Here, at the gates of my capitol, the Chinese have a reasonably mixed siege army ready to go. I have been pillaged like crazy, and two of my outlying cities have been sacked. I lose this game and had a great, great time being defeated like this. Also, I didn't live long enough to reach the tedious end game!

The End

GAME STYLE CONCLUSIONS
I hope these very different approaches to playing style and difficulty level illustrate something about CivIV: On Noble level, if you are passive (but still have a strong home defense), you'll likely get a peaceful builder game in which not much happens, especially if you try diplomacy at all and use shared religion and trade to your favor. At the other extreme, if you go on the attack early and never let up, a conquest game, too, can end in a game in which not much interesting happens. This leads me to believe that timed or space race victories probably offer your best hope for excitement on Noble, though those victories seem artificial to me and don't really test the game's mechanics to their fullest. As most people are probably looking for Noble to provide the fairest look at the game, however, I am a bit worried that the general impression of CivIV's potential will be skewed toward thinking that "nothing happens" or that the game is too simple.

On Monarch level, I think the vision Firaxis has for CivIV finally comes to focus: There is now significant financial pressure in supporting your cities and units. Your citizens are much harder to please, which not only slows growth but demands that you research other parts of the tech tree that a warmonger might conveniently wait on at lower difficulty levels. In my quick survey, I found Monarch to offer a good balance of these elements while still offering me a chance to attack somebody. All elements of the game became important – everything from terrain to choosing promotions very carefully. Best of all, when I overstretched myself, a powerful neighbor capitalized in an intelligent way and killed me. It was very satisfying. Finally, my brief look at even higher difficulty levels and raging barbarians convinced me that I could tweak the challenge I wanted to suit my whim or improving skills.

Ultimately, I think Firaxis spent a good, long time figuring out how to rework the early game to kill I.C.S., to make for more interesting early decisions, and to liven up the game world. In that, they succeeded. For me, the early game is quite fun. But as the game progresses, various design weaknesses begin to show themselves, and ultimately the flawed interface coupled with an increasingly zoomed out view leaves the player feeling remote and focused on repetitive/awkward interface decisions instead of making interesting game decisions. Higher difficulty delays but doesn't fix those problems, though the rescaled graphics did help me feel a closer part of the action even when zoomed out to see more of the map.

If you reach the end game as a warmonger, however, gone are the subtle choices to be made about where to place a city (Do I keep this 40th city or not? Does it matter? Bleh.), about what resource to target (Oh, look, my 4th source of oil. Ho hum.), about what tech to shoot for (Hey, mom! Future Tech 12. No hands!), about what A.I. to cozy up to (O.K., Purple A.I.. You want some Stack of Death, too? Bug me one more time about open borders and I'll crush you just to shut you up), and, finally, what – if any – strategy to carry you to the end (O.K. Here's my strategy: Take these 5 cities, eat some dinner, take those next 5 cities, write a bit of my review, take another 5 cities, enjoy some tea and David Letterman.) To be fair, I haven't reached the end game on anything above Noble yet so cannot comment on the end game at higher levels except to say that even if the A.I. is putting up a better fight, you'll still run out of tech tree, out of new unit types, and, possibly, out of patience with the magnitude of micromanagement.

Ultimately any of the subtleties of the early game are blown away simply by the economies of scale the player ultimately gets away with once you pass the tipping point (a point this is pushed much higher at higher difficulty levels, of course). Your coffers are running so high that city or unit maintenance means nothing. I'm at 80% cultural spending, 0% research (no need), and still pulling in 220+ gold. Coupled with my 11,000 gold in the bank and no worry that even healing my units in battle will cost me something, what more is there to think about? Attack with 20 stealth bombers on the next city instead of 15? Those become the little mini games you have to play to keep the end game entertaining: Can I take an entire city just with a bajillion artillery and a single marine? Dunno, let's try!

RECOMMENDATIONS
Beyond some criticism sprinkled here and there in my review, perhaps my best recommendations for Firaxis and frustrated CivIV players come simply by pointing to the latest build of Stan Karpinski's Ages of Man (theagesofman.net), which was inspired by Hexagonian's Cradle mod (geocities.com/hexagonia). You'll need a copy of Call to Power II, but the Ages of Man update is free from Stan (he'll send you the files on CD for a deliver charge if you prefer). The graphics won't wow anybody, but some of the gameplay elements just might.

By no means am I suggesting that you play one game and not the other. In fact, I find elements in both games that I appreciate and wish some of them could be combined! Some Ideas from Ages of Man:

1. Progression through the eras is greatly slowed. Be prepared to earn your tech advances. Be ready to use those upgraded units for a good long time before needing to upgrade them again.
2. Yes, the A.I. has certain cheats, but the human player can work to even the field early by building/defending outposts on resources, and in doing so unlock some tech advances, secure cartels (economic bonuses) etc.
3. Government type limits the number of cities you can hold before the maintenance penalties become severe.
4. Healing your units costs production points (and you can't do this in enemy territory AT ALL without supply wagons)…no more steamrolling over the enemy and simply healing every other turn for free.
5. And on this topic, tile improvements cost you dearly in a clear guns (unit healing) or butter (tile improving) proposition that forces the player to make interesting decisions.
6. The A.I. is coded to evaluate every bit of progress or aggression you make. This “frenzy” code means the A.I. is never simply sitting idle on the sideline waiting for you to cruise to a win. This doesn't necessarily mean that all the A.I. will pile on you, but it does mean that when the A.I. asks for an arms reduction (yes, arms reduction!), you might consider it carefully.
7. Coordinated A.I. attacks and alliance with the A.I. that let you, for example, decide on a particular city to attack together.
8. A.I. civs that will actually surrender when you are clearly more powerful than they are…imagine the time savings and added realism over taking down civs to the last city.
9. Stacked combat! A highlight of the CTP series, frankly.
10. Public Works! -- No more workers cluttering up the screen, and you just might pay more attention to tile improvements.
11. A useful encyclopedia of game ideas.
12. An interface that makes finding units / cities, doing upgrades, etc., much easier than it is in CivIV.

Despite all my critical views of CivIV, I think that Soren is listening to fans. He said, when talking about the RPG-like elements of promotions, that he isn't against using great ideas found in other games: With the opportunity for more patches and x-packs, I'd say that's precisely what the team at Firaxis should do. With any luck (and tons of hard work in Hunt Valley), CivIV will be our strategy game of choice for years and years to come.

Finally, for those people out there who wish me ill (I don't always blame you, either!), the question of “Will Yin be eating any cardboard?” is probably of interest to you. I think you have my answer on I.C.S. as well as combat. While I am curious to see how a few others (Vel, Korn, Hex, etc.) think about these things, I would give I.C.S. a +1 and combat a -1. So, does that mean the result is zero, and I won't eat any cardboard? Actually, they were separate issues.

Let's just say I am inviting a friend out for a visit…and he is very good with a digital camera and video editing software on the Mac…   ... Previous Page

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