Sid Meier's Civilization IV | 
| From: 2K Games
List Price: $29.99
Buy New: $11.95
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Rating:  365 reviews
Sales Rank: 1159
Platforms: Windows Xp, Windows 2000
Genre: strategy_games
ESRB: Everyone 10+
Media: CD-ROM
Autographed: No
Memorabilia: No
Batteries Included: No
Age: 5 - 20 years
Operating System: Windows 2000
Shipping Weight (lbs): 2.1
Dimensions (in): 5 x 1 x 4
MPN: 710425217128
Model: 710425217128
UPC: 710425217128
EAN: 0710425217128
ASIN: B000BC38K6
Release Date: October 24, 2005
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| Features:
| • | Match wits against world leaders in a quest to build the ultimate empire | | • | Detailed, living 3D world with animated units and customizable armies | | • | Flexible tech tree provides more strategic choices for developing civilizations | | • | Easy-to-use interface; team play offers new way of setting locked alliances | | • | Single player or multiplayer gameplay options |
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Product Description
Civilization IV is recognized as one of the greatest PC game franchises of all-time. Now the fun and incredibly addictive strategy game reaches new heights by adding new ways to play and win -- along with new tools to manage and expand your civilization. Civilization comes to life like never before in a beautifully detailed, living 3D world -- with all-new easy to use mod capabilities and intense multiplayer modes and options. It's a must-have for gamers around the world! Flexible Tech Tree allows players more strategic choices for developing their civilizations Team play offers a new way of setting locked alliances that result in shared wonder effects, visibility, unit trading and shared territory Over 70 in-game movies and animated sequences advance the story
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| Customer Reviews: Read 360 more reviews...
 Released as a beta version, but now works (mostly) fine October 30, 2005
Bruce F. Webster (Parker, CO USA)
663 out of 738 found this review helpful
[5th version of my review - March 1]
While I can edit this review, I can't updating the ratings above; if I could, then I'd change them to 5 stars for 'fun' and 4 stars for 'overall' with the 1.52 patch installed.
I stand by my earlier contention that 2K Games pushed Civ4 out the door a few months too early. Civ4 should never have gotten through SQA (software quality assurance) and been declared 'golden' (ready for commercial release) with these kinds of defects. I suspect this was done to increase Christmas sales, but the net-wide flap over the Civ4 problems likely had just the opposite effect.
Since then, 2KGames had released patches to fix most of the technical problems. Because of that, I've deleted the section I originally had in this review regarding installation and graphics driver problems; just be sure to download and install the current Civ4 patch (version 1.52, as of this updated posting) from the 2kgames.com web site before playing.
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That said, I am quite happy with the changes and expansions made to Civ4. My highest praise goes to the actual game design changes, to wit:
--Faster gameplay. I typically play with a huge world, but I finish a game a lot faster than I could in Civ3. (That's not saying too much; I've still had a few all-nighters.)
--Reduction or elimination of a lot of the micromanagement. I am _so_ happy not to be dealing with riots; in virtually every game that I've played, I've never had to open up a city and reallocate who was working where. Also, automated workers are a lot smarter (and have more options).
--The improved terrain modeling and the increased improvements options; again, it makes things more interesting.
--The combat unit "promotion" track. I tend to go for non-military victories, but this feature may make me play around more with actually conquering my neighbors. It also makes barracks more valuable.
--The "civics" and "religion" aspect. Both are interesting and fun, and both appear to be well-balanced.
--The "culture borders" concept. This allowed me to stake out territory while minimizing incursion by other nations. However, be aware that keeping your borders closed irritates the AIs after a while.
--The "great leaders" concept. There was a little of this in Civ3, but this new implementation makes it a far more vital part of the game. I managed to trigger two (2) golden ages for myself in one game (one by building the Taj Majal, the other by using several great leaders), and I also kept a few Great Engineers on hand to hurry some major wonder projects towards the end of the game. And Great Artists are very useful for 'culture bombing' neighboring cities or pre-emptively staking out large amounts of unclaimed territory.
Most of the complaints I had (UI response, lack of right-click menu features, raging barbarians) appear to have been fixed or, at least, improved by the 1.52 patch. Here are a few that remain:
--The "Show Friendly Moves" option does _not_ include units that are automaticly exploring (scouts, galleys, etc.)--which is where I used it the most in Civ3. Indeed, there appears to be some overall flakiness in both the "Show Friendly Moves" and "Show Enemy Moves" options--it's hard to tell at times whether Civ4 is paying any attention to those options.
-- Even with the 1.52 patch installed, when you complete a game, it's best to exit Civ4 before starting a new game. I've had one or two abrupt crashes when I've tried to go from completing one game to starting a new one.
All this said, Civ4 is a major improvement (in game design and graphics) over Civ3. It is very addictive, and I've spent far more time playing it over the past several months than I should have. ..bruce..
 Enhancements in all the right places November 4, 2005
Crispee (Westminster, CO United States)
222 out of 270 found this review helpful
I've been playing Civ since 1992 and it's amazing how, even with all the ripoff games in the same vein, it remains a leader and innovator. While some folks like the insane action of RTS, Civilization allows one to be more thoughtful about gameplay -- more like chess.
The presentation is just marvelous -- with great graphics that even with all settings turned to the max, are snappy and just right. The wonder movies are astonishing as well although I did find some sound glitches in them.
Finally you can zoom all the way into your cities and every city looks different based on the choices that you've made through the game. Developed tiles around them slowly turn into suburban sprawl and the whole effect is very realistic. The animation on the ground is also very good and adds alot of beauty to the map.
The sound design is amazing with a wonderful soundtrack. The main menu music is just for color but i find myself sitting on the screen to let it play. The music choices are interesting and varied and suitable for the period. Mozart and the classics are to be expected. What I didn't expect was to hear clips from the opera "Nixon in China". Amazing to hear.
Units animate much better and combat is the pretty much the same "dice roll" type that has always been in the game. While it is more balanced than before, with city defenses a group of archers can still defeat units with guns. What adds a nice "RPG" feel is the upgrades through XP that you can give your units. This takes units to a whole new level and encourages combat.
The resources are much more developed and make it more fun. Workers now have many levels of duties they can do. While this is fun for while -- like old games once you have 20 workers going you just automate them and don't think of them again. This is a strength and a weakness. It's great not to micromanage but why have something the computer is going to play for you? I wish there was more decisions that needed to be made in that respect that could affect how your game develops.
And as with previous versions this is an overall problem. The later stages of the game do bog down in popup clicking and choosing what to build. In the earlier phases it has alot of importance and if you are a warring nation it does. Being a peaceful, powerful nation is pretty boring though. Decision making is not as imporant or complex. Discoveries are nil and the game gets repetitive.
Battle though is pretty fun though so the best way to combat the above is to... well, combat.
The A.I. on the level I played was pretty weak. Asking someone to go to war with you gets no coordinated effort. In fact the other nation didn't do one thing except move their units around. One time they even captured a city after watching me do all the work! This area could use alot of improvement as there is really no strategic reason to do it.
The Wonders are back although later in the game they don't really add a whole lot. Mainly they will increase your culture. Only at the very end did any cities convert to my nationality due to culture. Occasionally a Wonder will afford you the ability to build something.
New in the game is the "Great Person" concept which adds another layer of choice onto what to do with your city. I wish they would do more than they do. After awhile it is a bit repetitive. Plus there is no explanation on who that person is so you can at least learn something. Mainly each category of person does the same thing.
The Civilopedia is back but doesn't seem as helpful as in previous versions. It's sad to see it actually get worse and less helpful. Also in that category are the "advisors" which are pretty useless here. Luckily other parts of the game provide insight so you don't need them quite as much.
It might seem like there are alot of negatives but there is alot of good stuff and it is definitely the best version of the game yet. Highly recommended and still as addictive as ever. But... the replay value is lacking as once you do it a few times, it doesn't vary enough to really warrant much repeating. The higher levels basically allow the other civs to "cheat" by getting things faster. I haven't tried but one level so that remains to be tested.
Overall, thumbs up. Go buy it.
 The most poorly programmed game I have ever played November 21, 2005
Lawrence Wisne Jr. (Palo Alto, CA)
45 out of 78 found this review helpful
I am a computer programmer, and this game makes me sick. I have never seen such a piece of trash thrown into a box and sold to people. I think the game itself is pretty interesting, but what does it matter since I can't play a game all the way through? Once I get to the 1800s or so, the game crashes every 2 or 3 turns. Firaxis and 2k Games (the companies responsible for this piece of garbage) should be ashamed of themselves. I want my $50 back until you finish beta testing!
Looks aren't everything January 10, 2006
J. Hall (Santa Clara, CA)
45 out of 60 found this review helpful
I bought this game on the recommendation of my brother-in-law, who has similar taste in gaming. Owning an Alienware gaming rig, I wasn't concerned about the system requirements--after all, this is a 3 GHz P4, with a GB of RAM, dual 200 GB RAID0 SATA drives, and a top-of-the-line NVIDIA video card. No worries, right?
When I ran through the tutorial, I thought that the game looked interesting and fun--albeit a bit complicated--so I started a "real" game. It was great fun, the interface is well done, and I really like the game during the time it works. But it's hard to communicate just how bad it is for a game to be pretty cool, hook you in, and then fail (badly) in a way that prevents you from completing it.
Right up until the Industrial era, everything is fine. At that point, the game started crashing (and patching it hasn't helped). Generally the crashes occur during or soon after one of the "cut scenes" showing the construction of a Wonder. Before the patch, the game failed with no error--it just dumped to the desktop. Now that it's "patched" it fails with a memory corruption error. Thanks, guys. That's ever so much better.
I've tried everything recommended and everything I could think of (I work in software development) but no dice. I've checked for updates for my video card, killed off unnecessary processes, started with a smaller world, lowered resolution... but nothing seems to help. The frustration and disappointment at this point will probably leave the game sitting on the shelf--I doubt I'll be frequenting the Civ IV Web site to see if they have a newer and better patch.
The funny thing is, I would rate this game really highly on the interface, game concept, and fun. I think this might have been a game that would have changed my interest from RTS to turn-based games. I really WANT to play this game and to like it as much as I was starting to before it started crashing. But it isn't so much fun if you can't finish.
My recommendation is to avoid this game.
A Platinum-Plated Turd May 23, 2006
Gregory Bartz (San Jose, CA)
42 out of 69 found this review helpful
I'll be completely honest. I have lost sleep to this game. I've played with that "just one more turn..." gleam in my eyes until suddenly it's 4 AM and the sun is rising. However, this was only for the first few days, and right now, I feel like dusting off my old copy of Civ II and giving someone a Babylonian Beatdown. Civ4 is not a bad game per se; however, it is not a great game either, and mostly just serves to remind me of what a freaking awesome game Civ2 was.
If you've played the previous Civ games, or Alpha Centauri, the first thing that you'll notice about this one is how much the core elements have stayed the same. The map is still divided into square tiles. You still use settlers to build cities and then put the little people-heads to work on the 20 squares around the city in order to produce varying amounts of food, industry, and money depending on the terrain being worked. Population still increases according to how quickly you can stockpile food, and there's still no distinction between mining capacity and manufacturing capacity. Combat still involves only one attacking unit and one defending unit at a time. In other words, it's still immediately recognizable as being made in the mold of Civ. However, it was not designed by Sid Meier, who created the original, nor was it designed by Brian Reynolds, who made Civ2 and Alpha Centauri. The lead designer of Civ4 was Soren Johnson. Remember that for later.
The most immediately noticeable difference is the perspective. The pseudo-three-dimensional isometric perspective of Civ2 and Civ3 has been replaced with a true and fully 3D graphics engine. This has allowed the maps to be done as true square grids like in Civ1, as opposed to the ugly jagged-edged diamond grids with skrewy coordinate systems in Civ2/3. The mouse wheel adjusts both zoom and perspective; the view becomes more top-down as you zoom out, and more first-person-ish as you zoom in. It's quite lovely, and the ONE area in which Civ4 has managed to improve upon its predecessors.
The second immediately noticeable difference is the terrain. Hills, forests, and jungles are not distinct terrain types anymore, but rather, attributes that terrain can have, just like Xenofungus and "rockiness" from Alpha Centauri. Rivers, which were a distinct terrain type in Civ1 but a terrain attribute in Civ2 and Alpha Centauri, now run between tiles as they did in Civ3. The game also divides water tiles into shallow ("coast") and deep ("ocean") categories, another trait borrowed from Alpha Centauri. Nothing bad, but nothing new, either.
The third immediately noticeable difference is the combat stats of units. They no longer have distinct offense and defense values, just a single combat value. In all previous Civ games, if a strongly attack-oriented unit like a catapult attacked another catapult in flat open terrain, the attacking unit was almost guaranteed to win. Similarly, if a strongly defensive unit like a Phalanx attacked another Phalanx, the defender had the distinct advantage. In Civ 4, this aspect of combat is completely gone. Catapults are just as good at holding hills as they are at knocking down city walls. Ummmmm... yeah, right. Unfortunately, that's only the beginning of the dozens of lapses in logic that Civ4 demonstrates. I've also been unable to figure out what the hell kind of combat system it's using, but however it works, it allows archers to regularly beat WWII-era Infantry. Even Civ2 was better than that. But I'll hold the complaints for the second half of the review.
One of Civ4's best attributes is its emphasis on special resources. In Civ1/2, special resources did nothing more than boost the food, production, and trade output of any given terrain square. Civ3 changed that by making them required to build certain units; for example, you couldn't build gunpowder-based units unless you had access to the Saltpeter resource. Civ4 adopts the same idea. This makes wars MUCH more interesting and realistic - you need access to horses in order to build mounted units, Copper or Iron in order to build most melee weapons, Uranium to build nukes, and so on. Many resources also require specialized improvements, like offshore oil rigs. Very, very cool, though again, sadly, nothing new.
The removal of pollution, drone riots, and fixed population caps is a welcome change. These are now handled by new, less annoying functions. Corruption, Waste, and individual building maintenance costs are also gone, with building maintenance now directly determined by a city's distance from your palace. Naturaly, this means that many buildings have had their functions altered; Courthouses cut building maintenance costs in half, while Aqueducts add 2 to a city's healthiness. Actually, just about every building has been changed in some way. For example, Coal Plants, instead of increasing your production directly, now provide an entity called "power", which increases the effectiveness of your Factories. Woo! Realism!
The addition of culture and religion is... interesting. Unfortunately, it has very little real effect on the game, except that it boosts the combat effectiveness of the troops defending your cities. Yes, that's right... you can make your city walls stronger by writing books and singing songs. Sure. That makes sense. Oh, and because Firaxis was so obsessed with being politically correct, all religions are functionally identical. Because, you know, a society of Buddhists and a society of Muslims are equally likely to go to war. Ummm... woo, realism? Commence the complaining.
The tech tree has been completely redrawn. You no longer start the game with Irrigation, Mining, and Roads; instead, you must research Agriculture, Mining, and The Wheel, respectively. This is another thing that annoys me. Why can't roads be built until The Wheel is discovered? In the real world, roads existed long before wheels did! And honestly, how much "scientific research" is involved in discovering that you can scoop dirt out of the ground? You also have to research "hunting", despite the fact that dinosaurs had that "technology" hundreds of millions of years ago... and humans had in tens of thousands of years ago, if not hundreds of thousands, well before the game's 4000 BC starting date. Hunting is also a prerequsite for animal husbandry, meaning that you have to learn how to kill animals in order to befriend them. Yeah, you try to figure out the logic behind that one. But the madness doesn't end there. Paper, which the Egyptians and Chinese had somewhere around 3000 BC, is a good halfway up the tech tree. Polytheism is a prerequisite for Literature, as if a person's religious beliefs have the slightest relevance to their ability to write books. Polytheism is also STILL a prerequisite for Monotheism (in violation of Occam's Razor), but this blooper was in all of the previous Civ games, so I'll let it slide. Actually, tech trees have been so generally nonsensical in all of the previous games, so I think I'll let this whole category slide. Instead, I'll complain about the specific things that each technology allows. The "Machine Gun" unit requires Railroad. What the hell do machine guns and railroads have to do with each other? The Galleon and Frigate require Astronomy, as if boat design has ever been improved by looking at the sky. The "Mount Rushmore" Wonder, a symbol of American freedom and democracy, requires the discovery of FASCISM - what was Soren Johnson smoking when he came up with THAT one? The "Hereditary Rule" civic option must be researched - seriously, how much "scientific research" does it take to come up with the idea of "the kid gets the throne when I die"? Or how about the Free Speech and Free Religion civic options? Those are in the upper half of the tech tree, despite the fact that in reality, both speech and religion STARTED OUT free until someone came up with the ideas of censorship and state religion. Soren Johnson needs to be smacked upside the head with a two-by-four. Hard. And repeatedly.
Unit obsolescence/upgrade paths are even worse. In previous Civ games, as in reality, medieval weaponry became obsolete with the discovery of gunpowder and the creation of muskets. In Civ4, gunpowder does not make any units obsolete. Not a single bloody one. NOTHING upgrades to a Musketeer - NOT EVEN ARCHERS!!! WHAT THE HELL?!?!? Instead, musketeers/musketmen are basically medieval units, and all Pikemen, Macemen, Longbows, Crossbows, et cetera are made obsolete by Rifling and upgrade directly to Riflemen, as do the musket infantry. This is, for lack of a better word, completely f***ing retarded. Also in previous Civ games, as in reality, wooden warships became obsolete when Ironclads were developed. In Civ4, nothing upgrades to an Ironclad, nor is made obsolete by its existence; instead, both Ironclads and wooden ships are replaced directly by Destroyers. Oh, and there are no Cruisers in Civ4. You get Destroyers, Battleships, Submarines, and Carriers, but no Cruisers. Soren Johnson has clearly not played "Battleship" in a VERY long time. Oh, but there's more... in previous Civ games, as in reality, Tanks were the modern replacement for Cavalry. In Civ4, Cavalry upgrades to... helicopters? What the hell!
Some of the more "fun" specialty units are nonexistent. Paratrooper fans will be disappointed because the Paradrop function has been removed. The "Alpine" ability is gone, too. Diplomacy and espionage units are gone; the Spy is still around, but has been reduced to a modernized Explorer. Those crazy little Fanatic guys are gone, along will their railroad-pillaging counterparts, the Partisans. Marines are still around, but this doesn't mean much because now ALL ground combat units can attack directly from transport ships. Cruise Missiles are gone, and nukes have been heavily watered down. Caravans and Freight units are gone - no more stockpiling for instant Wonders. Oh, speaking of which, Wonders no longer come in increments of seven. Another brilliant move by Soren Johnson.
Of the 18 playable civilizations that come with the game, not one is Mesopotamian. There are no Sumerians, Babylonians, or Assyrians, despite the fact that one of the Wonders is the HANGING GARDENS OF FREAKING BABYLON!!! I'm hoping that this is fixed in the expansion pack...
Unfortunately, it's these little things that ruin the game for me. Colosseums are bugged and produce three times as much happiness per culture as they're supposed to, making them obscenely overpowered. AI empires never declare war on each other. Dozens, if not hundreds, of these little things. Gameplay is smoother and more manageable than before, but when my intelligence is so frequently assaulted by such horribly sloppy game design, I begin to wonder just where that old Civ2 disc is hiding.
But hey, maybe they'll finally get it right with the fifth one.
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