article

Sid Meier's Civilization IV (or Civ IV) is a turn-based strategy computer game released between October 25 and November 4, 2005 in North America, Europe, and Australia. Developed by lead designer Soren Johnson under the direction of Sid Meier and Meier's studio Firaxis Games, it is the latest installment of the acclaimed Civilization series. The game's first expansion, Warlords, is due to be released in July 2006.

Overview

Civilization IV is a historical 4X game in which the player builds an empire from scratch. All standard full-length games begin in 4000 BC with a single settler to build one's first city and a scout or a warrior. From there, the player expands the empire while contending with rivals, utilizing the geography, and developing technology.

The player has several obstacles to face modelled on political or economical problems faced by real-world nations. Apart from this they also have to handle their diplomatic relations with rivals and their continuing quest for exploration and new resources. Other important tasks include the planning of where to build new cities and progress in science which reveals access to new technologies. A player has the choice of playing the part of a number of historical figures ranging from Mahatma Gandhi (Indian Empire) to Mao Zedong (Chinese Empire).

The scope of the game ranges from a period near the stone-age to 2050 A.D. Civilizations gradually advance in technology based on their own production of "research" and sometimes the work of Great People. Technologies range from Writing and Pottery to Paper and Nuclear Fission. All technologies reveal new possibilities for a civilization and enable the chance to trade with other civilizations for military aid, gold, resources or other technologies. The concept of technological growth is based on a technology tree.

Another important concept in the game is the growth of culture, which expands one's cultural borders and can also cause one's culture to infiltrate into other civilization's, sometimes causing a city to rebel against its current owner. Culture is increased through the creation of World Wonders, which also have other effects, constructing certain buildings in cities, and the spreading of a number of religions (see below).

The game can be won through Conquest (conquering all other civilizations), Domination (controlling a dominant percentage of the world's land and the world's population), Space Race (being the first to construct the various parts of a space ship to fly to Alpha Centauri), Cultural (increasing the cultural ratings of three different cities to "legendary" levels), Diplomatic (through votes in the United Nations) or Time (having the most points at the end of 2050).

Gameplay

Diplomacy

Diplomacy in Civilization is generally the trading of goods. Different trade options require different advancements to unlock, and some things may only be traded for certain other things (e.g., per turns deals must be compensated by another per turn deal). The general items to trade to the other civilization are technologies, resources (including luxuries such as wine), maps (to reveal information about the rest of the world) and gold. Advanced diplomacy options include the creation of trade embargos, the promising of military aid and the adoption of particular civics and/or a religion. The reasoning behind diplomacy is more transparent when compared to Civ3: the Diplomacy window now not only displays the other leaders' attitudes (friendly, pleased, cautious, annoyed, furious), but why they feel that way (e.g "-2: You refused to stop trading with our worst enemies!"). When a leader is friendly towards one's civilization, they are more likely to accept deals without unfair bargaining. Another new feature is the new abilities of the United Nations. The United Nations wonder allows passing global resolutions (e.g. the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty) in addition to granting access to diplomatic victory. Unlike real-world resolutions, Civilization IV's resolutions are binding.

Civ02.jpg|thumb|150px|left|Another screenshot of a Civilization 4 game, this time played as the Germans during a buildup for war.]]

Combat

Units no longer have separate attack and defense values. Instead, they have a base strength that is increased or decreased depending on the situation. The unit's strength also impacts how much damage it can do. Prior to the 1.52 patch, the unit's damage was calculated using its current strength (which also acts as life/hitpoints and changes accordingly). After the patch, the damage is calculated from the base strength - this means that badly damaged modern units can still easily win battles against obsolete units. Instead of generic increases in rank, individual units gain specific types of combat experience, such as bonuses against specific types of enemies or abilities like faster movement in forests. In total, there are 41 different types of combat promotions. It is also now possible for players to examine "combat odds" before attacking, giving the player a good sense as to whether a given attack will succeed or not, factoring in all the various bonuses and penalties associated with terrain, unit capabilities, and so forth.

The 1.61 patch brought further changes, and now damaged units attack or defend with the average of their current and full strengths.

Production and trade

The game features 32 types of resources, all of which are tradeable and require an improvement (such as a mine or an oil well) to be utilized. Some resources are required for certain units, buildings, or wonders (iron, copper); some may double the production speed of a certain wonder (marble, aluminium); and some act as luxuries like in Civ III, providing either happiness or health to all cities connected to them (fur, dye, incense). There are also three types of culture goods provided by World Wonders, rather than resources, that can be traded: Hit Singles, Hit Movies and Hit Musicals. To trade goods or to send them to other cities within one's border, they must have some form of connection between the goods and the city. In the later game, this connection can be through ocean tiles, but in the early game, it is limited to roads and rivers. Cities on the same river or coastline are automatically connected for trading purposes. Production (also known as "Hammers," the icon that represents it) is sometimes used as a resource-term on Civilization. Each tile provides a city with a certain amount of "Hammers" which collect up in the city to produce buildings and units. Unlike in Civilization III, the player is no longer able to transfer all production from one project to another, but all production on a certain project will remain. For example, if the player is building a temple but decides to switch to a harbor, production on the harbor will have to start from scratch. However, the temple stays in the building queue and retains its previous progress, aside from some decay over time. As an ancillary rule, if one culture is building a World Wonder but another empire completes it first, the losing culture is compensated with gold proportional to the amount of Production points lost.

Religion

The concept of separate religions is new to Civ4. In previous games, players could build temples and cathedrals, but the religion was just a generic feature of happiness and culture. There are now seven distinct religions in the game — Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and Taoism. In order to prevent anyone from being offended because of an issue related to their religion while playing, there are no bonuses or traits specific to any religion, except that each religion is tied to a specific technological advance, and the four later religions (Christianity, Confucianism, Islam, and Taoism) begin with a free missionary; however, this is more for game balance than anything else. If a player is the first to discover a certain religion on the tech tree, they can "found" the new religion; a city with no religion or the newest city in that civilization's empire becomes that religion's holy city.

As the game progresses, both the players' and the AI's religions will slowly spread by themselves to cities that do not yet have formal religions. Players and the AI can also greatly accelerate the process through missionaries, monasteries, shrines, other buildings and units, and acts of diplomacy such as asking another nation to convert to one's religion. If a player controls the holy city of a religion, they are able to have line of sight in cities that share that religion, and can also build holy structures that inspire foreign citizens to send gold to that player's coffers by means of expending a Great Prophet in the holy city. Two civs with the same religion (ie. the player and an AI civ) will be more friendly to one another in trade and diplomacy; those with different religions will display varying degrees of hostility. These effects are amplified for civilizations controlling their religion's holy city.

The new civics model of government also has a strong effect on religion: players can found a state religion, declare religious freedom, or take other actions that have profound impacts on the religious lives of their subjects. If a civilization has no declared religion, they are exempt from diplomatic advantages/disadvantages through religion.

Civilizations and leaders

Eight of the eighteen civilizations have two leaders. Each leader offers bonuses based on what conditions were exceptional during the historical reign of that leader, and each leader acts as differently as if they were a separate civilization and have distinct personalities. Several historic figures not used in previous Civ games are AI leaders in Civ4, including: Asoka, Cyrus II, Franklin D. Roosevelt, George Washington, Hatshepsut, Mansa Musa, Kublai Khan, Peter the Great, Qin Shi Huang, Saladin (though Saladin was a hidden leader in Civ 2), and Queen Victoria.

All civilizations have some element of uniqueness and all leaders have certain traits based on their achievements in real life. While these are limited, they have some effect on a player's game plan. All civilizations also have a unique unit which can be military (such as Persian Immortals) or economic (such as Indian Fast Workers). Below is a summary of the unique features of each civlization.

Civilization IV
Civilization Starting Advances Unique Unit Leaders Leader Traits Favorite Civic Capital
America Fishing, Agriculture Navy SEAL (replaces Marine) George Washington Financial, Organized Universal Suffrage Washington
Franklin D. Roosevelt Industrious, Organized Universal Suffrage
Arabia Mysticism, The Wheel Camel Archer (replaces Knight) Saladin Philosophical, Spiritual Theocracy Mecca
Aztecs Mysticism, Hunting Jaguar Warrior (replaces Swordsman) Montezuma II Aggressive, Spiritual Police State Tenochtitlan
China Agriculture, Mining Cho-Ko-Nu (replaces Crossbow) Mao Zedong Philosophical, Organized State Property Beijing
Qin Shi Huang Industrious, Financial Police State
Egypt Agriculture, The Wheel War Chariot (replaces Chariot) Hatshepsut Spiritual, Creative Hereditary Rule Thebes
England Fishing, Mining Redcoat (replaces Rifleman) Victoria Expansive, Financial Representation London
Elizabeth I Philosophical, Financial Free Religion
France Agriculture, The Wheel Musketeer (replaces Musketman) Louis XIV Creative, Industrious Hereditary Rule Paris
Napoleon Bonaparte Aggressive, Industrious Representation
Germany Hunting, Mining Panzer (replaces Tank) Frederick II the Great Creative and Philosophical Universal Suffrage Berlin
Otto von Bismarck Expansive, Industrious Representation
Greece Fishing, Hunting Phalanx (replaces Spearman) Alexander III the Great Aggressive, Philosophical Hereditary Rule Athens
Incans Agriculture, Mysticism Quechua Warrior (replaces Warrior) Huayna Capac Aggressive, Financial Hereditary Rule Cuzco
India Mysticism, Mining Fast Worker (replaces Worker) Mohandas Gandhi Industrious, Spiritual Universal Suffrage Delhi
Asoka Organized, Spiritual Universal Suffrage
Japan Fishing, The Wheel Samurai (replaces Maceman) Tokugawa Ieyasu Aggressive, Organized Mercantilism Kyoto
Mali Mining, The Wheel Skirmisher (replaces Archer) Mansa Musa Financial, Spiritual Free Market Timbuktu
Mongolia Hunting, The Wheel Keshik (replaces Horse Archer) Genghis Khan Aggressive, Expansive Police State Karakorum
Kublai Khan Aggressive, Creative Hereditary Rule
Persia Agriculture, Hunting Immortals (replaces Chariot) Cyrus II Expansive, Creative Representation Persepolis
Rome Fishing, Mining Praetorian (replaces Swordsman) Julius Caesar Organized, Expansive Representation Rome
Russia Hunting, Mining Cossack (replaces Cavalry) Catherine II the Great Creative, Financial Hereditary Rule Moscow
Peter I the Great Expansive, Philosophical Police State
Spain Fishing, Mysticism Conquistador (replaces Knight) Isabella I Expansive, Spiritual Police State Madrid
Civilization franchise

Technologies

As in prior versions of Civilization, there are technologies for the civilizations to discover. There are a total of 86 technologies in the game, up from 81 in Civilization III. Technologies have many uses; they can be used for trade, for the construction of new buildings and wonders, for the founding of new religions, or for the development of new forms of government. To discover modern technologies, it is first necessary to discover the technologies that lead up to it (for example, Democracy can only be discovered after the printing press). See List of technologies in Civilization IV for complete list.

Technology development is flexible: certain technologies can be discovered in more than just one way. The game has a very useful tech tree, which can be accessed by pressing F6 on the keyboard. The tech tree displays all the techs in the game and their relations with one another. It is possible to select even unavailable techs for research. This will cause all the prerequisite techs to be researched in order. If multiple paths lead to the target tech, the civilization will pick the shortest. The final tech or group of techs, as in previous versions, are called "Future Tech", followed by a number. Instead of simply adding on to the final score, however, each city receives a happiness and health bonus for each future tech discovered.

In single-player games, the discovery of each tech during the game is accompanied by a famous quote from history which is voiced by Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame. Some of the quotes come from Buddha, Charles Darwin, Brillat-Savarin, Steve Wozniak, Henry Ford, the Bible and even Lonnie Donegan.

Scoring System

In Civilization IV the leadership skills of players are compared to a subjective list of twenty of the best or worst leaders in history, similar to the list in Civilization I. The score is based on a number of factors, including military growth and success, technological advancement, construction of wonders and economic growth.
RankLeaderScore
1Augustus Caesar> 15,000
2Hammurabi14,000 - 14,999
3Abraham Lincoln13,000 - 13,999
4Charlemagne12,000 - 12,999
5Winston Churchill11,000 - 11,999
6Nelson Mandela10,500 - 10,999
7Emperor Constantine10,000 - 10,499
8Shaka Zulu9,500 - 9,999
9Charles de Gaulle9,000 - 9,499
10Simón Bolívar8,500 - 8,999
11Lech Wałęsa8,000 - 8,499
12Ivan the Terrible7,500 - 7,999
13Henry VIII7,000 - 7,499
14Herbert Hoover6,500 - 6,999
15Louis XVI6,000 - 6,499
16Neville Chamberlain5,500 - 5,999
17Nero5,000 - 5,499
18Warren G. Harding4,000 - 4,999
19Ethelred the Unready3,000 - 3,999
20Dan Quayle< 3,000

The game abandons Civilization III's graded scale. In Civ3, a spectacular victory on Chieftain mode (the easiest available) would provide the player with a fairly bad score, and the best titles were only awarded to players attempting the hardest difficulties. Civ4, on the other hand, allows the player to obtain any score on any difficulty level, although as of the v1.61 patch, the player's score is normalized based on the chosen difficulty level. For example, playing on the 'Prince' difficulty will give the player a 20% boost to the final score.

New features

Gameplay

Many aspects of Civilization IV are new to the series. These include:

  • There are Great People that fall into five categories: artists, merchants, prophets, engineers and scientists. Each of these grants several bonus abilities. Among the Great People included are Xi Ling-Shi, Plato, Moses, Homer, William Shakespeare, Ramakrishna, Michelangelo, Isaac Newton, Zoroaster, Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi, Coco Chanel, Albert Einstein and Li Po. (See List of historical figures in Civilization IV for a full list of people and cultures used in Civ IV.)
  • The founding and spreading of religions and the adoption of a state religion (see above)
  • Instead of subtracting from a city's population upon completion, Settler and Worker units require the city to suspend its population growth, on the theory that all its new citizens are being funneled into the unit, until it contains enough people to depart. This makes Settlers significantly more difficult to build in small cities, and encourages players to build up their cities before expanding.
  • The concept of city maintenance replaces corruption, which has been removed. Civilizations with a large number of small or ineffective cities will find their empire too expensive to maintain.
    • These two modifications together prevent a common strategy called Infinite City Sprawl (ICS), where numerous new cities are built as quickly as possible without regard for the consequential increase in city maintenance.
  • One civilization's units cannot cross another civilization's territory unless the civilizations are at war or have agreed to an open borders treaty.
  • Governments have been replaced with a more flexible civics model, where the player can set the amount of freedom the citizens have (slavery, free speech, etc.). There are five different categories in the new civics model (Government, Legal, Labor, Economy, and Religion), and five separate options within each category. This appears to be adapted from the Social Engineering section of Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
  • AI civilizations no longer act as if they have knowledge of the entire map.
  • The AI is more intelligent. They make full use of all options and have better long-term planning abilities.

Interface improvements

  • Pollution, size restictions, and similar aspects from earlier games are combined into one "City Health" system. Resources and improvements—such as wheat and hospitals—add health points, while population growth and industry decrease them. A negative total causes a food production penalty for the city. Fallout continues to exist in the case of a nuclear attack or meltdown.
  • Similarly, cities no longer fall into tedious disorder. For each unhappiness point over the amount of happiness points, one citizen refuses to work.
  • Some streamlining elements have been introduced, such as the ability to select and issue orders to multiple units at the same time. When population grows, a new technology is discovered, or a new unit/improvement is built, any excess resources are carried over rather than wasted.

Audio-visual

  • More emphasis has also been put on the soundtrack, which features Renaissance (Desprez, da Palestrina, etc.), Baroque (Bach), Classical (Mozart and Beethoven), Romantic (Brahms, Dvořák, Rimsky-Korsakov, and Saint-Saëns), Minimalism (John Adams), and self-composed (mainly by Jeff Briggs) music.
  • Each leader has a unique piece of music played during diplomacy (with the exception of Kublai Khan who shares his music with Genghis Khan). Many of the pieces are popular and familiar; for example, Roosevelt's music is the Marines' Hymn, and Napoleon's is a variant on La Marseillaise. Some are renditions of famous pieces, such as Frederick's piece, which is a paraphrase of the fourth of the Goldberg Variations. Others, such as Mao Zedong and Alexander the Great have music that has been modified from earlier games, such as Civilization III. Still others have entirely original scores.
  • Narrative voice acting, previously heard in Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri but never used in a game with Civilization in its title, is provided by Leonard Nimoy, who reads a quotation related to a technology when it is discovered. Land-based units also offer short phrases in their culture's native language when selected. If the player's view is near a city, they will hear sounds related to the nation which owns that city.
  • Sound effects are played when certain buildings or improvements are built, such as coins jingling when a bank is completed. Ambient sounds can also be heard near different terrains when zoomed in. For example, near the ocean or on its shore, waves splashing and breaking up can be heard.
  • Civilization 4 uses the same 3D engine (Gamebryo) used in Sid Meier's Pirates!, which allows players to zoom smoothly from world map levels down to features in individual cities.
  • Wonder movies are back and they, arguably, show the best graphics in the game.

Customization

Civilization 4 is much more open to modification than its already mod-friendly prequels. Game data and rules are stored in XML files, a Software Development Kit was released in April 2006 to allow AI customization and, finally, major parts of interface, map generation, scripted events, etc are written entirely in Python.

Four levels of modification are possible:

Map Editor

The map editor, called World Builder, is accessible within the main GUI. It allows a player to create a map from scratch or to take any in-game situation as a jumping-off point for a new scenario. Terrain can be modified; resources, improvements, and military units added or removed; and cities built, erased, or altered. A bitmap importer allows the use of satellite data, and of other real-world (and imaginary) terrain maps.

The player can also choose what technologies are being researched, and the status of diplomatic and military ties.

XML

More game attributes are stored in XML files, which must be edited with an external text editor or application. Barry Caudill, a senior producer at Firaxis Games, said * in September:

Python

The game uses boost.python to allow the Python programming language access to many parts of the game (including the style and content of all interface screens).

Python can also be used to modify random map generation and to add complex scripted events.

Software Development Kit

The highly-anticipated Software Development Kit was released on April 13 2006 to co-incide with the release of the v1.61 patch. The kit allows players to view, modify or completely re-write the game's DLL source code, enabling the modification of the game's AI and other integral parts of the game. *

Launch problems

The release of Civilization IV has not gone smoothly. Technical, production and shipping problems have marred its product cycle.

  • As originally shipped, the game functioned poorly on minimum-specification machines, and suffered from performance problems. It also conflicted with certain mainstream graphics cards. A user-created utility program was created to fix the memory usage problems. It was made redundant with v1.52.
  • Some considered the minimum specification unnecessarily high for what is ultimately a strategy game. In particular, many with laptops containing Intel graphics chipsets faced an issue due to a lack of Hardware Transform and Lighting features; however, the dependence upon this functionality seems to have been reduced with the release of recent patches.
  • A major patch (v1.61) was released on 13 April, 2006. The patch made a number of gameplay tweaks, fixes and additions, including five new scenarios and three new map scripts. The patch also added support for the Pitboss turn-based server application. As before, the 45.7MB patch can be downloaded using the game's in-built updating utility, or from a variety of mirrors. [http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=166928
  • The most common packaging errors have been French and German technology charts in English-language boxes and the erroneous packing of two of the same CD-ROM, rendering the game unusable. *. There have also been some cases in which the game manual has pages placed in the wrong spot (e.g. page one is the very last page of the manual). There are also many typographical errors in the Dutch manual.
  • Civ IV uses SafeDisc 4, which refuses to acknowledge legitimate game copies if certain programs associated with unauthorized copying are installed. Unofficial work-arounds to SafeDisc exist.
  • Many players have experienced difficulty in multiplayer gameplay. When they attempt to join a game, their connection is refused by a fellow player's router or firewall, thus inhibiting gameplay. This problem is quite widespread in the Civ IV multiplayer community, and those players with routers or firewalls which reject other computers have been labeled as "bad peers." The problem is partially correctable by forwarding a series of ports on one's router or firewall to the game computer * (this method has not consistently solved the problem for some users), and can be eliminated entirely by demilitarizing the game computer on the router or firewall.

Despite all of these problems, many newer computers run Civilization IV quite smoothly. The headache caused by the need to cater to many different computer configurations has caused lead designer Soren Johnson to state that he seriously considers focusing on console development. *

Patches

  • The v1.09 patch for Civilization IV was released on 23 November 2005. While it fixed some memory leak issues, the patch seemed to focus more on tweaks to buildings and units, while also creating some problems of its own.
  • The v1.52 patch, released on 22 December 2005, was a major update that fixed several of the major performance headaches relating to numerous memory leaks and usage. v1.52 also added several new scenarios and maps, in addition to tweaking.
  • On 13 April 2006, the v1.61 patch was released. Also a major update, it fixed several performance issues remaining from v1.09 and v1.52, including the stuttering Wonder movie problem. Several new additions were made to the game, including two new map scripts, new game options and new scenarios. Many gameplay tweaks were also made. Although the patch was considered a success for some users, others have reported various problems, including a loss of text and sound. These problems seem to be related to the incompatability of certain mods downloaded by users.

Critics' Scores

Awards

Trivia

  • Sid Meier narrates the tutorial.
  • Much of the game is voiced by Leonard Nimoy, famous for playing the role of Spock from Star Trek.
  • In the cultural victory cutscene, the Colossus' face appears to be a composite of Sid Meier.
  • Like in many other games, the manual goes into production before the developers have finished the game, and there are several notable errors:
    • All the results of all the games that have been played, regardless of victory or score, are listed in the "Hall of Fame" (despite what the manual says: If your victory is spectacular enough, your exploits might be recorded on the Civilization IV Hall of Fame screen)
    • In Civilization IV, corruption in cities was removed. However, in some manuals, corruption and how to reduce its effects is mentioned.
  • The Three Gorges Dam bears a striking resemblance to the Hoover Dam.
  • Elvis Presley has had some form of appearance in every Civilization title so far: in Civilization IV, the clothes of the Great Artist units, from the Industrial to the Modern Ages, and the "Rock and Roll" wonder are tributes to him.
  • Spaceship journeys to Alpha Centauri are always successful.
  • In the video for the Space Victory, the figure that jumps down resembles CEO Nwabudike Morgan from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri.
  • The name of the title song played at the start of the game is Baba Yetu. The title is "Our Father" in Swahili, and the song itself is a rendition of the Christian Lord's Prayer. It is performed by Stanford University's Talisman A Cappella and was composed by Christopher Tin. (lyrics and more information, sample)
  • In the popup which tells the player that they have reached the Modern Age, there is a digital watch with the brand name Soren. This is a reference to Soren Johnson, the lead designer and AI programmer for the game. The time shown on the watch is 05:23, and Soren's birthday is May 23rd (05/23).
  • The Firaxis logo is the artwork on the sails of workboats.
  • In a reference to a famous Al Gore quote, the former Vice President's face is featured in the graphic for The Internet Project.
  • In the movie for the Hollywood wonder, the blueprints include a picture of Clara Bow and a Hollywood Walk of Fame star for Hoot Gibson

See Also

References

  • The sites listed below.

External links

Official Sites

Publisher-Recommended Third-Party Sites

Other Sites

2005 computer and video games | 4x games | Civilization franchise | Firaxis games | Turn-based strategy computer games | Windows games | Computer and video games featuring cooperative gameplay

Civilization (Computerspiel)#Civilization IV | Civilization IV | Civilization IV | Civilization IV | Sid Meier's Civilization IV | Civilization IV | Civilization IV | Civilization IV | Civilization IV | Sid Meier's Civilization IV | 文明IV | Civilization IV

 

This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the "Civilization IV".

Home Page • arts • business • computers • games • health • hospitals • home • kids & teens • news • physicians • recreation• reference • regional • science • shopping • society • sports • world