Review: Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution

Sid Meier brings the "One-More-Turn" genre of Civilization to the game console, namely the Sony PlayStation 3, the Microsoft Xbox 360, and the Nintendo DS, and we saw that it was good.

I’m a huge fan of Sid Meier. I first played his Civilization and Railroad Tycoon games in the early nineties, and one of the most memorable moments on GameSHOUT Radio was an hour-long interview with Sid and his team for the release of Civilization IV. But although Civ has had a long and glorious history on the PC, the time has come to expose an entire new generation of console gamers to the “one-more-turn” addiction. And for this, Sid has brought about a revolution to the Civilization genre.

Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution has so far been released for the Playstation 3, the Xbox 360, and the Nintendo DS. The first two versions are rather similar, so I took the PS3 and Mav the 360 versions. We also both took a try at the DS game. I was pleasantly surprised to see that the gameplay is quite similar on the big platforms and the portable unit, although graphics and additional content is certainly in greater force than on the DS.

For those unfamiliar with the Civilization series of games, the basic concept is to take control of a whole civilization and lead your people through history and, hopefully, to become the greatest civilization on earth. The game plays out turn by turn; on each turn, players move their units around the map and make decisions about which technology to research, what to build in each town, and so forth.

For those familiar with Civilization, much has changed and much is the same in Revolution. Overall, the game is greatly simplified, compared to Civilization IV. One of the biggest changes was the elimination of happiness. Overall, the micromanagement in towns has been removed in favor of buildings with big, clear bonuses. Libraries double science production; universities double it again. Many buildings now affect the cultivated tiles: granaries improve food harvest from plains and grasslands by two, while workshops improve production from hills by three.

The great civics system in Civ4 that replaced the static governments has once again been trumped by simplified government selection, though now governments tend to have single clear bonuses. For example, fundamentalism gives you +1 attack, monarchy doubles culture from your palace, democracy gives you 50% bonus to gold and science but you cannot declare war, etc. Changing your government is more common in Revolution, because it tends not to throw your entire nation into disarray. You just pick the bonus you need and go with it.

Other concepts are basically the same. Settlers build cities. Cities still gather from the 20 tiles around it (though only the first 8 until you build a courthouse). Bonus tiles give added resources, provided you’ve unlocked the relevant technology. Tiles give food, hammers, or trade, and you allocate what goes where in your city. Military units have attack, defense, and movement rates, and there are different units focusing in each category, including the classic early triumvirate of warriors/legions, archers, and horsemen.

One notable change to the military aspect of the game was the addition of armies. Three units of the same type can be merged into an army of that unit type. An army moves as one, has the attack and defense of the combined three units, and has their combined total health. This makes armies a much more powerful option than individual units (three times as powerful, to be precise), and you’ll quickly find that they become indispensable when engaging in warfare. At the same time, they’re also more expensive to build, so you’ll have to watch your strategies more carefully, lest you build a powerful offensive unit only to have it destroyed on the defense.

The technology system remains roughly the same as earlier games, with a list of available techs to research and a relatively linear progression through them. One feature, for better or for worse, is that the first civ to research a technology gets a special bonus. For example, the first civ to research gunpowder gets a free rifleman. Many of these bonuses can, in fact, improve your whole civilization, like giving some extra production to each of your cities or building certain buildings in each of your cities. It’s a great incentive to get a tech first, if just having the tech itself wasn’t already.

All in all, Revolution definitely retains the feeling of being a Civilization game while simplifying and speeding up the whole process. On the other hand, this simplification takes away many of the elements hard-core Civ fans really enjoyed, especially slower, epic games, where you have time to muster armies and engage in warfare before the technology rush renders everything obsolete. Also, there are no map options in Revolution, there’s only the default random map generator. No size selection, landmass distribution, or any such customization is possible.

The PS3 version of the game features great graphics and a relatively simple to use control scheme. The most irksome part of the game is trying to select units: you have to scroll through everything one unit at a time to find the unit you want to move, and there’s considerable lag as the map scrolls all over the place.

The DS version is the game looks much simpler, graphically, for obvious reasons. But it also incorporates the touch screen very well, allowing you to scroll around, pick units, and drag movement routes. I was quite impressed with how easily the game played on the DS, and the upper screen was used to very effectively provide extra information about terrain and units for the player.

Score: 9.0 (out of 10)