The Civilization series has a long history. It started over fifteen years ago with a game that resembled something of a mixture between Risk and Sim City. Since then it has spawned at least three sequels, a handful of expansions, and is available on a multitude of platforms beyond just the PC. Though it is not as flashy as some strategy games, it carved itself a nice little niche as something between a board game like Risk and a real time strategy game like Starcraft.

Civilization IV is a game that will remind you of the Age of Empires series if you’ve ever had a chance to play it. It’s a game that takes elements of historical fact and progression and lets the player develop and shape thier own civilization in their own way. It’s like playing an interactive history game in a quasi-realistic scenario of how things progressed through the last three or seven thousand years of history.

The roots of a game like Civlilzation 4 lie in the old board game Risk. It is a turn-based strategy game where players take turns developing their empires, doing battle, and plotting strategy. The difference is that Sid Meier borrowed elements of other diety/city simulation games where you have to manage resources, keep your people happy, and so on.

You start out with a band of settlers and a couple warriors to protect them. First you establish a city and build workers. Eventually as your civilization progresses you build more warriors, settlers, and workers to expand your empire. Over time your empire can progress economically, politically, religiously, and militarily.

The fun starts to come when you have a few cities and your empire makes friends and enemies with the other civilizations. It can be quite fun to pick fights with other countries. Of course, if you choose peaceful means of progression, you never have to encounter a single fight. That’s one of the truly enjoyable parts of this game. There are plenty of valid strategies for success. Military might, spreading your favorite religion, having the most powerful economy, and trading with other countries can all be done. You can even make other countries wage war for you.

While the game is very fun for those who like strategy games, but don’t have the twitch reflexes needed for some of the more complex real time strategy games out there, it is not without its problems. For example, the game is very time consuming. A single game can take 3-7 hours just to complete. As I said, this game is a lot like Risk. Also, in the later stages of the game when you have upwards of ten or twenty cities to manage, it can become overwhelming in a hurry to decide which city should produce what and when. That really bogs the game down and can kill the experience.

Slow gameplay aside, Civilization IV has a lot of charm. Also, it will play well on most computers. It is not a graphical powerhouse and should play well even on most modern laptops with integrated graphics cards. Also, there are multiplayer options if you have friends who wish to play as well, but be warned the game can take hours to complete, so perhaps multiplayer would be best suited for a LAN party or maybe a long afternoon game. This game while casual can be time consuming enough to not be a fifteen or thirty minute pick up and put down gameplay experience. It will suck you in and might not let you go for hours. Consider yourself warned.

Score: 4/5
Verdict: Solid game, not without it’s problems, but worth playing.