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Civilization IV Hands-On - Multiplayer

By Jason Ocampo, GameSpotPosted Sep 15, 2005 2:03 pm PT

A multiplayer Civ game that works? That's what we thought, too, until we flew to Firaxis to actually play the game head-to-head.

The Best Defense Is a Good...

You'll also definitely want to send out some warriors on their own to explore the land and to attack targets of opportunity, which is very important. Lead designer and programmer Soren Johnson explained that you get more experience for attacking, and less for defending, so it's worthwhile to send out warriors early on to have them attack packs of wild animals. That's because you can upgrade your military units in Civ IV when they gain experience levels. Basically, once a unit is promoted, you'll be alerted that you can upgrade it by selecting a bonus. You may upgrade its unit strength (making it tougher to kill), you may increase its city defense strength, you may improve its combat strength when fighting in woods or hills, and more. This way, you can create highly specialized units, such as elite city defenders. Or on the flip side, you can create elite city attackers. You'll also have a reason to want to preserve that unit for as long as possible. The wise leader is the one who manages to keep his or her elite units alive, as they're far more valuable than green units.

Build cities on hills if you can, as they can grant a valuable defensive bonus.

The ultimate key to survival in Civ multiplayer, though, is expansion, which makes sense. If you have three cities, and your opponent has six cities, you're in obvious trouble. Simply put, you need to build up a larger empire than your rivals so you can generate a larger economy, which helps you not only create a larger army, but also lets you research up the technology tree faster, letting you unlock some potentially decisive technologies.

For example, during our second multiplayer game, we were also caught on the defensive early on, but we managed to hold on by building up archer units. It wasn't until the enemy researched new technologies and unlocked new units that we were finally overwhelmed. Yet on the flip side, it's far more difficult to expand your empire in Civ IV as quickly as you did in earlier Civ games. That's because the expansionism strategy of previous Civs, where you tried to build as many cities as possible as quickly as you could, has taken a hit in Civ IV. There are many more pressures on you at the beginning of the game, and it can be unwise, as well as downright difficult, to expand too rapidly. What you need to do is balance your priorities between expansion, research, building military units, and improving your core cities. Build too many cities too quickly and you'll have a lot of vulnerable cities to defend. But if you wait too long, the enemy will get the jump on you.

It's also important to read the terrain carefully. Mountains are no longer passable by land units, which should be taken into account. Key and secondary resources are scattered over the map, which could make building a city by them worth it, if for no other reason than to deny those same resources to the enemy. Defensible positions, such as rivers and hills, should be exploited, as they grant defensive bonuses to cities. Make sure workers construct roads so you can rapidly shift forces around your empire. Also, make sure to station units so you have line of sight in a defensive line, because one nasty tactic that we discovered is that human opponents can and will try to do an end around, sending military units to sneak around your borders, only to reappear at the gates of one of your vulnerable cities in the rear. Or instead they'll simply cut a road linking you to a critical resource, thus crippling your ability to construct advanced military units.

Always remember in multiplayer that the best defense is a good offense.

This is all common sense, of course, but it's proof that Civ IV works as a multiplayer game. You'll be caught up in the strategy of the game from the get-go, trying to work with your allies while desperately trying to outthink and outplay the opposition. Moreover, this short multiplayer game feels like an excellent mode for LAN games, for when you and your friends are hanging out together. There's a built-in, adjustable timer that ensures the game keeps moving forward--so you don't have to wait forever for someone to finish his or her turn.

Of course, we'll have to wait and see how the rest of Civ IV's multiplayer turns out. In particular, we'll have to wait and see what that ambitious pit boss mode will be like. But at this point, things are looking up for Civ multiplayer in a way it hasn't before. The short multiplayer can be ruthless and cutthroat, which is exactly what you want in a multiplayer strategy game. Civ IV's release date has moved forward a few weeks, so we can now expect the game to ship somewhere around the end of October or at the beginning of November.

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