Civilization IV Hands-On - The Middle and Late Eras of the Game
We play around with the middle to late parts of a Civ IV game to get a feel for what to expect.
While there have been many previews of Civilization IV, there's hardly been any coverage of the game's middle to late stages. That's due to the fact that while we've been able to play with the early eras of the game, when you're busy clawing your way out of the Stone Age and researching such groundbreaking technologies as the wheel, Firaxis limited our time with Civ IV to basically everything before 1AD, leaving out the 2,000 years that follow. That changed recently, when we got our hands on the first playable version of Civ IV ahead of everyone else on the planet. So in this preview we'll give you an idea of what the later part of Civ is like.
Assuming you're not crushed by rivals or by barbarians during the early part of the game, sooner or later, your primitive civilization will advance its way out of the Stone and Bronze Ages, but then what? Well, if you play on the standard-sized map using the default "continents" world setting, odds are you'll find yourself with a decent-sized civilization with approximately five to 10 cities. At this point, you'll have pretty much established the borders with your neighbors, and all available land on the continent will have been settled. You'll have to switch gears from exploration and expansion to focusing on improving your economy, because now it's a race to see which civilization can advance the fastest up the tech tree.
Several of your cities, mainly your oldest ones, will be your "core" cities. They've simply had more time to build up than the others and are best dedicated toward building key improvements, such as national wonders and great wonders. National wonders are the old "small wonders" from Civilization III and are basically smaller wonders that each civilization can build once. These include the familiar Wall Street wonder, which boosts the economy, but there are also new national wonders, such as Oxford University, which lets every civilization build its own super-university, and Scotland Yard, which lets every civilization that builds it recruit spies. That's right, the old spy unit that was last seen in Civ II makes a return in Civ IV, and she's once again capable of spying on enemy civilizations as well as detecting enemy spies.
You'll also want to get going on constructing more of those great wonders, those one-of-a-kind monumental wonders that can grant the civilization that constructs them a significant boost. While many of the great wonders will be familiar to Civ veterans, keep in mind that a lot of them have been tweaked. Some of the changes are mostly cosmetic (Hoover Dam is now Three Gorges Dam), while others are more significant (Great Library now only gives you free scientists instead of free technology). There are also new great wonders to be aware of, such as Notre Dame Cathedral, Hollywood, Broadway, and rock and roll. Those last three great wonders are particularly interesting, because they highlight the role of culture in the game, and they also produce valuable trade goods in the form of films and musicals that you can export to other countries.
One of the biggest changes in Civ IV, and one that has been discussed in great detail already, is that you can no longer transfer production from one project to another. This is an age-old exploit that has finally been addressed, and we found that it certainly ups the risks involved in undertaking a huge project like a great wonder. In the past, if someone beat you in a race to finish a great wonder, you could simply take the existing production and instantly transfer it to another project, preferably another great wonder. Now, if someone beats you to a great wonder, you receive a refund that's determined by how much work you've already invested in it, which can translate into hundreds of gold. Still, that's little consolation to losing a race to a great wonder. One thing's for sure, though. It will be much more difficult for you to "monopolize" the great wonders, particularly at harder difficulty levels.
We also found that the "no transfer of production" rule had an effect on our building of regular city improvements. You can no longer switch to another project at the last second like you may have in earlier Civ games. For example, you may be 12 turns into constructing a university when a rival declares war on you. In earlier Civ games, you could simply dump all that production into a military unit, letting you "instantly" recruit it. In Civ IV, the game will "save" the production that's already been done on the university, and you must start any other new project from scratch. This means that you can't afford to procrastinate on important upgrades, such as defenses and military units. Meanwhile, you also can't use this to "store" production for a later date efficiently, because "saved" production will slowly decay over time.
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