Being a dictator is fun! Run your civilization your way.
User Rating: 9.5 | Sid Meier's Civilization IV PC
Im not really a big fan of TBS games. I really like RTS games better. TBS games can be like playing chess. But there was a big fuss over this game. So I tried it out and its really awesome. The concept is great: You become the leader of a Civilization and starting at the dawn of man, you build it up and make it a power. The game starts out around 4000 BC and ends 2050 AD. You do have the option of going further into the future though. You can choose 1 of 18 empires to rule, including the British, Spanish, French and even the Americans. This game really does get into politics. You can have a police state government or a democracy. But there is so many options that for example, you can have a communist government but still have a freedom of the press. You can also alter history in Civ 4 as well. For example, you can build the pyramids in Germany or build the Pentagon in Russia or build the Statue of Liberty in Japan. These are called world wonders and even though you will be altering history by building these in a different location, its good to have them because with these buildings, you can help the culture flow. You can also adopt a theocracy government and choose which religion you want that government to run by. There are many to choose from including Christianity, Islam and Hinduism. Religion isnt a big part of the game but it will help the culture of your nation. Without culture, your citizens will get angry. Throughout the game, you will make contact with other leaders of different nations. You can trade with them if they like you enough. Trading will help your nations economy. Some of the nations are peaceful and some of them are hostel. So be ready to defend yourself. Also, there will be barbarians in the game. So you must have you borders protected. Barbarians will make raids against your cities and if one of your cities is not protected, they will burn it to the ground.
Now, there will be times when you have to go to war. You can build dozens of different units throughout the game. It depends on what era your in. If your in the midevil era, you will be using archers, swordsman and catipults. If your in the modern era, you will be using tanks, jets and infantry. In war, if your strong enough, you can capture cities and you will have the option of keeping the city and annexing it or razing it. You can choose to go into peace negotiations or conquering the nation your at war with.
You can also earn wealth. You can decide whether you want it to go to research or for it to go to benefit your culture. Research is important because you need to make technological advancements if you want to succeed. You can research a ton of things including gunpowder, printing press or mass media.
Unfortunately, there are a lot of down sides to it. In the modern era, you can take tanks against a civilization thats 100 years behind you and they could still be using musket rifles or even macemen against you and sometimes, they will make military victories with these old weapons against your modern day military. We all know, that is unreal. Also, you can use nuclear weapons against your enemies and you can launch it at their cities. They should be reduced to dust but some buildings still stand. The nuclear blast only reduces some of the population of a city and the city still runs like normal. There is some more problems with the game but thats all I can think of right now.
Overall, its an awesome game. This is one of those games you will spend sleepless nights with. I recommend it to anybody who loves strategy and one who is into politics. I would say that this is the best turn based strategy game so far.
