Spiffy
Dozens of ways to play, integrated multiplayer support, no two games are alike.

Iffy
Games on larger maps will still take a long time.

Our joint empires were not faring so well. I had teamed up with my fellow editor Delsyn, and our civilizations sprawled across two small continents. We had gotten off to a slow start, thanks in part to an embarrassing incident where a young New York City was attacked by bears. Across the ocean loomed the joint powers of Greece and Germany, lording over their superior technology. The real wild card was Kublai Khan, who was poised on Germany's doorstep with his Mongol hordes. Delsyn and I had concluded over text chat that our Mongol friend was the key to toppling our foes -- he was the way to swing the balance of worldwide power. But negotiations were tense: Sometimes he demanded new technologies for nothing in return, and we caved in every time. Would these decisions haunt us later?

Tough decisions are what Civilization is all about, and the latest build of Civilization IV has 'em in spades. Should you switch state religions to appease a spiritual neighbor? Should you build up your capital's culture or use its resources to crank out horse archers? Should you stop the current war effort to pacify your people, or just turn your nation into a Police State?nnnRecently we got the opportunity to kick the tires of Civ IV, voraciously tearing into a preview build. The interface was much more polished than we talked about in our last hands-on, complete with Leonard Nimoy narrating all of your civilization advances. The Civilopedia is now in the game, so you can read about all the technologies and units, and there are pop-up tool-tips everywhere so that nothing is a mystery. It takes a little bit to learn what all of the icons mean (folded hands mean religion, the little shiny silhouette of a man means a great person, the little hammer means production...) but once you figure it out, the elegance of the underlying game becomes clear.

In fact, compared to previous games in the series, so much more of what's happening in Civilization IV is clear right from the main interface. You can see the strength of units by how many soldiers are standing there, you can see city improvements like aqueducts (which dynamically wind toward cities from nearby mountains), and you can tell at a glance which cities have pollution or unrest. Even the diplomacy screens give you info at a glance -- if a ruler isn't willing to negotiate a point, it's highlighted in red, meaning that he won't consider trading it. If you mouse over an item you'll see text explaining why the ruler is reluctant. It's a huge time-saver.

In our previous hands-on we talked about how the game plays out faster than the last incarnations of the franchise, even in multiplayer mode. While it's true that it's a much more streamlined game than Civ III, further testing shows that you can easily have a single game stretch on for hours. We played a game on a small ocean map with five civilizations, two of which were controlled by humans, and after about three and a half hours we'd gotten to Napoleonic-era technology. It looked like another two hours or more to finish the game off. Alternatively, if you play on a tiny map with no bodies of water separating the world powers, it looks like you can burn through a game in a couple of hours. Civ IV may not be a game you can blow through on a lunch hour, but the time you spend is utterly addicting -- the hours will just soar by.

Your choice of maps, starting age, and victory conditions will have a huge impact on the type of game you're going to play. For instance, on any map with large bodies of water, a civilization will need to develop some pretty advanced sea technologies to navigate from one continent to the next, and it's only the later technologies that allow you to carry big stacks of units on a ship. Naturally this means cultures will be pretty large and advanced before they clash. Alternatively, "Tiny" or "Duel" sized maps are particularly fun, as you will immediately come into contact with other civilizations, and usually you're at war with only one or two cities each.

There are even special map flavors available, such as "Great Plains." On this map style, a flat fertile region stretches between two belts of resource-rich mountains. Although the cities at either edge of the map will have access to essential metals, the ones in the middle have the best land for rapid growth. Also -- horses! I played a short game on a tiny version of this map type and monopolized all of the horses in the middle, using diplomacy to cover my back while my mounted troops swarmed my opponents. When one of my former allies stopped trading iron with me, I was forced to turn against him. Interesting stuff.nnnBecause Civilization IV has a very streamlined game design, individual units can make a big difference in the flow of the game. Each of the 18 cultures in the game has a unique unit of their own that replaces one of the regular game units of a particular era. This can profoundly change the strategy. For instance, the most basic infantry unit is the warrior, basically cavemen dudes with clubs who have an attack strength of 1. The Incas build "Quechuas" instead of warriors, who are twice as strong and get a 100% bonus against archers. This means that the Incas are devastating... during the initial game, before anyone's developed more serious fighters. Expect an early Incan rush. The Japanese, on the other hand, can build Samurai, which during the early Medieval period can devastate opponents with a high attack rating and two first strikes. If you're facing the Japanese you'll want to hurry to build up your gunpowder-based weapons, because an army of Samurai can eviscerate ordinary defenders.

Another interesting unit is the machine gunner. Relatively inexpensive, he's got a powerful attack rating of 18, on top of a first-strike, at a time when most other modern cavalry or infantry units attack at 15 or less. The catch is that machine gunner units can't attack -- they can only defend. The upshot is that once civilizations start putting these guys in their cities, there's a noticeable cooling of hostilities since it's harder to successfully attack. Of course it doesn't last; modern infantry will follow a few advances later, and then mechanized infantry, tanks, and marines will swing the pendulum toward offensives again. That's the ebb and flow of the game -- it's got a great feel.

After hours of play and several games, we've come to a few conclusions about the next Civilization. Not only is it going to be one of the best PC strategy games of the year ... it's actually in the running to be one of the best Multiplayer PC strategy games of the year. Firaxis is working hard to slap a final coat of polish on this sucker -- we can't wait to get our hands on the final version!

Civ IV und AoE 3: