Review: Civilization
Score:
81%
Version Reviewed: MMC Game Card
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I’m not Douglas Adams, but I’m more than happy to paraphrase a really good line from the late, great man… "Civilization is big. Really big. I mean, you may think that Pathway to Glory was involved, but that’s nothing compared to Civilization." To sum up Civ (to give it its weekday name), you’ve in control of the Earth, rather like a god. You start with massive empty rolling fields, and by building infrastructure, managing resources, and exploring other areas of the world, you can eventually achieve your aim of either landing the first settler on Alpha Centauri, or achieve complete domination in the world by conquering all the other civilizations on Earth.
Laying Down Your Roots
Sounds rather all encompassing, and it is. It’s worth pointing out to the five of you who don’t know, but Civilization is a port. The game has been around for a while, and it’s still as stunning as when I first saw Sid Meier’s classic PC game back in 1991. The N-Gage version seen here is a port of Civilization II. That’s a good thing, as Civ II fixed all the obvious imbalances that were discovered in the first version, which means that although this is a new N-Gage title, the underlying mechanics of the game are incredibly well balanced, and the AI has been tested and tweaked over many years. Not a lot of titles can boast that.
On starting the game, you can set a number of settings, including difficulty, race, number of opposing civilizations, and how the roving barbarians act. You’ll then be into the game proper, with one Settler unit that you use to build your first city – in the case of the English, it defaults to London, but you can rename it to something more appropriate for world domination… I went with Chipping Sodbury.
You’ll also have knowledge of some areas (for example you might play The English, and know about Irrigation, Mining and Roads). Starting back in 4000 BC, you’ll need to work up through things like metal working, pottery, the wheel, and the alphabet and use these building blocks.
The graphics are functional. I guess titles like Pathway to Glory have spoiled me, but we have moved on from the nineties. While the characters and icons are clear and you can tell what they mean, there’s a certain air of amateurism around them that detracts from the amazing depth that this game has.
Branching Out
Civilization is turn based, so there’s no need for any lightning reactions here. Your first hour or so are going to involve building units to explore the neighbouring countryside – until you’ve explored somewhere, it remains black on the map. At some point you’re going to find two things. The first is a good place to build your second settlement (so you can suggest to your people "why not live in Bury St Edmunds?"). The second is that you’re going to stumble over another civilization.
At this point you open up a dialog, perhaps work on establishing an embassy with them, create a trade route and work together. Maybe a bit later on you’ll have some spies steal some technology or knowledge from them to increase your own resources. You might even go all the way and declare war on them.
As you progress in the game, you’ll be able to switch from exploring on foot, to building roads and transport along rivers, improving your range per turn and allowing more goods to flow between (hopefully) cities in your empire, trading with other civilizations with which you’re not at war, constantly seeking more knowledge and science and culture to improve your society.
It’s great to subvert history. Having bomber aircraft in the sixteenth century may not follow our established history, but it certainly gives you an edge. Choices like this are long term strategy goals, and that’s one of the keys to Civilization. Once you can balance long term goals with the little things like managing the tax levels in your cities, the manufacturing of goods to equip your people with tools, then you’re well on your way to lasting six thousand years.
Managing The Leaves
Most of your information is going to come in different management screens, although these are little more than a set of numbers that affect each unit or location. A city (for example) is made up of citizens, food, buildings, resources and trade levels. These tables are clearly presented, albeit with the aforementioned graphical look. The vertical screen of the N-Gage is put to good use here, as you scroll through all the figures and icons. Using the main ‘5’ key and the cursor to navigate is very easy. My only worry is that the cursor highlight doesn’t provide great contrast, so it can sometimes be hard to locate which item is actually being highlighted.
While out exploring the world, you have an isometric view, and all the number keys surrounding ‘5’ will move your cursor in that direction. This is a great way to make up for the fact that the cursor pad isn’t set up for accurate diagonal movement.
Rolling over a unit or location brings up a quick look at the statistics of the unit, and does provide you with most of the information you need. If you want more, just click on it. It’s a really good UI system, and only takes a few minutes to sort out in your head. After that it’s never a problem making the game do what you want it to do.
One thing new players will want to check out is the Civilopedia, available under the options panel using the left soft key. This is your reference book while in the game. As you can imagine, there are a lot of things that relate to each other – you can’t build your bomber aircraft until you’ve discovered skills such as physics and navigation. This is where you can find out all that, without having to carry around sheafs of paper and notes.
Summing Up
Civilization is not a short game. This isn’t something you pick up when you’re queuing for a train. Maybe on the 45 minute train journey into work, you can get a good session, but you do need to spend time to get going and keep focussed on the goals you have set yourself. The great thing is that once you do settle down, then the average graphics and mass of numbers tend to go into the background of your mind. I found myself jumping quickly from screen to screen to change one tiny thing that I knew would just work. There was no thinking about where to go or what to look for, it was all there, all automatically done by my brain.
This gameplay comes down to great design, and as noted before the fact that this is a port of a long standing (and very popular game) becomes an advantage. Nokia have rightly not demanded anything brand new in the game. There’s no shoehorning in of any multiplayer or Arena enabled options here.
Fans of Civilization (and I hear there are a few of them still around on the Internet) will be happy with a well-programmed port. If you’ve never experienced Civ before, it’ll take a while to get into the mechanics of the game, but once you’ve got that sorted, prepare to be rewarded handsomely by one of the best strategy computer games of all time… now in your pocket.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at