Civilization: Revolution

Civilization: Revolution, a game that I truly never anticipated I would end up enjoying.  I never played a Civ game before this one, and it took some time before I was actually willing to give it a shot.  In fact, I think this was given for free for Xbox Gold members at one point, and I might not have bought it otherwise.  It's definitely made me a fan, though.  When I have a computer again (my last one had a traumatic accident and died), I definitely would want to get whatever is the most recent version of Civ.  Then again, perhaps I won't enjoy the newer ones more than this.  From what I could research, this was praised by Sid Meier as being exactly what he always wanted Civilization to be.  It's also supposed to be good for fast games, and that's with a typical game lasting 4-6 hours!  This is currently a game I play when I want to spend a lot of time just chilling out.  This is my long game.  I don't think I could handle a game that takes a whole day.

As this is my only Civ game, I can't relate it for others who are familiar with the series (my only other Civ exposure was watching Game Grumps play Civ 5).  For those who are not familiar, you're basically in charge of one of the great civilizations of the world from all over time.  From your contemporary greats like America & Russia to more ancient ones like the Aztecs & Romans, plenty of options exist here, though from what I can see, the options pale in comparison to other Civ games.  For one thing, there are no Native Americans (the Aztecs are the closest thing).  You win by basically being the greatest civilization in the world.  You can conquer each other civilization's capital cities, building the United Nations through your great culture, the World Bank through your supreme wealth, or become so scientifically advanced you can settle on Alpha Centauri.  As someone who does not typically play war strategy games, this manged to catch me very well.
You should always have war in your mind, as your opponents are going to seize upon you if you leave something undefended.  Fortunately, it seems much easier to defend than it is to conquer.  However, if you devote all you've got to conquering other cities, you'll probably lose out on more long-term benefits.  Players that devote more time to scientific research will end up receiving stronger military units faster.  You also receive significant benefits when your gold reserves reach a certain amount.  Even culture can be used as an offensive tool.  If you're close to an opponent's city and your neighboring cities have a strong culture, you can end up converting that city over to your side peacefully.

Unfortunately, I have yet to play this on multiplayer.  You can play it blind with people online, but I don't want to commit to spending that much time playing with strangers.  I can imagine it would work out significantly different from playing solo, even though solo play is still a great experience.  For one thing, spies would become much more valuable.  In solo play, the AI will generally just use spies to disrupt your defense as they attack, but they're capable of so much more.  They can kidnap great people, which usually take a lot of culture to acquire and give really good benefits.  They can also destroy buildings, which take a very significant investment.  Players hoping for an economy victory would also really hate having their gold stolen, since the amount taken is proportional to your reserves.  Culture would also become much more important.  Great people can be used to give you permanent benefits over time or expended immediately for a one-time powerful effect.  If you get a great artist/philosopher, that effect converts a city with the lowest culture over to your side.  That would really hurt, losing a city instantly without any resistance (and therefore also losing the units inside it)!  The shenanigans involved for multiplayer would make for a very interesting experience indeed, although I have no idea how the diplomacy feature works there.

This game, even for a relatively simplified version of Civilization, is still incredibly complex.  Fortunately, the game goes very out of its way to teach you how it works.  When you play on the lowest difficulty, there are frequent prompts to teach you about the game's elements.  There's a handy science planner, showing what technologies you need to unlock a new one (for example, Feudalism gives access to knights, therefore requiring both Monarchy and Horseback Riding).  It also has a very useful Civilopedia, giving detailed information on basically everything you could want to know about the game.
Now, I'm not much of a historian myself, but I can still see how everything they've done for the civilizations is based on actual history.  It is still very interesting to see the awkward combinations between civilizations & government types.  For example, China's cities start out larger than others, because China's one of the most populated countries in the world.  This also encourages you to be a Republic with China, because a Republic makes it cost less to create settlers and make more cities.    America can do very well as a Communist government, since they can produce better with factories and Communism increases production.  The Arabs will start out Fundamentalist for more attack power, and quickly get free access to catapults, but will later on probably prefer to go with a Democracy for more science & money.  Then there are amusing inconsistencies with technology.  China immediately knows Writing, but does not automatically know the Alphabet.  I once actually made it right into the Modern age with China having Writing, Literacy, even Atomic Theory without ever knowing the Alphabet.  Some ancient artifacts & great wonders can give you a quick boost in tech, such as a recent game I had where Rome managed to learn Atomic Theory by the 1600's!  It makes for very interesting "what-if" scenarios.

When you play a normal game, the entire world is randomly generated each game, so you always have that element of exploration.  With the DLC, there are lots of very interesting scenarios, some of them with pre-arranged maps and some with just interesting rule changes.  For example, it really changes up your early game when you've got 1000 gold immediately.  One scenario has the entire world consist of the UK, and I had the good fortune of eliminating my only neighbor on Island while making a strong navy to keep others from conquering me.  It's really weird when the rules make science advance more quickly too, because you probably won't be able to make new units fast enough to keep up with the changes.  Of course, I would highly recommend you at least buy the extra ancient artifacts to add more variety to your games.

Civilization: Revolution has provided me with far too much entertainment for me to even consider anything less than a 5-star rating.  Even though there's no achievement for it, I'm working on going full completionist, trying to beat the game on the highest difficulty with every civilization by every victory type (which effectively means full military control).  I personally wish there were a bit more civilizations here, but there are definitely enough here to give a lot of variety.  For the price it's at now, I'd say anybody who likes RTS or tabletop gaming should give this a shot!