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| Source // MobyGames |
My time with Civilization games has been long and fruitless. With multiple paths to victory, there are multiple ways to fail, and I have seen them all it seems. Nothing I do is good enough, fast enough, precise enough. Another nation always pips me to the post, rubs my nose in it, and kicks me when I'm down.
But like an absolute idiot, I keep coming back for more. This very second I am re-installing Civilization VI because of my experience playing Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution, a "simpler" game designed for consoles and handhelds that aims to give you a considerable chunk of the full Civilization experience.
50 minutes of downloading to go, let's see how I got here.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
Fun Times
There aren't many ways to introduce a Civ game to players. Cavemen turn into Romans turn into Astronauts. We get the idea, we've done it (well, tried to) before. I'm playing the PlayStation 3 version of Revolution here, and it comes with a whole bunch of familiar leaders and their special abilities. So far, so Civ.
None of these screenshots will be useful for showing my exact first game, so you'll have to imagine the lovely Cleopatra here, speaking her Simlish-like gibberish, is actually Queen Elizabeth, because of course I'm going to try and fail to expand the English Empire.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
The single-player mode seems to just spawn a random world map with a bunch of opponents and lets you go and build a civilization as best you can and seeing as that's what Civ is to me, that's a fine starting point. The tutorial is plonked on top for those who need it, and that includes me, and its first talking point is a Barbarian camp on the outskirts of London.
Playing this game with a controller, or in the case of mobiles you fingers, might sound a bit of a hassle, but the grid-based nature of the game and its chunky and colourful visuals make it obvious what's going on. Units are highlighted, spaces they can move into this turn are green, future turns yellow, enemies they can attack are red. You can't really go wrong.
After scouting the landscape and crushing a Barbarian or two, we discover Cleopatra and then Saladin as our nearest neighbours.
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| Source // MobyGames |
The advisors have always been useful to me in Civ. Informative, if not useful. There's an advisor concerned with your military prowess, another with an economic stance, and then this chap who is just delighted at each and every new technology we discover. I am too, mate. Tech trees are fun.
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| Source // MobyGames |
If Revolution is dumbed down, it doesn't feel it when looking at this. Before you know it, you've got the latest and greatest bit of tech nailed, be it pottery or horseback riding, gunpowder or democracy. Just grab a bunch of everything - it'll probably come in handy.
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| Source // MobyGames |
Frustrations
It'll come in handy, but how and why is anyone's guess. One thing this tutorial hasn't told me anything about are my workers, diligently gathering the resources I need to train units or construct buildings. Food is important for population growth, culture and science will improve your standing, vast amounts of resources are used to build basically anything, with gold speeding along the process, and yet I knew nothing of what was going on.
I literally cannot tell you what half of those icons around town represent, or whether London, Dover or Warwick were well-placed to rake them in. All I knew was that everything was going incredibly well for me. Like, ridiculously well. The Thames, if there was one, wasn't flowing with sewage, but with gold. I was hella rich, and getting richer, and I had no idea why.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
Things would just happen, and the usual response was "Cool?". I was given gifts from unknown lands, dancers viewable in a trophy room. Okay. Bit weird. Who are these people and what did I do to deserve them?
Great people would spontaneously appear in the city, where they could be cashed in for a quick bonus or settled for a more long term approach. They were everywhere, making my cities more cultured, smarter, cheaper to do anything in.
It felt like I was steamrolling this game without building a single unit. I was getting units for free on account of how awesome London had become and continued to have no idea why.
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
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| Source // MobyGames |
As I forged ahead, my only real input being the pressing of the X button to start working on another new technology or to build another structure in my expanding empire, I was having some kind of fun. I usually hop into a ship and explore the world at the earliest opportunity, and I discovered the remaining civilizations and settled a couple of islands, picking up instant rewards along the way for discovering Atlantis, or the Knights Templars, just waiting to be discovered.
The city of York was founded on an island that was ripe for mining something or other, and developed so quickly that it felt like only a few turns went by before it was the powerhouse of my empire, and it was so out of the way that nobody could touch it. In the whole game, I saw just one other boat, and it was made of wood and didn't look at all threatening to my steel battlecruisers.
To really show how ridiculous my progress was, I had one city churning out entire fleets of battlecruisers I wouldn't use because I forgot to tell them to stop. I spent my vast wealth on a road network to make travel near-instantaneous around the map - especially when rival civilizations would just switch over to becoming part of my empire because I was so cool, I guess?
Cleopatra, Saladin, and everybody's favourite Gandhi went to war with me before being crushed. Cleopatra's foot soldiers fell to my bombers, Gandhi's empire just decided to switch sides, and Saladin eventually backed out and was happy with a bit of gold. Good for him.
I didn't need to build an army to take these leaders on. I took over Thebes in a turn or two, bombing the defences before walking a cannon through the front door. I'm not complaining, but this isn't my usual Civilization experience at all.
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| Source // MobyGames |
There are four paths to victory in Revolution. I could have won by any of them. Literally. I had all I needed for a Culture victory, I just had to build a certain wonder to end the game. Ditto for the Economic victory. I took two empires for the Military victory, but could easily have taken the rest. The holy grail, for me, was launching a spaceship to travel to Alpha Centauri. It was a piece of cake, especially when you refuse to trigger an actual win from the other victory paths.
After two and a half hours, I had trounced everyone in this game. On Chieftan difficulty. The easiest of the bunch. That might explain it, but this difficulty level hasn't been that easy for me in any other Civ game...
Final Word
I was left feeling a little deflated after my time with Revolution. I won, and it had its moments, but I felt like I was watching a movie at times. Things just happened, went in my favour, and snowballed into a monstrous victory on all fronts. I was entertained but wasn't challenged.
"Put the difficulty up then." Good point. I certainly could. But then I'd have to put up with the graphics, and the frame rate than can drop to numbers you can count. Not a big problem for a turn-based game, but not something you want to see from a console.
The Civilization experience is condensed by reducing the variety of units you've got, toning down the complexity of stuff going on under the hood, and just letting you do the things you want to do with your empire, and for that I like Revolution. It's a great starting point, especially for console gamers.
I probably would play it again at a higher difficulty, were it not for two things: I still don't really get the whole backend of how this game actually works, as in where to settle and how to manage and focus your workers, and I've already experienced the latest in the Civ series, Civilization VI, and thoroughly enjoyed it. And got thoroughly frustrated with it, and never won, and so on.
There is a city-building itch that needs scratching. Creating things on a grand scale is fun. Seeing them fail can also be a right laugh if they fail spectacularly. Revolution might have scratched that itch in 2008, but might struggle to do so now. Treat it as in introduction to the idea of a Civilization game, if you want, but move onto the "real" Civ afterwards.
Fun Facts
New scenarios were released each week for players to compete in, though the online multiplayer mode itself has been described as slow.
Sid Meier's Civilization Revolution, developed by Firaxis Games, first released in 2008.
Version played: PlayStation 3, 2008.