CIVIV

For a long time, I had no idea whether Civilization IV was any good or not. I hadn't played it much before this week, first because of lack of graphics card, and then because of lack of system32 directory when I installed my new graphics card. For the brief span where it worked, I commented that it did mess with the original rules, but it was so nice about it that you didn't care. But now that I have both a working graphics card and capable computer, Whitney and I accidentally spent about eight hours playing it a couple of days ago, so I think it's fair to say some sort of conclusion has been reached.

Compared to books and films, there are very few games that provoke a sense of actual wonder. If I had to name a couple, I would go for Albion and (though I'm loath to admit it) Halo, just for its storyline. Civ IV definitely deserves to be added to this list, as right from the beginning it sends chills down your spine with the view of the Earth from space and the theme music that sounds like it was taken out of The Lion King.

For anyone unfamiliar with the game, it's about the history of the world. No, don't scroll up yet. You begin with a settler in 4000BC, found a city, select something to build, wait a few turns until it's finished, maybe build another unit or settler, and expand outwards. The whole process takes hours, but because every little goal that you strive for is so small you don't notice, and it quickly sucks your life away so that soon you find yourself in control of a thriving Victorian empire at three in the morning.

It's true that the fourth game makes major changes to the way I'm used to playing (in Civ 2). Virtually all buildings and units are different, with only a few of the ones that are recognisable retaining their old effects. It's like a completely different game rather than an upgrade, and it's to the developers' credit that they've managed to keep the same feeling while making the whole process so radically different.

One of the major things that I felt wrong with Civ 3 was the way that the Settler unit was separated into Settlers (building cities) and Workers (doing anything useful to the land). This has remained. But they have made it far more worthwhile by making the workers able to do a lot more work than irrigate, mine and build roads - now they can build cottages that will eventually grow so that your city can eventually extend past its grid square, pastures, plantations, camps, and so on - each one giving a unique advantage to the surrounding cities.

In fact, most of the additions made in Civ 3 were mad, and the designer fully acknowledges that they were mad in the back of the manual. The health system, which previously saw your workers dying of malaria for crossing some jungle terrain, has been rethought into a new city resource. As well as unhappiness, a city generates sickness with must be combatted with health-improving buildings and improvements.

But where things work surprisingly well is in what's been taken out of the game. Civil disorder, for example, is gone entirely. The concept of happy vs. unhappy citizens is still there, but the only disadvantage of letting unhappiness get out of order is that you get unhappy citizens which refuse to work (which can be quite a handicap, but nowhere near as devastating as civil disorder). The concept of pollution has also been eliminated, with buildings that caused pollution causing sickness instead.

One of the most unexpected bits that works is the way that units have been made far more complex. Actually, the attack/defence has been simplified into just "Strength", but now every unit is awarded extra special abilities depending on the number of combats that it's been in - collecting experience points will allow you to level them up and pick a new ability, like increasing their strength or defence against archery units or something. This means that churning out masses of new units is somehow discouraged in favour of withdrawing from combat and going back to repair your existing good ones, in a very sort of Battle Isle way.

Another overhaul is in the government system. The first game had, I think, five governments. A couple more were added for the later games, such as Fundamentalism, bringing the total to seven or eight. Civ IV has three thousand, one hundred and twenty-five different forms of government. This is because the monolithic government system has been split into "civics", each of which has a small effect on how your civilization works and provides advantages or disadvantages depending on your style of play.

And there's just all sorts of assorted cleverness, like removing the annoying Zone of Control rule, and making food change into production when you build Settlers and Workers rather than sacrificing city population. The best bit is that just like in Soul Calibur 3, the developers have decided to go right back to the start and revive elements of the game in its original form - here it's the music, with an orchestral variation of the original little Adlib MIDI that played on the title screen all those years ago. It's truly amazing.