Reviewers Note: Recently, I had the wonderful opportunity to review Civilization Revolution for both the Nintendo DS and Sony Playstation 3 (PS3) platforms. Since the back story and general description of game play is identical in both platforms, I decided to avoid needless repetition and only included it here in the Nintendo DS review. For information specifically regarding game play on the PS3 platform, please see the PS3 version of the review.

I have spent a great many hours of my life with various incarnations of Civilization, or more colloquially, Civ, the global domination brainchild of Sid Meier. Honestly, I’ve spent quite a few more hours of my life with this game than I care to count, which is why I got so excited upon hearing of this latest release by Firaxis, Civilization Revolution.

Concept:
Briefly, you are the leader of one of a handful of fledgling civilizations, or civs, starting to make your mark on the world. As time goes on, you must build cities, discover technological advances, explore the world around you, create and sustain an economy, advance your culture, meet and maintain relationships with the leaders of your neighboring civs...um...oh yeah, while you’re doing that, be sure to protect yourself from invasion by Barbarians or warlike civs intent on your destruction.

Goals:
There are 4 ways to win the game:
Cultural Victory: Amass a certain number of great people (notable people who appear in your cities after certain criteria are met and supply you with game bonuses), wonders (great works such as the Great Wall), or culturally flipped cities (cities formerly belonging to neighboring civs that, because of your cultural superiority, decide to join your civ), then build the United Nations wonder.
Domination Victory: Capture all enemy capitals
Economic Victory: Amass a certain amount of gold in the treasury, then build the World Bank wonder.
Technology Victory: Be the first civ to build a space ship and reach Alpha Centauri.

Choosing a difficulty level:
You can choose from easiest to hardest: Chieftain (which contains a very helpful in-game tutorial), Warlord, King, Emperor, and Deity (which is “insanely difficult” to quote the manual).

Choosing a civ to play:
Each civ has special game bonuses that they start the game with, such as the preexisting knowledge of a certain technology or the presence of a great person. In addition to initial bonuses, each civ has special game bonuses that come into play as they enter each of the game’s eras: Ancient, Medieval, Industrial, and Modern. Depending on which type of victory you’d like to play toward, choose wisely which culture you would like to play.

Gameplay:
Civ is played in turns, where each civ is allowed to move their military units, choose to build cities or what to build in their existing cities, initiate diplomacy with their neighbors, attack another civ, etc. Once you’re done with your turn, the other civs get their turns to move, until game play comes back to you. Each turn represents a number of years, from a hundred to a handful, depending on the era you’re playing in. As such, it can take several turns for a city to build an item of your choosing, so you need to plan ahead.

With Civ, the fun of the game is in the strategies and decisions that you get to implement. You get to choose where to build your cities (near grassland for good farming or in a narrow pass to block neighboring armies from approaching your capital, for instance), what to build in them (more offensive military units to wage a campaign against your neighbor or a harbor to increase food production near the sea), and whether you want your city’s workers to focus their energies on gold, food, production, science, or some balance between the four. You can decide whether or not to build wonders, which represent some of the best monuments, events, and cultural endeavors of civilization. Each wonder has a different effect, such as increasing a city’s cultural output, or an increase in the amount of a city’s scientific research. It’s your civilization, go shape it as you see fit.

Notable Details:
The overall time needed to play Civ Revolution is much, much abbreviated from earlier versions of Civ; this one takes mere hours rather than days to complete, which, given my obsessive tendencies when it comes to Civ, my family appreciates greatly.  Of course, this shortened time frame has a cost; the map of the world is smaller, and some game features have been simplified. For instance, rather than taking turns of work to increase a terrain square’s food production abilities, irrigation is now a technological advance that is earned through study, then applied to cities. Die-hard Civ players may moan that this lack of micromanagement detracts from the realism of the game, but for the average player, it means you’re free to dedicate more time to your plan to conquer Bokhara with your army of catapults.

Hmmm...sorry...I started getting distracted again. Where was I?

Important in Civ Revolution is the concept of “culture flipping,” or the risk of losing cities on your borders to neighboring civs with greater culture. This emphasizes the importance of increasing your civ’s culture, which can be obtained by building temples, cathedrals, and wonders as well as through the appearance and influence of “Great People” in your civilization, which should appeal to those idealists who favor attempting world domination through peaceful and cultured methods.

Diplomacy with other civs can be valuable. You can sell or trade technological advances, insult a leader to start a war (unless you’re a democracy, then Congress overrules you), and find out good gossip about your neighbors. You can also get good advice about your neighboring civs or about managing your own cities from various advisors that you can call on, even if all the characters speak in a strangely accented gibberish. It does communicate emotion, I suppose. I guess it’s a good thing to know when Genghis Khan is angry with you.

In making the game simpler, they may have removed some of the “realism” of all the little things that you need to do to grow and maintain a civilization (if you can call having one ruler over the course of hundreds of years “realism”), but they did a great job making sure the fun is still there.

Translation to the Nintendo DS Platform:
The Nintendo DS does a good job of making stylus and button use easy and intuitive. They manage to pack a lot into a compact handheld device. This version has been streamlined to keep the important aspects of the game, yet keep it simple enough to run well on the DS. The smaller world map fits reasonably well on the lower screen, centered on the unit whose turn it is to move, while information about the unit or the surrounding terrain shows on the upper screen.  Also, when your military unit attacks another unit, a cartoon of the battle shows on the top screen, which is a nice touch. A thumbnail version of the world map would have been handy to get the gist of where you are in comparison to the rest of the world, but the world is small enough that you can get by without it.

The DS version lacks a “Civilopedia,” which is a compendium of the various units, terrain, technologies, wonders, etc within the game. While you can get enough information from the notes found on the upper screen during game play, it would sometimes have been helpful to have a reference to consult, although it would’ve been difficult to squeeze into this format in any reasonable way. You can, however, consult a “Tech Planner” within the game, which can allow you to better plan out what technology to research next to get that special advance you’ve been craving.

DS Multiplayer Options:
There is an option to play against up to 3 others through the DS wireless connection, provided your friends also have Civ Revolution cards.  You can also play over Nintendo Wi-Fi, either against other players, or you can play a “Game of the Week.” Every week a new single-player scenario is posted. However, these options have not been tested by this reviewer.

Overall Impressions:
Nikolai, my 7-year-old, really started getting into this game.  He plays on “Chieftain” level, which is the easiest. Somewhat predictably, he likes attacking other military units, and isn’t too into the diplomacy thing. Like any good mom, I’m hoping he’ll eventually learn patience and the benefits of planning ahead. He liked the game play on the Nintendo DS, up until he saw the graphics on the PS3, now there’s no going back. The DS’s graphics are “too pixelated,” in his words. It isn’t really that the animation is bad, it’s just that it doesn’t compare with the PS3’s more realistic 3-D style. For more information about that, please read my review for Civilization Revolution for the PS3. Considering that the actual point of the game is the strategy rather than the graphics, I’d have to disagree with him. I don’t see this as a major problem in my game play.

All in all, I think Firaxis did a masterful job of making a complicated game palatable for a small, handheld gaming device. For the novice, it’s easy to learn to play, for the long-time fan, it’s nuanced and challenging enough to keep you engaged. As for me, I really need to get back and see whether my crack team of researchers have discovered metallurgy yet. My campaign would go so much better, I think, if I had a few cannons!