Civilization Revolution

The story of my completion of Civilization Revolution is a long one. I borrowed the game from a friend back in 2009 and played a few campaigns. I then stopped playing and after having it for about a year my friend unsurprisingly asked for it back. 2011 arrived and along with it came a thirst for achievement hunting after I managed to finish Prototype after renting it for a week. Then, in 2013 I decided to fill the gaps in my collection by purchasing all games I had started after borrowing them but not finished. Thus, Civilization Revolution made its way back into my hands. But I didn’t start playing it again until this year because...reasons.

The basic premise of Civilization games is that you have to build an empire from scratch and compete against other civilizations for dominance. There are sixteen different civilizations to choose from, all of whom have their own subtle differences. There are four different ways to win the game and an achievement for each win type but I’ll get more into that later.

In terms of the gameplay, it’s a bit of weird one. Some might say it’s a thinker’s game with tactics and the like, but I don’t think I’m the most tactically minded individual and I still managed to get across the line with all styles of win. What I’m getting at here is that I don’t see where the enjoyment is. It’s not tactically advanced enough to challenge those who seek it but not quite user friendly enough for the causal gamer. That said, it is one of those games where you start playing and before you know it, three hours have gone by and you haven’t really achieved much.
 
Aside from the normal game mode, there are also scenarios you can play including but not limited to; Beta Centuri mode where you start with all technology unlocked; Lightning Round where you start with three villages and the winning criteria is significantly reduced; and Golden Age where you start with 1,000 gold. There are eight scenarios in total, but these are the ones I played.

The most annoying thing about the game is the advisors and not because of the advice they give you but because every time they talk to you to, they make inaudible baby like noises which are just complete nonsense.  The music while playing is fine which is good considering that games can take in excess of three hours to finish, but going back to the advisors, towards the end of the game, they will – en-masse – update you on how close you are to victory. This is really fucking irritating after they’ve told you exactly the same thing three turns in a row. No wonder games take in excess of three hours with drawn out ‘dialogue’ like this.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 50 Achievements

As you can imagine, 50 achievements can turn into an absolute slog. Starting with the simple ones, there are 17 related to winning as the various civilizations – 1 for each civilization and 1 for winning as all civilizations.

There are several you will get just for playing through a game. I unlocked 12 achievements for doing certain in-game things in my first game and that doesn’t include any victory criteria. That said, a few of these situation achievements required me to play a game specifically to target the achievement in question. I found the most tricky of these to be developing a city that has 200 production per turn. This is hard because it’s the only one of these types where you need to build a city in a specific location to get enough production. This also takes ages and I had one game end because I had reached the maximum time allowance before I got city with enough production.

Another miscellaneous one was for winning the game before 1,000AD on King difficulty or higher. The Golden Age scenario mentioned earlier was the one I used to get this. With the early gold supply, you can buy horse units and get ahead of the other civilizations. There is still an element of luck though as the other civilizations could be anywhere. I failed to get this on my first try because one of the cities was right next to the North Pole and I needed ships to reach it.

The last category of achievement is for the various victory conditions. There are 13 in total, 4 for each condition type at any, King and Deity difficulty and 1 for winning under each condition. Beta Centuri makes three of the victories easy as it levels the playing field. However, you cannot get a technology victory here. For that, I needed the Lightning Round scenario. This was also quite luck-based as I had to keep reloading until I got good starting positions to raise enough science before the other civilizations.

The last achievement I unlocked has come under fire from the gaming community for being a deliberate fuck ass. In order to unlock it, you have to get all of Great People to turn up in your games. A lot of people have said that the game is biased against the player because they keep getting the same Great People showing up despite meeting the specific criteria for getting them to appear. I think I may have got quite lucky with this. I tried three times to get all of the Great People to show up in one game but was never successful. Then I went for the specific criteria and just kept restarting the game until I got my last one. I can certainly see why the community have developed such hatred towards it.

Downloadable Content – N/A

The only word to describe the game (in terms of achievements) is ‘slog.’ My sheer determination was what got me through in the end. I won’t be playing it again for fun and it will take something very special to get me to play another strategy game for a long time.