Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution Review

Civilization series have been around for by twenty years on the PC.  But now Sid  Meier lets you build empires right on your iPhone.  iPhone gamers will be able to take 1 of the 16 civilizations from ancient times to the contemporary era, building armies, expanding territories, and researching new technologies.

Fans of the series should be happy to know that Civilization Revolution for the iPhone retains much of the game play from the PC version.  Players will have to manage cities for production, research, and wealth developments.  Building structures to enhance these outputs is vital to the success of your empire.  Culture is plus an crucial factor in the game.  Building temples, cathedrals, wonders, and great humans will increase the influence that city has on its surroundings.  whether a city has very high culture, it can cause an enemy city to defect to your side.   Like its predecessors, Civilization Revolution for the iPhone plus allows the player to change governments.  Each government has its distinct advantages and disadvantages.  For example democracy maximizes production and research, but cripples player’s ability to wage wars.

The iPhone version plus allows for four ways to win the game.  Players can aim for economic victory, culture victory, technological victory, or domination victory.  In an economic victory, players will build up as much money as possible.  Building the World Bank wonder will end the game.  To win with culture victory, simply build sufficient Great public and Wonders to unlock the Wonder United Nations.  In technological victory, colonizing Alpha Centari is again an objective.  In domination victory, capturing sufficient enemy palaces will manufacture all other civilizations kneel to your rule.

Although the technology tree is not as comprehensive as its latest PC iterations, it does include sufficient technological advances and new units to

allow for strategic warfare amoung empires.  But those technology fanatics will miss some of their beloved advanced units and enhancements for their cities.  Those pursuing a technology victory may plus find their journey for the ultimate knowledge shorter than they’d expected.

The controls for Civilization Revolution may need a little more work.  Players move units by dragging it toward its destination grid.  Player can additionally zoom in and out on the main map.  However at a assured zoom point the units vanish from view, making transporting a unit by towering distances difficult.  The developers could have incorporated gestures to allow optimal viewing points for the game map.  There are additionally too much clutter at the main game map.   City names and development status constantly block unit views.  It would be nice whether they can be turned off so it would not obstruct unit movements.

The graphics could have been better on the iPhone.  The units really should have a higher pixel count.  The current units look downright ugly when zoomed close.  Some of the resources on the map look terrible as well.  Hopefully in future updates, sharper looking units will prepare players feel better about their armies.  A bright spot is the battle sequence.  The short animated battle sequence is exciting and fun.  The right viewing distance prepare these fighting units look acceptable.

Strangely, multiplayer option is lost from the iPhone version.  The Nintendo DS version of Civilization Revolution featured online support via Wi-Fi.  Hopefully they will be added to future updates.

Overall, Sid Meier’s Civilization Revolution for the iPhone is a great strategy game.  It is a rich strategy game that will easily take 4-8 hours to complete.  Aside from a few interface and graphical problems, players should enjoy the classic empire building game with most of its renowned features intact.