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Three-parts in, I have already covered a number of bases on Civilization: Revolution. I began by going over the background of its development. I then moved to examine its victory conditions alongside its diplomacy and multiplayer systems, and most recently its pre-game specifics in the form of civilizations, their abilities and bonuses, eras and the revised nature of Great People (GP). Moving more in-game, you start with at least one common basic: a Settler unit looking to found your people's first city. This part of my preview of this still-in-development title is dedicated to units -- yours and your opponents alike.
JUST THE BASICS, MA’AM… SIR
Combat is played out to that which Civilization IV players will recognize as default: a blow-by-blow animation with appropriate sound effects accompanying it including clanks, thunks, grunts and musical overtures. Before combat, you are given a combat preview that tells you what the odds are for the would-be battle. In large numbers you are provided the total attack and defensive values, followed underneath by a breakdown of the components that comprise this total. Any attacking and defending bonuses would be noted in this area of the display. At most times during battle, you can withdraw should matters go from bad to worse. With gameplay balancing no doubt in mind, this action gives the opposing force a bonus. [N]ot to be done lightly, Sid comments. This is an opportunity never before seen in the Civ series. As has been stated by Lead Producer Barry Caudill in earlier previews and interviews on CivRev, the emphasis is on positives and neutrals in the mechanics and not negatives. Therefore, a penalty for the force initiating the withdrawal is out of the question.
Sid Meier, developer Firaxis Games' Director of Creative Development, tells us there are a lot of cool units in CivRev. If you have logged time with one or more previous Civ titles, you may find one or more of your most favourite or despised units are missing. This would not be surprising as the total number of units in CivRev is less than you will find previously in the series. However, all unit types (e.g. mounted) and classes (e.g. air) are represented. Examples cited or otherwise seen are (in alphabetical order) Archers, Catapults, Cannons, Galleys, Horsemen, Legions, Knights, Militia, Modern Infantry, (the dreaded) Nuclear Missile, Rifleman, Tanks and Warriors as well as airplanes (presumably more than one type). Of those named Galleys, Horsemen, Knights, Tanks, the airplanes and the Nuclear Missile have a movement rate of greater than 1.
All units have intermixed attack values and health points a la CivIV. Therefore a single, successful strike in combat is unlikely to destroy one except perhaps where they are outrageously mismatched in ability e.g. a Phalanx taking on a Tank. (I never said Battleship.
)
SOMETHINGS OLD, SOMETHINGS NEW
Units can heal, and one of the ways to do that -- as in previous Civ titles -- is to instruct the unit to use their turn to heal. You can also keep tabs on their location from city screens which will show you the relative distance between the settlement and the unit. You always know how far somebody is just by looking at it on the map, Barry explains. You don't have to go to a separate screen to see how close are they or how close are mine. It is also from the city screen that you can rush a unit with gold so long as you have enough coin to do so. That’s right, CivIV players, there’s no need to gun for the Great Pyramids Wonder or dash through the technology tree to be able to switch to a Universal Suffrage Civic! For times when a unit has to go and you can’t find a surely heroic (or foolish) ‘out’ for them; you can disband them. You may also feel the need to pad your treasury a bit as there is a small amount of gold that is generated in income as a result.
Any three of the same unit, e.g. Phalanx, can when sharing the same title band together to form an army. This has been disclosed in earlier previews of the game as well. Armies are three times as powerful as a regular unit, but if and when it's killed remember that means all the at one time independent units perish. It's also a way of simplifying the management of the game as the number of units expands, Sid comments. Barry notes that the promotion of any one unit in an army is automatically shared by the other two. This also includes a single unit's Veteran or Elite status where applicable.
Speaking of this status, regular units upgrade to Veteran after three victories against units of greater or equal strength; three more victories on the same condition means Elite status. A Veteran unit has a 50% combat bonus over a regular unit and Elites have that much again over Veterans; yes, that then means an Elite unit is 100% more effective in combat than a regular counterpart (assuming full health). Just as with units that are unified into an army, you can tell just by looking at a unit whether or not they have been upgraded. For example, a Veteran Warrior bears a helmet that a regular Warrior does not.
There is the “Set 'Rally' Point” concept that CivRev is introducing to the series. Using the push down buttons, you can set a location that you want your troops to move towards and then -- with one button press -- when a unit becomes active you can send it to that location. As you explore more territory, often you'll go to war with somebody and you can set a location there to send everybody to join in. Nice touch.
YOU DESERVE A PROMOTION
The promotion system CivIV introduced to the Civ series has a meaningful presence in CivRev too. Though I do not know the mechanics of probability of promotions in CivRev, this time around they are less plentiful but more powerful.
[These upgrades] are cool because they give you unique units [in their own right]. [..] Sometimes when you're talking to the other leaders, they'll point to one of your units and say “that's a pretty cool unit!” [..] Also, if you've got a unit in their territory they'll say “what's that guy doing over there?”
There are nine different promotions as noted in earlier previews. This was one area of CivRev that Sid and Barry did not include in their presentation but I asked about. In alphabetical order, the names of the seven I learned about are: Blitz, Engineering, Guerilla, Infiltration, Loyalty, March and Medic. Before this I hadn’t even heard the Engineering or Loyalty promotion names let alone what was involved with them. The identity and status of the other two promotions remain unknown... and it didn’t even strike me at the time of previewing that they hadn’t been disclosed!
Blitz makes it so that units can attack twice in a turn as opposed to once. Engineering gives units a 100% bonus in defending cities; similarly, Infiltration gives units a 100% bonus in attacking cities. Guerilla gives units a 50% greater attack value while in enemy’s territory while Loyalty provides a 50% greater defense value in their own territory. As with unit status, promotions can be gleamed at a glance by the physical appearance of units on-screen. March permits units an extra movement point which is visually represented by a unit carrying a backpack. Medic allows units to heal themselves more quickly where the renowned read and white cross symbol appears on the uniform of units with this addition.
Though not included in Sid and Barry’s demonstration, while playing CivRev I did encounter a situation where I had to make a choice between what promotion to apply to a unit of mine that had been quite successful in combat. I will not hesitate to admit that the array of promotions in CivIV from numbers to attributes – what I will refer to again shortly as ‘tiers’ – kept me from paying any great attention to their specifics for very long. At the same time I do not want a post-CivIV title to come without a promotion system of some kind; that this position is coming from a builder
, that should demonstrate as much as anything how valuable I believe this feature is. For any would-be Civilization V, I recommend adopting CivRev’s promotions and those promotions alone. What a CivV should add to them is what is seemingly omitted from CivRev but CivIV had with its promotions: tiers. To me, promotion tiers are the e.g. “I” through “III” levels for any one promotion. If in fact these are being tinkered with in CivRev, I just as equally recommend their removal.
MR. CARAVAN, BRING ME A TRADE
Last seen in CivII, Caravans are once again available to generate money by delivering goods to a city. Unlike CivII, their income in CivRev is generated for both the Caravan's originating civilization and the civilization of its destination. The originating civilization receives a lump sum gold payment while the receiving civilization earns a percentage on it in the form of an import tax. If you have an ally, it's a good thing to trade Caravans because you'll both be [benefiting], Sid maintains. From what I saw, the percentage of this income tax is 40 (e.g. 20 gold in import on 50 gold in trade) but it may vary.
It is possible that one of if not the earliest appearance of a Caravan unit for you will occur when your treasury meets or then exceeds 100 gold for the first time. This marks the first economic milestone in CivRev -- the next milestone occurs at 250 gold, but I do not know anymore than that. Caravans have a base movement rate of 2 tiles per turn; unescorted, they are very vulnerable to capture even from Barbarians. In these circumstances its best hope for continued survival is to outrun and outthink its pursuers.
WHERE FOR ART THOU, WORKER?
One unit that you will find conspicuously missing is the Worker which has been a series staple since Civilization II: the Worker or its equivalent (in CivII, Settler and eventually Engineer). No, CivRev is not marking a return to having Settlers perform Workers’ duties as was done in Sid's first Civ title. Instead the Worker function has been streamlined: they are automatically assigned to work within a city's territorial boundary and start doing so as soon as they receive their assignment. It will give you kind of a balanced economy -- some food, some trade and some production but as Sid goes onto add, you can micromanage the strategy by reassigning these workers to other workable tiles. This is consistent with previous Civ titles where this unit or equivalent has also existed. In CivRev you get a Worker, represented by a man and woman side-by-side, for each population point that you have in a city.
Ever since I first heard of this automation being put in place in earlier CivRev previews, I became cautiously optimistic towards it. Going into this demonstration and playtest I had yet to hear about how satisfactorily intelligent that automation was let alone see it in action for myself. The improvements in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) from Civilization III to Civilization IV had me hopeful that I would not be disappointed but at least that I could still direct the process at my discretion. From what I did see I am not concerned with the implementation with Workers’ automation. A related idea with Workers that I had liked without reservation from when I had first heard of it is the ability to assign a Worker to the title that your city itself is built upon. A city's fat cross in CivRev is not necessarily so cross-shaped and has slimmed down. Instead of 20 tiles workable tiles as seen since CivII, there are 8. If and when a city reaches the size of 9, its newest Worker automatically starts working your city's tile. They become a Labourer, generating another hammer towards its production effort. There is even a longer-term benefit to look forward to. As your city grows larger, your city [Workers] starts generating trade and you can create an internal economy to your city. Sid does emphasize that for cities 8 and smaller, it's generally better for Workers to work the titles around it and not the city tile itself. Also unlike CivIV, your Worker can still work a tile that has been lost from your cultural border so long as it has not been consumed by another civilization's cultural border.
LIFE IS A HIGHWAY
In previous Civ games my Workers (and Settlers before that) have executed more road building than all other improvements combined. It is as a necessity to connect resources to your trade network for internal and external (export) use as it is to move your units in and out of your empire. With CivRev making Workers the domain of your cities directly, I went into Sid and Barry’s demonstration wondering how this aspect would be handled or – indeed – streamlined. I got my answer. No more are roads built piece-by-piece either by manually directing Workers every turn or even assigning them a road path to build over a number of turns. Your cities’ Workers do not even enter the equation directly: instead, your treasury does. From a city’s management screen (city screen) you select what other city you want to build a road from there to. A specific amount of money is attached to completing this path and if you can afford it, you’re given the option of whether to go ahead with its construction or not.
No comprehensive discussion on roads in the Civ series should be considered complete if it does not address railroads as well. Railroads have been in play since the series began with Sid’s original PC release in 1991. But this isn’t Civ on the PC. Instead, roads pay a part that is most like last seen in CivII but not exactly. Like in that title, unit movement along roads is free but this time they are not unlimited. At first this may understandably seem like a contradiction but here’s the wrinkle: when a unit moves itself into a city it pays a movement point to do so. I believe Firaxis has hit a ‘sweetspot’ with this combination. Remember the underlying desire with CivRev to improve the time between which the average game starts and ends: to this end (pun intended ), there is an increase in unit mobility that does not rely on the research of and subsequent construction from railroad. At the same time there is a limit to this improved mobility that avoids the unbalancing gameplay element CivII wrought with railroads. Units give up a movement point when they enter a city and they must enter a city at some point as roads are constructed between two cities.
Borrowing a phrase from Sid himself, roads in CivRev are pretty powerful but not egregiously so.
WHO’S ON FIFTH?
Keep your World Wide Web browsers pointed to this website for the fifth part of my preview. In the next edition, I will be all over governments like peanut butter and jelly on bread. There’s also this thing called ‘culture’ to look over…
JUST THE BASICS, MA’AM… SIR
 “Tonight on Pay-Per-View: Americans vs. Egyptians” |
Sid Meier, developer Firaxis Games' Director of Creative Development, tells us there are a lot of cool units in CivRev. If you have logged time with one or more previous Civ titles, you may find one or more of your most favourite or despised units are missing. This would not be surprising as the total number of units in CivRev is less than you will find previously in the series. However, all unit types (e.g. mounted) and classes (e.g. air) are represented. Examples cited or otherwise seen are (in alphabetical order) Archers, Catapults, Cannons, Galleys, Horsemen, Legions, Knights, Militia, Modern Infantry, (the dreaded) Nuclear Missile, Rifleman, Tanks and Warriors as well as airplanes (presumably more than one type). Of those named Galleys, Horsemen, Knights, Tanks, the airplanes and the Nuclear Missile have a movement rate of greater than 1.
All units have intermixed attack values and health points a la CivIV. Therefore a single, successful strike in combat is unlikely to destroy one except perhaps where they are outrageously mismatched in ability e.g. a Phalanx taking on a Tank. (I never said Battleship.
)SOMETHINGS OLD, SOMETHINGS NEW
Units can heal, and one of the ways to do that -- as in previous Civ titles -- is to instruct the unit to use their turn to heal. You can also keep tabs on their location from city screens which will show you the relative distance between the settlement and the unit. You always know how far somebody is just by looking at it on the map, Barry explains. You don't have to go to a separate screen to see how close are they or how close are mine. It is also from the city screen that you can rush a unit with gold so long as you have enough coin to do so. That’s right, CivIV players, there’s no need to gun for the Great Pyramids Wonder or dash through the technology tree to be able to switch to a Universal Suffrage Civic! For times when a unit has to go and you can’t find a surely heroic (or foolish) ‘out’ for them; you can disband them. You may also feel the need to pad your treasury a bit as there is a small amount of gold that is generated in income as a result.
Any three of the same unit, e.g. Phalanx, can when sharing the same title band together to form an army. This has been disclosed in earlier previews of the game as well. Armies are three times as powerful as a regular unit, but if and when it's killed remember that means all the at one time independent units perish. It's also a way of simplifying the management of the game as the number of units expands, Sid comments. Barry notes that the promotion of any one unit in an army is automatically shared by the other two. This also includes a single unit's Veteran or Elite status where applicable.
Speaking of this status, regular units upgrade to Veteran after three victories against units of greater or equal strength; three more victories on the same condition means Elite status. A Veteran unit has a 50% combat bonus over a regular unit and Elites have that much again over Veterans; yes, that then means an Elite unit is 100% more effective in combat than a regular counterpart (assuming full health). Just as with units that are unified into an army, you can tell just by looking at a unit whether or not they have been upgraded. For example, a Veteran Warrior bears a helmet that a regular Warrior does not.
There is the “Set 'Rally' Point” concept that CivRev is introducing to the series. Using the push down buttons, you can set a location that you want your troops to move towards and then -- with one button press -- when a unit becomes active you can send it to that location. As you explore more territory, often you'll go to war with somebody and you can set a location there to send everybody to join in. Nice touch.
YOU DESERVE A PROMOTION
 A Phalanx Army is on the move |
[These upgrades] are cool because they give you unique units [in their own right]. [..] Sometimes when you're talking to the other leaders, they'll point to one of your units and say “that's a pretty cool unit!” [..] Also, if you've got a unit in their territory they'll say “what's that guy doing over there?”
There are nine different promotions as noted in earlier previews. This was one area of CivRev that Sid and Barry did not include in their presentation but I asked about. In alphabetical order, the names of the seven I learned about are: Blitz, Engineering, Guerilla, Infiltration, Loyalty, March and Medic. Before this I hadn’t even heard the Engineering or Loyalty promotion names let alone what was involved with them. The identity and status of the other two promotions remain unknown... and it didn’t even strike me at the time of previewing that they hadn’t been disclosed!
Blitz makes it so that units can attack twice in a turn as opposed to once. Engineering gives units a 100% bonus in defending cities; similarly, Infiltration gives units a 100% bonus in attacking cities. Guerilla gives units a 50% greater attack value while in enemy’s territory while Loyalty provides a 50% greater defense value in their own territory. As with unit status, promotions can be gleamed at a glance by the physical appearance of units on-screen. March permits units an extra movement point which is visually represented by a unit carrying a backpack. Medic allows units to heal themselves more quickly where the renowned read and white cross symbol appears on the uniform of units with this addition.
Though not included in Sid and Barry’s demonstration, while playing CivRev I did encounter a situation where I had to make a choice between what promotion to apply to a unit of mine that had been quite successful in combat. I will not hesitate to admit that the array of promotions in CivIV from numbers to attributes – what I will refer to again shortly as ‘tiers’ – kept me from paying any great attention to their specifics for very long. At the same time I do not want a post-CivIV title to come without a promotion system of some kind; that this position is coming from a builder
, that should demonstrate as much as anything how valuable I believe this feature is. For any would-be Civilization V, I recommend adopting CivRev’s promotions and those promotions alone. What a CivV should add to them is what is seemingly omitted from CivRev but CivIV had with its promotions: tiers. To me, promotion tiers are the e.g. “I” through “III” levels for any one promotion. If in fact these are being tinkered with in CivRev, I just as equally recommend their removal.MR. CARAVAN, BRING ME A TRADE
 A caravan is successful in trade |
It is possible that one of if not the earliest appearance of a Caravan unit for you will occur when your treasury meets or then exceeds 100 gold for the first time. This marks the first economic milestone in CivRev -- the next milestone occurs at 250 gold, but I do not know anymore than that. Caravans have a base movement rate of 2 tiles per turn; unescorted, they are very vulnerable to capture even from Barbarians. In these circumstances its best hope for continued survival is to outrun and outthink its pursuers.
WHERE FOR ART THOU, WORKER?
One unit that you will find conspicuously missing is the Worker which has been a series staple since Civilization II: the Worker or its equivalent (in CivII, Settler and eventually Engineer). No, CivRev is not marking a return to having Settlers perform Workers’ duties as was done in Sid's first Civ title. Instead the Worker function has been streamlined: they are automatically assigned to work within a city's territorial boundary and start doing so as soon as they receive their assignment. It will give you kind of a balanced economy -- some food, some trade and some production but as Sid goes onto add, you can micromanage the strategy by reassigning these workers to other workable tiles. This is consistent with previous Civ titles where this unit or equivalent has also existed. In CivRev you get a Worker, represented by a man and woman side-by-side, for each population point that you have in a city.
 Your Military Advisor patiently awaits your order |
LIFE IS A HIGHWAY
In previous Civ games my Workers (and Settlers before that) have executed more road building than all other improvements combined. It is as a necessity to connect resources to your trade network for internal and external (export) use as it is to move your units in and out of your empire. With CivRev making Workers the domain of your cities directly, I went into Sid and Barry’s demonstration wondering how this aspect would be handled or – indeed – streamlined. I got my answer. No more are roads built piece-by-piece either by manually directing Workers every turn or even assigning them a road path to build over a number of turns. Your cities’ Workers do not even enter the equation directly: instead, your treasury does. From a city’s management screen (city screen) you select what other city you want to build a road from there to. A specific amount of money is attached to completing this path and if you can afford it, you’re given the option of whether to go ahead with its construction or not.
 Modern Age Grudgematch: Modern Infantry vs. Tank |
), there is an increase in unit mobility that does not rely on the research of and subsequent construction from railroad. At the same time there is a limit to this improved mobility that avoids the unbalancing gameplay element CivII wrought with railroads. Units give up a movement point when they enter a city and they must enter a city at some point as roads are constructed between two cities.Borrowing a phrase from Sid himself, roads in CivRev are pretty powerful but not egregiously so.
WHO’S ON FIFTH?
Keep your World Wide Web browsers pointed to this website for the fifth part of my preview. In the next edition, I will be all over governments like peanut butter and jelly on bread. There’s also this thing called ‘culture’ to look over…
-- I don't view your points as complaining at all in either content or context.
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