Windows Phone Xbox Live Review: Civilization Revolution

The Windows Telephone Xbox Alive lineup has long lacked strategy titles. Concluding year saw the release of Fusion: Sentient, which turned out to be more than of a sophisticated colorlessness simulator than an actual game. Thankfully, 2K Games' very first Windows Phone release is not merely any strategy game. No, it's function of the illustrious Civilization series: Sid Meier'due south Civilization Revolution.

From humble origins

The overall goal of Civilisation Revolution (or Civ Rev every bit I'll now phone call it to be cool) is to steer a tiny settlement from the year 4,000 B.C. into modern times and beyond. There will also be multiple NPC civilizations that yours can deal with in a variety of means. At that place are actually four different means to win the game, allowing for a variety of play styles:

• Domination: Capture all of the other civilizations' capital cities and agree them for 1 total round.
• Culture: Gain a total of twenty keen persons, wonders, and/or converted cities in any combination, and and so build the United Nations wonder.
• Economic: Larn 20,000 gold so build the World Banking concern wonder.
• Technological: Research all technologies necessary to build and launch a spaceship, and finally be the first to reach Blastoff Centauri.

Starting out

After selecting one of 16 historical civilizations, each of which has a few unique bonuses to aid it along, yous're thrust into the game itself. An optional tutorial teaches some of the game basics, but it doesn't go near far enough to explain the game menstruation to new players. If you've never played a Civilization game before you may be in for a rough ride, merely I'll do my best here to explain the general menstruum of the game.

Initially you have a single settlement, your capital city, from which the rest of your civilization will eventually spring. If the capital city is captured by an opposing forcefulness you lose the game, so either keep information technology defended or make sure it's surrounded by other well-defended cities that will proceed information technology safe. But we're getting alee of ourselves!

During each plow, players take the opportunity to move any bachelor units, which may include:

• Military units who tin can explore, attack and defend
• Settlers who tin outset new cities
• Less common types: caravans, spies, and neat people

City Management

The other function of a turn involves city management. Press the advisable button the right side of the screen to enter the management interface. From here, you'll decide whether to build new units, buildings, wonders, or roads. All of these tend to take one or more than turns to complete, so once you've gotten a city'southward production started, you tin can unremarkably leave it solitary until production completes. If y'all set it to unit of measurement product, the city will incessantly produce that blazon of unit of measurement until told otherwise. But after a edifice or wonder finishes, the urban center's production goes idle and will be wasted unless you get-go manufacturing a new item.

The other important selection in the management screen is how to divide the city'due south budget. You can cull to focus on either science or gilded. The more science produced betwixt your cities, the faster you'll research new technologies. Gilded is useful for building roads and accelerating production of units, buildings, and wonders. At first all science research is a skilful strategy, but in time you'll want some cities on science and some on aureate.

Research

1 of the most enjoyable aspects of the game is watching and guiding your civilisation's technological development. After your first plow, you'll determine whether to research an Alphabet, Bronze Working, Horseback Riding, or Pottery. Each inquiry detail takes a set number of turns to consummate, which varies depending on your overall scientific product. New technologies allow for either the production of new units, buildings, or wonders, in add-on to unlocking further subjects for research.

It'southward wide to cull what win status you're going for and research the advisable technologies. If you're going for a military victory you'll desire to focus on military engineering. Gaining access to archers, swordsman, and eventually tanks and planes before other civilization should fill power mongers with glee. Only other technologies are more useful for keeping your citizens content and enlightened, perhaps leading to a cultural victory.

Exploration

At the start of the game the expanse beyond your village is surrounded by black fog of war, so yous'll want to explore equally much as possible. Ship your sole warrior out to fill in the map and search for friendly villages and unfriendly Barbarian tribes. Reach a hamlet and they'll bestow you with one of a diversity of resources (unit upgrades, settlers, technology) or geographic info. Barbarians are ambitious and volition attack and destroy your undefended cities, so brand sure to take them out and gain valuable battle feel (and sometimes free cavalry units) from the encounters. Y'all may as well come up across ancient wonders that provide terrific rewards, though these ordinarily require sailing to notice.

Unit movement is the gameplay elements of the mobile versions of Civ Rev that needs the most piece of work. To movement a unit, you lot tap and hold it and so drag out a path. Then far so practiced. Yet inexplicably, dragging confronting the edges of the screen doesn't scroll the screen, making long paths a chore to create. Pinching to zoom out gives a fleck more room to piece of work, but zoom out very far and units disappear from the map, limiting its usefulness.

State of war and Peace

As your units spread out and make full in the map, yous'll somewhen come across competing civilizations. You may choose to establish friendships with them or become to state of war. Unless you're already bodacious of military superiority, the one-time is a much amend option early on. Diplomatic mechanics pretty much come downwards to the sale or trading of technologies. Play long enough and your friends usually start to get aggressive and asking offerings of money or tech, though you can safely ignore them without going to war if your size is much greater.

Should yous attack an enemy city or units, y'all'll want your own units to be grouped outset. Stacking three of the same unit creates a much more powerful army, so you'll desire to rely mostly on armies. Battles are automated and come down to how each side's offensive and defensive stats compare. For case, gunmen will likely defeat opposing cavalry, assuming they become to assault outset. Edifice upwards a potent strength and taking down weaker civilizations proves almost every bit fun as the other victory types, if not more so.

Ugly duckling

Xbox 360 version

Despite its deep gameplay, this championship looks similar it got hit past the ugly stick. Let's dissect how that happened. In 2008, a streamlined (just pretty) version of Civilization chosen Civilization Revolution launched on Xbox 360 and Playstation 3. A Nintendo DS port was rapidly thrown together in lodge to launch at the aforementioned fourth dimension as its big brothers. The combination of a rushed schedule and the original DS's lack of horsepower resulted in a game that played well but looked homely. A yr later on, 2K Mainland china produced a slightly prettier iOS port using most of the same assets. Both DS and iPhone versions fall a bit short of 2005'south Civilization 4 (also 2D) in the looks section.

Fast-forward to 2022 and 2K China has ported their aging and not-that-pretty-in-2009 iOS game to Windows Phone with aught graphical improvements. Every bit if that wasn't bad enough, the graphics actually look a bit worse now. What happened? The pre-Retina iPhone game runs natively at a resolution of 480 x 320; Windows Telephone 800 x 480. Near as I can tell, the developers simply resized every shred of the existing avails, even UI elements, in an automated fashion without increasing the detail. Every bit a issue, edges that looked smooth on a tiny iPhone screen at present appear jagged and aliased. It plays wonderfully, but could accept looked much nicer.

Achievements

Civ Rev's Achievements aren't tough; they're just boring. Yous'll go an Achievement for completing a game with each of the xvi civilizations. That would take a lot of grinding if not for Scenario Way. If you're in a hurry for GamerScore, but pick Art of State of war on the lowest difficulty and yous'll easily complete a game in less than an hr. I would have preferred Achievements for getting each type of victory or completing higher difficulty levels.

Overall Impression

Fifty-fifty once you've knocked out its Achievements, Civilisation Revolution remains an engrossing and rewarding experience. A full game can have hours to complete, peculiarly on the college difficulties. I often establish it difficult to quit because I wanted to complete but a few more buildings or some other goal. Information technology may not exist much of a looker, but gamers who enjoy strategy or history will find Civ Rev gives a tremendous amount of blindside for the buck.

Culture Revolution costs $2.99 and there is a free trial. Discover it here on the Marketplace.

Information technology'due south hither

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/windows-phone-xbox-live-review-civilization-revolution

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