Strategy

Description

Starting out with just a single unit and knowledge of a small local area, your challenge is to guide your civilization into becoming the dominant force, either by conquering every other civilization or by sending a spaceship to Alpha Centauri.

As you’d imagine, a lot of challenges come into such a task. You must locate cities so as to make use of food, construction and trade resources, which can be later improved by constructing irrigation, roads, mines, railroads, and farmland. Each city can construct one item at a time – civilian and military units, buildings or Wonders of the World (there are 28 of these across the different eras of the game, and each can be possessed by only one city). The buildings and wonders have different effects – most buildings and some wonders improve defenses, scientific research, trade or food output, but most wonders offer unique advantages that can be used to great strategic effect.

There are over 100 scientific advancements in the game, and most require prerequisites before they can be researched. How quickly this happens depends on your scientific output, which must be traded off against financial and military concerns. …

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Description

Civilization II: Test of Time, released in 1999, is a turn-based strategy game similar to the best selling game Civilization II. Test of Time’s central innovation was the addition of multiple maps and the inclusion of two campaigns concerning science fiction and fantasy themes.
Test of Time includes an exact replica of the old Civilization II campaign, with only a few minor changes. Cosmetically, however, it looks quite different, with all-new art and animated units. Test of Time also offers the option to undertake the Extended Original campaign, which is identical to the Original except that the “pink” slot for a civilization is occupied by aliens on Alpha Centauri. When one builds the Alpha Centauri spaceship, instead of ending the game, it unlocks a secondary tech tree and allows the player to battle the Centaurians.

There is also a Fantasy game (along with a more detailed Midgard Scenario), along with a whole new tech tree. You can play as either the Buteos (bird people), Merfolk, Goblins, Stygian (undead), Elves, Human, or Infidels. There are four map layers of the word: sky, surface, underwater, and underground. …

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Description

Sid Meier’s Civilization III is a turn-based strategy game where the objective is to rule the planet with the civilization of the player’s choice. Players control one of 15 historic civilizations (Aztecs, Egyptians, Russians, etc). Each civilization has its own particular strengths and weaknesses — some are more scientific, for example, while others have stronger cultural or military attributes; also, each civilization has its own unique unit, and is more prone to certain forms of government while shunning some others.

Like in the previous titles in the series, the point of the game is to expand the influence of a civilization through resource management, conquest, or trade with other civilizations. As game time progresses from ancient times through the modern era, a civilization will acquire new technologies, which in turn enable interesting new abilities and enhanced power. Since there are several ways to win (military, diplomatic, or cultural), it is up to each player to determine how best to manage the division of labor. …

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Description

Sid Meier’s Civilization IV, the fourth installment of the series, starts the player, like in the previous games, with a single village in the Stone Age and has them advance from there by exploring, founding cities, researching, exploiting natural resources and eventually trading or making war with neighbouring civilizations. While Sid Meier’s Civilization III put cultural influence in the forefront, this time it is religion that is put forward as a new factor underlying many aspects of the game.

In addition, Sid Meier’s Civilization IV attempts to streamline gameplay by removing some features (corruption, pollution) which slowed down the late stages of the game and making significant changes to the combat system so that tactical thinking plays a more important role. Units now have a single combat value instead of defense and attack values, have a special ability and can be further enhanced with experience in a player-defined way. …

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Description

Sid Meier’s Civilization IV: Colonization is both a stand-alone addon for Sid Meier’s Civilization IV and a remake of Sid Meier’s Colonization from 1994. So the basic premise of the game is still that the player becomes the Viceroy of one of the four playable countries (Netherlands, Spain, France and England) in 1500 with the goal to successfully declare independence from the old world and survive the repercussions in form of the Independence War before the year 1800 (although the winning conditions can be changed).

Based on which country and which of the two available Viceroys of that country the player chooses, he gets different bonuses and starts with different units on his lone ship in front of the shores of either a random generated map or a part of real America — but the first goal is always the same: building a settlement at a good location. Based on which resources surround a settlement, it can harvest and produce different kinds of goods by the settlers currently occupying it. If enough food (200 units) is available, an additional settler will be available to work on the fields or in the different shops or be trained to become a master in his business and thus producing even more units per turn. These goods, for example cloth made out of cotton in the weaving mill, can then be traded with the natives or the other countries settling on the continent or sent back with a ship to Europe and sold there. …

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