How Bear spent countless hours, keeping Gandhi from nuking my country. Also, apparently, Bear has a lot of things to say about this game.
Civilization IV1, a Firaxis Games 4X turn-based strategy game where the player controls a Nation from its early beginnings up to the space age. It came out in 2005, and was one of my favourite games at the time. I still miss some options from back then in the newest iterations of Civilization.
It’s also very well known, as most Civilization games, for having an option when you win the game, for “one more turn”, to keep playing if you want to. And that specific option is the reason this game sucks even more time from anybody playing for “just one game”.
Back in the days (yes, the Bear is old and says back in the days), you did not always have an internet connection that allowed you to play live. Lucky for you, this game had options to play by email (and I miss this slow way of playing your round, sending the email, and then waiting for the response, it had a very interesting way of making you wonder about all your moves that you just sent). You could also play online (lucky you), or in LANs. The multiplayer side of the game was nice, but this is not why I spent countless hours on it.
The game in itself
The first experience of the game (after installation, of course) is this amazing theme https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJiHDmyhE1A, “Baba Yetu”, the hit theme to Civilization IV – composed by Christopher Tin. This song lives rent free in my head. The animated video shows us some of humanity’s civilizations monuments and events, asking us how our civilization will fare in this world.
To start your game, you pick a nation and a leader. Nations have between one and three leader options, depending on whether you have the full version with the expansions (Beyond the Sword, Warlords). Every nation has a unique unit and a unique building, and every leader has traits that give you bonuses2.
My personal favourites are Hatchepsut (for Egypt) and Louis XIV (for France).
I really like playing with Hatchepsut3 because she’s my favourite pharaoh, and she has the Creative trait, which gives culture bonuses, and I love playing Culture oriented.
Plus the unique unit of Egypt, the War Chariot is a nice way to defend yourself in the beginning (and also attack sometimes, but I’m not the best on the attack).
I also enjoy playing Louis XIV purely for game benefits, as like Hatchepsut he has the Creative trait, but also the Industrious one which means Wonders are built faster, and that is very nice, because I love building wonders. The Musketeer is nice (moves fast), especially because it reminds me of a cartoon from childhood4.
Hatchepsut still looks better though😂.
So you pick your nation, launch your game, and on you go!
Typical game, with Hatchepsut, by Bear
Our Great Egyptian Civilization starts in 4000BC, and every turn a certain amount of years pass (at first quite a lot of years per turn, and then it’s one year per turn).
Egypt has a settler, and a warrior, and sees only the map around them.
And from there, the nation’s capital city gets founded. Behold, Thebes.
Then we create buildings in the cities, they expand, we create new settlers to build new cities, and then, after a while, we get to meet other leaders trying to leave their mark in history as well. As soon as we acquire the know how to make maps, they will pester us every two years with map sharing requests and open borders request to cross the egyptian countryside. I have to say I’m not very open to sharing in this game, as I almost never share passage through my land. I refuse to let them go settle across Egypt! Everywhere is Bear Land now!
This game might turn people into tyrants, but you have no proof. My people call me President Bear, everything is fine!
Egypt the great, nation builder of all the World Wonders. Everyone knows Stonehenge is an Egyptian marvel. Just like the Colossus, the Pyramids, the Hanging Gardens…
Roosevelt starts insulting the great Egyptian nation for not having a strong army and ‘stealing’ all the World Wonders, and the whole country’s economy is switched to unit production to protect the Egyptians. A few fights follow.
As the Americans start talking peace treaty, the treacherous Spanish people, led by Isabella try to sneak a war on America to capitalize on Egypt’s weakening of the country, trying to take one of the border cities. But a secret weapon has just been unveiled by the best scientists in Thebes.
After the tragic death of an Egyptian worker caused by Spanish troups passing through the country to invade America, Barcelona gets what was expected, and everyone sees the LIGHT.
With two wars going on and (maybe) nukes fired, most of the leaders are weirdly anti-Egyptian, which Hatchepsut finds very rude. Surprisingly, Louis XIV, leader of France, still thinks highly of Egypt. They probably hope to receive an Obelisk or something.
As for some unfathomable reason, everybody seems to hate on Egypt, and an all-out war is about to start, Thebes launches the last of the spaceship modules to launch the Egyptian Empire into space, and the game ends on a Space Victory.
After the game
If you manage to click on “Exit to Main Menu” instead of going for one more turn, you get a lot of neat infographics about your game, the biggest cities in the world, who had the most wonders, and my favourite, a small timelapse of the land ownership.
And then the game kinda insults you, by giving you your place in history.
Last words (and then, after that, just one more turn, I promise)
There are a lot of things to say about this game, the scenarios, the mods, the LANs, but one really important part of the game for me was the tech quotes read by Leonard Nimoy5. Every time you get a new tech, there’s a small flavour text, with a quote. I remember a lot of those quotes because of this game.
The bottom line is: This is a great game to spend hours on.
Thanks for reading up until there, don’t hesitate to share your favourite Civ stories in the comments (or to tell me how much you like another Civ installment better :D)!
- You can find a rather complete Wikipedia article on the game ↩︎
- A list of leaders, nations, unique buildings, and unique units is here ↩︎
- Check out her life as we know it https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hatshepsut ↩︎
- Albert the Fifth Musketeer, a Canadian-French cartoon from 1994 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iT94il81hAE (French theme song of the cartoon) ↩︎
- The actor playing Spock on Star Trek, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leonard_Nimoy ↩︎