Civilization Revolution
It'll be a "great reinvention" of the series"
We recently had the opportunity to grill Firaxis's Tim McCracken - who carries the great job title 'chief deficiency inspector' - on this new venture that he describes as a "great reinvention of the series".
So tell us about Civilization Revolution...
Tim McCracken: It's a totally new game of Civilization, designed from the ground up for the consoles. It's the same goal within the game, where you try and make your nation into a superpower. We're doing all the cool, latest-gen effects. I love the water. I like to say it looks so good you want to drink it.
You can play as one of 16 different civilisations in the game. From Alexander the Great, to Bismarck, to Cleopatra - you can play as them and against them. These characters are larger than life, they have their own strategies and their own powers.
There are four ways to win the game: Domination, where you capture all the other civilisations' capitals; being the first to reach Alpha Centauri; and then there's an economic and cultural victory.
The way we present the game is that, if you get stuck in one of the four ways, there's always another way to pull out a win so you're never stuck in one situation.
It's a great reinvention of the series that brings a lot of new life to it.
We were speaking to Sid Meier about the game and he mentioned a new feature - the ability to create armies - what's that all about?
McCracken: The ability to form armies is cool thing we have in Civilization Revolution. If you move three of the same units into the same square you can form an army that's three times as powerful as a single unit. If you're really clever, you get three different units with different special abilities to form an army and they have all three special abilities. You can have Ninja-Medic-Marching super-modern infantry that could take on the world.
How do we gain access to the special abilities for units then?
McCracken: At the end of a fight - combat is amazing and dynamic, by the way. You could fight a hundred different times and see a hundred different battles - I get an upgrade and what I can do with that upgrade is I can spend it on different special abilities. Infiltration, for example, will increase my chances of taking a city or a barbarian encampment. March gives an additional move per turn.
In Civilization IV when units got an upgrade they didn't really change, but now they have new uniforms. There are nine different abilities and each of them will have different uniforms.
Also, when you do something great, other civilisations recognise it and give you exotic gifts. For example, the Venetians send amazing acrobats that are doing amazing acrobatics y our trophy room. There's also dancing girls. I like those a whole lot better than the acrobats (laughs). Throughout the game you get more and more awards and trophies to show off.
Sid also spoke about artefacts...?
McCracken: Artefacts are ancient relics of history - like the Ark of the Covenant - that can provide a civilisation with great benefits. There's a ton of different artefacts you can find and it really encourages players to search around the map for these things because the first person who finds them gets them.
And presumably the wonders remain?
McCracken: The Eight Wonders of the World are great artefacts like the pyramids, the Colossus of Rhodes. It's pretty much a race to build these things. The first person to build the pyramids is the only person that can build the pyramids. But any civilisation can build the pyramids, or the Great Wall of China, say. The wonders provide awesome powers that have been totally remixed for Civilization Revolution.
We also, of course, have the technologies, which is one of the ways that you can guide your Civilization. You have a choice between three technologies. It goes all the way from horseback riding to space flight. And this is where a lot of the replayability and depth of gameplay comes in. Each time you play the game you're not going to be able to research all the technologies, so each time you're going to have to make a hard decision on what to do.
The correct way - my way - to win the game is to be the first civilisation to colonise planers in Alpha Centauri. By researching all the technologies you get to build a space shuttle and make it to outer space.
For those not familiar with the series, can you tell us about the role advisors play?
McCracken: If you come to a decision that you're not sure about you can consult your advisors and see what they think about the situation. The longer you're playing the game, the more information your advisors get and they'll tell you things like, 'We know this is their best unit', 'They are a leader in this research' or 'They have the greatest culture'. So they help guide you to make the right decisions.
[A brief interlude while some of the game is demoed to us. Tim starts talking about boats and how in his opinion boats in strategy games are awful because they tend not be very interesting.]
McCracken: They [boats] just carry troops or they fight each other. And it's just like, 'great'. There's no one reason to have boats.
We came up with a really great reason to have boats because they can bombard land units if they are near a battle. This makes a huge difference in combat, because if you have a few boats stationed outside the battle it can really turn the tide of how things are going to turn out. It provides another dimension to battle. Boats still fight other boats, but it provides a really cool element to that.
Finally, what are you including for Civilization Revolution multiplayer?
McCracken: We have lots of multiplayer options - One versus one, two versus two, four-player free-for-all, ranking, ladders, matchmaking.
