Civilization Revolution

I love this game. It's as fun as Civilization 3 for the PC, but doesn't have the tedium of Civilization 3. You have to make decisions constantly. (Not just make decisions once in a while and carry them out for a while like in Civilization 3). Every game is full of changes and you have to constantly adapt to them. The game has only one bug that I have found so far after completing 5 games. Sometimes, you can't build the World Bank to win an economic victory. I had to win a technological victory instead. I looked it up on the internet and found that other players had found this bug. It may only happen if you are gaining wealth too quickly from what I've experienced and read, but I'm only guessing. I won an economic victory by building it in an earlier game. Otherwise, the game has been bug free. In a normal game, you start out with just a unit of settlers on a random map. There are 4 other civilizations on the map out of a total of 16 civilizations. You use the settlers to build a city wherever you like. A city starts out just working 2 tiles (squares of land) around the city because you only start with two workers in a city. For example, one might work a grassland tile and produce 2 food per turn, while another might work a forest producing two hammers per turn. Hammers are units of industial production. It takes 10 hammers to make a warrior unit to fight and/or explore. It takes a certain number of units of food to increase the city's population by one unit of workers. Once the city has a population of 3 workers, you can create a settler unit (at a cost of 20 hammers) which reduces the city's number of workers by 2. This unit of settlers can move to find a nice spot for another city and found that city. The first warrior should have explored enough to know where. Leaving cities or settlers undefended makes them easy for enemy civilizations to capture and use themselves. There are lots of kinds of military units. Some are especially good at defense. Fortify these in your cities. Some are good for attack. Some can move more spaces per turn than others. Ships can move on the sea and can carry land units across the seas. Aircraft can move across any type of square. A worker working a sea square creates 2 research and possibly some food as well. Do enough research and you learn the technology that you are currently researching. You can then choose the next technology to reasearch. What research you have done determines what types of units you can build and what types of buildings and wonders of the world you can build in any city. A city can change from producing research (vials) to wealth (gold coins) (and back) at any time. When you reach certain levels of wealth you get a bonus. Wealth can also be used to rush (produce instantly) whatever you are building in a city, but it can be costly. Wealth can also be used to build roads between your cities so your land units can quickly move along them. Besides food (apples), industrial production (hammers), research (vials), and wealth (gold coins), you can produce culture in cities. The main way to produce culture is to build temples and cathedrals. High culture can get other civilizations' nearby cities to go over to you and low culture can lead to some of your cities going over to other civilizations. Culture production also leads to more great people, it seems. These people can be used to do one of two things. For example, a great scientist, like Albert Einstein, can permanently double (I think) a city's research if he settles there. He can instead be used to finish researching whatever technology you are currently working on. There are four ways to win. You can conquer all the other civilizations' capitals for a domintation victory. You can reasearch (eventually, after required preceding technologies) space flight and then build a colony space ship and send it to Alpha Cenauri for a technological victory. You can win an economic victory by accumulating 20,000 gold and then building the World Bank. Finally, you can win a cultural victory by getting 20 of the following, great people (like Albert Einstien) and/or wonders of the world and/or culturally gained cities, and building the United Nations. You can lose by being conquered of having another civilization gain a technological, economic, or cultural victory first. In 5 victories, I have won 2 technological victories, an economic victory, a cultural victory, and a domination victory. It takes me about 10 hours (I think) to win. (Losing sometimes takes me much less time. I give up easy.)

I've been alive through the entire gaming evolution, from Pong to now. As I've gotten older I've gotten tired of button mashing and games that require fast reflexes. I wanted a game that relied more on planning and strategy and boy did this game deliver. I understand that this game is not as deep as the PC versions of Civilization, but you can't sit on your couch when on your PC either, nor play it on your 52" Bravia like I do. Whatever shortcomings the whiners point out are insignificant to the average gamer looking for a great strategy game. It literally never ends with this game. There are varying degrees of difficulty, various civilizations to play as, and four different ways to win any one game. Literally all of the leaders, buildings, and wonders are historically real. The Civilopedia (the in-game instruction manual) gives you historical background on everything and clear instructions on how to play. It is very easy to read and learn, but it does take time. At first I found the game overwhelming, but kept coming back. It was worth it. Each game has a unique map with different assortments of civilizations to compete against, different layouts of terrain and resources. The replay value is literally endless if you like the game. You can also play online and there are various alternate forms of gameplay such as scenarios and a game of the week where you can download a scenario and see how well you play it relative to other players online. You build units, harvest food, aquire technology, engage in diplomacy with other civilizations (even so far as getting them to wage war on other civilizations for you). You can expand your empire to new cities with settlers or take over other people's cities. Spies can be used to infiltrate other cities and take gold, destroy buildings, among other things. You can pursue domination, culture, technology, or economic success. Land, sea, and air can be commanded. And the list goes on, and on, and on. When you look at the big picture of this game and consider its fun, engrossing depth and replay value, it literally is flawless. Bravo, Sid Meier. Edit 3/12/2012 After having played this more and more, I have three additional comments that I think are necessary. The first is that for all of the great things this game provides, there is a graphical problem. If you run the game in 1080p you will have a black border around your screen where the image doesn't completely fill the entire viewing area (less than 10% of the remaining area). After playing for long periods of time, this could lead to a reverse burn-in. I force my PS3 into 720p when playing this game and it solves the problem, with the image filling the screen entirely. I guess the game resolution is not truely 1080p, but some upscale of a lower resolution. Not a big deal, really. On another note, and a very good one, you can download add-ons for this game from the Playstation Network. The really cool part...most of them are free! The final matter, on a very important note, is that as I have played the different difficulty levels more, I'm in awe of the artificial intelligence in the game. As I've moved up to higher levels of difficulty, the game really gets challenging, to the point of frustration. In my opinion, this is the hallmark of a really good game. You can play on the initial difficulty of Chieftain, which is basically a tutorial mode. The next level is Warlord, which seems to be Chieftain difficulty without the tutorial. Next is King which is where you will get beaten if you still are not familiar with every facet of the game and some of the more common strategies. Next level is Emperor, where you will be literally crushed often, even after you have gotten better at King. Finally, the Diety level is staggering in its difficulty. For shiggles try it some time and see how weak your play really is. The computer never has any special advantages or cheats, it's just better than you...until you evolve! Like I said before, it just never, ever ends with this game.

Love the Civ Series. Was so happy to find this for my PS3. Gameplay is fun and the graphics were good. Solid Game, good deal, fast delivery

First, I haven't played video games for years. I had a Nintendo back around 1990 and changed over to computer games. Sim City and Outpost being the only ones that were anything like this Civ Rev. I finally decided to try a game console again after years of not playing on the computer, so bought a PS3 last month. That said, I haven't played this in every way. I have made it to Alpha Centuri and conquered the world, though, in the easy mode. Civ Rev looked good to me, and actually is about what I expected. But as many others have already said, it sure isn't a completely controllable strategy/sim. The time-line limit must be the worst thing, although I'm not sure I like the way it also gears towards specific types of win. It thinks for you, I guess I would call it. For example, if you manage to destroy all the other cultures it apparently wants to end. If you advance your people enough it wants you to make a United Nations. Reason I say it like that is because of all the nagging popups requiring button pushes that do nothing if you want to continue. A setting to prevent those would be great... unless maybe the other 3 play modes I haven't tried are different (doubt it). I'm unsure about the mainly war-oriented theme, too, because mainly the game builds war machines and not other things that could be interesting instead. For example, since there's other win types other than Domination I would have expected to see more possible that tanks and armies. It mentions railroads and I never see them available. On that note, only a single atomic bomb is possible (?) even though you find yourself button pushing endlessly to create/bypass weapons (armies, planes, artillery, etc.) all the while. So once you build your atom bomb that part is over if you ever use it. In other words, this game could be improved in many ways. I'm hoping it will be redone better someday, and in the meantime it makes a good time waster to keep from getting bored until the game itself is boring. Bottom line is probably that this game lacks truly involving strategy, without ability to control most aspects. A button-pusher paradise perhaps, not programmable paradise. I think anyone would agree it isn't fun to be forced to jump from City plan to City plan without a way to exit them when you have a dozen cities and only want to move somebody around the world, not be stuck with more city planning until it finally gives you an out whenever the game decides.

Civ Rev is a great strategy game for the console because it is so in depth, but not in depth as its console brothers. This is mostly because there is not as much micromanaging things though. Civ rev is such a unique game to play because you are basically setting from the stone age, all the way up to modern days, and you make all of the decisons. Once you hit the modern age the game will begin to end though, there are for victories that you can get, Domination, exactly like it sounds, taking all capitals through war, economic, cultural, and scientific. One dislike that I had about the game is that other nations seem all to eager to declare war on you, most of the time I will be at war with every nation on the map simply because I refused to share some knowledge with them. It can serve to make the game a little bit to linear because you have to invest so heavily in the armed forces. But the game does have its strong points to, outside the fact that it is a great Strategy game, the gameplay itself is spectacular. In war you get to see how your forces that you are planning to commit to battle compare to enemy forces (except in cities unless one of your troop has a perk that does otherwise), and when you do meet on the battlefield you can watch your soldiers duke in out in order to tell who is winning which makes it entertaining. Another aid to war is that the map is dynamic, as in your forces will get advantages from being in woods, or hills, making fights more even if you are facing a superior force, but the enemy AI ussualy utilies this to, which increases the games dynamics. The only downside to war is that it is constantly being declared, which can make it monotonous. The economy is as big a factor as in war though, you need gold to buy troops, and you get that gold by developing your economy, and the better the culture you have, the more your borders expand, but science gives you more tech, to quicken the process. alocating more resources to you, but you will need the military to defend yourself. This is subtle, but gives the game great balance. You wont be able to simply invest in the military the whole game, and build up some huge army, because the less developed your economy, the more time it takes to get troops. This insures that players, and the enemy cannot simply invest all resources into one department and get a quick victory, everything is intertwined.' The game is incredible in its depth, and the fact that the map changes every time you start a new game keeps you on your toes all of the time, and always keeps things interesting. Some more unit diversity for troops would have been nice (it exists though, most nations have at least one unique soldier) but there could have been more emphasis on that in the modern era, though it is fine for all eras before that, like the troops at least look different. If you don't play PC, but are looking for a great strategy buy this game, because outside of military games like RUSE, & Command & Conquer, you will not find a better game. You will spend hours with this game because no game you start in Civ Rev is ever the same from the story you played before.

If you are a fan of the original Civ games on PC, then this will be a fun little diversion. Games are fairly short, compared to the PC game, and the overall design is perfectly suited for the PlayStation controller. I am writing this review in 2026, and frankly, I've been playing it since 2010 or 2011 maybe? A long time, for sure. The game continues to be replay-able, even to this day.

Great game. I have always heard of these strategy games and was so interested but never had the chance to experience them. One of the main reasons is because I never really hear of them on the consoles and I am not a PC gamer. I've specifically heard of the Civilization series and how great it is and boy was I glad to purchase this for my PS3. It's just great. It's turn based, as in your empire and other empires take turns making actions to better your empire. You can create armies of all sorts: just foot-soldiers, or horsemen, or riflemen, or cannons, tanks, jet fighters. You name any kind of battle unit and this game probably has it. It takes a little bit getting used to if you've never played these types of games like me, but it is very easy to get into and you can choose to get a sort of coach while you're playing through it the first few times. It is very addicting, and very rewarding. It makes you feel like a great leader or general, a brilliant tactician. It is also very fun to use multiplayer and test your wits on friends or random people online. It may take hours but you will will find that it was well wort your time. Great game. A definitely buy for consoles being that this might be the only one or the best strategy game available for them.

Excellent game. I play regularly with my younger brother (12). This version of Civilization is easy to understand and play. There are so many different civilizations, scenarios, ways to win, and difficulty levels to choose from that it does not get old. I love seeing the evolution and development of each city as time passes. From the buildings and the advantages they bring, to the different technologies and the advantages they offer, this game is very strategic. It forces the player to think about each factor and act according to the expected consequences. As such, it is a much more cerebral game then most found on the market. I highly recommend this game. All that said, there are a few nitpicks with this version of the game. For example, when you conquer a city, you should have the option of destroying it (levelling it to the ground). Instead, in this version, you take over that city and absorb it into your civilization. This becomes a burden when you're going for a domination victory and end up absorbing and controlling 20+ cities. That is just one example, there are a few other minor things that could be fixed or improved. I really hope Sid Meier releases an updated console version of this game.

Great, compact version of Civ. I can even get my wife playing it from time to time and she is NOT a gamer - Easy game to learn - Recommended for strategy gamers, and those that wish Civ was a bit more basic.

Some games are too simple.

didn't like it

Man kann kein eigenes Spiel erstellen?! Gegner auswählen, Kartengröße, Siegbedingungen usw... Wieso?

Todo perfecto y el juego esta en español, al menos el que he recibido yo hoy