REAL OPPONENTS, REAL SLOW
A Review of CivNet
by Nathan Bruinooge
You have to hand it to Sid Meier. In a world where the average computer game's lifespan is only around 6 months, Civilization has lasted almost that many years. With the recent release of Civlization 2, the trend seems bound to continue. The most popular games on the market today, from Master of Orion to X-COM to Warcraft, owe their basic strategic build-and-conquer format to Civ.
The demand for a version of Civ that players could play head-to-head or in groups is as old as the game itself. Unfortunately, while CivNet fulfills that demand in theory, allowing everything from modem to local network to TCP/IP play, barriers in both speed and reliability make sacrifices inevitable when facing off against fellow humans. Whether it's worth it or not depends on just how much you love Civ.
The game itself is unchanged from previous versions. The overall situation is familiar to most gamers: you begin with a small band of settlers in the year 4000 B.C., and most slowly build from there, developing cities, raising armies, and sending out diplomats and merchants, meeting the other developing civilizations, trading with them, fighting them, all the while increasing your technology so you can build still BIGGER cities, in a grand epic arc that lasts all the way (usually) until 2000 A.D. or thereabouts. There are a host of subtle strategic decisions along the way. Each individual city you found is its own problem and opportunity--you have full control over the town and its surrounding terrain, which determines how much food and resources that city can garner. Difficult decisions rise up constantly: build mines, so you can construct that temple, or send your population to the grasslands for more food and faster growth? Research literacy (hoping to be able to discover Democracy down the road) or iron-working (so you can build those killer chariots)? Crush those meddlesome Romans next door, or leave them around for profitable trading?
The interface is highly flexible, with a copious options menu and numerous resizable windows. The mouse can do everything, but there are also frequent keyboard shortcuts for the savvy player. The musical themes on the CD can be replaced by putting your favorite music CD into the tray, instead. Resource-wise, CivNet is pleasantly low-impact. Units and cities on the board are still represented by square tiles, a throwback to the board wargames from which Civ originally developed.
The truly critical problem with the old Civ, which remains in CivNet when you DO play it by yourself, is that the computer players don't play by the same rules as you do. Civilizations that are out of sight of your civilization may change suddenly--the computer adjusts things to keep your opponents dangerous for you all the way through. Challenging? Yes, but a disappointing lack of realism. I've sent spies to confirm an enemy city's lack of defenses, only to attack on the next turn and find it (impossibly) chock full of defenders.
This crucial lack in AI sophistication is solved by the potential for multiplayer play. CivNet handles this task well--players take their turns simulataneously, with a constant stream of data going both ways. No taking turns for turns, here. In large multiplayer games, a time limit can be set for the duration of each turn, keeping everyone on their toes (and keeping the game moving along). At its best, with good speed and on-the-ball players, CivNet is everything it promises to be--a masterful strategic game against real, live, dangerously intelligent and very real opponents. But in the real world, CivNet is rarely at its best. In two-player 28.8 modem games that I've tried, things move fairly quickly but still considerably more slowly than in a one-player game. Civ is a long game to play in the first place, which means that a multiplayer game can rarely be finished in anything but a marathon gaming binge. On the Internet, via TCP/IP connections, things slow down still further. It may be worth it for some, but be prepared to have a magazine handy or Minesweeper in the next window--you WILL have plenty of downtime. As for reliability--there are as many opinions as there are players. The initial release was painfully buggy, so downloading the update (from http://www.microprose.com/civnet) is a necessity. I've not had significant problems in terms of maintaining game connections, but complaints are still rampant.
If you have the patience, though, it's often well worth it. The home page listed above has a link to a CivNet players directory, and there's almost always someone looking for a game on the IRC channel #civnet. For those with perserverance, there's a whole world out there to conquer.
Gamer's Zone Scorecard
| Product: |
CivNet |
| Company: |
MicroProse-USA
|
| Cost: |
$57.99 |
System Requirements:
IBM-PC 486 w/ Windows 3.1 or greater, 8MB RAM, SVGA 256 color graphics and Microsoft Compatible Mouse, CD-ROM drive with MSCDEX 2.2 or later, and 12MB of hard drive space.
Breakdown:
Fun Factor 4
Graphics 3
Sound 3
Interface 4
Replayability 4
Overall Score:
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