Civilization Revolution: Information Center
Introduction 
Welcome to the Info Center for Civilization Revolution. On this page, you will find the known information about Civilization Revolution, organized into appropriate categories for ease of reference, including new features, enhancements of old concepts, and other relevant information. Be sure to visit the other pages in the Civilization Revolution section here to get a full understanding of this innovative game!
Table of Contents
- Introduction
- New Features
- Empire Management
- Multiplayer
- Civilizations and Leaders
- Units, Military, and Combat
- Diplomacy and Interaction
- Victory
- External Links
New Features
- Civilization Revolution is designed exclusively for consoles and handhelds, allowing developers to focus solely on creating a Civilization game that works well on these platforms. Handhelds have the same gameplay, allowing those users to enjoy the full features of the regular game in a different graphical setting.
- Sid Meier, creator of the Civilization series and Director of Creative Development at Firaxis, has maintained a key role in designing the game.
- The interface has been adapted to make use of the consoles’ gamepads in an attempt to blend the complexities of the game with the fluid, faster-paced nature of the PS3, Xbox 360, and other consoles.
- There are four types of victory: Economic, Space Race, Domination, and Culture. Gone are the old, traditional conditions of Diplomatic Victory and Time Victory.
- Five difficulty levels, Chieftain, Warlord, King, Emperor, and Deity, ensure humans will have adequate AI opponents. The developers have tried to make the AI even smarter in terms of not needing any real unfair advantages. There is also a tutorial mode for getting acclimated to the game.
- There is a balance between graphics and gameplay that tries to incorporate the abilities of consoles with the traditional strategy that has been the basis of the Civilization series for years.
- A typical game will last just a few hours, quite a bit shorter than a usual Civilization 4 game on the PC. The primary aim is create a game with multiplayer contests in mind, thus shortening unnecessary periods of time, hopefully allowing games to be started and finished in just one sitting. Units are produced faster, techs are researched faster, but all with appropriate balance.
- There is only one map size available in an attempt to ensure the game stays balanced and action-packed, although limiting the ability to enjoy larger, more “epic” settings. The environment, or climate, is randomized every time as well, hopefully generated starts for all civilizations that are fair and roughly equivalent.
- The game uses the Havok physics engine to create realistic, interactive environment that is especially apparent during combat, when units fight one another and fall down (see right).
- There will be scenarios included in the game, made by Firaxis. Firaxis also plans to release scenarios available for download after the game has come out.
- The Civilopedia has been overhauled, incorporating videos and pictures to provide better historical background while making it more exciting and interactive.
- The dark fog of war has been replaced by a whiter counterpart that obscures the view of unknown areas.
- Build overflow has been enhanced, meaning that if you produce twice the necessary production for a certain unit, you will end up building two of those per turn.
- The number of saves you can create varies according to console: 5 for the DS, 10 for the Xbox, and unlimited for the PS3!
- Defeated barbarian cities reveal nearby bonuses such as additional barbarian cities and artifacts, among others. They also can provide gold, a free unit, or technology.
- A new “Game of the Week” (GotW) feature is a Firaxis-sponsored competition where, each week, Firaxis releases a new game to be played worldwide by anyone who is interested. Individuals can play the game as often and as many times as they want (different from CivFanatics’ Game of the Month for Civ4/Civ3) with the goal of getting the highest score.
- Roads now are built not with worker units, but with gold from your treasury. You can manage the construction of roads within your empire from individual city screens.
- Tiles now only provide food, production, or trade, but not all three as in previous versions of the Civilization series. This makes city founding even more strategic, as one has to consider the potential benefits and their limitations.
- Religion plays a lesser role in the game, having less of a universal impact. The various governments do not take it into account (unlike the Civ4 civic system), and religion as a whole does not have as much influence on gameplay.
- In the early game, turns with nothing to do pass by quickly, speeding by to turns that actually require human interaction and movement and lessening the waiting period for units to be built.
- No two mountains or coastlines will be the same, as the graphics system for CivRev uses an “erosion” feature to ensure realism and individuality. In addition to this, there are different graphics styles for various civilizations, with different architecture for each type of civilization (like in previous versions of Civ.)
- There is no more penalty for changing production in the middle of its build, allowing you to swap builds and maintain your current level of production. This removes some tedious city management and is also more forgiving for newer players.
- There are various options for singleplayer: Quick Play and a standard create game feature provide normal, random maps, the Game of the Week loads the Firaxis-organized competition, and the Play Scenarios mode allows you to explore the various scenarios included with the game (for example, in Attack of the Huns, barbarians are more aggressive; in Chariots of the Gods, the game begins with even future technologies known, and Lightning Round is a faster game that begins in the Medieval era.)
- By scaling down the game, there is now more emphasis on individual aspects such as cities, technologies, and armies. Each turn is more important, every unit means that much more. It will be quality, not quantity, that wins the game.
Empire Management
- Workers now are managed in the city screen, and they do not improve terrain any more: they are graphics that collect resources from the terrain. This eliminates the more tedious methods of the past where players had to individually control each worker every turn.
- Tiles are improved by either researching technologies or constructing buildings in cities.
- A courthouse is required to expand the radius of workable squares for a city. Like other Civ games, it starts off being a 3-by-3 square (the immediate surrounding tiles), but now, in order to be able to work more than just those tiles, you need to build a courthouse.
- “Unfun” elements from previous Civilization games have been scrapped, taking the premise of Civilization 4 even further. Things like pollution, starvation, and corruption are no longer present, letting players focus on more important aspects of the game.
- Gold can be used to rush builds in a city without needing a certain requirement (for example, the Universal Suffrage civic in Civ4). This will complete the production of whatever you’re building in that city.
- Landmarks allow you to place text on the terrain, much like in Civ4. In fact, they integrate even better, written directly on the terrain without any vertical signs.
- There are various governments replacing the civic system of Civ4. The Pyramids wonder opens up all governments upon its completion. Otherwise, new governments become available as you research more technologies. Below is a table that explains that information:
| Government | Benefit |
| Despotism | No loss of culture after firing a nuke |
| Monarchy | Doubles the effect of the Palace |
| Republic | Settlers cost just 1 population point |
| Communism | +50% production in cities, negates temples and cathedrals |
| Democracy | +50% trade, cannot declare war |
| Fundamentalism | +1 attack to all units, negates libraries and universities |
- There are four eras, the Ancient, Medieval, Industrial, and Modern, which, upon entering them, yield a bonus unique to your civilization and update the graphics to represent that timeperiod.
- Six different types of Great People provide special abilities upon their appearance, and are generated by a civilization’s culture (as opposed to a city’s turn-by-turn collection of great people points). These powerful units can hurry production in a city, research a technology, or settle in a city, providing various per-turn benefits. With their rough Civ4-equivalents in parentheses, the types are: Great Builder (Great Engineer), Great Scientist, Great Explorer (Great Merchant), Great Artist, Great Humanitarian, Great Leader (Great General). See the table below for more info:
| Great Person Type | Potential Uses |
| Great Builder | Rush build to completion any improvement or wonder in a city
Halve the cost of all buildings in the city for future construction |
| Great Scientist | Finish research of current technology
+50% science in the city when settled |
| Great Explorer | Provides an instant sum of money (no movement to a foreign city required)
+50% gold generated in a city when settled |
| Great Humanitarian | +1 pop to all cities
+50% population growth in a city when settled |
| Great Leader | Upgrades all non-Veteran units to Veteran
Settles in a city to provide +3 experience points that stacks with other improvements |
| Great Artist | Peacefully flips a city of an opponent to you over a period of a few turns
+50% culture in the city when settled |
- When capturing a city, all Great People become yours (that is, they are not destroyed). This is especially helpful for Cultural victories, where Great People contribute to satisfying the required conditions.
- Caravans provide a source of gold, units that you can move to other civilizations’ cities and in return get a lump sum of gold. The civilization whose city you conduct this operation in also gets a smaller bonus (around forty percent or so). Caravans usually become available when you have at least 100 gold in your treasury.
- For each population point in a city, you get one “worker” to work surrounding tiles (or the city tile itself). Unlike Civ4, these aren’t actually individual units you move around. Instead, they provide some food, production, and trade from nearby tiles within range of your city (provided it’s not enemy-controlled).
- Working the city tile gives at least one production resource and an amount of trade (0-5) that depends on the city population.
- Laborers (Pop 1-6): +1 production
- Vendors (Pop 7-12): +1 production, +1 trade
- Traders (Pop 13-18): +1 production, +2 trade
- Merchants (Pop 19-24): +1 production, +3 trade
- Importers (Pop 25-30): +1 production, +4 trade
- Exporters (Pop 31): +1 production, +5 trade
- There is a group of advisors that interact with you like in Civ2, giving advice on their respective areas of knowledge and guiding you in your game. For example, your Military Advisor might tell you to focus on military units and buildings.
- The tech tree remains organized by OR paths; that is, to research a tech, you usually only need one of its prerequisites. Additionally, if you are the first in the world to research a tech (to indicate this potential, a gold beaker will be next to that tech’s name), you will gain a bonus. For being the first to Masonry, for example, your cities get free walls; for Feudalism, you get a free knight.
- A typical empire will consist of only 6 or so cities, emphasizing specialization as in Civ4. It’s much more efficient to focus each city on a different aspect of the game (food, wonders, units, research, etc.) than to try to build every building in every city.
- For reaching certain levels in your treasury, the game rewards you:
| Amount | Benefit |
| 100 gold | Free settler |
| 250 gold | Free Currency or Banking tech |
| 500 gold | Free Great Person |
| 1000 gold | Free Granaries for all cities |
| 2000 gold | +1 population for all cities |
| 5000 gold | Free Aqueducts for all cities |
| 10000 gold | Free Great Person |
| 20000 gold | Enables construction of the World Bank wonder |
Multiplayer
- Multiplayer games played online cannot be saved in progress; however, with this in mind, the developers tried to make it so games would finish in 2-4 hours, lessening the need to save and reload multiple times.
- Team games or free for alls are all possible, as are head-to-head matchups, pitting humans against one another in a faster-paced environment.
- There is again a timer to keep the game moving along nicely; the short setting gives 15 seconds to complete your moves, whereas the longer setting allows for 2 minutes. There is also a medium option.
- The handling of drop-outs and joins has been improved, continuing Civ4’s progress with respect to allowing players to leave and join the game seamlessly and preventing a situation where a player’s exit causes major problems. AI civilizations will replace any humans that leave the game, and humans can take over these civilizations at any time.
- For the Xbox 360, there will be tracking of achievements to monitor your progress. Additionally, the online system will serve as a means of distribution for other Firaxis content.
Civilizations and Leaders
- All civilizations have their own unique bonuses for each era of the game. These benefits are cumulative and help to give some flavor to individual leaders and civilizations.
- Some civilizations have their own unique units which essentially are just flavor units that replace the standard ones available to every other civilization. For example, the American civilization receives Sherman Tanks instead of ordinary Tanks to portray history.
- For more information about civilizations and leaders, visit the Civilizations page.
Units, Military, and Combat
- Three units can combine to form an army, assuming all three units are of the same type, increasing their collective
abilities. This army unit fights together in battle and shares any existing upgrades when army is formed — this includes their unit status as well (regular, veteran, elite). - Promotions have been made even more powerful, continuing the trend of Civ4’s promotion system to increase units’ strength. This move allows for more exciting combat and impressive units.
- Units cost more as you build more and more of them, preventing a situation where a player can just overwhelm his opponent with sheer numbers instead of strategy.
- If an attacking unit is losing a battle, it can retreat to prevent further damage. However, the unit which was successfully defending gains a free upgrade to counter this feature.
- Air units now have movement points and move like in Civ2, meaning they move around the map like other normal land units and must return to a city, before they run out of fuel.
- Naval units provide coastal naval support to units when attacking a city on the water, benefiting those units while attacking.
- The combat system is similar to Civ4, combining total strength into one value and displaying combat odds before an attack, using the hitpoint and strikes system to create “rounds” of combat.
- Units gain promotions from experience in battles: each battle gives 1 experience, and more if the enemy was stronger than your unit. Reaching 3 experience points allows one new promotion. The first promotion always makes a unit Veteran, and a unit with more than one promotion is considered Elite.
- There are nine promotions in the game, which are listed in the table below:
| Promotion | Benefit |
| Blitz | Unit receives an extra move after an attack |
| Infiltration | +50% strength when attacking cities |
| Loyalty | +50% strength when defending in friendly territory |
| March | +1 movement point |
| Engineering | +100% strength when defending cities |
| Guerilla | +50% strength when attacking in your territory |
| Medic | Allows for healing of this unit in enemy territory |
| Scout | Unit can see its opponent in a city battle, and has increased sight range |
| Leadership | +100% defense when in a stack |
- Units that win in combat may also randomly become Great Generals, and this promotion gives a bonus to all units in its stack.
- Units can move freely on roads, as far as they want, although it costs a movement point to enter cities, so eventually movement will come to an end as units travel from city to city. Additionally, there are no more railroads that provide unlimited movement.
- To help distinguish units of various levels, they gain additional features as they become more experienced. For example, Veteran units wear a helmet that Regular units do not have.
- Enemy units do not appear in enemy cities, so, unlike Civ4, you have no idea what kind of defense is present when you’re attacking. This return to Civ3-mechanics allows for the element of surprise to influence attacking and defending.
- Spies have increased abilities, allowing them to cause more damage: they can “de-fortify” a unit (that is, take an enemy’s fortification bonus away) and sabotage production within enemy cities, among other powers.
- Galleys and Galleons have a “crew” which can explore islands while the naval unit maps out its coastline, streamlining the exploration process. Additionally, there is some mechanism for counter espionage where another spy can disrupt a spy’s activities.
- Battles where the odds are 7 to 1 or greater are automatically won, reducing the unrealistic scenarios where lone units make miraculous successes, while still providing for the element of luck and chance.
- Various other notes: siege units don’t suffer a drawback when attacking across rivers, and hills now also provide an offensive bonus (unlike previous versions of Civ where they were defensive terrain).
- There is only one nuclear weapon (the ICBM), available solely to the civilization that builds the Manhattan Project.
Diplomacy and Interaction
- No longer are you able to sign Open Borders or trade maps, forcing the human player to manually explore instead of relying the AI to instantly update their world map with just one trade. Using ship units and explorers are two effective methods of exploration.
- Individual leaders continue to develop their own personality, reacting uniquely in diplomacy with their own actions, gestures, and conversation to preserve the spontaneous environment.
- On higher difficulty levels, the AI tends to be more aggressive towards the human, hopefully utilizing better strategy as opposed to sheer numbers. Especially towards the end game, AI civilizations prepare to prevent you from winning at all costs and ensure that victory does not come easy, since they have little to lose with the game on the line.
- In diplomacy talks, leaders will point to the map occasionally, focusing on various things like your powerful units and asking what they’re up to, adding a more unique touch.
- Culture clashes between civilizations are more dramatic, limiting the ability of civilizations to neglect culture for a long time. Borders can change much more easily because of culture, providing a way to expand without war and focusing more on a balanced society incorporating culture.
- There are various bonuses scattered throughout the world, like “Great Forests” or “Great Bodies of Water” which give you a gold bonus when discovering them. Additionally, you get “naming rights” — that is, you can give a custom name to this region (or use the game-suggested one). Similarly, barbarian cities, which appear earlier in the game to give more interaction between humans and “uncivilized” people, provide gold upon defeat.
- Three different leaders represent the barbarians based on geographical location: Brennos leads the temperate-climate-based barbarians, Norte Chico for the warmer-region barbarians, and Grey Wolf leads barbarians in icy, colder regions.
- Diplomacy is much more unpredictable, as some leaders interact in surprising ways. For example, Norte Chico might fire blowdarts at you or hide behind a bush.
- Relics provide an even more beneficial type of bonus; they are scattered throughout the world and yield benefits with more empire-wide impacts. For more information on Relics, check out the Relics page.
- There will be various cheats that enable different things: one cheat allows you to remove the fog of war, allowing you to keep tabs on your enemies.
- Below are the various mappings for the Xbox 360 controller, explaining what the various buttons do:
| Button | Effect |
| Left Stick | Movement orders for selected unit |
| Right Stick | Move cursor around |
| Left/Right for D-pad | Cycle through all units |
| Up/Down for D-pad | Cycle through units in stack |
| A | Move selected unit |
| X | Have selected unit defend |
| B | Skip selected unit’s turn |
| LB | Show city screen |
| RB | Show diplomacy screen |
| Left Trigger | Zoom |
| Right Trigger | Show information screen |
Victory
- Much like other versions of Civ, there is a replay feature that allows you to relive the glory of your empire after victory (or defeat!). This end-of-game experience provides you with a recap and various statistics on your progress and accomplishments.
- There is also a victory screen that updates you on other civilizations’ progress (as well as your own) towards the various conditions.
- A Top 10 Cities screen displays the greatest cities in the world and their glory, including great people, wonders, and population.
- Economic victory requires two things: 20,000 gold stored in your treasury and the building of the World Bank wonder.
- Domination victory, unlike previous versions of Civ, where you had to gain about two-thirds of the world’s land and population, now only requires you to capture all enemy capital cities.
- To win a cultural victory, you need to have the sum of the number of great people produced, wonders built, and cities converted be at least 20, allowing for some variation in terms of how you actually achieve victory. Additionally, the United Nations wonder is required to complete the victory.
- The space race remains nearly the same, requiring you to build a space ship of various parts, with the civilization whose spaceship reaches Alpha Centauri first winning. The space race victory is like the one in Civ4: Beyond the Sword, where a civilization can actually launch their spaceship after another empire and yet still win the race. To do this, the later civilization must build more spaceship parts, ensuring that they reach space first.
- The two game-ending wonders, the United Nations and World Bank, cost about four times as much as other wonders and cannot be rushed by a Great Builder, thereby preventing their construction without adequate time for enemies to counter. Once construction of the World Bank is underway, you no longer need to keep 20,000 gold in your treasury; that is, you can spend it.
- There are various achivements that are recorded as you progress, ranging from Easy (e.g. contacting another civilization) to Medium (e.g. winning a one city challenge) to Medal of Honor (extremely difficult challenges).
- The game automatically ends in 2100 AD, assuming no civilizations has won by another condition before then.
External Links
In addition to the various links above, under the Civilization Revolution menu, below are some other links that may be useful: