Orange County Register

Recalling great board games like “Settlers of Catan,” this turn-based strategy game plays very well, especially on higher difficulty settings. Unfortunately, it’s bogged down by constant user-interface glitches and bugs that, while not game-breaking, are constantly annoying.

Ever since I played “Warlords” on my cousin’s Macintosh back in the early ’90s, I’ve had a soft spot for turn-based strategy games. While I typically get my fix from tactical squad-based combat (I’ve literally ruined a copy of the PlayStation “Final Fantasy Tactics” game), there’s something to be said about dominating the world.

Enter “Civilization: Revolution,” the latest in the renowned Civilization series. This one was overseen by Sid Meier, the series’s creator, and it shows — the gameplay is really good. It’s fluid, dynamic and entertaining.

The system itself is very sandbox-y. There’s a lot of choices to be made: What order to explore different technologies; how much development should be made in gold or science production; how much of your production should be focused on military and infrastructure; how to approach your ultimate goal of victory; and several other less-sweeping decisions.

Also, there’s many different classes of, say, military units. You’re never making choices between, for example, archers and riflemen — you’re making choices between offensive, defensive and support units. After a few go-throughs on easy mode, the game’s flow and intricacies are well-established.

It seems a little overwhelming at first, but the game has a very good learning curve built in via difficulty settings and advisers.

Once players graduate to later difficulties, they’ll find that other nations are more proactive and far more willing to make demands that they can back up with a show of military force.  The delicate balancing act of keeping cities defended, avoiding unwinnable wars and preventing game-winning discoveries from falling into enemy — and sometimes ally — hands is the soul of “Revolutions.”

One of the facets that I particularly liked was that players didn’t have to invest in one path toward victory. In order to win, a player must meet one of the following goals: rack up a total of 20 “wonders,” like the Great Pyramids or the Internet, and “Great People,” like Aristotle or Leonardo da Vinci; rack up 20,000 gold pieces on hand; conquer every other nation’s starting city; or create a space colony and send it to Alpha Centauri. However, every player will have to invest toward each of the four win conditions to advance his or her agenda.

This means that, if a current strategy gets dicey, players can jump to another goal without having to start from square one. Not only does this mean that a player’s never out of the game, but it means that there’s never any wasted production — everything a player’s producing can be applied to some goal.

There’s a lot of nice touches graphically, too. Every character has an avatar that’s full of life; advisers also get a similarly detailed and well-animated on-screen presence. The layout of the game itself is very visual and easy to read at a glance.

Unfortunately, the game’s sole stumbling block is its controls. While the controls themselves are easy to pick up and fairly intuitive, they’re horribly buggy. Sometimes troops don’t respond when players try to activate them, requiring an annoying back-and-forth selection of another unit to get them to move or attack. Other times, entering a command to look at different troops on a square will send the cursor across the world to a different set of troops, or vice-versa.

Similarly, there are several graphical quirks — some clearly unintended and others probably just overlooked — that are detracting. It’s difficult to tell exactly where flying units will go, for example. Sometimes the game’s cursor will just disappear. Other times troops will disappear but continue fighting in the middle of a battle, making it difficult to tell whether retreat is the best option or not. I’ve also seen unit addons, like the general in a jeep that is awarded to chivalrous defenders, get lost and end up several squares away from the unit it was attached to. This was a purely graphical error, but it was annoying nonetheless.

Also, be prepared to turn down the volume whenever a Wonder is completed (and sometimes when a Great Person does something, well, great) — the sound file for that event wasn’t normalized and is easily three times as loud as the rest of the game.

Still, it’s a wonderful game that’s visually engaging. The bugs can be aggravating, but that’s all they are. They’re not game-breaking or truly frustrating. I’d give this game a 4.5, but we don’t have that score. So it’s a 4 with the caveat: If Sid and his buddies clean up the game and knock out those bugs, it’s a 5.

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