Sid Meier's Civilization IV, the fourth installment of the series, starts the player, like in the previous games, with a single village in the Stone Age and has them advance from there by exploring, founding cities, researching, exploiting natural resources and eventually trading or making war with neighbouring civilizations. While Sid Meier's Civilization III put cultural influence in the forefront, this time it is religion that is put forward as a new factor underlying many aspects of the game.

In addition, Sid Meier's Civilization IV attempts to streamline gameplay by removing some features (corruption, pollution) which slowed down the late stages of the game and making significant changes to the combat system so that tactical thinking plays a more important role. Units now have a single combat value instead of defense and attack values, have a special ability and can be further enhanced with experience in a player-defined way.

The game also offers some aesthetic improvements such as a detailed 3D map, environmental ambiance and animated units.

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Alternate Titles

"文明帝國 IV" -- Chinese spelling (traditional)
"文明IV" -- Chinese spelling (simplified)
"Wenming IV" -- Chinese title
"시드 마이어의 문명 IV" -- Korean spelling
"Civ 4" -- Informal name
"シヴィライゼーション４" -- Japanese spelling

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Part of the Following Groups

Merchant	Title	Platform	Price
	Sid Meier's Civilization IV	Windows	$1.87
	Civilization IV	Macintosh	$7.50
	Sid Meier's Civilization IV
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User Reviews

[v3.0] Whoa, Sid...what did you do to Civilization?	Windows	Indra was here (14332)
Civ 4 is a huge improvement over Civ 3 in almost every way except the system requirements and stability.	Windows	Droog (462)
They broke Civilization!	Windows	PCGamer77 (3030)

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The Press Says

Armchair Empire, The	Windows	Jan 10, 2006	10 out of 10	100
AppleLinks.Com	Macintosh	Oct 05, 2006		100
IC-Games	Windows	Nov 10, 2005	99 out of 100	99
Fragland.net	Windows	Dec 22, 2005	95.5 out of 100	96
GameSpot	Windows	Oct 26, 2005	9.4 out of 10	94
Playfuls	Windows	Nov 14, 2005	9.2 out of 10	92
Game Informer Magazine	Windows	Jan, 2006	9.25 out of 10	92
Yahoo! Games	Windows	Oct 26, 2005		90
PC Action	Windows	Dec 06, 2005	88 out of 100	88
Softpedia	Windows	Jan 19, 2006	8.5 out of 10	85

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Trivia

The introductory sequence of Civilization I has been remastered in Civilization IV and plays whenever you start loading a new map. Live orchestra samples have been used to bring the original theme to life and Leonard Nimoy (famous for his role as Mr. Spock in "Star Trek") narrates this sequence (along with other segments of the game).

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This entry was contributed by Corn Popper (69139) and Silverblade (1429)