Facebook game: Civ World

From Sid: It's very exciting that nearly 50,000 people have become fans of this page since we announced that we were bringing Civilization to Facebook! Thank you for your comments and discussions, your photos, and your memories of your favorite Civ moments. And many thanks for answering the questions that were posted - your feedback will be helpful as we move forward in developing Civilization Network.

We're making great progress on the game and look forward to telling you more about behind the scenes development and things we've learned from early playtesting after the New Year. We've definitely found the fun in Civ Network and are looking forward to launching an open beta soon.

Thank you for being a fan of Civilization Network, have a safe and happy holiday, and we'll see you in 2010! Stay Civilized.

On December 23 2009 13:40 Mickey wrote:
I'm interested in playing Civ. I'm bored and I want a game I can completely absorb myself in. Which of his games do you recommend I should try first?

On December 23 2009 14:59 TheYango wrote:

Depends on your tolerance for poor graphics. Civ 2 and Civ 4 are generally acknowledged to be the best 2 in the series (with Alpha Centauri giving them a run for their money as well). Civ 4 is the better game (partly thanks to mods), but Civ 2 has simpler mechanics and is easier to learn, IMO. I'd start with 2 and move to 4 once you're comfortable with it.

Let’s start with Great People. They come in five varieties: Great Artists, Prophets, Scientists, Generals, and Builders. We represent them in Civ World with cards, similar to the cards for military units. What do you do with Great People? You use them to build the wonders of the world! Wonders of the World can provide your civilization with a boost to science, culture, gold, production, and your military; and these boosts benefit everyone in the civilization where they’re acquired.

Each wonder requires a combination of great people to build. For example, you may need a Great Scientist and a Great Builder to build the Library of Alexandria the first time. Once a wonder is built, another civilization can steal it! However, to rebuild the wonder in their civilization, that civilization will have to put additional great people into building the wonder. For example, it might cost two Great Scientists and a Great Builder to build the Library of Alexandria the second time. Another caveat is that once you put a Great Person to work on a wonder, you can’t put any additional Great People into the same wonder. So, you’ll need to round up friends in your civilization to help you finish the wonders of the world!

One of the most exciting aspects of Civ World is war; from barbarian invasions to wars of sweeping campaigns of conquest. When your Civilization goes to war, you’ll need to be ready!

Combat is represented as a card game, with military units presented as stacks of troop types – cavalry, ranged, naval, and melee. But each battlefield only has a limited number of slots to accommodate a player’s units! A battle on the plains might have plenty of room for cavalry and ranged units, but a mountainous battlefield will be dominated by melee units and won’t have any room for naval units. You’ll probably want to build a good mix of different combat units in your civilization, so you can always bring the best force possible to the battlefield.

We represent a military unit in Civ World with one of the unit cards. The card’s portrait tells you what type of combat unit it is, and each type has a specific kind of weather it fights best in. When the weather favors your unit type, it does more damage, so once you put troops on the battlefield; you’ll want to pay attention to see if the weather changes to favor a different kind of unit. Unit cards of the same type can stack, so if you have twenty Spearmen cards, they’ll only take up one slot on the battlefield. By the same token, a single Swordsman card will also take up a slot! You’ll be able to see how many of those troops are in your stack, and a larger stack of cards will last longer than a smaller one.

Once you’ve committed forces to combat, you can set them to fight defensively or heroically. A unit fighting heroically dishes out more damage, but takes quite a bit more, so you will want to use this sparingly or your units may be destroyed before you can react! A defensive posture means a unit takes less damage, but it deals much less damage as well, which is useful if you’re just holding on until reinforcements can be brought into battle.