Civilization Revolution is the latest game in Sid Meier’s Civilization series, developed by Firaxis and released for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 in July of 2008. In it players control one of 16 historic civilizations and build that civilization, from thousands of years into the past into the near modern future, with a general goal of taking over the world (this can be done in several ways, several of them nonviolent) and outlasting the other competing civilizations.

Revolution is a turn-based strategy game that has players collecting resources, building cities, trading goods, going to war and generally expanding their civilization. This puts educational focus on business skills and creativity, though Revolution is exceptional both in terms of people skills and classroom facts, as well. Revolution’s Civopedia contains huge amounts of real-world information, and players control real-world leaders of real-world civilizations. Playing with a group of other players is a tense experience, requiring players to join forces with each other while being careful of doing so. Players must manage several different resources, each with its own benefits, and may choose to focus on any points that they wish. Civilization Revolution features several possible victory conditions, and while players can win by conquering most of the world they can also win by forming bonds and behaving totally peacefully.

While Revolution is a somewhat simplified version of a game in the Civilization series, it still maintains much of the series’ depth and complexity. The sheer amount of possibility in the game is sure to keep any player hooked, and the amount of educational content here means there are things to get out of it that are hard to find in other videogames.

Particularly notable is the Civopedia, a sort of in-game encyclopedia that details extensively the game’s mechanics as well as much of the historical significance behind them. From brief biographical entries on each of the game’s "great people" (from Karl Marx to Henry Ford to Thomas Edison) to video clips showing footage of the game’s "wonders", the Civopedia is an extensive wealth of information on everything contained in the game.

While the game isn’t quite "historically accurate," Civilization growth is certainly based on real-world principles, with everything from the collection of basic resources early on to the complex technology tree players will need to consider when deciding what to research being attributable to growth of civilizations historically. Important figures from all throughout history appear as the game goes on, as do a wide selection of the "wonders" of the world. Players control one of 16 real-world civilizations, as well, from Egypt to America, playing as historic leaders such as Ghandi and Alexander the Great.

Revolution also features an often overwhelming selection of charts and graphs, detailing every facet of each civilization, including general statistics, rate of growth and more. Players can collect various pieces of information at a glance, from their global diplomacy to their general worldwide standings; the sheer amount of information included can be staggering.

By the Gamer:

Players are given a huge world to explore and seemingly limitless possibilities to explore in each new game of Civilization Revolution. Choosing which civilization to play is just the beginning, here; players are in control of exploring the planet, placing cities, buildings and roads and developing diplomatic relations with each of the competing civilizations in each game, and that’s just scratching the surface.

Perhaps most intriguing are the game’s four different victory conditions. A "Domination" victory requires players to capture the capital city of every opposing civilization, but the three other conditions can each be obtained non-violently; a "Culture" win has players collecting enough wonders and great persons to found the United Nations, an "Economic" win requires players to collect 20000 gold and found the World Bank and a "Technological" win requires the player to launch a ship into space and reach Alpha Centauri. Victory can be attained through several different play styles, inviting players to go whichever way they like each time they play.

By the Developer:

Civilization Revolution is overall just an extremely impressive package. It succeeds at a task that can only have been challenging; translating the extremely complex nature of the Civilization series into something digestible to a videogame console. Revolution isn’t just a simplified version of the original, though; it’s a complete revision of the series. The flow of the game is streamlined, making games shorter and more accessible without losing much of the depth that has made the series so popular: this is its greatest achievement.

There’s much more to the game’s design than can be described here. The depth of the game – while it is, as stated above, not as deep as Civilization IV – is staggering, and the fact that the whole thing handles (mostly) intuitively using a console controller instead of a keyboard is impressive enough… never mind the never-ending possibilities of an hours-long strategy game that features wildly varying victory conditions and opportunities for competition between multiple players online.

Civilization Revolution definitely keeps players focused on managing resources (standards food and gold, as well as the more abstract happiness and culture stats), with each serving multiple purposes throughout the game. Resources can be gained in any number of ways, as well, from harvesting the land around cities to trading with other civilizations to capturing cities and villages. Players also have to manage each of their cities carefully, as each city is dedicated to producing one building or unit at a time. Gold can be spent to build a unit instantly, but gold collected around cities can also be spent instead on researching the latest technologies. Culture helps keep people happy as well as providing other bonuses, and food is, obviously, necessary to keep hungry citizens in check. There are a wide range of buildings to look into as well, which offer hosts of options, from increasing production rates of certain goods to providing access to altogether new resources later in the game. As the game continues, from deep into BC to the near future, more and more resources become available through researching technologies and erecting various buildings, while others structures may become obsolete over time.

There’s simply a lot to keep track of here, and what exactly needs to be kept track of changes and evolves over the course of a game, keeping players on their toes, and keeping skilled players thinking well ahead throughout a game.

Playing multiplayer Civilization Revolution requires players to interact with each other in any number of ways, whether it’s declaring war on one another or pursuing a friendlier arrangement. Diplomacies will change completely from game to game, due partially to the fact that players are free to decide in exactly what manner they’d like to play from game to game. Players will often need to cooperate to excel, but in the end each player has their eyes set on victory, as well, making each game a sort of web of diplomacies and strategies between players. Winning a game of Civilization Revolution doesn’t necessarily mean conquering every other player, but it at least means keeping a close eye on each one of them.

The problems facing the player during a game of Civilization Revolution change from game to game, ranging from deciding how best to produce an army strong enough to conquer an enemy capital to planning out a series of researches and discoveries that lead to a pivotal technology. Players must manage resources, explore the map and deal with any hostile players they find. As the game is turn-based players most often have as much time to plan things out as they need (though there’s definitely pressure in multiplayer games), and that’s a good thing as planning ahead is absolutely necessary. Each city and unit is managed separately, and making every part of your empire work smoothly together to reach a single goal in Civilization Revolution is as challenging a problem as any videogame is likely to produce.

While building a civilization in Revolution is definitely an abstraction of actual civilization growth, it operates on clear, believable principles. Players start in prehistoric times, building small villages, collecting food and gold when possible and traveling to meet other civilizations. Things get much larger as time goes on, and players must begin researching new technologies, building new structures and making diplomatic decisions regarding their neighbors before too long. Nobody is going to mistake it for the real thing, but at the same time building a civilization in Revolution can certainly feel "realistic" on some level.

Civilization Revolution has been received favorably since its release, receiving much of its praise as one of the defining console-based strategy games yet and for distilling the Civilization experience into something more accessible and delivering it successfully onto consoles. Criticisms include over-simplifying of many of Civilization IV’s mechanics.

Civilization Revolution includes five difficulty levels, several different scenarios and online multiplayer play, as well as an optional system that displays tutorial messages during play and standard audio/visual options.

Civilization Revolution is available on the Nintendo DS in addition to the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The DS version is the same as the console versions, except for the exclusion of the Civopedia.

Civilization Revolution received an E10+ from the ESRB with descriptors for Alcohol and Tobacco Reference,Mild Suggestive Themes andViolence.

Free demos of the game are available for download on Xbox Live and the PlayStation Network.