Where to download civilization 4 for free

Choose one of 18 nations to lead and go head to head with some of the most famous leaders in history. Each civilization has its own special characteristics - some are fairly peaceful, while others are expansionists and conquerors. However, Civilization IV is more than just a great combat game: you can also achieve victory through diplomatic cunning, cultural or religious alliances, and technological dominance.

Civilization IV delivers faster mid and late game AI turns, and offers greater control over your civilization's government and religions, while at the same time de-emphasizing the less fun micromanagement cleaning up pollution, for example.

Civ IV has been designed from the ground-up to deliver fantastic multiplayer gaming options, as well as unprecedented modding tools - allowing you to create new units, game maps, scenarios, and even entire new civilizations! Civilization IV is a product developed by 2kgames. Johnson: "Religion was the one really obvious and interesting topic from history that we'd never dealt with directly. It was clear to everyone that was the most likely place where we could make some good progress gameplay-wise, but we'd never done it before because it was an area of potential controversy - people might get upset and start to hate us.

We were pretty conservative though. Religions are pretty much flavours - fundamentally, there's no difference between Islam, Christianity and Hinduism - from a pure gameplay point of view they're functionally identical. The interesting part comes from how it actually plays out in the game - religions getting founded, spreading through the world and their effect on diplomatic relations. It took a lot of time to get the right version too - we tried about five or six different systems before we hit the right one.

Caudill: "One of the big differences in the earlier versions was that the player was a little bit detached from religion in the game. There was a hidden algorithm going on in the background that would determine how religion was spreading through the world, spreading along rivers or trade routes between civilisations that had diplomatic relations.

You would see your religion naturally spreading throughout your cities and you could do a few things to affect it, but it was only a secondary effect. It sounded good on paper, but fundamentally when you're playing Civ, all the games systems work because the player is in control.

Every previous Civ product was a single-player game, and every single one of them was a single-player product where we tried to put multiplayer on top of them. Johnson: "We wanted to put our resources into a new area where we could really raise the bar: multiplayer. We knew that would impress a lot of people and make people view Civ in a different way.

A good chunk of the Civilization gameplay is never going to change, so you need to look for things like multiplayer to really improve. I set out a long-term goal to find good pieces to use from every point in history.

I was fairly familiar with the baroque, so I got in contact with some musician friends of mine to get me some good requisitions for renaissance and medieval.

I listened to those, found some good pieces and came up with the idea of using John Adams for the modern age. I found that pieces with big climaxes aren't that good since you don't want to take the player out of their experience - so you hear some second or third symphonies that don't start with a bang or end with a bang, along with a lot of dances that work well as they keep the same level and don't really go up or down.

Johnson: "The main music was an original composition written for Civ IV. It was inspired by another piece that we wanted to use, but we couldn't for various legal reasons.

The composer of that piece was a guy I was familiar with from college - he was my room-mate - and he's worked on films like X-Men and various commercials. He had a really good grasp of that world music African thing, so I called him up and asked him if he could make an inspiring flagship piece.

He knew a great group who would do it for us - they're an a capella group from Stanford. He wrote the piece for them and we got it to fit well with the earth and the sunrise.

We've had loads of great feedback from it - people seem to love it". Caudill: "We had several people we were trying to get for the voice-acting. We had lots of people lined up, we were back and forth with Patrick Stewart and thought we had him, but all of a sudden he wasn't available anymore.

So we sat down with the licensing guy from 2K and he showed us a list of guys and it was like: "Oh, Spock! He has this great recognisable voice - it really brings you in and makes you feel comfortable.

What's more, just hearing the science officer from Star Trek giving all the tech quotes is great, y'know? Caudill: "In terms of which historical characters get included, we certainly don't want to alienate people - but at the same time if something makes sense, it makes sense; it's another tightrope we walk. We've had a few emails about the inclusion of Stalin as a leader for Russia in the Warlords expansion, and we also got a lot of emails when we included the Arabs in Play The World, in terms of who we chose as a leader and how it affected different people.

We try to do our homework and make sure the person is there for a reason. Generally, we talk to scholars and find out what the real story is.

That's the mantra coming out of the Firaxis office, half an hour's drive from the empty fish restaurants and seedy strip clubs of downtown Baltimore or an hour if the cabbie is a moron. Situated on an anonymous commercial estate, it's a typical American development studio, with natural light at a premium and salty snacks in ready supply. Not the most glamorous location for the worldwide unveiling of Sid Meier's Civilization IV, but the veteran developer has never really been about show business.

In fact, he's not even present at the presentation, preferring to remain out of sight, pulling the strings like the man behind the curtain at the end of The Wizard Of Oz. We do eventually catch up with him, but in the meantime it's down to cold, hard facts. A four-strong team has gathered for our interrogation, comprising a producer, a designer, a software engineer and a man whose business card lists him as a polygon wrangler oh dear.

They've got their patter worked out, though, hence the opening mission statement. The proven' is a given, as with over six million units sold since the original game, and a wealth of critical acclaim, Civilization is recognized as one of the enduring PC game franchises. You are the King, and you must please the people or not, as the case may be. Take over the world by fair means or foul, with a rough time span stretching from BC to AD.

Clearly, Firaxis isn't going to tamper with Civ by turning it into a platform game starring a squirrel, and fans will be pleased to learn that the core values will remain in place. Turn-based strategy is what the baying hordes want and turnbased strategy is what they're going to get. Firaxis has resisted the temptation to follow the likes of Age Of Empires into the real-time arena, arguing that it's the one more turn' appeal of Civilization that gives it the edge.

As for the improved,' one area that has been given a much-needed overhaul is the interface. For the uninitiated, attempting to negotiate Civilization III without recourse to the manual or tutorial is a bewilderingly frustrating experience, like trying to unlock a door with your thumb. The purists probably love it, but the series wasn't doing itself any favours in terms of attracting new players. Thankfully it's all change this time round, with a far more modern interface that will be familiar to anyone who has ever dabbled with an RTS game.

As Firaxis told us, it wants the first move the player makes with the mouse to be the right move, and this does seem a lot more intuitive than in previous instalments, having more in common with traditional strategy games such as Warcraft. Moving swiftly on, a further key improvement is to the graphics engine, which now boasts a living 3D world, as the surrounding screenshots demonstrate.

Doom 3 it isn't, but it is a notable advancement, and one that was perhaps inevitable, as spiritual leader' Sid Meier agreed when we finally tracked him down. It certainly became inevitable," hissed Sid, and it opens up a lot of possibilities to us.

The original Civ was a top-down map with squares moving around, and then we moved to a two-and-a-half D' view of landscape with a fixed camera. Now we can move around and zoom in and out and those are powerful techniques that we can use to enrich the game and bring it to life. He's not lying, as we can confirm having seen it with our own eyes, with the camera rotating, zooming right in on the action or panning out to offer a more global view. It's not merely eye candy though, as it also proves functional, with the close-up enabling you to see if there's a bear hiding in the woods, for instance, and the panned-out view offering a comprehensive outline of the bigger picture, with all the information available on one screen.

Pastures, wineries, water mills and windmills are all represented in detail, and their current status is also immediately obvious, with smoke billowing from a factory, or a cart travelling in and out of a mine, for instance, enabling you to visually gauge how productive a city is.

Elsewhere, Firaxis is promising a faster game. With Civ III clocking in at about turns, the feeling is that this was about too many. As such, elements of the game have been recalibrated so that the pacing makes sense, enabling you spend the requisite amount of time in each era. Firaxis reckons you should be able to get through Civ IV in about hours, although acknowledging that everyone wants to play the game their own way, there will be three core game speeds, namely Quick, Medium and Epic, plus a huge array of multiplayer options see 'Civ Online', below.

New stuff? For the first time, Civ will embrace actual-world religions, enabling you to carry out acts of war in the name of your favourite non-existent god.

With seven different - and equally misguided -options on offer, all the big hitters will be included: Christianity, Buddhism, all that good stuff. Firaxis admits it's always been afraid to tackle real religions before, but is going at it with some gusto this time round. All religions will basically be generic, with no bonuses for a particular belief. As was explained, this was not a line Firaxis was willing to cross, as it didn't want to get firebombed.

Within the confines of the game, however, allying yourself to a certain religion will enable you to curry favour with other like-minded peoples. They're not as stupid as you might assume though, and come fully equipped with a tangible memory. As such, suddenly converting to the same religion will not cut the mustard. As one of the dev team succinctly explained: They'll be like, where were you a thousand years ago'? Deciding your state religion will be a crucial area, as you face the possibility of alienating half your city depending on your choice.

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