Clash of Cultures: Civilizations Review

If the original Clash of Cultures had any one thing missing — and I'm saying this as a big fan of its take on the Civilization-style 4X genre — it was a sense of personality. Oh, don't get me wrong, it was a perfectly competent game. Sprawling cities! Huge armies! Circumnavigation of the globe! Barbarian attacks! A broad selection of advancements to research! For anyone willing to dive into its swimming pool of rich molasses (and spend a good few hours per game), it could be immensely rewarding. Stickiness notwithstanding.

Even so, at times it was as bland as the cardboard it was printed on. I'm speaking, of course, about the way every civilization could turn out just a little too samey. Sure, players could craft nations with at least a few differences, born of location and strategy. Some would set up trade routes, while others would pillage. Some expanded outwards, others erected timeless wonders. However, it's telling that every single metropolis would turn out 100% identical, built from the quadrumvirate of temple, fortress, academy, and port. It wasn't even possible to build a fully developed city inland. What's more, all armies might as well have been cast in a mold, formations of infantry lumbering across the landscape and nothing else. Despite being featured prominently on the box cover, there wasn't an elephant in sight. And while players might embrace different forms of government, there's something to be said about the pleasure of seeing your nation taking on its own identity right there on the map rather than in the abstracted corridors of the technology board.

Enter Civilizations, the expansion for Clash of Cultures that's determined to inject some heart to go with the brains of the original game. And it accomplishes this by making three sweeping additions.

We'll start with my personal favorite, the way cities are thrust into the limelight, becoming personalities in their own right. Previously, putting together a metropolis was one of the game's most rewarding accomplishments, letting you gather an enormous store of resources or spit out a fully-staffed army with a single action. However, by the end of the game, every major city on the map was largely indistinguishable. You'd have a fortress for protection, a port for building ships and raking in gold, and a temple and academy for their onetime bonuses of culture and ideas. It was an impressive sight, like beholding the unquestionable majesty of Mount Rushmore or something. But if you traveled all the way to the Black Hills of South Dakota and discovered a half-dozen Mount Rushmores on the way, you'd probably get sick of seeing Honest Abe's silly beard over and over again.

Civilizations changes all that by giving you three new ways to expand your cities, each of them fleshing out another part of the game. War-waging empires, for example, will find a lot to love in the apothecary, which lets you spend food to save units lost in battle, whisking them away to the safety of your city rather than to the annals of history. Meanwhile, nations situated next door to culturally dominant civilizations can build the obelisk to block attempts to culturally influence your population, while anyone bordered by pesky trade routes can use the market to prosper alongside whoever's doing the trading. Markets are also useful for building a better-rounded military, but we'll talk about that in a bit.

Crucially, these new buildings make cities unique hubs of activity. Settlements along your border can become specialized centers of defense and trade, complete with fortresses and markets and obelisks, while those situated in protected regions can become bastions of education, religion, and medicine. Inland metropolises become a possibility at all, hidden away from the possibility of sea raiders — extra important, considering that one of the expansion's more minor points is the appearance of pirates.

Meanwhile, armies also get a major infusion of personality. No longer limited to hordes of infantry, players can now flesh out their forces with cavalry and elephants, both of which give unique benefits to those who field them. Combat is still as simple as ever, but pairing infantry and cavalry to hit a bit harder, or using elephants to soak up damage, gives armies a new dimension — especially in light of Civilizations' third major change.

If you've ever played Clash of Cultures and wondered why you couldn't start out as a specific historical empire, here's your chance. With fourteen civilizations to choose from, this is the biggest addition of all, and it's also possibly the most interesting, giving each nation their very own sideboard of unique advances and a set of leaders to guide their people. Certain civilizations even come with their own starting tile, landing the Egyptians in the desert or the Maya in the mountains.

For anyone familiar with the game, this adds hardly anything in terms of rules overhead. The new advances are still advances, and the leaders conduct themselves like settlers, plus a few abilities unique to each leader. But the spike in flavor is undeniable; playing as Egypt under Cleopatra, whose reputation as a free-lovin' babe makes it harder for neighboring empires to justify an invasion, feels totally different from paying tribute to Pygmalion's impressive butt-chin and his fanatically independent Phoenicia. Some civs even bend the rules in interesting ways, like how the nomadic Huns can move around their unexpanded cities or how the Carthaginians make buddies with any pirates on the map. And if you get a peacetime leader when you're itching to march off to war, there's nothing stopping you from launching a regime change to swap out your leader for someone more qualified — though churn through too many sovereigns and you might find nobody else is willing to lead your sorry state.

When you get right down to it, Civilizations is exactly what I want from an expansion. It takes its source material and fleshes it out in all the right ways, filling out its scrawny bits and bulking up its muscle everywhere else. Clash of Cultures was always a fun game; now it's a great one.