Background:
The legacy of Sid Meier's empire-building strategy series continues with Civilization IV. You're still required to help a fledging culture grow through exploration, discovery, diplomacy, and combat. Gameplay enhancements include a richer combat system that allows you to produce great leaders, increased technical finesse, and uses for ranged weapons.
Features:
Faster-Paced Fun – Gameplay has been streamlined for a tighter, faster and more compelling experience.
Greater Accessibility and Ease of Play – An easy-to-use interface will be immediately familiar to RTS and action game players, and newcomers to the series will be able to jump in and play.
Tech Tree – Flexible Tech tree allows players more strategic choices for developing their civilizations along unique paths.
More Civs, Units, and Improvements to enhance and grow your empire.
Multiplayer –LAN, Internet, PBEM and Persistent Turn-Based Server (PTBS) offer players all-new strategies and ways to play when competing or cooperating with live opponents.
Team Play - Whether playing multiplayer or single player, team play offers a new way of setting locked alliances that result in shared wonder effects, visibility, unit trading and shared territory that delivers a plethora of new strategic and tactical options.
Civ IV comes to life! - Beautiful 3D world with dozens of fully animated units (including culturally unique units) and totally customizable armies. Cities and wonders will appear on the map. Wonder movies are back!
Mods and Community Tools - Designed from the ground up for modability, the game contains a powerful map editor with XML and Python support.
Choose Your Leader – Most Civs now have 2 leaders from which to choose, with each Leader having traits that provide various bonuses to the player.
Civics – With the discovery of new techs, civic options can become available. Freedom of speech or slavery? Hereditary rule or open elections? This creates endless government choices and possibilities!
Religion – Now there are 7 religions in the game that are unlocked through researching. When unlocked, the religion spreads through a player's empire allowing them to use the religion to help manage happiness, gain gold and create Great Prophets.
Great People - As the player uses specialists they gain Great People points in the city that is utilizing the specialists. Great People include the Artist, Tycoon, Prophet, Engineer, & Scientist. They can be used to get free techs, start Golden Ages, or join a city to increase its output.
Promotions – Each unit has a promotion path that emphasizes specific unit traits. Promotions include bonuses to Attack/Defend on specific terrains/features, movement bonuses, sight/visibility bonuses and increased withdrawal chances.
In-Game Movies – Civ IV will have over 70 in-game movies.Min System Requirements:
Operating System:Windows® 2000/XP
Processor:1.2 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon processor or equivalent
Memory:256 MB RAM (Windows 2000) / 512 MB RAM (Windows XP)
Hard Disk Space:1.7 GB Free
CD-ROM Drive :4X Speed
Video:DirectX 9.0c-compatible 64 MB video card with Hardware T&L support ( GeForce 2/Radeon 7500 or better)
Sound:DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
DirectX®:DirectX® version 9.0c (included) or higher
Recommended System Requirements
Operating System:Windows® 2000/XP
Processor:1.8 GHz Intel Pentium 4 or AMD Athlon processor or equivalent
Memory:512 MB RAM
Hard Disk Space:1.7 GB Free
CD-ROM Drive :4X Speed
Video:128 MB Video Card w/ DirectX 8 support (pixel & vertex shaders)
Sound:DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
DirectX®:DirectX® version 9.0c (included) or higher
Supported Operating Systems
Windows 2000 Service Pack 1 or higher WITH Internet Explorer 6.0 or higher
Windows XP Home or Professional w/ Service Pack 1 or higher
International release dates:Europe: Oct 28, 05