Have you ever wonder what it must be like being a member of the iluminati? To be able to control countries, lives, start wars and to end them.  Well, now’s you chance.

In this game you are the closest thing to being god, if you ignore populous. 

In this game you get to watch your civilization grow from a small group of nonads, to a country that eventually dominates the world.  You choose the direction that it takes and you decide whether you will be peaceful or not.

Your first task is to decide how much you will spend on the army, the people and science.  I would give the army about 40%, the people 30% and science 30%.

It is always a balancing act between giving the people what they want, making sure the country is secure and using the scientists to make it safe in the future.

This game is a point and click game, or you can use the keyboard to move your pieces with-in your move.  Then you can watch as the other players take there moves.

As you see above is one of the many maps that you can choose to play.  Even here you have control over quite a few different aspects of the game.  For example, even before you start.  You must decide how big the map is going to be, the climate and even how old the planet is.

It really is like controlling a country.  I think you will need to play the tutorial game first.  There is so much to learn and I would advise you to write some of the main keyboard short cuts until you learn them by heart.

Overall.  If you can put up with the slow pace, this game is a joy to play.  I do miss some of the wacky mods that you could get for Civ 2 but, I’m sure they’ll eventually be released for this iteration.