It's the early 1700s, well before the Industrial Revolution begins, numerous wars are being fought across the world. I myself, as the leader of the British Empire, am currently at war with the Mongolians and the Incans. They have far superior numbers and I'm easily outmanned ten to one, but whilst they were building armies, I was developing technology; so much so that I'm the technological stronghold of the planet and I'm about to unleash the power of what I've been building for the past few months.

When the Mongolians and Incans allied with each other, I deemed it necessary to develop something to turn the tide of war. It meant that my citizens had to suffer, but they would be safe from the barbaric Mongolians coming to invade my country. I sent out a task force of ships, far more advanced than the enemy's wooden boats, to find their home city. Just before I reached their location, Coventry fell to the Incan army that had been on the verge of conquering it for years.

With the city discovered, it was time to strike. My submarine surfaced off the shore of the Mongolian heartland, and fired its payload; within minutes, the first atomic explosion has taken place, wiping out most of the population of their city and their complete army. From here on out, the Mongolians and Incans were cooperative, to say the least, in future negotiations, so much so that they were both willing to pay me a high rate of money as an incentive for me not to annihilate them. It didn't stop me going ahead with my plan, but it certainly helped pay for my collection of inter-continental ballistic missiles.

As anyone who has played the previous Civilization games will know, this is a big turning point in the technology development; you'll no longer be developing electricity in 2050 when the game ends and you won't have to continue for another 100 years before you can develop nuclear weapons, let alone the Space Race Victory ever coming into play in a game. Civilization IV is possibly the most accurate of the series, as around mid-game civilizations start to either slow down their research or speed it up, replicating the Dark Ages in a way, focusing on fighting a hell of a lot of wars.

With the technology, the diplomacy has also changed. You'll no longer be building your cities when you come across the Germans, who for no reason declare war and invade your cities. I can't say how many times this happened to me in Civilization III - only that it was more frequent than in every other game. This time around, countries may be annoyed with you as soon as you discover them for trading with their enemy and similar things, but they'll never just invade your city and say "we don't like you"; this time they have to declare war to enter your territorial borders. This adds to the tactics, as you can hem people in and refuse to sign open border treaties, thus preventing them from expanding their territory.

The gameplay itself doesn't seem hugely different from the Civilization III, but it's the subtleties that will no doubt sell turn it into a big seller. My favourite addition to the gameplay is the extended use of resources, which was brought in with Civilization III, where you need uranium and aluminium to build an ICBM or iron to build a steel swordsman. The new addition to this is that to get iron you have to mine it, while to get corn you have to farm it and so on.

The next addition is population, as it's no longer based purely on your city sizes. You can build cottages that over time will grow into a full town, allowing you to make money and improve your research rates by having a large population; it also helps place you up the game points ladder, allowing you to win through a non-annihilation method.

The final addition that needs to be mentioned is religion, as it can play a large part in the game and also effects diplomatic relations. You can found one of seven religions, ranging from Taoism and Buddhism to Christianity and Hinduism. It's implemented well, in a way that shouldn't offend religious people and the religions seem to have been picked purely on the basis of being the most popular religions in history. Each religion has the same basic effect, with none being better than the other. Their use is to give the founding religion the ability to see all the faithful cities in the world, an early spying method, and can be used to go to war with other nations and help strengthen diplomatic relations between different civilizations. If you want to change religion, you can always send out missionaries to 'convert heathen cities'.

The part that will sell newcomers to the game is the graphics - and they are really something to see. The world map is now part of the engine, where you can zoom out to see the map of the whole planet, stars included, or zoom in up close to your cities and see what you've built in, removing the need for the city map like in the previous Civilization games. The graphics also extend into the diplomacy; like in Civilization III there are the 'talking heads' of the leader of the other civilization, but it has been moved into stunning fully 3D graphics. They still look kind of cartoony, but that seems to be intended, as other than that they look more realistic than most of the current generation of first person shooters are managing - plus it won't cost you an arm and a leg to get a computer to display it.

These graphics also extend into full motion videos of how the wonders would have been constructed, which are again stunning to look at. Each has had an immense amount of time taken into its creation and each one has its own original composition to go with it, the fact that there are hundreds of these in the game is a real credit to the developers at Firaxis.

The music is typically great, with a mixture of original compositions and a hefty amount of classical music, including Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and Mozart to name but a few of the most recognisable on the list. The narration is also voided by Leonard "Spock" Nimoy and is extensive, from the opening description of how the world was formed in a neo-classical ancient Greek creation story, along with hundreds of quotes for technological advances. This is similar to Alpha Centauri, but the quotes range from Euripides to Konstantine E. Tsiolkovsky (I dare you to try and pronounce that !) and are all aimed at the technological discovery they relate to.

The implementation of a well-designed multiplayer mode is a welcome step, and it's done in a way that won't take centuries to complete the game. Each turn can be time-limited, so all players are restricted to the same amount of time to complete a turn and play the same turn at the same time. There's also the ability for players to jump in and out of the game at any time and take over an existing empire, or leave it for the computer to run, which is a great feature to keep the game flowing smoothly - and there's also the ability to save the game and continue with it at a later date.

Multiplayer aside there's another reason to be connected to the Internet for this game, and that is its open ability to be modded. It has actually been designed with this in mind, to allow players to build their own style of gameplay and share it. Now with multiplayer back on side, this means without a doubt that any player will be able to find his own style of gameplay and be then play it with people from around the world, which is an impressive feature for multiplayer gaming in a strategy title.

The final element of the game that makes it a true classic is the replayability, which has been the longstanding feature of all Sid Meier titles. These are games that you can pick up and play over and over again for a month and not get bored, simply because they offer such diversity without killing the fun. This is very much the case in Civilization IV, where you have the ability to design the world you play on before you play in it, ranging from putting it in an Ice Age where you have larger continents but fertile land is on the equator and there are large glacier caps, or playing on a Pangaea map, where the entire landmass is a single super continent like it is theorised that early Earth was like.

Civilization IV is a game that you will return to over and over again, for a long time to come, and it's a welcome change from the masses of throwaway sequels that have been released recently. The game sticks to its roots but has dropped the dead leaves and found some new flowers to make a big enough change for it to be inviting to both newcomers and long-time fans of the series. The fact that you can wage nuclear war on savages may seem a little non-chivalric, but since when was chivalry an element of world domination? As the song says, everybody wants to rule the world - and thanks to Civilization IV, achieving that goal has never been such a varied and enjoyable experience.

Reviewed by Nik Gregory for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).