Civilization Revolution

The main game of Civilization Revolution begins in 4000 BC, with a lone settler unit in the middle of a little-explored region. That settler has the capability to found a city, which, depending on its specific mix of geographical surroundings, begins harvesting food (for the continued growth of the city), production (for the creation of units and buildings), and trade (that can be then turned into either research points or wealth). In the early stages of the game, uncivilized villages consisting of primitives, such as barbarians, and friendly villages will be encountered.

Over time, further settlers can be created, forming new cities; buildings can be built to improve each city's overall productivity; military units can be formed, focusing either on defense, offense, or exploration; and technologies can be researched, allowing for newer buildings and units, among others. Buildings in a final category, Wonders, provide major advantages to the civilization that builds it, either across their entire empire or just in the building city, depending on the Wonder. Meanwhile, rival civilizations are encountered, which can be both valuable trade partners, strategic allies, or dangerous enemies. Ultimately, each civilization competes for land and resources with the purpose of eventual military, technological, cultural, or economic domination.

The game was announced in June 2007.

On February 4, 2008 2K Games and Firaxis announced that the Wii version of Civilization Revolution was put on indefinite hold due to lack of manpower and no PlayStation 2 or PlayStation Portable editions of the game to share assets with. Firaxis programmer Scott Lewis explained, "CivRev was originally an Xbox 360/PlayStation 3 project and was in development for over a year before the Wii/DS platforms were added. The result was that the time and effort it would have taken to remake a game built for higher-end hardware from the ground up would simply have been too costly." On June 10, 2008, Sid Meier reaffirmed plans to develop a Wii version, stating that Firaxis had "no intentions of turning backs on the Wii version". However, there were no further updates about the developmental status of the planned Wii version to this day, and thus it remains unreleased.

The DS, PlayStation 3, and Xbox 360 versions received "generally favorable reviews" according to the website Metacritic, a review aggregator. GameSpot praised the gameplay and visual design of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions but found the multiplayer to be slow. In Japan, where the same console versions were ported and published by CyberFront on December 25, 2008, followed by the DS version on January 29, 2009, Famitsu gave it a score of one six, one eight, and two sevens for the latter console version, and three eights and one seven for the former two console versions.

Edge gave the PlayStation 3 version a score of eight out of ten in its July 2008 issue, saying, "While the streamlined and brisk approach that brushes over some of the minutiae of the previous games might cause some PC fans to baulk, Revolution has concentrated rather than diluted the Civ experience, creating an expression of the concept that's perfectly suited to its platform." Three issues later, however, the magazine gave the DS version seven out of ten, saying, "In terms of distilling the core Civilization experience from PC to handheld, this is almost as victorious as the PC-to-console iterations." 5 out of 10, saying that it "capitalizes on the DS's strengths with some great stylus-based controls. Unfortunately, there are some problems, as the gameplay feels a bit scaled down and the maps feel pretty cramped."