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If you have been living in a cave, or on a steady diet of shooter or console titles, you may not understand or appreciate "Civilization Addiction." In fact, it is a troubling and heartbreaking affliction, as thousands of strategy gamers pitifully plea with their loved ones or employers for "just one more turn!" Innocent gamers who vow to "only play for a few minutes" look up at the clock to find themselves in the pre-dawn hours, and that cold hard adrenaline jolt of fear hits: "Oh my god, its Tuesday! I'm so screwed at work today!"

Civilization IV continues the grand tradition of the series. True to form, Sid Meier and his team at Firaxis have evolved the game to the next level. With most sequels, there is always a certain fear that the designers will try to reinvent the game and utterly trash everything that was good and holy with the prequel. Or, the designer and publisher will take no risks and change nothing of the original formula except add a few more polygons, leaving the player with a "why did I just spend $50 for a game I already have?"

Instead, Civ IV is more of an evolution of Civ III: the basic game-play is largely the same as it has been since the very first game, but has been tweaked and refined based on lessons learned over the years, and likely large amounts of feedback from the player community. Sure, new features are added too, but these always seem to complement previous features and fit together well with the rest of the game. (Due to countless refinements by Sid and the designers, I'm sure.)

It's difficult to summarize Civilization to new players because I've been playing the series for so long and for probably thousands of hours. The basic rundown is that it’s a turn-based strategy game that lets the player take control of a civilization from history such as the Romans, the Mayans, or the Americans. As the leader of that civ, you must help it thrive and last through the ages until you reach one of the multiple end game scenarios. One way to win might be to focus on research and have your civilization build a large colony ship to escape earth and continue your race among the stars. Another method is to become a fascist dictator and wipe all other competition from the map with a military victory. Or, you can rise to the top of the heap via your culture and religion and peacefully convert the rest of the world to your lifestyle and way of thinking.

The game takes place on randomly generated map, with civilizations not being kept to their real-world locations. Each land or sea map tile provides resources to the civilization that controls them, with different resources driving the use of discovered technologies or granting valuable trade goods. For example, you might research horseback riding, but you cannot create mounted cavalry until you have access to horses - either by controlling the resource or trading for it. This makes trade and resource management as powerful as the sword when dealing with your neighbors. New resource types appear throughout the game as scientific research uncovers their uses, so while you may control the important resources early in the game, you might find that the all-important resources to make gunpowder are outside your reach when you need them the most.

Your civ is made up of the cities you settle, or "liberate" from your opponents. Based upon each city's culture rating - a measure of how influential your civ and city is in the world - it has a border of the tiles you control and these controlled tiles merge together to form your empire. As the game progresses and your borders meet up with your neighbor's a culture war ensues as the more dominant culture starts to encroach on the other. In fact, if your culture is strong enough your empire can "adopt" nearby cities as they renounce their ties to their civ and join yours.

Now on to some of Civ IV's changes over its ancestors, starting with the user interface. A great deal of effort has been made to pull the information and features that the player needs the most right to the top screen. Amazingly, this is done without cluttering the interface or making it impossible to manipulate. Instead of adding a huge graphical dashboard with buttons upon buttons, functions are tucked into the corners or show up dynamically on the dashboard. This leaves plenty of screen real estate to view the map and keep track of your empire. For Civ III fans, some of the interface changes are quite dramatic and you'll spend the first couple games just clicking around to figure out where everything is at. I did a lot of, "How the heck do I do X now?" but once I figured it out, everything felt very natural and easy to use again.

One of the new additions is that the game feels a lot more dynamic now. For example, in previous versions the player would be totally alone while making their civilization's moves, which near the end of the game might take you a half-hour or more, and the world didn't come back to life until you press the "End Turn" button. In Civ IV however, there are messages coming across your "desktop" throughout your turn, bringing news of the other civilizations in the game. For example, if another civilization changes religions or makes a special advance, it could come across at any time. This is a simple feature that doesn't change game-play, but I really enjoyed it just because of the feel it gives that you are taking part in a living world.

With the addition of religion, culture and trade play a much larger role than in previous versions. Your civilization can adopt a state religion, giving bonuses to cities that fall in line and increasing (or decreasing) your affinity to your rival civs. Religion is tied to scientific advancements, so different religions are available at different times. (Though, your choice of religion doesn't affect what science you can research - something the team might think about in the next version.) In earlier Civilizations, you would steer your empire through the various types of governmental power you want to wield, with each type affecting how your citizens felt about you and their role. For example, a monarchy might make it easier to keep your citizens under control, but at the expense of creative freedom and faster scientific achievement. Civ IV beats this by adding several new dimensions to your culture via the "Civics" screen, such as your civ's views on slavery, free speech, economy and more. Again, besides just changing how your civilization works but how other civs interact with you - just like the real world.

In fact, that’s probably the most noticeable improvement for me in Civ IV. Over the years, the diplomatic process has always been a little spotty. Face it, interacting with half a dozen different cultures is no easy feat to simulate. But this version, with many more ways to compare each civ to every other civ, seems to help tremendously with the AI seeming to make better decisions. I've also noticed too that, more than ever, Civ mirrors how society works in the real world, at least on the macro level, which really adds to the realism for me. Of course, I did see one exception, where a civ bordering me lost a city due to my strong culture declared war on me. Hey, its not my fault that they liked my music videos better!

The Civ series has always been much more about the game and strategy than pretty looks, but this version really is beautiful. (Take a look at one of the links below from Firaxis, which compares the graphics between all of the versions.) You can zoom much further out and in than in Civ III, units move around more and have more animations, trees sway in the breeze, birds fly by and the terrain is gorgeous. Like I mentioned above, the UI does a good job of presenting all of the information you need the most right up front, and does it without getting in the way. This is a good thing because I was a bit frustrated with the length of time it takes for some of the management screens to come up, such as for foreign relations or science trees. However, I clocked the game on my wide-screen late model laptop and got a steady 30 frames per second at a full 1920x1200 which, by the way, rocks.

The sound and music is a cut above for a Civ game this time around as well, and everything seems very professionally put together. I was surprised to hear all of the narration being read by none other than Leonard Nimoy's sure and steady voice. And if you are a real Civ fan, you know you'll be hearing the soundtrack over and over and over again, so its nice to hear a well produced soundtrack that doesn't get as old as fast. Plus, if you get sick of it you can easily point the game to your own MP3 folder and play your personal earth conquering play lists.

On that note, if you poke around in your Civ game folders you'll also notice that this version of Civ is very mod friendly. If you know anything about Python or XML you can make some deep mods to the game, along with changes to units, tiles and more. In fact, there is a very prominent Mods area on the Civ IV website - though I hope the list of available mods and add-ons grows faster in the new year. I'm sure there are some enterprising amateur game designers out there planning massive total conversions as you read this.

There's so much more that could be said about this game (I haven't even touched the new and improved multi-player yet, or the built in scenarios) but it’s safe to say that this is definitely the best game of 2005, and the best Civ game yet created. If you are a Civ fan, I'm sure you already have this game, and if you don't, please hand in your membership badge now. If you have played Civ in the past but found some parts of it frustrating, I urge you to give it a second chance, as everything is very well polished and it’s worth your time. For the rest of you, if you aren't just a FPS player and have an open mind about a turn-based game, you can't get a better title than this one. Soon, you too will be suffering from "Civilization Addiction," and calling in sick to work the next day.