Civilization Wars

Real time strategy games are often criticised for allowing tank rush tactics to prevail.

Simply chucking a huge number of units at the enemy and seeing what sticks (or blows up) is not usually considered good form.

But rather than following that conventional wisdom, Flash game conversion Civilization Wars does a rather odd thing. It positively celebrates the tank rush and builds its gameplay around it.

Ankh rush

Actually, it’s not so very odd if you’ve been monitoring iPhone strategy games.

The game’s structure is reminiscent of games like Galcon, with its three ancient races - Egyptian, Chinese and Roman - taking the place of interstellar forces.

Attacking is a matter of drawing a line from one or more of your outposts to an enemy encampment, at which point half the troops within set off to capture it. If your number of troops exceeds the amount occupying your opponent’s structure, you take it as your own, and the process continues.

Civilization Wars expands upon this premise by introducing structures with special functions. Crystal production buildings are necessary for allowing you to launch elemental attacks, while towers thin out the opposition ranks in a nod to tower defence.

Not so civil war

While this added depth is praise worthy in many respects, it does mean that Civilization Wars is less immediate and more laborious than a game like Galcon.

This isn’t helped by some clunky controls that, combined with the undersized graphics, result in repeated accidental selections. You’ll lose count of the number of times you pinch troops from an outpost you didn’t want to, and there’s no way to cancel such errors either. It's less an issue on the HD iPad version thanks to the larger screen, yet other shortcomings remain.

While an admirable attempt has been made to introduce some variety to the levels with boss fights and multiple unlockable game modes including a last-stand high score mode, it feels too much like a war of attrition.

The difficulty takes a jolting step up six or seven levels in too, with the rounds often turning into grinding stalemates.

Civilization Wars should be commended for incorporating so many different influences into its stripped back take on real-time strategy. Unfortunately though it hasn’t quite mastered the finer points of war.