No game or activity that you can do without being paid can suck the life right out of you quite as well as the Civilization series. Don't get me wrong, dominating the world in a civ game brings me a vague sense of satisfaction that I can't quite pinpoint. It almost excuses being hunched over in the dark surrounded by dirty dishes for hours and hours.

Civ is a game of epic atomic actions, losing a settler to a barbarian early on can often spell failure for your budding civilization and the load of an auto-save that makes you step through the same painful set of actions with only a slight variation. The slow pace of this turn based marathon makes alt-tabbing to something a little more visceral a must even at the cost of losing your micro-management strategy.

Starting Out

Getting a good start in Civ 4 is vital to global domination. The engine usually places your first settler in a good place for your city, but after a while, you'll start re-generating the map to get a real winner. Balancing food supplies (flood plains, oasis) with production potential (hills and forests) while also ensuring that you jump on any available resources can be tricky, but comes along with experience.

Once you've kicked off your civ, there's often a long period of pressing the turn button while watching your 1 unit auto-explore. I always try and found a religion as my first research goal as you can gain serious income as that religion spreads. Converting your neighbours to your religion also makes for good friends and less of a possibility of early war.

The second city often fills two key roles, a resource grab and a land cut-off. Setting up a protective border beside your nearest foe and keeping closed borders allows you to take your time back-filling your locked off territory.

From here on in, it's a growth versus cash equation. Building cities to ensure your land grab, but watching the costs of those cities so you don't fall behind on your tech tree is the name of the game.

Great People

Great people are a huge addition to the Civ series which allow you to employ some great tactical strategies. Keeping your main city with a high great person production rate (through specialists) ensures a constant flow of these tools. They can be used to hurry production, make you some cash, build religious buildings, discover tech and expand borders. Combined, several great people can trigger you a golden age.

One of the best uses for great people is a culture bomb. Let's say your neighbour has built a city close to your borders or on resources that are rightfully yours. Move a great artist to your nearest city and create their great work. If the enemy city is young enough, your borders will expand to wrap around it and you'll take it over peacefully in a few turns.

Micro/Macro

Civ 4 suits all types of players, from the hour per turn micro- management OCD, to the casual always clicking the "recommended" button type. Of course, having a deep understanding of the game will make you much more efficient, but you won't get destroyed if you just feel like noobin it.

Multiplayer

So, lucky you, you found another sloth like yourself and you want to get a multiplayer game together. The best advice I can give is to not co-operate. Two humans working together makes this game a joke even at some of the higher difficulty settings. You can take 2 seperate paths of the tech tree and essentially double your research, leaving the AI in the dust. Though this can lead to those hilarious moments when you're watching an archer take out your attack chopper, it becomes tedious quickly and you can usually just end the game about halfway through out of sheer lack of challenge.

Combat

The wars in Civ 4 are really what it's all geared towards. Unit variety plays a key role in determining the odds of an attack, but I've still found the classic zerg to always be the most effective. You will have a fortified pikeman at some point take out your tank, but that's the Civ way, it's just numbers in the end.

The Rest

The graphics are graphics, the music isn't muzak and the voice quotes are tolerably humorous. It's hard for a game without the shiny glossy appeal of the latest Direct X features to really distinguish itself these days. Civ 4 relies on its existing fan base and hardcore gamers to succeed.

So if you've got a day to kill, or feel somewhat lost without some over-arching epic strategy festering in your forebrain, grab some snacks, turn out the lights and get ready to hate yourself for not doing something productive for so long.