Customer Reviews

Sid Meier's Civilization V

5 star:		(128)
4 star:		(100)
3 star:		(89)
2 star:		(152)
1 star:		(370)

 

 

Just to give this review some perspective, I've been playing the various iterations of Civ for a very, very long time. I remember playing the original like it was yesterday. Beavis and Butthead on the TV, Nirvana on the radio, and me on my Packard Bell. I spent hours in my mom's basement, wasting away from rickets while the normal kids were soaking up the sunlight, going out on dates, playing sports, and leading generally normal, productive lives. Civ 1 really messed up my life...but in a completely awesome way.

I mean, I couldn't get enough. Doubly so with Civ 2. The things you could do with that game. It had...personality. I remember little stuff, like the different architectural styles, that gave the game such an immersive quality. I remember how every time I played, the world had its own story, and how things would seem to take on a life of their own. The endless war with the Mongols, my alliance with the Germans, butting heads with Caesar. I learned more about history there than I ever did in school. It was fantastic. I didn't even play to win most of the time. I was a fifteen year-old kid in a sandbox.

I got older, and Civ grew with me. I spend endless hours on 3 and 4, balancing game commitments and my real life. When Civ 5 was announced, I didn't hesitate. I bought it immediately.

In short, it didn't take me long before I realized that this new Civ was nothing like the Civ of old. I've never played Revolutions, but I've heard there is a lot of overlap. I don't know. What I do know is that this game is boring. Really, really boring. Never have I clicked the "next turn" button like I have here. Maybe it's because it takes forever to build anything...so long, in fact, that it's easier just to hoard gold and buy things. Maybe it's because expansion and/or conquest isn't really encouraged. The seemingly massive happiness hit just makes it unreasonable. So I sit there, just watching the world slowly go by.

And how slow it is...the loading screen between turns has become my nemesis. I've turned the "superb" graphics down to their lowest setting, just to speed things up, and to keep things from jumping from one side of the world to the other every time I scroll my mouse. Just to be clear, I have a computer that can run all the latest shooters, yet cannot run a turn-based strategy game aimed at a mass audience.

The AI is dumb and unfinished. If my dog had fingers, he could win on prince at least. I don't consider myself the smartest strategist, but I have never lost a war in Civ 5. Ever. I started on warlord, then prince, then king. Onward and upward I went, until I quickly realized that the AI wasn't getting smarter. It was just cheating. This was acceptable 15 years ago, not now.

Why is Gandhi determined to kill me? After 2000 years of good relations, he wants to kill me. Not a biggie, mind you, because all he does is park archers next to my swordsmen, where I can promptly slaughter them. After I defeat his army (without taking any cities), he offers me all of his resources, all of his gold, and all of his cities (except for his capital, of course). He just gives up. I take him up on his offer, because I am obviously smarter than him. But that means my happiness tanks, my production stops, and my steady income stream is now in the red. Whatever. I still have 3 swordsmen and 2 archers. I can conquer the world with that. Screw culture.

Did I mention the music? Man, it's boring. No more period specific soundtrack, tribal or classical. Just the turn-based equivalent of elevator music. I'm sure the graphics are the bees-knees, but with me playing on the lowest graphics setting, I will never know. City-states, which were made out to be a big deal, are not. They ask for stuff, you give it to them (or not). They give you stuff (or not). That is the extent of the city-state strategy. Boring.

Actually, the city-state thing reminds me of a problem I have that extends beyond the poor quality of this game. Professional reviews. Why did every professional game review outlet give Civ 5 high marks. 9/10. A+. Really? Every review I've seen has been the same. "It has hexes!" "It has city-states!" "One unit per tile!" "Ranged combat!" "Beautiful graphics!" I even saw reviews gushing over how cool the opening sequence was (you know, the one you can't skip).

For one, I am tired of seeing the old man in the hut every time I load up. I find it oddly fishy that no "professional" reviewer has brought up the bugginess; the fact that you need an internet connection; the fact that you need Steam; the fact that the AI stinks; etc, etc, etc. Just hexes and city-states. Either they were told to write a good review by the "powers that be," or they spent a total of 3 hours playing before writing their reviews. Either way, I will never trust a professional review source ever again.

I gave this game 2 stars, because I believe it still has the potential to be good. After a few expansions, some mods, a Rhys and Fall, a Fall From Heaven. Yeah, it could be good. I've played around 60 hours, and still see a spark of genius here. But it will take an awful lot of work. Right now, it's like watching paint dry.

As a longtime fan of the series, I unfortunately have to say that Civ5 has been vastly overrated by professional reviewers. That's probably because the game looks great and the real flaws don't start to show up until after a few hours of play.

There are certain things I really like about this game. City states were a great addition and make the game a lot more interesting. Being able to purchase land is awesome and realistic. Easier rushbuying is a lot of fun and doesn't unbalance the game.

The new combat system is pretty goofy (for example, archers are a ranged unit but riflemen are not). It's a bit more fun than the old "stacks of doom," but I see reviewers praising the new combat system as "more streamlined" when it is definitely not. Moving an old stack of doom required 2 clicks (click on SOD, click on destination). Now you need to do the same thing 5-10 times as much to move an army.

The new Civic talent tree offers more customization of specific traits, which is fun to plan around. However you can't swap civics to match a change in strategy in-game (eg. teching up at the beginning of the game and then turning to a warlike theocracy once you realize you're likely to lose the space race). This is disappointing. Overall, when Civ5's civics are compared to Civ4 its a wash.

In-between-turn load times suck. On a normal size map in the modern age, I was sitting and watching the hourglass for an average of 15 seconds in between each turn--even when I wasn't watching animations of enemy moves. I'd blame my computer but it runs pretty much every other game at high settings without a hint of a problem.

Music is poor, particularly the asian themed music which sounds like a bad parody of its genre.

It's hard to believe they wasted time animating leaders and making them talk in their own languages. It doesn't add anything to the game and some of their voices (Queen Elizabeth) actually detract from it by being annoying.

The lack of science/gold/culture sliders takes away a lot of customization potential that was fun to tinker with in previous Civ games. This became painfully apparent when going for a cultural victory. A cultural victory doesn't require the last 25% of the tech tree, but you can't stop researching until you run out of money. And in the meantime, because you're still researching new tech, your puppet states are building more and more new buildings and costing you more money. And when you run out of money you can't do a LOT of things, like rush-build or more importantly buy luxury resources and establish good relations with city states that provide culture. Basically you lose the ability to do the things that make the game fun. This is especially frustrating when it have been so easily solved with the old-school sliders, which were never that difficult to manage in the first place.

Civ5 reminds me of Civ3, in that it attempts to add a couple of new game concepts and surprisingly flops at aspects in which its predecessor excelled. Overall, it's an interesting but ultimately flawed game that doesn't hold a candle to its predecessor and will most likely be remembered as one of the weaker chapters of a great series.

First - this game isn't really "Sid Meier's Civilization". It's nothing like the other games in the series. It's really "Jon Shafer's Civilization", the 26-year old "lead designer" of Civ 5 at Firaxis. This was his first game as "lead designer".

Second - this game is utterly unbalanced. There are a million flaws in the game that were never playtested. For example, producing wealth is irrelevant because you get far more gold from producing a unit and then deleting it. Certain civilizations are far more powerful than others, or can exploit certain tech/policy combinations to easily defeat other civilizations. The worst elements are things that were fine in Civ 4 and made worse in Civ 5, like exploiting Great Scientists. The Wonders of the World are mostly useless now, or not worth the hammers.

Third - So much content has been actually removed or downgraded, like Civics -> Social Policies, or the number of leaders and civilizations.

Finally - This game is just such a total betrayal of Civ 4, abandoning everything interesting and good. I'm really sad that they trusted a totally new Lead Designer for such an important game. Shame on you Firaxis for not getting Brian Reynolds from SMAC to do this game. Shame on you 2k Games for publishing this before it was playtested and balanced.

Utter garbage. Has some shiny and entertaining bits, I suppose, much like a console game. But like a console game, the gameplay itself is bad.

i'm just stunned, really.

i've played probably 30 hours of civ5 now, and i keep thinking, "maybe i'll like it more as i learn more about it." or sometimes i think, "i'm just not used to it, once i get in the groove it'll be great."

but you know what? i don't like it, and it's not getting any better.

listen to all the reviews here (aside from the complaining about Steam) - the hexes ARE cool, and ranged units are a good introduction. the graphics are pretty, mostly, minus the mini-map which is cartoonish sadly. but all of this is totally obviated by the complete console-ization of this game.

it's clearly made to look, feel and act like a console game - it's like Sid stared at console games, read some article about how console gaming is getting bigger and bigger and decided he'd try to capture that market as well. and in trying to make this pc/console hybrid, he's managed to produce a civ2/call to power 2 - a version of a great franchise that people would just assume didn't ever happen.

there are good ideas here, i don't mean to say it's all bad. but it's just so obvious to me that they'd have had a complete winner if they just cleaned up civ4 a bit, added the hexes and new battle stuff and introduced the new ideas in a less destructive manner and stayed true to the platform that makes this game what it is. and i can't figure out why this didn't occur to them as well through the very long dev process. surely *somebody* raised a hand and said "this is kinda not what this game has ever been. should we think about this?"

one of the other reviewers made this point, and they are right: why is it that each and every gaming site gave this such immensely high ratings, when nearly everyone else who's playing it seems to think quite the opposite? was each reviewer SO taken with hexes that they just couldn't keep focused? did they just not play that long?

in the end, i guess i'm just disappointed this game isn't what it should have been. it's not the revolution the series needed and i have great hopes that the next step in Civ is already underway and that i can find enough in civ5 to wait the 5+ years until the next try. or that i can't make my peace with playing civ4 instead and skipping this altogether. i can't play minecraft instead forever :)

try it at your friend's house first, or just skip it. you'll save the [...] bucks extra they're charging now, and the [...] bucks they want for new civs, another silly change to an unbroken model.

The working relationship between a game designer and his publisher is never a simple one. So I would not know where exactly to place the blame, Sid Meyer or 2K GAMES. But in the end, it does not matter. Because it is simply sad to see a great gaming franchise came to this.

THIS IS NOT A CIVILIZATION GAME
A great number of major features of this beloved series have been simply removed. A fellow gamer called this "Civilization For Dummies" and he is absolutely right.
There is no trading maps or technologies. There is no claiming resources outside your borders by building a colony. There is no need for transport ships as, apparently, units are now all..amphibious (and they need 15-20 turns to cross an ocean!). There are no city-growth milestone requirements (granary, aqueduct, refrigeration). There is no culturally conquering an enemy city (detonating a "culture bomb" by consuming a Great Artist will only get you extra territory tiles but no cities). There are no spies nor health/pollution balance. And there are no armies (please read on).

ARMY CASTRATION
Someone please tell me what was so wrong with armies that had to be yanked out? Napoleon almost conquered Europe with one army. Germany almost conquered the eastern hemisphere with three and the US still holds a two-and-a-half armies doctrine. How can a turn-based game be called Civilization unless one can emulate, well, a real civilization? Building an army, seasoning it on minor conflicts and then going for the enemy's capital was one of the most fun parts of any Civilization game. Why Sid, why?

YOU MAY BE ABLE TO LAUNCH INTO SPACE YET CANNOT CLIMB MOUNTAINS?!
Movement should be hindered by rough terrain. Units that have 3 or 4 moves on the plains should not be expected to do more than 1 or 2 on a mountain, right? Well, no. Mountains seem to be those magical places no unit can climb or pass through (not even ...helicopters of jet fighters!). And I cannot see how this makes for more complicated strategic decisions than timing your movements, claiming the high ground and having a bonus for elevated artillery?

UNIT STAMPEDE
A major issue for me, this was what really ruined the game. For some unfathomable reason units cannot be stacked. A worker can coexist with a military unit but that's it. Artillery and shock-cavalry are very vulnerable to attacks and (with the new hexagon layout) one would need ...six defensive units to protect a single artillery battery.
As a result, units keep getting on each other's way (especially when ordered to move for distances that require more than a turn), they refuse to even pass through friendly units (!) and the "tactical" considerations that result from this are trivial. And whenever besieging an enemy city, one has to endlessly maneuver his units around it (while exposed to its bombardment) whereas wounded units are never easy to withdraw.
You cannot even garrison more than a single unit within a city. Not that it would make a difference, since the garrisoned unit is not automatically awaken to fight back when the city is under attack(!), the city is left to defend itself.

CAN YOU REALLY COMMAND WITHOUT A...CENTRAL COMMAND?
The economy is nose-diving into the red and you want to reduce the percentage going into research for a while to avoid having units of yours deleted one by one? The fickle people of your civilization are unhappy and you want to placate them by increasing their entertainment allocation? You have discovered conscription and you want to upgrade all your musketeers into recruits? Well, TOUGH LUCK! There is not central command screen to do so. Only advisers that you have to thank for annoying you.
You have very little control of your cities resource distribution and zero control of your national economy. And units have to be hunted down and upgraded one by one.
Speaking of the economy, when are we going to see a Civilization game where one can run and manage a national debt?

NO FREE EYE-CANDY IN THIS UNIVERSE. NOT EVEN A STALE ONE.
The game does look new and polished and the units are well designed but not cutting edge and not without a steep hardware price. If you expect anything comparable to STARCRAFT II crispiness you will be disappointed - at my 1280x1024 resolution it is not easy to discern roads from railroads.
The system I am running my copy consists of a P7 920 on a MSI Eclipse with 3GB of RAM and an ASUS nVIDIA GTX-260. Even with an 18-months old PC in a WinXP environment (I refuse to forgo my game collection for Win7), apparently I cannot even try the highest DX9 settings (the game crashes at launch) but I managed to optimize them with a mix of high and medium. Even then, whenever I scroll to a different location of the map, I can see the image fleshing out, just like zooming in a Google-Earth map.
So one can only wonder: why should one need a Cray to run a Civilization game at full?

STEAM OF WAR
The game requires OnLine Activation (and rumored perpetual reactivation every few days) and has to be tied to a STEAM account. Effectively this means that the game is a piece of rentware the buyer never really owns and yet it is sold at full price. I realize that to some people this may not be a serious issue so, in case you are wondering, I deducted a single star from my overall rating of the game because of its DRM scheme. To every other gamer however, you can now make an informed decision.


This was a major disappointment. I never though I'd say this but I while playing the latest Civilization game I caught myself wondering if they would ever make...CALL TO POWER III.

New gamers, steer clear of this mess, this is NOT what a Civilization game plays like.
Seasoned gamers, we know better than to call this a Civilization game.

Sorry Sid, EPIC FAIL.

After playing around 30 hours, I am completely fed up. Actually there is one problem with this game, that is, there is just no fun.

Installation:
* I have an ancient Thinkpad T400, which fails to meet the minimum requirements, but it is still playable with minimum settings. I do not really care about the graphics;
* I am not totally for or against STEAM. They just want to use the online activation to stop piracy. But since the game was cracked soon after it was released (according to civfanatics), what's the point here?

Game:

Pros:

* Hex is cool;
* Each civilization is unique.

Cons:

Expansion:

* Money is EVERYTHING in this game. You can buy ANYTHING, soldiers,buildings and even land. At the same time the hammer produced in the city is so poor. The city improvements give you only +1 or +2 bonus, almost nothing, so you will always see that a normal building will take 50 turns to finish. So later it turns out that you just save money to buy most of the stuff;
* No financing. The research points are fixed. So you can not adjust the ratio as what we did in other versions;
* No happy faces in each city, only of the nation. After you capture a city, the angry faces last forever, making you want to just raze it. The people of the city are demanding, they will ask you to get some resources that you can hardly get. And the happy faces changes the strength of your army. When you just capture a new city, which gives you a lot of angry faces, then, all your soldiers will be angry...
* The cost of the wonder is close to a normal building, and with limited effects;
* The city growth is very slow, making the early expansion hard. Before the game was released, I thought it would be cool that they enlarge the city area. But while playing, I found the total population can hardly go beyond 20;
* No cottage, town, etc. Only trading posts, which always give you +2 gold, and they look ugly, like trash yard (not just on my lousy computer);

Culture:
* No religion, which is GREAT fun in CIV 4;
* The border does not change according to the culture, unless using great artists;

Diplomacy and War:
* War is everything in this game. The most important point of the game is getting sword man and longsword man earlier than others, then, with three of them and a general, you can raze other counties on you continent;
* One tile can only have one of civilian/land force/air force/navy force. This will cause a problem. Now spaceship parts have to be transported to one city. However, there might be a worker just moved to this city, thus, you have to wait for another turn, which may cause you to lose the game.
* No spy. Actually most of the time, I have no idea what others think about me. The foreign relationship is weak in this version, and it just makes you feel isolated. To make things worse, even you want to keep a good relationship, and you trade with them, they still declare war on you for no reason(or for any reason);
* The archers are ranged units, while the infantries and tanks are melee units (no range). And when archer/crossbow man gets updated, their previous ranged promotions disappeared;
* You have to control each of the unit during the war, which is time consuming. But if you do not start wars, you have no idea what to do during the game, since other ways of victory are too hard(I never finish the culture victory, and spaceship needs a very late technology);

Others:
* The game difficulty is greatly reduced. I can only try 5th hard level in civ 4, but now I can easily beat immortal;
* I reloaded several times just in order to watch the opening cinematic, which always crashed half way. Also, every time you start the game, you have watch this again and again, which, still crashes half way;
* I experienced several crashes during the game, and there is no autosaving, so I have to load what I got several hours ago (Updated: there is autosaveing, thanks to A. Ramirez );
* Have no idea how to turn the combat animation off;
* Graphics problem. You will see the great wall passing through a pyramid, and the Stonehenge built in the water;
* The game is half finished. The promotion symbols from the manual are not the same as the symbols in the game. Some of them, such as blitz, are shown as a triangle or rectangle in the game. So you could find some units with several triangle and rectangle promotion, and you have to move you mouse on them to see what they are. And there are bugs about the promotion. The gunship has a promotion that it can not capture city, just as CIV 4, which does not work at all. The the early artillery has to be set up in order to fire, but the rocket artillery does not. However, because it is a promotion of the early artillery to be set up in order to fire, after they get updated, they still keep it;
* No video after finishing a wonder or wining the game. Just a picture;
* The music and sound effects are awful. They use some famous music but arranged in a awful way, making you feel that the music is random. All you remember about the effects the stupid "Ahhhhhh" shouting of the soldiers and cities. At the same time, it is enjoyable just listening to the music of civ4.
* Ugly interface. Huge round buttons everywhere. And sometimes around ten of them pumped up during one round. It seems that it was intended made for the iPad not PC.
* If you know what happened to the latest release of Supreme Commander or C&C, you might have already guess what happened to our glorious civilization series. They simplified the game. Though they will surely improve the game in future expansions, since this game has NO DEPTH, I can hardly imagine anything better based on this crap.

IMO, this game should be less than 15 bucks. I just feel like get cheated. And I have no idea whether Sid Meier knows that somebody made such a lousy game.

SO SERIOUSLY, DO NOT WASTE YOU MONEY.

I've been a huge fan of Civilization since the first one, and am very disappointed with this one! The gameplay is ponderous, slow, and very boring, all at the same time. It takes forever to build anything, the change to unit stacking means it takes forever to get an army anywhere, and makes it more tedious to attack cities. The changes to the income/research/luxuries system make it more difficult to correct problems when they arise, and the list just goes on.

I bought this game on day of release, sat through one game which consisted of six hours of extreme boredom, and gave the game away. If you're looking for a Civ game, I'd stick with 3 or 4, 5 isn't worth the money.

I was anxiously awaiting the release of this game for months. Ive been playing the Civilization series since the first game came out in 1991. Civilization is the only real video game that I have played throughout most of my life. Every version of the game has been a pleasure to play. I have played Civilization 1 through 4 on pc, Civilization Revolution on Xbox 360 and Civilization Revolution on iPod touch. The PC series of the game has always been more complex and required more time and strategy. I did enjoy playing the xbox and ipod versions but they were much more dumb down and required less skill and time. To my suprise Civilization is much more dumb down just like the xbox and ipod versions. I also did not like the many many changes they made to Civilization 5. I did expect changes to be made but such drastic changes are too extreme. The exclusion of several liked features from civilization 4 like religion, trading knowledge,vassal states, etc. Also the addition of many features which most of us civilization veterans just don't like. One example of this is the city states feature. They could at least let us choose if want this feature or not.

On the brighter side Civilization does like very nice in terms of the graphics, but, also requires a lot of processing power and ram just to run. Also the addition of the game needs steem to play is a very silly move on the game developers side. I also appreciate the new notification system of them game which is fairly nice to have.

I do hope that in the future add ons that they can salvage the game and make up for their short comings. If not I guess we can always go back to good old Civilization 4 and play that for another 5 years until Civilization 6 comes out if that will be any good.

I hope next time the game developer and designers actually care about us, the people that actually play the game and buy the game to play it and not actually just sit there and have wasted our money on a game that used to be great classic.

Update April 2011: After owning this game since it originally came out in September 2010 it has started to grow on me a lot more. They have improved the game quite a bit since released with many patches. I do miss many features from Civilization IV like: spies, religions, being able to trade technologies and different forms of governments. But I also like some of the newer features added in Civilization V like: much improved graphics, notification system, battle enhancements, culture bombs, being able to by tiles, etc. Civilization V is still not a pleasure to play as much as Civilization IV was. With Civilization IV I could play it for hours and hours. Civilization V is still addicting but just not as much as Civ IV.

I'm writing this review as honestly and impartial as I can, from the prospective of someone that has played the civilization franchise for over 13 years.

Plain and simple, they dumbed down and washed out the game to make it more attractive and simple for a broader market. If you are a civilization fan, or enjoyed Civilization 4 for its strategy difficulty, its complexity and micro-management as well as the decission making problems and interaction with the AI, then save your money and don't buy this game, because all that is practically gone.

The game has been so streamlined and simplified that is border line irritating for someone that has played civilzation for the past decade. The cool changes regarding combat system, resource limitations, hexagonal grid, (which are great don't get me wrong) simple go out of the window when you are faced with a game that honestly seems to be geared to children and very casual gamers that don't like to think too much and see more action.

Added to that, is the poor (and by poor I really mean HORRIBLE) shape they shipped the game. I've had BETAs of games that were in a better shape than this. The amount of glitches, bugs, crashes and general game issues in Civilization 5 are just borderline un-acceptable. And to get the cherry on the cake, they force you to install and launch the game using STEAM, which is an online based service. So, doesn't mather if you bought your nice little CDs, you still have to go through Steam to install it, and use it. Now, Steam by itself is another company that has a reputation for very low quality services, and in this case they haven't improved anything. I suggest you go through the forums of Steam or 2k games and see the quantity of people that are days without been able to install or play normally their game just because of issues with Steam, in top of that you get the issues of the game itself which are below BETA quality.

The cool looking graphics, leaders in 3D talking their languages, and the incredible simplification (I won't go into detail because it's a lot) of the game simply screams "geared for children, consoles and toysRus shelves". Our beloved Civilzation strategy game is gone, completely.

So again, if you are new to the series and like a simplified strategy game to start, this is good for you. If you are an old civilization fan, or someone who enjoys strategy games for its complexity and micro-management then save yourself irritation and boredom and go out to have a nice dinner with those $[...] bucks. Firaxis has potentially killed his 18 year old franchise with this.

I received my copy today and just started my first game a few hours ago. I decided to pause it and write my first review on Amazon to share my initial impressions. Let me start off by stating this Civilization is COMPLETELY different from previous versions of Civilization. While this may be problematic for purists, I'm enjoying the game far more than I thought I would. There's definitely a learning curve, as the gameplay differs quite a bit from its predecessors (The Civilopedia is going to be your new best friend). With previous versions, only some of the basics changed (i.e., changes in basic gameplay dynamics or the inclusions and Exclusions of technologies, units, wonders, etc). With this version, quite a bit has changed, making it very dissimilar to previous versions. Civilization 4 and 5 are VASTLY different games. I'd suggest trying the DEMO FIRST before you buy, as the changes may appeal to some and really push away others.

SOME OF WHAT'S DIFFERENT:

- Like every previous version, the graphics have been overhauled and improved. In my opinion, the graphics are absolutely BEAUTIFUL! (Just a quick note: I'm using an overclocked DirectX 11 capable card, so I'm able to use the High detail options along with DirectX 11 with no problem whatsoever, so keep that in mind if you have a system that doesn't have DX11 or a lower than the minimum specifications graphics card, as that will probably make your experience of the graphics differ from mine.)

- Hexagons instead of squares, which allow for more movement and attack options, necessary due to the change in combat and the removal of stackable units. This really doesn't affect the gameplay much, in my opinion it's a minor change that was necessary for this particular version.

- The inclusion of City-States is fantastic, but do require management to sustain the relationships you've developed with them. They can either be fantastic allies (that share resources or units), or a permanent enemy that wants nothing more than to see you wiped off the face of the planet (there's actually a couple of levels in between but those are the two extremes). In my opinion this adds some much needed variety as I've always felt limited by the set number of civilizations in previous versions. Once you've encountered all the other Civs in previous games (generally early on in the game), and developed strategies on how to deal with them, you can implement your strategies, change them slightly as needed and plan your diplomatic long game. With City-States, however, the discovery of a new one can force you to rethink your strategy as they may have access to a resource you desperately need or even be a problematic roadblock if they dislike you and are permanently at war with you. Their inclusion definitely adds a dimension to the diplomatic game. You can't micromanage the City-States, but if you want their help you have to maintain positive relations with them. This is accomplished mostly by furnishing them with gold and units, or even completing missions given by the City-State (i.e., destroy this barbarian encampment for us, or build a road for us, etc.)

- I was a bit worried about the combat system when I heard Civ 5 didn't allow unit stacking. However, in my opinion, the changes to combat are mostly positive. I like that you can't stack units as it requires more thought on how you're going to attack. If you encounter a city that is strategically placed to block off all access except for one hexagon, you're going to find yourself having to funnel your troops through the choke point, placing you at a major strategic disadvantage. In previous versions you could stack a dozen units and overtake the city despite such a bottleneck. In this version you will be required to push units through, and if one is destroyed, you'll have to use movement points to move the unit behind it into position to attack, this means that city placement and unit placement now have greater importance and require more thought. Archers, also, can't just go barreling into a city and shoot up the place... well, they can, but you can't overtake the city with a ranged unit. Instead they function much more effectively as a backup to melee units, making placement 2 hexagons away to bombard while your melee units attack the garrisoned units a much better strategy. For the most part, I think the change in combat is the best change so far.

- You can now buy land around your city to force expansion instead of waiting for your borders to expand on their own, I rather like this as now I can seize up some of those resources that are just outside of my borders instead of having to wait for my borders to grow.

- They've also included Natural Wonders (like the Great Mesa, and other natural formations) which add bonuses to cities built near them.

- How state policies are handled are also very different. Instead of researching a technology to unlock specific policies, you now have to spend culture points to unlock policies (that have different benefits) on an RPG-like policy tree that is under an overall ideology (which is unlocked by research). Some policies can be implemented at the same time, while others are mutually exclusive. I haven't played enough to know how this will affect the overall game, but so far it's interesting.

- The exclusion of religion is a major problem with this game, in my opinion. Historically, in both real life and in Civilization religion has been a major factor in both forming early alliances and in the starting of wars. In the early game, especially, I can feel the absence of state religions in my diplomatic options. I hope they include it in a future expansion pack.

- The exclusion of some of the civilizations and leaders from previous versions bothers me as I did have some favorites. However, if I'm not mistaken, I think there's some DLC's coming that will add additional civilizations, and we will most likely see additional civilizations in future expansions.

- CORRECTION: As Rob points out in the comments section there are additional map options beyond the Random, Continents Archiepelago and Earth options available in the basic screen. These can be found in the Advanced menu during the Pre-Game setup, thanks Rob! That helps quite a bit :)

(Original Release Day Comment: Limited map choices is also, in my opinion, a mistake. There are only a few options, such as Random, Continents, Archipelago, and Earth. I miss the variety available in previous entries.)

- Now... here's one of the most interesting changes. The addition of an in-game modification browser that downloads and auto-installs any mod you select from the browser. Civilization has always had a thriving mod community, but by integrating the new mod browser, people who wouldn't otherwise know to go to mod sites, now have access to the mods in-game. Some of the mods already available include unlocking the Celtic Civilization as well as additional map types. They do include a warning saying that these modifications are not created by Firaxis and may contain viruses (a necessary disclaimer, of course), so pay close attention to the details and if it gives you a link check the source. Just use caution and care when downloading as you would with anything. In my opinion, though, this is a fantastic change. Yes, mods were available before, but this makes it easier than ever to find, install and use; they are broken down into category if you're looking for a specific type of mod.

- Steam... Controversial I know. I'm not a big fan, myself, but that's just my personal preference. To be honest, while it's not my favorite system in the world, it's not really a deal breaker for me either. However, I think their use of steam is mostly for the benefit of the multiplayer experience (I mean besides the obvious copy protection reasons). However, I never really use multiplayer so I can't really comment on the pros and cons of the multiplayer. Apparently, your saved games are put on the Steam Cloud, I'm not entirely sure what that entails but I'm sure someone will elaborate eventually.


I'm giving this 4 out of 5 stars. I think this version has quite a bit of potential, but I think we'll have to wait for some of the expansions to see that potential fully realized. However, I've also felt that way about previous versions. For example, I didn't feel that Civilization 4 really came into its own until Beyond the Sword was released (just my opinion, of course). Will I stop playing Civilization 4? No. I think both games are different enough that they can stand on their own and provide different gaming experiences. Though, for the most part I'm pretty satisfied with the new version (though, some of the new aspects still feel a bit clunky and aren't as streamlined as they could be, but like I mentioned above that might change in future expansions). It's different and I'm going to have to get used to it, but so far I'm enjoying the game.

Keep in mind, my first game is still going, and I'm still pretty early into the game, but these are my initial impressions and I do hope they help anyone who is curious about what's different with this version. Happy World Domination everyone!
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UPDATE: 8 hours into the game, encountered my first game-breaking bug during one of the diplomatic screen animations and lost a lot of my progress. You may want to wait for the first set of patches as others have suggested, or remember to save often as the autosave has been a bit buggy for me.

PATCH RELEASE: First Patch to address crash issues released on Sept. 28th. Hopefully that will take care of some of the crashing issues. It came faster than I expected, but we'll have to wait and see if the issues are mostly fixed or not.
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ANOTHER UPDATE: While it's still fun, I'm starting to find myself questioning whether or not this has the same level of replayability as Civilization 4 for me (at least the Vanilla unmodded version of 5, but then again I guess that's what mods are for, but I do expect the vanilla version to at least hold my interest for a while). I'll know better in a few weeks (after finding the difficulty level and settings that appeal the most to me). Maybe it's getting used to the new interface, but I find my interest lagging a little (though I am still enjoying it, but probably not as much as 4) in a way that it never did with other Civilizations. I would like to drop the fun rating down a star for the time being, but Amazon doesn't seem to be letting me. Again, just a personal opinion, maybe after a few more games I'll have a better idea, but at the moment I'm just not sure I'll play this version as much as I played 4, I guess only time will tell.
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