Civilization 5: Review

This Friday saw the release of Civilization 5 and, not unexpectedly, I was totally un-contactable for the entirety of Friday night as the legions of the Roman Empire swept across the globe, viciously oppressing all those unlucky enough to stand in their way. Like its predecessors, Civ 5 has the uncanny effect of making time simply disappear as the user spends hour after hour slowly growing their burgeoning civilization in a bid to either conquer the world, blast off into space, build the Utopia project or by building and controlling the United Nations.

In order to write this review I completed a normal game on regular difficulty. My game took 10 hours, 2 bottles of cheap booze and a fuck-tonne of cigarettes.

Civ 5 for me is a halfway house between Civ4 and Civ Revolution, the simplified version of Civilization for the consoles, iPod, iPhone and iPad. I say this because, while the game has definitely been streamlined in comparison to Civ 4, it still has more depth and plays on a larger scale to “Civ Rev”.

So, what’s different? Well, let’s first talk about the graphics. If your PC has the hardware, Civ 5 can be amped up to stupendous beauty mode. The game is fairly scalable though, even offering the user the opportunity to use Direct x9 for some unfathomable reason.

In terms of game-play, several key changes have been made:

Hexagons! – Yes, the board tiles are now hexagons, meaning more sides are exposed and units can move in more directions. The importance of this will become clear further down the list.

City States – In addition to the other civilizations on the map, a second type of AI has been added to the game. City states begin as neutral cities that do not expand and are not trying to win the game. Instead, they set you mini quests to complete. They can be bribed into helping you in war or commerce and they can, of course, be captured – although this might have diplomatic repercussions.

You may no longer stack units – Single units are now built as squads of soldiers with health bars and experience points. Squads no longer fight to the death if evenly matched, a squad may engage an enemy multiple times before one of them is destroyed. Also, very annoyingly, your squads can’t move through an occupied tile, which can make moving your army across the board extremely frustrating at times, especially when attacking a city. The hexagon tiles do make this slightly less of a disadvantage though.

Cities now defend themselves – I personally don’t like this mechanic. Cities are now given a defence rating based on their size and what defensive buildings have been built. They get one strike at any enemy within their range via catapults. The problem with this is that cities can fall very easily. A problem I always had with Civ 4 was that it was nearly impossible to take cities without incurring massive losses – but this mechanic possibly swings too much the other way.

Sea transport units have been removed from the game – units instead gain an amphibious ability which magically turns them into a boat when they need to cross a water tile.

Siege units and some ranged units can now fire over multiple tiles – This is an excellent addition, making artillery viable for the first time ever in a Civ game. It is now possible to set-up a trebuchet behind a row of melee units and pound the enemy into submission. Very useful for holding key choke points on the map.

My crossbow defeats your tank! – Not any more. Thankfully, this is no longer possible. FUCK YEAH!

Religion? Gone! – Although you can build churches and temples, the whole mechanic of discovering religions and manipulating the AI through religion and missionaries is gone. There definitely seems to be more of a PVP focus in Civ 5 so I can understand this move, as religion didn’t really have any effect on a human opponent in Civ 4.

Culture Capture – I still haven’t managed to convert a city to my side through culture. I’m not sure if it is even possible anymore. The culture mechanic has been changed significantly now. A player no longer adopts a type of rule, like monarchy or despotism, instead they adopt social policies which gradually unlock different culture bonuses over time. The social policies look a lot like skill trees from MMOs. A Player may mix and match their policies to create potentially hundreds of different combinations of bonuses for their Civilization.

Pay For Your Influence – The area of influence generated by a city still grows over time depending on the familiar limiting factors of food, production and luxury resources. New the player can further extend their influence by spending gold on adjacent tiles. This will no doubt be crucial to rush play in PVP.

In summary – I’m 28 year old male and as such I am becoming more and more resistant to change. I greet re-boots, remakes and improvements to my old favourite games with ever increasing grumpiness and suspicion. I think the changes to Civ 5 (especially to units and combat) are controversial but not unforgivable and, although it is now a lot easier to lose your cities to invading hordes, the changes to combat make the game much quicker and emphasise the need to counter units properly. Civilization 5 is an excellent addition to the series and if you spend the time to learn the new play mechanics you will be rewarded with a more streamlined game that maintains all the charm and deviousness of the original.

Let them eat WAR!