Civilization V: Review

With a franchise as revered and successful as Civilization, each release will evidently have very high expectations to live up to. After showing off all the new features and changes in the latest addition to the series, Firaxis had to make a fantastic game to live up to the desires of their fans. My impressions so far are that they have produced an incredible strategy game that manages to make changes to improve the gameplay while sticking close to what makes the series so great.

The new interface is very sleek and well-designed. Notifications and tasks queue up above the Next Turn button in an easy to see manner, and events with specific locations (barbarian camps discovered, unit promotions, etc.) allow you to click on the icon to be taken to the location of the event. This makes each turn very manageable, allowing you to progress through tasks you need to perform before ending your turn easily.

The interface also showcases some of the changes to the game. Your strategic resources, such as iron and horses, are displayed along the top of the screen, along with your culture, happiness, and gold. The amount of gold you have is much more important in Civilization 5, as it is used to purchase new tiles, units and buildings. While cities will expand naturally and still produce units and buildings, you will want to use gold to get new cities up and running, or build a large army in a short amount of time. Making gold a much more useful resource is an important change that makes improving your economy vital to your developing civilization.

Culture as a resource is a much more controversial change. While the policy trees and culture is a big change from the traditional choice of governments (such as the 5 different types of policies in Civilization 4), I think that change is a unique and interesting way of approaching government. Early game decisions continue to heavily influence your civilization in the late game, especially if you invest in the Piety tree (preventing you from adopting policies in the Rationalism tree). You have to balance immediate returns with long-term benefits of your policies, adding a new layer of strategy to the game.

While some have complained that the animated leaders of AI civilizations are secretive about their feelings, I have found that you can get a good sense for who is friendly towards you and who hates your guts. The removal of religions makes diplomacy more straightforward, as you don’t have civilizations that absolutely hate you for no reason other than the fact that you have, “Fallen under the sway of a heathen religion.” City states are a nice addition to the diplomatic world, as you can befriend some quickly by destroying barbarian camps or getting resources for them (among other quests). You have to think twice before going after city states, as your military actions can have widespread consequences (other civilizations tend to look down on your warmongering). The ability to wage war through other civilizations or city states is a surprising new feature, but donating units to a war against one of your rivals is a sneaky way to weaken or destroy your enemies.

The combat is much more strategic now that you can’t stack your units. Protecting your ranged units as they bombard cities is very important, and having a good variety of troops for different situations is even more useful. City defenses allow you (and other civilizations) to protect cities without garrisons of military units. Making placement of units far more important prevents you from rushing in with a huge stack of units to wipe out your opponents (and them from doing the same).

The game feels a little slow, but after a short time with the game it begins to feel normal. Firaxis has delivered a fantastic addition to the series, making important changes to improve the game while staying true to what makes the series so great. It is worth picking up for anyone who enjoys turn based strategy games, but it likely won’t change your opinion if you don’t enjoy them in the first place.