Sid Meier's Civilization V

Like many other die-hard fans I preordered the game (well, it was Digital Deluxe actually, but it's irrelevant). After initial hype about The. Next. Civ. Game I've played my first five games and guess what - I've won every single one of them! I was like "huh?" I'm in no means a great civ player, in Civ4 BTS I was able to play Emperor 50/50. Here, first game on King, second on Emperor, third on Emperor too, then fourth on Immortal and yup, fifth on Deity! The game plays like the AI isn't even there, just a bunch of random units moving about.
^^^^
That was my first clue that there's something horribly wrong with this one, and after a while it finally dawned on me - Civ5 is not done yet. When you play you can almost feel big gaping holes where the game features should be - diplomacy is a joke with AI ALWAYS accepting deals for nearly exact same amount of money, there's no religion, social policies (replacement for civics) are like skill tree from Diablo 2... City States, the much awaited for improvement over Civ4 are just a money sink now - throw money at them and get what you want - it's clearly written - this one gives you food, that one gives you culture... There's no interesting choices whatsoever, game simply leads you by the hand and don't worry about losing. I could go on, but I don't want to rant.

If you're a civ series fan - skip this one, and wait 6-12 month till they finish the job. Also, in latest interview with Dennis Shirk (one of devs) on Front Towards Gamer he openly admits that fifth part of Civilization series is directed towards mainstream audience - hardcore fans have nothing look for here, after you've played five games you've seen it all and then it's either "next turn, next turn" clicking, or boring skeetshooting contest with braindead AI :(

So if you're in an envious position of NOT spending money on that half-done game stick to it, and come back at least around Christmas (if not Easter) - by then some improvement hopefuly be done.

I'm sorry if I disappointed you, but I can assure you that I'm thoroughly disappointed myself...

Before I start my review I need to begin by saying that I've loved the Civilization series ever since the very first instalment. Civ 2 is probably the game I've devoted the most hours of my life to. Civ 3 was a bit weak, but did bring in several new concepts, such as culture which are now a critical part of the Civ games and were definitely a positive aspect. Civ 4 was in my mind a complete and more polished version of everything before, with enough of the original version's complexity to keep me coming back to it time and again.

Civ 5 is therefore a massive disappointment, and feels like a huge step backwards. For all those complaining about Steam, mine worked perfectly, and I was playing the game within ten minutes of taking the disc out of the box. In a similar vein, it has not crashed on me once, and for those interested my PC is not exactly a high spec machine.

The game's true problems lie in the fact that it has been "dumbed down". There is very little new incorporated into this game that wasn't present in Civ 4, but there is a lot now missing that was present in previous instalments.

A by no means exhaustive list of the many things missing/scaled back are as follows:

- Religion is no longer, which I thought was an excellent addition in Civ 4;

- The technology tree is substantially shortened (more so even than Versions 1&2 I reckon), meaning that most games now follow down the exact same tech path rather than allowing you the flexibility to research different paths;

- There is less focus on building a large empire of many cities, the culture and national wonders system actively forces you down the few and large cities rather than a massive world spanning empire

- The number of units/buildings/wonders has reduced (again giving less choice as what to build and curtailing the variety of the cities within your empire)

- Battles with other empires are much smaller affairs, not being allowed to stack more than one unit in a square limits prolonged combat, but similarly requiring one resource per unit (e.g. you need a second source of iron should you wish to build a second catapult or legion unit), also scales back how many decent units your army can contain.

- You have substantially less control over science/finance/culture than previously, again reducing the complexity.

On the plus side - I must admit that I do like the concept of city states, and the graphics are prettier, but that does not make this game worthy of using the "Civilization" name that its previous incarnations have worked hard to build up the reputation of. I'm also not convinced by the new "natural wonders" concept, I can't really see what they bring to the game.

I can only think that the designers got together when planning this game and came to the conclusion that such a game was far too complex for the average person and therefore to increase its appeal it needed to be simplified - this is such a shame as the whole point of Civiliation, (to me at least) was that it required me to think about strategies and adapt them as the game progressed. By taking out the complexity, the designers have removed the whole point of what this game was about, what it stood for (who said ruling an empire was easy?!) and why I've been playing it for 20 years.

All in all, I am very disappointed. I was quite excited about the launch of Civ 5 - and had spent a good week prior playing on Civ 4 having picked it back up again when I realised I couldn't contain my excitement of in the run upto launch day. Furthermore, unlike other games, I can't re-sell this game on an auction site, or trade in at a games shop as the install code is a one time only.

I consider this my lesson learned for getting far too excited and pre-ordering the game, I will not make this mistake again if Civ 6 is ever produced - which is a shame as I have loved this franchise since its launch 20 years ago. Next time I'll hold back, read the reviews (ignoring the ones whining about Steam) before handing over my hard-earned cash.

After the five gigabyte download and two sessions of playing Civilization 5 (both ended in the game crashing), a sense of déjà vu overwhelmed me; it was the same feeling of bitter disappointment I felt after playing the dumbed down sequel to Supreme Commander. Up until recently, I was still playing Civilization 4 thanks to the modders who were keeping things interesting, but it's going to take some serious modding to put right what's wrong with Civilization 5.

If you're not familiar with the Civilization series, then here's a brief summary: the game involves you, the leader of a budding civilization, trying to expand your empire, build cities and either defend against or conquer your rivals in order to win one of several types of victory. Civilization 5 is quite different to its predecessors, in that it uses hexagonal tiles, rather than square ones for movement. There are also city states who are not competing with you to win the game, but can be conquered, befriended or traded with. Not only that, but your cities are no longer as venerable as they were in previous titles; they can not only resist invasion but shoot back at enemy units from a distance too. There is also a new government system consisting of a list of eight "traits", which act as power-ups, giving you bonuses such as improved defence while fighting on friendly territory, or an increase in worker speed etc. That, unfortunately, is where the changes for the better end.

The new government system requires an accumulation of "culture" points before a particular policy can be chosen. It's not like the previous titles, where changing government in response to changing needs or technologies was simply a matter of revolution. One you've chosen a set of policies in Civ 5, there's no going back. What's more, you have no idea what policies your opponents have chosen, nor do they seem to react in any way to the ones you've chosen. A religiously orientated civilization did not seem to have any distain for my rationalistic one. A freedom-orientated civilization does not seem to react any differently to an autocratic one. There's no religion or espionage in this game, which is shame, because those made things interesting and more realistic.

When we get to the subject of unit building and game mechanics, things go from bad to worse. Units take too long to build; by the time you've built them, they're usually obsolete. City improvements also take too long to build; at one point, it was quicker for me to build wonders of the world than it was to build city improvements. Strategic resources are no longer unlimited; each one you control will only support a certain number of specialist units, which wouldn't be so bad if the requirements for said units were logical.
Want to build some knights? You need iron. Okay, that makes sense.
Want to build a tank division? You just need oil (but not iron, apparently).
Want to build a gas-guzzling jet fighter? You just need aluminium (but not oil, unlike the fighter unit it rendered obsolete).
What about a nuclear submarine? You obviously need uranium, right? Wrong! You need aluminium. No, I don't get it either.
The rocket artillery unit needs aluminium, whereas the SAM battery, which is virtually identical in form, doesn't.
It doesn't help that the instruction manual is wrong, either; it claims you need iron to build anti-aircraft guns, but no such requirement was found in the game. Everything except aluminium is strategically useless towards the end of the game. These are just bad gaming mechanics.

And once you've managed to build your units, the silliness continues:
- Men with bows can perform a "ranged attack" from two squares away, while tanks and men with rifles can't.
- The most powerful unit in the game is called the "giant death robot". Was this game made for adults or children?
- You are only allowed to have a single unit on a hexagon at any one time. This sounded like a good idea in theory, but in practice, it's a bit of nuisance, especially when you're planning a mass attack and you're trying to reposition your troops, in which case it's like playing one of those sliding puzzles with the one square missing.
- An easily exploitable bug allows your units to gain experience points (and thus upgrades) by just putting them in range of an enemy city and letting the enemy blast away at it, retreating, healing, and then repeating the process; a unit gains experience points every time its attacked, whereas a city doesn't.

In addition, there were also numerous graphical glitches, such as the time I built a great engineer - only to see a featureless magenta box where the "congratulations" picture should have been, or the list of strategic resources, located at the top of the screen, which expands as you gather them, eventually overlapping the year and turn number to the point where you can hardly read either. The rivers looks awful too; they're just featureless, motionless, monochrome blue strips meandering into the sea. But having said that, the graphics, where non-glitchy were okay, full of Nick Gaetano style artwork.

So there we have it. If you're new to the series, you'll probably be blow away by this game, but to be honest, you'd be better off sticking with Civilization 4. As it is, Civilization 5 is disappointing and desperately in need of modding.