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Civ V Review: Reforged Into A Masterpiece
firefly2003
Member UncommonPosts: 2,527
Comparing Civilization V to contemporary strategy games is entirely pointless. Imagine if Modern Warfare had come out alongside Quake II. There is simply nothing comparable out there, not least because the strategy genre has become the province of indie developers and niche publishers. Civ V is a towering, AAA release with millions of dollars worth of polish in an era where questionably localized Russian titles are all that strategy gamers have to tide them over for months at a time. It's also a delightfully fresh take on a formula that has been slowly iterated on for more than two decades.
The heart of the Civilization fantasy is unchanged. You still manage cities, developing them from rude collections of mud huts into gleaming modern metropolises. Vast armies and armadas are again at your command, waging global war for conquest, defense, or resources with everything from spears to nukes. The land must still be worked, the primordial wilderness tamed through your people’s sweat and blood. Your ultimate goal is yours to choose: Diplomatically unite the people of the world under your benign leadership, launch a viable colony ship into outer space, conquer the globe through force of arms, or create a glorious utopia through enlightened civility.
Civ V's genius lies in the way that Firaxis has aggressively chopped the number of decisions that a player has to make during the course of a game while taking away almost none of the meaningful ones. As a hardcore Civ player, I appreciate some of these ancillary aspects of the design, but the removal of all the fat is unquestionably Civ V's greatest accomplishment.
A perfect example of this elegance of design is the new concept of "embarking" units and removal of transport ships. In previous games, you'd build separate transport units, load your armies onto them, and send them across the ocean to land on foreign shores. As your military got larger, managing this became extremely cumbersome. The concept of land units being vulnerable and slow while embarked – the entire point of transport units – is perfectly replicated by Civ V's system of allowing armies to move across water on their own, albeit slowly and defenselessly.
Firaxis applied this sort of critical examination to legacy systems across the board. Some remained nearly unchanged, such as constructing improvements like farms and windmills on your land. Others were scrapped entirely, like Civ IV's religion system. Many others survived in altered forms, and I embrace the changes without exception. This is by far the most approachable game in the series, even edging out the stripped-down console entry Civilization Revolution, but Civ V's remarkable gains in accessibility have not come at the cost of strategic depth.
The major changes to the Civ formula may be hard for veterans to accept at first, but most will quickly realize that they haven't lost any control over their empire's development. The change to research and revenue looks drastic on the surface, but your input has merely been moved from the commerce allocation slider to managing citizens and specialists within individual cities. Religion's old role in spreading culture and affecting diplomacy is ably filled by the newly expanded role of gold, and creating a trading/financial powerhouse civilization is finally a viable path to victory. And as for combat…swallow your pride and your love for the old stack of doom, ladies and gentlemen, because the one-unit-per-tile new model is infinitely superior in tactical and strategic options while decimating the amount of time it takes to manage an active war.
The design focus on gold and resources is a fantastic approach that lends a lot of texture to diplomacy and opens up new possibilities for non-violent conflict – but it's a pain in the rear to fully take advantage of because the interface lacks a good way to track your incoming and outgoing resources and gold. Every time I want to sell off some cotton to Montezuma, for instance, I have to manually count how many I'm collecting myself, how much I'm getting in trade from other nations, and how many I'm already trading away. Stupid. Also, one specific early-game strategem nearly guarantees a win on its own: using the Great Library's free research advance to net the expensive Civil Service technology can double your growth rate, putting every other empire at a massive disadvantage.
Multiplayer is functional, but the only way I suggest spending any time with it is with friends playing cooperatively against the AI. For a number of reasons, including the Civil Service slingshot above, Civ V's design does not lend itself well to cutthroat human-versus-human play. That said, I didn't come across any technical issues that prevent playing with friends from being enjoyable.
I encourage everyone, from strategy newbs who spend most of their time in online FPS matches to grognards who could teach me a thing or two about the optimal distribution of forces in hex-based combat, to give Civilization V a shot. As a hardcore strategy gamer who is no stranger to planning out my empire's production dozens of turns in advance, I've already turned to Civ V for my world-conquering needs – but at the same time, if anything is going to rear a new generation of strategy gamers like the very first Civilization did for me, it's this.
Comments
Sounds great, thanks for sharing it.
I will get my copy somewhere next week, I am not certain but I think Sweden will get theirs a few days after NA.
I always liked CIV but it is great that they changed some things, or there would be little point for a new game.
i've already preordered!!!
this game delivers more than any mmo atm.
Why do people always compare very different games with eachother?
They are different kinds of games. CIV would make an interesting MMO actually....
I will be getting it for sure. You all should also check this game out if you a fan of gams like Civ. Totally awesome!
http://dawnofdiscoverygame.us.ubi.com/pc/
Been a fan of the Civ games since Civ2. None of the subsequent versions have ever disappointed me so I'm really looking forward to Civ5.
Welcome back Sid!
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
Thx for sharing! A must buy game!
The day spear men won't be able to take down tanks in a CiV game is when I will consider buying it again. When it happened for me in CiV 4 I shelved it indefinitely.
So you quit playing because one of your tanks got killed by a spearman? Obviously you must of been crushing the nation you were at war with if they had spearmean and you had tanks - why get all bent out of shape over one tank? If you are the type of person who quits because of that, I'm glad you will pass on this game - I hate players who quit in multiplayer because thier sorry excuse of a warrior rush failed.
You missed the point completely and I'm not surprised by that at all
I was wondering, is this going to be a midnight release? I am hoping to play it tonight haha
East Carolina University, Computer Science BS, 2011
--------------------
Current game: DAOC
Games played and quit: L2, PlanetSide, RF Online, GuildWars, SWG, COH/COV, Vanguard, LOTRO, WoW, WW2 Online, FFXI, Auto-Assault, EVE Online, ShadowBane, RYL, Rappelz, Last Chaos, Myst Online, POTBS, EQ2, Warhammer Online, AoC, Aion, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, Allods, Darkfall.
Waiting on: Earthrise
Names: Citio, Goldie, Sportacus
My problem with other Civ games is its so fun at the beginning, but they are so predictable. I play them for about a week or two, then I'm just bored of it. I'll probably still buy it, because I do love me some Civ.
Agree:P
Losing a tank is not the point. Games, and how they play need to make sense, or whats the point? Like losing a jet to a group of archers:P Some things just ruin a game to some people, and losing a tank to a group of men carrying spears is one of them.
I really did not like Civ 4, up through 3 i liked. Will wait and play a demo before i decide on Civ 5 to see if it had any things i didnt like like 4 did.
ALready got it pre-loading through Steam!!! will be playing soon.
Spearmen killing a tank is to much of an immersion breaker? I guess the Vietnam war never happened because that is the analogy I would use.
East Carolina University, Computer Science BS, 2011
--------------------
Current game: DAOC
Games played and quit: L2, PlanetSide, RF Online, GuildWars, SWG, COH/COV, Vanguard, LOTRO, WoW, WW2 Online, FFXI, Auto-Assault, EVE Online, ShadowBane, RYL, Rappelz, Last Chaos, Myst Online, POTBS, EQ2, Warhammer Online, AoC, Aion, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, Allods, Darkfall.
Waiting on: Earthrise
Names: Citio, Goldie, Sportacus
Another analogy that makes as much sense as yours would be trying to break into fort knox with a tooth pick which I personally think fits better.
It's good all the fans can look past it. I'm just not one of them
Better get your credit card ready for they have already said this will not happen.
Last I looked at Vietnam War documentaries, the Vietcong had AK's and such. And North Vietnam had geared up the army and air force with fairly modern equipment, with a little bit of support from the Soviet Union. They had MiGs, tanks, SAM batteries, etc. That analogy doesn't work for the Vietnam War.
The closest, historical thing I can think of is the British defeat at Iswandlwana where their column was defeated by a large Zulu army. The biggest example I can think of where a modern and proficient military force was beaten by a vastly technologically inferior (but proficient warriors) force. Of course, this pissed off the Brits, so they came back again...
"I have only two out of my company and 20 out of some other company. We need support, but it is almost suicide to try to get it here as we are swept by machine gun fire and a constant barrage is on us. I have no one on my left and only a few on my right. I will hold." (First Lieutenant Clifton B. Cates, US Marine Corps, Soissons, 19 July 1918)
You'll be happy they borrowed a lot of the combat mechanics of Panzer General in this game. Units of lower tech will be much less effective if at all against higher tech units. Mostly because what is called 6 dmg in the stone age, is less damage then what is called 6 dmg in the high tech world. Meaning no tanks being killed by spear wielding men.
So far I am having a field day playing the Chinese. They are simply amazing! They had so many opportunities to take over larger territories. Ironically I started to realize why they decided to isolate themselves. At the time they were capable of further expansion they were culturally unable to cope with themselves. I'm pushing to see how long I can keep there Golden Age of exploration going... tough though...
Love me some CIV, these are games I can get lost in playing...very dangerous to my spare time, it would eat it up.
Too bad I have some computer problems, there will be no game playing in the near future for me.
That's a pretty poor analogy then since the viets actually made good use of gunpowder and high explosives. And no spear-wielding primitive ever took down an armored unit, unless their "spear" was otherwise known as a recoiless rifle.
If you think the American army could never lose a tank by freak accident (It's belts jamming or breaking as they are attacked, the tank gun exploding when they fired, or their crew outside it drinking coffee or whatever) if they attacked Papua New Guinea or some other nature people, then I really think reality is not for you.
Theres also a review on Gamespy, also by a fan it seems but he is not completely convinced it's all improvements. He considers the abuse of city states a gamebreaker.
http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/sid-meiers-civilization-v/1122539p1.html
Thanks for the graphic. It has me really excited about a game I was already looking forward to.
No, I'm with you. It didn't stop me from playing though but man did it really piss me off. Anybody else in the thread feel like telling people if they like it? How playable is it. I looked on Amazon and it got some seriously shitty reviews. In fact it only has 2 stars right now. Out of the 19 reviews of it 14 gave it 1 star and only 3 gave it 5 stars.
In America I have bad teeth. If I lived in England my teeth would be perfect.
Firefly you really need to state up front that you are quoting someone. I started reading that and thinking wow this Civ must be great! Then I looked down and saw it was Game Informer... aka the most corrupt game magazine ever to exist. Civ 5 must have bought ad space, because thats all Game Informer ever promotes. You just can't trust their reviews at all.
I am a huge fan of civilization series, and bought every civ including the one from 1991. Civ 5 requires STEAM to be installed on your computer, no kidding. You can't launch the game without STEAM. You forgot to mention that in your original post.
That is something I am not gonna tolerate. I aint putting that malware on my harddisk. And then what if steam ceases to exist in 2 years? Will there be anyone in 2k to lift up that DRM protection, so we could play the game without steam? No sorry, I'll stick to Civ 1-4.
REALITY CHECK