Sid Meier's Civilization V reviews

This was a game I had been looking forward to for some time, the demo only made it look better, plus the reviews have all been glowing.

The problem with this, as with many PC games is that it seems what would have previously been a beta testing phase has now become a job for those consumers who foolishly buy such a game on or close to release date.

The single player side of things looks pretty good, many improvements in game mechanics and unit design over Civ IV. Where the game really lacks polish is the multiplayer side of things. Now I should add that I love Civ IV multiplayer, it is by far the more tactical way to play the Civilization series. Regrettably 2k and Firaxis seem to have missed the reasons why people play the franchise as all unit animations have been turned off in the multiplayer mode and cannot be turned back on. What this effectively means is that rather than your units marching into battle they teleport from one tile to the next. Combat is even worse as it is resolved as a numbers game. Thus, the animations that featured in Civ III multiplayer have been removed. This seems like a huge step backwards and I find it ruins the multiplayer experience, who wants to be able to use ranged units if you don't see the arrows flying and the individual units falling to your blows? Sure some people may like to speed up the game by turning these off but the fact that this is not an option is a major shortfall.

The second problem with multiplayer is that not only is it not engaging it is extremely unstable with game crashes frequent and often requiring a full reboot.

Another key problem appears to be the developers understanding of the issues and willingness to resolve them. For example every time you open the game the intro movie attempts to play in its entirety (about 5 minutes long). Then if you try and close it by pressing enter it waits 30 seconds and the screen flickers before opening the game (how this escaped testers only adds credence to the theory that the poor mugs who buy the first copies of the game are in fact the testers). The solution 2K proposes, rewrite the opening sequence by actually going into the games files and changing the code. In my mind this is in no way good enough for a new product.

This covers only a portion of my disappointment for this game. Sure if you only want single player I'm sure you will enjoy it a great deal, however if like me you love to sneak in and attack your friends you want to see your units moving and be able to play for more than five minutes without the game crashing.

Either way wait for a few weeks to see if the problems are resolved.

Overall rating

Single Player 4/5 Multiplayer 1/5

Sid Meier's Civili­zation is the poster child of the “just one more turn” game. Many nights have been lost as players say “oh, it's only 1:00am, I can have one more turn”.

This version is no different.

The great things about previous versions have been left alone. Research, exploration, diplomacy, wonders – they are all there.

What is added is a better map (hexes are just better than squares), better city maintenance (cities can work hexes further away that before), simpler information on-screen about resources and resource use., city-states (computer controlled cities that you can bribe or conquer – often they are petty and vindictive) and far better combat.

You can not have multiple military units in the same hex. Ranged units however can bombard enemies more than one hex away. This means you have to accompany melee units with ranged units. No more stacks of tanks. This means that attacking a city on a penninsula is really difficult.

If you like these sorts of games then you already own Civilization V. If you want to get into this sort of gaming then you need to buy this game. Just be prepared to see tens of hours of your life dissappear.

Like most games in the Civ series this release has set a good base to build on. Not as polished or as good as it could be, but the groundwork has been laid for a solid game once some patches and expansions come out. Not to say that it is not a good game without them though

Civilization V is an amazing game. Many things, but manages have changed but the feel of “Civilization” is still here. The whole game have been polished. A bit resource demanding. Try it, love it.

A great quality game, awesome if you have friends, but to truly experience the full game you need to buy all of the DLC's.

Pretty much, see above.

While there are changes from older Civs most players can just jump right in. The hex grid and single units are brilliant improvements to this venerable title…

Civ5 is a great game it just uses steam so unless you have a super fast internet connection dont buy this game. I live in central auckland next to a phone exchange with a 8Mb connection and have been waiting an hour for steam to update still only at 19%. The game will not work without a inital internet connection, once connected it will work in offline mode, but you still need the inital connection and it is slow.

Game crashes all the time.

It seems to have the same addictive Civ gameplay, but it's difficult to get in to when the game can't keep running.

It's certain to get patched eventually, but it's not ready yet.

Damn you Firaxis -now I'm addicted again… Installed the game after work to play the tutorial for a few rounds and next thing I know it's 1am… Way better than Civ4, but the single unit per tile kills my tank zerg strategy, need to keep playing to work out better strategies… Yeah right! ;-)

And the reason is because you have to play through Steam. You can't just buy the game, load it up and play it. You have to download Steam and there is a massive update before you can play it, and then, yes, it does crash all the time. They did the same to Settlers 7. For this reason I won't buy any future versions of either, nor will I buy any game that has to run this way. I paid around $60 – $80 for it new when it first came out, not realising it had to be played this way. For that money I expect to be able to play it, not have it sitting there as a decoration,.

Has strayed too much from what I'd call the civ games and the steam engine is nothing short o frustrating and difficult.

The graphics is certainly improved but other than that its a big dissappointment. Been playing civ since civ 1 and they really went the wrong way this time. AI is poor, and its much harder to quickly see the status of cities, how other leaders feel about you etc. The game play is much slower- seem to spend a lot of time missing turns etc. Check out reviews on amazon.com and you will see.

Everything you want in a civ game. Definate improvement on earlier games

Get ready to lose plenty of time playing this as you keep just one more turn.

@Flint: The menu seems to be used as a loading screen, hence the delay after pressing enter, before the intro disappears. Manually changing the .ini file (not nearly as drastic as doing anything to the code!) to remove the intro just causes a black screen for a while as the game loads.

@Jane: Yes, like almost every PC game these days you do need the internet to activate you copy of Civ5 on Steam but the game works happily offline like all my Steam games.

@Malcolm: Some people do appear to be having trouble with crashes I agree (works fine for me ~20 hours so far) but in terms of patches, there's been two(!) already, automatically applied by stream. Not great in terms of release-readiness, but pretty good response from the developers.

@Everyone else: The game definitely has potential but is still a way off Civ4+expansion­s+mods in terms of features and polish. There are still a number of bugs (e.g. Can't sort cities by science in the economy screen), strange omissions ( why no map trading?) and some features seem to be begging for an expansion (a complete overhaul of diplomacy and city states is probably a given). With all that said, it's been a string of late nights playing just.one.more.turn.

One unit per tile combat is engaging but has its quirks (not having the ability to see where you've moved units to, and what unit is moving where is a huge omission). One unit per tile for non-combat units however, is almost broken from a design perspective and needs to be fixed.

Took me a while to get the hang of the new system, but once I played a couple of short games it was great. No unit stacking was a bit of a bummer, but there is more than enough neat new game mechanics to make up for it.

You know a game does something right when you can spend 7 hours on a tutorial!

This games adds so much anticipation that you always want to say one more turn. By 4am you know that you have to stop just wake up and click “next turn” and keep playing.

Flaws, the game can be repetitive but that can be fixed by buying the expansion pack.

Even so the expansion is still pricey.

Over all 4 stars

Although The Changes Such As The One Resource Equals One Unit Is Quite Annoying And Does Not Help The Strategies I Have Planned This Is The Best In The Series,Improved Graphics And Better Structured As A Whole.To All The Gamers Out There BUY IT!

I didn't expect having to install steam in order for this game to even install on my computer. That's why I bought the boxed version after all! Things didn't go well at all and it took about two hours to get the game up and running. I was mightily angry by that time – particularly since I had to poke holes into my firewall for steam.

Now, having said that, after the first time you can put steam in to offline mode and no net connection will be necessary to play, but Civ V will not run at all without steam running on your computer, online or offline mode. I wrote an email to Firaxis telling them this is the last game of theirs I'm buying. Even got a reply .. Basically the guy said he understands where I am coming from but I will have to live with the New Reality. Wrong, I can vote with my feet and my wallet.

Anyway, on to the actual game. There are significant changes over Civ IV, as others have pointed out the diplomacy is a lot more slick, alas, once you start doing really well you find that your former friends (AI) suddenly publicly denounce you instead of standing by your side. Bah. The Great Person mechanism has been reworked from the ground up and it's become an interesting portion of the game, same as the independent cities. The victory conditions have become more varied and interesting. Farming barbarians has become rather important if you want to get your military units to gather experience and prepare them for possible conflict with other players. Also contributes to culture and finance. Control of resources on the other hand has become somewhat less urgent than it used to be in Civ III and IV. Management of ‘happiness’ and ‘finance’ are much easier, going on non-existent, no more hard decisions, not the tightrope balancing act it used to be previously. And, in the end, I must say that Civ V has become easier to win than the two previous installments. If you want a challenge, get Civ IV BtS and install the Fall from Heaven mod instead. One more thing: I have a high end graphics card. Civ V is the only bit of software that makes the fans on that card spin up after a while. It's demanding on the hardware. I fully expect that, after a dozen or so play-throughs I will revert to Fall from Heaven unless I want to fire up something that isn't really all that challenging – and that is something that I do at times.

Its is well worth a buy. It is a good game and it has its moments when its better than all the others but still have the civ feel to the game which is good

Civilization V makes a good go at allowing players to develop a civilization using a multitude of alternative approaches.

The player starts with a meagre warrior militia and settler and attempts to outdo the other civilizations by attempting lucrative negotiations, alliances, and politically strategic wars.

Micromanagement is fortunately unnecessary on the lower difficulties allowing a complete game within 6 hours game time. The various races exhibit minor advantages over each other encouraging the player to play again with another approach.

Personally I enjoy the exploration of each randomly generated hex based world as much as the game theme itself. The swathes of available and easily accessible mods provides many hours of game time.

The game as it stands is a very playable game for those keen on turn based world domination but is clearly an incrementation from its predecessor and may be a difficult full price investment for those already in possession of Civ IV.

Fabulous game! It's a fabtastic improvement on Civilisation four, without losing the game play aspects you love. Only issue with the game is how slow it runs late game when playing the very large maps.

I have been playing Civilization since the first edition, which was for MS-DOS. That had also been my favourite edition, until this release.

Civilization V is the best strategy game that has ever been created. It is deeply complex, and it supports any sort of scheme you can come up with to win the game.

You can use economy, politics, military force, cultural relevance, and scientific superiority to achieve victory over the other players, which can be computer controlled, or they can be human players.

Random maps, a massive tech tree, many game settings, and complexity gives this game endless replayability and maximum value.

It is well worth buying.

Ever since the original Dos-based Civilization was released in 1991 I've been having very late nights, telling myself, “just one more turn…”. And now, 5 Civs later, it looks like things are not going to change.

As usual, as soon as I heard Civ V was on its way I pre-ordered with the Ape without even waiting for the reviews, and I'd like to start out this review by saying that I wasn't in the least bit disappointed. However, much has changed in the Civ universe, but it has only served to make the game more user-friendly.

The first change you'll notice is the grid is now made up of hexagons, instead of squares. This allows for much easier movement around the board, and also allows you to surround a city with more units, now that your units can't be stacked.

And that, right there, is the second really big change. You can't stack your units anymore. Gone are the days when you could stack 6 or 7 units and roll up to a city with your super-stacked death army! Yes, you now have to play fair. But, then again, so does your enemy, so your cities stand a better chance of survival. :-)

The graphics on Civ V are absolutely superb, and really need a DX11 compatible system to see them at their best. However, even on DX10, it is by far the best-looking game in the series. The audio is also top-notch, and sound great if you have a surround sound system.

If you are new to the whole Civilization phenomena, then this is a good one to start with. This is because the cities are much easier to manage. There used to be myriads of menus you needed to go through in order to micro-manage each city, but, thankfully, has now been overhauled. The city menus are now very streamlined, and really only show what you absolutely need to know. The other stuff is still there if you are convinced you need it, but it's down in sub-menus, out of the way.

I don't have enough space here, to go into the game in detail; it's just so huge. However, if you'd like to try your hand at world domination, stock up on coffee and No-Doze, and break out Civilization V. You'll be hooked in no time. Can anyone say, “Giant Death Robot?”

Just… One… More… Turn…

As far as civ goes this is the best in my opinion, (played from civ 3:( ) The graphics are stunning the gameplay is addictive like narcotics and the leaders speak in their native tongues ( never knew the Aztec's language still existed). By far this is one..no THE Best strategy game on the market stuff starcraft go for civ!

If you can accept that this game will run slowly on even a top end PC gaming system like mine, you can just lose yourself in the complex revolution that is Civ V.

Game mechanics have been completely changed. Graphics are fully immersive and utterly gorgeous. Tiny details show in each unit's members.

New technology, new ways to win and gamer concepts like the Culture Bomb are now built in as functions of great persons (though they are less effective than the way we did it in Civ IV).

This game does need patching but I've lost entire days so far playing solo campaigns.

Destined to be a classic as only each generation of Civ can.

Best in the series, slow if you dont set it up right. But if you do set it up it is has very rich and colourful graphics.

What a fabulous game! The graphics are pretty good compared with previous versions and so is gameplay. You have a choice between what civilisation to play and how fast you want the game to run (counted as turns). As you progress through the various ages from ancient times through to future era, you watch as your civilisation expands and develops; whether its to dominate and rule the world, or reach enlightenment though knowledge, or achieve world peace through diplomacy.

Shame the ingame play doesn't follow up on the story-line in the opening movie sequence where a father has a dream and it his son's duty to fulfill it. I think that would make all the difference between a good game and a fabulous game, which it just falls short of.

Civ V is a game you don't get quickly tired of and can get quite addictive. I like the quotations after each new development and the beautifully illustrated scenes.

Now, my only bugbear with this game is the number of bugs. The game has some serious technical flaws that culminate in the game locking up and crashing, even if your system meets minimum requirements. The Steam system is a prerequisite to run the game, but is a cause of these crashes.

This may however not affect everyone who plays the game, as several factors likely come into play including which version of windows you use, your graphics card and system settings etc.

I also experienced minor graphical aberrations and system lag, even with 4gbs ram at my disposal and no other programs running. A good game with great graphics needs the best available system to run on, with an overall Windows rating of at least 4.0. Hopefully the company is onto these issues and will bring out a patch to fix these compatibility issues.

Otherwise, an awesome game!

Civ 5 is more of a boardgame now then a god game.

By that I mean that now, civ5 is more about learning the rules of the world and finding out the best way to abuse them and win the game as opposed to creating your own world and own rules. Don't get me wrong, if you loved civ4 then you will still enjoy civ5, it just takes a bit of getting used to.

That being said there are a few problems that need to be ironed out.

Firstly, the ai needs work, the ai is said to scale based on difficulty but I have seen very poor strategic decisions made by the ai up to and including prince difficulty. Maybe it gets better after that, no idea.

Multiplayer, while not as bad as everyone makes it out to be, needs polish. An option for the turning on or off unit animations should be added as well as an option to enable or disable simultaneous turns.

I really love the fact that all the different races in the game have different special ablilities that make a huge effect on how the game is played without making any race overpowered.

Also the in game mod browser is simply excellent. I've already picked up a few useful mods the very same day the SDK was released on steam. Given the amount of mods availiable for civ4, I can only imagine the quality mods that people will come up with given time to create them

Overall, good job firaxis. You've changed up the civ franchise without deviating too far from your roots, brought new life to a long running game series without abandoning the hardcore gamers that have supported you since the the original civ and made it that much easier for a first time civ player to get into it.

Cheers!

Took me approx 3 milliseconds to get sucked in by this game. It's a whole new twist of the classic Civ franchise, and a huge step in the right direction! One unit per tile, city states, social policies, multiple uses for gold, realitic cultural growth, finite resources, the list goes on and on and on! Sure, it's a bit rough around the edges, but with Firaxis' track record of patching and add ons it's going to turn into THE Civ to beat all others!! One more turn...........

Initially I had difficulty installing the game due to it requiring steam and an internet connection, such is the way these days but it did mean I could not play it for several days.

The good news is that this is not another Master of Orion 3 but an actually playable game. The combat is different, one unit per hex with ranged units firing two hexes. Combat is more tactical and does not facilitate the massive stack of units in one hex that would probably represent the battle of the somme or normandy landing in real world terms. Espionage is out which is unfortunate as I like the whole police state continent spanning empire with spies that my end games invariably turned into. This was my version of the Utopia project, Utopia with tanks, communism & spies. Happy happy…

Civilization 5 is just another example of why Sid Meier and Firaxis are the leader in turn-based strategy games. The new features (hex maps, no stacking of units) change the game play in good ways, and the art deco motif brings a cohesiveness that might otherwise be lacking in a generally themeless game.

If you're a TBS fan, or just want a change from twitch gaming then buy this, you won't be disappointed.

With so many customizable choices and difficulty levels this Civ will satisfy all… I've played and enjoyed every version since the first Civ around '95, this is near perfection.
Thank's Sid, my free time is owned ;p

Civ 5 is an interesting dilemma to me at the moment. It looks awesome and some of the game play is brilliant in comparison to past versions.

The combat is much simpler and not having to generate massive stacks of units is great.

Not having to worry about pollution is better but I find having happiness affect the Civ as a whole, while probably making more sense, is actually more of a chore than in the past at higher levels you have to spend more of your production focusing on keeping your population happy as it really affects you output otherwise.

Currently I'm having issues with the game crashing at later periods of the game. While my computer is a couple of years old it is still well over the minimum specs quoted for the game. However even playing on low settings on any map larger then small I have massive slow downs and frequent crashes which isn't fun. Hopefully this will be fixed in the future but as it is I am loath to play Civ 5 on anything other than a normal map size.

Over all I gave Civ 5 3/5 stars on a mixture of current game play and the promise it has. If I take into account the bugs I would drop it to 2/5 but they can be fixed. I would probably give it 4/5 without the bugs but at the moment it's hard to see past them.

Over all it's a good game but it's not game as big a step up from Civ 4 as I would have hoped.

I am extremely happy with my purchase of Civ V, and having played the game now for a couple of weeks I feel confident in pointing out it's good features and perhaps a few areas where it lacks.

The change from squares to hexagons mostly goes unnoticed, except when choosing formation when attacking.

The most striking difference to me is the change in combat. With the limitation to one unit per tile and the inclusion of real ranged units combat takes on a whole new life. You have to formulate new strategies and truly diversify your military. I found myself racing around the world laying siege to cities with battleships I massively upgraded over time to have a range outside that of any city's defenses, pummel them into submission and then send in slower ground units to mop up, it was extremely fun. One strange change I wasn't expecting was that now, once sailing is discovered, ground units come with their own transports and so none are required to be built, they just move from the land into the sea automatically.

My few gripes are the touches that I really liked about previous Civs but which are missing in this one. These include Leonard Nimoy's voice! Can't beat it. Wonder movies and the ability to turn a clock on inside the game to keep track of time. And I generally get the feeling that the interface has been dumbed down, it just feels less rich but I can't quite put my finger on all the reasons why.

But overall a great game and well worth the cost!

Still a classic tried and true formula so why change? well, for one because its new, some people wont like the addition of a hex grid movement system but all will love the fact that undefended citys can still hold there own with a ranged barrage onto nearby enemys. Also the addition of better diplomacy and no more unit stacking makes for prodictable play which some will love. Loenard nimroy just keeps on sounding wiser and more comforting with age.

Ignore all the negative “wait for patches” and “crashes all the time” reviews. Unless you have a real PoS PC, you should have no problems. Runs flawlessly on my high end 5870/i7/Windows7 PC as well as my low end GTS450/Dual Core/WindowsXP PC.

This game is an excellent step up from Civilization 4, if you are a Civ fan you will not be disappointed. Fantastic.