|
Written by Oltman on Thursday 04 Nov 2010
If you have never heard of the Civilization series of games, then you must either be new to gaming, or you were one of the guys landing in that bright light outside my window last night. If you have played any previous version, then you have probably only one question on your mind, to which I can answer: Civilization V is not the best strategy game available today. It is not even the best Civilization game today.
No, it might just be the 2nd best game of all time, following closely behind its predecessor, Civilization 4.
In an age where everything is bigger, better, and more detailed with more of everything, Civ 5 is a slimmed down version of the legendary (and best ever Civ) Civilization 4. Saying it is shallow, however, is similar to saying the Grand Canyon is small. It is still a turn-based strategy game where you take a single civilization from its infancy to a world power through either warfare, technological advancement or a utopian society.
The first thing that strikes you about Civilization V that is different to its predecessors is the new hexagonal grid. Previous iterations used a square grid and even though it worked fine, the hexagonal system feels better and allows for more accurate unit movement distances. It is clear that Sid Meier’s previous strategy games like Gettysburg had an influence on Civ V, in the movement department.
The second thing that strikes you is the beautiful graphics, from lush forests to snowcapped mountains, from the rippling oceans to the hazy smoke after a battle. Also, the fog of war is no longer a big black emptiness, it is a nice fluffy cloud layer, making it a little bit more inviting to go exploring.
Let’s get into the gritty details of the game itself. To give you some idea of what the game is about it will be easiest to run through a short play session and describing the details and intricacies of the game. You start off with 2 units, a warrior and settler. Settlers found cities - the hubs of your civilization’s cultural, technological and productive growth. Warriors are the starting block for your military growth. When you settle your first city you need take careful note of the terrain. It needs to be close to a water source, within reach of some goods that you can trade later, and ideally it will be a coastal city to allow further expansion later on.
Cities house your populace, either as scientists, artists or workers. Research is produced by scientists allowing you to grow technologically. It’s all hierarchical, so you will need to research mining so you can mine for coal, before you can research steam engines for the railways. The more scientists you have, the quicker the research becomes. Artists create culture, which in turn allows your civilization to become not just more famous, but actually institute different social policies, like better trading and civil rights.
But the trade-off is that if your city is full of scientists, you won’t have enough food as nobody will work out on the farmlands. Similarly, if you have too many artists, no research will be done. You can either mange your cities down to every detail, or leave it up to the CPU assistant (in the guise of advisors) to make those decisions for you.
Growing your cities can be done by constructing new buildings, each with different benefits. Barracks, for example, will allow new military units to have more experience from the start, where granaries will allow more food production and storage. Deciding early on what sort of leader you want to be is crucial to being a success. As the cities grow, their borders expand, but as we are all human it will never seem to go quickly enough. For the impatient or greedy you can now buy land adjacent to your cities to allow them to expand more quickly. If that land is far away from the city, it’s more expensive, but it may pay off to control some luxury goods early on.
For the first time you also run into city states in the game. These are competing nations, but rather than expanding by building more cities, these states comprise single powerful cities. You can still trade with them, as you can with other nations, but forming alliances is much easier - simply defeat some barbarian troublemakers, or resort to a never failing tactic of bribery. Having them as an ally means that they will provide you with units, depending on their attitude. Military city states will provide military units and so on. But some city states will align with your neighbouring nations, and when you run out of land to expand to, the inevitable will happen… war!
War forms a big part in Civ V, and whoever has the most units will not necessarily win. The different types of units, their placement on different types of terrain and fortification all plays a role. Ranged units perform better when they are on the high ground while some units have bonuses in the woods. This game really earns the ‘strategy’ title in its turn-based strategy genre classification.
In Civ 4 you had the ability to stack units, often ending with a stack of death as your armies amassed more units than you can throw a stick at. These armies would normally have no problem taking on the enemies or their cities. Civ 5 has done away with stacking, and now you need to think about which unit you will send where. To make it more interesting, you don’t have to garrison a unit in a city to defend it. The citizens of the city will defend it themselves. Obviously, a garrisoned unit will make it a lot harder to conquer a city, but it’s no longer required. This also allows you a few turns to call for backup to defend your city when it’s about to be sacked.
Cities have a ranged attack that can shoot enemy units 2 hexes away, and your ranged units can do the same. This will make you think twice about placing your soldiers next to a city until it is ready to be entered. You now also a have a prediction of how a battle will end before you attack. Sending your troops in will show you that you will have a decisive victory or crushing defeat. With fewer units at your disposal thanks to the lack of stacking, this balances out the gameplay quite nicely.
Sacking a city is much harder than before, and as a result you will have fewer cities than in previous games. Controlling these cities is by no means easier and when you add more to the list it can become a headache, so now you can add puppets to conquered cities. These puppets will run the day to day business of the city, but will still provide you with units, food and money. At any time you can take complete control away from these puppets, but this will anger the local populace. The last thing you want is a revolt during a major war.
But not all conflicts need to be resolved with violence. Diplomacy will often be more economically and technologically beneficial, allowing you to form trade and research partnerships. These partnerships are formed with some very strained relationships and when the need to expand arrives you will find that the treaties are not worth the paper they’re written on.
Yes, Civilization V is extremely complex, but as I mentioned earlier it is a little watered down from Civ 4, the pinnacle of the series. The research tree has been trimmed down a bit and you will have fewer options to research through your nation’s existence. You will have fewer cities due to the difficulty in conquering other cities, so there is less management involved. You also have less unit and social policies, which again means less complicated strategies.
Religion has also been completely done away with, and just like the rest of society, it seems as though religion has no place in games either. No more missionary units to spread those religions. No more angry nation because you chose a heathen religion other than their own. You also cannot spy on neighbouring cities and nations - something that added another layer to the experience.
You also have your multiplayer experience to add on top of all of this, and playing with human players also makes it that little bit more unpredictable - you can play online where everyone has 1 turn at the same time, and everyone needs to finish their turn before the next round of turns begin. Setting a time limit of turns is seriously advisable or you could wait hours. The multiplayer lacks the classic “play by email” setting, where your moves are emailed to your friend and he then makes his turn at his own pace, and mails his moves back. Epic fail for leaving this out! No epic games!
The developers also made modding of Civ 5 very easy. The tools are available free of charge and the game includes a very easy mod installation manager, allowing you to browse, download and activate mods from within the game itself. Not long now until we see some Star Trek vs. Star Wars mods, I am sure.
As a whole though, Civilization V is an extremely addictive, well-polished masterpiece. The gameplay is very balanced, and even against some of the hardest AI, you can make a stand and fight it out. You will lose eventually, but they never gain the upper hand in every encounter. Yes, club wielding warriors can still deal a death blow to tanks, but no longer is it so obvious and frustrating where a single archery unit defeats wave after wave of machine gun wielding soldiers.
Also heed this warning about the game’s addictiveness: all players will suffer from a medical condition known as ‘onemoreturnitus.’ This disease will cause you to think “just one more turn” before you go to bed. Yet the one more turn comes around more than once.
Every PC gamer should invest in a decent strategy game. Some will claim it needs to be an action blockbuster like Starcraft II. I say it needs to be the brilliance and depth of Civilization V. With endless gameplay and strategic depth you will not need another game… until the sequel releases in 4 years.
- The good : Amazing replayability, ‘onemoreturnitus’!
- The bad : Less depth than previous edition
- The ugly : A single arrow blowing up a tank will always be ugly
|
Be the first to comment!