Community Review: Civilization V

What’s better than one person doing a review? A whole community! Civilization V is out, and we’d like to know what you think. Considering picking it up? This is the thread you need to see. Already played it? We need your thoughts below!

Civilization V takes a long time to play. Even on its Quick setting, a singleplayer game will easily take up an entire night. But now that we’ve had a weekend and a bit to at least get some first impressions on it, we want to hear what you think.

As I said on 5 inch Floppy, my early Civ days helped form one of my gaming pet peeves: die rolls.

When an archer attacks your fortified city, with walls, with a knight inside, you shouldn’t lose. If the British longbowmen at Agincourt can consider themselves lucky, then that one in-game archer should buy himself a lottery ticket.

But the combat system has been thrown out. Cities can defend themselves now. And among many other changes, religion has been replaced with a cultural system that more resembles a tech tree, allowing you to pick bonuses that compliment your playstyle.

To some, these changes are no-brainers. They needed to happen, and are a much better alternative to the religion race we had before. But some may think that the revamping of Civ’s culture system, and overhaul of its combat system, makes it very un-Civ.

I found the hexagonal system to work very well with only having one military unit per tile. It emphasised positioning more, and on maps where I started near a chokepoint, there was a very clear line of battle. My empire’s border existed militarily, as well as diplomatically and culturally.

But even after bumping up the difficulty, I couldn’t enjoy taking on the AI. It would still make silly decisions, like launching a massive offensive doomed to fail within the first turn. And after bringing a friend in to play an empire that the AI had previously been commanding, there was strong evidence that the AI is a dirty, rotten cheater.

So right now I’m in the situation where I’d rather play multiplayer, but gathering people for the amount of time it takes to play a game of Civ is a hard task. What are everyone’s experiences getting people together for this? How do you manage the slow crawl of turns in late-game?

Do you think the franchise has changed for the better? Or has it changed so much it should have been a spin-off?

Civilization games have always had a theme of balance – does the new culture system genuinely allow you to play the way you want?

And of course, the question you’re asked in every Community Review: would you recommend it to your fellow Kotakuers?

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