Review: Civilization 5

‘Streamlined’ has many different meanings depending on context. In the office, ‘streamlining’ means ‘start sending out your resume’. When referring to a car, ‘streamlined’ can be interpreted roughly as ‘looks like a phallus’. In reading reviews of Civilization V, streamlined is a word that will be seen a lot, and in the context of video games, this means pared-down features and a Cliff’s Notes-type experience.

Maybe it’s not quite fair to compare Civilization V to its most recent predecessor Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword, considering it was an original release plus essentially two expansion packs, but there is a list of features from that game that never made it into Civilization 5.

As a turn-based strategy game in a world ruled by twitch gameplay, Civilization V may sound like an anachronism. Turn-by-turn (and each turn can take up to twenty minutes) you build an empire by founding cities, building armies, developing technologies and engaging in diplomacy. The majority of gameplay and strategic decisions are made in three screens. The city screen lets you choose which buildings and units to construct and how to allocate your citizens to resource gathering tasks. Other civilizations are engaged via the diplomacy screen, where you have the opportunity to sign various agreements or provoke war. Most of the action takes place on the hex-grid global map where units are moved, wars are fought, and cities founded. Your empire achieves victory one of five ways (with science, conquest, diplomacy, culture, or uh… score), a goal which can take over eight hours.

The length of the game adds weight to your strategic decisions. Decisions like whether to ally with a nearby civilization or launch a surprise attack against it in the year 1000BC will have ramifications hundreds of turns later in 1950 AD (not unlike real human history –Greece’s refusal to accept Macedonia calling itself Macedonia dredges up historical arguments over 2000 years old).

Firaxis overhauled several systems for Civ 5. Units can no longer stack and ranged units capable of attacking multiple grid squares away have radically improved warfare. Tactics, rather than the number of units in a stack, make the difference between winning and losing a war. Sure, defeat can turn to victory after decimating an advancing army from afar with well-placed English longbowmen. Fail to train enough melee units to protect valuable siege equipment and a timely flanking attack can grind an offensive to halt. As much as I enjoyed these changes, the AI seems to be a bit confused by them. The AI makes bizarre troop movement decisions from time to time. Hopefullly this will be tweaked in future updates. My biggest complaint about this new system, though, is that I’ll never be able to go back and play the older Civ games; the warfare will be unbearable after having played Civ 5. Culture works differently as well. Much as before, culture will expand your empires borders, but now has the added benefit of allowing you to acquire new traits (similar to the old Civics system, lest you think they actually added any new systems). This system works great and awards culture accumulation more than ever.

Finally, the graphics really are pretty. Some nice aesthetic touches include using clouds for unexplored map (rather than just black) and including up to ten soldier sprites in each unit. These are great changes.

Unfortunately for many sequels these days, rather than fixing problematic aspects of previous games, developers now just cut them out entirely. For example, Bioware’s Mass Effect had a much maligned item management system; Mass Effect 2, amazing game though it was, essentially just did away with the loot system. Bummer. And that is exactly what happened with Civilization V. Espionage? Gone. Religion? Gone. Corporations? Gone. Privateers? Gone. Sure, all of these features had issues, but critically eliminating them gives the player very little to do when not at war. Essentially, workers are the only unit needing orders during peacetime, which gets really boring and repetitive in a hurry with not much to break it up. Further, Firaxis has buried some features such as citizen management, a huge piece of the game’s strategy, and my worry is that players new the series will never even discover these options.

Though I enjoyed the new combat system in Civilization 5, Beyond the Sword remains the most complete Civilization iteration, not its successor. Beyond the Sword still has the most replay value and allows for more finely-tuned grand strategies. The first couple playthroughs of Civilization V are fantastic fun, but it suffers from diminishing returns due to the lack of depth. Ultimately, I feel Civilization V will become a great title once a few expansion packs have come out and added all the features I expected with the initial release. As it stands now, it is a worthy addition to the franchise, but hardly the best.

Civilization 5
PC
	Publisher: 2K Games Developer: Firaxis Genre: Turn Based Strategy Release Date: September 21, 2025 MSRP: $49.99 ESRB Rating: E10+ for Everyone 10+