Review: Civilization V: Gods & Kings

[Mekon]

I was simply making a connection between the publisher's pricing then and now, when there weren't options. Jezz mate, you seem more irritated then I do about his!

Irritated? Hardly. Are you?

I'm just bemused and unclear as to what point you are trying to make in raising Civ V's pricing (nevermind the availability of cd-key purchasing sites). At the end of the day, a review at least in part is used to informing purchasing decision. Cost seems important to this (you clearly agree, given repeated mention of the price). It just seems that a regional pricing variation caveat would be pertinent, given that it is an ongoing theme on this site.

With regards to religion and the implementation thereof, it's clearly a perception issue. For me Civ games are about min/maxing - it's rather key to the franchise, IMO. As such, ignoring a subsystem that has a fair breadth of opportunities for doing such seems off-kilter.

You might as well argue that there is no point choosing a starting civ, just pick at random, because they're all the same. I concur, there isn't any overwhelming advantage... but What other feature of the game (or any previous iterations of the franchise) provide overwhelming advantages? Wouldn't that be somewhat game-breaking?

[James Pinnell]

Irritated? Hardly. Are you? I'm just bemused and unclear as to what point you are trying to make in raising Civ V's pricing. At the end of the day, a review at least in part if used to informing purchasing decision. Cost seems important to this (you clearly agree, given repeated mention of the price). It just seems that a regional pricing variation caveat would be pertinent, given that it is an ongoing theme on this site.

We're going in complete circles on this one, so let's just both let it go.

With regards to religion and the implementation thereof, it's clearly a perception issue. For me Civ games are about min/maxing - it's rather key to the franchise, IMO. As such, ignoring a subsystem that has a fair breadth of opportunities for doing such seems off-kilter.

I don't think Civ is about min/maxing, I personally think it's about tactics. Using influence and diplomacy to trick opponents into distrusting one another. Creating a faux army you will never use to keep combat orientated civs at bay. Taking advantage of cultural assets to win unconventional victories.

Everyone plays the game differently, and I based my review on how religion impacted my play. It didn't, at all. Espionage *did*, however, because it allowed me to use information gathered to socially engineer other civs to distrust each other, or to steal technologies I could use to furthur my cause.

Getting +20% to combat from your religion or +1 to happiness is just another arbitrary figure, like the broken promotion system, that never truely bares fruit IMHO. The game even shows you how to flood cities with happiness generating buildings when it dips a little low.

You might as well argue that there is no point choosing a starting civ, just pick at random, because they're all the same. I concur, there isn't any overwhelming advantage... but What other feature of the game (or any previous iterations of the franchise) provide overwhelming advantages? Wouldn't that be somewhat game-breaking?

Civ bonuses rarely make any true difference outside of the first low-mid sections of the game. By the time you're in the thick of it, the real advantage is your skill at balancing - balancing your army strength, balancing your diplomatic skills, balancing your maintainence costs. I think very few people sit there agonising over their stacked bonuses, since you're basically flooded with them after the first hour of play.

Everyone plays Civ differently, and I found that Civ V, and this expansion, never capitalised on the true potential of a next generation enhancement to the series. Diplomacy is one of the most amazing parts of Civ, and it's a shame its still quite tepid and broken - although I will admit it's significantly better in this expansion.

[Slipoch]

I would have to disagree with the reviewer's comments re: the Civ V overall game.

I have been played every civ game since it launched, even those terrible ones that didn't have sid meir on board.

I find that Civ V is a different beast, yes it had some terrible bugs on release, and a massive amount of multiplayer issues that until recently had not been solved (some still remain) and tpo be honest it was the same in previous versions. But you have to think far more tactically, go for a cultural victory and you may leave yourself open to attack by a more advanced military et al. You can't just stack 5 billion units on a single tile that is completely defended. Flanking and associated moves are now a bit harder to pull off, but more devestating when you do. Attacking cities is far more difficult and you cannot usually just use one type of unit to do so.

Research is more balanced and a bit harder to run past all the AI players on higher difficulties, no more firing nukes while everyone else is on bows and arrows (although I must admit that was kinda fun)

I find that civ V is the most tactical of the lot, no more just mass producing a stacked army, you have to think about positioning and what is on your flanks when running an army.
You also have to be reasonably careful of what cities you take over/attack with city states and diplomacy.

Overall the diplomacy is pretty haphazard but has been improved a lot, is a lot more consistent now, and lets face it was quite simplistic and broken in the previous versions of civ until the 2nd major update/expansion came out.

As for simplicity? well you can still micro manage every city to the same degree you could originally, it just doesn't put that option right in front of you (off to the side , I find this to be the case with most of the options I initially thought were missing from the game.

As for linear play style, well civ has never pushed you into a particular play style, some have been much easier than others both now and in the past. the previous civ games were quite easy to win when you went with a domination victory, now it is a lot harder and you have to balance your forces more, I have seen more scientific victories or diplomatic (UN) victories than any other in the new version of civ, the tech tree is reasonable and seems to function the same (although a bit smaller) than previous versions.

I play with a few mates who all have very different play styles, I usually go for cultural victory but I have found my style suits a UN victory much easier. I have a friend who is always a scientific victory and another who goes for total domination, yet another is usually cultural. But switching play styles isn't very hard and often happens mid game.

Now onto the addon:
It's basically a new version of culture, boosts that can feed you goodies and weaken your enemies, spies are ok, but I would have enjoyed more flexibility & choice with what they can do, like being able to sabotage buildings etc.

I have tried the Austrians and benefited from using particular social and religious tactics, just marrying into city states is kind of awesome as you can keep your expansion up in the beginning against the comp when playing on immortal.
You can also seriously screw up human players who rely on certain benefits from city states to gain momentum. It does change the way you expand your empire or even block an enemy from gaining a UN victory (marry all his city states so it does have an impact on your overall gameplay and strategies in some cases. You can also use it to get a strategic city right near a player you may want to accidentally trip over and attack.

The religion aspect is a little under-developed, but still you'll find yourself swearing when someone has all but destroyed your faith and you cannot develop as fast as they can, early games with first contact will find great prophets and missionaries wandering around causing trouble, they can also end up starting wars as comp civ's (and humans) do not like being converted en-masse.


Overall I find it is a decent expansion for $26 (and yes I bought my copy of vanilla from a cd key site that I had heard of years before civ came out; no, no issues) for $50 well if you like civ V it's pretty good, if you prefer the old civ IV then don't bother until it drops in price.

Just my 2 cents but the review did not seem at all balanced or objective, it seemed more like a whinge about why it didn't change civ V back to civ IV (or implement the espionage and religeon the same way) and very little focus on the added features (although light) that the expansion provides.

Regards,
Slipoch

[Mekon]

I based my review on how religion impacted my play. It didn't, at all. Espionage *did*, however, because it allowed me to use information gathered to socially engineer other civs to distrust each other, or to steal technologies I could use to furthur my cause.

Hehe. I was going to make a point earlier at how lacklustre I found the Espionage side of things.... clearly we *do* play differently.

Idle curiosity - what is you usual victory path? I most often end up with a Science victory (space race), sometimes a Cultural victory (if I'm playing a small empire) less often a Time victory (overall score) and only rarely a Diplomatic victory (UN vote). I don't think I've ever bothered with a Domination victory. I clearly play a turtle game, cranking science and wonders. I'll only declare war if I can get an easy victory and will often lose my pants taking an easy cease-fire, just to proceed with progressive development.

Back to espionage, though - perhaps I was missing something, but the only activity I could perform against rival civs was stealing tech (which given how much of a lead I usually have, is fairly pointless). I most practically used my spies to flip city states. Is that all they do (other than obviously allowing you to check out rival cities via surveillance)?

Getting +20% to combat from your religion or +1 to happiness is just another arbitrary figure, like the broken promotion system, that never truely bares fruit IMHO. The game even shows you how to flood cities with happiness generating buildings when it dips a little low.

Practical examples: I had a desert bound city that kept flipping to starvation when it changed religion as it lost the food bonus from my religion. Happiness is another facet that depends on play style - I like large empires, making happiness a difficult one to manage and cultural development rather glacial.

Civ bonuses rarely make any true difference outside of the first low-mid sections of the game. By the time you're in the thick of it, the real advantage is your skill at balancing - balancing your army strength, balancing your diplomatic skills, balancing your maintainence costs. I think very few people sit there agonising over their stacked bonuses, since you're basically flooded with them after the first hour of play.

Again, perhaps it is a play style thing, but several civ abilities reinforce playstyles in not insignificant ways, throughout the game:

The Glory of Rome (Rome): +25% production towards any buildings that already exist in the Capital. this is a huge increase in production speed for large empires
Siberian Riches (Russia): Strategic Resources provide +1 Production, and Horse, Iron and Uranium Resources provide double quantity. excellent if you're limited in available iron/uranium
Hellenic League (Greece): City-State influence degrades at half and recovers and twice the normal rate. Excellent if you're planning on juggling city state tributes
Monument Builders (Egypt): +20% production towards Wonder construction. What can I say, I love crankign the wonders out
Scholars of the Jade Hall (Korea): +2 science for all specialists and for all Great Person tile improvements. Receive a tech boost each time a scientific building/Wonder is built in the Korean capital. Again, fits well my my Wonder whoring

Just for some examples, plenty more depending on how you approach the game.

Diplomacy is one of the most amazing parts of Civ, and it's a shame its still quite tepid and broken - although I will admit it's significantly better in this expansion.

I absolutely concur that diplomacy was virtually non-existent in the vanilla release. This expansion adds so much, though - I don't feel that rival civs are arbitrarily declaring war, I can always see it coming now with the expanded status tooltip (specifying what they are and are not happy with you about).

Also, I'm not sure if you picked up on the fact that up until the Industral era, your choice of religion is a key factor in civ relations (and moreso during the Medieval and Renaissance eras). After that it switches to social policy differentations (namely Freedom vs Autocracy vs Order), much as civic polices affected diplomacy in Civ 4.

For me, the current system now "works". Then again, my main goal is generally to avoid the rest of the world declaring war on me...

All in all, I feel you were rather harsh on the expansion - it's not quite the revolution that BtS was for Civ4, but it's certainly in the same ballpark, IMO. Perhaps a little more subtle in the inter-connectedness of subsystems, but that's hardly a bad thing in my books.

[ChainsawMcP]

You can still get it for a much more reasonable 26.99 USD at Green Man Gaming. At half the local price, it's a much more palatable spend.

Thanks... ...

[Marius]

Good balanced review, but sorry James, gotta agree with Mekon on religion.

Kellyism (my French religion) gave me +1 culture per plantation.

...and I started in a Jungle.

Do you know just how much culture that is? Enough to base my entire game strategy on.

Combine this with the French early culture boost, and the mercantalism gold boost from trading posts (which are one of the few things you can build on jungle tiles), and you have a very interesting build. One that absolutely tears ahead in culture and gold output (and research too, since there's that tech that gives +2 research from worked jungle tiles).

And yeah, I got my game for less than $30. $50 may be the recommended retail price, but there are many stores that don't rip people off like Steam does. I don't really consider the base RRP price of anything to be valid, since I'm always trying to haggle or look for specials for other goods too. Today I just bought 5 tins of baked beans for $5. $5.

[James Pinnell]

To be honest, I didn't write this review for everyone to agree with me, I wanted to give my opinion on the game at large and I'm really enjoying everyone's different playstyles. Its incredible how versatile the game is.

Based on the overwhelming response, it looks like I'm going to found a religion

[Marius]

I do have to admit though that I really lucked out.

France starting in a jungle is a bit overwhelming culture-wise.

Oh and I tend to prefer Civ 5 to Civ 4. I found overall, Civ 4 too broken. Too dependent on uber combos like tech rushing to Civil Service for the slingshot. Exploiting unbalanced techs seemed to be the main 'depth' in Civ 4, and I was really glad to see it gone.

However the same debates happen with every civ game. You have people saying Civ 3 is better than 4, and people saying 3 is an abomination.

[Cyrinno]

I also felt Civ4 was too dominate on the rush to "something" type strategies, other things that I disliked about Civ4 was that units in combat usually walked across the screen and onto oblivion(bugs in combat) and then city attack promotions wern't registered properly on half the units, but worked on the other half. This was around from classic to bts and never got fixed.

Yet those promotions were fixed in the colonoization spin off.

Still I spent alot of time playing Civ4 I thought it was the best Civ since civ2 but I am really enjoying Civ5 at this time. It's advantages to me are that there are no stacks of doom and that it's got macro style gameplay where I feel like I want to create a big Civ and manage it, I don't get bogged down. In Civ4 I got to a point my Civ got so big I just started razing everything in sight becuase I couldn't stand managing it anymore when at war.

[Ashigaru]

Calling me "butthurt" isn't a great way to start a pretty strong point mate, but I'll ignore it. I've also given Civ V a ton of hours, but calling it a "different beast" is, I feel, making excuses for broken features. I really hate the new grid system - it turns Civ into risk and removes a lot of the tactics behind flanking units and forces you into corners of sacrifical units or making the choice between a defenceless siege weapon or a weak arse polearm soldier.

Haha yes sorry for calling you butthurt, that was a little harsh. I guess I'm getting sick of every second thread on civfanatics being hijacked by the anti-civ V vs pro Civ-V slander fests that have been going on for far too long :B

I'm sorry to hear you don't like the hex grids, I thought they were a great addition. In fact going through this thread has not only been really interesting for everyone's opinions as well as your review, but it's also made me realise why I like this Civ the most. Due to the 1 unit per tile rule, I find it sits inbetween an RTS and a 4X TBS. It's got enough military strategy now that I don't just throw units away recklessly (unless it's a trap ).

Also I'm interested to hear why you think the promotion system is broken? Once again, I value my vet units that much more and also it makes me use barracks these days

Ahh what a great thread

Most important thing for anyone playing Civ V (Vanilla or G&K) is to take off your Civ IV hat. It's not the same game, nor will it ever be. I personally haven't had more fun with a Civ game than I have with Civ V

Given that Civ IV is one of the best games ever, you're not really selling it!

I haven't played V, and nothing I've seen gives me any desire to.

Sounds to me like Civ IV: BTS is still where it's at for 'real' Civ players...

To be honest, I'm just stating an opinion, not trying to get you on the band wagon. If you honestly think Civ IV is the pinnacle of Civ and nothing can beat it, then in your mind nothing ever will. Do not buy Civ V. Maybe give the demo a go, but unless you enjoy that then I wouldn't recommend it.

As I said earlier, I didn't enjoy the game as much as I expected on release, in fact I was a little miffed. But it made me work at getting better, and now that a lot of patching, fixing and now the expansion has rolled through, the game is so much better for it. It just makes me give a damn, and it's rare for an FPS nut like myself to get pulled into any other game that requires more than an hour of my times in a fixed period.

And also the city micromanaging was.... so awesome when I first found it in Civ V. I find it laid out quite well, and easy to follow.

Tell you what though, this is all making me want to go back and try Civ IV to see if my opinion is right! Civ 4 and Warlords were ok, but BtS is what really made Civ IV shine.

Oh also on the price thing, I paid $50. But I don't really give a stuff about spending that kind of money on a game I love so much

[InAUGral]

I don't expect an article to list cheaper sources for games because that would be too much extra work. The writer of the article might check 5 sites and see greenmangaming has it the cheapest. The writer may completely miss a site that this or that person prefer to use. As for CD Key sites I don't believe that any article should promote them because customers experiences vary so wildly.

[James Pinnell]

As for CD Key sites I don't believe that any article should promote them because customers experiences vary so wildly.

This is the primary reason we don't link to or promote third party key sites.

Even our interview with CJS sparked concerns we were giving them are blessing when this was not the case. The issues around Diablo 3 and those keys are a prime example why we don't recommend any particular site.

[Krogan]

Really have to disagree with the review, while Civ5 might have lacked a few things from Civ4 it adds so much more. After I had played Civ5 for about 6 months and put in about 500 hours into it I to started reminisce about how great Civ4 was (well actually how great Rise of Mankind was, Civ4 vanilla wasn't all that good) but as I went back and started playing Rise of Mankind again it didn't take long before I realized that I would never be able to enjoy that game again.

By no means do I think Civ5 is perfect but then again there isn't a single game in the world that is. What I can say for sure is that in my opinion Civ5 is the best there has ever been of its kind. Try getting used to units moving 1 square and yes squares instead of hexes, not to mention ranged units and all that brings. Remember that archers were just melee units with different stats? Remember how incredibly tedious stacked warfare was? Remember how terrain didn't win you wars? I can go on about this for quite sometime.

[Marius]

Remember how naval combat absolutely sucked in Civ 4. And how you couldn't use naval units to bombard the shore.

[Mekon]

I don't expect an article to list cheaper sources for games because that would be too much extra work.

For what it is worth, I wasn't suggesting the article should link to any 3rd party site... but rather mention that it is $30 on Steam itself everywhere but Australia.