Sid Meier's Civilization V

 

 

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Normally I am not one to write reviews of products I have purchased and used for some time. This game however is so poorly designed that I feel I have to warn everyone (especially "CIV Fans") NOT to buy this game! Like many fans of CIVILIZATION 3 and 4 I looked forward with great anticpation to playing the next challenging level of this series. There in lies the big disapointment! This new game is neither challenging nor an upgrade from the likes of CIV 4, or CIV 4 - Beyond the Sword. It seems like the producers, in an effort to rush out some sort of product by the release date, significantly "Dumbed-down" the game play of CIV 5. Gone are many of the elements that made CIV 4 - Beyond the Sword so enjoyable and re-playable time after time (e.g. Religion, Corporations, Civics, etc.). Game play itself (what little I have managed) is clunky, time consuming, with far too many menus occupying valuable board space. But perhaps the most annoying problem with this new release by Sid Meier's is the fact that is was knowingly released choc full of bugs! The game simply does not play properly on a vast number of systems (both high and low end PCs). I have personally experienced seemingly random Crashes and lock-ups of the game. Somtimes I can play for 50, 60, 100 turns before the game suddenly freezes my entire system. Other times CIV 5 crashes after just 3 turns (and usually before you can save your game)! I have the hastily released patch applied and have even tried many of the "Fixes" suggested on the 2K forums website. None of these have worked to resolve the major crash problem. Hey, I'm not a programmer and should not have to "Fix" the bugs the Sid Meier's people released with this inferior product!! Overall a disapointing waste of $55.00. I will not (actually CAN NOT) play this game again, and would reccomend that anyone seriously thinking about buying this product wait a year or so for ALL the Bugs to be ironed out by those at Firaxis. As others have said, Sorry Sid, you blew it big time on this pre-mature release of your flagship series. Next time .... Write a good game; beta test; patch; more testing; Release; then earn your money (NOT THE OTHER WAY AROUND!!!).

The working relationship between a game designer and his publisher is never a simple one. So I would not know where exactly to place the blame, Sid Meyer or 2K GAMES. But in the end, it does not matter. Because it is simply sad to see a great gaming franchise came to this.

THIS IS NOT A CIVILIZATION GAME
A great number of major features of this beloved series have been simply removed. A fellow gamer called this "Civilization For Dummies" and he is absolutely right.
There is no trading maps or technologies. There is no claiming resources outside your borders by building a colony. There is no need for transport ships as, apparently, units are now all..amphibious (and they need 15-20 turns to cross an ocean!). There are no city-growth milestone requirements (granary, aqueduct, refrigeration). There is no culturally conquering an enemy city (detonating a "culture bomb" by consuming a Great Artist will only get you extra territory tiles but no cities). There are no spies nor health/pollution balance. And there are no armies (please read on).

ARMY CASTRATION
Someone please tell me what was so wrong with armies that had to be yanked out? Napoleon almost conquered Europe with one army. Germany almost conquered the eastern hemisphere with three and the US still holds a two-and-a-half armies doctrine. How can a turn-based game be called Civilization unless one can emulate, well, a real civilization? Building an army, seasoning it on minor conflicts and then going for the enemy's capital was one of the most fun parts of any Civilization game. Why Sid, why?

YOU MAY BE ABLE TO LAUNCH INTO SPACE YET CANNOT CLIMB MOUNTAINS?!
Movement should be hindered by rough terrain. Units that have 3 or 4 moves on the plains should not be expected to do more than 1 or 2 on a mountain, right? Well, no. Mountains seem to be those magical places no unit can climb or pass through (not even ...helicopters of jet fighters!). And I cannot see how this makes for more complicated strategic decisions than timing your movements, claiming the high ground and having a bonus for elevated artillery?

UNIT STAMPEDE
A major issue for me, this was what really ruined the game. For some unfathomable reason units cannot be stacked. A worker can coexist with a military unit but that's it. Artillery and shock-cavalry are very vulnerable to attacks and (with the new hexagon layout) one would need ...six defensive units to protect a single artillery battery.
As a result, units keep getting on each other's way (especially when ordered to move for distances that require more than a turn), they refuse to even pass through friendly units (!) and the "tactical" considerations that result from this are trivial. And whenever besieging an enemy city, one has to endlessly maneuver his units around it (while exposed to its bombardment) whereas wounded units are never easy to withdraw.
You cannot even garrison more than a single unit within a city. Not that it would make a difference, since the garrisoned unit is not automatically awaken to fight back when the city is under attack(!), the city is left to defend itself.

CAN YOU REALLY COMMAND WITHOUT A...CENTRAL COMMAND?
The economy is nose-diving into the red and you want to reduce the percentage going into research for a while to avoid having units of yours deleted one by one? The fickle people of your civilization are unhappy and you want to placate them by increasing their entertainment allocation? You have discovered conscription and you want to upgrade all your musketeers into recruits? Well, TOUGH LUCK! There is not central command screen to do so. Only advisers that you have to thank for...annoying you.
You have very limited control of your cities resource distribution and zero control of your national economy. And units have to be hunted down and upgraded one by one.
Speaking of the economy, when are we going to see a Civilization game where one can run and manage a national debt?

NO FREE EYE-CANDY IN THIS UNIVERSE. NOT EVEN A STALE ONE.
The game does look new and polished and the units are well designed but not cutting edge and not without a steep hardware price. If you expect anything comparable to STARCRAFT II crispiness you will be disappointed - at my 1280x1024 resolution it is not easy to discern roads from railroads.
The system I am running my copy consists of a P7 920 on a MSI Eclipse with 3GB of RAM and an ASUS nVIDIA GTX-260. Even with an 18-months old PC in a WinXP environment (I refuse to forgo my game collection for Win7), apparently I cannot even try the highest DX9 settings (the game crashes at launch) but I managed to optimize them with a mix of high and medium. Even then, whenever I scroll to a different location of the map, I can see the image fleshing out, just like zooming in a Google-Earth map.
So one can only wonder: why should one need a Cray to run a Civilization game at full?

STEAM OF WAR
The game requires OnLine Activation (and rumored perpetual reactivation every few days) and has to be tied to a STEAM account. Effectively this means that the game is a piece of rentware the buyer never really owns and yet it is sold at full price. I realize that to some people this may not be a serious issue so, in case you are wondering, I deducted a single star from my overall rating of the game because of its DRM scheme. To every other gamer however, you can now make an informed decision.

This was a major disappointment. I never though I'd say this but I while playing the latest Civilization game I caught myself wondering if they would ever make...CALL TO POWER III.

New gamers, steer clear of this mess, this is NOT what a Civilization game plays like.
Seasoned gamers, we know better than to call this a Civilization game.

Sorry Sid, EPIC FAIL.

First of all, you can't buy a hard copy of this game. You can only get a virtual copy because you MUST AUTHENTICATE WITH STEAM. Pure idiocy. A stupid mistake on development's part. THIS IS NOT CLEARLY INDICATED WHEN YOU PURCHASE THE GAME, BUYER BEWARE, YOU HAVE ZERO RIGHTS WITH STEAM. If Steam cannot connect when you want to play, you will NOT be able to play this game despite Amazon stating 'one time activation'. That is an outright lie. On top of that, if this game does not work on your system you will not be able to get a refund due to the STEAM policy agreement.

This is an OK strategy game overall, the graphics are a bit childish, but the standard gameplay is there. Old Civ fans will find some familiar points here and there but one thing is very clear, this is NOT a real rendition of Civilization. It takes many steps backwards:

For one, they stripped the game of religions and some trading elements (tech trading, a big part of all the civ since 2, is gone), and many of the concepts have been dumbed down. A lot of the micromanagement that would usually appeal to many hardcore Civ3 and Civ4 players is long gone. They added 'social' purchases with culture points, making it like a science-style system, but this is a clunky system, as once you invoke a social change in your civ by purchasing it with culture points, you can't ever change it. You're stuck with it until the end of the game. That's a BIG issue with me... what the hell civilization ever kept one way of thinking through its entire evolution? Very bad decision.

The AI in this game is terrible and poses no challenge whatsoever even on higher difficulty levels. To compare, in Civ4, changing difficulty level could affect AI behavior, including what kind of attacks it could 'think' about performing (small scale amphibious assault, basic 'rounded' stacks, etc) just don't happen anymore. The AI just blindly rushes how it wants, without any real logic, it will often place archers and artillery front line against your 'heavy' units, making it easy to steamroll through without any difficulty. The only likely source of challenge will come from going head to head with other human players.

The ability to 'choose' a style of victory and focus on it is pretty much moot, in Civ5, the only real victory that is feasible is military. The ability to go for real religious, diplomatic, cultural victories are more or less impossible, and attempting to get a scientific victory always leads to war. Any other victory is pretty much an illusion more so than a reasonable possibility in this game.

On top of all of this, the game is VERY buggy, crashes often, and has finicky issues like 'endless' decision popups, endless-loop animations and many Crash-to-desktop bugs and freezes. This was tested on multiple machines of differing builds, so it's not localized to one machine.

Overall, the game looks nice, plays... strangely, but overall it is NOT an impressive product. For hardcore Civ (and especially Civ4 fans), this is a complete regression to an inferior product. For strategy gamers in general it is, overall, a good-if-lackluster game.

I am disappointed. VERY Disappointed.

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4.0 out of 5 stars What's with the complaints?
I played both Civ3 and Civ4 before this. Civ5 is just as addicting as the others in its series, and I welcomed the new additions such as the combat system and social policy tree... Lisez davantage

Published 1 month ago by Ming

4.0 out of 5 stars Steam is awful but the game is fun
The game itself takes some getting used to, but it's pretty fun. It improved all of my issues with Civ 4, showing they care a lot about the gameplay and gamers satisfaction... Lisez davantage

Published 1 month ago by James

1.0 out of 5 stars buyer beware
bought the game hours ago, disc just prompts a steam install requiring a key, key worked fine, steam install DOES NOT WORK. Lisez davantage

Published 2 months ago by Geordo Matechuk

2.0 out of 5 stars Sid V sucks
I could not get into this game. I played civ II, III, and IV until my ears bled but not this one. What can you do?

Published 4 months ago by matt V

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent
Best Civ so far. More strategy and diplomacy. Flexible and very good on solo mode. City State are very interesting.

Published 7 months ago by Christian Riendeau

2.0 out of 5 stars boooooooring
This was not worth the 30.00 i spent on it. I found it very slow, and boring. I really enjoyed Civ 4 and was hoping for something great with this one. Lisez davantage

Published 17 months ago by Ashlee L. Galletta

1.0 out of 5 stars Warning: civ 5 is virtual not hard copy
Civ 5 is powered by a virtual entity called Steam. Unlike previous versions of civilization, the hard copy is not enough. Lisez davantage

Published 17 months ago by Beverley Greenwood

1.0 out of 5 stars Dumbed down superficial gameplay wrapped in a plethora of bugs
I bought this game based on reviews from the majority of gaming publications and from the reputation of this games predecessor (Civilization IV and it's two expansions - Warlords... Lisez davantage

Published 19 months ago by BuzuBuzu

5.0 out of 5 stars Civilization V
This is an awesome game. The gameplay is faster than in previous versions. There is a problem with the game locking up if you don't have enough memory. Lisez davantage

Published 19 months ago by Rich Clifford

2.0 out of 5 stars I recommend waiting a year
I've played every Civ game in the series and loved them.

I could write about the basic problems with game mechanics and the overall lack of depth in the playstyle, but... Lisez davantage

Published 19 months ago by DarkDestroyer

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