
They will have different approaches to their development, expansionist tendencies, and propensity for military aggression.
E X CIVILIZATION V FULL
Things like this are what help to make the full Civ experience more accessible to newer players.ĭiplomacy sees some subtle tweaks and upgrades AI personalities for all the leaders are distinct and varied. I can’t overstate how much time and frustration this saves - it lets you focus on planning rather than uninteresting minutia. The icons also act as a to-do list, which becomes doubly helpful in the later stages of the game when you’ll have much more to manage. Where in the past a tiny text description would appear and force you to hunt around the map to find what you need, simply left-clicking on the icon will center the map over the related object. Any time an important event occurs or units and cities require your attention, an icon will drift down along the right side of the screen. Where Civ V’s user interface really shines is the notification system. The only time I ever left it was for talking with leaders or to view the extended tech-tree on occasion to plan long-term research strategy.

Where previous games were a Byzantine labyrinth of menus, sub-menus, and advisor screens, nearly every major function in Civ V can be accessed without leaving the main map view. Civ V brought back the same UI talent, and their work is immediately obvious. While Civilization Revolution was a divisive game for most Civ fans, it really can’t be argued that it did well in streamlining the user interface.

He’s got an Ian McKellen-like quality to his voice that’s perfect for the tone of the game. The loss of Leonard Nimoy as a narrator will bum some fans out, but Morgan Sheppard fills in admirably. Sound design is also strong - each civilization has unique music that is both pleasing and unobtrusive. Graphically, the game looks fabulous smooth unit animations and lots of detail in the unit and city designs make it a delight to zoom in on the map. There are many more strategic implications to the hex grid as well, but we’ll come back to those a bit later. The world takes on a much more organic appearance without having to rely on right angles to render curvy natural features like mountain ranges or coastlines. The most noticeable change to the presentation is the conversion from a square grid to a hexagonal one.
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Those that haven’t experienced the series before will likely find themselves eras deep in an engrossing strategy experience before they know it.Īs to the changes in Civ V from previous titles, we’ll tackle the cosmetic issues first. There’s good news though - Civ V does more to ease new players through the learning curve than any previous Civ game. If this sounds incredibly complex and daunting, that’s because it is.


Victory can be accomplished through a variety of means: military conquest, diplomatic maneuvering, cultural output, winning the space race through superior technology, or simply having the best overall score when the game ends in AD 2050.
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However, despite the barriers, Civ V manages to make an overwhelmingly strong case for investing in one more turn of “just one more turn”.įor those unfamiliar with the series, Civilization V is a PC turn-based strategy game that tasks the player with growing a single group of settlers in the Stone Age into a sprawling empire that outshines all others. Keeping a game with so much tradition fresh and fun without alienating a deeply loyal fanbase is a Herculean labor, to be sure. With Civilization V, the developers at Firaxis are rolling the dice yet again and making some sweeping alterations to the series’ DNA. That’s pretty damned impressive for a game that’s basically about world history. Spanning nearly 20 years of digital iteration (and a decade in board game form prior to that), the IP that brought gamers the invention of the tech-tree has managed to not only survive, but evolve, entertain, educate, and perform in the marketplace. With this perspective, the achievements of the Civilization series become acutely mind-boggling. This is only amplified in the case of video games, where increases in design complexity and rate of technological advance are exponentially unfolding. The majority of bands fade into obscurity, movies are forgotten in the wake of the latest pretty face, and all but the most iconic artists and authors get lost in the shuffle of the staggering volume of options the information age has provided us. In any medium, it’s an almost insurmountable challenge to produce a product that stands the test of time.
