Review: Civilization 5
Sep. 28th, 2010 04:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
4thofeleven
You know, I wish I could like this game more than I do. It’s not that I hate it, it’s just…
Well, maybe it’s unfair to compare it to Civilization 4 – Civ 4 with expansions and all patches is the most polished, enjoyable game in the series, and I probably shouldn’t have been expecting the same experience. Still, for the first time in the series, I’m seriously tempted to just go back to Civ 4 rather than enjoying the features of the latest game.
Gameplay wise, there’s a lot of new ideas – hex based map instead of grids, culture and happiness being civilization-wide rather than city based, different combat system, city-states that provide benefits when allied with. They’re interesting, but the whole game suffers from too many problems. Mainly, the AI is terrible and the speed of gameplay seems too slow.
Granted, the AI in Civ was never very good, but this time, the computer controlled civilizations don’t seem to have the slightest idea what they’re doing. Throw in the fact that computer civilization’s relations with the player are left hidden, and one ends up dealing with a set of computer players that declare war on a whim yet seem unable to effectively develop or defend their own territory. Victory is quite often simply a matter of building a few powerful units; the AI seems unable to manage even that. (It also seems utterly uninterested in exploration, and occasionally one finds civilizations that haven’t even bothered to expand their own territory.)
As for the speed of the game – well, Civ V’s obviously decided that in earlier Civ games, moving around dozens of units got tedious. So in Civ V, a single unit is far more valuable and you don’t build as many. However… building a single unit takes much longer to make up for this. Throw in the way Civ V’s mechanics encourage only having a few, large cities, and turn after turn is spent hitting “End turn” while waiting for things to get built.
And then there’s the minor quibbles: Poor interface and feedback – it took me forever to realise why my archers couldn’t fire, because nothing on screen tells you that they can’t fire over hills. Working out how many luxury goods you have available for trade is a mess, since some screens don’t mention resources being acquired through deals with city-states. City-states themselves seem overpowered; the ‘maritime’ cities that give a food bonus to every city you control can make farms obsolete. And who’s brilliant idea was it to have two separate policy trees, each with completely different effects, named ‘liberty’ and ‘freedom’?
Generally, the game seems to lack a lot of the polish I expected. It’s entertaining, but until the AI can be at least competent without simply playing on difficulties where it’s blatantly cheating, I can’t really be that excited about it.
Minor notes:
- I do wonder if it was worth the effort to record each leader’s dialogue in their own language. Granted, it was cool to hear Augustus speaking Latin. I do wonder how accurate the translations are for some of the more obscure languages. (Disappointingly, Ramses is apparently speaking Arabic, not Coptic.)
- I miss the bits of personality in Civ 4 – leaders don’t have favourite government types they try and force you to adopt, they don’t have amusing personal dialogue, they don’t have favourite wonders. I realise the idea was that the AI is meant to be playing more to win, less trying to act ‘like’ the historical figure – but since the AI’s totally incompetent now anyway, it seems like a real loss. And the removal of religion is another nice 'flavor' detail that I miss.
- It bugs me when civilizations get bonuses that don’t match the leader they have. Napoleon gets bonuses for ‘ancien regime’? Alexander getting a ‘Hellenic League’ bonus with city-states? Should have been Louis XIV and Pericles as the civ leaders if they wanted to give them those bonuses…
- The Inca didn’t make the cut, but Siam’s a playable civilization? And Songhai replacing Mali as the sole African civ is weird – surely Timbuktu is better known in the west than Gao?
no subject
on 2010-09-28 05:08 pm (UTC)The trouble with most Civ games I've played is that the outcome is determined about 30% of the way through the game; the remaining 70% is just playing it out. Some exceptions apply. Still very enjoyable, but I get this nagging feeling that I should be doing something else.
War and Peace is great for a Civ fix when you're strapped for time.
no subject
on 2010-09-29 02:15 am (UTC)Civ really needs some sort of mechanism to make the late-game challenging - some sort of rebellion system to hurt large empires or something.