A Civilisation game for those who wanted more battles and micromanagement, but fewer things to tweak.
Cons: Smaller variation in Civilisation styles available, slow turn speed, lack of useful information in Civilopedia
If you've seen any other reviews of Civ 5, you will know all about the hex grid system by now, as it's the single most obvious change from Civ 4, and it changes the way maps look from the outset. And yes, it works, you don't miss the square map tiles, and it makes military lines much better without the chance of diagonal holes in your defences.
Another thing that will strike you early in playing is the animation pieces of the Civilisation leaders. Each speaks their real language (or at least the modern equivalent), and they're what you'd expect from a franchise as successful as Civ. However, when you've been playing for 10 hours or more (e.g. half way through your first game), you'll no longer even look above the text when they appear on screen, so wonderful they may be, but they are just fluff. Additionally, much effort has been put into allowing the other leaders to just show up & insult you. Yes, really. There you are, struggling with a costly border war with France, and Lincoln shows up to say he's seen city states with better military. It makes you want a button labelled "Oh really? Don't hold back, Lincoln, tell me how you really feel. Because I could wipe you off the map in like 10 turns". It seems irritation of a player to the point of anger was a deliberate objective of the design team.
What does deserve some attention, though, is how much complexity and depth is now woven into combat. When you go to war, it really matters where your units are, if they are attacking, defensive or ranged, and how good a line you can create to hold back the enemy. Each new version of this franchise has drastically changed one area, and for 5, this is Combat. In the game it is now possible for you to hold off a significantly stronger, more advanced or just more numerous enemy, and even triumph through careful tactics. In this version, the terrain you fight your battles on will spell the difference between a quick victory, and a long terrible erosion of your ground forces to arrow fire. You can lure your opponent into ambushes, and your cities themselves are a significant element that can swing a battle, as long as it isn't your only unit.
The importance of City States in the game also appears to be mostly around combat. If you make friends, and more importantly manage to keep them close, you will have a stream of extra units and hopefully a secure border to work with. Even if you don't, sometimes a neutral 3rd party to hide behind can provide a valuable turn or two for a damaged unit to recover.
All this adds up to something that all previous Civ games were lacking in their combat - depth. Previously, battles were either futile, where your attacking unit became obsolete before it reached the enemy, or they were the steam roller produced by the dominant technology player to finish the game without waiting the extra hundred turns for a spaceship victory. Now, battles aren't just a means to bring a game that has clearly been won to a close, they're fun in their own right. And this is good, because you're going to end up in a lot of wars in Civ 5, whether you want to or not.
And this is my main gripe with this version of Civ. Diplomacy, despite the pretty horse-riding Alexander, the austere Elizabeth and the (censored) insane Montezuma, is ultimately futile. Each computer controlled Civ leader only has two categories for land tiles. Land they own, and land they have not seen yet.
There is an option, for both the Computer controlled leaders and for you, to ask other Civilisations not to settle "near" your borders. Unfortunately, you have no way of knowing what another leader considers near, and having experimented a little, I'm now fairly certain near means anywhere they have ever visited. In mid game once, I settled a city that was, to the hex, the opposite side of the cylinder (Civilisation worlds are cylindrical) from the last English city. A city, mind you, that was under siege and about to be demolished by another computer Civilisation. And still, Elizabeth took time out of her busy bunker to complain I was too near her borders, and insisted there would be consequences. As did every other Civ still on the map, of course. Only a lunatic settles after the stone age without overpowering military force to ignore any diplomatic incidents in this game.
So, a good concept - giving each other space, and noticing when you are being hemmed in - totally failed in implementation.
The only thing that your fellow leaders really care about is, are they scared of your standing army. And if you're on anything but the easiest difficulty levels, the size of army they will consider intimidating enough not to declare war is big enough to steam roller your way across the continent, and expensive enough to have driven your culture to poverty. So by the time you've built it to maintain the peace, you're practically required to use it yourself.
Then, there's the Civilopedia. In Civ, with so many rules, you no longer receive the solid 100 page rule book, but are instead encouraged to find the answers to your questions through the in-game Civilopedia. The search system here is rubbish, as it only searches on tags, not text within the rules. So if you want to know about Great Generals, and you type Generals, you will get zero results. Second, there is a wealth of background information, on for example who the Iroquois were, or how pottery was vital to early man's development. But actual rules, such as how unit maintenance costs are worked out, are completely absent. In many cases, you are referred to another part of the Civilopedia, without any hyperlinking enforcing use of the aforementioned search, only to find that the referenced section contains no information at all.
For example, you may create a diplomatic "pact of cooperation" with other leaders. But, "Pact" in Civilopedia only refers to defensive pacts, and the exact phrase returns no results. I still don't know if a pact of cooperation does anything at all, other than provide an opportunity for the animation to say some stuff and give a role-playing moment to the voice actors.
Another change I have noticed is, the range of things that can be adjusted in this version has shrunk. Previously, there has been concepts such as trade points, that can be split between happiness, science and money. Now, each of these are out of direct control of the player, and can only be influenced by building things, or occasionally tile improvements. And there are many things that need to be built, and tiles that are so fantastically useful that you often find your decisions are all no-brainers. In general, the fight to allow your civilisation to continue at all is tight enough on anything but the easiest difficulty levels, you won't be able to make your civilisation very different from one game to the next. Sure, you can go for a cultural victory, or a science victory, or a military victory, or even a diplomatic victory. But whatever you pick, your first 50 turns in any city will be largely the same. While you may tailor the wonders you want to build to the victory you are trying to achieve, some, like the hanging gardens, are so damn useful you will *always* want it.
And like every other Civilisation game, the computer opponent provides a challenge not because it plays well (it doesn't), but because it cheats. In combat, it'll make the same bad mistake a dozen times in a row. It will farm only one luxury resource, but will refuse to trade excess for things it doesn't have. And it will get away with it, because it gets a free unit every couple of turns without stopping its other development, and because all its cities are happy no matter *what* it does. Changing the difficulty level just alters how much it is prepared to cheat, and how hard the rules are for just you. Compared to earlier versions, buildings you construct to improve your cities provide very small bonuses. This means there is no more "super city" tactics, where all the production advances go in one city, all the science advances in another. Effort has been made to reduce the "run-away tech" style victories; an advantage in research speed will always be small, and you will find you have to fight for every last percentage point rather than find a short cut or wonder that doubles your output in one go.
The lack of sliders and fine control would lead some to expect a reduction in micro management as a result. Unfortunately, this is not the case. There is just as many fiddly little "farm this tile, not that tile", and "change production at the end of the turn to get the chopped wood bonus" moments as was in Civ 4. And remember, one of the complaints about Civ 4 was an increase in micro management. Turns take ages to complete, and little things that should reduce the micro management overhead just don't work. Want to set a ship to auto explore? Well go ahead, but it'll stop in every city state sovereign territory as it does. Want to click on the destination tile for a unit rather than move by move? Be careful, sometimes the AI can't find a path around another unit, and it'll instead pace up & down on the spot like a caged zoo animal with OCD. Also, the "unhappiness" state for your civilisation is fairly crippling. Without the ability to correct miscalculations through temporarily adjusting down research, say, means at times, you adjust city growth or tile improvement to the turn.
The graphics for the game are quietly impressive. You don't fall off your seat, but there is a depth and smoothness to them that allows you to connect emotionally with the empire you've created, every building, every battle scarred ruin on the landscape a moment in the world history you have built. It isn't particularly colourful, and much of the map can look a drab khaki, particularly when compared to, for example, the lurid primary colours of Civilisation Revolution (my main obsession, see my review & blog posts). Still, the detail and ability to zoom in & out grows on you over time.
At first, I hated this game. After the first abortive run through, I was ready to pack it back in its wallet and never think about it again. But I gave it another chance, because I felt even if I hate the game, I should beat it at least once. Then another chance after that, so I could justify reviewing it. And in the end, I've found the positives that the game has to offer. Great combat. A resource management challenge, but with mostly "right or wrong" choices. Closer development curves for everybody.
If you liked Civ 4, but wanted better fights, get this. If you've never played a Civ game before, really enjoy turn based strategy games and Sim stuff, go for it. If you liked Civ 2 or 3, but hated 4, you may want to skip this title as well. If you suffer from high blood pressure and get easily offended by animated characters mocking your efforts, particularly when they are justified, steer well clear.