Sid Meier's Civilization V

Overview

Civilization V is the latest game in the Civilization franchise, developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K Games. It was released on September 21, 2010 on the PC, and November 23, 2010 on the Mac. It makes a significant departure from the previous games in the franchise, adopting a hexagonal grid (instead of a square grid) and limiting units to one per tile. The combat mechanics has also been changed, with the reintroduction of ranged units and cities now able to defend themselves. Some gameplay elements from Civilization IV, like religion and espionage, has been removed, while new elements like city-states and limited strategic resources were added.

Gods & Kings, an expansion pack, will be released on June 19, 2012 in America, and June 22, 2012 worldwide. It will add 9 new civilizations, 3 new scenarios, as well as religion and espionage in the game.

Gameplay

Hex Grid in Action

In Civilization V, the player chooses a civilization and manages its cities and units, trying to achieve victory. The game usually begins in the Stone Age, although players can choose a pre-determined age to start off from, and will progress through the ages to the Future Era. Throughout the game, the player will encounter other civilizations, and can form relations and become strong allies, or crush them to smithereens. Players can win through having the highest score, capturing all enemy capitals, being the first to reach Alpha Centauri, winning the United Nations vote, or even being the most culturally affluent of all the civilizations and building the Utopia Project.

Combat

The combat system has been completely overhauled in Civilization V. In previous games, the popular tactic was creating a massive stack of units and sending them to take over cities. In Civilization V, only one military unit can be on a tile at a time, and the value of units has been increased due to higher production costs. This encourages more battles in the open and greater tactical options. Zone of control is also more important as units are spread out over the battlefield, and flanking maneuvers are crucial to hit vulnerable units, now unable to hide under a more powerful unit.

Ranged Combat

Ranged units make a return to the franchise, and are more important due to the combat changes. They can attacks units from a distance, allowing them to take potshots at invading armies. However, they are weak in melee combat and requires good positioning or a melee defender to avoid being destroyed.

Sieges in Civilization V is different from the previous games, as cities can now defend themselves. All cities now have hit points - when this reaches zero the city will fall under the attacker's control. Garrisoning units and building defensive buildings will increase a city's defence rating. Cities can also fire at sieging units, softening up for a counterattack. After a city has been conquered it can be razed, annexed, or transformed into a puppet state.

Naval movement and combat has also been changed, as any land unit can "embark", entering a water tile automatically turn into transport ships. This removes the tedious management of transport ships present in previous games, but increases importance of naval vessels as embarked units are defenseless. All ships are ranged units, so maneuverability and the ability to strike first has a major impact on naval combat. Ships can also blockade trade routes and bombard cities and units on land.

Barbarians have always been a classic in the Civilization franchise. Barbarians now originate from barbarian camps, instead of cities in Civilization IV. From this camp barbarian units are sent out to pillage neighboring cities. This presents a huge early game threat as the player needs to send out units to destroy the camps while maintaining a proper garrison in their cities and countryside to prevent opportunistic civilizations from invading.

Cities

The City Screen

Building a city is one of the pillars of Civilization gameplay, and can be settled by settler units in any suitable place on the world map. City boundaries can grow, one tile at a time, to a maximum of 3 tiles outwards, favoring food oriented tiles like grasslands over production based tiles like forests. The player can also buy specific tiles, speeding up the rate at which a city expands. Cities generate production, money, culture, and science for their civilization, and players can choose which building they wish to build and what units they wish to train.

City-States

City-states are one city civilizations controlled by AI, unable to expand, and cannot win the game. There are three types of city-states -- Cultured, Maritime and Militaristic, each providing culture points, food, and military units respectively. Civilizations will have to vie for influence over the city-states, performing quests for them or giving them tribute. Being friendly with a city-state provides bonuses based on the type, and allying with one will provide a greater amount of bonus.

United Nations

A city-state can only ally itself with one civilization at a time, and the city-state provides all its resources to the ally and will join the ally in war. It will also vote for the civilization in the United Nations, for the Diplomatic Victory. If a city-state is conquered by a civilization but then liberated by another, it will also vote for the liberator in the United Nations. Some examples of city-states in the game are Singapore, Rio de Janeiro, and Venice.

Social Policies

Social Policy Trees

Social Policies replaces Civics from Civilization IV. Social Policies are civilization-wide bonuses that are unlocked with enough culture points. There are 10 Social Policy trees, each with 5 policies and opener and finisher abilities, and are unlocked in various eras. Some policy branches are mutually exclusive. Players can still switch to a conflicting branch, but only at the expense of all the policies of the previous one, and a period of anarchy. If 5 trees are fully completed the Utopia project is unlocked, allowing for Cultural Victory to be achieved.

Science and Economy

Science is an important part of Civilization V, as it controls how fast technology is unlocked. Science is generated at 1 per population unit, and can be increased using scientific buildings, specialists, or Social Policies. Trading technologies between civilizations has also been removed. Instead, two civilizations can enter a research agreement (for a nominal sum) where they work together to provide a huge boost to their research. But if they go to war, the agreement is cancelled.

A civilization's economy is reflected by the amount of gold they have. Gold can be used in a vast array of things, from the maintenance of units, buildings, and roads, to buying and upgrading units. Gold can also be used in diplomacy to improve relations with other civilizations or city-states, or used as a bartering tool. Gold is generated from tiles such as coastlines or rivers, and the trading post improvement can be built to generate further income. Luxury resources, trade routes, pillaging tiles, capturing cities, and disbanding extra units will also provide gold.

Happiness

Happiness is a factor that determines how willing a civilization's citizen are to work and cooperate with their leader, and how well they fight in their armies. Unlike previous games, happiness is now a civilization-wide value. The larger a civilization gets, the more unhappy their citizens become. The number of cities in a civilization and the population of those cities negatively affect happiness, and annexed cities compound the issue. If unhappiness is not resolved, rebel units will eventually rise up in the civilization's territory and attack the civilization.

Happiness is generated through the presence of luxury resources, the construction of entertainment buildings and the discovery of Natural Wonders throughout the world. Several Social Policies and Wonders also help to alleviate unhappiness. Positive happiness will eventually build up into a Golden Age for a civilization, granting them additional gold and production for 10 turns.

Great People

Great People are special units generated by Great People points. These units can build a special Great Person tile improvement, activate a special action unique to that type of Great People, or can be used to generate a short Golden Age. Great People points are generated from the corresponding specialists and from certain Wonders, except Great Generals, who gain points from combat.

Resources

There are 3 types of resources in Civilization V: strategic resources, luxury resources, and bonus resources. Strategic resources unlock different units and buildings that rely on them, such as Iron for Swordsmen. These resources can be acquired by building the appropriate improvement upon them like mine or a well. Strategic resources had a huge overhaul in Civilization V, and there are now limited quantities of a resource per source. If the source is depleted no further units or buildings that require that resource can be built. In addition, if a civilization loses the resource, their units will suffer a severe combat penalty. The strategic resources are: horses, iron, coal, oil, aluminum, and uranium.

Luxury resources are rare resources like spices, whales, or gems. These resources often provide gold boost to the tile it is on, and more importantly, happiness to a civilization. Each unique luxury resource a civilization holds grants it 4 happiness points, and extra luxuries can be traded for gold or more luxuries.

Bonus resources like cows or fish help a civilization grow bigger. These types of resources provide additional food or production to tile, and can be improved by tile improvements. A city working a tile with the bonus resource will get the full benefit of that resource.

Wonders

Wonders are special one-time buildings any civilization can build, and provides massive bonuses. There are 2 types of buildable wonders in Civilization V: World Wonders and National Wonders.

Natural Wonders are a tile feature added in Civilization V. They are magnificent natural features that can be found around the world, and provides 1 happiness point to a civilization when discovered. The number of Natural Wonders in a game is limited by the size of the map. Natural Wonders provide tile yields greater than normal terrain, and Spain gets additional bonuses from Natural Wonders due to their special ability. There are a total of 10 Natural Wonders in Civilization V:

• Cerro de Potosi: 10 Gold
• El Dorado: 5 Culture, grants the first civilization that finds it 500 Gold
• Fountain of Youth: 10 Happiness, grants units near it extra health regeneration
• Krakatoa: 5 Science
• Mt. Fuji: 1 Gold, 5 Culture
• Old Faithful: 2 Science, 3 Happiness
• Rock of Gibraltar: 2 Food, 5 Gold
• The Barringer Crater: 2 Gold, 3 Science
• The Grand Mesa: 2 Production, 3 Gold
• The Great Barrier Reef: Occupies 2 tiles, 2 Food, 1 Production, 1 Gold, 2 Science

The Civilizations

Washington

There are 25 civilizations currently in Civilization V, shipping with 18 and the rest as DLCs. Unlike the previous games, each civilization now gets a special ability that is unique to them. they also either get two unique units, or a unique unit and a unique building or tile improvement. These special abilities give them specific advantages that somewhat reflects the civilization's history. Each civilization is either controlled by a player or AI, and goes through the various eras until achieving victory or is defeated.

DLC Civilizations

Map Packs

• Four "Cradle of Civilization" map packs were initially only available separately as pre-order bonuses from different online and "brick&mortar" retailers. Each pack includes a sinlge fixed size map inspired by real-world Asia, the Americas, the Mediterranean and Mesopotamia. The maps were late made available as paid DLC.
• The "Explorer's Map Pack" was released alongside the Denmark DLC. It included 5 real world location: the British Isles, main island of Japan, the Caribbean, the Bering Strait and eastern North America. It also added 3 new map generation scripts (Amazon, Donut, Sandstorm) as well as enhanced versions of the Continents and Pangea scripts.

Special Editions

The special retail edition includes:

• 5 metal figurines based on units from Civilization V manufactured by Reaper Miniatures
• 2-disc CD soundtrack of game score selections
• “Behind-the-Scenes at Firaxis on Civilization V” DVD
• 176-page hardcover art book

There were no in-game bonuses in the Special retail edition.

The digital deluxe edition also came with the soundtrack and the behind the scenes footage, but lacked the figurines and the art book. Instead, the Babylonian civilization and a Cradle of Civilization map pack was available for free.

Steam Integration

2K Games announced that the game will use Steamworks. It will be used to provide Steam achievements, auto updating, DLC, multiplayer matchmaking and Steam Cloud support. This means that Steam will be installed regardless of how the game is obtained, despite the fact that it is purchasable through other digital distribution services (such as Direct2Drive). Steam will also be the DRM solution, requiring a one time activation.

Gods & Kings

Official Box Art

On February 16, 2012, the first full-on expansion to Civilization V was announced. In contrast to the "civilization & scenario" DLC packs, Gods & Kings will also include major gameplay changes. Amongst them are two heavily fan-requested features: Religion and Espionage. Furthermore, the combat system will be reworked, putting a bigger emphasis on a balanced army composition. Other additions and changes include 27 new units, 13 new buildings, 9 new wonders, and 9 new playable civilizations, as well as 3 new scenarios including a steampunk-inspired one.

The expansion pack is set to be released June 19, 2012 in North America, and June 22, 2012 worldwide.

System Requirements

Useful Links

• Civilization V Homepage
• Civilization V Digital Manual