A review for Civ-fans
It started with me skipping lunch to play Civ 1 in the computer lab in high school, and it led to spreadsheets calculating tile yields and worker moves to maximize the first 100 turns of Civ 3 games and countless big fat crosses scrawled on the back of slips of paper to figure out how many farms I needed to build to work all of a cities tiles plus specialists in Civilization 4. So you could say that I'm an experience civilization player.
If you're a fan too, then you are probably already playing Civ 5 or you've played the demo and decided that they've taken too much out or streamlined too much and you're angrily going back to Civ 4 or Civ 3 or wherever else you think the game peaked.
But here is my take on the new game. I preordered the Steam Digital Deluxe version, although I'm regretting the extra $10 I payed for Babylon. I'm enjoying Civ 5 more now than I enjoyed Civ 4 when it first came out but less than I enjoyed Civ 3 when I first got it.
Overall, science feels faster and building seems slower than in Civ 4. I really enjoy the hexes and the tactical combat, although ranged combat seems a little over powered at this point. I guess they felt like they needed to make it powerful to make it relevant. The look is great - the graphics are superb, although they may be a little too hot for my computer (literally) as my display driver wigs out after an hour or so of play. Be sure to set auto save to every 3 turns or even every turn. The time between terms can seem long, but I'm a patient man.
I'm enjoying the social policies, and I think the different unique abilities do a good job distinguishing the civs. It can take a while to get used to the fact that it plays differently than Civ 4. It's not just the major differences, but also the little things. I'm still adjusting to clicking on the city name and not the city itself to go into the city screen. I'm not used to using the little green buttons instead of the tiles to assign citizens. But overall Civ 5 is a great addition to the Civilization franchise. It is fun to play now, and it has great potential. There is already a mod that takes away the one unit per tile limit, and I'm sure there will be mods for religion, espionage, or whatever else you miss from Civ 4 soon.
If you're still enjoying the heck out of Civ 4, you might want to wait for the first expansion or at least a price drop, although that may be a year away. But once you're ready to try something different, Civ 5 is certainly worth the money.
