Now let’s see how successful was Sid implementing this new combat system and the rest of the features of Civ 5. First, and this being a sequel, let’s start with the differences from its predecessors.<\/p>\n
So what are the major differences in Civilization 5?<\/strong><\/p>\n The Major differences in Civilization 5 from its predecessors, apart from overall better graphics, are the introduction of City-States and the revolution of the combat system by introducing the 1UPT (1 unit per tile) approach.<\/p>\n City-States are minor and independent powers normally reduced to single cities (as the name suggests). They do not compete for victory as the other civilizations but can be determinant to victory as they provide important bonuses that can make the difference in the long run. There are three types of City-States: – Maritime, Culture and Militaristic. The first provides food bonuses to your empire, the second provides culture bonuses and the third provides you with regular gift units. It’s up to you to know how to handle city-states. Sometimes they will make requests of you, if you comply you can get a boost in relations with that city-state. You can just conquer city-states and gain access to their nearby resources or you can make allies with them to benefit from the bonuses described above. It’s up to you.<\/p>\n Overall City-States are a very nice addition to the franchise as they provide more depth to diplomatic relations, more decisions to be made and ultimately are a fun feature that is undoubtedly a major plus for Civ5.<\/p>\n The other major difference in Civ5 is 1UPT. This is a completely new way to place and move troops. In its Civ predecessors troops could stack to a very big amount in a single map tile which sometimes resulted in the famous SoD (stacks of doom). Now in Civ5 a tile can only old a single military unit. This is a revolutionary feature that dramatically decreases the number of military units present in the world. To allow 1UPT the Civ5 mechanics changed significantly, for instance there is a limit of units you can build now, at least the ones that require special resources. To build swordsman you need iron, but if you only control 4 Iron resources you can only build 4 swordsman, in contrast to Civ4 where if you control a single resource of iron you could build an unlimited number of sword units.<\/p>\n With 1UPT tactical and strategical combat changes dramatically and gains a new meaning. Now each unit must be placed with care since only a handful of troops can attack a city or an enemy troop in the same turn. The units are now more valuable so you will not want to lose them so much. To add to this archers and siege units can now fire 2 to 3 tiles apart which enhances tactical combat even more. Maybe you will want to keep your archers in the back while you attack with swords in the middle and cavalry from the sides. It’s up to you to make your formations. Combat has evolved to a new level in the Civilization series. 1UPT is another plus for Civ5. I just have to remark that although 1UPT seems wonderful the AIs don’t seem to master it too well, at least at the time of this review. Maybe this will be fixed in future patches.<\/p>\n What about other changes, are there any?<\/strong><\/p>\n The introduction of City-States and 1UPT were the really major differences of Civ5 in relation to its predecessors in my opinion but what about other changes? Apart from a different user interface, different music and new graphics is there any difference? Yes, there are plenty of differences.<\/p>\n In Civ5 they removed (from Civ4):<\/p>\n They added:<\/p>\n There are other differences that I cannot remember now, if someone wants to note others feel free to point them out, I’ll add them later on.<\/p>\n Civics are now Social Policies<\/strong><\/p>\n In Civ4 you could choose civics that you could adopt in your Empire to gain some benefits. You could adopt civics in Government, Legal, Labor, Economy and Religion aspects. The choice of the civics influenced diplomacy (if you had the same civics as the other civs they would like you, makes sense). Now in Civ5 civics were removed in favor of Social Policies.<\/p>\n The concept remains, you can choose between several types of rule styles and ideologies like Liberty, Tradition, Autocracy, Freedom, among others. The good thing is that you can now have a mix of these, like you can adopt a Liberty measure and a Tradition measure but some are incompatible like Autocracy and Freedom (makes sense).<\/p>\n Social Policies have trees for each policy so in a sense they are like mini tech trees of their own. Social Policies are a nice addition but they don’t qualify as major additions in my opinion since they are more like a remodeled Civics feature.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Diplomacy is now more … mysterious<\/strong><\/p>\n To explain how the diplomacy has changed nothing is better than listening what the Civ5 lead designer Jon Shafer has to say about it (this clip was taken from Sulla’s “What Went Wrong with Civ5 article” that you can read here<\/a>).<\/p>\n Here’s what Jon Shafer said in an E3 interview: “Our goal was to make diplomacy feel more like interacting with other players or world leaders, rather than a system to be min-maxed. No longer are diplomatic modifiers shown since this used to give away pretty much everything your computer-controlled rival nations were thinking. That’s one way of doing diplomacy in a strategy game, but we wanted there to be more mystery in the interaction. Some leaders will work behind your back, and showing the numbers would either give everything away or provides a misleading sense of security.” And in another interview: “One of our early goals was to improve the diplomatic experience in the game. In particular, we want there to be a sense of mystery to it, where the player doesn’t know exactly what to expect from the other players.”<\/p>\n Well the intention seemed good but the result was not that good. Remember about the diplomacy positive and negative modifiers (numbers) that you got in Civ4 that told you exactly how each leader feels about you? That is no more. In fact after successive complaints by the fans Jon Shafer receded a bit and in the new patch (1.0.1.141) you can now see some modifiers, not exactly quantitative numbers, just some subjective positive and negative sentences. The problem was (and still is) that diplomacy became .. well .. too mysterious, to the point that it can be considered as erratic, random or illogical depending to whom you talk. But one thing is certain, it does not matter which civ fan you talk since all of them will tell you that they don’t like the way diplomacy behaves, and even after the new big patch (1.0.1.141) there are still many things that need to be corrected.<\/p>\n For instance sometimes the AI will tell you that you are expanding too much near him while you are far away from that Civ, the AIs after some point start to be hostile to you without any good reason and many times all at the same time. Sometimes you liberate a Civ, and it becomes naturally friendly with you but in 5 turns it starts saying you are a bloodthirsty leader and they became angry with no apparent reason. And there are more of these erratic behaviors.<\/p>\n Diplomacy is perhaps one of the worse aspects of Civ5. The intention was good but it did not come out right. Maybe they can fix this with future patches and expansions.<\/p>\n Happiness management is now Global, is that a good thing?<\/strong><\/p>\n In Civ4 happiness was managed locally in each city. A building you create in a city influences that city happiness alone. You needed to manage each city individually doing what you could to keep it happy. Now in Civ5 happiness is managed globally. Every resource you gain access to but more importantly every happiness building you create contributes to the global empire happiness status. You can argue, as I do, if this is logical to start with. What does a coliseum built in a city contributes to global happiness? Shouldn’t that building influence that city alone? But apart from how the concept gets abstracted there is another aspect of global happiness that needs to be addressed.<\/p>\n There was always a mechanic in civilization games to detract an empire to become too big too quickly and turn completely unstoppable, and to avoid the player from adopting the infamous ICS strategy that is basically to create as many tiny cities as you possibly can. In Civ3 it was corruption, in Civ4 it was maintenance, in Civ5 it is global happiness. Unhappiness is generated by the number of population and number of cities so if you want to expand you need to access more resources and build more happy buildings. but there is a catch or more a side effect that the designers didn’t foresee.<\/p>\n Building more cities generates more population and subsequently more gold and more science, in contrast with Civ4 where for every city you built you suffered a substantial economy impairment that could only turn over in the long run. If you expanded too much in Civ4 you could stale very quickly, ICS was not viable in Civ4. In Civ5 if you expand too much you can say that you are going to become unhappy but that is not such a big deal since the penalties of becoming unhappy are not so important. So in Civ5 you can adopt ICS and expand a lot without penalty. This is not what the developers intended, they intended us to build big cities but it has not turned out that way. This has been addressed in the new patch (1.0.1.141) but it’s still not completely fixed.<\/p>\n Buildings take too long to build and there is not so much to do …<\/strong><\/p>\n One thing that I started noticing while playing Civ5 was that buildings took too much time to build and another thing that I experienced was that I was not building most of the structures available to me (in contrast with Civ4 where I built most of them). You may argue that this is ok since you don’t need to build every structure available to you, but the thing is that I probably don’t build around 50% of them EVER. It is a very strange thing to me still that I don’t bother with many buildings, first because they take forever to build, second because they just cost too much money to maintain and third simply because I just don’t care. Something does not feel right about this and again ask to any game fan and they will tell you the same thing. Some mods already exist to address this (because now forests only provide 1 hammer, and mines provide also less hammers) to help solve this issue a bit.<\/p>\n This leads to my next big issue with Civ5, there seems not to be enough things going on to keep you entertained.<\/p>\n Everybody knows that the franchise is famous by its “just one more turn” syndrome. This happens because the game is very addictive, simply because there is always a lot going on, and in a single turn much can happen and this keeps the gamer glued to the screen full of excitement and expectation anticipating what’s coming next. I’m sorry to tell you but Civ5 does not feel so addictive as its predecessor, simply because there is not much going on to keep you engaged. Some people call this immersion factor, it is a state where the player forgets about time (about everything) and just keeps playing and playing and clicking end-turn fully engaged in the game.<\/p>\n The problem in Civ5 is that so much as been removed that not much is left to keep the player entertained. Sure the battles are fun and keep you entertained, but Civ is not only about war is also about the feeling of advancement (the next building, the next unit, the next policy, the next tech breakthrough, etc). The player needs to be given constant options so that decisions can be made. With so many things removed like religion, random events, local happiness management, tech trading, espionage, health, foreign trade, corporations, culture assimilation, map trading etc. What are we supposed to do between turns? Many will say that Civ5 is now more of a war game and if you want to take the full out of it you must engage in war. Unfortunately there are many gamers (like me) that prefer the peaceful-occasional-war style of play. For those the game feels a bit too boring.<\/p>\n Multiplayer<\/strong><\/p>\n I did not tried multiplayer in Civ5 yet but judging from what the community is saying it seems it is still half-baked and full of problems. For example there is no Hot Seat :| (yet)<\/p>\n Graphics, User Interface, Sound and Music<\/strong><\/p>\n In general Civ5 improved the graphics of its predecessors in almost every way. The terrain, see, lakes, forests are now more believable than ever. A remark on rivers that don’t look so nice.<\/p>\n The user interface is good and functional. The leaders animations in the diplomacy screen are specially nice. Only a remark on the building queue system that is not so good as before and to a nice feature now gone, the multiple selection of cities (clicking Alt key in a city would select all cities in Civ4).<\/p>\n Music is nice, I specially like the Greek soundtrack however and in spite the music is ok I still prefer the Civ4 music. Sound is also good. The sounds of rifles (like a firing squad), the artillery sounds, naval units, nothing to complain here.<\/p>\n Conclusions<\/strong><\/p>\n Civ5 is generally an enjoyable good game but it does not live to the expectations of the hardcore fans. Just search the forums in CivFanatics<\/a> for example. It’s true that the stakes were very high since its predecessor Civ4 Beyond the Sword was already the culminating peak of optimizations to the franchise, and so it would always be very hard to meet the fans expectations.<\/p>\n For Civ5 to be completely successful it needed to evolve and to be able to surprise and re-engage the fans. The addition of City-States and 1UPT were very nice evolutions and promised to lead the franchise in the good direction but unfortunately there are many problems with Civ5 that have disappointed the fans. Things like the diplomacy problems (that the game cover introduced as “improved diplomacy”), global happiness shortcomings, long building times, boredom (not much to do) undermine the game to the point where it cannot be named a classic (yet).<\/p>\n Some things may and will be fixed in future patches and expansions for sure. If we remember well Civ4 was far from perfect when it was launched.<\/p>\n If they can fix diplomacy, provide more things to do, decrease the building times and provide more justifications to build many structures I think the game can still become the best of the series. If that is possible only time will tell but it will not be with the same lead designer. Jon Shafer left Firaxis (don’t know the details) so maybe Sid Meier himself can supervise the evolution of Civ5, I certainly hope so.<\/p>\n You can buy Civilization 5 from Amazon here<\/a> (box). If you’re interested in the download version go here<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
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<\/a><\/td>\nSid Meier’s Civilization 5
\n(Buy at Amazon)<\/a><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n<\/td>\n