I have been a fan of the Civilization Series since Civilization II. Ever since my dad brought me the deluxe edition back when I was a young pup. I have always enjoyed building cities and choosing the way to run my nation. There is something about building a nation from nothing to superpower that makes one smile with glee. Civilization has had a great run and the fifth installment continues that along with fixing the problems its predecessors had.
Civilization II was enjoyable but the main problem it had was that for some reason every nation was very powerful except for you. Even when your military advisor told you that you were a superpower. I can't count how many times he would proclaim: "We stand astride the world like a Colossus Noble Leader, send forth our armies so that we will smash every nation that stands against us!" So I would do such and proceed to get crushed myself. Then two hours later I would be defending my last two cities with everything I had. My allies would suddenly forget about me and I would die. The other extreme was that I was powerful and would crush everyone with ease. Once I was done with enemies I would back stab my allies and kill them all and conquest the entire world. Made the game too easy and not challenging, which made it no fun at all.
Civilization III fixed some of the problems that the second one had. Warfare was easier but far too frequent. Not to mention that the government controls were a joke. You used to be able to switch governments at will and as long as you didn't choose a bad one or went from dictatorship to freedom it would work. In the third one it was a guessing game. Only one form of it worked for your nation and it took a few revolutions to find out which one. Why it was fun to execute dissenters, it was hard to run a nation when you kill over half the population and whoever is left works slowly in order to indirectly piss you off, knowing that you won't raise a finger against them because they are the only person left who knows how to run your nuclear program (you killed the others).
Civilization IV fixed most of the problems, the government controls were almost taken away. The CPU managed most of it thus making it less tedious. However while that was fixed new problems arose. One of them being the warfare. It was made more challenging but it was as if they took the difficulty and shoved it as high as possible. At one point I rolled into a nation with five tanks and attacked one city. The long bowman in the city took out all my tanks, all five of them. It bothered me that a long bowman, a soldier from the 1500s could take out a large heavily armored machine with a giant gun from the 1900s. The diplomatic controls were bad too. Nations would randomly declare war on you for no reason. And when they did, their soldiers would always kill yours no matter how much more advanced you were. The only way I could defend my cites was to garrison them with at least ten units and sometimes that wasn't enough. Not to mention that win or loose I still would have no idea why they had declared war on me in the first place. Averting war also was not possible because you had no idea when or why it was declared, apparently things would deteriorate rapidly without you knowing.
Civilization V has remedied these problems. First off, the warfare is more balanced, winning wars is very doable but challenging at the same time. Diplomacy has improved much more. Nations will warn you that you did something to anger them. It is possible to avert war and repair problems. One problem in Civilization IV with diplomacy was that your allies would demand help right away in a war. In the fifth one you can tell them to wait 10 turns for you to prepare and they will honor that. Your government is also easier and rather then picking one type you can adopt policies and practices that will tailor your government to what you like.
Overall, the game has done well to fix the issues. It's a joy to play and to wage war. Once again back to coming from nothing to ruling the world! A Thank You to Fraxis, they got another winner, 2K knows how to publish!
Review
Grade-Harvest It!
Highs-New graphics and much more game play offered. Warfare and diplomacy is fixed and the issues that weren't broken were kept good and even improved
Lows-Big maps sometimes make relations and wars very taxing
ESRB Rating-E+10, for Everyone 10 and over
Kid Friendly?Yes, the warfare is not violent. However with how complex the system is, I would suggest an older child.
Overview-It was on sale and it cost me 24.99 but its well worth the full $59.99 price tag, it is an amazing game!
