LogFAQs > #932986465

#26





Years of release: 2010 (PC), 2012 (Gods & Kings), 2013 (Brave New World)
Beaten?: On highest difficulty, and also against humans

This is actually my first Civilization game! I'm not sure what convinced me to play this one - I think it was in a Humble bundle or something, and I was in the mood for a strategy game, so I tried it out? I have IV but I still haven't played it. And, embarrassingly, I bought VI as well but I haven't played THAT one either. Civilization V really satisfyingly served my needs.

One type of game I like are games that I'm able to play while I'm watching videos on Youtube. There's stuff I like to watch on Youtube but I get bored of just sitting and watching it, so I need something non-lingual (otherwise I miss what's going on in the video) to do just to busy myself with something in the meantime, and I like games that I can play kind of semi-mindlessly for a bit. Civ V fills that niche, oddly, although I would call it anything but mindless; but strategic planning sort of goes into a different part of my brain than watching a video so I'm kind of able to multitask, I guess.

This game also kind of weirdly falls into both the Roguelike/"watching numbers go up" niches. Starting a new game of this is appealing because every time, the game is going to be a little bit different, and you're going to get lucky and have exciting new things happen in each game. Pulling that slot machine lever and seeing what start you get each game produces a little bit of a dopamine hit, which is nice, and it always feels good every game to build up your civilization, build an army, research techs, expand your cities, watching all those sweet, sweet numbers go up. And if you successfully build a wonder, which is nearly impossible on the higher AI difficulties, mmmm it just makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside knowing how much it's going to kick ass for me.

I really like playing this game with people when I get the chance. Games take way too long, unfortunately, so they almost never finish unless it's like 3 or 4 people max and you make the game as quick as possible, but it's really fun to build up your civs and strategize against each other, although the game does have a tendency to have some people run away with things. Mostly I play against the AI though. It's unfortunate that the AI sort of sucks so to make it hard the AI has to get completely obscene bonuses that allow them to do things the human players can't do (some wonders at higher difficulties become literally impossible to build because the AI will ALWAYS prioritize them over others), but, hey, that's the challenge of playing a 4X game against the AI I suppose, I'm used to it by now.

I do think the game starts to bog down in the later eras a bit - technology gets so crazy that you can have way too many cities and way too large an army to manage, while everyone's defenses are too good for you to do much significant damage to other civs, if they're playing decently well. I don't really like managing air units a whole lot, and the endgame tends to be a space race, but that's okay - I just wish that military victories didn't have to be quite so comprehensive, because conquering the world takes a ridiculously long time given everything you have to do. Minor complaint, but I definitely do find the game more fun in the earlier phases than the later phases.

This ranking should really be only considering Brave New World as the definitive version of this game, not the previous versions. I got Civ V with Gods & Kings originally and it was still a little weak back then - culture victories weren't very interesting and there were some other things that needed tweaking, which Brave New World came along and fixed. There's other mods out there that I've played though, there's one multiplayer balancing mod that changes up quite a few things that I really liked.

I should probably pick up Civ VI at some point but it's hard for me not to just want to keep coming back to Civ V - after 300 hours, I still feel like I could play a few more rounds if I wanted to. Each civ has pretty unique strengths and weaknesses and nearly all of them are fun to play, so the game has a lot of replay value, since every game is different. I want to get more into 4X games like this, since I've really come to like the genre. It's like seeing what board games can do when a video game is automating them.