Civilization V

After the exam last Saturday was over, I finally sat my ass down for one hell of a gaming session of Civilization V, the latest of the Civ franchise. After I woke up on Sunday, the session continued and ended in the evening. After all that, I decided to post my honest assessment of the game instead of rambling about how Blizzard totally ruined the story of Starcraft. Anyway, I must mention I played in normal difficulty as Washington in a small Pangaea map and won via domination.

What's new?

The biggest change was moving from a square grid to a hexagonal one. On a "board game" type of game like Civ it's kind of a big deal. Hexagons lead to a more fluid map and an entirely new combat system. Speaking of combat, Civ V has done away with the "stacks of doom". What's a "stack of doom"? A SoD is when an incredibly large stack of units occupy a single tile on the map and moves slowly but surely into your cities or to your own, hopefully, larger stack. Now, only one military unit can occupy a single tile and have different moving and attacking mechanics such as a "ranged" barrage where units can attack other units two tiles away. Also, there are city states which you can influence or conquer for some benefits.

What rocks?

The new combat system is much better and has enormous potential. Looking back, SoD was the weakness of Civ. It was pretty boring and all it came down to was who could make the biggest stack the fastest and composition. Now, advanced tactics are possible. Graphics, the game looks great. The music is pretty well done too in my opinion. City management has been simplified. There is no longer individual city health and happiness but a larger empire-wide happiness that you need to look out for. Technology has also been simplified. A lot of fat was cut out and all we have is a very basic Civ. I guess it's to make combat and other game aspects more appealing.

What sucks...

Combat has huge potential. I use "potential" because the AI is hilariously stupid yet somewhat smart? AI has been inconsistent for me. On the one hand Nobunaga pretty much stomped all the other Civilizations yet had his army decimated by a handful of minutemen. He had riflemen and artillery which were more powerful. The poor bastard left his arty undefended and attacked me across a river so yeah. The AI needs to grasp tactics on hexagons and not the old SoD "crush everything" style. Granted, I played on Normal but in Civ IV, the AI was smart enough to attack me when I'm not looking or band together to declare war on me. AI needs more work. Also, some tiles have a mysterious red spot like a graphical glitch. The user interface lacks a few things like a clock and alarm(absolutely necessary), detailed breakdown of maintenance costs of individual units, diplomacy "love and hate web" and a way to stop puppet states from producing stuff.

Verdict

Civ V has enormous potential but really suffers in terms of AI. It lacks many things and is far from perfect. The simplification was nice but I enjoyed micromanaging cities like an anal-retentive German bureaucrat. The simplification is a mixed blessing, it makes warring easier. If there's any consolation it's that future updates will remedy this. Looking back, Civ IV wasn't nearly as great as it is today until the second expansion pack, Beyond the Sword. Hopefully,I won't have to shell out more cash for an expansion pack to fix the problems. All in all, a good game with a big chance of becoming "totally awesome" in the future. It's nice but needs polishing and patching. The modding community is pretty big so this game better get progressively better. I hope.