The Shrine

vgchartz.com wrote:The Civilization Series launched in 1991 with the slogan, “Build an Empire to Stand the Test of Time”. Civilization V was announced on February 18th and not only does the slogan still stand true, but Sid Meier's franchise is second to none in the genre of exploring, expanding, exploiting, and exterminating.

Civilization IV was incredible, garnering an aggregate score of 94 on Metacritic. You may not understand until you play the game, but Civilization V puts its predecessors to shame.

There have been major changes to the series and the most apparent is the move from square tiles to hexagonal tiles. This allows the player much more freedom of movement for troops. Also, this makes the world look more organic, versatile and natural.



The next big change is the removal of stacks. No longer can you place multiple troops on a single tile. In Civilization V there is only one unit per tile. What this means is cities will have to defend themselves and maybe build forts outside city walls. This will get expensive, so you should try to build smaller, but stronger units.

The combat system has overgone some changes, too. Ranged units are fairly different in Civilization V. Set these guys on hills and in the back and have them inflict damage on the front line enemies. This will make life a bit easier for your warriors.

After starting your first game in Civilization V, you'll soon notice the addition of notifications. If something is going on in the world and you are not there to witness it, a notification will let you know so you can go to the scene of the crime instantly. The value of this feature should be self-evident.



Another welcome change is the user interface overhaul. All of the commands that you don't use on a regular basis are hidden behind a sub-menu and the commands you use frequently are cleanly displayed front and center.

City-states also make their debut in the game. While not vital in running a successful nation, city-states will help polish your thriving civilization. This means they will never grow as large as a country, and thus never be a real competitor to you. However, there are benefits if you decide to interact with them. The example used in my demo of the game was the city-state of Sidon. When provided with gold and military units, Sidon became friendly and is now willing to help me out in the future. Realize that you may need to make choices later on regarding your allegiance to Sidon and other city-states.

World leaders take the spotlight by speaking their native tongue in fully animated models set in scenarios that are unique to every leader. At this screen, you can choose to interact with other nations in a number of ways including Declare War, Demand, Discuss, Trade, etc. For example, you can enter into a research agreement that provides 15% scientific research for both civilizations.



The development team at Firaxis Games is making Civilization V feel more like real life. Instead of number crunching to make decisions, you'll need to read more carefully about the behavior of other territories and make choices based off of that. The world, the units, and everything looks gorgeous and feels more realistic. Additionally, mods are just as useable in the game and it now has a mod search engine in-game as opposed to scouring the web for downloadable tools.

Civilization V is developed by Firaxis Games and published by 2K Games. It will be released Fall 2010 for the PC. A Mac version may follow later, but no official announcement as of yet. Minimum requirements will be DirectX 9 and 256mb video.