Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods & Kings Review

     Hey it's Brian and this is my first post on this blog. Today I'll be reviewing Sid Meier's Civilization V and the Gods & Kings expansion. Civilization V is a turn-based strategy game by Firaxis and is the fifth game in the Civilization series released in the U.S. on September 21, 2010. The game consists of the player controlling one of 34 civilizations (some only obtainable through individual dlc). There are also minor civilizations called city states that you can communicate with.  To win the player must have command over all other civilization's capitals, build a spaceship and win the space race, complete the Utopia project with culture, or win a diplomatic victory by winning control through the UN.

The main menu of Civilization V: Gods & Kings.

The four different victory conditions needed to win a game in Civilization V.

     Diplomacy in the game however is very frustrating. The AI would always make unreasonable demands for instance trade 5 horses for silver, pearls, oil, iron, and 500 gold. They are also very aggressive. If your army is weak (compared to theirs) they will threaten you and warn you that they will invade you. When you don't meet into their demands, they will denounce you warning other civilizations that you are "bad." Then other civilizations will denounce you causing the entire world in a sense to hate you. If you were nice and formed a declaration of friendship, then the AI would demand more and more weakening your civilization then they would betray and invade you. But to add some realism the leaders speak in their native tongues like Alexander speaks Greek and Catherine speaks Russian.

The diplomacy screen for the Greeks.

     Combat is very advanced in this game. Unlike other strategy games where you would just attack with vast amounts of troops, in Civilization V one needs to have an actual strategy to annex a city. In this game unlike previous Civilization games, the tiles are in hexagons and only one combat unit can be on a tile at a time. Cities are therefore hard to conquer as in this game they don't need a garrison to defend themselves. Cities have a ranged attack with a range of up to two tiles, so attacking a city is very costly on your troops. Terrain can make it even more difficult as cities could be surrounded by mountains allowing you less tiles to attack. And to annex the city, you would need a melee unit to come in and attack so a balance of siege, ranged, and melee units are required to effectively attack cities without losing too many troops.

The city of Atlanta in Civilization V. Note that to the top right of the city is an infantry unit and to the left are workers.

     Technology in Civilization V like the other Civilization games are still the same. You get a technology tree and research different technologies and advance through the ages. Different technologies gives you different benefits and unlocks different objects and units for you. The wheel unlocks roads and construction unlocks bridges. The later technologies unlock parts for your spaceship you can construct in your cities and win the space race victory. With the many different ages and technologies, each game is ensured to last a long time.

A technology tree found in Civilization V.

      There is a mechanism called culture within the game. Culture allows a civilization to adopt different social policies. If you have completed five social policies you are then allowed to start construction on the Utopia project and when completed you may win. Culture is gained in cities from different buildings like theaters, stadiums, temples, and many other buildings. Unlike the previous games, culture in this game does not increase the borders of your cities. Cities only gain new hexagons from gaining a citizen or buy purchasing the surrounding tiles with gold. This adds another dimension into the game along with diplomacy and technology, one has to focus on culture as well in order to stay ahead in the game.

The different social policies in the game. As you can see 3 of the social policies are already filled out.

Gods & Kings Expansion

     The expansion adds a couple of new civilizations, units, and a religion system. The religion system allows you to create a new religion from various symbols such as a cross or a Buddhism wheel. You can choose the aspects of the religion like it praises fertility or believes in crop gods and many more. The different aspects of your religion give different benefits to your civilization such as increased birth rates or hire food yield from farms. Churches, temples, shrines, and other religious buildings gives your civilization faith. With faith they can purchase units such as inquisitors that destroy the presence of other religions in your cities and missionaries that spread your religion. Religion adds some more things to do while you play the game. Although not that important, it can help you with diplomacy with different civilizations.

The religion panel in Civilization V: Gods & Kings.

      Also included in the expansion is a system of espionage. During the Renaissance Era a civilization is given its first spy. Spies can steal technology, sabotage cities, instigate revolts, and can see the area around a target city. Spies can also defend your cities from enemy spies that may try to steal technology or harm your cities. Although not that important and sometimes really annoying, espionage adds more depth to the game play.

The espionage panel in Civilization V: Gods & Kings.

Overall, I give Civilization V: Gods & Kings a rating of:

9/10

To get the game, you may purchase Civilization V and all of its dlc on Steam or go to your local game or electronics store and purchase it there.

Minimum Requirements For Windows:

• Windows XP Service Pack 3
• Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz or AMD Athlon 64 X2 2.0 GHz Processor
• 2 GB RAM
• 8 GB free disk space
• DVD Drive for disc-based installation
• 256 MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT / nVidia GeForce 7900 GS video card, or Core i3 integrated graphics
• DirectX 9.0c-compatible sound card
• Internet connection and a Steam account for authentication

Recommended Requirements For Windows:

• Windows Vista Service Pack 2/Windows 7
• 1.8 GHZ Quad Core Processor
• 4 GB RAM
• 8 GB free disk space
• DVD Drive
• 512 MB ATI 4800/nVidia 9800 or better video card

Requirements For Mac OS X:

• Mac OS 10.6.4 (Snow Leopard)
• 2.6 GHz Quad Core Processor
• 4 GB RAM
• 512 MB Video Memory