Sid Meier's Civilization V Review

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(More customer reviews)The working relationship between a game designer and his publisher is never a simple one. So I would not know where exactly to place the blame, Sid Meyer or 2K GAMES. But in the end, it does not matter. Because it is simply sad to see a great gaming franchise came to this.
THIS IS NOT A CIVILIZATION GAME
A great number of major features of this beloved series have been simply removed. A fellow gamer called this "Civilization For Dummies" and he is absolutely right.
There is no trading maps or technologies. There is no claiming resources outside your borders by building a colony. There is no need for transport ships as units apparently are now all..amphibious (and they need 15-20 turns to cross an ocean!). There are no city-growth milestone requirements (granary, aqueduct, refrigeration). There is no culturally conquering an enemy city (detonating a "culture bomb" by consuming a Great Artist will only get you extra territory tiles but no cities). There are no spies nor health/pollution balance. And there are no armies (please read on).
ARMY CASTRATION
Someone please tell me what was so wrong with armies that had to be yanked out? Napoleon almost conquered Europe with one army. Germany almost conquered the eastern hemisphere with three and the US still holds a two-and-a-half armies doctrine. How can a turn-based game be called Civilization unless one can emulate, well, a real civilization? Building an army, seasoning it on minor conflicts and then going for the enemy's capital was one of the most fun parts of any Civilization game. Why Sid, why?
YOU MAY BE ABLE TO LAUNCH INTO SPACE YET CANNOT CLIMB MOUNTAINS?!
Movement should be hindered by rough terrain. Units that have 3 or 4 moves on the plains should not be expected to do more than 1 or 2 on a mountain, right? Well, no. Mountains seem to be those magical places no unit can climb or pass through (not even ...helicopters of jet fighters!). And I cannot see how this makes for more complicated strategic decisions than timing your movements, claiming the high ground and having a bonus for elevated artillery?
UNIT STAMPEDE
A major issue for me, this was what really ruined the game. For some unfathomable reason units cannot be stacked. A worker can coexist with a military unit but that's it. Artillery and shock-cavalry are very vulnerable to attacks and (with the new hexagon layout) one would need ...six defensive units to protect a single artillery battery.
As a result, units keep getting on each other's way (especially when ordered to move for distances that require more than a turn), they refuse to even pass through friendly units (!) and the "tactical" considerations that result from this are trivial. And whenever besieging an enemy city, one has to endlessly maneuver his units around it (while exposed to its bombardment) whereas wounded units are never easy to withdraw.
You cannot even garrison more than a single unit within a city. Not that it would make a difference, since the garrisoned unit is not automatically awaken to fight back when the city is under attack(!), the city is left to defend itself.
CAN YOU REALLY COMMAND WITHOUT A...CENTRAL COMMAND?
The economy is nose-diving into the red and you want to reduce the percentage going into research for a while to avoid having units of yours deleted one by one? The fickle people of your civilization are unhappy and you want to placate them by increasing their entertainment allocation? You have discovered conscription and you want to upgrade all your musketeers into recruits? Well, TOUGH LUCK! There is not central command screen to do so. Only advisers that you have to thank for annoying you.
You have zero control of both your cities resource distribution and your national economy. And units have to be hunted down and upgraded one by one.
Speaking of the economy, when are going to see a Civilization game where one can run and manage a national debt?
NO FREE EYE-CANDY IN THIS UNIVERSE. NOT EVEN A STALE ONE.
The game does look new and polished and the units are well designed but not cutting edge and not without a steep hardware price. If you expect anything comparable to STARCRAFT II crispiness you will be disappointed - at my 1280x1024 resolution it is not easy to discern roads from railroads.
The system I am running my copy was top of the line about a year ago and still I had to tweak the video settings with a mix of high and medium to get it running. Even then, whenever I scroll to a different location of the map, I can see the image fleshing out, just like zooming in a Google-Earth map.
So one can only wonder: why should one need a...Cray to run a Civilization game at full?
STEAM OF WAR
The game requires OnLine Activation (and rumored perpetual reactivation every few days) and has to be tied to a STEAM account. Effectively this means that the game is a piece of rentware the buyer never really owns and yet it is sold at full price. I realize that to some people this may not be a serious issue so, in case you are wondering, I deducted a single star from my overall rating of the game because of its DRM scheme. To every other gamer however, you can now make an informed decision.This was a major disappointment. I never though I'd say this but I while playing the latest Civilization game I caught myself wondering if they would ever make...CALL TO POWER III.
New gamers, steer clear of this mess, this is NOT what a Civilization game plays like.
Seasoned gamers, we know better than to call this a Civilization game.
Sorry Sid, EPIC FAIL.

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Sid Meier's Civilization V is the fifth offering in the multi-award winning Civilization turn-based PC strategy game series. As with earlier installments in the series, Civilization V features the famous "just one more turn" addictive gameplay that has made it one of the greatest game series of all time. In addition to this it also features improved diplomacy, unprecedented modding tools and functionality, new ranged combat over a hex oriented board rather than squares, an in-game community hub facilitating improved online play and more. This collectable Special Edition also contains exclusive content and items. See the complete contents list below.

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Sid Meier's SimGolf Review

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(More customer reviews)Links and other golf-realism fans look elsewhere. This is not about accurate golf. It's a money management and resource gathering sim along the lines of Theme Park or Sim-Coaster. Those expecting this to be as involved or detailed as Meier's Civilization or Alpha Centauri games will also be disappointed. It's not necessarily challenging, but still fun to play.
Like most games of this type, you start out with a blank piece of land and a small sum of money and your job is to build up your course hole by hole until you raise enough money to err... go on to another blank piece of land. Detail is sacrificed for simplicity in this game. You can raise/lower terrain, add fairway, green and various traps rather intuitively but you can't make the sandtrap the exact shape you are looking for. You can win awards for a number of different achievements such as completing dog-leg holes or hitting the 9 and 18 hole marks. As your course becomes popular and the money starts pouring in, you can also sell prime real estate which celebrities such as "Curtis Weird" will move into.
Once you get a hole or two built, you can open your course to the familiar Sims who travel the course, speaking their gibberish, and showing their enthusiasm (or disgust) at your creation. A well designed course is also necessary to impress the city officials who, after a pleasing round of golf, will allow you to buy additional parcels of land to expand your course. If your course is particularly well designed, a pair of sims will start an elaborate story you can follow along with as they play. A pair may fall in love, start a business together, or whatever. If the story reaches a conclusion, a bonus item (usually some kind of course decoration) will drop from the sky and on to the course. It's interesting to follow, but after about four or five stories, they'll start to repeat themselves.
A weaker aspect of the game is the tournaments you play against fellow sims to build up your skills such as putting, driving, etc... It's *very* basic. You may make a mouse click or two on the initial drive, but the computer takes over from there right down to the final putt. You might as well be rolling dice. I wonder why it was ever incorporated into the game.
It's a very easy game, so if you're looking for a challenge straight out of the box, skip the normal level and go straight to difficult. There's also a nice feature that allows you to import your face in the game; the readme.txt file details how to do it. It's tricky, but you can import three different faces (happy, normal, mad) using a program that edits .bmp files (such as Paint Shop or Microsoft's Photo Editor). Then your face will appear in the giant photo of yourself as you pull up your character's statistics (I was hoping my mug would appear in the game itself, but alas...)
I killed an entire evening playing this game right out of the box. It sucks you in very quickly with its simplicity. However I don't find myself coming back to it that much the way I did playing The Sims. Perhaps it's because it's easy or maybe it's just because I'm sure I've probably seen everything already. So the next chunk of land is a wooded area instead of a tropical beach. What's the use of continuing if you're just going to create another course and listen to the same jabbering sims over and over again?
Still, if you ever wished you create your own Pebble Beach or Mauna Kea resort, this game delivers.

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Sid Meier's SimGolf puts you in charge of your very own golf resort. You'll get to play the roles of course designer, CEO, and resident pro as your try and grow your business from a small, public pitch-and-putt to a five-star resort complete with private memberships, airstrips, and luxury hotels. To do this, you'll need to design courses that are fun and challenging and manage your resort's resources to satisfy your guests' growing needs. You'll even have a chance to test your course and golf skills when your Sims challenge you to a round.
You can create the world's most challenging and outrageous golf courses in a variety of different environments, including woodlands, desert, tropical, and Scottish links. Then you can build an entire golf resort from the ground up around your course. Hold tournaments, sell memberships, and entice the rich and famous to build homes at your resort. But make sure you manage wisely. Modify your course and resort so you can respond to the needs and interests of your Sims guests.
The skills test against your Sims is the penultimate challenge. Players can bring their existing Sims characters into the game with a user-friendly import tool or create their own Sim golfer from scratch. Customize and play your resident pro against other pros for a big cash purse you can use to upgrade your resort.

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Railroad Tycoon II: Platinum Edition Review

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(More customer reviews)The Platinum Edition lumps the original game with several add-on packages.
Let's start off with a few things:
Yes, this is an old game. And, yes, you can probably pick it up for $20 (or less). And, yes, there is a newer version of RailRoad Tycoon out.
But I personally don't find the newer version to be as much fun as this one.
The graphics aren't striking. There's no whiz-bang 3-D animation. There's only strategy.
The scenarios seem easy enough:
"Create a railroad company, and lay track from Baltimore to Washington DC. Make 10 journeys with a train full of people in 10 years and win this scenario."
Or
"Connect New York to Chicago, carry 10 trainloads of passengers between these cities and have a company book value of $10 million. You have 20 years."
Okay, these may not be the exact scenarios, but they're close.
This game isn't just laying track and putting trains on them. You've got to create trains to do specific tasks. Start at a Iron mine with 2 cars full or iron, run to a Coal mine and pick up 2 additional cars, run to a steel mill and wait for the steel to be made, then off to a Tool and Die company for goods, now deliver those goods to a city and start it over again.
The scenarios are challenging, and fun. Sometimes it's not about running trains, but how well you run a company--or how well you play the stock market.
In RRT2 you get:
===North America===
The Iron Seed: Mid-Atlantic states
Handle on The Breadbasket: Eastern USA
Bridging a Nation: Western USA
Silver Booms and the Market Busts: Southwestern USA
Whistle Stop and Promises: Northwestern USA
Crossing the Great Divide: Canada
===Europe===
Birth of the Iron Horse: Britain
Excess on the Orient Express: Europe
Knitting with Iron: Germany
Next Stop the 20th Century: France
Through The Brenner Pass: Alps
When Walls Come Down: Eastern Europe
===World===
Croissants vs Crumpets: India
Which Way to the Coast?: Australia
The Samurai Rides an Iron Horse: Japan
The People's Train: China
Dilemma Down Under: Australia
Cape to Cairo: Africa
as well as the Second Century Expansion pack which takes you into the 20th century with new challenges and newer trains.
Including getting supplies to ports in America to be delivered to Europe for World War 2, running trains in the Eastern Block and Moscow during the Cold War, running commuter trains in the Northwest and a few science-fiction 'future' scenarios centering around a geo-thermal plant in Spain. I found this game very addictive, fun and still enjoyable years after my initial purchase.
Well worth the money. And you can find online guides to help you if you get stuck.


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Cities XL 2011 Review

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(More customer reviews)*This is from my review of the downloadable version*
* I haven't encountered any crashing bugs so far. I went through the forums and looked at what some are having trouble with. So I'm reviewing and informing at the same time.
*** Just a Reminder*** If you have the original Cities XL ('09) you can get CXL '11 for half the price. All you need is your serial number. Go to Citiesxl.com. ***
**Update** There is a patch now available**So after a year since CXL was released by Monte Cristo, Focus Interactive releases Cities XL 2011. They promised some changes and a transit system complete with buses and trains (subway and elevated). The next generation city simulator gets a makeover with these much needed features. I liked CXL and was annoyed that Monte Cristo went bankrupt before it could implement its new ideas ie. G.E.M.'s Transit expansion, and a host of others. When Focus Interactive took over CXL, it seemed like a breath of fresh air and a new chapter for the city building genre.
Unfortunately, some (and for others, many) bugs from the original CXL and some new ones have marred it to the point where the forums are lit up by frustrated people. Focus has been quiet although they did fix a bug for steam users. I recently saw a post that Focus has no patches in place because they are working on releasing CXL '11 for other languages. It could be a while before we get any type of patch. They are also very quiet concerning CXL '11 and it's future. From my point of view, it seems like they are going to crunch numbers and see if it's viable to continue. Hopefully, they will. There has been no attempt at creating a city-building game after Simcity Societies (not including CXL). Simcity Societies was dreadful.
If you are familiar with Cities XL, buying the game online has your serial number emailed to you; and online activation. The download was pretty fast but bare in mind, I am using FIOS. Previously, Monte Cristo told me that I can load CXL on as many computers as I like, no limits. Focus doesn't mention it. I heard that Starforce DRM is on it but I didn't see it while going through installation. I've had Starforce before and it usually says, "loading Starforce." If anyone who has this, had seen, it, I'll change this sentence, but like I said, I didn't see it. I went through the files as well. For people who had CXL, you have the opportunity to buy CXL 2011 for half the price if you have your serial number for CXL. If you forgot it or lost it, emailing Focus Interactive Tech support is the way to go..You have to provide your username, password and email you used to sign up CXL.
There is no online aspect of the game. Previously in CXL, you had the planet mode. online mode is completely left out in CXL 2011. You can trade with each of YOUR cities or Don Madoff of Omnicorp, but no one else. It's fairly simple. Like a point and click. You have a "earth" screen that will show where the trades are going but it doesn't show your road network like Simcity 4. In the earth screen, you can also see the available areas to build a city. It doesn't truly represent what you will see when you pick that spot unlike in Simcity 4, you see what land you are getting; including all the physical features. A wishlist here would be when you are searching for an area to create your city, it would be nice to get a feel of what you are getting. You cannot change the land. You can terraform AFTER you pick your spot and name your city. Terraforming is very expensive and a little frustrating. Simcity 4 was much easier when it came to terraforming.
The same premise is back. You can build a city on the CXL "planet," picking a spot with different physical features ie. peninsula, volcano, lakes on a plain, fertile plains, tropical island, and more. Also, keep in mind what type of resources that each "plot" has ie. oil, water, holiday, water, farm. You give your city a name and go through a quick tutorial of where to place your first road, city hall, and early power/garbage zone. The tutorials at the very beginning (before you pick where you want your city) are good enough to give you the know-how of the basics. Again, you cannot terraform the land after you pick it and name it. I found one bug. I chose a peninsula and I was creating my city when I saved and closed it. When I came back to it, all of a sudden, my city became a island with peninsula qualities.
Many people are having problems installing the game, starting it, and playing it. Steam was the worst but I think a patch, fixed that. I haven't had this trouble at all. Also, people have been reporting slow frame rates early in the game. Usually the frame rates decrease when you have a sizable city. This is true. I loaded my city that I exported from CXL and yes, it was slow. Not too terrible though. It was like your large city in Simcity 4. You would think in 2010, almost 2011, the multi-core support and increased framerates for a city-building genre would be there.
The graphics are gorgeous. The people in CXL '11 are just like the original; not very realistic but better than others. There is no comparison concerning graphics between Simcity 4, CXL '11, and Simcity Societies. This one is by far better!
One thing new, you can tax different types of zones. In Industry, you can tax separately; heavy industry, office buildings, high tech etc. In CXL '11 you have industry, commercial, and residential zones. Building have been added as well as packs ie: coastal homes on stilts, Asian style homes, European....
One of the best things done in CXL is the idea of allowing us to create our own bus lines; up to 20 lines. The maps show your worst traffic and how your lines are being utilized. You can;t go crazy or else you will go bankrupt quickly. The best thing is that the bus stops are placed along your roads; they don't take up a tile as in Simcity 4. Perfect, since every bit of real estate is needed. The Metro (train) works the same way as the buses except, the station needs to be placed near a road. you can create many lines depending on the size of your depot (just like the buses; small or large). What is great, concerning the Metro, you can run your lines along side or under your lines placed already. The belief in the CXL universe is that the tracks go under the track already placed. A roundabout was added in the roads section however, it really has no use at this time. Expressways are now highways. One bug that had carried over from the earlier CXL is the way traffic moves. On a multiple lane road, cars in the left lane turn right and cars in the right lane turn left (besides going straight). The traffic lights, again are not animated. These 2 things too me are glowing issues especially since we are in 2010 and this game pushes city building realism. I'm also a realism nut :) The way cars and trucks turn is unnatural. People waiting at the bus stop looks nice, however, when the bus arrives, they mysteriously get out of the bus and get on. The windows on the bus look like the windows on the buildings. I wish we were able to change the physical features of the land we choose to put our city, otherwise, it's very expensive to terraform.
For those looking to buy Cities XL 2011, just be on the lookout concerning the bugs; there seems to be more in this one that the previous one. In the previous Cities Xl, Ive only experienced one lockup but in this one, none. Like I said, I haven't come across the crashing and error messages that others have gotten. Most people reporting the issues have decent systems. Check the forum. You need a decent video card because this one will wake up your video card. But again, the bigger the city, the game lags. Not terrible, but it's noticeable as in Simcity 4. The game was rumored to have multi-core support but it doesn't.
Besides all the bugs being reported, what makes me nervous is the way the developer is very quiet. Contacting them gets a very slow response. Sometimes, it seems like you get a generic response also. For those who remember, Cities XL '09, Monte Cristo was quick to respond and always had their news updated. Even when nothing new was reported, they seem to update their website. When emailing tech support, they responded quickly and seemed more personable. They even took the time to let you know that they've logged your issue and will send it to the development team. In other words, at least they responded. When I couldn't find my serial number from CXL '09, it took more than a few days for Focus Interactive to email me back and even their response was kind of cryptic. You had to read it a few times to realize what they were asking. Don't get me wrong, I'm not blasting Focus Interactive. I'm happy that they've added some things to CXL 2011 and cleaned up the resource trade screen. It just would be nice if they kept us, those who bought the game in the loop ie a patch will be coming, updates will be coming soon. It's like pulling teeth! Not good customer service. I feel bad for those who are looking to buy this game or have it on their wish lists but are afraid to take a chance because they might feel, "what if I get those bugs and/or crashes."
All and all, what is surprising is the amount of bugs being reported. If you don't experience the bugs, you will enjoy this game. It really requires you to thin what type of city you want to build, where, and how big. You have to keep an eye on your finances. In Simcity 4, it was easy to zone and expand quickly without any problems. In CXL '11, you can't expand quickly. When things become available, sometimes it's best not to immediately place them because it will put you in the red quickly. The passage of time in CXL '11 is by cycle, not month/day/year like in Simcity. I happen to like CXL way of passage of time. By default, the...Read more›

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Sid Meier's Civilization V Review

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(More customer reviews)The working relationship between a game designer and his publisher is never a simple one. So I would not know where exactly to place the blame, Sid Meyer or 2K GAMES. But in the end, it does not matter. Because it is simply sad to see a great gaming franchise came to this.
THIS IS NOT A CIVILIZATION GAME
A great number of major features of this beloved series have been simply removed. A fellow gamer called this "Civilization For Dummies" and he is absolutely right.
There is no trading maps or technologies. There is no claiming resources outside your borders by building a colony. There is no need for transport ships as units apparently are now all..amphibious (and they need 15-20 turns to cross an ocean!). There are no city-growth milestone requirements (granary, aqueduct, refrigeration). There is no culturally conquering an enemy city (detonating a "culture bomb" by consuming a Great Artist will only get you extra territory tiles but no cities). There are no spies nor health/pollution balance. And there are no armies (please read on).
ARMY CASTRATION
Someone please tell me what was so wrong with armies that had to be yanked out? Napoleon almost conquered Europe with one army. Germany almost conquered the eastern hemisphere with three and the US still holds a two-and-a-half armies doctrine. How can a turn-based game be called Civilization unless one can emulate, well, a real civilization? Building an army, seasoning it on minor conflicts and then going for the enemy's capital was one of the most fun parts of any Civilization game. Why Sid, why?
YOU MAY BE ABLE TO LAUNCH INTO SPACE YET CANNOT CLIMB MOUNTAINS?!
Movement should be hindered by rough terrain. Units that have 3 or 4 moves on the plains should not be expected to do more than 1 or 2 on a mountain, right? Well, no. Mountains seem to be those magical places no unit can climb or pass through (not even ...helicopters of jet fighters!). And I cannot see how this makes for more complicated strategic decisions than timing your movements, claiming the high ground and having a bonus for elevated artillery?
UNIT STAMPEDE
A major issue for me, this was what really ruined the game. For some unfathomable reason units cannot be stacked. A worker can coexist with a military unit but that's it. Artillery and shock-cavalry are very vulnerable to attacks and (with the new hexagon layout) one would need ...six defensive units to protect a single artillery battery.
As a result, units keep getting on each other's way (especially when ordered to move for distances that require more than a turn), they refuse to even pass through friendly units (!) and the "tactical" considerations that result from this are trivial. And whenever besieging an enemy city, one has to endlessly maneuver his units around it (while exposed to its bombardment) whereas wounded units are never easy to withdraw.
You cannot even garrison more than a single unit within a city. Not that it would make a difference, since the garrisoned unit is not automatically awaken to fight back when the city is under attack(!), the city is left to defend itself.
CAN YOU REALLY COMMAND WITHOUT A...CENTRAL COMMAND?
The economy is nose-diving into the red and you want to reduce the percentage going into research for a while to avoid having units of yours deleted one by one? The fickle people of your civilization are unhappy and you want to placate them by increasing their entertainment allocation? You have discovered conscription and you want to upgrade all your musketeers into recruits? Well, TOUGH LUCK! There is not central command screen to do so. Only advisers that you have to thank for annoying you.
You have zero control of both your cities resource distribution and your national economy. And units have to be hunted down and upgraded one by one.
Speaking of the economy, when are going to see a Civilization game where one can run and manage a national debt?
NO FREE EYE-CANDY IN THIS UNIVERSE. NOT EVEN A STALE ONE.
The game does look new and polished and the units are well designed but not cutting edge and not without a steep hardware price. If you expect anything comparable to STARCRAFT II crispiness you will be disappointed - at my 1280x1024 resolution it is not easy to discern roads from railroads.
The system I am running my copy was top of the line about a year ago and still I had to tweak the video settings with a mix of high and medium to get it running. Even then, whenever I scroll to a different location of the map, I can see the image fleshing out, just like zooming in a Google-Earth map.
So one can only wonder: why should one need a...Cray to run a Civilization game at full?
STEAM OF WAR
The game requires OnLine Activation (and rumored perpetual reactivation every few days) and has to be tied to a STEAM account. Effectively this means that the game is a piece of rentware the buyer never really owns and yet it is sold at full price. I realize that to some people this may not be a serious issue so, in case you are wondering, I deducted a single star from my overall rating of the game because of its DRM scheme. To every other gamer however, you can now make an informed decision.This was a major disappointment. I never though I'd say this but I while playing the latest Civilization game I caught myself wondering if they would ever make...CALL TO POWER III.
New gamers, steer clear of this mess, this is NOT what a Civilization game plays like.
Seasoned gamers, we know better than to call this a Civilization game.
Sorry Sid, EPIC FAIL.

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Sid Meier's Civilization V is the fifth offering in the multi-award winning Civilization turn-based strategy game series, and now it is available to players on the Mac platform. As with earlier installments in the series, Civilization V features the famous "just one more turn" addictive gameplay that has made it one of the greatest game series of all time. In addition to this it also features improved diplomacy, unprecedented modding tools and functionality, new ranged combat over a hex oriented board rather than squares, an in-game community hub facilitating improved online play and more.

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Sid Meier's Civilization V Review

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(More customer reviews)Just to give this review some perspective, I've been playing the various iterations of Civ for a very, very long time. I remember playing the original like it was yesterday. Beavis and Butthead on the TV, Nirvana on the radio, and me on my Packard Bell. I spent hours in my mom's basement, wasting away from rickets while the normal kids were soaking up the sunlight, going out on dates, playing sports, and leading generally normal, productive lives. Civ 1 really messed up my life...but in a completely awesome way.
I mean, I couldn't get enough. Doubly so with Civ 2. The things you could do with that game. It had...personality. I remember little stuff, like the different architectural styles, that gave the game such an immersive quality. I remember how every time I played, the world had its own story, and how things would seem to take on a life of their own. The endless war with the Mongols, my alliance with the Germans, butting heads with Caesar. I learned more about history there than I ever did in school. It was fantastic. I didn't even play to win most of the time. I was a fifteen year-old kid in a sandbox.
I got older, and Civ grew with me. I spend endless hours on 3 and 4, balancing game commitments and my real life. When Civ 5 was announced, I didn't hesitate. I bought it immediately.
In short, it didn't take me long before I realized that this new Civ was nothing like the Civ of old. I've never played Revolutions, but I've heard there is a lot of overlap. I don't know. What I do know is that this game is boring. Really, really boring. Never have I clicked the "next turn" button like I have here. Maybe it's because it takes forever to build anything...so long, in fact, that it's easier just to hoard gold and buy things. Maybe it's because expansion and/or conquest isn't really encouraged. The seemingly massive happiness hit just makes it unreasonable. So I sit there, just watching the world slowly go by.
And how slow it is...the loading screen between turns has become my nemesis. I've turned the "superb" graphics down to their lowest setting, just to speed things up, and to keep things from jumping from one side of the world to the other every time I scroll my mouse. Just to be clear, I have a computer that can run all the latest shooters, yet cannot run a turn-based strategy game aimed at a mass audience.
The AI is dumb and unfinished. If my dog had fingers, he could win on prince at least. I don't consider myself the smartest strategist, but I have never lost a war in Civ 5. Ever. I started on warlord, then prince, then king. Onward and upward I went, until I quickly realized that the AI wasn't getting smarter. It was just cheating. This was acceptable 15 years ago, not now.
Why is Gandhi determined to kill me? After 2000 years of good relations, he wants to kill me. Not a biggie, mind you, because all he does is park archers next to my swordsmen, where I can promptly slaughter them. After I defeat his army (without taking any cities), he offers me all of his resources, all of his gold, and all of his cities (except for his capital, of course). He just gives up. I take him up on his offer, because I am obviously smarter than him. But that means my happiness tanks, my production stops, and my steady income stream is now in the red. Whatever. I still have 3 swordsmen and 2 archers. I can conquer the world with that. Screw culture.
Did I mention the music? Man, it's boring. No more period specific soundtrack, tribal or classical. Just the turn-based equivalent of elevator music. I'm sure the graphics are the bees-knees, but with me playing on the lowest graphics setting, I will never know. City-states, which were made out to be a big deal, are not. They ask for stuff, you give it to them (or not). They give you stuff (or not). That is the extent of the city-state strategy. Boring.
Actually, the city-state thing reminds me of a problem I have that extends beyond the poor quality of this game. Professional reviews. Why did every professional game review outlet give Civ 5 high marks. 9/10. A+. Really? Every review I've seen has been the same. "It has hexes!" "It has city-states!" "One unit per tile!" "Ranged combat!" "Beautiful graphics!" I even saw reviews gushing over how cool the opening sequence was (you know, the one you can't skip).
For one, I am tired of seeing the old man in the hut every time I load up. I find it oddly fishy that no "professional" reviewer has brought up the bugginess; the fact that you need an internet connection; the fact that you need Steam; the fact that the AI stinks; etc, etc, etc. Just hexes and city-states. Either they were told to write a good review by the "powers that be," or they spent a total of 3 hours playing before writing their reviews. Either way, I will never trust a professional review source ever again.
I gave this game 2 stars, because I believe it still has the potential to be good. After a few expansions, some mods, a Rhys and Fall, a Fall From Heaven. Yeah, it could be good. I've played around 60 hours, and still see a spark of genius here. But it will take an awful lot of work. Right now, it's like watching paint dry.

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Sid Meier's Civilization V is the fifth offering in the multi-award winning Civilization turn-based PC strategy game series. As with earlier installments in the series, Civilization V features the famous "just one more turn" addictive gameplay that has made it one of the greatest game series of all time. In addition to this it also features improved diplomacy, unprecedented modding tools and functionality, new ranged combat over a hex oriented board rather than squares, an in-game community hub facilitating improved online play and more.

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