Gaming Reviews: Civilization

Civilization is a turn based strategy game in which you take a civilization, or civ for short, from the stone age to the modern era. Each civ is different in that it has a special ability to cater it to a specific victory type and play-style a unique unit sometimes two, and a special building that only it can produce but more on that later.

In the beginning of the game, you build units and buildings that are very primitive befitting the stone age such as warriors with stone clubs and granaries to store food. At the same time advancing your civs technological standing by developing things like Writing or the Wheel.

Eventually you meet a city state or another civ whom are vying to win the game. There are a few different ways to interact with other players. For instance, you can expand, ”which might make them angry” and even go to war with them, while city states are only there to give quests and support if you are allied with them. Otherwise they take up valuable space that you need to expand. Eventually, you proceed to the Classical Era where you start doing bigger things like building roads and building Wonders. Wonders are special buildings that only one can exist in the world, like The Pyramids or The Parthenon. Each wonder gives a specific benefit that can be very powerful.

After the Medieval era, the Renaissance era is when espionage comes into play. You can send spies to other civs or city states to steal tech and see 3 tiles around the city or rig elections in your favor respectively. Spies can also be sent as diplomats which help you gain delegates in the World Congress/UN which comes into play once you meet every civ in the world and have discovered the Printing Press. This opens up the Diplomatic victory once you reach the Atomic Era and the World Congress becomes the UN. Then periodically, votes for the leader are taken. You win if you become the head of the UN.

There’s also the Culture victory where your civs culture must become the dominant one in the world. This is done through the creation of art, music, books, and some Wonders, all of which affect tourism which represents how many people visit your cities. The next way to win and by far the easiest and most standard is Domination where you try to take over THE WORLD.  Doing so is self-explanatory. You need to be the last one standing with your capital city. The other victory type and by far the most interesting is the Science victory. To win with that you must build a rocket to Alpha Centauri. To do that you must discover late game techs “such as Rocketry or Nanotechnology” so you can build the rocket pieces. Once all are built you win.

Civ is like a big boardgame, and like a boardgame, it’s more fun with friends. Try to play in multiplayer  mode. While playing against the computer is fun, unless you play on anything higher than Prince difficulty, “which is the normal difficulty”, the computer just acts dumb. The multiplayer is really buggy and tends to lag at points so it’s not perfect. All and all I give civ 5 an 8/10 rating.