I have played Civ2 and still play Civ: Call to Power off and on. I enjoy Call to power, but I am finding the AI a little lacking. I think I want to start playing a new Civ game. I probably am going to buy Civ V, but still, I want to ask what others think of it and if there is a large learning curve for a player of the old games. And in Call to Power, I’d turn Bloodlust on, so the only way to win is through world domination. Does Civ V have that option?
EDIT: Also, there seem to be a few versions of Civ V, Gold edition, etc. Which one should I buy?
Civ V is a great game, and should be easy enough for anyone to get into who’s familiar with the series, although there are quite a few new concepts that have been introduced since the last version you played. You can define what victory conditions you want at the start of the game, including turning off everything except “Domination Victory.” The various “gold” editions and the like come bundled with the expansion packs for the game.
It looks like Amazon has a deal right now for the Gold edition (which includes the DLC and the Gods&Kings expanions) plus the Brave New World expansion for the same price as the base game:
I don’t know how it’s priced on Steam right now but that’s a pretty great deal. I haven’t played with BNW yet, but Gods and Kings makes the game a lot more fun.
I loved Civ II and IV, but I didn’t like Civ V at all. Even the lead designer admitted that they screwd up with the how the game was at launch. I haven’t played it since the launch though, and I’ve heard things have improved since then.
I jumped right from Civ II to Civ V myself. I had bought Civ III at launch and it was a buggy mess so I played it maybe twice and shelved it and skipped IV (which I understand now was well done but anyway…). I started Civ V with a little hesitation whether I’d like it and soon found myself staying up far too late saying “Lemme just finish this…”
Having played Civ II, I can say that the general concepts of Civ V are the same. Tech trees, exploration & settlements, expanding cities, conflicts with neighbors, etc. You’ll probably find yourself fairly well grounded. You’ll want to play the tutorial or a game on easy with tips on though to pick up on the new nuances such as needing a resource in your city limits to build a particular unit or the new ways trade works. Also things like military units no longer stacking and entirely new concepts like Culture.
I would definitely get the Gold version (w/ Gods & Kings) and Brave New World. They very much enhance the game. I played Civ V base then the G&K then BNW and each time was like a whole new, better, game.
Everyone who replied, thanks for the help. I think I am going to buy it (with the BNW and G&K expansions), and the link you posted here looks like the best price. But it seems to be a download. Can you burn the game to a disk to keep in case there is a problem? I’m not sure if I like the idea of just downloading the game, and losing it if my hard drive dies.
It looks like to be a Steamworks game, which means you can download and install it with Steam as many times as you want, on as many computers and/or hard drives as you want.
I have an idea what Steam is, but have never used it. But my fear with such things is that in 10 years I might want to play the game on a new computer, and if I don’t know my Steam login info, I assume I would not be able to redownload it. Maybe I’m just old fashioned, but I like to actually have a hard copy as a back up.
Given it uses Steam for DRM, you wouldn’t be able to play your hard copy either.
I’d give it a try, especially given how good that Amazon sale is. Worst case scenario is that you buy it, play it some and at some future point forgot your login without being able to retrieve it. Hopefully you’ll have gotten 20 bucks worth of fun out of it before that happens.
All copies of Civ V use Steamworks no matter if they’re store bought or for Mac or bought from Amazon or through Steam… they all require Steam. So I wouldn’t worry about trying to find a hard copy. Even if you had a store bought DVD copy or burned it onto a DVD, you would need Steam to install/activate it.
It has. I bought it at launch, and thought it was crap (I, too, loved Civ I, II, and IV).
I put it away until after G&K came out, then G&K got cheap, so I bought it. Yeah, they’ve fixed it. They REALLY fixed it. I like it better than IV now, and I never thought that would happen. You might want to revisit it.
Not that it is a problem at the moment, but you need an internet connection to be able to install the game? I haven’t bought any games in years, so thats new to me.
I hope so, because I don’t have the expansions and think I like III and IV better. There’s some interesting things in V in that they introduced ranged units and got rid of the ability to build “stacks of doom”, but the AI is so stupid. I win pretty consistently on emperor level, and it just shouldn’t be that easy. The Iroquois are almost broken in that game, too. Mohawk Warriors are as powerful as swordsmen, are quicker in their movement due to their ability to move through forest tiles as if they were roads, and don’t cost any resources to build. You don’t even need to support them with ranged units because you can crank out so many and just swamp your neighbors with guys that are more powerful than anything they have.
Civ V is pretty cheap now, though, so even though the base game is flawed, I think it’s worth the money.
What you will get from Amazon is a “Steam key”. A code like AW23-FHWJ-00FGH. You’ll need to set up an account on Steam and download their client. Launch that and go to “Library” and there’s a link at the bottom to “Add a game”. Click that and there’ll be an option to enter a key. Copy & paste your key in and it’ll activate. You might actually get two keys from Amazon (one for Civ 5 Gold and one for BNW) so enter both. If this is the case, you’ll need to enter the Civ 5 key first since it won’t let you activate the BNW expansion without the base game. When you activate the key, it’ll ask where you want it installed (you can hit cancel if you don’t want to install right now) and it’ll go from there. It should put a shortcut on your desktop for the game or you can launch it from your library, whichever you prefer.
This sounds more complicated typed out than it really is. I was just walking you through it since you didn’t seem very familiar with direct downloading games and Steam.
You did make it sound more complicated than it really is :). But you’re also dead right, so kudos.
One thing you forgot though is once you have the game, you don’t need an internet connection to play it. The whole thing runs from your own hard drive. If you don’t have an internet connection and launch it, Steam will pop up and warn you that you can’t save your game on the Steam cloud. However, the default save game function stores it on your own hard drive anyway, so the cloud doesn’t matter. Play away.
I agree the expansions definitely fixed Civ V. Totally transformed the game, from something that was pretty disappointing to something that was excellent.
The only thing from the fully-upgraded Civ IV I miss are corporations - neat concept and one I was hoping would reappear in V.
