Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods & Kings
Reviewed By Luke "Lukaz" Withoos
Sid Meier is well known in the gaming industry as a visionary. Creating the first Civilization for PC in 1991; defining the very start of the strategy genre for gamers the world over. His redefinition of the genre has come a long way from 16 colour screens, MS DOS and 5 ½” floppy disks though.
Meier returned in 2010 for the latest instalment of the series; Civilization V, and with the very recent release of the first expansion to this title; Civilization V: Gods and Kings, the genre is once again redefined for a new generation of gamers.
As with every Civilization game, turn based strategy is implemented to allow players to seriously consider the actions they are taking to protect, develop and expand their civilization; and thinking hard is what you need to do just to get by. A balance is required between the key elements of the Civilization series: happiness, food, work, science, culture, diplomacy and conquest. Civilization V: Gods and Kings adds espionage to the expanding list of features and also puts more emphasis on the last key element of the series; faith.
Where previous Civilization games have focussed on faith as an important part of running a civilization, the new mechanic for religion now includes a resource for faith that must be collected to expand your people’s beliefs and eventually form your own religion. The benefit of this system is that your religion is fully customizable. In my case, I chose to take full advantage of this system. Unfortunately one of my favourite religions, the “Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster” was a little too long for the game, so I chose the “Church of the Sub-Genius”. I could have used the term “Pastafarianism”, but looking back, it was worth the change.
Getting to a point where I could choose my religion was not as easy as you might think though. Before faith was even a concern for me, I had to manage my civilization - who were the English in my case - to expand their small country and build 7 separate towns. With these towns, I needed to build workers. Lots of workers. Workers to cover the lands surrounding my towns with farms, lumber mills and mines to keep my growing population busy and well fed while I use my diplomacy to start trade relations with the nearby City-States.
The City-State mechanic was introduced in Civilization V originally; but further relationship building mechanics were introduced with the expansion. It is helpful to undertake questing for these states by putting pressure on other City-States or building wondrous structures; called “Ancient Wonders” such as the Temple of Zeus or The Pyramids. If your relationship with those City-States is good enough, they may even join your cause should you go to war with another nation.
Along with these City-States, you also have the chance of meeting other major civilizations, such as the Japanese, the Russians, the Mongols; even the Aztecs and Babylonians. While these races can’t all exist in the same timeline in reality, due to historic discrepancies, it was interesting to see what impact my English forces had in Liaison with these other cultures.
Each civilisation has a different leader. America has George Washington; France has Napoleon Bonaparte; Egypt has Pharaoh Ramesses II; the list goes on. My English civilization was ruled by Queen Elizabeth I. By nature, the English have greater strength at sea; so upon the time that my forces set sail for different islands, I was in good hands; however I had to get past the people of The Netherlands, ruled by William I who was located to the north, as well as the Spanish, who was ruled by Isabella I and were even further North.
While diplomacy is the natural course of action for any leader to keep his people safe, I though it prudent to ensure that the relationship with these great leaders was upheld. At least, this was the case until William decided it was appropriate to expand his lands to my borders and prevent me from marching further.
Diplomacy ended this day, as I amassed forces of archers, pikemen, warriors and catapults to take down the glorious capital of Amsterdam. The city succumbed to my forces over a series of years; but they did eventually fall. The English expanded their rule. Spain wasn’t too happy about this; neither was the Russians or the Aztecs who managed to find me during the war, and even though they hated each other settled their differences as they were suspicious of my new-found violent side.
I had waited a long time for my religion to take off as a great prophet arrived at my capital, London. I found the nearest place to build a shrine for my prophet and get back to the fighting. Turn after turn was made as I moved on to William’s final town, Rotterdam. Taking down this town and conquering the Dutch people made me feel great as a conqueror, but I realised that to do so, I had been playing for 8 solid hours without leaving my seat.
Civilization V: Gods and Kings is out now and is a fantastic game to play for marathon sessions. I recommend this game to any person who enjoys strategy games; but be prepared to play long games. As a matter of fact, to make the game even longer, you can choose larger maps, more races, and even set the game to “marathon mode”; where a game can take literally hundreds of hours of gameplay to complete.
The core game and expansion are available for purchase via Steam, and even with the time-consuming nature of the Civilization series, there is no reason to not sit down in a nice comfortable chair to spend hours on end saying to yourself over and over “just one more turn, just one more turn, just one more turn.”
Rating: 85%
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Game: Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods & Kings
System: PC
Developer/Co-Developer: Firaxis Games
Publisher: 2K Games
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