The Civilization series is a long standing classic of its genre. It wraps a meticulous strategy & management game in the foil of all human history, from the first agricultural settlements to our present modern age, and the near future. Imagine a toy box filled with all the most interesting elements of history: leaders, empires, battles, technological developments, exploration of new lands. Funny hats. Tip all that into a turn-based strategy game. That's Civilization put as simply as possible. It's the player's task to pick a Civilization and lead it, turn by turn, through the ages to victory or defeat - be that through conquest, diplomacy, cultural achievement or scientific triumph.
Civilization 5 is the fifth entry in the main series, made this time under the creative stewardship of modder-turned-designer Jon Shafer. Following up the highly-acclaimed Civ 4 was always going to be a tough job, but Civ 5 succeeds in making some fun changes to the established formula. There's a lot of cool stuff here – hexes instead of squares, a new tactical combat model, city-states, and a board-game-alike two-dimensional strategic view that can only be described as blatantly sexy. Having said that, there are some problems too.
The most comprehensive and fundamental of the new additions that Civ 5 makes is the combat system. In the pre-release build up Shafer talked openly about his admiration for the early nineties' tactical wargame Panzer General, and his wish to move Civ combat in a similar direction. For anyone familiar with Panzer General or other hex-based tactical wargames, the influence in this version of Civ is plain to see.
In previous Civ games, military units could be stacked on top of one another limitlessly, and thus wars tended to be fought by huge stacks of units piled on top of each other, hounding other such death-stacks or bee-lining for objective cities. Not so in Civ 5, which does away with unit stacking completely, instead allowing only one military unit to occupy a given tile at any time. Because of this, war-zones tend to take on a 'front-line' appearance. Ranged units such as archers or artillery are able shoot at other units two or three tiles away, but are vulnerable to attack and must be shielded by melee units. And of course, they shoot further when positioned on a hill. Very wargamey. It's the first game in the series to present a somewhat deep tactical model for combat.
It works very well in itself, multi-tile traffic jams aside. For the first time in a Civ game, you'll find yourself pondering the positioning of your cannons as you prepare to withstand an attack from that over-compensating cad Napoleon; you'll fight battles of maneuver on open fields, and grinding battles of attrition in narrow passes. You'll execute Hannibal-esque coups of tactical audacity that simply were not possible before.
And you'll pull your hair out when it dawns on you just how dim the computer opponents are. Now, you have to make some allowances in this regard; you can't expect a game AI to posses the acuity, inventiveness and deviousness of a human player when it comes to dealing with these sorts of systems. But boy oh boy: these great historical leaders are dim. Positioning is critical in this new model of combat, and the AI leaders display little understanding of its importance. Ranged units in particular are rarely defended properly. It's a real shame, because the model itself is basically interesting and fun, but the AI opponents have at best a very slippery grasp on how to play it. For a game that focuses quite closely on its combat mechanics, this is a pretty big failing.
It is, however, very nicely presented. The menu screens are pretty and functional, with a pleasing, smooth aesthetic. Setting up a game is a quick and painless process, with all the major options laid out clearly on one main screen. There's sub-screen for more advanced tweaks such as enabled victory conditions, number of rival Civs and the specific characteristics of the world (sea level, climate, etc). Hit the 'start game' button and while the game loads you're treated to a brief spoken overview of your chosen Civ's real-world history, read in a suitably wise and commanding voice. By the time you're checking out your starting location you ought to be in just the right mood for a little empire-building.
The new hex grid gives the geography of the game-map a much more organic look and feel. Coast lines and cultural borders flow and curve majestically, rather than jutting at ninety-degree angles. Just in terms of the look of the game, hexes are a big step up from squares.
Civ has always been a series that places a great emphasis on geography. As such, half the battle in setting up a fun game is creating interesting worlds - Civ 5 does this wonderfully. If you like maps, then you ought to like at least one thing about this game. Mountain ranges stretch over multiple tiles, rivers snake down from hilly inland regions to the ocean, jungles grow just off the equator. The maps have pleasing, non-random appearances and bonus 'natural wonder' tiles that make exploring them something of a pleasure in itself. Of course, there is a strategic element too. Geography is critically influential over one of the most important aspects of the game: city placement. It's hard to grow crops on mountainsides.
Given how nice the maps are it's a slight annoyance that you can't sign-post tiles in this version, as you could in Civ 4. So, you won't be able to declare that mountain tile X is now 'Mount Caesar Sucks'. Maybe in a future patch.
The user interface is also good. Everything is drawn in a thoroughly attractive style, and most buttons or information screens are never more than a click or two away. There are some oversights however; there is a main-screen display for strategic resources but not luxury ones for example. With each new turn, a list of reminders appear along the right hand side of the screen, giving the player prompts for new production orders or research goals. It's very easy to navigate, and should ensure that no decision is left forgotten about.
The post-game screen is a big let-down, though. In earlier Civs, upon victory or defeat you would be treated to a break down of your virtual world's history - complete with score graphs, statistics on how many buildings/units you built, and an animated map charting the expansion or inglorious defeat of your empire. It was a nice way to cap off a game, and is all but absent here. In Civ 5 a splash screen and a few lines of text is your lot; it hardly seems worth the effort of leading a people through the centuries for.
The big new game in Civ 5's diplomatic arena is city states: minor civilizations that occupy only one city, and will not attempt to win the game as a major Civ would. Relations with them can be very important. Get in their good books by completing missions for them, or plying them with gold, and they will provide bonuses to food or culture, provide resources, or gift you military units. It brings a new element of strategy into Civ, and it's a welcome addition to the diplomatic landscape of the game.
The overall happiness of your empire forms a cornerstone of the strategic game. In Civ 5 - unlike older Civs - happiness is implemented as a global modifier. In order to keep your cities growing you need to stay in positive happiness. Dip into negative happiness and you'll get a combat penalty along with slowed growth. It's good to be happy. Happiness comes from luxury resources, or from specific buildings, but is offset by population; this means that happiness functions primarily as a check on unfettered expansion and population growth. And it's a pretty stringent check - to the extent that it's often preferable to raze conquered cities rather than deal with the happiness penalties associated with holding newly captured population centres. Genocidal mania, apparently, is a real crowd pleaser.
Balancing happiness with growth is one of the core tasks you'll be engaged in. Unfortunately at the time of writing it's possible to get ahead by creating scores upon scores of tiny but fractionally productive cities which nonetheless cover their own cost in happiness. It's a highly efficient snowball effect, and doesn't seem much as if it's working as envisioned by the designers. It won't manifest itself as an issue unless the player employs a quite particular strategy of spamming low-population cities, but it's there. Hopefully Firaxis will take a look at this.
The stratification of science, culture and wealth production is another notable change from the older games in the series. Gone are the sliders that have been an ever-present element of Civ since the very first game. The critical consequence of this change is that it's no longer possible for an empire focused on cultural development, for instance, to morph abruptly into an scientific powerhouse via a quick reversal of the culture and science sliders. What's more, there is very little overlap in this game between the bonuses provided by city buildings. Most provide a bonus of only one type - eg +5 science, +25% gold output. It's quite a rigid approach which starkly presents the cost of a given decision not only in terms of resources, but in terms of lost alternatives as well.
Culture in Civ 5 works very much like science, complete with something like a tech tree. Culture output-per-turn goes into a pot that builds up gradually until you have enough to purchase what Civ 5 dubs 'social policies'. Social policies are one-time bonuses that, once activated, give a permanent boost in a particular regard. There is a military-themed tree of bonuses, an economic tree of bonuses, and so on. Deciding which policy branches to pursue is genuinely interesting, as different policies complement different strategies. Do you want to expand early? The liberty tree is for you. An early war? Honour tree! A militaristic Civ will pick up different 'traits' over time than a more commercially or diplomatically focused one would. It gives your Civ a few degrees of character.
It's a shame, then, that there's no way to examine another Civ's social policies. Those Greeks you're engaged in an arms race with - are they a fascist empire? A republic? A theocracy? Which social policies has Alexander the Great over there chosen - is he focusing on military bonuses, or economic ones? Who knows! There isn't a whole lot of info about other Civs to be found. Diplomatic interaction is also characterised by a lack of explicit detail. There is no numerical feedback on relations with AIs - instead, you're left to guess their attitude towards you based off of a few lines of text and pre-rendered animations. It's a pretty easy guessing game though; most of the time relations with the AIs seem to run on a spectrum that begins just short of 'hostile' and ends somewhere around 'burning, irrational hatred'. It's possible to arrange trading deals with the AIs, but long-term peaceful relations are often difficult.
So then, is Civilization 5 a worthy addition to the series? The answer must be yes, it is, with the reservation that it's not yet as complete a game as the twice-expanded Civilization 4. It re-mixes the Civ formula in some fun ways and is nicely presented - but it has problems. Given a few good patches and an expansion pack or two it is possible that Civ 5 could grow to surpass its older, more established sibling, though. And it still hits on the fundamental appeal of Civ; it's still a toy-box mix of strategy and history. Look over a few faults, and you'll still find yourself engrossed, counting the turns until you discover gunpowder and babbling obscenities at a virtual Montezuma.
3/5
PLUS:
-Tactical combat
-Just. One. More. Turn.
MINUS:
-Poor combat AI
-Some balance/design issues
No comments:
Post a Comment