Hailing from Canada Sid Meier has established himself as one of the most creative visionaries of our time in gaming. He has designed such games like Civilization (2000), Civilization II (2003) and Civilization III (2006). At the time of his death Meier was working on Civilization IV: Gods and Magic. He wanted to create something new and fresh, something that would generate excitement in the gaming community. With this he started to work on Civ 5 and after months of intense work he had brought to the market. Civilization 5 was not released until September 2010. Since then this game has raised the bar on graphics and gameplay to unseen heights. The new expansion pack, improved battle mechanics and new buildings all resulted in an excellent game.

The game takes place in a fantasy world of ancient civilizations. You have the option to pair ancient civilizations with futuristic civilizations. There are eight civilizations you can play with, each one more advanced than the last. The gameplay is countless hours of fun with challenging maps, amazing special abilities and a fun story line. In Civilization 5 you play the role of a civilization building leader. In the beginning each leader must deal with minor problems and advance the technology and population levels until they have advanced to the point where they can start building a grandchild civilization worthy of their name.

I have played Civilization games since I was a kid, with this latest installment I found that it was a breath of fresh air from all the formulaic games. The addition of city-states to the game allowed me to play more aggressively and without fear of a mob. Of course, you will still need to have considerable might to defeat them if you are to have any chance of success. The new military units are very fun to use. They actually have missions and objectives we can meet during the game like captures the flag. These types of objectives provide the game with some variety and sense of rhythm. Sometimes we need to be aggressive and sometimes we need to be defensive, it is good to know that you can change your tactics whenever you feel it is needed. Some of the new units are very fun to use but there are others that have not been well liked by many, so I am unsure how many of them are “must have” units for example. The demos for Civ 5 did not include any kind of campaign or map pack, which I have been looking forward to. I realize that Firaxis is not looking to create a long term client, so the lack of a full map client may be somewhat disappointing. So for the short term I think it is adequate. There are three modes of play in Civ 5, Civ 5 Gold, Civ 5 Classic and Challenge. The map pack allows for total domination as you shell out cash for expansion and conquest. My only complaint with the game would be AI Disable, which I believe is an oversight.

In the beginning you will feel a calm and steady piece of Civilization 5, but as soon as the game wheels up you will realize there is a lot of content being thrown at you all the time. In Civ 5 you can not afford to ignore any of the surrounding civilizations as they will not only steal your money, but also mess with your plans. You will encounter quite a few oddities which can make the game a little more challenging, for example, not being able to select a leader of your political faction who is not of the same faction as you. Also when trying to form alliances the game does not allow you to form alliance with the papacy, instead your government will label alliances as illegal. So be careful which alliances you make as enemies may not be too happy with you.

In the beginning you will not have a lot of choices as all of the game play is performed by the computer however after you develop your city a little bit and start gathering a few resources it is time to earn some cash and that is where the real game begins. You can invest in land that isn’t developed yet, you can also buy a lot of land that isn’t Developed yet to have an monopoly on trade. Throughout the history series you will find that cities with a high level of development will experience faster decline because of lack of trade. From the research center you can now research economic growth to reduce the amount of development time in building and improve your city’s speed of development. When you accumulate a couple of hundred thousand people you can now incorporate them into an alliance to achieve more quickly.

Civilization 5 takes a new approach to history in that it divided the empires into modern day nations. You will notice that there are actually a lot of recurring styles throughout the game and many found in earlier games. Take for example, Amazon is still playing off of theromanagement engine, but they have also incorporated some of the economic mechanics present in the medieval ages and Rome. With the addition of these modern nations, there are a lot of new interacting facets with the game.