Of course Civ V doesn’t provide the same adrenaline rush either, but Civilization is meant to be a cerebral game where you can take your time thinking through a long-term plan and then executing it with meticulous care.Ī single campaign of Civ V can easily take 10 hours or more, but there’s no hurry when it’s just waiting for you on your laptop or, dare I say, at the office.

Unlike a real-time game like StarCraft II, a turn-based game like Civ V does not make personal reflexes and coordination an issue. With Civilization V, the series demonstrates yet again why it is the definitive turn-based computer strategy game franchise. The core play systems have been tweaked to allow a new sort of tactical and strategic flexibility in how you build your empire to stand the test of time, all presented within a slick, easy-to-use interface. It forms a vital step forward for the franchise because it is much more accessible and welcoming for casual players than the last generation of Civ games. It is the most visually alluring Civilization yet. The latest version, Sid Meier’s Civilization V, was published on Tuesday by 2K Games for Windows PCs.

If you include the scintillating 1999 spinoff, Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (which sets competing groups of human settlers on an alien planet), I have probably spent at least 500 hours with the franchise over the years. Meier’s development team has released a new rendition of what has rightly come to be seen as his career-defining magnum opus. Roughly every five years since the original Sid Meier’s Civilization was released in 1991, Mr. There may not be a game franchise I have enjoyed more consistently over the last two decades than Civilization. But are they warriors or scientists? Culturally progressive or atavistic? Peaceful or bellicose? Six thousand years later, the descendants of those settlers may be researching space flight and preparing to colonize the heavens, but how they get there, if at all, is up to you (and your rivals).

On they progress through the various ages of human society. On a riverbank they build their first huts and begin to discover what separates men from beasts: pottery, writing, mining, the wheel.

But I’ve always been taken by the image of a tiny band of settlers in the vast wilderness of an unknown world at the very dawn of recorded history, 4000 B.C. When you think of the most evocative characters in video games, various commandos and knights and even a plumber come to mind.

Civilization v