Video Game Review – Sid Meier’s Civilization V: Gods and Kings

I wasn’t overly impressed with Civ 5 when it first came out. I was so unimpressed, in fact, that for the last year or so I’ve ignored it and been
playing Civ IV. There were a lot of things I didn’t like about 5, like the lack of religion and espionage, the no-unit-stacking policy, the limited number of civs, the strangeness of the naval units and, frankly, I didn’t get why everyone went so mad over the idea of the hex grid. I always found it rather annoying.

Thankfully while the hex grids and no stacking remain, this expansion (which you can also buy in download form from Amazon), adds in more civilizations, more city-states (for them as likes those), more naval units, espionage and religion! And boy, let me tell you about the religion options. They are astounding. First off, you get to adopt a pantheon fairly early in the game, which adds some minor bonuses. But then, once you have a great prophet, you can found an actual religion. There’s all the ones from IV, plus ones like Zoroastrianism and Sikhism, as well as Tengriism, which sent me to Wikipedia, since I’d never heard of it before (though my guess on what it might have been was correct. Hooray!).

The diplomacy options have also expanded significantly. Now you can establish embassies in other countries, which gives you the location of their capitol and allows for other diplomatic niceties. You can also, if you are playing the Austrians, buy city-states, which is remarkably useful. There’s also a large number of scenarios, including a steampunk one that I look forward to playing.

Now like I said, not all the “problems” I have with the game are fixed. But that said, I find that I enjoy the game much, much more with these features added and it might, finally, be time for me to retire from Civ IV.

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