Sid Meier's Civilization V (PC)

• Average user rating: 1.0 stars out of 7 reviews
• My rating: 0 stars

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• 3 stars

  Too easy and disappointing for hardcore CIV fans.

  by Jerieth on September 21, 2010

  Pros: New Combat System Adds Variation
  Voice Acting
  Better Graphics

  Cons: Combat system easy to manipulate
  Major changes to Economy, Production, and Trade
  Unable to customize victory conditions
  Buildings take forever to build
  AI tends to be aggressive, forcing you to go for military victories

  Summary: Its a decent game.

  Summary: Its a decent game.

  2 out of 2 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 1 stars

  **STAY AWAY FROM THIS GAME**

  by Fuerza10 on July 13, 2011

  Pros: NONE!!!!!!

  Cons: You can never fully enjoy this game without worry about when it is going to up and crash on you...for no apparent good reason

  Summary: This game is a POS! I can't be more honest than that. I've been a Civ fan ever since Civ I...and this thing is even worse than ...

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  Summary: This game is a POS! I can't be more honest than that. I've been a Civ fan ever since Civ I...and this thing is even worse than Civ IV. Here it is...10 months since it's release and you STILL have THOUSANDS of people going to Civ websites and forums BEGGING for help to make this game work. 2K Games, the publisher, has released a staggering 6 updates since it came out. SIX!!! Does that not say something about how poorly this game was written and quality-checked before they rushed it to the shelves to start cashing in on it? No...I did not buy this piece of crap, it was a gift. I would NEVER buy this game. What is the problem you ask? 2k GAMES!!!!!! When Sid Meier's decided to sell out to/partner up with 2K Games - biggest mistake he ever made! The customer service is, well...there IS no customer service. CS staff have been trained to blame everything ELSE on why the game is crashing. I have a top of the line computer, that EXCEEDS all of of the published and recommended specs that appear on the game's box and 2K Games STILL insist that I do bogus stuff so that they don't have to accept responsibility for a shoddy game - things like: erase my whole hard drive and do a complete fresh install. Ummm, this is the same BS they tried to feed me when I had Civ IV - which, by the way, I ended up filing a complaint with the BBB and got my money back, and you should do the same. 2K Games won't act/react unless you file a complaint against them. I even read online that a small group of game owners are going to file a class-action lawsuit against them for a faulty product that apparently ruined one guys computer. I own PLENTY of computer games, some with super intense, full-motion graphics with 3D zoom functions that occur in game and I have NEVER had a problem with any of those. Do yourself a BIG favor - stay away from this game and don't believe all of the things you read that Civ IV - BTS is way better. Even if you buy an older version, you will still get the same crappy customer service from 2K Games should you have any problems. First off, 2K Games has taken American jobs and shipped them to the UK. The "mates" in the UK are there only to collect a paycheck and you will get frustrated very quickly with the phone support's lack of technical knowledge to help you solve anything. If you insist on talking to a technical supervisor, be prepared not to hear back from anybody for at least a week and perhaps even longer. It took them nearly 3 weeks once to get back to me once. And then when you complain about that, and ask for the corporate phone number in the states, they tell you that they don't know that phone number. PLEASE!!! Stop insulting our intelligence. Funny enough, the person that oversees the UK support division is in California! Hahahaha...figure that one out. Oh, and don't bother talking to in California. You will be shunted to a "manager" by the name of Elizabeth somebody. Do a google search for that name+2K Games and you will find it all over the internet. She is too busy being a 'company person' to want to help. Long story short, it was because of her that I ended up going the route of the BBB and Chamber of Commerce to get my money back several years ago. I will NEVER buy another 2K Games product. Best of luck if you decided to buy this game after reading this review. My suggestion - have someone get it for you as a gift or borrow it from a friend and play it that way. This game is not, nor will it ever be, worth the price they want people to pay for it.

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  1 out of 1 users found this user opinion helpful.

• 1 stars

  Don't be stupid like me - avoid it!

  by The User on December 4, 2010

  Pros: Probably some novel features (if you are lucky to have it working)

  Cons: - Performance - slow like nothing else
  - Marginal visual improvements over Civ 4
  - Buggy, buggy, buggy - prepare to see it crash every 5 minutes or so

  Summary: Terrible, simply terrible.
  
  Despite the reviews that I read here, I went to buy it. What a regretful mistake it was.
  
  I installed it on my PC, which is way ...

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  Summary: Terrible, simply terrible.
  
  Despite the reviews that I read here, I went to buy it. What a regretful mistake it was.
  
  I installed it on my PC, which is way above minimal requirements and slightly below "recommended" only as measured by CPU speed. I can run Crysis with mid-high setting on it, but not Civilization 5. Despite being a turn-based strategy, it runs like a slug. Sometimes, it's OK but after 10- minutes of playing it will come to a grinding halt: to drag a cursor across the window will take 2 minutes or so. I set graphics to "minimal" - no improvements, works just as slow as it did on "high".
  
  And then the Civilization 5's trademark - bugs. The game crashes every 5 minutes or so. In some cases it will kill the latest NVIDIA drivers (yes, I updated them to the latest available before playing) and the screen will go black. Or the game simply closes on itself. Small things like misaligned text on buttons and labels (sometimes it's wrapped, other times it simply blurred out and unreadable) you get used to right away because they are there from the moment you launch the game. Other things like water tiles randomly appearing in the middle of a continent (there was land a second ago, now there is vast patch of water with your city under it) are quite annoying. Things like post rendering - you end turn, things happen behind the scenes and then you witness the program applying changes on tile-by-tile basis where it would draw a forest patch, then pretty it up a bit, than add shadows, then more colour - all with about 5-10 second lag between each step, you just live with them because they are there. You'd think it's all in the name of a better graphics. No, it is not. The graphics is marginally better (marginally is not an exaggeration) than CIv 4, but Civ 4 just flies on the highest resolution in comparison to Civ 5 barely moving on lowest settings.
  
  I gave it a try. I wanted to complete at least one game. 46 crashes, 5 reboots (yes, it cripples your PC sometimes) and about 14 hours later (it is slow, but I am determine to wait through one game) I am still didn't pass the year 1,000 AD in the beginner mode.
  
  What a shame! Oh, and I almost forgot to mention that Civ 5 comes with malware called "Steam launcher", which is needed to start the game. The sole purposes of this thing is to sell you more Civ 5-like cr@p. Every time Civ 5 crashes, I am greeted with a friendly new window from Steam asking if I want to buy this or that for a great price of $49.95. As soon as my first and the last Civ 5 game is over, I am wiping it clean off my PC and going forward I will remember to make sure the game doesn't have anything to do with "Steam" malware platform.
  
  Thank you.

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• 5 stars

  With CIV 5 the "one more turn" thing is over

  by golfusuk on November 1, 2010

  Pros: The best part about these series is the great step graphic-wise, the terrain looks way more real, the water looks stunning and the whole planet is just much better designed than in the previous series. Also, a big advantage is the new battle system

  Cons: When a developer makes a new sequel of a game they normally don´t take features off which made the previous game especial. Well, this is not the case. Religion is off, the new social system is just silly. You feel like playing Civilization Revolution

  Summary: I have been playing the series since the very first one. I must admit that I have been adicted to this game from the begining and I have played each ...

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  Summary: I have been playing the series since the very first one. I must admit that I have been adicted to this game from the begining and I have played each serie 1000s of hours. I gotta say that I played civ v 24 hours in total, I have not even finished my first game. It feels very simple, I understand they are trying to make it simple but it is just ridicously simple and war focused only.
  If you like the doom series you may enjoy civilization v because really, if you don´t declare war you just get bored. In past series you could expand your culture in many ways, you could negotiate with the AI (the diplomacy system on civ 5 is not very clever either, it does not matter who they are they just want to kill you), you could negotiate, with this AI you really cannot do anything besides of declaring them war. You cannot negotiate maps, tech advances, etc.
  
  I was expecting much more, not just graphicwise but the actual heart of civ 5. I am really sad to say all of this but, personally CIV 5 is another game which has lost the actual esence of what it was meant for and has begun to look alike a simple graphic good looking ps3 game. It should not be called civilization 5 but civilization revolution 2

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• 1 stars

  full of bugs. AVOID!

  by mafacaz on October 20, 2010

  Pros: none CNET bull want 10 chars

  Cons: multiple game crashes, lousy design ruin experience. And they want money for an unfinished product. Piece o'cr@p

  Summary: DO NOT BUY - give developers a lesson not to sell unfinished products.

  Summary: DO NOT BUY - give developers a lesson not to sell unfinished products.

• 5 stars

  Disappointing

  by countrugen987 on October 5, 2010

  Pros: Very streamlined,
  Easy to Learn

  Cons: War-Centric,
  Buildings aren't really needed and take so long to build it's almost always more advantageous to build the unit du jour,
  AI needs work,
  Too many unrealistic, "gamey" elements,
  Many more, but there's a word limit here

  Summary: Overly aggressive AI forces you to build lots of troops to keep them at bay. Buildings take forever to construct and during that time your enemies are continuing to (of ...

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  Summary: Overly aggressive AI forces you to build lots of troops to keep them at bay. Buildings take forever to construct and during that time your enemies are continuing to (of course) build troops, so it has thus far always behooved me to forgo most buildings for units. Most of the Wonders are useless time-sinks. Numerous "ruins" and "tribes" give you power-ups when discovered. Fortified barbarian encampments pop up randomly and regularly and continually produce troops until they are destroyed, forcing you to constantly play a game of wack-a-mole. LOTS AND LOTS of city-states which defy imagination and just exist as a game-prop to spend money on (because if you don't bribe them to join you, an enemy will). The "diplomacy" with the city-states many reviews glowingly refer is this: you get a message (text, not video) from the city-state sending you on a quest to be completed. If you do, they'll like you more. The quests are always "attack and destroy civilization X." Most pacts you enter into with "real" (non city-state) civs in the game are useless (seriously, "Pact of Secrecy" and "Pact of Cooperation" do nothing whatsoever) and it's not a question of if, but when, you get backstabbed.
  
  I could go on, but the bottom line: I play Civilization because it's a fun civ-simulation. Civ5 is not that. It is an easy-to-learn, entry level war-game. If you like war-games, you'll probably like this. If you liked the depth and variety of play that was a hallmark of Civ4+BotS, then you probably won't like this.

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• 1 stars

  No direction on Mac/Bootcamp compatibility

  by DFWtech on September 27, 2010

  Pros: Civilization games are great

  Cons: Can't be played on Macs

  Summary: Neither I, nor my friends, nor my business use windows - we're all Mac. Have you been to a Starbucks lately? Or a college campus? All Mac.
  
  I know ...

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  Summary: Neither I, nor my friends, nor my business use windows - we're all Mac. Have you been to a Starbucks lately? Or a college campus? All Mac.
  
  I know who plays civilization - nerdy people with disposable income. The exact opposite of people who own PCs.
  
  So how about some direction on which Macs will run the game using bootcamp?

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  0 out of 3 users found this user opinion helpful.

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