I don’t think I’ve ever bought a computer game for full price before – most of the games I buy are acquisitions that come along long after they’ve been released. However, I have a (relatively) new computer, and there was Civ V staring at me longingly from across the aisle, and I just had to buy it. 

Installation went smoothly, which included setting up a Steam account. (You can’t play Civ if you don’t have internet access when you install it. Afterwards, play offline all you want). The first patch was automatically downloaded by the Steam engine, and then off I went.

I found that the most striking feature about the game was the addition of City States to the game. Soon enough, my initial civilization was making contact with all these independent non-expanding civilizations around the world and, once I had some money, giving them gifts so that they’d like me. Having City States liking you is great: they gave me extra food, extra culture and extra military units. 

Diplomacy with the other “players” is mostly an unrewarding business. Let’s face it: most of them just want to crush me beneath their heels. There was no exchanging of world maps, techs and similar items here. Yes, you could exchange cities if you wanted, which happened once of twice in my original games. Well, I say “exchange”, but it was more the civilisation giving me all of its non-capital cities in exchange for me not crushing it for a further 10 tiles. At the easy levels, crushing the opponents with the military was entirely possible.

The nicest thing about the new diplomacy was that, instead of exchanging techs, you teamed up for a Research Agreement. After a number of turns, you both gained a new (random) tech. So, both sides benefited, as opposed to earlier version where tech trading could be impossible due to one civilisation being far in advance of another.

The other big change to the game was due to the way military worked. In previous versions of Civ, I’ve disliked playing military strategies: too many units, too much time organising them all. Civ V makes all of this so much easier. Units can’t stack, and there are definite differences between each of the units. Archers actually can fire at opposing forces without taking hits back, but do very poorly when infantry charge them. And this will happen: the Archers can fire 2 hexes, but the infantry can rush those 2 hexes to attack as well. Shoot and fade from mounted archers is very nice when it works.

Cities might have a garrison of one unit, but they are quite happy defending themselves without: they can bombard enemy units. I experienced more of this than having to do it against the enemy players, though barbarian units in the early game came into range too often for my liking. At the easier difficulty levels (Chieftain and Warlord), they were more annoying than dangerous.

I made initial diplomatic overtures to the other civilisation on my continent, but eventually got bored and sent in the army – spearmen and archers – which eliminated him. Then it was time to make all the city states like me. Then I sent out explorers, made contact with other civilisations, and befriended the city states around them. Eventually, my techs got well enough that I could build the United Nations, and I discovered that everyone has just one vote on the UN. It’s not proportional any more. Everyone included the city states, by the way. As they all thought me great, as did a couple of civs that had been overrun by a major aggressor and then liberated by myself, everyone voted for me and I won my first game. Hooray!

The liberation is an interesting thing: the capital city of each civilisation and city-state can’t be destroyed. (I’ve seen city states conquer opposing cities and then raze them, but not yet a capital of an opposing civ; I’d love to see what happens). Instead, they can be annexed and added to your empire, or made into puppet states: you can’t control what they build, but you gain their culture, wealth and happiness.

The next game I played I won with a Domination victory as Napoleon. Heh. War is scarily good in Civ V, and it makes me very worried about how the computer gets better at it at higher difficulty levels – if it does. Certainly I’ve seen some empires do a lot of conquering, and I’ve been on the receiving end of some of it, though not for that long so far.

The third game saw me facing off against a huge Napoleonic empire. I was on one continent as Askia, Napoleon was on the other. I’d wiped out the two other civs that had been unfortunate enough to start with me, and Napoleon was doing the same on his continent. I’d made puppets of my conquests, so I didn’t really have that big an army, compared to the 20 or so cities (and commensurate armies) that Napoleon controlled. However, the domination victory doesn’t require you to conquer everything: just the capitals of every other civilisation. Or rather, have them conquered by someone…

So it was that a small force – two rifleman and an artillery – penetrated the heart of Napoleon’s territory and brought Paris to its knees. I was helped by the fact that Napoleon’s tech wasn’t the best, but I was very lucky to do it while his army was on the other side of the continent. 

The third way of winning Civ V is through a cultural victory. Instead of governments in Civ V, you have cultural policies that you unlock when you gain more culture. Each gives you a particular benefit, and there are 6 benefits in each cluster of policies. If you completely unlock six clusters, you can build a wonder that will win you the game through a cultural victory.

The trick is that the amount of culture you need increases with the number of cities you have. However, as puppet cities don’t count towards that number, the game I won found me gaining quite a few puppet cities. (The capture of Napoleon’s capital was meant to be a culture victory, but I didn’t build up my culture production fast enough). This method of victory is something I found really hard: it’s very hard to enough culture per turn to do it before time runs out, and meanwhile you’re mostly ignoring a lot of things you need that will keep you safe.

In the end, I achieved it with only about 8 turns to spare. I was gaining about 600 culture a turn, and the wonders I’d built and policies I’d adopted had brought the policy gains to once every 6 or 7 turns. The other civs on my continent were now my puppets; elsewhere they were too busy fighting each other to worry about me.

The game is – sadly – not bug free. A new patch is imminent, but I had problems with puppet cities in one game wanting me to choose their production – which I couldn’t. I had to annex them before the game would let me continue. A graphics glitch had a colosseum floating on the waves, which had no gameplay implications but looked quite amusing. There are meant to be other bugs but, thankfully, I haven’t encountered them yet.

The game, even on “quick” mode, is longish. It took me about 4 hours to play a “quick” game on the Small map. In Civ4, I could often knock such a game over in 1-2 hours. Marathon games taking several weeks to complete? Yes, I could see that.

The game, like previous versions, is quite addictive. I’m not the world’s biggest Civ player, and I’m certainly not the best. Decidedly mediocre. It remains, however, the one computer game I really enjoy to play, and this latest version is one that I’ve been very much enjoying.