You know how I don’t play computer games? WRONG.
A couple of weeks ago I blagged a copy of Civilisation V (note “s”) from someone who had a spare copy on Steam. He said I could only have it if I promised to actually play it, so I did.
In actuality, I’d already bought it. Stupidly, I’d tied it to a Steam account I couldn’t access, so got it refunded, but I still wanted the game. The price then went up from £5 to £25 so I Banntyned it. Until now!
I do love Civ. A lot. I used to play the original a lot on my Amiga, and Civilisation II is one of very few games I ever actually bought for my PC. I liked Civ III, and Alpha Centuri was excellent too, if slightly different. Civ IV I only ever played as a Mac demo (I’d stopped playing computer games by then), and I’ve dabbled with FreeCiv over the years as well.
Oh, and the excellent Civilisation Revolution of course. Civ Rev is my most recently played Civ, and it’s much simpler, faster, and less serious than Civ V, which was a little jarring when I starting playing the new one this week.
After a couple of hours, though, I was back in the swing of things. In fact, in all these years, very little has actually changed. There are a couple of new types of victory, some resources are now finite (which was confusing at first, when I had no idea why I couldn’t build anything that needed iron or horses), and most importantly, the game grid is now made up of hexagons instead of squares.
OK, so that doesn’t make a massive difference. It just means there are no diagonals any more, so the number of spaces you can move isn’t affected by going diagonally.
After a slow start, where my Japanese nation didn’t seem to do very much for a good two hours or more, I finally settled a second city and built up an army capable of wiping out my nearest neighbour – Rome – and another Roman city just down the road. A couple of hours later, I took out the city-state (they’re new too, I think) of Geneva, and then returned to a peaceful existence, building many Wonders and trying to boost my Science and Culture – either of which is likely to be my route to victory. I got bothered by the Germans for a while, but nothing serious.
It’s horribly addictive. And awesome.
