Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

100 or More Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Highly addictive"

Yes, once again Sid has created another epic game in the series of Civilization! No doubt, this game is one of the top games for PC gamers and it's not that hard to believe. The game has many new features that take the game into a whole new level. One of my favourite changes is that you can adopt different policies such as Liberty, Order, Commerce, Tradition etc. all that give different benefits to your civilisation. To get these you use culture points, which no longer go to the expansion of your borders. Talking about borders, they grow as your city grows but you can also purchase tiles. In the beginning its very cheap but as you move on further into your game, purchasing these tiles while get veeery expensive, but very effective as competition between the special resources becomes rough.

There are a few new factions and some have been taken away, but no drastic changes, except for the city states. The City States are small factions such as Cape Town, Kuala Lumpur, Amsterdam, Stockholm etc. that do not compete in the game to win, they just simply are there to either help you or stand in your way. Their borders don't grow and they only have 1 city. With enough money to give away as gifts, they will become your allies and help you in wars, give you money and special resources. Personally I find these pretty annoying since they are in the way of where I want to put my cities.

There's a new change in how you fight battles. Now, only 1 military unit can fit one 1 tile, which means no stacking. Each unit has about 10 guys in it. These units you can upgrade, heal etc as usual. Even though it's easy to kill another unit, taking cities is a real challenge, Even if there's only 1 unit defending the city, you need at least 8 guys to take it. Another thing that I really love is that you no longer need transports to get your guys over water. Simply research Optics and it will allow you to simply drag the walking path of one of you units onto water and the become boats which really saves a lot of time. No more fuss about constructing transports etc. There's a ton of new exciting things in this game that people can look forward to. However, like all games, there are a few bad things. I find that the diplomacy is limited and that it could have been a bit more flexible. There is no religion any more. The producers probably decided to take it away since there was critique of discrimination in the previous Civilization. Very disappointing. Another thing is that the game simply doesn't change, it's just the same thing over and over. After playing after a couple of turns and destroying one or two cities, you get bored and start a new game. But if you are really one of those fans, I strongly recommend this game. I downloaded this game for free from Isohunt (shame on me I know) and now I know that I would have regretted paying 600 Kr. (about 85$) if I had purchased it. Nether the less, I'm sure that there's another game in the series sooner or later and I really hope that the developers listen to the comments, feedback and critique of the common gamers and fans .

Cheers!

toolbox642