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Civilisation V

Civ V has changed my view on Endless Legend somewhat, which is interesting though not quite for better or worse. It HAS made me realise that between the two neither quite manage to be EXACTLY the game I want from this genre, but nonetheless the two could do with sharing notes.



As I said with Endless Legend, I don't really play these games for the strategy or the deep and balanced strategic battle between players, I play them to role play as the leader of a Civilisation, to create my own historical events, and to imagine the day to day lives of my citizens with the technologies and wonders available to them, and the politics of the world I've become a part of. And to that end, there's a lot in Civ V for me to love.

Building up a city and it's borders is brilliant, as workers transform the landscape of your city outskirts into farmland, trading posts, manufactories and mines really feels like you're making your mark. And the game will near-constantly provide you will simple choices along a ton of different progression trees, that fill in a picture of what your empire is like on ground level. It's easy to look at the different progression systems purely in terms of stats, but remember, that wasn't just you gaining a happiness and cash boost to your capital based on your population, that was you establishing a monarchy. There's a King and/or Queen to your empire of Swedesia. There will probably be arguments about weather to get rid of them at some point.


The fact that all of these decisions are so small means you get so many of them. Tiny little choices that pop up in a turn, anything from choosing a ideology to govern your nation's future and creating a five year plan, to proposing a world religion, founded in your own capital, to the UN. It all forms part of a history of your own participation. And if these little decisions make up the historical footnotes talked about only in history classes by nerds, your exploits on the map make up the moments in history you hear about from your grandparents who were proud, or perhaps a little terrified, to be alive at that time.

Perhaps you mounted an expedition to new lands across a vast ocean, with a fleet of warships, footmen and a settler unit, and met the other 4 players just chillin' on a separate continent. Perhaps you founded a city in the arctic on a small island, dedicated to housing your nuclear arsenal and building weapons of war far out of the sight of your enemies. Or maybe you mounted a panicked assault on a powerful enemy faction out of fear that they might beat you in the space race, only to be betrayed by your closest neighbour while your entire ground forces were on the other side of the world, leaving your capital city to be defended by naval artillery shelling anybody that came near. I did all those things, and I remember them clearly and with great fondness, as I imagine my citizens would.


There are still however, tell-tale signs that this is a game walking a line. Balancing the multiplayer side of things has clearly left elements of the simulation at dead ends before they can really come to life. Diplomacy is one of these. Factions at war and in wary agreements are all well and good, but the closer you come to being friends with other nations the more the game clearly holds back. Because the multiplayer aspect makes this a game about winning, and you can't have more than one person take the top spot now, right? So you can never really co-operate with anyone beyond a meaningless announcement that you are allegedly doing so, and research agreements.

In fact, the whole idea of "winning" in general has basically killed my long-term interest in Civ V as a role-playing game. Games just come to an abrupt halt without me being able to do much to stop it. I'd suddenly be told that I'd won a culture victory, despite not having any interest or investment in doing so, or another player would suddenly declare themselves world leader on the first attempt without any way for anyone to stop them. Turning these different victory types off is possible, and I keep turning off more and more of such features to make it more like the game I want, but that indicates to me that this game isn't trying to be what I want really. That's fine, obviously, but it does mean that there continues to be a gap in the market for a game that doesn't care as much who wins. Perhaps a game that lets players win in tandem, and allows multiple winners of different victory types in a game, where 2 people can team up to reach the stars while still allowing another player to have the most influential culture or most powerful army etc.


Though if there's one thing that I love about the Civilisation series in particular, it's how celebratory it is of the cultures it presents. The leaders of each faction are all brimming with personality, their animations and their environment all full of country stereotypes, but presented with nothing more than a sense of awe and wonderment. Every world wonder you create comes with a beautiful piece of art, and the quotes that accompany every great work of writing, new technology and wonder come from all different cultures, and there's not an ounce of focus on the less cheerful elements of our history. Every empire description waxes lyrical about the great successes of the leader and the empire, and while it doesn't ignore clearly unignorable elements of their history, it will never dwell on them as anything more than is needed to allow you to love them as much the game and it's creators do.

Another reason I'm not as fond of Civilisation over Endless Legend in a lot of ways is that is draws everything from history, your empire will always be built from elements of our own past, so you're never going to create something truly new and exciting. But I don't begrudge it for that, because that's what Civ is. I have a lot of respect for the series' own respect and admiration for everything in history, and I get that it's the identity of the series, and I'm happy to love it for what it is, even if it doesn't click as much as EL does for me.

So yeah, it's good. You might not really be able to tell the tale of a new empire, but you can tell the tale of your favourite empire if they didn't die off before their time, which is cool. Also steal various monuments from across time, which is probably cultural appropriation or something, ban this filth etc.

Next week, perhaps some Hard Reset Redux, the retro-styled FPS you might have picked up if you couldn't afford Doom, but that you should buy even if you could because it's good.

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