Never On Sunday

Uh oh. Looks like my fears for Civ5 were well placed. You may recall that early attention to the latest installment of the venerable Civilization line focused on the wargaming background of its lead designer. Civ was to receive a new hex grid to replace the square grid. Ranged units were to attack at range, which could mean archers softening up a target literally hundreds of miles away. Stacking was to be abolished, so each unit would have to be managed separately for maximum effect. But that was all early press release material; we were assured that Civ’s other aspects would receive the same attention and improvement.

Well, the reviews are coming in, to replace these early teaser previews, and the promise looks a little shaky. Robert Hawthorne’s hands-on preview in PC Gamer last month painted colorful pictures of his units’ heroic hilltop defense and predicted that military details would win Civ5 the most new fans, but said nothing at all about cities, buildings, or diplomacy, except perhaps in observing “Civ V‘s world is richer for its condensation of features and a more intuitive interface will soften the game’s depth for previously intimidated players.” Meaning less game off the field of battle. Worrying.

Dan Stapleton’s fuller review this month expands on that preview, delighting in the micromanagement of military units (“Combat is so engrossing that my first few games were all about conquest,” despite aiming for space victories.”) while delighting equally in the shrinking of other aspects of the game (“Other areas have been mercifully simplified…if you want, you never have to do anything besides pick what you want your cities to build.”) Missionaries: gone. Tech tree: pruned. Morale: a national average, rather than city-specific. In place of these strategic concerns, you’ll spend your time worrying over each army’s positioning and facing, which Stapleton admits can get pretty tedious. Otherwise, in his eyes, the focus on war is all to the good, despite the new complexity of combat overwhelming an AI which was never very bright in the first place.

But what about the rest of us, those of us who play Civ to build empires, rather than simply seizing one? I don’t deny the interest value of a richer military game, though it may be lost on me personally. I would, however, resent an impoverishment of the economic game, presuming the reviews prove accurate. Civ made history by offering an experience that was at least as much about building as conquest. It remains popular largely as a refuge for builders amid a sea of strategy titles that treat resources merely as a means to the ultimate end of destroying everyone else. In that respect, Civ5—again, if the reviews are correct—represents a step backward for the series, in philosophy if not in execution. (Which execution sounds excellent in the reviews, incidentally.) I’ll surely buy Civ5, and play it, and enjoy it. But the reviews imply I’ll give it up and return sooner or later to Civ4, just as I abandoned the Warlords and Colonization expansions, just to avoid those grinding battles.