Sid Meier’s Civilization V: Brave New World
If you’re going to get Civilization V , you need this as well as Gods & Kings . Both of them are true expansion packs and they add a lot to the game, cumulatively speaking, so I’d say they’re not as outrageously overpriced as some of the game’s other DLC. For fans of Civ IV and earlier, I would honestly say G&K+BNW puts the game on par with the rest of the series. If you can only pick one for now though, I would recommend BNW.
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
I’ve been playing the various Civilization games since the original release in 1991 and in fact I still have that first (pre-Windows) version on 3.5" disk. I have had Civ V for years, but just upgraded to the “Complete” version because it was on sale and I wanted several copies so I could multiplayer it with my kids. I thought I’d play it through with the DLC on singleplayer, to see whether we should use the DLC or not. I wish I hadn’t bothered.
Yes the DLC has changed the game, but I’m not sure it’s for the better. So far I’ve played it through a couple of times, and both times I’ve seen sudden “late game” changes that have ruined the experience.
Sid Meier’s Civilization® V
I played as the Iroquis, befriended the Incans, Aztecs, and Shoshone and then destroyed America, Spain, France, and England.
10/10 game the only historical game where I can undo white people crimes
– Real player with 842.6 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
It’s old…but, awesome….been playing this game off and on for well over 10 years…
– Real player with 655.3 hrs in game
Sid Meier’s Civilization® IV
Diary Entry 1- Heliopolis is under siege by Rome. I’ve been unable to send reinforcements because Caeser is moving his troops around my territory, destroying farms, mines and villages. I can’t spread too thin in fear of my other cities being attacked.
So 5 handfuls of Heavy machine Gunners have been defending the city from catapult bombardments and grenadier attacks.
And now, he seems to have set his sights upon the neighbouring city of Memphis.
Diary Entry 2 - I’ve reached out to the Malinese and Isabella of Spain, and both have declared war on Ceaser. They are on the opposite side of him to me. So while they cannot directly help my cities, they will put pressure on the Western side. So hopefully I can repel the siege and push to his cities. I have a troop of tanks coming in from the Northeast, and a regiment of Marines coming in from the southeast.
– Real player with 661.1 hrs in game
Read More: Best 4X Strategy Games.
Once upon a time, I tried Civilization V. I discovered it was buggy. What I did play was really fun though. So my in-laws bought me Civilization III, which was really fun. I then saw that Civilization IV was on sale, along with the expansions, so I bought the main game and a couple of the expansions. I am currently enjoying the happily ever after.
This is one of the most addictive games I have ever played. My husband and I are enjoying a hotseat match in which I am sure will end in a bloodbath. In Civilization IV: Beyond the Sword I am preparing to conquer the world with my mighty Celtic army. Civilization IV is an awesome strategy game in which almost anything is possible. There are so many different leaders to choose, and many different ways to beat the game. Sure, you could do a military victory, but you can also win diplomatically, artistically, and financially. There is also the Space Race…
– Real player with 86.8 hrs in game
Sid Meier’s Civilization® III Complete
Here’s what I think of this game, I’ll compare it to Civ 5 since most people consider that to be the best Civ game.
Music: Both Civ 5 and Civ III have fantastic soundtracks as with pretty much all Civ games. CIV 5’s soundtrack is better, but that doesn’t mean this soundtrack isn’t worth listening to.
Diplomacy: The diplomacy here in Civ III, in my opinion is better. You can trade maps technologies, change how agressive the AI is. The AI does get quite a bit agressive once you get to medium agressiveness although.
– Real player with 328.3 hrs in game
I will start this review in two seperate forms, one for interested newcomers and then the Old Guard.
I will list off the pros first before the cons of this game, Civilization 3 is a different twist of the game than you may be familar with 4 and 5. Go in understanding this switch:
-Its an old game, if you can run the actual game, there should be no real issues.
-Graphically, it’s a sound experience and not many real issues, the modding community can find you bug fixes or new skins. Its pleasing regardless and you won’t really be let down by this game.
– Real player with 325.2 hrs in game
Galactic Civilizations® I: Ultimate Edition
This was one of the few games I played over and over as a teen.
I’ll be honest, I never got into the sequel, because I didn’t like the way the planets were depicted (though it probably made influence more intuitive). So I don’t know how this one holds up to GalCiv II. But on its own merits, it’s a good game.
In Galactic Civilizations, you start out as ruler of united Earth. The various alien races, having gotten the secret of hyperdrive from the humans, have turned off their massive wormhole portals and scrapped them for hyper-capable colony ships. The real space race has begun, and it’s up to you to determine the path you want humanity to take.
– Real player with 194.6 hrs in game
In my ongoing and likely futile effort to write a Steam review for every game in my library (#291 out of 612)… it’s time for Galactic Civilizations I: Ultimate Edition.
You might know Galactic Civilizations by its other name: “Oh, yeah, there was a game before Galactic Civilizations III, wasn’t there?” Indeed there was! The obvious question here is: why should anyone play Galactic Civilizations 1 when the third game exists, and is so, so good? Historical context? Pure, unadulterated whimsy? A PC so old and out-of-date that it doesn’t even qualify as a toaster? Galactic Civilizations I has got fewer features, less polish, and less depth all-around. Furthermore, you’re in for one hell of an uphill battle if you’re even -thinking- of trying to get the game to run on a modern operating system. Galactic Civilizations does not play nice with anything more advanced than Windows XP!
– Real player with 24.6 hrs in game
Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension
I’ve played several thousand hours of this game, and dominions 3. The only other game i’ve played anywhere near as much is tabletop rpgs. But i’m biased, old hand, fan, etc. This guy isn’t. Here’s what he had to say on the Steam forum.
@Stephen:
Earlier tonight, one of the most epic occurences I have ever seen in a video game occured. Seeing that as a sign of a good game and also worth telling about, I decided to post here for your reading pleasure. Since it is only due to a confusing chain of events that this occured, I’m going to tell the full story from start to finish. Enjoy.
– Real player with 595.5 hrs in game
Dear friends, I know that many would have you believe that the Pale Ones are extinct, save for the occasional emergence of an Earth Reader or the primitive Pale Ones that are sometimes encountered in remote regions. I am here to set the ancient records straight.
Long have I labored in service to the Ancients, dead and forgotten though they may be to most of the civilized world. Only after extensive research and tireless experimentation had I uncovered a ray of hope in the sea of Agarthan darkness.
– Real player with 333.1 hrs in game
Forgetful Dictator
Recommendation: This is a fun game that will quickly improve your knowledge of world geography and maybe teach you a little bit about countries of the world.
Review: The story conceit of the game is fun; you play an aide to a Dr. Evil-like despot who is determined to rule the world by conquering it one nation (or territory) at a time. To conquer a nation, you just need to be able to recognize it and name it; doing so enables the despot’s armies to roll in to that country and conquer it. There’s no violence portrayed in the game, and the tone is cartoony and light, constantly poking fun at the dictator and his incompetence: it’s all just a loose story framework to fold around a game of identifying nations of the world by their border outlines and location on a Mercator projection map of the world. The game starts by asking you to choose whether you wish to identify all the countries of the world, or just work on conquering a part of it: Africa, the American hemisphere, East Asia and the Pacific, Europe, or West Asia and the Middle-east. Then the game choose a random nation within that group of countries, and you are presented with the outline of a country on the world map with a Hangman-like set of blanks to fill in with the name of the country. Enter the name correctly and you’ve conquered that country! Then the game will prompt you to choose an adjacent nation to identify/conquer. You have two resources to track as you play: armies and intel. You periodically gain armies as you march across the nations, but you lose one whenever you make a serious mistake (if you get one letter wrong, the game will tell you which letter it was and give you a second chance to get it correct). If you ever run out of armies, the game ends. You use intel to fill in some random letters in the country name (again like Hangman); there’s no penalty for running out of Intel (except that you get no clues). But as you continue to play, more game mechanics are revealed:
! a rival dictator - a ridiculous tyrannosaur - starts to conquer nations in parallel with you, chests of upgrades/materiel appear in random countries.
– Real player with 10.9 hrs in game
I’ve only played country mode so far, and bought on sale, but I’m impressed, even though the polish on this is not perfect, it feels more like a game than many educational games do, and I’ve been enjoying it more than any geography lesson I can remember (there aren’t many I can remember - not my strong subject).
There are a few different ways of revealing unknown country names (guessing letters, using up “intel” to reveal half of the letters or the remaining helf, multiple choice, and rarely you can reveal a random country). These different methods for arriving at the answer add variety and probably help with learning and recall. The zany dialogue sets a low-pressure atmosphere, although it does get repetitive after a while. Easy enough to click past, though. Being interrupted by trivia questions can be frustrating sometimes, but also breaks things up to reduce monotony, so I wouldn’t go as far as to call it a bad idea - maybe the implementation could be a bit better.
– Real player with 9.4 hrs in game
Europa Universalis III Complete
Whee. Europa 3, like its predecessors and its cousins Hearts of Iron and Victoria (Crusader Kings as well, but that isn’t as hard to learn), is an extremely complex game that is notoriously difficult to learn, not helped by crappy tutorials. I had an edge having been playing this series since its first installment, but it still took some time to get used to everything. So right from the start expect a significant time investment on learning how to play the game, and learning to do well at it. War, Diplomacy, Trade, Exploration, and more. It’s all here.
– Real player with 535.5 hrs in game
As far as I’m concerned, this is the best game ever - especially in this version with the first two additions to the game.
To a certain extent, it is comparable to the Total War games, if they only included the map mode, which would here be simplified to armies only being able to move from province to province and not within a province. However, you have a more complicated diplomacy and domestic policy to deal with.
Another thing that makes it different, and, for my taste, better than the Total War games, is the greater realism and historical accuracy - in this game you can’t just conquer everything, and it remains challenging for the more than four centuries that its timespan covers.
– Real player with 492.4 hrs in game