Who is playing Civ V?

It just came out for mac, today, and I wanted to check reviews, etc, before dropping the cash. The Amazon reviews make me VERY concerned. And all the "professional" gaming sites have reviews that are clearly glorified ad copy.

Everything I've read says it is slower, buggier, simplified, and linear. But the graphics are pretty!!!! Which of course is fucking VITAL for a turn-based strategy game. Every review mentions "more accessible" and "not your Grandpa's Civ!" which apparently are good things, rather than terrible omens. If I wanted a totally different playing experience, I would go play a different game.

So, any verdicts? Do I just keep playing Civ IV and hope that a patch or expansion makes V more than Civ Revolutions for PC?

Jokes on you now, old bean! Now you're only half the gamer you used to be!

I will give it that. I personally think it's one of the better entries in the series, both visually and from a gameplay standpoint.

That said, it does leave a bit to be desired. The "Stack of Doom" is now impossible in stock Civ V; only one military unit is allowed per hex. Note I say hex, and not tile; Civ V uses hexagonal spaces, a change I heartily approve of. The tiles apparently had exploits at the corners; this is not possible in Civ V.

Civ V introduces the concept of city-states. These are cities on the map uncontrolled by any particular player, but with which any player can become allies. This leads to interesting power struggles as various civilizations compete for the ever-dwindling resources on the map.

The enemies seem to be a little bit more intelligent than they were in Civ IV. For example, I once took by force one city-state (whose name is on the tip of my tongue but I still can't recall at the moment). That went okay; I conquered it, rather than becoming an ally and protector, so it became mine outright. However, later I tried to take Bucharest (another city-state), and one of the other civs immediately popped up a trade dialog box to inform me that my actions were being watched, and that if I took Bucharest by force, the other civs would ally against me and smack me down.

This warning was followed by a gradual buildup of other civs' military units in the general vicinity of Bucharest, including one which started building up their empire in that area and is at the moment very explicitly warning me not to continue to expand in that vicinity, "or else".

:D

Mods are already available, too, including one that reintroduces the Stack of Doom. All in all, I'd buy it, or maybe wait until it comes down in price. Be aware that Civ V seems to be a Steam Exclusive, meaning that you will need to have (or create) a free account on Valve's Steam distribution platform in order to activate it, even if you buy a disc copy. For that reason, I would just get a Steam account and buy it online.

Plus, Steam is just many many kinds of awesomeness. I've purchased a lot of games on Steam, from top-shelf titles to three-dollar indie games, and haven't ever had any problems either activating them, buying them, or downloading them (repeatedly!). So far as online distribution goes, Valve should show Steam to other studios and say, "do this".

In short, the good outweighs the bad as far as Civ V goes. I give it about a 3.75 to 4 out of 5 stars.

BE AWARE that you will probably need a brand new gaming PC to turn the visuals all the way up. I have a quad core processor and use two (two-year-old) video cards, have 4GB of RAM, and Civ V makes my machine chug by more than a bit as the game progresses.

But Civ4 was better imo.