Civ V was my first Civ game, and I was damn impressed. I was apprehensive about playing a turn based game after spending much of my childhood with AOE, as I thought it might feel slower, but the experience was absolutely fantastic. Building a civilization from the point of having a single city and one warrior, to destroying other civilizations with nukes and submarines, and building a space program is such an incredible experience, as you go so much further through the ages than any other game offers. What more can I say than just WOW?

Sid Meier's Civilization IV was a masterpiece even without expansions and it only got better with them, this one sadly not so much. Vanilla version of Civilization V is extremely streamlined and simplified, to the point were there are even no religions to begin with. Without expansions, this one is pretty disappointing and if you want the proper version of this game, get Complete Edition instead, because without expansions, this entry is just average at best.

Civ 6 wasn't that great off the bat, I am not sure how it is progressing now but Civ 5 is still the best by far especially after the couple years of updates which have balanced it out! Forget upgrading and just get this one!

Some of the decisions made in this game befuddle me. I've played every Civilization iteration since the first (except CivNet), and this one has a lot to recommend it, so I'm clicking the "Yes" button. But I recommend it with reservations. Civilization IV is the better game, and feels more like Civ to me. However, the changes made in Civ V (like one unit per tile) provide their own challenges, so there's fun to be had, as long as you don't expect it to be "real" Civ. At least, that's the attitude I ended up taking, and it helped me find fun with the game.

My first game was Civ 3 and I've played every main Civ game since then. I've played probably around 3000 hours across 3, 4 and 5 but this one is my favourite though at roughly 800 hours. The graphics are great, the hexagonal tiles add a lot of strategy that the square tiles didn't. The unstacking of units was also a feature I greatly enjoyed as army placement became that much more important. The religions have good beliefs (if you're one of the last to make one they kind of suck) and the civic policy and ideologies are good. The wonders are fantastic. The vareity of old and new nations and leaders are great (some of them do kind of suck) and the vareity of units and buildings is also excellent. The game does have a few minor problems in that the rationalism civic basically has to be chosen or you will fall way behind in tech and the AI is still pretty stupid but better than previous games in the many choices that it makes. If you're a long-time fan of the series or just getting into the series this a great game either way. You should defintely buy it and I hope you have as much fun as I've had playing this game.