Positives: + This is an in-depth, turn based strategy game. It features a massive technology tree for the ancient, classical, medieval, renaissance, industrial, modern and future eras. Conduct research to unlock new buildings and units. + Multiple victory styles to suit your own gameplay goals. Aim for world domination, or try for a cultural victory by constructing world wonders and acquiring great works of music, writing and art. Build the first spacecraft through the Apollo program to win a science victory. + Lots of units available for each era, ranging from archers and cavalry to giant death robots and XCOM specialist squads. + There's a well fleshed out system for city development and unit recruiting, whereby you need to balance your productive output with your food and gold output. For your empire to be successful, you need to work the land with citizens appropriately. The more food you have, the faster your town grows, but this usually comes at the expense of production, resulting in longer building times. + This is the ultimate empire building game. Workers can construct roads between cities, and later on railways. They can erect plantations on exotic goods like wine and sugar or ensure resources like stone and gold are extracted with mines. Settlers can found a city in faraway countries. + DLC adds a lot of new features, like religion and tourism, which impacts the game a fair bit and makes it more interesting. + Battles with enemies seems boring at first, but soon you realise that it's much more intricate. The positioning of your troops, the type of unit, the terrain you're on and unit capabilities directly affect your damage or defensive rating. So, battles become quite intriguing. + Multiplayer co-op! Negatives: - Stupid diplomacy system which doesn't make much sense. There's several faults here. You can be allied to another civilization for thousands of years (renewing the friendship agreement when it expires), but the simplest of transgressions results in them "denouncing" you. For example, in one of my games, my spy successfully stole technology without being detected. But somehow, the AI knows that you've taken this research, and threatens me. Very unrealistic. When you denounce them in return, they're suddenly "hostile" and then attack soon after. There doesn't seem to be any complex formula governing diplomacy, it's so simplistic. The AI doesn't take into account your previous good standing with them or mutual objectives. It doesn't recognise your past support for them in wars and trading doesn't seem to have much positive diplomatic influence or effect. This really ruins a core part of the game. - AI can be overly aggressive on normal difficulty and above. It always seems as if it's scripted and the AI has decided to target you. Even if you take the initiative early on and conquer another civilization, there's another ready to invade you. This happened on multiple occassions to me. It would be fine if there was some logical reason behind their attacks, or if other civilizations experienced the same struggles. But it's not like that at all. Sid Meier's Civilization V is a grand strategy game filled with many hours of content. It can be really, really fun, but also quite unrealistic at the same time. The game has many pros and only a few cons. I suggest buying Civilization V - Gold Edition, which is cheap and has most DLC included, along with the Gods and Kings expansion. The only package which isn't included is Brave New World, but that's not necessary to enjoy the game.

Got mine on a promotion and love every cent I spent. The complete collection is certainly worth buying, if you are planning on spending several hours here. Never played any civ before? Don't worry about it. This one is great one to start. So get yours today, and start building your fancy civilization. Conquer the world by your own means, whether it is by force or by diplomacy; by religion or by science. Just watch out for those pesky barbarians, they like to steal workers ;)

Complete edition of Civilization 5 is more like "proper" and "definitive" version of it, mostly because you have many features back from previous game, like religion for starters, because without those the game felt incredibly empty. Expansions give a lot more depth for this game, without them it's just nice looking game with solid music, but no substance. While Civilization IV is still best in the series, Complete Edition of 5 is pretty close to its excellence. If you want to pick this game up, then go straight for Complete edition, because vanilla version might disappoint you and turn off of this game, which would be a shame, because 5 is actually pretty good with add-ons.

Since childhood I have played a lot of strategy games, but Civilization is probably the best of them. This is my first game in this series, I played it 8 hours a day, 7 days a week. Just this game is addictive. It offers a lot of faction, chance of victory, development. Each nation has its own attributes, units and wonders. Our goal is to achieve victory against other states and it is up to us whether we use our strength, diplomacy or science to achieve victory. The game also offers multiplayer mode so you will not get bored too quickly

Civilization V starts with your settlers founding your first city. From there on, your civilization will grow and expand by your command. As the game progresses you will meet other civilizations, and you will start trading, and getting involved in international politics. The ultimate goal is to get your civ to defeat all other civs. This can be done in multiple ways. You can win with a Military, Science, Cultural, Diplomatic or Time victory. This is the best game of the franchise. I've spent rougly 180 hours in this game (only 80 hours on the steam version), and I think I have seen all of what Civ V has to offer. If you ever loved any strategy game, I think you should try Civilization V. It is simply the best 4X and best turn-based game out there. The game is very cheap on sales, so if you're hesitating, just get it on sale. If you're buying this you should get the complete bundle with all DLC packs, because the expansions are great.