I’m apparently one of the few people who has really been enjoying Civilization 7, the most recent iteration of a series that has been a presence in my life for over 20 years. A Civilization game has been installed on all of my PCs dating back to at least 2005’s Civilization 4. Before that it was Civilization 2 on the PlayStation, played with my dad after school. Not sure what happened to Civ 3 in all of that, but maybe I was too busy playing Jak and Daxter instead. And I wasn’t born when the first Civ was released, so I can be forgiven there.
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Out of all these, it’s Civilization 5 that stands out as the greatest Civ game ever made. It’s also one I can no longer play as it’s not supported on Windows 11. So I’ll dump another 500 hours into Civ 7, I guess. With a bit of finagling I’m sure I can get Civ 5 to work, but it’s a shame that playing one of the all-time classics of the genre requires me to start rummaging around in obliquely-named files. There has never been a remaster of a Civ game, but I’m here to argue why Civ 5 should get the special treatment.
A Special Game
During the pandemic, I played multiple 15 hour games of Civ 5 with some friends. One of them had a pet rabbit that would run around the living room and cause chaos, meaning some of the turns could take like 20 minutes as we waited for him to stop his rabbit chewing the cables at the back of his PC. Another friend’s PC was in the family dining room, so during dinner time we could hear his dad tell him to get off the game and eat with them. As a true comrade, he stayed put and saw out just one more turn. None of us minded about these interruptions – we had nothing to do but chat and joke and plan world domination.
But Civ 5’s multiplayer is notoriously awful. Bad desync problems and bugs meant it was often completely unplayable, with sometimes weeks and months between patches to fix the issues. Somehow the brilliance of Civ 5 kept me coming back for more, wading through the broken multiplayer to play with my friends, or to settle down on TeamSpeak with people I’d never met to play for the entire day. I can’t think of another game that has ever had a hold of me like Civ 5 did.
But What Was So Good About It?
Civilization 5 has a timeless quality. Its style, atmosphere and UI design put Civ 7 to shame. So much care and attention had been poured into every little detail, from the well-written leader introductions to the dense encyclopedia with historical notes and detailed gameplay information. All of this complemented very solid gameplay. Games felt varied, both in single-player and multiplayer, with the AI having distinct characteristics that you began to understand as if they were a real player. Gandhi and his tendency to drop nuclear bombs is an all time great.
Civ 5 also had many meta-strategies that developed over the course of its life-cycle. Games were complex, but ultimately you could grow to understand exactly what was happening in most situations. If you started next to Arabia then you knew to expect a Horse Archer rush at some point. This balance between tangled game mechanics and understandable outcomes made Civ 5 one of the best strategy games ever developed.
Of course, Civilization 5 didn’t start out great. None of the Civilization games start out great. It wasn’t until the Brave New World and Gods & Kings DLC that the game really came into its own. I’m also not arguing against new and innovative ideas – I really do enjoy the civilization-swapping in Civ 7 – but part of me dreams of a world where Civ 5 was still being updated, with a fresh lick of graphics, new leaders, maps, and mechanics. And a greatly improved multiplayer mode. Or, even, a game that actually ran on modern OS. This is unlikely to ever happen. New game make money. Old game bad. So the cycle continues.
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