Recent reviews by James

masterpiece

£20 for an underwhelming DLC. It is a cop-out to duplicate and re-skin the jade and jet lion and call them new units. Kislev remains disjointed with "the great orthodoxy" still having no units to accommodate its supposed significance in the Kislev lore which this DLC makes even worse with you having boyars leading your armies of monsters instead of hags. Tzeentch arguably came out the best in this DLC, yet the gors in particular come up short with CA thinking that just dunking them all in tango blue raspberry justifies the cost.

Good dlc, ignore the brokies crying about price.

The game is now a lot more enjoyable than what it was during the release of shadows of change. So long as future updates are on the same quality as 5.0, this game will probably bring a few people back as it did for myself.

Yea the dlc adds up and you’re best buying them during a sale. Some DLCs are certainly better than others but you don’t have to own every one of them to get your money’s worth.

We wuz...

Too much of what they ultimately set out to achieve in this game falls flat on its face in its execution

unique great people: The idea of Einstein giving you a different buff to that of Plato is interesting but in reality, you are in a position to just meta-pick certain scientists with some having major benefits in comparison to others.

Districts: overall a stupid idea. Why would I have to build a library for my city in a district that is several tiles away a mountain range? Takes away the city-building aspect you had from CIV5. realistically, these districts should be optional should you wish to optimise a particular city for a function ie: religion, science etc.

Art: The other reviewers are idiots, it looks like a mobile game. The fog of war is very irreparable at times as well, CIV5's fog of war is much greater on the eye as here you are stuck in a black and white view of lands you do not have coverage of. The Cities themselves feel very limited and do not grow past a certain size on the map. In CIV5 your cities would visibly grow into metropolises as the population grew but here it looks to be stagnant once you pass level 10+ in pop.

Wonders: Make sense that some wonders take up a tile ie: pyramids, but as you get through the game, your lands end up looking like a monopoly board with all these random buildings scattered everywhere. There is also an over-exaggeration of geographical and district requirements to build wonders.

units: to keep having to build workers after their use and having to rely on trade to build roads, excluding Rome, makes the early game feel monotonous.

Misc:
The game tells you information in a much more ugly way in comparison to CIV5:
- when a wonder is built it will never show you which one was built like in CIV5, you now have to hover over the icon in the bottom right.

The golden ages function is cringe, you are punished for not playing in a certain way the game wants you to play.

Movement is clunky and changed unnecessarily compared to CIV5. makes early game scouting and war play like a ball ache.

the borders are too hexagonal.

solid

The greatest strategy game ever made, don't @ me

meh

Good rat food 10/10