Gods and Kings- a “brief” review

Ok, so, say you want to hear some about Gods and Kings but don't want to read a million billion words about stuff with me talking very little about the actual game. I'm going to try a review format where I give an ultraquick take above the fold, and then talk a little bit about things below.

Supershort take-

I liked Gods and Kings. It makes navel combat worthwhile, improves the tactical and diplomatic AI somewhat (note, tactical AI still makes some silly moves (though no more than it did in Civ4), and certain AI powers are really kinda dopey-aggressive (see- Bismark, Atilla, Monty)) and adds two nice features in the form of religion and espionage. Religion is a lot of fun, and I really like the way they model beliefs. Espionage does a good job of helping weaker powers to catch up, and is a worthwhile addition (unlike building spies in civ2-3 or the miserable espionage slider in Civ4 BTS). The new civilizations are fun without being overpowering (except for the Ethiopians, maybe), and the changes to city states (combined with espionage) make it more than a game of “who has more money” to win the diplomatic war (though money helps!)

Civilization 5 was an excellent game in the Civ. Series at release, marred by two pretty significant issues, the tactical AI wasn't very good, and a slightly schizophrenic diplomatic AI. This meant that the excellent changes to the tactical combat were somewhat wasted, as the AI didn't know how to make use of it's troops, and the endgame (always a weakpoint in the civilization series) was annoying, as previous AI “friends” would gang up to murder your ass if you looked like you were going to win, which is something your actual human friends would do anyway, but was objectionable if you wanted “verisimilitude”

Gods and Kings fixes these issues (though not completely), makes a host of minor changes which strongly improve gameplay, and introduces two new subsystems- religion and espionage, both of which are fairly mechanically interesting, in addition to new wonders, etc. I particularly want to gush about the religion system, which helps to stabilize diplomatic relations in the early game, as well as being both interesting and able to let you channel your inner five-year-old (I was the founder of the religion of Board Games in my Dutch game, and many city states clamored for it to be spread to their shores, though I'm sure they would have clamored for Cock as well, if you chose to name your religion that).

The minor fixes are probably best to talk about first, as they solve some of the things that bothered me. To begin with, the tactical AI is better. Better doesn't mean perfect, as the AI tends to prioritize killing your units over strategic objectives, but, considering the power of upgraded units, that's not terrible. I had a long war with Attila in my Dutch game, and was only able to persevere through the power of my advanced technology, though it was very touch and go for a while. The diplomatic AI will ignore minor slights provided you have a good enough base relationship, though when you accumulate enough negative modifiers, expect them to get really pissed. Moreover, there is a bonus to your relationships with people of the same religion, giving you a stabilizer in the early game, especially if you spread your teachings to the rest of the world.

The changes to navel combat- ships are now split into two tracks, one close range and one longer-ranged, as well as an across the board buff to the power of navel units makes combat much more interesting on the high seas. Additionally naval units are able to capture cities, meaning that being a strong navel power matters a lot- you don't need to be a strong land power too. The gunpowder age has been extended, with musket-men serving for much longer before the advent of rifling, making the many civilizations which depend on a unique musket much stronger, though the addition of a composite bowman in the classical age is less interesting. Some of the policy trees have been rebalanced to suck less as well, for example, commerce and piety (which was previously disqualified due to shutting out rationalism in a game in which science is king) are now both worth taking. The end-game policy trees (communism, fascism, and democracy) also give diplomatic bonuses/penalties to civs which take the same/different policies, though the problem remains that civilizations which engage in a lot of conquest are unlikely to see any of those trees without building enormous numbers of cultural buildings.

Great scientists no-longer allow you to magically slingshot through a tech, instead, giving you a fat stack of beakers depending on your average science per turn, which, when combined with a slightly larger tech tree, make the code of laws slingshot and other silly technology games worth substantially less. City states now offer a lot more quests, and you have expanded diplomatic options in dealing with them, such as shaking them down for cash, or offering to protect them. Moreover, your spies can rig elections and generally monkey with city states, letting you get influence without having to pay cash. This means that you can interact with the “diplomatic game” without having to be mr. moneybags, though if you want to win diplomatically, you need to have fat stacks of chedder.

The religion system is cool, which you generating “faith” from tiles and structures, which is spent initially to establish a pantheon (a sort of microreligion, which can “tag along” on the back of an actual religion), and, afterwords, to buy great prophets (who can found a religion or add new beliefs to an existing one, as well as to spread the good news of Board Games), missionaries (who spread religion), inquisitors (who eliminate enemy religions from your cities), as well as buying crusaders or religious buildings, depending on your beliefs. Religions have a founder belief (a bonus to the founder) as well as one or more follower beliefs (a bonus to people who follow the religion). The interaction of pantheons with religions is neat (you can think of them as being different “sects” of the same religion, in the case of people with the same religion but different pantheons), as is the way religions accumulate beliefs over time.

Despite these strengths, there are some annoyances with religion, such as a janky detection algorithm for when you have enough faith to do stuff (it checks at the beginning on the turn, unlike everything else). As well as the problem of having a neighbor with a lot of faith constantly prophet-bombing your holy city, as there's no way to tell him to fuck off short of murdering his ass. As you move through the ages, the costs to do “religious stuff” increase, so by the industrial age, building up the faith for a missionary takes a while, which means that a scientific civ will tend to be infiltrated by the cheaper missionaries of their more backwards neighbors, which is interesting, but somewhat annoying.

Espionage is a system that kicks in during the renaissance, and helps to keep civilizations from being completely overwhelmed by their bigger neighbors. When any player advances an age, each player, regardless of which age they are in, gets a spy. The spy can be deployed in a number of different missions, including tech theft, city-state influence, general reconnaissance, or counter-spying. If you're ahead in the tech game, you will need to dedicate your spies to counter-spying if you want to keep your neighbors from getting a free tech boost. Moreover, if you're sufficiently advanced, your neighbors will be able to steal some tech from you, as you don't have the spies to patrol ALL your cities, and since spies gain experience (and effectiveness) through successful missions, you'll need to build buildings and devote spies to keeping the loss-rate under control.

Of course, your spies can also die, and if they do so, you'll be out an agent for a couple dozen turns before a new rookie shows up. Some people might not care for the fixed number of spies, but I feel it helps to keep the spy-wars of civ2-3 under control. Also, the whole thing is menu driven, which might annoy those who are battle-spreadsheet averse.

Some of the things that hasn't been fixed, and is still somewhat annoying, is the need to choose a victory path fairly early in the game, and the ability of a civilization which isn't culture-focused to interact with the culture trees is low. Happiness is easier to acquire through religion, which makes keeping a large empire under control easier, which sort of defeats the purpose of empire wide happiness, though it's still impossible to go on gigantic conquest-sprees without investing a lot in placating the people your conquer. Also, DLC civilizations piss me off, as they're a particularly transparent way to nickle-and-dime people out of more money, after 60 and 20 dollaring them for the game.

All in all, I recommend that people try the expansion if they liked Civ5. If you didn't care for Civ5 due to annoyance with the diplomacy and tactical AI, now might be a good time to give it another go. If you just hate empire-wide happiness, or are bored by the tactical combat, or found the user-interface citizen-control infuriating, or even felt that the culture-trees and diplomatic victories too “game-y,” this is not the expansion for you.

See you in the funny papers!