Breaking a promise to stop expansion near a neighbor has wide-reaching negative diplomatic effects. Chiding a belligerent empire’s aggression toward a friendly city-state could spark a war, while forgiving their actions dramatically hurts relations with that minor nation. Though your responses to rivals’ statements are still binary in most cases, most have real consequences now. The way that the expansion keeps the player’s attention on big-picture global politics and empire development is a significant accomplishment.įleshing out a great deal of diplomatic nuance that the base game lacked is Gods & Kings’ third pillar. As streamlined as it is, Civ V is still a massively complex strategy game. With rare exceptions, the player’s input into matters of religion and espionage are limited to single decisions every five to ten turns or so. Gods & Kings’ greatest success is how it enhances the Civ V experience without adding appreciable complexity. Instead of adding together minor multipliers to tweak your research efficiency, you’re rigging city-state elections, stealing technology outright, converting whole cities to new beliefs, or enabling entirely new religious buildings.
Each belief incorporated into a religion or skulduggery undertaken by a spy has an obvious, powerful impact. One of Civ V’s strongest aspects is how forthright and direct the consequences of your decisions are, and Gods & Kings maintains that core design tenet. The major features it adds, religion and espionage, integrate smoothly into the Civ V experience and add interesting options without introducing unnecessary tedium or micromanagement. Gods & Kings is an outstanding expansion for players like me who found reasons to sink 200-plus hours into the base game. My love for Civilization V is enthusiastic and unapologetic.
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