sprout Summary
Experienced-based learnings on how to have fun hosting and playing multiplayer Civilization 5 games.
background
Sid Meier’s Civilization 5 is among my favorite games of all time. (the other games in my personal top 5: Hades, Portal 2, Minecraft, Hollow Knight). I’ve logged over 350 well-spent hours playing it, largely over big Discord voice calls with my other Civ-playing friends during the covid lockdown of 2020/21.
Now that there are two newer installments of the Civilization series, there honestly isn’t much of a reason to choose Civ V as a new player. But if you’ve played Civ 6 or 7 and enjoyed it, I think you’ll enjoy 5 as well— and I hope this guide will serve as a good entrypoint for that! Otherwise, I’m mostly just writing this for myself before this knowledge gets lost to time.
I’ve previously written about some vaguely civ-related thoughts on how the tall-vs-wide strategy decision relates to other aspects of my life; if that sounds interesting you can take a detour to the sphere of knowledge on Substack.
other civ games, humankind, etc.
I don’t personally have enough experience to comment on the other popular entries in the 4X genre. I assume this strategy guide is largely Civ 5-specific, but I’ll call out anything I do know to be transferrable.
Perhaps there will come a day where I’ll learn another one!