Common Sense Media Review
By Chad Sapieha
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Excellent strategy game is educational and accessible.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 11+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Play
Videos and Photos
Sid Meier's Civilization V
Parent and Kid Reviews
Based on 8 parent reviews
Based on 25 kid reviews
Kids say that this turn-based strategy game is a masterpiece, providing an engaging and educational experience with historical elements, although it may be complex for younger players. While it offers a fun and addictive gameplay with good graphics, the learning curve can be steep, requiring some effort to appreciate its depth fully.
- educational experience
- complex gameplay
- fun and addictive
- historical elements
- appropriate for teens
Summarized with AI
Summarized with AI
What's It About?
The Civilization franchise is a two-decades-old bastion of strategy gaming bliss in the PC world, and its basics remain firmly intact in Civilization V. Players select an authentic historical leader and begin the game with a single city in a sparsely populated ancient world. As the years flip by, you scout the land, find additional cities, and meet strange new cultures that you can either crush with your armies or befriend as you work toward satisfying diplomatic, cultural, or scientific victory conditions. And it's all been made more accessible than ever before. A clean, new interface includes bulletins that pop up on the right side of the screen, ensuring you're always apprised of changes in neighboring countries' dispositions and aware of vital opportunities. Just below is a dynamic action button that leads you through all available activities, ensuring that you never forget to move a unit or begin production on a new building before ending a turn.
Is It Any Good?
Civilization V's changes aren't limited to simply making things more user-friendly. A new social policy system allows players to mix and match ideologies such as fascism and rationalism for strategic growth in areas like technology and population happiness. And the introduction of city-states that can be used as allies or pawns adds an entirely new element of strategy worthy of significant consideration.
What's more, Civilization's battles have never been better. Cities can now defend themselves, which means no more piling them full of soldiers you'd rather have on the front lines. And whereas players once stacked units into massive armies before merrily marching off to war, each unit now occupies its own space on the map, forcing players to strategically line up ranged attackers behind melee units in preparation for sieges. Simply put, it's tons of fun. This season's high-profile shooters might steal the spotlight for the moment, but if there's one game released in 2010 that people will still be playing five years from now, it's Civilization V.
Online interaction: Multiplayer supports open text and voice chat so players could hear unwanted and inappropriate communication.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about learning from games. Do you think the Civilization games can potentially teach players more about the world in which they live? Do you think this game can make players better understand how modern geopolitical conflicts occur?
Families can also discuss the differences in depicting war from the personal perspective of an individual soldier versus that of a bird's eye view. Why might the latter be more appropriate and bearable for younger players than the former?
Game Details
- Platform : Windows
- Subjects : Math : addition , money , subtraction , Social Studies : cultural understanding , government , power structures , Language & Reading : reading , reading comprehension , vocabulary
- Skills : Self-Direction : academic development , Thinking & Reasoning : analyzing evidence , decision-making , prediction , Creativity : developing novel solutions , Tech Skills : using and applying technology , Responsibility & Ethics : learning from consequences , making wise decisions
- Pricing structure : Paid
- Available online? : Available online
- Publisher : 2K Games
- Release date : September 21, 2010
- Genre : Strategy
- ESRB rating :
- Last updated : October 9, 2025
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