And the winner is.... OzzyKP!



Apolyton Civilization Site congratulates OzzyKP for winning the Civilization 5: Gods & Kings review contest.
OzzyKP wrote a lengthy review of the latest civ expansion and dressed it up with pictures and screenshots. It's clear that a lot of work has been put into this piece of work. OzzyKP tries to give a nuanced write up about the latest civ incarnation and is able to stay away from both mindless hate and fanboy love. His conclusion shows this off quite well: "Overall the expansion is decidedly an improvement. But not enough of one to ultimately fix a flawed game. That said, I did enjoy the few games I played."

OzzyKP will receive a free copy of the game by having Apolyton pay for his Gods & Kings purchase.
Congrats again, OzzyKP! And Keep on civin...!
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Rhasto signed up at Apolyton to post his Civilization V: Gods & Kings review! His review is the 3rd submission to our Civilization 5: Gods & Kings review contest. If you like his review, please give him a 'thanks' in the forums. The reviewer that gets most 'thanks' will get his or her Gods & Kings purchase paid back by Apolyton (read the terms & conditions for specific information)

Civ 5 Gods and Kings Review.
Many people compare Civ 5 to previous installments of the Civilization game. I am going to try and give a simple, unbiased review of the new features in G&KS, the first expansion for Civ 5.
The expansion does add several new gameplay features, such as espionage, religion, 9 new Civilizations as well as Several new technologies. The big question is, is it worth it? If you enjoyed Civ 5's gameplay then I would say definetely get the expansion, as it improves the game immensely. If you are a CIV Vet, and you hated Civ 5s gameplay then I would say try the demo available on Steam. Worst case scenario : You don't like it and can get on with your live. Now, on to the new features introduced in the game.
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Civilization V: Patch 1.0.1.705 has been released. It addressed problems that have been found since the Civ5 addon Gods and Kings like the leader shift save game bug, and miscellaneous crashes and bugs. Here is the complete list:

[PREVIOUS SAVES]

• Older saves with DLC leaders (including Genghis) will no longer "shift" when loaded into the patched game.

[CRASH FIXES]

• If a user does not have a religion, and receives a religion from another Civ, setting the "automated faith purchase" option could previously cause a crash when the purchase tries to fire for either the player, or the AI. This has been corrected.
• Fixed an issue where a user could click on a city banner during the AI turn, and the game could crash depending what AI process is happening at the time of the "click."
• Into the Renaissance - If an AI player has open borders and a friendly relationship with another Civ, they would sometimes send a Great Admiral to park in their city. If the city tries to purchase a civilian unit while the Great Admiral is parked there, the game could crash. This is corrected.
• Scenario hang - There was a chance that when you won a scenario, the game could hang. This has been corrected.
• Fixed an issue where any user with special characters in their Windows name will be unable to load saves.
• If a player has Steam in "offline mode", and clicks on Mods, into the modding area and then backs out, the game could crash. This is now corrected.
• Game Hang on turn 0 - After patching, many have reported being unable to interact with units or end the first turn. This is now corrected.
• Game could previously hang on "Unit Needs Orders" after the player clicks next turn. This has been corrected, and the camera snap has been fixed.
• A crash that could occur in Hot Seat if the game core threading had been disabled is fixed.

[BUG FIXES]

• Fall of Rome Scenario - Golden Ages were switched to providing bonus culture earlier in project. We've removed the culture bonus from Golden Ages for the scenario.
• Open Borders that do not exist - If the AI is trying to renew an open borders agreement, but has something more important to talk about in the queue, the system would still record the Open Borders agreement as being active (even though it is not actually in place). This has been corrected.
• Military Caste (+2 culture from garrison) was not working correctly. Whenever a civilian unit embarks, bulbs, or is deleted, it subtracted 2 culture, and kept adding up each time this happened, leaving the city at permanent negative culture. This has been corrected.
• The "Peace Loving" belief was not functioning. This has been corrected.
• When cities bombard attacking units, death animations would now play correctly.

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Long time Apolyton member Wiglaf is the 2nd person to submit his review of Civilization V: Gods & Kings to Apolyton's Civilization 5: Gods & Kings review contest and is clearly not happy with this expansion pack, read his review to understand why. If you like his review, please give him a 'thanks' in the forums. The reviewer that gets most 'thanks' will get his or her Gods & Kings purchase paid back by Apolyton (read the terms & conditions for specific information)

Review:

Gods and Kings, hitherto 'GK,' is the first expansion to Jon Shafer's last act as a respected member of the PC videogame industry, known as Civilization 5. GK is a continuation of the trend of cashing in on a successful but highly flawed game by tacking on poorly integrated, barely thought-out game features that really should have been included originally, in working format.

I will break down my thoughts on the additions.

The name: 'Gods' makes sense, but 'Kings' does not. This is a bad start, and things will only get worse.

Boring, uneventful, nukeless espionage: The first thing I noticed is that all my spies have only first names, like Albert, or Alexa, or Fred. While I appreciate the need for secrecy, I do not appreciate feeling like I am sending my god damned pet goldfish off to spy on the enemy. These are professionals and they should be named as such....

First contender in Apolyton's Civilization 5: Gods & Kings review contest is OzzyKP. OzzyKP is a long time Civilization fan and known as a dedicated Civ4 diplogamer (multiplayer). If you like his review, please give him a 'thanks' in the forums. The reviewer that gets most 'thanks' will get his or her Gods & Kings purchase paid back by Apolyton (read the terms & conditions for specific information)

Review:

Introduction
No doubt like most people reading this review, I don't play Civ5 all that much. So it will be difficult to review Gods & Kings since beyond the big ticket items I can't quite tell you what has changed in the game. So consider this review to be from the perspective of a casual gamer, not one who has explored and mastered all the intricacies of the game. Just a regular Joe who doesn't have strong feelings about Civ5, but decided to give the expansion a shot.

When Civ5 first came out I was pretty excited. I've been playing the Civ franchise since the beginning and love Civ4 dearly. So I followed news of Civ5's development closely. I don't buy many games, but my loyalty to the franchise was strong enough that I went out and bought a copy of the game the first day it was available. In fact, after driving 9 hours from Indiana to Maryland, I went straight to my local Best Buy. Unfortunately Civ5 was sold out, so after my long drive I got back in the car and spent another hour driving to the only other Best Buy in the area with a copy.
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Write the best review of Civilization V: Gods & Kings here on Apolyton and we'll pay your copy of Gods and Kings!

To participate in this contest just post your review of Gods & Kings in the contest forum.
The review that receives the highest number of 'thanks' responses from the Apolyton memberbase wins the contest.

All entries will be reviewed by the Apolyton Staff first. Serious entries will be displayed in this forum.
Everybody is free to comment to the competitors, ask questions and discuss the reviews.

Only 'thanks' responses awarded to the actual review post will be counted.
Every Apolyton member can award 1 'thanks' per day. This 'thanks' option can be awarded by clicking the 'thanks' link under the post/review.

The contest ends July 11th 22:00 GMT.
Apolyton Staff will not discuss the results of the contest.

The prize will be awarded in the form $25.19, the price of Gods & Kings on dlgamer.com...