Introduction

Check out Captain Fargle's Civ V thread here!

What's it all about?

Ah, Civilization, the long-running "4X" game series where you control a single civilization that develops out of the stone age and competes with other civs to become something that stands the test of time! This is generally done in one of four ways: by kicking everyone else's ass, by developing a culture so influential it cannot be erased, by getting everyone else to vote you world leader, or by building a rocket ship to Alpha Centauri (and eventually becoming one with a sentient alien Planet, but that's a whole other game).

There have been many Civ games, increasing in complexity as time has gone on. Civ IV, however, may have been a bit too complex. Its tech tree was a crazy maze and its religion system was just an insane mess. You'd become the leader of a religion by discovering a particular technology first before anyone else--which meant that if you were out-sciencing everyone else, you'd be the leader of half the world's religions. Plus, for fear of offending anyone, Firaxis made them all more or less interchangeable gameplay-wise, and you'd have to worry about stuff like which was your dominant state-approved religion to appease the masses, and a whole bunch of other stuff I can't even get into.

What's that got to do with this game?

Civilization V's makers decided to just do away with the religion system altogether. This got rid of that hot mess, but it also left a hole that needed to be filled. Fortunately, in the substantial expansion pack, Gods & Kings, they added religion back in and it works much more sensibly and more awesomely. It's a customizable enhancement to your civilization, giving you completely different benefits depending on what religious practices you adopt, yet it's also relatively straightforward.

The purpose of this LP is to show off religion and how much cool stuff it can do for you. There are multiple different civilizations with different gimmicks regarding religion and I'll try to show off all four of them. Ideally we'll be going for the four different victory types among them as well.

Our first leader will be Boudicca, and she will use religion as a deadly weapon. I am not even kidding.

The Let's Play Archive

Civilization V: Gods & Kings

by Speedball

Introduction

Table of Contents

Part I: Celts vs. The World

Part II: Mayans In Space

Part III: Everybody Hates the Byzantines!

Interlude

Part IV: Ethiopia the Uncrushable

Interlude 2

Brave New World!

Final Update