Civilization V – The pain of waiting

Since last week’s demise of APB I have found myself in the curious position of not really having a game to play, or at least devote a significant portion of my free time to. Sure I could revisit old gems; but when it comes to games that I truly love, I tend to play them to a point of over familiarity, where every line of dialogue is memorised and the outcome of every decision known. In short there are few surprises left and these games lose their lustre, no matter how good they are. As such I recently completed my third full playthrough of Mass Effect 2 and my Nightmare mode playthrough of Dragon Age: Origins. I’m giving Arkham Asylum a well deserved second playthrough, but it’s somehow not enough.

So now I find myself in the uncomfortable position of waiting for the next big game to release and it’s become almost unbearable. That game is Civilization V and every moment I am not playing, it feels rather similar to how I imagine a dagger through the heart might feel (it is entirely possible that I have a defective imagination and/or no real experience of being stabbed). While it seems many other games journalists are dropping reviews that joke about how many hours they will spend playing this sprawling behemoth of a game, I’m left with a timer on Steam that states 3 days and 9 hours. What makes this wait seem infinitely longer is that for many people the game will unlock today, but for us Brits our strange retail habits require that big releases hit the shelves on a Friday. Presumably this is because people are more likely to go out and buy a game at the end of the week, resulting in big lovely day one profits for the money-men. I would like to take this opportunity to say “A thousand curses upon you and your offspring!” to the people responsible for this.

So here is my handy guide to killing the hours until the release of Civ V! Rejoice and please offer your own suggestions in the comments below as to how to lose some time until this year’s grand strategy masterpiece drops.

PS. People who suggest either “Get a life!” or “Halo Reach” can piss off.

1. Sleep. Sleep is a requirement for all of us and naturally in the next couple of days we’ll be spending a decent proportion of non-Civ playing hours catching some Z’s. But sleep is not only a necessity of life – being asleep is like living in fast-forward! Hours spent sleeping are hours not spent thinking, “Man I wish they’d release Civlization V already.” The one perilous pitfall of this activity is that you may have a dream that the game has released, then wake up to find out it was merely a fabrication of your desperate subconscious. The added bonus of sleeping is that whilst playing Civ, sleep patterns are demolished and you’d do well to pre-emptively catch up on the lost hours of sleepy-time required for a healthy Civ-addiction.

2. Check out the recorded live stream of Civilization V embedded below. There’s around 2 hours of footage that will help to fill the endless void in your soul currently pining for some hex-based relief. Watching some dude play Civ is obviously nowhere near as fun as playing it yourself, but you might pick up a few strategic hints and tips as well as learn a little about the combat and other changes to the series.

3. Read the manual! The whole of the manual for the game has been put into a handy PDF file and it’s rather large, there’s definitely a couple of hours to be lost trawling through this glossy creation. For added fun you can copy out the reference table at the back by hand, adding your own amusing illustrations to waste even more time.

4. Trawl through every single review of the game on Metacritic. This is however a risky tactic, because it will only serve to increase your anticipation and the general gist is “It’s great and I get to play it before you tee-hee-hee!” Or at least that was my interpretation.

5. Go through your wardrobe and try to recreate the look and style of your favourite Civ leaders from previous entries in the series. Obviously Gandhi is one of the easier ones, as all you will require is a sheet and some glasses. Zara Yaquob is more of a challenge, seemingly combining the classic robed look with the stylish trappings of an Adidas tracksuit.

6. Go to work. Obviously this is the equivalent of a bottom draw consolation prize, but you can both earn money and begin to feign the signs of whatever pretend illness you’re going to use as an excuse when the game releases.

7. Buy the brand new board-game. Proudly advertised on the back page of the PDF manual is this rather wonderful looking Civilization board-game. Obviously you’re going to need some friends for this one. Can be combined with suggestion number 5 for some kind of weird and wonderful civ-themed evening.

8. Write a Civlization themed poem. Here’s my attempt:

I once was a lonely settler, lost in the ancient era,

but then I made my first scout, and things became a little clearer,

but alas around the time I discovered Mathematics,

my scout stumbled across some barbarian fanatics,

he was butchered in the plains, my citizens gave me the blame!

So I adopted slavery and worked them all to death.

9. Make a vow to never try and write poetry again.

10. Write a silly article about wasting time before Civ V releases, to waste some time before Civ V releases, then publish it on your website without telling your editor!