One of these days I'm going to have to play as the Aztecs and gain culture through murder. It was released on the 21st of September 2010 in North America, and three days later in the rest of the world. It introduces a number of elements to the series for the first time, such as having hexagonal tiles instead of squares, and implementing a one unit per tile rule. Then there are civs that seem overpowered on certain maps (England and Polynesia on archepelago) and civs that seem entirely geared towards a certain victory condition (Babylon and Korea for science, China and Mongolia for conquest.) In any case, I don't really see Civ as much of a multiplayer game, so balance really isn't an issue. Civilization 5 is the fifth iteration of Sid Meier’s Civilization series. I don't see much appeal for the United States, nor do I see how the Ottoman's ability is anything less than worthless. I guess the weaker Civs are the ones who's abilities are fairly circumstantial and are otherwise underpowered. France is pretty good in allowing access to the first few branches of civics earlier, Germany has some early-game military help to compliment its useful unique units (Landschnekts are great because of how easy they are to pump out, costing half as much as a regular pikeman. Same goes for Rome, as long as you come to accept that your capital won't be the wonder factory one is often tempted to make it. From my limited experience, it seems like Japan has a pretty overpowered special ability that is useful in pretty much every case, as war is almost always inevitable anyways.
