When comparing Civilization V vs Cities: Skylines, the Slant community recommends Civilization V for most people. In the question“What are the best singleplayer games on Steam?” Civilization V is ranked 27th while Cities: Skylines is ranked 28th. The most important reason people chose Civilization V is:
From the players cities and armies to the lush landscape, Civilization is quite a beautiful game for those with systems powerful enough to push the graphics to the limit. Even when on lower graphical settings the game looks lush and well animated.
Specs
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Pros
Pro Beautiful graphics
From the players cities and armies to the lush landscape, Civilization is quite a beautiful game for those with systems powerful enough to push the graphics to the limit. Even when on lower graphical settings the game looks lush and well animated.
Pro Endless scenarios and replayability
Civilization V has a large assortment of nation leaders to choose from that have an even bigger assortment of scenarios that are able to play out for said leaders. Each game can be quite unique in this way as each leader allows for a different nation to be controlled.
Pro Customization through policies
Policies are used as a tool to gain a variety of customizations that benefit ones society. There is a branching tree of policies that will allow the user to pick certain aspects that will suit them best such as adding law or religion to ones society which will give gains in certain aspects.
Pro Fantastic tactical combat
Civilization V has a great combat system that feels very tactical over previous versions as there is no stacking of troops, but with the new hexagonal grid players can surround enemies as well as allow for better tactics when planning attacks.
Pro Large scale
At a total of 36sq.km of area to use (compared to SimCity 4), there is a large amount of room to build and play.
Pro Steady Stream of new content via DLCs
DLCs are optional, they do go one sale. Plus when a new DLC is released a bit of the content is released into the base game.
Pro Depth of field
There is a depth of field effect that will blur distant buildings, which mimics Sim City's diorama effect. It can of course be adjusted with a slider as to how much or little to use.
Pro Large Amount of Workshop Mods & Assets
With almost 150 thousand assets and mods, you can totally change the gameplay and look of the game
Cons
Con One unit per tile
Civ 5 restricts you to having one unit per tile, but has an AI unable to handle that restriction well, and doesn't even have decent pathing for units. Late game becomes a slog of ordering each unit individually due to poor pathing.
Con Most victories won by timed or military victory
It can be pretty difficult to win by diplomacy or culture which does add some challenge to the game but it can get tiresome if one keeps winning by only military or timed victories.
Con No stats on other Civ attitudes
Unlike past Civilization games there are no longer stats on the attitudes of the players surrounding Civilizations. This allowed one to see how each other nation felt about the player, but now that it is gone one has to guess, which is definitely not as helpful.
Con No steam workshop support on Linux
The Linux port currently does not support steam workshop, and as the mac port made by the same developers has not received workshop support despite having been out for several years, it is unlikely that it ever will.
Though there are unofficial workarounds to get the mods working.
Con Resource Heavy
If your computer doesn’t have decent specs, don’t expect to be able to run this game smoothly.
Con Expensive
If you want more gameplay features, you have to buy expensive DLC, but you can get them on sale sometimes.
Con Can be difficult to glean what one has done wrong in game
Cities: Skylines has difficulty letting the player know what they have done wrong, which results in a lot of head scratching.