About three years ago I lamented on a Facebook status that I would have to spend the rest of my life playing Civilization V before I acquired every one of its 286 achievements. A friend shot back a challenge: “You’d better get started then, man.”
Now its the eve of Civilization VI‘s launch (Beyond Earth is for heathens), so it felt like a good time tally my progress. Just the other week I managed to pass the halfway mark with 154 achievements, a whopping 54% of the total. That’s 209 hours of gameplay as well. An honorable run, I’d have to say.
Civilization V is special to me because it’s a game I can enjoy match after endless fucking match. It’s a game I play to relax. The achievements, on the other hand, simply gave me something to shoot for as tuned out the world and turned up the game’s soundtrack.
There were certainly the low-hanging fruits: build a wonder, upgrade a unit, earn a unit promotion. Stuff you earn simply by playing the game for an hour or two. But then there are the achievements for beating the game… as each civilization (hint: there’s 43 of them with the expansions). And then the achievements you can only achieve as a single civilization. Then there’s one for beating the game on each map type, map size, and difficulty from Settler to Deity. Plus, there’s all of the scenarios. And that’s just getting started.
The vast majority of the achievements I have remaining are mostly victories on each different scenario map as different civilizations. Here are the ones I missed by a longshot:
Purchase/Build/Construct 1000 X’s Across Any Number of Playthroughs
And I thought playing the game as every civ was going to take a while. These achievements came with the base game (no DLC) and include things like “build 1000 roads”, “purchase 1000 tiles”, and “construct 1000 temples.” I mean, seriously, how many fucking temples do you need to build every game? Maybe a dozen? I’ll be an old man by the time I get this one.
Panzer “Shafernator” General
The original “Platinum Trophy” of the base game, it is awarded for spawning over 100 Great Generals (accomplished by now probably), beating the game 100 times (work in progress), and building an army of over 100 standing units in a single game (yeah, fuck you too).
Beat the Mongol scenario on the Deity difficulty level
This scenario is so absurdly hard that I can’t even beat it with the turn-by-turn guide someone made for it.
The Last Crusade: Capture the city that built Petra using a Landship
I get that this is a clever joke on Indianan Jones, but it also seems absurdly narrow to get.
Hannibal’s Crossing: As Carthage, attack a Roman Unit with an Elephant from a mount tile
See above.
Silk Road: Connect to the Arabs, China, India, the Mongols, and Persia at the same time using Caravans.
Come on, really?
Raiders of the Lost Ark: Have your American Archaeologist extract an Artifact from Eygpy with a German Archaeologist within 2 tiles.
Alright, this is just dumb now.
But anyway, who am I kidding? I’ll probably still be playing this game by the time Civilization VIII: It’s A Trump World After All finally launches. Here’s to another 200 hours.
Veni, vidi, vici.