A scene from the game. Telegraph picture

Civilization V is one of the most immaculately paced and addictive strategy games you'll ever play. Firaxis' latest iteration of the venerable series features a gorgeous graphics engine to humble your videocard, streamlined gameplay to make it easier than ever to pick up, and a few bold changes that declare this isn't just Civilization V.

Unfortunately, it also features some questionable design decisions, an A.I. that can't play the game Firaxis has designed, and the need for a couple of patches.

First, here is a quick primer for newcomers. Civilization V, like previous games in the series, is about leading a nation through the eras of history, starting with a single city and expanding across the map. At the outset of any given game, you select a leader, each of whom possesses a particular benefit that disposes his or her civilization to a particular style of play. Americans get a range of sight bonus, the Siamese get diplomatic bonuses with miniature nations new to the series called city-states; the English get naval perks and so forth.

From here, you collect resources, make deals with other civilizations, manage your economy and go to war and attack the cities of your enemies when the time is right. There are four main ways to win a typically lengthy game of Civilization V.

You could dominate through military means and defeat every civilization's capital city. You could be the first to gun through the technology tree and build the parts necessary for a spaceship that whisks you away to Alpha Centauri. You could ally with nations and city-states across the globe and win a diplomatic victory via a vote at the United Nations. You might even become the cultural envy of the world by developing a large number of government policies and researching a mysterious undertaking known as the Utopia Project.

But here's the rub: once you've learned a game, you know enough to see how good the A.I. is. Or isn't, in the case of Civilization V. The design revolves around a new tactical combat system where units have to carefully move around the terrain and protect each other.

You note France marching towards you with a cannon and a terrible array of musketeers, only to squander them by not realising that it should set up the cannons behind a screen of musketeers and advance on your position. Enemy archers stand toe-to-toe with the swordsmen who will kill them. Cavalry fling themselves into pikemen.

Frigates don't seem to understand that your ironclads have them outgunned. Armies just stay home while you pillage merrily. Cities fall obligingly.

Whether Civilization is new to you or not, it's easy to appreciate the newest game's user-friendly interface, which makes figuring out what to do next a breeze, meaning more of your time is spent strategising and less of it is spent fumbling around. The organised nested menus are intuitive and easy to get used to, and Civilization V does a good job of only displaying vital information on the screen while making other information easily available with just a few clicks. A few of Civilization IV's features have been eliminated -most notably, religion and espionage-though many players aren't likely to miss them.

However, longtime aspects of the series have returned. Your advisors are there if you need a bit of direction, though unit automation and little icons representing each advisor's suggestion in the production menus mean you won't often need to pay them a visit.

At least, the idea of the combat system fits the design perfectly. I can't say the same about the new approach to Civics and Religion. In Civilization IV, Civics was the name for a system of configuring your civilization on the fly, inspired by Brian Reynolds' spectacular Alpha Centauri.

Religion was presented as an out-of-control viral force, spreading without regard for silly things like national borders and armies. Civilization V takes these two concepts and puts them into an alternative tech tree called Social Policy, where you buy upgrades by spending accumulated Culture Points.

But this new approach misses a couple of important points:

· The first is that the game already has a tech tree. Now it has two, each with its own resource. If you want to streamline out Civics and Religion, duplicating a concept that's already in the game is a strange choice.

· The second missed point is that Social Policies cannot change. They are one-time fire-and-forget decisions that ignore the concept of civilizations adapting to changing times. Once you pick something from the Social Policy menu, it will always apply to your civilization. It will never change. You will never adjust your economy, change governments, convert religions, or dally with fascism. Instead, you're just buying a permanent improvement. Some of these are great, and they mostly do a good job of forcing hard choices and sometimes introducing new gameplay. But they're a disappointing alternative to that old time Civics and Religion.

What's more, the game loves big messy numbers. Numbers in the dozens, hundreds, thousands. You'll have piles of unhappiness, heaps of culture, clumped maintenance costs, and truckloads of food. Large numbers perch at the top of the screen like crows. Traditionally, the Civilization series has been about discrete bits and pieces, each an icon lined up in neat rows on elegant screens, easy to read at a glance, and easy to relate to the game world. A hammer here, a piece of food there, a coin, a flask, a bushel. This boardgame elegance is almost entirely gone in Civilization V, despite its attempts to streamline the gameplay.

Then there are some curious bugs. In late games, I've noticed numbers not adding up. Where is my iron? What happened to my whales? Why do I have this extra dye? Sums of gold set in the diplomacy window are always five gold no matter what number you negotiate. You can't queue up orders for units, which really hurts the pacing during the endgame. Hotkeys listed in the manual to control units and change the map display don't work. You can't set combat animations except when you start a game, so have fun in the modern era waiting for all those 15-second bomber runs.

Some of these problems are minor, but they're the sorts of things I'd expect from a rookie developer scrambling to meet a deadline. What are they doing in 2K's flagship strategy game, under the brand of one of the greatest game developers we've ever known?

In many ways, Civilization V is an admirable game, bolder and sexier than the average strategy game, and sporting some nice innovations that will make it hard to go back to Civilization IV. But in other ways, it's a disappointment that needs a lot more work before it earns its place as the successor to Civilization IV.