We had some exciting days with the info from the PAX East in Boston, we got lots of interesting stuff, which should be summarized here.
The Civilizations
The Huns: Some of the speculation about the Huns has ended now. It was conjectured that they might not be able to found cities, due to the lack of city names, but this turned out to be totally false, as the developers confirmed that they can found cities and will take city names from the end of the lists of other civs.
But they get a flavourful trait, which is named Scourge of God: they can raze cities at double speed and start with Animal Husbandry, fitting to the theme of horse barbarians. Additionally they get a production bonus from pastures.
Their UUs also fit the early conquering style, with some sort of horse archer and a battering ram (as spearman replacement).
It is still not known which language Attila will speak, but it's not any of the first predicted languages, like e.g. Hunnic. Interested people with broader language knowledge, especially about turkic languages, are welcome to participate in the thread about analyzing Attila's voice.
Austria: Austria with Maria Theresa as leader (screenshot) is the first time really a civilization in the series. Their ability is called Diplomatic Marriage and will allow Austria to more easily absorb city states into their fold, but no specific details have been given yet.
Ethiopia: The last announced civilization at this point was Ethiopia, with probably the most modern leader ever in Civilization, Haile Selassie (screenshot). Their UU is a rifleman replacement, the Mehal Sefari (wikipedia), and their unique ability will grant them a 20% combat bonus against empires with more cities.
Carthage: Carthage gets an elephant UU, which strikes fear into the enemies unit and generates GGs faster, and a Quinquereme. Their UA is called Phoenician Heritage and allows them to move units over mountains (getting 50% damage if they finish their turn on them) and gives them a free harbor in each of their cities.
Other civs: One civ is still not announced, but other civs were a bit more covered. The Byzantines will get a ship UU, the Dromon, which can somehow throw fire, and the Mayans get the Atl-Atl, as a spear throwing unit (wikipedia). It was also mentioned that the trait of Askia will be changed, since all embarked units in Gods & Kings will be able to defend themselves.
Another important note was that Spain, which has been sold as DLC, will be included as normal civilization in Gods & Kings (but is NOT one of the 9 new civs).
For a general discussion about the civilizations in G&K please see this thread.
City States
A couple of things about the CS have been revealed. There are new CS, like Colombo, a mercantile CS, Milan, a cultural CS, and Geneva, a religious one.
It was already said that the mercantile CS will have unique resources, like porcelain or jewelry, but now it was the first time mentioned that they could have more than 1.
The religious CS will be able to generate faith for the player, somehow similar to cultural CS.
Also a new global quest system will be implemented for city states. As example it was given that the first Civ to get X culture becomes the CS ally. This will also influence the diplomatic victory, because gold will have less influence and requests by city states (which will become more diverse) will have a bigger impact.
Units & Combat
Some new things were also said about units, e.g. that the great admiral will be able to heal nearby ships, and that Destroyers are melee, but Battleships are ranged. Due to the general revamping of the naval side of the game, the AI has also been reprogrammed for better amphibious invasions.
A couple of things were changed for existing units, please see this thread for notes. New units see below:
Composite Bow|7|11|2|-|Can't melee attack
African Forest Elephant|14|-|3|67|-
Quinquereme|13|4|-|30|Melee ship
Great War Infantry|50|-|2|-
Mehal Sefari|34|-|2|-
Great War Bomber|50|-|-|-|Range of 6
Landship|60|-|4|-
Religion and Social Policies
The users Optional, albie_123, sukritact and AriochIV were able to figure out the Pantheon, Founder and Follower Beliefs from different screenshots. Since there is way too much to summarize it, please take a look at this thread if you're interested.
Noticeable in other regards are that you can buy great persons with faith if you have certain social policies. Order allows you to purchase GEs, Autocracy GGs and Freedom GAs.
Social policies also receive other adjustments, like that Freedom unlocks in the Industrial Era and that the Order finisher is now +2 of everything, instead of just +1. And most importantly; they'll influence the diplomacy in the later game. Autocracy followers will have worse diplomatic relations with civs that follow Order or Freedom, and vice versa.
Minor things
There'll be a retire option in the ingame menu, and "Trying to win the game the same way as us" has been removed from G&K as a diplomatic modifier alltogether.
Also different new resources will appear, but some are not clear. We'll get pigs and crabs in the game, but it's not figured out if we saw citrus or coffee in the video.
Canada will also get a first represenation in the Civ series, with the CN tower revealed as a wonder (artwork).
The Videos
All videos from the PAX are availabe on twitch.tv:
- Friday's Live Interview (at 1 hour and 5 minutes)
- Saturday's Live Interview
- Sunday's Gods & Kings Demo (at 1 hour and 20 minutes)
External sources
A couple of gaming sites have already published articles and videos about the PAX, so you might want to take a look at Destructoid, ThoseGamingNerds, SpaceSector, TheEscapist, BrainLazy and PsychoButtons.
Direct links:
- Destructoid: PAX: Have some faith in Civilization V: Gods & Kings
- ThoseGamingNerds: PAX East 2012: Civ V: Gods & Kings Interview
- SpaceSector: PAX East Impressions – XCOM: Enemy Unknown and Civ 5 Gods & Kings [Now, with Videos!]
- TheEscapist: Pax East 2012: Civ V: Gods & Kings Changes the Game
- BrainLazy: Civilization V: Gods and Kings Preview
- PsychoButtons: PAX East 2012: Civ V: Gods & Kings
We hope that everyone has fun with the discussions which are sparked by this new info .