The PAX is over - A Gods & Kings summary

[The_J]

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:

Name	Strength	Ranged Strength	Movement	Cost	Other note
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 .

[Minor Annoyance]

One thing I see left out is that the machine gun has a one tile ranged attack. I wondered about this because past ranged units could fire over units because they fired in an arc. Bullets can't be aimed in an arc so it wouldn't make sense for machine guns to be able to shoot over things.

[Voyhkah]

Haile Selassie!? Other than inspiring a misguided Caribbean religion, he was a complete failure. He failed to stop the Italians invading in the 30's, then got ousted in a coup 40 years later. If you want a real Ethiopian leader, choose Menelik II, who actually managed to drive off the Italians and make Ethiopia the only African kingdom to resist European imperialism. But then, it's CiV GaK, what did I expect?

[tonberry]

Originally Posted by The_J

Canada will also get a first represenation in the Civ series, with the CN tower revealed as a wonder.

The first "representation" of Canada would be Quebec city state no?

[The_J]

Originally Posted by Minor Annoyance

One thing I see left out is that the machine gun has a one tile ranged attack. I wondered about this because past ranged units could fire over units because they fired in an arc. Bullets can't be aimed in an arc so it wouldn't make sense for machine guns to be able to shoot over things.

I thought that one tile range had been mentioned before, but I might be wrong .

Originally Posted by tonberry

The first "representation" of Canada would be Quebec city state no?

Oops , right.

[labrynianrebel]

Originally Posted by Voyhkah

Haile Selassie!? Other than inspiring a misguided Caribbean religion, he was a complete failure. He failed to stop the Italians invading in the 30's, then got ousted in a coup 40 years later. If you want a real Ethiopian leader, choose Menelik II, who actually managed to drive off the Italians and make Ethiopia the only African kingdom to resist European imperialism. But then, it's CiV GaK, what did I expect?

Agreed, plus Menelik II is the one who tripled the size of Ethiopia through conquest. Oh well Haile Selassie is more known in pop culture (mostly because of Rastafarian cultural osmosis) and the fact that during the Italian conquest he gave a speech to the League of Nations that's well remembered. Also he IS the emperor that officially renamed the country from Abyssinia to "Ethiopia"

Menelik II is still the more deserving though.

[snipperrabbit!!]

Gatling guns are range 1 too !

[mitsho]

also, Geneva already is a city state, it's only changed from cultural to religious.

[Stormy28]

(In case anyone is curious about the Byzantine Dromons' fire attack.)

[Heerlo]

This sounds pretty good, if it's not just another April fools joke.
Just kidding

[Uncle Anton]

Maria Therese looks like Florence from Little Britain or at the very least like David Walliams in a dress.

[Uncle Anton]

Originally Posted by Minor Annoyance

One thing I see left out is that the machine gun has a one tile ranged attack. I wondered about this because past ranged units could fire over units because they fired in an arc. Bullets can't be aimed in an arc so it wouldn't make sense for machine guns to be able to shoot over things.

Heh

Erm, matey, are you sure you know how firearms ballistics works?

http://www.essentialsomme.com/articl...un_tactics.htm

Machine Gun barrages only ceased being an effective employment tactic because of concurrent development in combined arms theory. Even then, Machine Gun barrages were used in the Hundred Days offensives by the Allies to good effect.

Needless to say other technological advances made the Machine Gun barrage largely a thing of the past by the time WW2 really got started.... I think this is what the devs are trying to represent when they give the MG unit a range.... they're not so much representing an MG Barrage as they are the benefits of machine guns in an indirect fire role.

[Haiku]

Originally Posted by Uncle Anton

Maria Therese looks like Florence from Little Britain or at the very least like David Walliams in a dress.

And from what I read, Maria Theresa was born in spain, dead in Versailles, and was the queen of France since her marriage with Louis XIV. Not much Austria here.

[Col Kurtz]

Originally Posted by Haiku

And from what I read, Maria Theresa was born in spain, dead in Versailles, and was the queen of France since her marriage with Louis XIV. Not much Austria here.

You are thinking of someone else I think.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maria_Theresa

[jcracken]

You also forgot William of Orange (Netherlands) as a new Civilization. Also, Louis XVI's wife as Marie Antoinette, not Marie Theresa. Marie Theresa was the one who Prussia stole the rich land of Silesia from.

Edit: Also the Celts, both civilizations were mentioned in the original blogpost:

http://www.2kgames.com/blog/civiliza...pack-announced

[The_J]

Sure, sure, but this here is only a summary for the new info from the PAX, not of al info .
And like hinted before, Maria Theresa of Austria, has nothing to do with France .

[jcracken]

Originally Posted by The_J

Sure, sure, but this here is only a summary for the new info from the PAX, not of al info .
And like hinted before, Maria Theresa of Austria, has nothing to do with France .

Oh yeah, I guess that makes sense...

And here's a youtube dump of the gameplay demo (it's in two parts):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ajY0oGbsxyI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ueEPWvjSWAw

[Bechhold]

I also wonder why Menelik II was not chosen as his legacy far outweighs anything Selassie ever did, that and he actually managed to defeat European conquest of his country add that to the reforms he introduced greatly benefited his country.

[NinjaCow64]

No more "You are trying to win the same way as us" modifiers? Hm. Might make me reconsider not buying the game.

[awesome]

Originally Posted by The_J

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.

i thought it was actually 50hp, not 50% of hp for mountains. and i noticed that the forest elephant has both the same strength and generating generals ability as the companion cavalry. i just hope that the part about striking fear is actually an ability, or that's not going to be a very fun unit.