Civ 5 Confirmed Features

Very nice bite! Thanks for all this work!

I noticed this here:

players will now have to take every capitol in a territory before claiming it, instead of finding and defeating every city in that territory–which caused players a lot of grief

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Does this mean to conquer another Civ you only have to capture their capital? Or is it just a poorly worded description of the new conquest victory? It's at the end of the paragraph next to the second image.

Hypernova said:

I noticed this hereoes this mean to conquer another Civ you only have to capture their capital? Or is it just a poorly worded description of the new conquest victory? It's at the end of the paragraph next to the second image.

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I assume its just a badly worded explanation of the conquest victory

Thormodr said:

Ruins are the new version of goody huts apparently. Sounds cool.

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Where did you pump that info about ruins?

mwyeoh said:

This is just a feeling, but have goody huts been replaced by city states??

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Same here! City States are better because you need to harbor relationship before getting a present. With goody huts, the AI tended to get all the benefits with their free scouts and it was sometimes hugely disproportionate (for example, I once got Music from a late goody hut hid in a corner of mountain or we can sometimes get multiple techs in line). Of course, I'll miss the "The villagers taught you the secret of Bronze Working".

bite said:

I assume its just a badly worded explanation of the conquest victory

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Nevertheless, it doesn't mean to be easy to conquer the capital when it is surrounded by cities. Stacks of doom don't exist anymore and you need to pass through lots of trenches before attaining your goal...single unit at a time.

I've taken consideration about the organic culture borders and I finally got a liking to it under the condition I have at least minimun control of its expansion (e.g. through cash). If rivals can't trespass you border without RoP or DoW, then it would be easy to block off their expansion! (Reference to the last image in Civ 5 gallery)

Personally, in my opinion, I felt that the leader choices made more sense to me because they were both historically significant and recognizable.
Because, really, when I think of China, I really think more of Qin Shi Huang and (yes, even him) Mao than Wu Zetian. When I think of Arabia, I am more likely to think of Saladin than Harun al-Rashid. When I think of Japan, I'm more likely to think of Meiji or Tokugawa or Hirohito than Oda.
Also, I think (though i'm a little doubtful) here, the current leaders made more of an impact than the new ones, but i'm no historian, so feel free to differ.
Plus, I really liked the two leaders a civ, so I'm a little disappointed they took it out.
Really like the new combat systems though.

Tachywaxon said:

Where did you pump that info about ruins?

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It is from this article at gamespot.
Specifically:

To make sure you don't forget what you were going to do next, the game will instead offer an enhanced notification system that will alert you to pretty much all happenings in the game, from completed scientific research to finished construction in your cities to discovering ruins (which appear to be the new game's version of goodie huts), and clicking on the notification will always open up the relevant menu and let you do whatever you need.

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from an article at justpushstart comes the following quote:

Another feature we were unable to take a look at was a mystery button that provides a “strategic view.” They believe this will have many players excited when they release more info on it in the coming months.

Not sure what this confirms of course, but it certainly sounds interesting.

mjs0 said:

from an article at justpushstart comes the following quote:

Another feature we were unable to take a look at was a mystery button that provides a “strategic view.” They believe this will have many players excited when they release more info on it in the coming months.

Not sure what this confirms of course, but it certainly sounds interesting.

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Hmm... the mystery button!

Aysee said:

Personally, in my opinion, I felt that the leader choices made more sense to me because they were both historically significant and recognizable.
Because, really, when I think of China, I really think more of Qin Shi Huang and (yes, even him) Mao than Wu Zetian. When I think of Arabia, I am more likely to think of Saladin than Harun al-Rashid. When I think of Japan, I'm more likely to think of Meiji or Tokugawa or Hirohito than Oda.
Also, I think (though i'm a little doubtful) here, the current leaders made more of an impact than the new ones, but i'm no historian, so feel free to differ.
Plus, I really liked the two leaders a civ, so I'm a little disappointed they took it out.
Really like the new combat systems though.

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To be fair, I barely heard about Salah ad-Din (or Saladin as us westerners call him) or Tokugawa before playing a Civilization game. I feel that they're simply well known to us because we're used to seeing them in the game. Kind of like Mansa Musa, who even my friends in history graduate programs have a hard time remembering.

Okay, that's not fair... Salah ad-Din & Tokugawa are definitely more well known than Mansa Musa, but they still aren't very well known by the world at large.

However, I've definitely heard of Harun al-Rashid from many sources, the least of which is to mention his many portrayals in A Thousand and One Nights. I mean, who can forget the story of the time he gave Charlemagne a clock, which Charlemagne thought to be some kind of black magic?

Oda Nobunaga is also very well known to me, though perhaps this is personal bias, as he is portrayed in one my all time favorite novels, Shōgun by James Clavell. Once again I'd argue that he is more likely to be known by non-Civilization players when discussing Japanese history than Tokugawa, that in this case it would be a pretty close call.

Wu Zetian is the only one I really agree with you on, but it represents an aspect of Chinese society that is hardly ever depicted. The Chinese have a long history of females in places of power, and even fighting in the military. Like many societies, their attitudes change with time, but I think it's fair to say they were very forward in this regard for a long period of time. The only other civilization to put women in such high places of power that I can think of is the Egyptians.

So, while I agree that Qin Shi Huang would be a better fit, I think this choice is fine as it will open up people's perceptions about what China is and showcase another aspect of their history aside from the great unification (Qin Shi Huang) or their present "communist" society (Mao Zedong).

Dissapointing - I or someone else sould mod the game to allow Religion and espionage. (In my opinion VERY important) BRING BACK RELIGION AND SPYS!
Quick Poll: Yes= Religion and Spys are a must! No= I hate them both! YN=Religion yes spys no
NY= Spys no religion yes

Quick Poll:

Religion: No (They say it messed with the new Diplomacy system so I'm fine with the temporary loss)
Spies: No (I thought the spies were a mess to handle. Too much work for such little play value)

Philyo1 said:

Dissapointing - I or someone else sould mod the game to allow Religion and espionage. (In my opinion VERY important) BRING BACK RELIGION AND SPYS!
Quick Poll: Yes= Religion and Spys are a must! No= I hate them both! YN=Religion yes spys no
NY= Spys no religion yes

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There will almost definitely still be a spy unit, but ultimately it would be nice to have an espionage system, though I disliked how it worked in BtS and am glad to see it go in that case. I think an espionage system should work more like terrain and city improvements, you progressively infiltrate other countries by building up spy networks and such.

People go on a lot about how we so need distinct religions because apparently that's more historically accurate, well actually I think generic is better. The concept of discrete religions is historically inaccurate. Religions are way too concrete in Civ IV, in reality they were extremely fluid and blended with the general superstition of the pre-scientific times. Sure there were a lot of religious wars, but these were disagreements very specific to the time, not conflicts in the name of long term overarching ideas (though their warriors probably thought they were) as they are presented in Civ.

Also your YN and NY mean the same thing! But don't worry I know what you mean

I'm espionage system yes so long as it's well implemented, but discrete religions no.

I also did not like the religion and spies as seen in Civ 4. Thus I kind of ditched Civ 4 in favor of Civ 3. But overall, I hope that Civ 5 will be better than anything before it.

You can add this picture in for roads.

You can see a small road leading from the town to the farm:

http://pcmedia.ign.com/pc/image/article/107/1075587/sid-meiers-civilization-v-20100308025620486.jpg

The IGN article reports that there will be no espionage. That is unfortunate. For me espionage is one of the more enjoyable aspects of the game. I hope our champion modders will be able to restore it.

The espionage system in civ4 was overly simple and not very effective, so if they weren't going to give it an overhaul I'm fine with it leaving.

Religion though, I think belongs in the game. I guess we'll have to see how the diplomacy plays out but so much of history has huge religious influences. How are we going to have zealots and holy wars without religion? Plus how will you build temples to make people happy? Though I supposed they could go back to civ2 and you can build temples they just aren't associated with a religion.

No tech trading also seems VERY odd. I guess we'll have to see how it works out. Maybe they could just put more restrictions on it and smarter AI at valueing tech.

LegioCorvus said:

To be fair, I barely heard about Salah ad-Din (or Saladin as us westerners call him) or Tokugawa before playing a Civilization game. I feel that they're simply well known to us because we're used to seeing them in the game. Kind of like Mansa Musa, who even my friends in history graduate programs have a hard time remembering.
).

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Please say no more - you're terrifying me: I teach my middle school students about Mansa Musa.


Wu is a terrible choice for China. I'd rather see Qin, I'd rather see Taizong, I'd rather see Mao, heck I'd rather see Deng Xiaoping or Jiang Zemin to represent modern post-Maoist China (much closer to the power it is today) than Wu. A very, very poor choice.

sounds pretty crappy to me.. it doesn't sound like a civ game to me anymore. changes is cool, but this is too much. they could add things without changing everything..
I guess I will continue playing civ4