The Escapist Preview

reading now http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/99021-Civilization-V-Offers-New-Strategic-Combat

Quote "gaining access to one source of Iron allows you to make one swordsman and that's it. You can't make another swordsman unit unless that one died or you gained access to another Iron source"

Some things that caught me:

- "Units are no longer destroyed if they lose a battle, which means that civs can spend much more resources on maintaining their armies as opposed to cranking out new units" - sounds good to me!

- Sounds like the city-states have a personality of their own. The article said some of them can be "militaristic". This sounds really, really interesting, and would definitely add some excitement to the game.

"In CivV, gaining access to one source of Iron allows you to make one swordsman and that's it. You can't make another swordsman unit unless that one died or you gained access to another Iron source."

Wow, I knew there was a cap on units, but I didn't know it was ONE?! Is that right? One swordsman for one iron resource?

Besides that, nothing new in this preview.

If this is true, then the game we all used to know as Civ has been completely altered.

Either there will be plenty of resources or it means simply, few cities, few units...small maps etc..
I so hope I am wrong

Just because there were one resource pr unit in this demonstration doesn't mean it will be like that in the final game. The ratio might depend on the map size too.

check out these links too: http://kotaku.com/5489834/civilization-v-to-eradicate-road-spaghetti?skyline=true&s=i and http://kotaku.com/5474750/civilization-v-hexes-pcs-this-fall

Of course one swordsman unit will be much more meaningful, so it hardly matters where the cap lies.

Of course one swordsman unit will be much more meaningful, so it hardly matters where the cap lies.

Click to expand...

Ye, you're right but I am not sure I like civilization to have let's say 10 units for your whole empire...maybe I am old fashioned but I enjoy having a large army and I did enjoy an early war to fight off the enemy with a small group of swords (or axes in civ 40). Conquering others with say 2 units doesn't feel the same way to me.

Lets say you have one swordsman unit promoted with 10men in the front line and it gets pounded while assaulting to 3men. swap with backline spearmean (assuming spearmen are regular units), resupply the swordsmen on the next turn to 10men then send it back into combat PG style better than loosing there hard earned promotion you worked on. Civ5 will rule i would say

edit.

Well IGN is saying something more like 5 units per resource, so I'm guessing that the final cap will be decided closer to the release date. No need to panic on this front! Still, good to see the need to acquire more than 1 copy of each resource-makes combat & diplomacy much more interesting!

Aussie.

Wups sorry, Aussie Lurker said the exact thing; should've read before posting

It maybe that
1 Hex of Iron can provide more than 1 Source of Iron

So If I have that Iron Mine north of Chicago, I have 5 Iron... I can treat them all seperately..
Trade 2 away, keep 3 for myself.

Also we have no idea how common these Iron hexes are, perhaps there is 1 every 20 land tiles



"Units are no longer destroyed if they lose a battle, which means that civs can spend much more resources on maintaining their armies as opposed to cranking out new units"

REALLY REALLY GOOD. Hopefully repairing/reinforcing units entails cost besides just maintaining them (ie at least Healing involving 'extra maintenance')

Perhaps units aren't maintained with Gold but with "Military Maintenance"...which is like gold (imperial delocalized stockpile)... but is produced by City Hammers (like gold is produced by using the Currency Setting.)

So you don't Produce many units at all... you

1. Build them once when you want More Total military
2. Reinforce them when they lose a combat
3. Upgrade them when you get a new tech

So Building units is very rare... most of your Military towns are spending their production on Military maintenance (to maintain, reinforce and upgrade the units)

Basically Building units is like building cities.

Most probably what this means is Batttles aren't to the death... they are ALL 'bombardment'
I decide to fire at an enemy unit... If they also have enough range, they fire back. That is the end of combat (perhaps multiple combats per turn are allowed.)

Or perhaps...
I decide to 'fire on' an enemy unit... Then they have the decision... stop combat OR fire back
Every time they fire back, it gives me a chance to fire on them again.

This would allow a single unit in a mountain pass to hold up quite a while as they could only get hit by 1 'round' from everyone that could reach them.

If you get player Input for Each combat round, that would be Really Interesting.

In the end, it comes down to going to war against a civ that is already at war. Since units are so scarce, to win is still to beat them in numbers, and divide the spoils. No way to stop players from doing this, and this is highly likely the ultimate winning warmonger strategy.

Tom

tom2050 said:

In the end, it comes down to going to war against a civ that is already at war. Since units are so scarce, to win is still to beat them in numbers, and divide the spoils. No way to stop players from doing this, and this is highly likely the ultimate winning warmonger strategy.

Tom

Click to expand...

Yes but that has always been the best course of action.

My guess is that how many units a single resource can sustain will depend on the resource type, the unit type & the map size. So 1 Iron might be able to get you 10 swordsmen units on a regular size map, but perhaps only 2 battleship units. We do know that if you lose access to the resource (via conquest or pillaging) you keep the units, but the maintenance cost of those units increases.
As I've said elsewhere, though-I do hope that resources impact more on your domestic economy too-namely that having multiple copies of a single resource confers benefits to things like production & gold across your empire-a benefit which is decreased depending on the number of units you build using that same resource (the old "Guns vs butter" choice). I'm also curious if there are units which, though they don't require resources per say, do require a limited resource (like population or food) in order to build & maintain. This would give civs not blessed with ample resources a means of fielding armies-but this ability would need to be restricted in some way IMHO!

Aussie.

Rowain deWolf said:

Yes but that has always been the best course of action.

Click to expand...

True, but it was not necessary at all... in most all cases was not something that you wanted to do. With the Stack of Doom syndrome, and taking advantage of the dumb AI, it was not good to do so and give another civ more cities by working with them (unless you had too).

Now it sounds like it will be a necessity to do so, in order to overcome the difficulty of a 'larger empire is not necessarily able to wipe smaller empires out easily' game style.

Tom

Personally, I think all this is for the good. In truth these changes help to negate the "Bigger is always better" syndrome & the "War is always better than peace" syndrome. From everything I've read so far, war is going to be a much more costly exercise, without a sure-fire route to victory (SoD's). This might well force a good many warmongers to the negotiating table !

Aussie.

Aussie_Lurker said:

Personally, I think all this is for the good. In truth these changes help to negate the "Bigger is always better" syndrome & the "War is always better than peace" syndrome. From everything I've read so far, war is going to be a much more costly exercise, without a sure-fire route to victory (SoD's). This might well force a good many warmongers to the negotiating table !

Aussie.

Click to expand...

Agreed!

Now let's hope for a truly dynamic and different diplomacy options.. more than just the 'trade screen'. Something where you can actually negotiate various things as are done in reality, and have semi-military options to use without going to war (blockades, multiple nations putting preasure on a civ to not research Nukes when they have decided not to, or negotiating by giving some other resources to stop an arms race for a period of time along with other friendly nations doing the same, etc). The sky is the limit... This would bring much needed diplo into the game that has been lacking.

If not this one, hopefully into an expansion pack.

Tom