Civ V Screenshot Analysis

[kivanc]

That does indeed seem very interesting. Although it could just be, as someone else has said, a matter of selling off land tiles to someone else. It would be neat to have your borders growing in different directions by different amounts, but I wonder if it would add too much complication/micromanagement to the game? We'll have to see, I guess.

It's either about sth about culture or maybe it is defiend manually from city screen?
so that mountain peaks is BFC are not wasted, you select which tile to work on. so i mean, there is no regular BFC shape, you just pick 10/15tiles for a city maybe... just a guess. in fact that was my dream for a long time, i just want it to be like that.

I did not see any workers. Did this mean an improved agriculture system?

The way of terrain improvement was very different in call to power. maybe, it is sth like that?
in that game, you were just spending some from empire's total power and some turns later, it is there. you just click on a tile and pick what u want. it was like it is in real time strategy games. you also used no worker. each improvement was like a building.
i think it was very practical that way. you didn't have to move any workers to do the improvement, it used to make the city played much faster.

and about hexes, i liked them. it is seen as if some limits are there for units, i agree, i guess so. but maybe only 1type of unit can be on the same tile. only azes or only archers for ex.
well, in old civ series, you were not able to move your unit from a tile neighbour to the enemy unit tile to another tile neighbour to the enemy unit. you were able to build up a defense line more easily. maybe that system is back?

the pics also made me feel that you defend inside the city, you make the defend outside it. seems much more realistic.
but i also agree that archers throwing bows from 2 tiles seems realistic. what is 1hex anyway? is it 1km? then the city is just 1km square?

 

[RedRalph]

I read (I think it was the civ5 website) that you will be able to trade land with other civs. This may explain the effect we are seeing.

I noticed that too, it's inteiguing...

 

[CTH]

Perhaps you can choose any hexagon in your culture to be used by a city but you get a penalty if it is too far away from the city, it would solve the problems with building 1 squre away from a important resource and it is pretty realistic

 

[Lord Parkin]

The way of terrain improvement was very different in call to power. maybe, it is sth like that?
in that game, you were just spending some from empire's total power and some turns later, it is there. you just click on a tile and pick what u want. it was like it is in real time strategy games. you also used no worker. each improvement was like a building.
i think it was very practical that way. you didn't have to move any workers to do the improvement, it used to make the city played much faster.

I think it might be a bit early to be reading much into the lack of visible Workers in a couple of screenshots. They may well be absent so as not to obscure the scenery beneath them; or someone may just have them in a different part of their empire, or have just forgotten to put them in using a WorldBuilder equivalent. Workers have certainly been an integral part of Civ for a long time now, and if they start replacing too many core mechanics of the series, they might start alienating its player base. I'm not saying I wouldn't play if there were no Workers, not by a long shot.... I'm just dubious about whether it'd be a step in the right direction (if they are indeed stepping that way at all).

Anyway, as I said, I don't think we can really say much about whether or not there'll be Workers just from a couple of early screenshots.

what is 1hex anyway? is it 1km? then the city is just 1km square?

It depends on the map size really, but usually it's taken that geographically, a tile is approximately 100 by 100 kilometres (at least in previous versions). But everything's done in different scales in Civ anyway. You have the geographical scale at the small end (mountains, terrain, etc), cities at a larger scale, resources (animals etc) at an even larger scale, and units at the largest end of the scale. (And some units are at different scales than others, like the naval and air units compared to ground units.) No-one would dream of claiming that a city spans 100 by 100 kilometres, or that a unit is 100 kilometres high. It's just the visual representation which works for gameplay purposes.

 

[Commander Bello]

I think it might be a bit early to be reading much into the lack of visible Workers in a couple of screenshots. They may well be absent so as not to obscure the scenery beneath them; or someone may just have them in a different part of their empire, or have just forgotten to put them in using a WorldBuilder equivalent. Workers have certainly been an integral part of Civ for a long time now, and if they start replacing too many core mechanics of the series, they might start alienating its player base. I'm not saying I wouldn't play if there were no Workers, not by a long shot.... I'm just dubious about whether it'd be a step in the right direction (if they are indeed stepping that way at all).

On the other hand, the CtP-system worked pretty good. (A lot of the CtP-ideas actually have been very good)

 

[Sian]

It depends on the map size really, but usually it's taken that geographically, a tile is approximately 100 by 100 kilometres (at least in previous versions). But everything's done in different scales in Civ anyway. You have the geographical scale at the small end (mountains, terrain, etc), cities at a larger scale, resources (animals etc) at an even larger scale, and units at the largest end of the scale. (And some units are at different scales than others, like the naval and air units compared to ground units.) No-one would dream of claiming that a city spans 100 by 100 kilometres, or that a unit is 100 kilometres high. It's just the visual representation which works for gameplay purposes.

well ... on the big tiles i've always seen it as having control over that area with a force which might ocupy a very little part of it, having an 'zone of control' over the rest of the tile where no enemy army can enter without either a fight or a previous nonargession argeement

 

[Lord Parkin]

well ... on the big tiles i've always seen it as having control over that area with a force which might ocupy a very little part of it, having an 'zone of control' over the rest of the tile where no enemy army can enter without either a fight or a previous nonargession argeement

But still, my point is that the scale to which the city tile (and the buildings inside it) are drawn is different to the scale of the surrounding hills, mountains and oceans.

 

[BothofUs]

http://forums.civfanatics.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=243579&stc=1&d=1266566083
^Not sure if this is posted, but I'm assuming that those lines are showing the possibility of water getting to those tiles neighboring the farm. Looks like irrigation to me.

 

[kivanc]

Anyway, as I said, I don't think we can really say much about whether or not there'll be Workers just from a couple of early screenshots.

it was just a guess
i also would play the game w or w/o workers.

It depends on the map size really, but usually it's taken that geographically, a tile is approximately 100 by 100 kilometres (at least in previous versions). But everything's done in different scales in Civ anyway. You have the geographical scale at the small end (mountains, terrain, etc), cities at a larger scale, resources (animals etc) at an even larger scale, and units at the largest end of the scale. (And some units are at different scales than others, like the naval and air units compared to ground units.) No-one would dream of claiming that a city spans 100 by 100 kilometres, or that a unit is 100 kilometres high. It's just the visual representation which works for gameplay purposes.

well. the archers throw 200kms than? Still, sth weird. At least we know that they throw from the other side of the lake.
well, archers on hills can throw arrow to the plain maybe 200metres, AFAIK

anyway, i would still play civ if archers throw from 200kms away

 

[Shurdus]

What I am very afraid of is that it may be so that the Ai will not be able to handle it's military strategy very well so that it will lose while in a better position. More in-depth combat is nice and all that, but the major flaw of games like the total war series is that the Ai is so stupid on the battle map that you can barely lose there. No matter how poor you do on the campaign map, if you take a little care on the battle map you can win battles with what shouldbe very poor odds, just because the AI has no overall strategy other than throwing units at you to slaughter.

If there are to be more tactical battles over several tiles, let us hope that it is simple enough that the AI can actually handle it easely so that it wins when it should. One thing I liked about the highly simplified combat in Civ is that it is highly predictable who would win a war and there is very little left to chance. If the game would just give away victory in battles because of AI stupidity I would be very much disappointed.

 

[Rhye]

I can see different city building styles. From one of them, we can guess the presence of an asian civ (possibly Chinese or Japanese). Nothing surprising but good to see different artstyles

 

[remake20]

No religion?!?! That was really fun.

 

[RedRalph]

I'd imagine it'll make an appearance in an XP.

 

[Lillefix]

The screenshots remind me of Settlers of Catan. And that's a good thing.

 

[sedna17]

Farms definitely look like they have a sub-grid of rectangles. There's a sort of Big-Fat-Cross appearance to them, in fact. The sub-grid within the city is much less regular however. Note the curving lines and triangular segments in this portion:

In the city these lines look like roads, but the thick grey "road" leading up to the farm looks more like the typical Civilization strategic/resource-connecting road. This leads me to think that the grid lines within the city are purely artistic, representing little streets. Perhaps the same is true for farms? Of course you could still have developing farms which get more segments over time.

 

[kivanc]

Farms definitely look like they have a sub-grid of rectangles. There's a sort of Big-Fat-Cross appearance to them, in fact. The sub-grid within the city is much less regular however. Note the curving lines and triangular segments in this portion:

In the city these lines look like roads, but the thick grey "road" leading up to the farm looks more like the typical Civilization strategic/resource-connecting road. This leads me to think that the grid lines within the city are purely artistic, representing little streets. Perhaps the same is true for farms? Of course you could still have developing farms which get more segments over time.

The terrain improvements in that picture are a bit skew. the shapes are quite random.
the farm is inside a hex but the farms borders flood clearly outside the hex.
it's understood that both the city and farm grid represent a level probably imrpoving with the tech.

i assume sth.. hmm coming to my mind. can it be true? shall i say it?
ok just a guess;
that they changed the city screen mechanics and you don't work 1 tile for 1pop. you place 1more pop to the same tile which has been worked such as:

let'S say a hex has 8 grids. so each farm can have level8 at most. if your city pop is 8 and you work all the pop on farm, so you get a level8 farm and all the farm grids seem "full". or when you have 8 pop, you work 3 citizens in the farm which i level 3/8 and the rest3 citizens in the mine which is level 3/8 etc etc...

I'm sure this is wrong but sth similar to this one might be.

 

[robcheng]

but i also agree that archers throwing bows from 2 tiles seems realistic. what is 1hex anyway? is it 1km? then the city is just 1km square?

I don't suggest thinking too hard about scale, or your head will explode.
After all, we are talking about a game where military units are represented as giants that could crush cities and forests by stomping on them...

 

[RedRalph]

Lads, I think the lines around farms are nothing more than rough, unfinished graphics. I doubt it will be in the main game.

 

[croxis]

I'm not so sure about that, it doesn't match up with what I know of game art development (friend of mine is a freelance game art dev, worked on gal civ 2 and some other games)

 

[timtofly]

There is a lot of "graphical" grid overlay between hexes. It seems likely that the graphics "grid" is seperate from the troop movement "hex" grid making it more lifelike.