Civilization V Announced!

[zulu9812]

Wow, this has taken me completely by surprise. I didn't even know Firaxis were working on this. I was half-expecting Civ IV to be the last of the series, due to the release of the source code.

 

[Supa]

Will they include civ-specific unit gfx, so that instead of cloning the unit with different graphics for each civlisation (or cultural group) we can just assign special gfx and be done with it?

It's already in Beyond The Sword.

 

[bonafide11]

Initial thoughts:
Hope they do away with traits and do Civ-specific bonuses like they did in Civ: Revolution. Traits are too generic and limiting; I find the Civ bonuses much more fun.

I hope they don't get rid of religions. That was one of the more fun aspects of Civ IV. If anything, they should expand on it. Religions have been a huge part of world history, so it doesn't make any sense to leave them out.

Hexagon tiles are a cool idea and will bring some fresh strategy to Civ, but hard to determine how they'll affect gameplay. Your units will only have six possible tiles to move to instead of eight, which I'm not sure is a great idea. I'll have to see it in play though.

They talk about how the combat has changed, but I don't really get how. I love the paper-scissor-rock combat style, but I also wouldn't mind if they added some more skill to it rather than just like basically rolling dice.

Since Firaxis is starting over and they have to leave room for expansion packs, many people will be disappointed with Civ V vanilla. Things such as colonies and corporations probably won't come until the expansion packs come out in another year or two. The game might seem very bare for those used to playing Beyond the Sword.

I'm skeptical it'll be out in Fall 2010; I imagine early 2011 or maybe Spring 2011.

Of course, whenever it comes out, expect there to be A LOT of bugs, and just as many Civ-fanatics throwing temper tantrums about the bugs on the forums.

 

[Munchkinguy]

The hexagonal grid also seems to be in line with Walter Christaller's Central Place Theory.

 

[bestbrian]

I would expect them to move heaven and earth to have Civ V Vanilla out in time for the holiday shopping season. Way too much $$$ at stake to miss that deadline. Even more of a reason to suspect a buggy product upon release.

 

[AndonSage]

I still play Panzer General from time-to-time, hence why I have yet to upgrade to Windows Vista or 7, PG won't run on them!

That's been fixed

Panzer General Forever

Now you have no reason not to upgrade your O/S

 

[GoodGame]

Very pretty. Pretty won't get to me to buy if it doesn't run faster with a more active players per game than Civ4, though.

The one archer picture implies ranged combat. Even better it might be that there'll be true grand tactical battles, that is battles involving large regions?

 

[bestbrian]

that's been fixed

panzer general forever

now you have no reason not to upgrade your o/s

awesome!!!

 

[emeralddude]

Hmm... Seems to me like it's gonna be hard to make a good earth map.

 

[CanuckSoldier]

Awesome!!!

I read a comment that Civ V had a whole new game engine built from the ground up. If that is true, then I would think that it would support multiple threads. (Multi-processor support)

Why would you build an entire new game engine and not have it be multiple threads?

It's not officially confirmed, but many of the programmers Firaxis is advertising for have Unreal Engine experience as a asset, not sure if this would be for Civ5 or another project, but it makes for some nice speculation Is the unreal engine multithreaded, does anyone know?

CS

 

[CanuckSoldier]

I hope they'll ensure that the game is compatible with Windows 7. I still can't play Civ IV on my computer without it freezing sooner or later, despite having installed that famous patch to BtS which supposedly fixes everything.

Of course, that constitutes asking Firaxis to do a more conscientious job than Microsoft did when they designed Windows Vista/7.

I have no doubt that Civ5 will be fully Windows for Games compatable, the problem with Civ4 is they tried to do that, but Civ4 was produced before Vista was released so the devs were working with a pre-vista GFW spec. But they have already stated that Civ5 is build for DirectX 11, so that alone makes me believe that they are well on their way to a goal of full GFW compliance this time.

CS

 

[CanuckSoldier]

Just as an FYI and plug, I got this information from StefanDK, the admin at http://www.civmultiplayer.com/, and passed it along to TF.

Although, I wouldn't be surprised if TF had already known and was waiting to set everything up, being that he is the admin/owner of one of the largest and best Civilization Fan Sites on these here Interwebtubes. Sorry if this sped up your plans, TF.

Stefan will not be the only multplayer site that will support Civ5, Civilization Players (www.civplayers.com) that has been providing an MP league since Civ3 PTW came out will also support Civ5, and fill in any fan requirements that Firaxis is not in the new "community hub". As well I'm sure that the rest of the MP Community, Civfr, KAC, BF etc, are all planning on contining their support to there members.

CS

 

[ecc]

Hooyah civ 5!

 

[Whaleyland]

That's been fixed

Panzer General Forever

Now you have no reason not to upgrade your O/S

Wow! Awesome. I still won't upgrade yet since I have about a dozen other games I enjoy that I doubt are Win7 compatible (X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, anyone?) but this is a great leap. I assume it doesn't work for Mac. That would be the ultimate of awesomeness.

 

[mythmonster2]

In the immortal words of Captain Falcon: "YES!"

 

[DMOC]

Hmm... Seems to me like it's gonna be hard to make a good earth map.

Why would it be?

 

[Esckey]

No religion? Darn I like that part of the game. In all the other Civs it was so hard to keep the AI as a friend, but with religion I seemed to have a clear idea who was going to backstab me ASAP and who was going to defend my land till death(or till I declare war on them) That and there was bit of pride in knowing that your religion is the state religion of all the top dogs in the game

Not to happy about the no stacking, I hope they mean no SODs but I can still stack like 5 units or something.


I hope they change up the terrain a bit. Add stuff we've always wanted to like the ability to sail up/down a major river. Have the lakes and in land seas look less like a big sploch of blue on the continent and more like you know.....a lake. A bit more of terrain blending would be nice, no more desert/jungle/tundra nonsense

 

[Unclescam777]

Wow! Awesome. I still won't upgrade yet since I have about a dozen other games I enjoy that I doubt are Win7 compatible (X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, anyone?) but this is a great leap. I assume it doesn't work for Mac. That would be the ultimate of awesomeness.

X-Wing vs. TIE Fighter, and other old games, can be made to run in Windows 7. XP is an abomination that needs to be put out of its misery. It's a giant security risk, has terrible memory management, and doesn't properly utilize multi-core processors or newer graphics cards.

If Civ V really is multi-threaded, or made with DirectX 11 in mind, it will be in everyone's interest to upgrade to Vista or Windows 7. From the looks of the screenshots Civ V will also need an OS that can efficiently handle large amounts of RAM and VRAM. I wouldn't be surprised if the min framerate suffers, with small pauses and hiccups between turns, on XP.

 

[EMT]

Rough idea of an earth map in hex format to me seems kind of odd. That's just me though. I've never really played strategy games, and civ is by far my favorite. I started on civ 4, so I'm just used to squares. I can only hope hexes are even better

 

[ancestral]

Anyone ever play Battle for Wesnoth? It's a free hex-based, turn-based strategy pseudo-RPG game, much like Fire Emblem or Ogre Battle, or even Final Fantasy Tactics, with some Myth thrown in there.

In fact, there have been some modders who have made Civ mods for the game.

Spoiler Screenshot of Battle for Wesnoth :