GamerNode on Civ5 after Pax East

[V. Soma]

here:http://www.gamernode.com/previews/8948-civilization-v-preview/index.html

Interesting bits:

1.
The graphics are certainly something to gawk at as clouds float overhead and water ebbs and flows in incredibly realistic fashion.

2.
advisers for matters such as foreign relations and economics have made a return in Civilization V

3.
Each leader who does not speak English will have subtitles displayed below them
[sooo: can i have English written subtitle for those speaking in English?]

4.
cities will now have health points that must be completely depleted before being taken over. Players will still be able to put units into the cities, but this will now absorb the units into the city and boost its hit points instead of allow the unit to battle invaders.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Interesting...

Thanks for the link V. Soma.

I'm curious about this:

Units can also use the environment to their advantage by having a group of enemy units do their best 300 impression. The opposing units fortified themselves between two mountains and forced the presenters' units to only be able to attack them head on and one at a time.

 

[Shurdus]

Interesting...

Thanks for the link V. Soma.

I'm curious about this:

That means like you can hold a chokepoint like you could in CIv IV -> axeman on hill. Only in Civ IV the enemy could send 5 units at one time to get rid of that defender, in Civ V they cannot. That is how I take it, nothing really eciting but it is a new feature that comes with the 1upt rule.

 

[PieceOfMind]

That means like you can hold a chokepoint like you could in CIv IV -> axeman on hill. Only in Civ IV the enemy could send 5 units at one time to get rid of that defender, in Civ V they cannot. That is how I take it, nothing really eciting but it is a new feature that comes with the 1upt rule.

Oh ok. I interpreted as meaning each little person making up an individual unit could attack one at a time, perhaps making for a rather length single combat animation. I think your reading of it makes more sense of course.

I think it was the use of "head on" that threw me a bit as well, almost suggesting units face a particular direction...

Anyway, in the instance described, I don't know why the "presenter" wouldn't just fire on them with archers first before attacking the chokepoint with melee.

 

[Luft46]

Finally, our presenters displayed how the defense of cities will be handled. Gone is the old way of stacking units into cities that would fight off invading forces. Instead, cities will now have health points that must be completely depleted before being taken over. Players will still be able to put units into the cities, but this will now absorb the units into the city and boost its hit points instead of allow the unit to battle invaders.

I think this was the most interesting bit for me, and clears up the whole city defense questions I had. I am guessing as you build units, you "add" them to the citiy's defense, thus raising the hit points of that city. I suppose this would be unlimited, where you could move units built in other cities and add them to the defense/hit points of any other city, and eventually you could really raise the hit points of a city so it could withstand a lot of attacks.

I think I am going to like this.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

Personally I hope there *is* a limit to the number of units a city can absorb-either hard capped (say no more than your current population number) or soft capped (each extra unit reduces city happiness by 1). If not, then we're just back where we started from in many ways-a variant of the "Stack of Doom", the "City of Doom" !

Aussie.

 

[Red Adept]

I think this was the most interesting bit for me, and clears up the whole city defense questions I had. I am guessing as you build units, you "add" them to the citiy's defense, thus raising the hit points of that city. I suppose this would be unlimited, where you could move units built in other cities and add them to the defense/hit points of any other city, and eventually you could really raise the hit points of a city so it could withstand a lot of attacks.

I think I am going to like this.

finally a use for those scouts after you've explored your continent!

 

[eleazzaar]

I think this was the most interesting bit for me, and clears up the whole city defense questions I had. I am guessing as you build units, you "add" them to the citiy's defense, thus raising the hit points of that city. I suppose this would be unlimited, where you could move units built in other cities and add them to the defense/hit points of any other city, and eventually you could really raise the hit points of a city so it could withstand a lot of attacks.

Personally I hope there *is* a limit to the number of units a city can absorb-either hard capped ... If not, then we're just back where we started from in many ways-a variant of the "Stack of Doom", the "City of Doom" !

Aussie has a point. I expect the limitation will be simpler: Adding units will "heal" a "wounded" city, but won't increase it's max "hit points". Things like walls and castles, and maybe even more population would probably increase hit points.

 

[seasnake]

Aussie has a point. I expect the limitation will be simpler: Adding units will "heal" a "wounded" city, but won't increase it's max "hit points". Things like walls and castles, and maybe even more population would probably increase hit points.

That sounds right, probably new techs will also raise the cap as well. But units are only added to the garrison up to a certain amount.

 

[Ituralde]

This also puts a lot of emphasis on cutting off a city from supply if you want to conquer it quickly or even if you want to conquer it at all. As long as the defender can keep pushing units into the city it will be hard to take it, but once he can't reinforce anymore it will be easy.

The system sounds good I can't wait to try it out!

 

[Wolle68]

I'm pretty sure it has already been said that if you want to build a unit in a city, you'll have to move any unit there out of the city first. They've also stated that they wanted the fighting to move out of the cities.

I'll guess that this feature will not allow you to create a city of doom, but will allow one extra defender in the city, and that the existence of this defender will act as a modifier to the city's total hp (as opposed to first you must fight the defender - then the city).

Edit: Source

 

[PieceOfMind]

Indeed, how "doomsy" can a city possibly be? - it's stationary and completely impotent in projecting power anywhere apart from its immediate surrounds.

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I meant in terms of it replicating the process of placing a stack of units inside your city & forcing the other player to bring a stack of their own to take it. If there's no limit on how many units a city can absorb, then you're just recreating this problem-which is not the "move combat out of cities" situation they're advocating. Hope that makes more sense.

Aussie.

 

[PieceOfMind]

I meant in terms of it replicating the process of placing a stack of units inside your city & forcing the other player to bring a stack of their own to take it. If there's no limit on how many units a city can absorb, then you're just recreating this problem-which is not the "move combat out of cities" situation they're advocating. Hope that makes more sense.

Aussie.

Yes but it sounds like you're making a civ4 assumption that units in cities will be just as effective, if not more (like in Civ4 where many got city defense bonuses), than when they are outside cities. More likely I think they are letting you simply add to the hitpoints of a city in a way that is less effective overall than what the unit could usually do independently.

It might be that you are assuming a city is implicitly stronger than a single unit. My point is we know very little about how this works yet and since they have said they're moving combat out of cities, and if we take for granted the devs are not morons (as someone else put it), then I think we needn't fear at this point that we will have cities of doom.

Who knows, maybe a city's ability to defend itself will be somehow inversely proportional to the number of adjacent tiles occupied by an enemy. That would be a very very basic mechanic to encourage units getting out of the city to fight, defending important tiles and adding a tactical element to city sieges.

P.S. I wonder how often I start posts with "yes but"

 

[Aussie_Lurker]

I'm not suggesting that you're wrong. Indeed, I hope you're 100% right-but I still hope there is a limit to how many units can be absorbed into a city at any given time.

Aussie.

 

[Chalks]

I think Aussie is correct that we will likely see a limit to how many units can be absorbed into a city. Perhaps something like a finite number of slots that units can go into. So say a city of size 5 or less will have one slot, then it'll gain an extra slot at size 6 and every 6 sizes over that.

I assume that if you put a warrior into a city on turn 1, you will eventually want to replace it with something better, rather than the unit being automatically upgraded over time (since the standard warrior upgrade path tends to result in offensive rather than defensive units).

 

[Ahriman]

I think the question is; will the unit actually be absorbed? Or will you just say at hit points to the city equal to the strength of the absorbed unit?

Personally I don't really like the idea of "absorbing" units, I'd prefer that units were for using in the field (I'd hate to see a system where your old obsolete units just got sent off to get ground up and turned into city fortifications), and city-defense buildings (walls, castles, citadels, fortresses, etc.) were for defending the city.

Certainly if units can be absorbed, there needs to be some limit on it.

 

[Chalks]

Yeah, I agree - I don't really like the idea of grinding your men up and building walls out of them either.

Unfortunately, I'm struggling to see how multiple units can be used to re-enforce a city's defences and remain usable afterwards without basically duplicating the stacking system.

I can't really think of any narrative justification for "defensive troops" becoming unusable if you decide you want them to stop defending either.

It's times like this that I just want to play the game because I have absolutely no idea how this will actually work.

 

[Ahriman]

Unfortunately, I'm struggling to see how multiple units can be used to re-enforce a city's defences and remain usable afterwards without basically duplicating the stacking system.

Agreed. Hence my thinking that if there is some absorption of units, those units are probably gone for good, and that once absorped they no longer have any of the properties of "units".

But I'd much prefer that cities just be a high-hit point defensive unit.

This intrinsically adds incentive to siege, because you want to get as many units as you can attacknig the city so that you can take its hit points down faster, rather than letting it sit around for several turns and heal because you could only attack it with 1-2 units per turn (because the other surrounding tiles were occupied by defender units).

But I agree its hard to coneive well without playtesting.

[Which gives me another random thought; are we going to lose any scope for "medic" type units with 1upt? Or might a medic just increase the heal rate of units in adjacent tiles?]

 

[Chalks]

[Which gives me another random thought; are we going to lose any scope for "medic" type units with 1upt? Or might a medic just increase the heal rate of units in adjacent tiles?]

Sounds like there could be scope for a civilian "medic" unit able to traverse the battlefield providing healing where it's needed. Quite a nice idea and probably significantly more realistic than just like, upgrading a tank regiment so that it heals other nearby units.

Geneva convention wonder that prevents enemy forces from attacking your medics? Perhaps I'm getting carried away but the whole civilian unit stack ability does open the game up to lots of cool concepts like this.