Gods & Kings - Summary of May, 10th

The_J

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We had again a massive influx of new articles with also new images, and the actual info is scattered around, so we need a summary here, so that we can have a good overview here at CFC ;).
Everyone who prefers the info more in a list form, is welcome to take directly a look at the summaries by cuc here and Ulthwithian here. This post is completely based upon these two other posts, and even partially stolen, so you will not miss anything if you skip the text here. Alternatively you might want to take a look at Arioch's overview site for G&K here.
Please don't forget that this here is only the new info, and does not cover what is already known. For the known info please consult the overview thread.
So...

Civilizations



The Celts
The Celtic UA was revealed, it's called Druidic Lore, and with it your cities will generate more faith near unimproved forests. They get the pictish warrior as their UU, and it receives a combat bonus outside of friendly territory, pillaging costs no movement for this unit, and it receives faith equal to half enemy strength upon eliminating an enemy unit. It seems to be a replacement for the spear man, with a strength of 11, one point more than the regular spear man.
The Celts also get a unique building, the Ceilidh Hall. It is unlocked by Acoustics and provides culture, happiness and an artist slot. It's speculated that it might replace the opera house, but this is not yet sure.


The Maya


Their UA seems to involve receiving "Maya Long Count Bonus" at certain intervals. The bonus may include great people. It's also speculated that their calendar display will change from the regular calendar to the Mayan calendar after having researched the calendar tech.
They also get an UB, the pyramid, but there's nothing really known about it. Palenque is their capital and their second city is Tikal.


Austria


Together with the Austrian UA, their UU the Hussar and their UB the coffee house were revealed, but stats for these are not yet known.


Other civs
We know now how Gustav Adolph, King of Sweden, will look ingame via this screenshot. Also noticeable is that neither the Aztec nor the Spanish UA will be changed to fit to G&Ks religious theme.
The Netherlandish UA has also been clarified. The Netherlands retain 50% of happiness from luxuries traded to other civilizations.


Units, Buildings, Techs and Wonders


Like expected, many minor changes happened, mostly moving wonders around in the tech tree, changes to the strength values of units, etc., please see the above mentioned direct summaries for that.
Notable are that catapults don't require iron anymore, that the Alhambra is confirmed as a wonder, we get a new tech named "Drama and Poetry" and that the classical era is finally longer, with 2 tiers. It is now also clear that the mysterious icon from the PAX is a police station, which is an counter intelligence building.

Arioch already put a suspected tech tree for G&K together, which you can find, with the related discussion here.


Religion


You will get a Great Prophet at 200 Faith points, and not randomly, like it was said in one of the first interviews. The special abilities of this GP are that he can spread his religion to max. 4 cities with an amount of 2000 Faith (what this exactly means is not known), will remove the influence of other religions in the respective cities, and it's possible to build a special improvement, a Holy Site, with this unit (screenshot for all of this). In contrast to the other GPs in the game, the prophets will not have any names, because anything which could happen to such a unit ingame could be problematic, as Dennis Shirk explained.
Missionaries can also spread your religion to other cities, but only 2 times, and with half the pressure.
For an interesting article about religion please see this here at GameSpy.

We now also know the Enhancer Beliefs, see list below:
  • Defender of the Faith: +20% Combat near friendly Cities that follow this Religion
  • Holy Order: Missionaries and Inquisitors cost 30% less Faith
  • Itinerant Preachers: Religion spreads to cities 30% further away
  • Just War: +20% Combat near enemy Cities that follow this Religion
  • Messiah: Prophets 25% stronger and earned with 25% less Faith
  • Missionary Zeal: Missionary conversion strength +25%
  • Religious Texts: Religion spreads 34% faster (68% with Printing Press)
  • Religious Unity: Religion spreads to friendly city-states at double rate
  • Reliquary: Gain 50 Faith each time a Great Person is expended


Resources


Finally more resources were revealed. Some more expected, some less.
We will get Salt as luxury, and the yet not specified maritime resource are crabs.
More unexpected we will, as it seems, get copper as some type of resource, and the suspected pig resources turns out to be truffles at the end.


Misc stuff


- In the diplomacy department was also some stuff revealed. e.g. you will need an embassy to establish defensive pacts, open borders and other things. Additionally you'll be able to see the other civs capital after you established an embassy in the other empire.
- The natural wonder Uluru will be added to the game, as well as some more city states like Jakarta, Manila, Mombasa, Zurich and others. Some, like Stockholm and Helsinki, were in contrast obviously removed, because they appear on the city list of Sweden.
- It also seems that we'll now get era dependent advisors, because some screenshots show them with other art. This again is not a big surprise, because the art itself is already present in the game (to be seen in our image gallery), but now it appears that it will finally be implemented.
- Female leaders will not longer get male titles. You will now see Lady Catherine instead of Lord Catherine ingame.
- It seems that something has changed with the appearance of the trading posts. What exactly? See this discussion please.


Empire Of The Smokey Skies scenario


TheVerge has an nice overview showing some aspects of this scenario. The scenario is a complete overhaul of the game. You get 5 new factions with new (static) leaderscreens. A new tech tree with 2 new eras, beginning with the discovery of the Steam Engine. New victory conditions. You will get different types of land ships, air ships, Sky Fortresses, and so on. The only thing which had not been changed might actually be the terrain, but that we'll only see when we can play the scenario.
Besides of the mentioned article another screenshot can be seen here.


The article list


We got all the info from these articles. Many people were involved in finding the new things and analyzing the screenshots, thanks to all of you :).

 

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"You will get a Great Prophet at 200 Faith points, and not randomly, like it was said in one of the first interviews."

Has this been actually confirmed? Or just a speculaction because a single article said, for all we know he could've simply meant that once you reach the milestone of 200 faith blah blahb lah? It sounds weird they suddenly changed that mechanic for no reason.
 
My thoughts on this new info on "Gods and Kings":
1. Sweden has their own civilization? Now the Norwegians are jealous :)
IMHO, I think it's best if the whole of Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden and Denmark, including Iceland) would be represented by one civilization (like the Vikings in Civ4: Warlords)
2. I think the option of renaming a religion in "Gods and Kings" is a disastrous idea, especially for a Christian like myself, with the potential of the customized name being offensive.
3. I really like the steampunk concept of the "Empire of the Smokey Skies" scenario. Nice touch.
 
"You will get a Great Prophet at 200 Faith points, and not randomly, like it was said in one of the first interviews."

Has this been actually confirmed? Or just a speculaction because a single article said, for all we know he could've simply meant that once you reach the milestone of 200 faith blah blahb lah? It sounds weird they suddenly changed that mechanic for no reason.

Think this is based on a single article. But honestly, it makes sense to make it a fixed mechanism, because the random option would be...random, which is not good for a strategy game.
 
Think this is based on a single article. But honestly, it makes sense to make it a fixed mechanism, because the random option would be...random, which is not good for a strategy game.

While not trying to start an arguement, would you say the same thing about Random Events being unrealistic because it's bad for strategy game?

I actaully prefer a % that increases per turn (so after 1-10 turns you'll eventually HAVE a prophet) and it just costs 200 faith (since it's been noted adopting Pantheon and Great Prophet spawn actually reduces your faith to 0.. or so..)
 
2. I think the option of renaming a religion in "Gods and Kings" is a disastrous idea, especially for a Christian like myself, with the potential of the customized name being offensive.

Is it offensive if it's done somewhere else in the world and you never see it? In your own game, you can choose not to make offensive religion names and be happy. The AI won't do it either, so you'll never see anything 'bad'.

While not trying to start an arguement, would you say the same thing about Random Events being unrealistic because it's bad for strategy game?

Random Events are bad for real strategy games (realistic/not realistic is qq question for Sim games, not strategy).
 
2. I think the option of renaming a religion in "Gods and Kings" is a disastrous idea, especially for a Christian like myself, with the potential of the customized name being offensive.

Huh, wouldn't it be you doing the renaming, or are you thinking of mods ?
 
- The natural wonder Uluru will be added to the game, as well as some more city states like Jakarta, Manila, Mombasa, Zurich and others. Some, like Stockholm and Helsinki, were in contrast obviously removed, because they appear on the city list of Sweden.

This must be a kind of postmodern imperialism: a city (capital) of now-independent country presented as a part of another nation in a video game for no obvious reasons (since Helsinki wasn't an important city for Sweden, as noted further). Although Helsinki was founded in 1550, it's population in 1809 (when Sweden officially lost its parts making up modern-day Finland to Russia in the Treaty of Hamina which ended the Finnish War) was about 4000. Also, Turku was de facto capital of the now-Finland parts of Sweden (and then Russia) until 1812. This means that Helsinki in the era of Swedish rulers in now-Finland had no importance at all, so there is no reason why Helsinki should be on the Swedish city list. I realize that the cities were much smaller at the time; while I wasn't able to find any good large demographics, Stockholm had about 50000 inhabitants, Turku a bit over 10000 and the whole now-Finland more than 800000 so I think Helsinki wasn't really important until it was made the capital of the autonomous Grand Duchy of Finland (of Imperial Russia). At least that's what I think is taught here. :)

Think this is based on a single article. But honestly, it makes sense to make it a fixed mechanism, because the random option would be...random, which is not good for a strategy game.

...pseudorandom ;)

They have the Hakkapeliitta and the Carolean as UU.

Hakkapeliittas as a Swedish UU (if confirmed) I can accept since although they were (in some sense) Finnish, at least they fought for a Swedish king.
 
Yes, Firaxis tries to cover as many nations as possible with only a few civs. Sweden is meant also to represent Finland, like Denmark is also meant to represent Norway.

agreed, I make take a look at the Scandianavia, thsi time around they're splitting it up, but previously it pretty much always covered.. well Scandinavia, even Iceland, I believe in Civ 3 Reyjkavik was a city.
 
Helsinki appears on the Swedish city name list? I find that quite baffling. Helsinki wasn't anything worthwhile but a small fishing village before the Russians took over Finland in 1809 and made it the capital of the Grand Duchy of Finland. If anything, Helsinki should be on the Russian city list then. Turku, or Åbo in Swedish, can be on the Swedish list, since that was the capital of Finland while under Swedish rule and quite an important location. But leave Helsinki as a city state, I say.
 
As someone who was born, grew up in Manila and spent half of my life there, I am pleased as punch that my small nation of the Philippines (albeit with a large population of 92 million people with an ex-pat pop of about 11 million, myself included) has made it to Civ!

Hail Hail Firaxis! - I am a Civ5 fan for life!

Though I realize my people will never be an empire (we have always been part of one, never one ourselves), this is the closest thing we have as an honor in PC Gaming!

Thank you Mr. Meier, thank you Mr. Beach... I just can't contain myself... :dance:
 
Very long time ago there was Mt. Everest in vanilla previews. Still nothing new about it?
 
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