IGN multiplayer preview (September, 10th)

[sdlufkin]

Barbarians are now going to progress at the same pace as the civ with the lead in technology. So in those late era's they be coming after you with more than clubs!

Actually, while this is true (it was said that barbarians can spawn as the highest tech unit currently in the game world) they also only spawn in the fog of war, so after awhile presumably the entire world will be explored and barbarians won't even be able to spawn any longer.

 

[Mainne]

Barbarians are now going to progress at the same pace as the civ with the lead in technology. So in those late era's they be coming after you with more than clubs!

Really like this.

 

[Louis XXIV]

they don't have as much a detrimental effect randomly (you can get back a settler if it is taken by barbarians, for example.)

I had read about this before, but never thought about it in context of everything else. That's going to be really cool. Now losing settlers are a handicap to expansion, but you can always fix your mistake if you want to. I remember one multiplayer game I was a part of (team game between fan sites). A rival team popped a goodie hut that spawned barbarians that killed our settler. We ended up demanding some exorbitant sum of money (gold for loss of production for settler, loss of population, since this was Civ3, loss of gold the new city would have earned during that time, and interest). Needless to say, since this was refused, it led to a long war. If we could have marshaled our army and taken back the settler, the end result probably would have been less dramatic and war might have been avoided.

The same is true even moreso if you turn off City-States, which I have seen some people say they are planning on doing for multiplayer.

Honestly, I feel City-States work well for multiplayer, so turning them off would be a shame. The reason to avoid having AIs is that they're in the game to play like a person, but can be abused as a game mechanic. It would always lead to an unfair situation where the player next to a computer would dominate, while a player next to another human would get stopped. With City-States, they're spread around evenly for everyone to use.

This shouldn't come as a surprise to those of you who have seen me say before that I think City-States are the single best new feature in Civ V.

City-States (and the diplomatic interactions they inspire) might be the part I'm looking forward to the most as well.

 

[Tylerryan79]

Actually, while this is true (it was said that barbarians can spawn as the highest tech unit currently in the game world) they also only spawn in the fog of war, so after awhile presumably the entire world will be explored and barbarians won't even be able to spawn any longer.

I would laugh if I landed on some lonely small island somewhere and found myself greeting a barb tank. I think I'd leave and let him be, seeing as he made it that far .

 

[SeptimusOctopus]

@Greg: Thanks for the reply. It sounds like Barbs will actually be more than just irritating in Civ5. I'm really happy to hear that settlers won't be completely lost if they're captured by barbs this time around. I'm anticipating this game more than I have for pretty much any game to date.

@Guardian: Sorry if that post sounded whiny. I meant it as an honest question. With the way some posters here make an effort to hate on Civ5 for any little thing, I can see how you would have mistaken my post to be of that sort.

 

[hardcore_gamer]

I would laugh if I landed on some lonely small island somewhere and found myself greeting a barb tank. I think I'd leave and let him be, seeing as he made it that far .

If what the above guy said about barbs not being able to spawn after the map is explored then that would mean that once you have researched the satellite tech (I am assuming it is still in Civ 5, am I wrong?) that gives you the whole map then barbs will stop spawning altogether. So its not like we will see our modern cities under attack by bipedal barbarian giant death robots.

.......or at least I hope so

 

[Snoopaloop]

If what the above guy said about barbs not being able to spawn after the map is explored then that would mean that once you have researched the satellite tech (I am assuming it is still in Civ 5, am I wrong?) that gives you the whole map then barbs will stop spawning altogether. So its not like we will see our modern cities under attack by bipedal barbarian giant death robots.

.......or at least I hope so

In 4, the discovery of satellites, automatically allowed the civ to discover each tile, not see what was going on in each tile every turn (if I'm recalling correctly - I can't go check I already uninstalled the game ). So those barbs could have tanks or even a silly GDR if the tech "satellites" existed as we knew it in the previous version.