Information from the GamesStar VIDEO Preview

[brianshapiro]

Yes,
This is my hope too.

I imagine in Civ5 there will be more wars that reflect say France/Germany fighting over Alsace-Lorraine. Which would be a good thing.

The fighting over Alsace-Lorraine wouldn't really be accurately represented by city states, though. The issue wasn't an independent Alsace-Lorraine government that was being negotiated with by both sides, it was a split population. Its more represented in Civ4 by mixed culture and culture flipping.

Though what I would really love in Civ is if in every Civilization all of your cities in fact acted at some level like city states, and the only difference between a City State and a regular Civilization would be the City State either declared independence or opted not to expand.

 

[Calouste]

The fighting over Alsace-Lorraine wouldn't really be accurately represented by city states, though. The issue wasn't an independent Alsace-Lorraine government that was being negotiated with by both sides, it was a split population. Its more represented in Civ4 by mixed culture and culture flipping.

Though what I would really love in Civ is if in every Civilization all of your cities in fact acted at some level like city states, and the only difference between a City State and a regular Civilization would be the City State either declared independence or opted not to expand.

One thing I have always missed in Civ is something that models the change of a country as a somewhat loose alliance of local fiefdoms who swear allegiance to the same king but might switch sides (see for example France during the 100 Years' War and the Holy Roman Empire throughout most of its history) to a modern nation state. They could have modelled this in Civ4 by making cities immune to flipping after Nationalism or something like that. I think there was an earlier version of Civ (Civ2?) where you could try to bribe a city to revolt to your side, something that stopped working if the other side became a Democracy. I think there was a hint that a system to buy or bribe cities and/or hexes is in Civ5.

 

[JonoLith]

@jonolith

the germans in this video seem to have a respectably large empire, and thier capital is only producing 5 culture out of a total of 35 for the entire empire. (in the year 1450ad)

I think bonuses like 1 culture per turn per city, or a +10 culture from an allied city state are gonna be monumentally useful, so don't knock it yous.

According to Arioch information compendium, World Wonders only give 1 per turn each. In comparison, 10 per turn seems like a truckload.

It would appear that I have been effectively bamboozled! Very well, I concede the point. 10 Culture per turn will be an extremely useful thing to have, especially if it's producing double the amount of a capital.

You all win this time!

 

[YoHo]

The fighting over Alsace-Lorraine wouldn't really be accurately represented by city states, though. The issue wasn't an independent Alsace-Lorraine government that was being negotiated with by both sides, it was a split population. Its more represented in Civ4 by mixed culture and culture flipping.

Though what I would really love in Civ is if in every Civilization all of your cities in fact acted at some level like city states, and the only difference between a City State and a regular Civilization would be the City State either declared independence or opted not to expand.

You don't need to have a war over cities or city-states, you can use war to flip individual tiles which is what I was thinking. At least that's what it appears like.

 

[Celevin]

Something I want to clarify, and this thread seems to be the best place to do it...

Is there a city-wide culture which is completely separate from the empire-wide culture? Just like how city-wide happiness is separate from empire-wide happiness?

 

[bjbrains]

Something I want to clarify, and this thread seems to be the best place to do it...

Is there a city-wide culture which is completely separate from the empire-wide culture? Just like how city-wide happiness is separate from empire-wide happiness?

Yes. From various videos, we can see that each city produces its own culture to expand its borders, which then feeds into the empire-wide culture pool for social policies.

 

[Dark_Jedi06]

I want to see this video...too bad I'm not in Germany

 

[Celevin]

Yes. From various videos, we can see that each city produces its own culture to expand its borders, which then feeds into the empire-wide culture pool for social policies.

That's pretty cool. So our borders expand naturally - based upon the "easiest tiles", like clear grasslands - by the city, then we can specialize it a bit by buying up tiles with gold? I thought it was only the latter.

 

[AriochIV]

That's pretty cool. So our borders expand naturally - based upon the "easiest tiles", like clear grasslands - by the city, then we can specialize it a bit by buying up tiles with gold? I thought it was only the latter.

It's both. In the City Screen, there is an "X turns until Border Growth" gauge that's clearly filled by Culture (it's pink), and an indicator on the map of which hex the city is going to choose, but then also a "Buy a Tile" button that lets you manually choose a tile and pay for it in gold.

 

[kurtkage]

Yea the example in the e3 video was Rome and the presenter, paraphrasing, said "notice the hex with the pink ring, that is what will be chosen next, it's a hill because the system sees that Rome is short on production" he then bought 2 tiles with gold and left the city screen to show that the culture border had expanded to encompass the new tiles.

 

[bjbrains]

It's both. In the City Screen, there is an "X turns until Border Growth" gauge that's clearly filled by Culture (it's pink), and an indicator on the map of which hex the city is going to choose, but then also a "Buy a Tile" button that lets you manually choose a tile and pay for it in gold.

This is correct. The tile chosen will be based on 'ease' (hills/mountains are harder), and whether there are any resources (Apparently the AI involved will prioritize resource tiles).

 

[Ituralde]

Some more information from the video:

The presenter buys a tile for Berlin, his Capital, it is in the outmost ring and costs him 105 Gold to buy. Once he chooses to buy a tile those in available are either outlined red or yellow. He buys a yellow tile containing an iron resource. The price stays the same as he hovers over several yellow tiles.

Frankfurt a newly founded City can attack enemies up to two tiles away, even outside it's own cultural borders.


CITY CONQUERING: these are thein game tool-tips:
ANNEX THE CITY:
Annexing the city into your Empire causes it to become a normal City that produces quite a lot of extra Unhappiness.

CREATE PUPPET:
By turning the City into a Puppet, it will generate Gold, Science, Culture, etc. for you, but you may not choose what it produces or customize the City.

It will contribute much less Unhappines than an Annexed City, and will not increase the cost of your Social Policies and Great People. If you choose this, you may later Annex the City at any point.


Two interesting things in the last tool tip. Apparently the number of Cities affects the cost of Social Policies and Great People. Also good to know that you can choose to annex them later.


HAPPINESS BREAKDOWN:
The video shows the current breakdown of happyness in the Empire.

Total Happiness Level of the empire is 0.

38 total Happiness from all sources:
- 20 from havine AT LEAST ONE source of the following luxury resources:
+5 from Gems
+5 from Spices
+5 from Silk
+5 from Wine
- 2 from Social Policies
- 4 from Buildings
- 12 from Difficulty Level

38 total Unhappiness from all sources.
- 10 generated from number of Cities
- 6 from number of Occupied Cities
- 14 generated by Population
- 8 from Population in Occupied Cities

The minimap in the video shows 7 Cities. One of them is Paris and another is Lyon.
So I suppose this means 5 Cities and two Occupied Cities (Paris/Lyon).
Meaning 2 Unhappiness from normal cites and 3 from Occupied Cities plus additional Unhapiness through Occupied Population.

I'll update my original post with this info as well.

 

[Schuesseled]

Also based on need, if you city has hardly any hammers, they'll go for some harder to capture hills.

 

[Suho1004]

It's both. In the City Screen, there is an "X turns until Border Growth" gauge that's clearly filled by Culture (it's pink), and an indicator on the map of which hex the city is going to choose, but then also a "Buy a Tile" button that lets you manually choose a tile and pay for it in gold.

Sorry if I'm being a little dense here, but are those the only two options? 1) Have the city choose the next tile by itself or 2) buy the tiles you want with gold? I was wondering if there might be a third option, mainly choosing the pink tile. That is, you could tell the city which tile you wanted next, but you would have to wait for the culture gauge to fill.

This is not the case, I take it?

 

[Thyrwyn]

As far as we know, only two ways: auto select via culture, or you pick via gold.

 

[Suho1004]

OK, thanks for the clarification.

 

[Tatran]

The minimap in the video shows 7 Cities. One of them is Paris and another is Lyon. So I suppose this means 5 Cities and two Occupied Cities (Paris/Lyon). Meaning 2 Unhappiness from normal cites and 3 from Occupied Cities plus additional Unhapiness through Occupied Population.

A total of zero happiness with only 7 cities?
How large are those cities?

 

[Ituralde]

It's hard to see as the only cities shown clearly at that moment are Frankfurt at Cologne at a population of 2 each. The rest ist hard to judge.
Earlier you can see though that ONE Theater gives +4 Happiness, so with only one Happiness building it's no wonder the total is only zero.

By the way. Those camps (tents and stuff, there was a thread about this somewhere here) are also visible on the map and also in the City Screen. The increase commerce so it is safe to say that they are the trade posts/cottages of Civ V.

 

[Tatran]

I missed the fact that unhappiness won't create angry citizens anymore, but will cost the player gold (and culture).
So, that's why real life is becoming more and more expensive.

 

[Maniac]

Jon Shafer claimed he wanted to make each civ more unique than in Civ4, but if these special ability effects are all there is to it, I'm actually rather disappointed. Many of these special abilities are less impressive than what was present in Civ4:

Arabia: Trade Caravans
+1 Gold from each trade route.

In Civ4 you wanted to have open borders with everyone you weren't at war with anyway. So I don't see what gameplay difference this bonus could cause. It's just a bland and boring gold bonus.

China: Art of War
spawn rate of Great Generals increased.

That's like half of the Charismatic Trait.

Egypt: Monument Builders
+20% production towards Wonder construction

That's like a quarter of the Industrious trait.

The only special abilities which seem mildly interesting and gameplay-altering to me, are the Aztec and Indian abilities.