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IGN just published a new Civilization V preview with some new details from a hands-on playtest of the game! The 3-page article goes into the core game mechanics in more depth than any other preview so far, and notes the diligence Firaxis has put towards this game: "It sounds kind of insane, but Firaxis is constantly running AI games in a test environment to get a better sense of the relationships between all these systems."Here are a few excerpts that should help Civ4 veterans get a sense of what's different:
Strategic resources are handled differently. There the quantity is very important. One iron deposit, for instance, will only grant you the right to build and maintain, say, five iron-based units. You can't build any more than that until one of those units dies (or is disbanded) or you get access to more iron. You will be allowed to keep those units in the field if your resource is pillaged, but there's an additional maintenance burden and you won't be able to replace them if they're lost.
Borders are also handled a bit differently. Instead of just dropping a big culture bomb at certain thresholds, a city's territory will keep better pace with population and grow one tile at a time. Now when you get a new tile, you'll probably have no other choice but to work it. It's still based on culture, and you can drop some cash to speed things up, but culture growth will be more relevant over the long term in Civ V. You also won't pick the tiles individually. Instead the game will weight growth towards "good" tiles like grassland or wheat and away from "bad" tiles like forests and mountains. It makes sense that culture would tend to spread quickest where people can settle and make a living, but we're not sure yet what impact this has on production-focused cities that need lots of mines and forests.
Borders are also handled a bit differently. Instead of just dropping a big culture bomb at certain thresholds, a city's territory will keep better pace with population and grow one tile at a time. Now when you get a new tile, you'll probably have no other choice but to work it. It's still based on culture, and you can drop some cash to speed things up, but culture growth will be more relevant over the long term in Civ V. You also won't pick the tiles individually. Instead the game will weight growth towards "good" tiles like grassland or wheat and away from "bad" tiles like forests and mountains. It makes sense that culture would tend to spread quickest where people can settle and make a living, but we're not sure yet what impact this has on production-focused cities that need lots of mines and forests.
You can discuss the preview here on our Civ5 General Discussion forums.
Thanks to the author Steve Butts (aka mrbee) for posting about it on the forums!
