New Features @ Civ V homepage

[Windsor]

Looks like it's mostly the same as in Civ4. The big news is really what we kind of new from before(but nice with a confirmation feature).
- The separation of and (removal of and the slider)
- You can buy tiles
- The addition of city states
- Rushbuy always available. We had universal suffrage in Civ4, but always having rushbuying as an alternative does change it a bit.

 

[King Jason]

For an expansion they should consider integrating a system where you can invest your gold into civ-wide benefits. For example, being able to invest (using fake numbers here) 10g per turn to obtain a constant military bonus (+1 str to units, something silly like that)... as long as you continue to invest the X gold per turn, you gain continue to gain the effect. You could have multiple trees/branches, similar to the policy system, but rather make the trees more linear. Have trees emphasize military, growth, etc... as you progress down a tree you reap greater benefits at the cost of greater gold per turn. For example, Military Bonus #1 (1 str to units) would be 10gpt, but bonus #2 might be a total of 20-30gpt.

With multiple trees, and the earlier bonii being cheaper, this would allow choice in how dedicated you want to be to a certain kind of investment. If you're serious about investing in superior military, you just may be prepared to spend tons of gold per turn to reap those specific bonii.. However, if you'd rather spread that 50gpt around, you could get lower levels of various different investment opportunities.

I think something like this, if refined and actually worked on as more of 3 minute thought, would strengthen the value of the dollar... I mean gold. (that was a joke)

Oh, and it also gives the choice of whether you want to hoard gold or spend it for civ-wide bonii. If you begin to lose gold, and reach zero, you'd be forced to abandon a particular investment, and thus lose the bonus, while simultaneously bringing you back into +g -- which would actually create the dynamic of hoarding for a period so that one might invest for a period later... for example, if (still using random fake numbers) it's 100gpt to invest fully in the military tree and gain all of it's cool goodies, but you only make 50g... you might hoard gold for 20 turns to get a surplus 1000g, then declare war, being able to fully invest in military bonii (100gpt) for 10 turns.

In fact it could even be designed around the concept of "temporary buffs" to begin with... since such concepts are already in place with research pacts and golden ages (which aren't gold related... but ARE a temporary buff). That could give research pervue of civ advancement, culture dominion of persistant bonii that affect your entire game, and gold the domain of investing in short term boosts (which requires diverting gold from what you'd otherwise regularly use it for).

could be interesting.

 

[Buccaneer]

With the single exception of the monument, which has no prerequisites and is available to build at the start of the game, you need knowledge of a specific technology to construct a building. For example, you must learn bronze working before you can build a barracks.

How is that different than what we have had in Civ2-4?

Some buildings have resource prerequisites as well – for instance a city must have an improved source of horses or ivory nearby to construct a circus. Also, some buildings have building prerequisites. You can’t build a temple in a city unless you’ve already constructed a monument there.

Same question as above. Perhaps more buildings require resources?

There’s one downside to buildings: most of them cost gold to maintain. The price depends upon the building in question, and can range from 1 to 5 per turn. The gold is deducted from your treasury each turn. A later feature will explain more about gold, including how you earn it and what else it can be spent on.

Welcome to Civ2. Funny this is being touted as a new feature when it isn't. But the lead designer's pedigree only extends back to Civ3-4.

 

[Lillefix]

Didn't buildings cost gold to maintain in civ3 too?

 

[Thoughtful Thug]

Welcome to Civ2. Funny this is being touted as a new feature when it isn't. But the lead designer's pedigree only extends back to Civ3-4.

Actually the lead designer was a beta tester for Civ 2. I am certain that all of the people involved in the making of the game is familiar with all of the games of the franchise. I know I wouldn't hire someone who had never played all of the games.

 

[2K Greg]

How is that different than what we have had in Civ2-4?



Same question as above. Perhaps more buildings require resources?




Welcome to Civ2. Funny this is being touted as a new feature when it isn't. But the lead designer's pedigree only extends back to Civ3-4.

The article is explaining how cities work in Civilization V. It's goal is not to only point out things that are new

 

[Louis XXIV]

Didn't buildings cost gold to maintain in civ3 too?

Yep ...

 

[Hamil]

I am wondering what happened to the podcasts? There was one on 16. and 23. of July but for nearly 14 days we havent heared from elizabeth...

 

[D712]

I am wondering what happened to the podcasts? There was one on 16. and 23. of July but for nearly 14 days we havent heared from elizabeth...

I was wondering the same thing! its been forever since a podcast. Im getting kinda anxious!

 

[Ricci]

The unhappiness is mechanic is meant to restrict the growth of cities. If you restrict the growth of cities on your own accord, that's not an exploit.

But Piece has a strong point here. I starve my cities as well, using granaries and food stored as a resource, to boost production of a wonder or tryingto hurry some Great Person (empathizing some type with massive specialists all of a sudden).. etc. If a penalty for unhappiness doesn't affect your game play it could be a problem if not minded by the devs.

 

[PieceOfMind]

For example, suppose you know that next turn your empire is about to go unhappy. You set one of your important cities to maximise food this turn (maybe +10) but not so much as to grow to the next level. Next turn unhappiness kicks in so you now emphasise something else while the city starves very slowly (maybe -1). If it takes you only 10 turns to fix your happiness problem, then that city was pretty much not affected at all by the unhappiness hit to growth rate.

More generally you could do this in all cities. Emphasise growth during times of happiness and then emphasise anything but growth during times of sadness.

I hope/expect there will be other negative consequences of empire unhappiness than just the growth rate, but regardless of whether that is true or not, I really hope there is some negative consequence for starving cities if there is one for growing cities (as well as food-stationary cities I suppose - it's only fair).

 

[Thyrwyn]

Not having the choice to grow is still a consequence, even if you can switch your cities to some other focus. You could also consider easier growth a reward for keeping your people happy. Just because your people start at happy, doesn't mean that is the "zero-state".

 

[Calouste]

For example, suppose you know that next turn your empire is about to go unhappy. You set one of your important cities to maximise food this turn (maybe +10) but not so much as to grow to the next level. Next turn unhappiness kicks in so you now emphasise something else while the city starves very slowly (maybe -1). If it takes you only 10 turns to fix your happiness problem, then that city was pretty much not affected at all by the unhappiness hit to growth rate.

More generally you could do this in all cities. Emphasise growth during times of happiness and then emphasise anything but growth during times of sadness.

I hope/expect there will be other negative consequences of empire unhappiness than just the growth rate, but regardless of whether that is true or not, I really hope there is some negative consequence for starving cities if there is one for growing cities (as well as food-stationary cities I suppose - it's only fair).

Seems to me easily fixed by making starving people count towards unhappiness as well. Yes, you can still try to eploit it, but you risk going from merely having unhappiness to being deep in trouble.

 

[PieceOfMind]

Seems to me easily fixed by making starving people count towards unhappiness as well.

Can you please be clearer what you mean by this? I thought it was a given that every citizen contributes to the happiness cap already, and whether or not the city is starving is irrelevant in the calculation of whether your empire is happy or unhappy.

Yes, you can still try to eploit it, but you risk going from merely having unhappiness to being deep in trouble.

Sounds very vague to me. What is "deep in trouble" to you?

Not having the choice to grow is still a consequence, even if you can switch your cities to some other focus. You could also consider easier growth a reward for keeping your people happy. Just because your people start at happy, doesn't mean that is the "zero-state".

Not having the choice to grow (or more accurately ... the choice to grow being less attractive or less efficient) is not necessarily going to be much of a disincentive for much of the game. Unless the game is designed so that cities are growing quickly for most of the game, I would assume there are times when your empire is not experiencing much growth. It could simply be because you're at a stage of the game where you are mostly blocked in and you are focusing on building military for conquest as opposed to growing your cities larger (and unhappier).

I can imagine that city growth will be more important in civ5 than it was in civ4. Cities can reach more tiles now and there seems to be heavier dependence on city size for production of , but it doesn't completely remove my concern. Often the ways that features get exploited to the max (like chop overflow on wonders in civ4 for example) are not all that obvious at the design stage and still not anywhere near obvious at the beta stage (or whatever you call the game at its current point of development).

Consider another abused mechanic in the early days of civ4 - anarchy. IIRC originally there was no restriction after changing civics on how soon you could change civics again. Players abused that in their early conquest campaigns by taking advantage of the fact that there were no maintenance costs during anarchy. These players forfeited the chance to grow their cities (no food collected during anarchy) but they were still perfectly able to capture cities and even obtain more gold for those captures. Perpetual anarchy was undoubtedly an exploit and even today it is banned for HOF games despite it being much reduced in effectiveness thanks to patches.(actually I can't find evidence of this in the HOF site so maybe it has been removed from the rules)

Reducing growth rate, if it doesn't affect cities that aren't growing much anyway if at all, does not sound like much of a negative consequence of empire unhappiness. This is why I'm assuming there will be other effects that come along with the unhappiness. I think reduced combat effectiveness has been mentioned as well, but even that is likely to have negligible effect during times of peace.

 

[Disgustipated]

Not having the choice to grow is still a consequence, even if you can switch your cities to some other focus. You could also consider easier growth a reward for keeping your people happy. Just because your people start at happy, doesn't mean that is the "zero-state".

Seeing as science is based off of population you are impacting your science as well. So civilizations with access to a lot of luxury resources I would think would be larger and more scientifically advanced than civilizations without luxury resources.

 

[Calouste]

Can you please be clearer what you mean by this? I thought it was a given that every citizen contributes to the happiness cap already, and whether or not the city is starving is irrelevant in the calculation of whether your empire is happy or unhappy.

+1 unhappiness for every food shortage you have. If you have a 10 pop city, and your food storage is shrinking by 2 every turn, it would generate 12 unhappiness.

Sounds very vague to me. What is "deep in trouble" to you?

The second level of unhappiness that exists in the game. When you initially go unhappy, the only negative effect is slower growth. When you reach a certain amount of net empirewide unhappiness (i.e. happy-unhappy), the effects get worse, with no growth at all, can't build settlers and your units fighting with a penalty.

 

[AriochIV]

If you are deliberately keeping your population low to avoid unhappiness, that's not an exploit, it's a choice. You're missing out on the potential benefits of that extra population. Whether that is net gain or a net loss would, I expect, depend on a lot of factors.

 

[PieceOfMind]

+1 unhappiness for every food shortage you have. If you have a 10 pop city, and your food storage is shrinking by 2 every turn, it would generate 12 unhappiness.

Honestly that would probably create more problems than it solves. Are you actually suggesting a system where changing citizens around in one city will affect the happiness and hence growth rate of every other city in your empire? Much more likely is that happiness will depend on things that are at least static during the turn. If I take a citizen off a farm in city X to be employed as a scientist, then the citizen working the farm in city Y suddenly produces less food.

If you are deliberately keeping your population low to avoid unhappiness, that's not an exploit, it's a choice. You're missing out on the potential benefits of that extra population. Whether that is net gain or a net loss would, I expect, depend on a lot of factors.

Who said the population has to be low? In fact I've been saying that usually the time that growth is slowed or zero is when your cities are already large.

In civ4, running at -1 for a turn then +1 for a turn has the same effect on city growth (assuming not passing either end of the food bar) as 0 for 2 turns. At the moment, it sounds like in civ5 they are not the same.

And just to reiterate, Arioch, I'm not calling this an exploit. A well known player, obsolete, always did and still does argue that Protective Stone chop overflow on walls was not an exploit. It was patched out in BtS 3.19. Getting into arguments about whether something is an exploit or not is mostly pointless. I just want to help avoid game mechanics where to make most efficient use of them requires tedious micro or very unintuitive and "gamey" steps.

 

[Jaybe]

If you are deliberately keeping your population low to avoid unhappiness, that's not an exploit, it's a choice. You're missing out on the potential benefits of that extra population. Whether that is net gain or a net loss would, I expect, depend on a lot of factors.

Such as how much does each additional unhappiness affect your gold, science, hammer & culture output. Is it equivalent to a citizen removed from the pool as in civ4 (e.g., total pop 14, 1 unhappy reduces each of these by 1/14)? It may not be unprofitable to exceed your happy limit to a small degree ... in moderation, of course.

Another bleepin' 47 days.