Recent Civ5 Previews

[Ginger_Ale]

Over the past few days, a number of gaming magazines have published previews of Civ5 in their print versions. A couple of forum members have been kind enough to summarize what these articles contain, so if you haven't been scanning the Civ5 forums recently, here is some of what you missed.

Swedish PC Gamer, as reported by Danielos:

About 50 persons are currently working on the game, which has been in development for over two years, but is now reaching the final phases.

City states:
These are small, AI-controlled civilizations. They never grow big and doesn´t desire to win. The player must choose if he is to be friendly, indifferent or hostile towards a city state. The attitude you has towards a particular city state will have a big effect on diplomacy. If for example your units is approaching a city state that have friendly relations with another civilization, he will warn you, and if you ignore them, there will be consequences.

Barbarians:
The barbarians originate from a barbarian city and will get more advanced units later in the game. You need to wipe out all barbarian cities to get rid of the barbarian hordes.

City expansion:
Borders does no longer expand in large areas, but one hex at a time. Remote hexes like marshes, forests and mountains will be harder to acquire.

Economy:
You can invest money in your neighboring hexagons, for example trying to acquire an important resource before your opponent.

Research:
You can also sign a research-deal with another civilization. This way, both civs will cooperate to reach the new technology and both will gain it when the discovery is made. This was included to encourage cooperation between civilizations.

Diplomacy:
The civilizations will have an all-new advanced AI. All opponents will have fixed characteristics. Based on this unique personality, every AI-player will have their own agenda, which the AI will use to plan how to best play to win the game. But there will also be a certain randomness to avoid having the AI be too easy to predict.​

Computer Bild Spiele, as reported by Civinator:

Tech trading is abolished.

Alliances give special boni (per example the possibility for a quicker research of a technology)

Cut-out of religions as known in Civ 4 confirmed

Cities can grow bigger than in former versions of the civ series as they there are 3 tiles for a city in every direction to be worked on.

New troops must leave a city at once, as there is only one unit per tile

Distance fighters (archers, artillery and so on) can shoot over the front units, lakes and other tiles

One philosophy is to form front lines for battles far away from the cities.​

GamePro, as reported by dc82:

Leaders/Civs
German leader: Otto von Bismark
China leader: Wu Zeitein/Zetein
American leader: Washington
Japanese leader: Oba Nobunaga
Arabian leader: Harun al-Rashid
Other confirmed leaders mentioned in the article (Genghis Khan, Caesar, Napoleon, Gandhi)

Units
Basic military units move two tiles in combat instead of one. ​

Be sure to read the rest of those threads as there is lots of new info!

 

[MetHimPikeHoses]

can't wait

 

[Mathalamus]

no religion? oh well. its not like if its an important part of humanity and civilization and directed many many inventions in the human race, many conflicts, and represents a certain strategic depth.

 

[wabatt]

ohhh the new borders sound cool

 

[Mathalamus]

yeah if you don't mind having an enemy stabbing your city with their hexes. looks like stabbign to me anyway.

 

[cephalo]

I love these radical changes! I can't wait!

 

[Jaroth]

Wow, this latest incarnation of Civ sounds vastly different from its predecessors.

I've really enjoyed the entire series so far, with each new installment raising the bar another notch. I just hope they don't break this latest one by trying to reinvent everything.

Looking forward to more bits and pieces of news.

 

[choxorn]

Barbarians:
The barbarians originate from a barbarian city and will get more advanced units later in the game. You need to wipe out all barbarian cities to get rid of the barbarian hordes.
​

So, now we fight actual modern barbarians instead of guys armed with axes the entire game?

City expansion:
Borders does no longer expand in large areas, but one hex at a time. Remote hexes like marshes, forests and mountains will be harder to acquire.
​

This could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how it works. It is a big change to the culture expansions in the last two games.

Economy:
You can invest money in your neighboring hexagons, for example trying to acquire an important resource before your opponent.
​

See above comment.

Research:
You can also sign a research-deal with another civilization. This way, both civs will cooperate to reach the new technology and both will gain it when the discovery is made. This was included to encourage cooperation between civilizations.
​

Is there a way to keep the AI from researching things you don't want?

Diplomacy:
The civilizations will have an all-new advanced AI. All opponents will have fixed characteristics. Based on this unique personality, every AI-player will have their own agenda, which the AI will use to plan how to best play to win the game. But there will also be a certain randomness to avoid having the AI be too easy to predict.​

Interesting... so Shaka and Monty will keep building trillions of military units and try to conquer everyone, as opposed to the previous games in which they built trillions fo military units and tried to conquer everyone? Or something?

Tech trading is abolished.
​

Alliances give special boni (per example the possibility for a quicker research of a technology)
​

Cut-out of religions as known in Civ 4 confirmed
​

Then again, it says "As known in Civ 4..." does that mean gone completely, or just not as they were in Civ 4?

Cities can grow bigger than in former versions of the civ series as they there are 3 tiles for a city in every direction to be worked on.
​

So... 37 tiles per city as opposed to 21?

New troops must leave a city at once, as there is only one unit per tile
​

Distance fighters (archers, artillery and so on) can shoot over the front units, lakes and other tiles

One philosophy is to form front lines for battles far away from the cities.​

How far can they shoot, exactly?

Basic military units move two tiles in combat instead of one. ​

I'm not sure how to react to this... with the bombardment and city work changes, I now must ask a question: Are there more tiles than there once was?

All in all, I have to give this new info a , maybe two.

 

[Hypernova]

YAY! Amazingly I actually approve of all the changes, though I'm not sure all of them will have popular support on CFC... It seems they've also abolished multiple leaders, which I personally prefer but multiple leaders seemed popular.

 

[Mustakrakish]

...and of course here is the news that I spend entire day looking for.

 

[garlic pudding]

I kind of like the idea of limiting the number of units that can stay in a city at once, although just one U is pretty limited (do you think reinforcements will be possible?)

So many battles in history were fought in large fields. I don't like the way conquests in CIV or other strategy games work. It just ends up in a series of boring and difficult sieges.

I would have limited the number of units in one tile to 2 or 3 though.

 

[subanark]

So, now we fight actual modern barbarians instead of guys armed with axes the entire game?

In Civ 4 barbs could get some decent weapons (as they get techs based on what other civs), their economy usually just sucked too much to build any good units.

This could be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on how it works. It is a big change to the culture expansions in the last two games.

I assume that you have the ability to choose which hex you will get next (provided you have 2 adjacent hexes you control, or its next to your city).

Is there a way to keep the AI from researching things you don't want?

I assume this is per technology. You make a 1 time agreement with another civ to research a technology (agreeing to invest a portion of your research into that tech). This would slow down your current tech you are researching, but would require less overall tech points to get that technology.

Interesting... so Shaka and Monty will keep building trillions of military units and try to conquer everyone, as opposed to the previous games in which they built trillions fo military units and tried to conquer everyone? Or something?

This may relate to how they organize their troops, an AI may focus more on melee units, or may try and pillage your landscape rather than direct attacks more often.

Tech trading is abolished.

I never really liked how tech trading worked in Civ 4. You are constantly checking when a tech becomes available for trade and you try and trade it to everyone else to maximize profits. A assume the new system will simply give significant bonuses to civs that don't have a tech another one has. Similar to how Imperialism II works (The company and devs for that game got absorbed into Firxas).

Cut-out of religions as known in Civ 4 confirmed

I assume each civ will have its own religion. You might be able to get other civs to abandon their starting religion for your own. The primary benefit would be that your first city is the holy city for that religion giving you a bonus they don't get unless they manage to take it from you.

New troops must leave a city at once, as there is only one unit per tile

I never really liked having to manage big armies. Hopefully a army won't be defeated in a single battle. I assume this is military units only (or workers have been abolished).

 

[Wonderblunder]

For me, the city state feature sounds the most promising. Hopefully in the March 9 conference they will talk more about it. Hopefully they didn't remove religion completely from the game, that was one of my favorite features from CivIV. (like the majority of civfanatics has already said)

 

[ButSam]

I *really* hope spying is like it is in BtS. That is my favorite feature of the entire Civ series, not just of Civ IV.

I also would like to see religion stick around, but I'm not attached to it like some others are.

I wonder what victories are possible -- all of the Civ 3/4 (w/o religious victory)?

 

[Swashbuckler.]

Cut-out of religions as known in Civ 4 confirmed

What does that mean? Are they out or they will be in Civ5 but in diffrent way then it was in Civ4?

 

[bythveo]

I kind of like the idea of limiting the number of units that can stay in a city at once, although just one U is pretty limited (do you think reinforcements will be possible?)

So many battles in history were fought in large fields. I don't like the way conquests in CIV or other strategy games work. It just ends up in a series of boring and difficult sieges.

I would have limited the number of units in one tile to 2 or 3 though.

Would nor a limit to the number of units that could be on a tile be better if the limit varied depending on the terrain, features, presence of roads were? For example limit on hills 1 on plains 2 roads add +1 to limit.

 

[emeralddude]

I think the "Cut-out of religions as known in Civ 4 confirmed" means theyll be adding new religions that were originally going to be in Civ 4, but were cut out when playtesting decided 7 religions was best.

 

[JtheJackal]

Are maps going to be gigantic since a single tile now represents a much smaller area then in previous games?

 

[SHADOW-XIII]

City expansion:
Borders does no longer expand in large areas, but one hex at a time. Remote hexes like marshes, forests and mountains will be harder to acquire.

I like the idea

Research:
You can also sign a research-deal with another civilization. This way, both civs will cooperate to reach the new technology and both will gain it when the discovery is made. This was included to encourage cooperation between civilizations.

seems to be nice idea as well

Tech trading is abolished.

bad 1 civilization cannot teach another some things !?!?!? I always like to play with my brother against AI and we exchange techs (yes we can now reasearch them together but we cannot trade["teach"] those O_o ... lame)

Cut-out of religions as known in Civ 4 confirmed

in civics probably ? Hopefully not hard-linked to a civilization

Cities can grow bigger than in former versions of the civ series as they there are 3 tiles for a city in every direction to be worked on.

so I assume maps will be HUGE (I hope) ? I wonder if cities will be stll 1 square with a range or they will grow to other squares?

New troops must leave a city at once, as there is only one unit per tile

laaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaame

Distance fighters (archers, artillery and so on) can shoot over the front units, lakes and other tiles

nice feature, looking forward to

One philosophy is to form front lines for battles far away from the cities.

defending cities will no longer take place in cities! since you can have 1 unit there only. much worse is conquering one as just after taking over a city someone can take it back (since you can only defend it with one unit) ... overall not good, not bad - there are worse things already

Basic military units move two tiles in combat instead of one.

I think would be nice to make it 1 tile, 2 for fast units and +1 or +2 with roads. we do not want to explore way to fast

 

[Rub'Rum]

Love it. They seem to be daring, good job. Love to see the conservative reactions too, HA, owned.