Civilization V!!

[Martok]

Official site

IGN announcement

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

February 18, 2010 - 2K Games just made the day a little brighter with the announcement of a brand new title in the best-selling Civilization series. Sid Meier's Civilization V, currently in development at Firaxis, will feature an "entirely new combat system, deeper diplomatic interactions, and a cavalcade of expanded features that deliver a fully immersive experience providing hours of enteratainment as players build and defend their empire on their quest to become the greatest ruler the world has ever known."

Perhaps most significantly for fans, the series is making the jump to hexagons rather than square tiles to "allow for deeper strategy, more realistic gameplay, and stunning organic landscapes." The entire game is being built on an entirely new engine that's being built from the ground up to bring players "closer to the Civ experience than ever." Diplomacy is handled full screen now, with full leader animations and appropriate languages. Players who aren't inclined towards negotiations will find that war feels "more massive" and includes ranged bombardment from behind front lines.

Civilization V will also include an "extensive suite of community, modding and multiplayer elements," and an "in-game community hub where Civ fans can share content and compete against each other."

Firaxis' director of creative development and series' eponym Sid Meier shared his enthusiasm for the new project: "Each new version of Civilization presents exciting challenge for our team. Thankfully, ideas on how to bring new and fun experiences to Civ players never seem to stop flowing." He added, "We're excited for players to see the new vision our team at Firaxis has brought to the series."

Switching from tiles to hexes, less abstract combat (i.e., no stacking), improved diplomatic AI.... Damn, I think I might actually have to get this one!

[Veho Nex]

Just... one... more.. turn... Then I will go to sleep...

[seireikhaan]

Very nice, very nice indeed. Pretty big fan of the series, and good to hear they're making a concerted effort at improving the series still.

[tibilicus]

Lets hope they continue the trend of allowing a wide array of mods for their games. I've clocked a ridiculous amount of time on Civ 4..

[Basileus]

Just when i thought i was out it pulls me back in :D, Civ was what got me into gaming and this one will probably get me back into it again..cant wait.

[Subotan]

My only problem with this is that it will come out just when I enrol at university. Otherwise, all is good.

Especially those rivers. Oh wow, just look at the rivers.

[Kekvit Irae]

Meh. Not interested. It's just yet another update to the Civ series.
If they came out with Alpha Centauri 2, THEN I would be interested.

[tibilicus]

My only problem with this is that it will come out just when I enrol at university. Otherwise, all is good.

Especially those rivers. Oh wow, just look at the rivers.

Same situation for me. Thank God most courses don't make the first year count towards any assessment.


I also hope they fix the way military units are done in this game. I would prefer separate building ques for military and city based improvements. I never liked the way you had to choose between a nice city or a big military. I also hated the way the AI could build military units much faster than you. If you played past monarch difficulty it just got ridiculous.

Also an economics system I can understand would be nice.

[Askthepizzaguy]

I agree, I didn't like how much the "AI" relied upon cheating in order to defeat you on the highest levels. There was no actual strategy involved, it simply started with settlers and military units, and you started with a settler and a warrior. Then it had other bonuses and didn't get as penalized for civilization size like you did.

My favorite Civ was Civ II. I loved the advisors that spoke to you, I liked the user-friendly interface, and the playability, even at higher levels. I liked the various workable strategies that you could use to win.


Civ III I hated... didn't like the direction they went with it.

In Civ IV, it seemed that on upper levels, you could only win via military force to expand large enough to win the science race, since the AI would trade techs like mad and have more cities than you, that were more advanced than yours due to their bonuses. The only way to win then was to have more science cities, since they would usually beat you to several key world wonders and thus have at least one city that was better than half your cities combined.

I got into Civ IV a bit, but I still feel like Civ II was a better gameplay experience.

[Subotan]

Same situation for me. Thank God most courses don't make the first year count towards any assessment. .

I doubt Oxford is that merciful :|

I also hope they fix the way military units are done in this game. I would prefer separate building ques for military and city based improvements. I never liked the way you had to choose between a nice city or a big military. I also hated the way the AI could build military units much faster than you. If you played past monarch difficulty it just got ridiculous.

I agree totally. I always had a tiny millitary until Nationalism came along, and I could draft to my heart's content.

Also an economics system I can understand would be nice.

An economics system that actually involved economics would be nice.

[Aemilius Paulus]

If they came out with Alpha Centauri 2, THEN I would be interested.

You know they will never be able to make a worthy successor to that one.

[tibilicus]

I doubt Oxford is that merciful :|


I agree totally. I always had a tiny millitary until Nationalism came along, and I could draft to my heart's content.


An economics system that actually involved economics would be nice.

Oxford? Nice. I guess much depends on the subject your taking too. provided I get the grades I should be doing History and Politics which luckily means, as an arts student, I shall need time to procrastinate about my reading. Although they expect a minimum 30 hour work week at most of the places I applied to so that will no doubt limit my time to play games to very little, if you throw in social stuff on top of that. Anyway, back on topic.

I think the main problem with the draft and nationalism was at the higher difficulties the unhappiness it caused just basically lead to empire wide rebellions. That was more a problem with the way the AI worked though. As you set the difficulty higher, the AI did get smarter but at the same time it got a ridiculous speed bonus in the way it could research technology and build stuff.

Civ on the maximum difficulty is merciless, I've never won a game on it, haven't even come close to winning one either.

[Subotan]

Oxford? Nice. I guess much depends on the subject your taking too. provided I get the grades I should be doing History and Politics which luckily means, as an arts student, I shall need time to procrastinate about my reading. Although they expect a minimum 30 hour work week at most of the places I applied to so that will no doubt limit my time to play games to very little, if you throw in social stuff on top of that. Anyway, back on topic.

Thanks. I'm PPE, so they'll expect me to read and write loads. Which won't be a bad thing, but it means little time for games. You're Oxford too, right?

I think the main problem with the draft and nationalism was at the higher difficulties the unhappiness it caused just basically lead to empire wide rebellions. That was more a problem with the way the AI worked though. As you set the difficulty higher, the AI did get smarter but at the same time it got a ridiculous speed bonus in the way it could research technology and build stuff.

Civ on the maximum difficulty is merciless, I've never won a game on it, haven't even come close to winning one either.

If you had a big enough Empire though, you could just rotate your cities. Slavery helped too.

Civ on the maximum difficulty is merciless, I've never won a game on it, haven't even come close to winning one either.

I'm too scared to try it

[tibilicus]

Thanks. I'm PPE, so they'll expect me to read and write loads. Which won't be a bad thing, but it means little time for games. You're Oxford too, right?


If you had a big enough Empire though, you could just rotate your cities. Slavery helped too.


I'm too scared to try it

Oxford? I wish. My firm will most likely be Sheffield and my insurance Liverpool. I don't think my school actually got a single successful Oxbridge applicant this year, normally we might get one but it's pretty rare. Good choice in deciding to do PPE though. Get a 2:1 or higher in that and you'll have secure employment prospects for life basically. Although I couldn't handle the economics side of PPE, my maths ability is shocking. I take it your probably taking quite a few A levels at the moment if you plan on doing PPE?


BTW, did any one play the Rhyes and fall mod for civ 4? I really hope the guy behind it makes a similar mod for the new game. It just made civ a whole lot better.

[CrossLOPER]

My only problem with this is that it will come out just when I enrol at university. Otherwise, all is good.

Especially those rivers. Oh wow, just look at the rivers.

Dude, stay away from those games for the first semester.

[Subotan]

Oxford? I wish. My firm will most likely be Sheffield and my insurance Liverpool.

Those are both still really good unis though. My insurance is Essex.

I don't think my school actually got a single successful Oxbridge applicant this year, normally we might get one but it's pretty rare. .

That sucks. My college gets better results on average than Eton (We're still state btw) and we get way less people into Oxbridge than Eton does....

Good choice in deciding to do PPE though. Get a 2:1 or higher in that and you'll have secure employment prospects for life basically. Although I couldn't handle the economics side of PPE, my maths ability is shocking. I take it your probably taking quite a few A levels at the moment if you plan on doing PPE?

Thanks. And I only realised that applied to me as well at the start of this year, hence my decision to cram AS Maths into UVI. It's not part of my offer though, so in theory, I could get a U in Maths and go to do Economics at Oxford. I'm also doing History, Politics, Economics, and I've got an AS in German along with an Economics Extended Project, to make up for my weak-ish Maths.

BTW, did any one play the Rhyes and fall mod for civ 4? I really hope the guy behind it makes a similar mod for the new game. It just made civ a whole lot better.

I really enjoyed certain features of it, such as Congresses, emergences, stability etc., but it felt a bit too rigid at times. The Dynamic names were fun though, and occasionally everything melted together beautifully (E.g. The Mongols conquered China in a few years, only for China to revolt, and then slowly be ground down by the Mongols again in a 200 year long war). I also enjoyed Total Realism, Gold Edition, and any mod that replaced Judaism with Zoroastrianism, so check them out as well.

Dude, stay away from those games for the first semester.

I don't know if I'll be able to resist for a whole term...

[Ituralde]

I'm completely psyched that this is coming up! And so soon after the anouncement too.

I'm just looking forward to see whether it'll hold up against BTS from the get go. But who am I kidding I'm gonna get it either way!

[Beefy187]

Now the game is more like Total War as we can't stack our units no more.

I'm not sure what to make of it just yet.. But it looks nice anyway

[Subotan]

I won't make a judgement until it's out.

[al Roumi]

Meh. Not interested. It's just yet another update to the Civ series.
If they came out with Alpha Centauri 2, THEN I would be interested.

You know they will never be able to make a worthy successor to that one.

If only they'd bloody try!

[Scienter]

Farewell, sleep. It was nice knowing you.

I stayed up late so many nights playing Civ IV. Hopefully V will be as much fun!

[al Roumi]

hmmm. It's not much to go on but looking at those screenies in the OP's link remind me of land combat in Pirates! I hope CIV V doesn't go down that route... Pirates land combat was fun enough but way too cheesy a mini-game for what I would like from CIV.

I found it easier to suspend belief of what was happening on the small scale of battle tactics when an army was in a stack. Not getting that involved, beyond some broad maneuvres (what ground to occupy, which units to lead the attack with) reinforced the higher level strategy aspect of the game. War in CIV has, for me, been more about production, tech and supply than anything to do with micro-managing battles & tactics. Ok, what has been before need not be the way of things to come but... it is kind of a defining feature of the game for me. I can imagine large scale war getting really tedious if you have to organise a battle line each time. In some respects it could be too much like TW, but not zoomed in low enough perhaps.

[Ser Clegane]

As they are already switching to hex they could use something similar to SSI's Panzer General. Straight forward enough to not distract too much from the main elements of a typical Civ game but still good tactical fun (at least IMHO)

[rajpoot]

I never liked Civ 4's battles......seemed too much like rock paper scissor stuff to me.......all you did was just make as many units as possible and keep making them until you win...

I remember one game where I had atleast 10 ICBMs in each of my city's....still couldn't defeat win.

[TinCow]

One major benefit to a switch to hex is that we no longer have to worry about the 'fat cross' for city placement. Presumably cities will just work 2 concentric rings of hexes, which is a lot easier to figure out on the fly.

[al Roumi]

They still won't tesselate! :D Much better that way too, otherwise it's the days of CIV3 where the uniform city carpet/matrix ruled the day.

[Scienter]

One major benefit to a switch to hex is that we no longer have to worry about the 'fat cross' for city placement. Presumably cities will just work 2 concentric rings of hexes, which is a lot easier to figure out on the fly.

Hopefully you're right, I wouldn't miss the fat cross at all. I'd love to be able to turn the grid lines off.

[TinCow]

I've read several articles on Civ V recently. Here are the highlights:

http://kotaku.com/5489814/civilizati...ig-differences

The current minimum spec Firaxis is hoping to accommodate are 256 MB video cards and dual core processors.

Players get a notification system this time, which alerts them to important new events such as a new bit of research being completed or a scouting party being attacked. Clicking on the alerts that appear on the right side of the screen, when relevant, warps the player to the location of the event.

Advisers are back in Civ V, characters who pop up to offer tips, Rival civilizations are now being programmed to fight with noticeably distinct artificial intelligence styles. (Less consequential to gameplay is the introduction of full-screen animations of rival leaders such as George Washington or Napoleon, set in character specific locales).

New city states appear on the map. These are always controlled by the computer. Players can enter pacts with them, trade with them, or even attack them. This complicates the relationships among the major civilizations, as an America that is friends with Budapest might be drawn into a war if it tries to free a besieged Budapest from the French. The city states were described by one developer showing the game as elements that "are there to make things happen."

A great civilization's area of influence used to spread evenly in Civ games. In the new one, a player will see the colored border representing the limits of their people's reach expand in more realistic ways. Turn after turn, the computer will automatically expand a player's civilization into areas that have relevant resources, say forest instead of desert, early in the game. Players can spend gold to speed the expansion.

Players will no longer be able to stack units onto one space and then carry that offensive stack to war. Each unit — which still represents and is depicted by — a cluster of fighters, can only occupy a space on its own. New ranged units can fire from afar (an extra hexagon away for the archers, according to the demo this week). And cities, which now have health bars, can fire back.

The developers said great civilizations can now agree to commence a research agreement, instead of just establishing trade or declaring war.

http://kotaku.com/5489834/civilizati...road-spaghetti

During a theater demonstration here in San Francisco of this fall's Civilization V that I witnessed yesterday (and chronicled in depth), I asked where the roads were.

I was being shown a civilization that was advanced enough to amass armies to attack other great civilizations. Yet all I saw was a single, nicely-paved road. It looked nice, but it didn't look like Civ.

It turns out, one of the developers of the game, told me, that the game's creators are re-thinking how roads are implemented and displayed in these games. The idea the creators at Civ studio Firaxis are going for is, they said, that "roads will mean something" this time. As in: Even a single road will have relevance and feel as special as a key highway does in the real world.

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news...rategic-Combat

Gone are features like Civ 4's religions

Units are no longer destroyed if they lose a battle, which means that civs can spend much more resources on maintaining their armies as opposed to cranking out new units. The combat that we saw took place completely outside of a city, and positioning and terrain are much more important. "In the past, combat revolved around stacks [of units], which our fans affectionately call 'stacks of doom,'" Shirk said. "We wanted to pull combat out of the cities, and make every unit important." No two units can occupy the same tile, even friendly ones, so positioning on the battlefield becomes very important. Ranged units, like archers, are used to soften up the front lines from up to two hexes away, but they are vulnerable to attacks from melee units. The result is an emphasis on battlefield tactics instead of most Civ games which favored the civ that was able to crank out the most units.

The resource system supports that concept. In Civ3 and 4, once your civilization gained access to Iron, each of your cities could pump out swordsmen and there was no limit to how many you could make. In CivV, gaining access to one source of Iron allows you to make one swordsman and that's it. You can't make another swordsman unit unless that one died or you gained access to another Iron source.

A new addition is city-states. "City-states are small NPCs that are scattered throughout the world. They're not trying to win the game, they never grow beyond a single city. But they make stuff happen in the world," Shirk said. For example, Budapest was a city-state in the demo and by talking to them, you had the option of helping them out against barbarians with gold or units. Doing so raises your friendship level which means that they might gift you with units or aid in scientific research. "Different city-states grant different things," Shirk said. A more militaristic city-state might ask you to attack a neighbor or a weaker state might be attacked and ask you to defend them. Of course, there's always the option to simply take them over and add the city to your civ.

Civ V will boast the most extensive modding tools ever available. Firaxis realized though that not many casual Civ fans know that such a vibrant mod community exists, so they are adding a way to browse for mods directly in-game. The mod browser will allow users to scan for mods by popularity with a built-in rating system, as well as give Firaxis the ability to feature mods on an ongoing schedule. Modders will be able to solicit comments and questions by linking to their fan pages on CivFanatics through an ingame web browser.

[Krusader]

Oh sweet jeez...I can't wait for this game.
Will be interesting to see how the new combat system works. And I like the 1 resource = 1 unit using said resource system too. Religions were fun though.
Last paragraph is the best. Think CA will follow suit? *now where's that roaring laughter smiley*

[Subotan]

That all looks excellent, apart from:

Gone are features like Civ 4's religions

Noooooooooooo

EDIT: But I might forgive them, solely for this:

The Incas we have no leader for yet, but a Swedish article claims they resurrected the dead language (sic) of the Quechua for the game, as each leader speaks their native tongue with subtitles in English (or whatever language you play the game in). In reality, many people still speak Quechua, but whatever...