Civilization V Coming This Fall

[Markbnj]

The reactions on this thread remind me of the reactions of hard core Railroad Tycoon fans when Sid Meier's Railroads was announced. In the end it turned out that Meier had almost nothing to do with it, and the game at release continued the long tradition of decline in that series. In fact it may very well have been the worst of the titles. I hope hard-core Civ fans (and I'm one) don't have as much reason to be disappointed in Firaxis, but I would be in the wait and see camp.

 

[minmaster]

i have more faith in the people involved in the civ franchise than that. they pretty much have a pass in my books. i'll be one of the first to buy. when's the last time a civ game got horrible reviews? never...

 

[Gibsons]

Yeah, lack of religion sucks ass. Just wondering if they don't want to offend anybody. They can always include non real world religions...

I suspect it's 'don't want to offend.' Some would be offended by any religion that's not their own, even if it's made up just for the game.

 

[zinfamous]

Wow if this stuff is true then Civ V is going to be a completely different game then any of its predecessors! I'm going to experience complete culture shock when I buy this game.

http://www.civfanatics.com/ Recent Civ5 Previews

Swedish PC Gamer, as reported by Danielos: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=355764

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.

City states sounds like an expansion on how barbarians would form actual cities in Civ 4, if you happened to ignore the isolated island-bound groups for several centuries.

Research sounds really, really cool. One complaint that I've always about civ is that diplomacy never seems to work quite well, or that there is so much emphasis on military units early and later on, that diplomacy always end up being irrelevant the more you advance--AI being so shitty that you can never expect an ally to actually be an ally--it was always easy for the AI to badger you into being invaded (bully you into donating resources, invade if you refuse), but you could never force them to declare war on you with the same tactics

Research looks like it may improve the alliance system...though I wonder if there is any real "memory" as to how your civ shared technology and resources early on.

I don't care about religion. It was interesting, but was something of an autopilot function when I played. I'd think they'll have something similar in this update.

 

[paperfist]

The reactions on this thread remind me of the reactions of hard core Railroad Tycoon fans when Sid Meier's Railroads was announced. In the end it turned out that Meier had almost nothing to do with it, and the game at release continued the long tradition of decline in that series. In fact it may very well have been the worst of the titles. I hope hard-core Civ fans (and I'm one) don't have as much reason to be disappointed in Firaxis, but I would be in the wait and see camp.

I thought I read a quote where Sid said, "Railroads was the game he always wanted to make"...

That game was the worse in the series.

I'll def pickup Civ 5, but I'm really the type of person that still hates wild card baseball I like the tried and true, if it ain't broke don't fix it way of thinking.

That said I'm also pissed that religion is gone. It was almost perfectly done, not over powering and not something you could totally ignore. Now they are taking it out. I doubt it's coming out because of political correctness, but probably more because this version of Civ seems to be heavily focused on military.

i have more faith in the people involved in the civ franchise than that. they pretty much have a pass in my books. i'll be one of the first to buy. when's the last time a civ game got horrible reviews? never...

Did the second expansion to Civ 3 get horrible reviews? I don't remember, but it's the first time I ever emailed Firaxis complaining how I wanted my money back because the multiplayer was so horrendous hat I wanted to punch my monitor.

 

[Gibsons]

Did the second expansion to Civ 3 get horrible reviews? I don't remember, but it's the first time I ever emailed Firaxis complaining how I wanted my money back because the multiplayer was so horrendous hat I wanted to punch my monitor.

Was Civ3 the one where corruption was such a huge deal? Cities more than a few 'rings' away from your capitol were practically useless?

I hated, hated, hated, that part of it (I think a lot of people did), but I think it was still a good game.

 

[lupi]

yes, they wanted to contain people from placing cities everywhere (mostly done as a means of terrain defense) so they devised that mechanism. in the end they realized how badly it turned out which is why they switched to the spreading culture model, so if someone tries to plop down on an area to use a new city to gain a foothold there is a good chance the existing empire could consume it, or at least cause enough revolt to keep it from being functional.

 

[Arglebargle]

I was always amused by the Civ3 trope of 'Democracy has no corruption' in government. I think it was 3 anyway.

Hopefully the Firaxis team is good, because I don't put much import to the Sid Meier name any more. Marketing PR. But a new Civ is alluring....

 

[minmaster]

yea i figure whatever that's not in the vanilla will eventually be added in later via expansion packs. they have to save stuff for that so there's gonna me some holding off of things.

 

[HomerX]

I think the "problem" with the religions in civ4 is that the impact on diplomacy is too big.

Small nuances in diplomacy are pointless when the other Civ hates you because of a different religion.

Most of the time it`s that simple: same religion = friend, other religion = enemy.

 

[paperfist]

I think the "problem" with the religions in civ4 is that the impact on diplomacy is too big.

Small nuances in diplomacy are pointless when the other Civ hates you because of a different religion.

Most of the time it`s that simple: same religion = friend, other religion = enemy.

Yepp:

"A few days ago, IGN published an early preview of Civ5 in which they discuss some of the influences of the current build, including Civilization Revolution and Panzer General. We also get a sense of lead designer Jon Shafer's impact in shaping the game.

Here is an excerpt, focusing on diplomacy and moddability:

Naturally, it's not all about making war, so diplomacy has been overhauled as well. Diplomacy has a wider focus but has also been streamlined a bit. In terms of focus, the team wanted to create a game where the player's main interactions weren't always driven purely by competition. The inclusion of unaligned city states that can be used as leverage against larger powers helps move diplomacy in a new direction. By removing the religion and espionage systems, Firaxis hopes to focus diplomacy more on specific strategic situations and less on the exploitation of more arbitrary game elements. [...]

It's not surprising given Jon's background that the new version of Civilization will be even more moddable than Civ IV. All the tools have been taken to a whole new level, so the more you know about XML and programmable DLL, the more you'll be able to achieve with the game. More importantly, the game itself will contain a browser for full community interaction, so you can search for, discuss, install and rate mods all from within the game shell. Firaxis will maintain a small bit of control over this and will rely on player flags to evaluate objectionable content."

http://www.civfanatics.com

So they nuked spies too, wow. Not that I liked spies a whole lot as for me they were limited use, but that an no religion is taking a few steps back from Civ IV. I hope the new layout makes up for it.

 

[nageov3t]

looks really interesting.

the religion change doesn't bother me too much, I almost always completely ignored it on all of my civ 4 games beyond occasionally bombarding a potential rival with missionaries to convince him to change his religions to get him to be more friendly.

the AI changes could be great. I always kinda wished there was a pacifist option to victory; it seems like in every previous civ game, not having a mega huge military = every country indiscriminately declares war on you.

 

[minmaster]

i do like when the AI notices things like weak military and takes that into account and tries to whoop your ass. if you are only paying attention to building and not having sufficient defenses at the least, you should pay for it and they should attack you. seems only fair.
how many empires have weak military? you shouldn't be able to ignore military and win.

 

[StinkyPinky]

Anyone want those advisors back from Civ 2? They were always good for a laugh

 

[nageov3t]

Anyone want those advisors back from Civ 2? They were always good for a laugh

all I can say is that it better have a throne room! that was like my favorite feature from civs 1-3

 

[Highmodulus]

One more turn . . . One more turn . . . One more Turn (repeat). Much later "HOLY CRAP its 3 AM!"

 

[acheron]

Anyone want those advisors back from Civ 2? They were always good for a laugh

"Give me more soldiers, noble leader, so that we may sheathe our swords in the beating hearts of our enemies!"

all I can say is that it better have a throne room! that was like my favorite feature from civs 1-3

Yes! Well, the throne room was in Civ 2; Civ 1 and 3 had the palace. Definitely want one of those back though!

 

[Gibsons]

One more turn . . . One more turn . . . One more Turn (repeat). Much later "HOLY CRAP its 3 AM!"

I'll stop when I get this next tech. Then I'll go to bed.

Ooh, cool, gotta trot out my new units, just to see.

I'll just explore this little area to the north, then quit.

Damn, need to build a city there. That's a good stopping point.

oh! only about 3 turns for the new wonder. I'll stop after that.

WTF! Alexander thinks he can mess with me??? Your movie sucked ahole, say goodbye to your empire!

 

[Martimus]

I see that they are using a lot of the concepts from Galactic Civilization in this new game. One thing I have learned from GC is that the small city states are mostly used as a way to gain technology or well developed land cheaply. This is because their diplomacy isn't nearly as good as the well developed nations, so trading with them is easy, and their military isn't that great (since they only have a few cities to produce units from), so you can easily invade them and take their land.

 

[minmaster]

One more turn . . . One more turn . . . One more Turn (repeat). Much later "HOLY CRAP its 3 AM!"

in the future hopefully they'll make civ playable in sleep.

 

[paperfist]

Anyone want those advisors back from Civ 2? They were always good for a laugh

Looks like they brought them back, but sadly in a more serious tone:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/107/1075587p1.html

Pretty good 3 page read covering a lot more ground then any other preview at this point.

 

[Daverino]

Ugh, no more city defections?

This is really sounding more like a war game than a Civ game.

 

[paperfist]

Ugh, no more city defections?

This is really sounding more like a war game than a Civ game.

That's the impression I'm getting as well.

However a little assurance from the devs that it's not:

PC Gamer

PCG: What have you streamlined from previous games?

Jon: We made some changes with religion. Because diplomacy is one of our focuses with Civ V, planning what an AI leader is thinking, how he's going to win the game, that wasn't something that was meshing very well with the religion system. In Civ IV, the religions were primary factors of who liked whom and who disliked whom. And that wasn't meshing very well with what we wanted to do, so we decided to move on without the religion system. But that's mainly because we wanted diplomacy to have more depth and not be so predictable. We wanted to make sure that the AI leaders were taking into account the same things as the player was taking into account. A player might not care what religion you're running, but they might care quite a bit if you attack one of their friends.

Let's see if there's a couple good examples...

Dennis: Jon's point about stepping away from religion is a good one. We want people to remember that as these systems are taken away, in favour of new systems, we're never leaving gaping holes where people are going to be saying, 'Oh my god, they took out religion, what am I going to do now?'.

We're putting in new mechanics, especially with diplomacy, that are making the game an entirely new experience - especially with things like city states. City states are a new mechanism on the map. They're smaller, single city, weaker NPCs scattered throughout the map. They never really grow that much, but they're there to grease the wheels of diplomacy.

Jon: There are a few mechanics of making making friends with them and getting rewards, and you can kill them of course if you want. But the thing we're excited about with these is: say you've made friends with a particular city state, and another AI power that's more militaristic decides he wants conquer it. You have this interesting situation that didn't exist in previous Civ games. Rarely were you concerned about other players, their survival, their situation. Now you can have this web of client states who are subservient to you and working towards your victory, and protecting them is very much in your interests. It works both ways. If you're a militaristic player, you now have to worry about who you're attacking because it might bring in a larger alliance against you.

PCG: Will the city states persist throughout the game or will they die out?

Jon: They start at the beginning like all other players, and they'll stick around to the end if they're able to survive that long.

Dennis: I was playing an excellent game the other day. City states that are close to your borders are candidates for you to take, because they give very good resources. I ended up taking a neighbouring city state, and that immediately sparked off a war with another civilization that was getting benefits from being friends with that city state. That war went on for some 200 years, with them trying to liberate the city state and me trying to keep and claim what I felt was mine.

 

[lupi]

Just started a rather interesting 4 game. Selected random for everything but kept difficulty rather simple. Have so far found stone, marble, copper, and horse all either within my empire or within a couple tiles of it. As long as I get iron I'll be good till I have ti worry about oil/uranium for all the stretegic resources. Have already produced two wonders with the resource production multiplier and haven't receieve word of any others completed. Also established 2 of the religions.

 

[minmaster]

Sid Meier’s Civilization V players will enjoy the benefits of the Steamworks’ features included in all PC versions such as
auto-updating,
Steam Achievements,
downloadable content,
multiplayer matchmaking and more.

Sid Meier’s Civilization V Digital Deluxe Edition
will expand players’ conquests with the new Babylonian civilization and their ruler, Nebuchadnezzar II (c. 630 – c. 561 B.C.).
As King of Babylon, gamers will be able to expand their empire with advanced Babylonian Bowmen to rightfully earn the title of Nebuchadnezzar the Great. Sid Meier’s Civilization V Digital Deluxe Edition will also include an in-depth “Behind the Scenes at Firaxis with Civilization V” video feature, as well as the game’s epic soundtrack.

Gamers who pre-order any version of Sid Meier’s Civilization V from Steam will receive
the downloadable bonus content, Cradle of Civilization Map Pack: Mesopotamia,
for free when the game is available.
The map pack will let players experience the traditional Western and Middle Eastern “Cradle of Civilization.”
The pack will include the Fertile Crescent with the Nile River valley to the west and extending east down the Tigris and Euphrates river valleys to the Persian Gulf. Leaders will be able to explore new terrain, cultures and conquests

does that mean we can't play Babylonians if we don't shell out the extra $10?