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An Early Look At Civilization V 286

c0mpliant writes "IGN and Gamespot have each released a preview of the recently announced and eagerly awaited Civilization V. Apart from the obvious new hexagon shape of tiles and improved graphics, the articles go on to outline some of the major changes in the game, such as updated AI, new 'flavors' to world leaders, and a potentially game-changing, one-unit-per-tile system. No more will the stack of doom come to your city's doorsteps. Some features which will not be returning are religion and espionage. The removal of these two have sparked a frenzy of discussion on fan-related forums."
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An Early Look At Civilization V

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  • Stack o' Doom (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Psychotic_Wrath ( 693928 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @06:13AM (#31436106)
    They thought they fixed this with the collateral damage caused by seige weapons. They talk about it on the civ forum. The airstrikes do a pretty good job of weakening the Stack O' Doom
    • Re:Stack o' Doom (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @06:54AM (#31436254)
      ..the only problem is, the civ4 stacks of doom arrive thousands of years before aircraft are invented.

      It isnt until airships that the stacks of doom start their decline in importance, because prior to that it only takes a few forward units to shield the stack.

      The hardest early counter mechanic to stacks of doom would be unit upkeep cost (stacks are expensive), but thanks to the specialist mechanics, early warmongers simply chop out libraries, temples, and markets and run a specialist economy for research and money. Money isnt a problem when you can set your research slider at 0% and still keep up on techs.
      • Re:Stack o' Doom (Score:4, Interesting)

        by blahplusplus ( 757119 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @09:41AM (#31437238)

        "..the only problem is, the civ4 stacks of doom arrive thousands of years before aircraft are invented."

        This is what catapults are for, and they come long before aircraft, did you even play Civ? Seriously?

        • Re:Stack o' Doom (Score:4, Interesting)

          by Rockoon ( 1252108 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @01:10PM (#31440962)
          It is you that seems to not be playing any competitive Civ4.

          Catapults damage at most 4 to 6 units. A stack of doom is 20 to 30 melee units, also with 5 to 10 catapults. You can slam my stack with collateral catapults, but then I slam your city defenders with collateral catapults. Unless your city has a big stack in it, its going down to my stack.

          You've got exactly 1 turn to hit my stack with catapults, because I blocked the path to my stack as it approached your city.

          In human vs human play, the only defense to big stacks is bigger stacks.
  • New AI (Score:3, Interesting)

    by sopssa ( 1498795 ) * <sopssa@email.com> on Thursday March 11, 2010 @06:18AM (#31436116) Journal

    I love diplomacy but it sucks when you know the AI is going to cheat. I hope Civ V will finally have an AI that doesn't cheat.

    • Re:New AI (Score:4, Funny)

      by hotdiggity ( 987032 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @06:38AM (#31436194)

      I love diplomacy but it sucks when you know the AI is going to cheat. I hope Civ V will finally have an AI that doesn't cheat.

      You want nations that don't cheat on diplomacy?

      If we're going to abandon reality, why don't we just add wizard units and inter-dimensional portals too?

      • Re:New AI (Score:4, Insightful)

        by moonbender ( 547943 ) <moonbender AT gmail DOT com> on Thursday March 11, 2010 @07:05AM (#31436302)

        Are you joking? I you aren't, he's talking about AIs getting better gaming conditions (things are less expensive, etc) on the difficulty levels above Noble. The player gets similar bonuses on levels below Noble. Backstabbing in diplomacy is available at all difficulty levels.

        • Re:New AI (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Ailure ( 853833 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @07:26AM (#31436384) Homepage

          What I would like to see is probably the game being more clear with what each difficulty actually means. Probably would be over the head of most people, but at least marking how much advantage you get vs computer. Other than knowing that me and the AI is on equal footing at noble difficulty... it's not really as clear it could be in Civ IV. :)

          • Re:New AI (Score:5, Informative)

            by Brownstar ( 139242 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @08:25AM (#31436674)

            You're right for most people, they probably don't care, which is why the Game presents it in basic terms.

            But, if you're on of the ones that truly cares, all of that information is in plain text format (marked up in XML) in the /Assets/XML/GameInfo directory. (You can even change it if you want).

            The file that addresses the changes in difficulty specifically is: CIV4HandicapInfo.xml

            But also realize that some of these factors are also modified based on world size, and turn speed as well. (Possibly some other things that I've forgotten as well).

            I know Civ3 and Alpha Centauri had similar files, and If I remember correctly, I beleive even Civ2 stored all of this information in text files that could be modified.

            Which is one of the reasons that the various Civ's have always been so modable.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by T.E.D. ( 34228 )

        If we're going to abandon reality, why don't we just add wizard units and inter-dimensional portals too?

        I'm with hotdiggity. When is the sequel to Master of Magic comming out?

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by ultranova ( 717540 )

        If we're going to abandon reality, why don't we just add wizard units and inter-dimensional portals too?

        Done [civfanatics.net].

        Altought if you want portals you can pass, you'd need to go back to Master of Magic. Perhaps that could be the defining new feature of Civ 5: allow multiple separate maps, to model the colonization of Moon and nearby planets? It doesn't make any sense to send a spaceship to Alfa Centauri, when Mars is closer and pretty close to habitable.

        That, and I'd really like to see undersea colonies/tunnel roa

  • by aaron alderman ( 1136207 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @06:19AM (#31436128) Homepage
    I'm glad they got rid of religion. Hopefully we can get rid of it in this world too.
    • by pagaboy ( 1029878 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @07:50AM (#31436462)
      If you believe it enough, I'm sure it'll happen.
  • by nanoakron ( 234907 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @06:40AM (#31436202)

    My pet gripe with Civs 3 & 4 (never played 2 but LOVED 1) was the time-constrained tech tree.

    I used to love dumping all my resources into tech just to get nukes by 1000AD and then quickly ruling the world. Why shouldn't I be allowed to do that in later Civs?

    Why can I only get electricity within 100 years of when we discovered it in the real world? Or metallurgy? Or whatever I choose to dump my nation's resources into?

    (Oh, and please do an updated version of Alpha Centauri as well...)

    -Nano.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      You can get your techs very early relative to the time period if you play the marathon or epic versions. I've always been more disappointed in the lack of future techs. I know a few mods tried to address that, but they simply weren't as well thought out or professional as Firaxis's work. I want techs extending into the science fiction future. That would just be so cool. It feels kind of silly that the greatest weapon on earth is... a 40 hit point armored tank.
      • I want techs extending into the science fiction future. That would just be so cool. It feels kind of silly that the greatest weapon on earth is... a 40 hit point armored tank.

        That was the best aspect of Call to Power, IMO. The gameplay doesn't end until 3000CE.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Ailure ( 853833 )

      There is no time-constraint to the tech tree in Civ IV. Civ IV simple made it harder to tech really quickly (especially since SmallPox/ICS was majorily nerfed). I play FreeCiv with friends at times, and it's almost ridiculous how fast you can go through the tech tree in a 1 vs 1 game.

      Unfortunatly Firaxis have already stated there's licensing issues regarding Alpha Centauri due to the rights being owned by EA Games.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by T Murphy ( 1054674 )
      I've only played Civs 3 and 4 (civ 4 is nice for a change, but 3 is better), but I know in Civ3 there is an accelerated production option which lets you finish the tech tree before 1300 AD on a large, full game. You can make a map and remove the 4-turn minimum, which would probably allow you to start nuking by 1000 AD if you lead in GNP.
  • Removal Of Religion? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by FinchWorld ( 845331 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @06:44AM (#31436218) Homepage
    Religion, whilst not game changing as many other factors (Hello pratorians!), made an interesting difference to diplomacy and a slight boost to gold. It was also useful to spread to opponents cities to allow spying/gold generation, and was one of the few reasons to consider open borders. It'll be interesting to see how the civics will be altered to reflect the lack of religion. On a side note anyone know of a decent guide to get Civ 4 (or generic guide for games) running under Ubuntu 9.10 x64 with ATI propriety drivers (HD4600)? I've got it working on a different comp using a Geforce card but not the ATI.
    • Wasn't open borders worth it for the income boost from trade connections alone? Can't help you with that ATI card, though I also got Civ4 working beautifully with an Nvidia card.

  • Both Good and Bad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sonicmerlin ( 1505111 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @06:45AM (#31436222)
    I'm excited about the removal of "stacks of doom" for the increase in strategy with battles, but I'm rather disappointed in their PC move of removing religion. Religion has been a huge driving force, if not the greatest motivator, of the last several thousands of years. To remove it and just leave "culture" is a rather silly cop-out to the overly sensitive fools out there.
    • CIV4 has environmentalism to the level it might as well be religion.

      So making 3 gorges dam gives me negative points... guess dams were not on the developer approved list of clean resources.

    • by CODiNE ( 27417 )

      Maybe the next Civ will remove culture then we can all get along as one big happy family. Right?

    • I'm excited about the removal of "stacks of doom" for the increase in strategy with battles,

      I think you confuse strategy with tactics.

    • Re:Both Good and Bad (Score:5, Interesting)

      by T.E.D. ( 34228 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @09:29AM (#31437140)

      You are absolutely right about the sillyness of removing Religon from a game about recreating history.

      OTOH, Sid Meyer is rather famous for removing gameplay features that detract from the fun of the game. Quite often over the loud objections of simulation purists. It could just be that this was one of those cases. Religon's biggest long-term effect in the CIV4 was just to give AI Civ's one more thing to get pissed off at you about. There was no winning with it either, as no matter which you picked, you'd tick somebody off. This made persuing one of the peaceful victory options (like a cultural win) damn near impossible. At least for me.

      • Re:Both Good and Bad (Score:4, Interesting)

        by Mongoose Disciple ( 722373 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @10:13AM (#31437664)

        Religon's biggest long-term effect in the CIV4 was just to give AI Civ's one more thing to get pissed off at you about. There was no winning with it either, as no matter which you picked, you'd tick somebody off. This made persuing one of the peaceful victory options (like a cultural win) damn near impossible.

        I will respectfully disagree with you:

        - Yes, your choice of religion will most likely piss somebody off. (It's not completely unheard of for everyone in a Civ IV game to end up with the same religion, but mostly rare.) But that's just a reflection of the nature of diplomacy in Civ IV in general: nearly everything you do pisses somebody off. Sign a defensive pact with Russia or trade and you make them happy, but their enemy Germany gets surly about it. Diplomacy in Civ IV is less about trying to make everyone happy and more about choosing who to befriend.

        - Along those lines, religion added something interesting to the game in making you weigh the costs and benefits of a religion choice. Most of my cities are Buddhist, but my Aztec neighbor is Hindu. Is it more important to me right now to maximize the happiness/production of my cities by choosing Buddhist, or to make Montezuma happier with me by being Hindu?

        - The Apostolic Palace, especially in the votes that result from it, add an extra layer of complexity. Ideally you'd like to be the religion that covers your country the most, build the Palace, spread your religion to other civs, and use it to push them around. But there are opportunity costs in achieving all of that, and there's always the chance that someone else spreads the religion more than you have and uses the Palace to push you around instead. In a lot of ways it's a more complex early-game U.N., which I think would be right up your alley if you like diplomacy.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        Religon's biggest long-term effect in the CIV4 was just to give AI Civ's one more thing to get pissed off at you about. There was no winning with it either, as no matter which you picked, you'd tick somebody off.

        So it's just like real life, then.

    • by thesandtiger ( 819476 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @10:36AM (#31438164)

      I don't think it was a PC move - it just isn't that compelling a feature in the game and in the view of the designers removed more than it added. If they were remotely worried about being PC they wouldn't have had Stalin - a mass murderer surpassing even Adolph Hitler for body-count - as one of the leaders in the game since the first iteration, and certainly wouldn't have put religion into the game in the first place.

  • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

    by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @06:50AM (#31436238)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • by awol ( 98751 )

      Try the "Total War" series. Turn based game where you can choose to play thebattles in a 3d world. Most excellent fun. It is something that a turn based game can get from a 3d zooming structure.

      • Except the campaign map AI is most retarded in the Total War series. You can be allies for centuries, fighting side by side in war after war, but as soon as you border one another, they will betray you for no reason, even if you are a globe spanning empire and they are but a single province nation that you helped keep alive. They also tend to build rather silly armies that make little sense when put together. The AI is even worse in the latest game, Empire; it's so bad that, until a patch, the AI could not
        • by alen ( 225700 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @08:22AM (#31436648)

          welcome to the real world. go read a history book, this is exactly how things happened. Look at Britain and France. Mortal enemies for centuries, but as soon as Prussia/Germany rose to power they are now the best of friends. and Britain had a falling out with Prussia in the mid 1800's after centuries of being allies against France.

          Same with Russia. Allies in the wars against Napoleon but come the mid 1800's Britain goes to war against Russia because they expand in the Crimea

          • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

            Unfortunately for your quick dismissal, there were reasons that they made the switch; they wanted to maintain a balance of power, they were threatened with a greater common enemy, etc. In game, none of this makes any sense whatsoever. If the game AI was running the world, there would be almost constant warfare in every last corner of the globe for the great offense of being neighbors. Estonia would be waging an aggressive war of conquest against Russia, and despite having no money, no army, and their last p
    • Then you should really take a look at the games being published by Paradox Interactive [paradoxplaza.com]. Classics such as the Europa Universalis-series and the Hearts of Iron-series are great strategy games. They're also publishing several other games in the same genre and I'd strongly suggest taking a closer look for games that play well and don't need a brand new gaming rig.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by moonbender ( 547943 )

      Ridiculous. Sure, Civ4 could work fine with a Civ1 style graphics scheme. Though why stop there, just do it in ASCII, nethack/dwarf fortress style! That said, it would be nice to be able to switch over to a simple graphics mode to run it on a netbook that lacks a decent GPU. Anyway, from a gameplay perspective the game benefits from 3D, if you really want to call it that -- Civ4 is pretty 2D about it's 3D overhead view. Being able to zoom in to an individual unit isn't particularly useful (so why would you

      • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

        The interesting thing about dwarf fortress is that despite its primitive appearance, it's actually one of the most advanced games out there.

        Aside from the fact that it's an alpha, it partially doesn't have graphics because most hardware can barely handle the game. The only thing that makes graphics feasible is the fact that the game engine is single-threaded.

    • by Ailure ( 853833 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @07:43AM (#31436438) Homepage

      Just wondering, did you at some point try Civ IV?

      I play Civ IV and Freeciv and... I actually find both good to their own points. I find Freeciv Stronger than Civ I/II/II balance wise, but Civ IV have way different strategies which makes it interesting, especially with how you specialize cities. After getting used into thinking of terms of "cottage spam" and "specialist-based economy", I can't help but to find Freeciv rather basic. The irony is that while they removed a lot of old annoying micromanagement in Civ IV, they introduced new kinds of it. (I belive FreeCiv removed some micromanagment elements, such as making the game handle production/commerce "overflows" of various kinds).

      Personally I don't find the 3D view a nuisance. I actually find it useful in RTS games, where you can pan the camera around buildings that blocks the camera. Isometric 2D games are annoying when it comes to handling buildings that is in the way. If it's a 2D RTS, I prefer a birds view style ala Dune 2/Tiberian Dawn/Red Alert.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Maltheus ( 248271 )

      The thing about RTSes is that even though the older games often offer better gameplay, I can never go back to the old control systems. I somehow missed out on the whole starcraft thing and tried to play it a few years after, but couldn't handle it, due to an inability to group more than something like 8 units at a time. Supreme Commander may have gone overboard on the graphics, but I simple won't bother with an RTS anymore that doesn't have strategic zoom and the ability to infinitely queue your actions. Si

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by kjart ( 941720 )

      Secondly, Total Annihilation/Supreme Commander and C&C/Red Alert. There are RTS games but solely focused on small unit skirmishes and resource management, where development speed is core to winning each game... in which case, why in hell do I want (or even need) to mess around with zooming in and twiddling camera views? Just give me a single isometric view with sprite graphics...

      I'm sorry, but if you don't find the zooming in Supreme Commander amazing, you're doing it wrong. That was probably the most amazing feature of that game and makes every other RTS out there frustrating to play.

  • by AceJohnny ( 253840 ) <jlargentaye@NoSpam.gmail.com> on Thursday March 11, 2010 @07:02AM (#31436290) Journal

    I've recently discovered the Fall From Heaven 2 [civfanatics.net] mod for Civ4. It's the most sophisticated and complete mod for Civ4 out there. It's a fantasy mod set in a deep and well fleshed out universe [wikia.com]
    It brings much more new concepts and content than both commercial extensions, Warlords and Beyond the Sword (although it requires these to work).

    I expect it to keep me busy enough well past Civ V enters the discount bins. Having the mod ported to Civ V, however, will make me switch in an instant. Hint hint, Firaxis.

    • You should play Fall Further, it adds even more unique civs and tweaks to Fall From Heaven 2 (it's a modmod). More Civ-Crack for your enjoyment :-)

  • More previews (Score:2, Informative)

    by Eraesr ( 1629799 )
    They've got a preview up on Eurogamer [eurogamer.net] as well.
  • Wesnoth clone (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fph il quozientatore ( 971015 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @07:28AM (#31436392)
    Hexes, one unit per tile, ranged attacks, tactical combat, no need to garrison a city... Wow, civ5 will be an overpriced giant 3D Battle of Wesnoth clone.
    • by phiwum ( 319633 ) <jesse@phiwumbda.org> on Thursday March 11, 2010 @09:37AM (#31437202) Homepage

      Wesnoth does not have ranged attacks in any reasonable sense of the term. Units must be adjacent to attack. Civ V adds the capability of ranged attacks between unengaged units.

      That's not to say they do it well. Since when do archers fire over ponds and farmers' fields in order to hit city units? How far can these archers shoot? Somehow, that image bothers me.

      In any case, I'm certainly not intending to disparage Wesnoth with my comments. Wesnoth is, as far as I've seen, the hands-down best totally original open-source strategy game out there. I'm also not trying to compliment Civ V, since I haven't played the commercial version of Civilization since Civ II.

    • I have no clue if you're serious or not. There are about a billion games that meet your requirements, so I suppose by your logic they're all Wesnoth clones. Of course, since Wesnoth itself is a clone of the Warlords series of games, maybe you should just shut your trap, eh?

      And if I got trolled-- sorry all.

  • Swell... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by DoofusOfDeath ( 636671 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @07:42AM (#31436430)

    Just yesterday my wife said to me, "I can't believe you're still not bored of Civ3 after all these years." She knew I was at risk of staying up until 2 a.m. again playing it.

    This will not be good for me.

  • the only question we should be asking is: "where does the line start ???"

    seriously, i'll cut my left ball out fi i don't get this game on day ONE!

  • No city defection (Score:3, Insightful)

    by blind biker ( 1066130 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @08:16AM (#31436602) Journal

    I'm kinda bummed they got rid of city defection, because "my flavor" was that of cultural conquest.

    No stack of doom: I am ambivalent on this one. Frankly, I never understood the huge uproar against the stack. If a player has the industrial muscle to build one, what whine is that of yours? Build your own stack of doom to counter it, or shut up and lose.

    Hexes: I love that, and was eagerly awaiting for this feature to be implemented.

    No religion: it's OK, I was never too fond of the way it was implemented, anyway. I understand why it was implemented the way it was, and why it was dropped - it's the good-ole political correctness at work. But, it's all fine, peace brother...

    I just hope there still will be a "peaceful mode"-option to play the game, like there was for Civ IV.

    • regarding religion (Score:3, Insightful)

      by pnuema ( 523776 )
      They didn't drop religion due to political correctness. They dropped it because it added nothing constructive to the gameplay - ironic, isn't it?
  • by Kokuyo ( 549451 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @08:27AM (#31436682) Journal

    I always loved the game but I could never fully enjoy it either. I probably just suck at it, but war is no fun if one phalanx obliterates half a dozen tanks. What do I invest in science for when my future technology is trumped by this bronze age unit?

    I usually win by being first to colonize another world or by building the UN. But to have a chance at that, I need to set hostilities to a minimum... it's only half as much fun to play a castrated version of the game.

    I think next time I'll invest a few hours to read some guides and tactics.

  • Workers? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by wjousts ( 1529427 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @08:43AM (#31436788)

    How will the one unit per hex effect worker units? I could imagine it getting very frustrating when you can't move your armies out of your cities because of the gaggle of worker units building stuff around it. Personally, I'd like to see them do away with workers altogether. I've been playing CtP 2 recently (thanks GOG.com) and I'm really liking the lack of busy work moving workers around. I also like the fact that I can create trade routes without having to painstakingly move caravan units around.

  • by deniable ( 76198 ) on Thursday March 11, 2010 @09:21AM (#31437074)
    I just put in the Civ4 disk and lost three hours.

It was kinda like stuffing the wrong card in a computer, when you're stickin' those artificial stimulants in your arm. -- Dion, noted computer scientist

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