Civilization V

[Valigarmander]

Civilization V Preview for the PC from 1UP.com

You don't mess with Civilization. If you aren't a Civ fanatic already, then you should know that Civilization is a veritable cornerstone of PC gaming; it's a franchise that defines the turn-based strategic experience, that exemplifies the "intricate systems interacting with each other to produce addictive gameplay" motif, that invented the "just one more turn" phrase within PC gamers' minds, and is often named the best game in PC history. Civilization titles are rare -- the "okay, this is pretty much the best one, there's no way to do but down after this" game that is Civilization IV came out way back in 2005.

So it's no small feat for Firaxis to be making Civilization V. Fact is, with a series this storied and iconic, the developers can't simply get away with making it look prettier and making the number bigger. They have to make a game that makes the five year wait worth it, especially after its near-perfect predecessor. So what will Civ V do? From a recent, 20-minute demonstration, here are four major changes that V is making to justify its existence.

No more squares!

The first and most prominent change that Firaxis personnel point out, and gamers notice, is that the tiles that make up land are now hexagonal instead of square. But really, what does having two extra sides on a polygon actually do? It helps in making more natural landscapes, such as mountain ranges or ocean fronts. But besides the aesthetic changes, since it is an under-the-hood change to a fundamental part of the game engine, it results in a lot of little tweaks.

For example, it's simply a lot easier to move around the map now. Not just in the fact that you have six choices of direction to go in versus four, but in that the hexes that the world is built on make many of the geographical aspects of the map clear. In previous Civ titles, you could easily see a pair of peninsulas that don't look connected via land, but in fact are, due to the squares underneath; you wouldn't realize that both land and water units can cross the same space. Now, with hexagons, the world layout feels more consistent and natural; when you see the English Channel on the map, you'll know that boats can cross it but cars can't.

It took a lot of lessons from CivRev!

As good as CivRev was, it was also classified as a "simplified Civ for console." Even as such, CivRev actually taught some significant lessons that are now being utilized for Civ V. Most of these don't apply to the mechanics or under-the-hood gameplay; they are more about presentation and information flow.

The basic takeaway that Civ V got from CivRev is that there is a lot of information being thrown at the player during the course of a Civ game, and Civ V now features a notification system. Any time something significant happens, a little pop-up just informs you about said event in the lower right-hand corner. Clicking on the notification then brings you right to where said event (a victorious battle, a devastating loss, a dying worker) occurred. On one hand, this solves the "I'm managing a whole bunch of stuff, and I've just been told that I lost a settler, but I have no idea which settler" problem. Additionally, because the notifications simply happen and get stacked in the corner, your actual gameplay and interface won't have a big "HEY STOP A MOMENT AND PAY ATTENTION" dialogue box in the corner. So you can continue to do stuff like move units or check up on cities at your own pace, and then address the notifications later.

Not as direct a carry-over, but still part of the "make things easier to manage" mantra of Civ V, is how mods will be handled. Don't worry, Civ V's mod support is still as robust as Civ IV's. The main change is that there will now be an in-game browser; so you can easily sort through, download, and rate mods right within the game (and conversely, it will also be easy to upload mods as a creator). Now you don't have to worry about hunting down a cool Fall from Heaven-style mod among a sea of fansites.

Leaders feel like people!

One of the other major tweaks is the whole treatment of leaders of other civilizations. There is a purposeful drive to make A.I. leaders feel like other players, not just random computer opponents, and to that end, Firaxis is going for a visual and gameplay overhaul.
For one thing, leaders aren't just talking heads anymore; they're now represented by full 3D-rendered characters that emote and animate when you deal with them. In fact, one particularly cool little touch is the fact that leaders speak in their native language (for our demo, we get to see George Washington representing America, and Otto Von Bismarck rocking his German tongue).

The other major change, besides the talkative and animated person yelling at you on-screen, is that their A.I. will be more "personality" driven. Meaning that rather than be a simple A.I. that attempts to win the game by any means necessary (leading to hilariously odd situations like a warmongering Ghandhi), each A.I. will have a sort of guiding personality. This could mean a disposition towards using military force, or a love of science, or a paranoia of foreign culture. While the A.I. will still adapt and counter your activities (supposedly, the A.I. will notice you massing armies on its borders, for example), it will follow a basic personality type specific to that player. It might not result in weird "Hahaha, look at Alexander the Great being a wimpy non-conqueror!" type of moments, but it should actually result in more consistent, interesting, and "human-like" play.

Combat is different!

A huge change, besides the "hexes are the new squares" mechanic, is that combat doesn't allow for unit stacking. In previous installments, you could simply toss something like 15 stealth bombers and 20 tanks into the same "stack" of units, and just have this monster army roll around the map and kill things. Now, you can only have one unit per hex. Sure, this isn't the newest idea in the world (the Firaxis fellows point out that Advance War and Panzer General play just fine with the one-unit-per-hex rule), but for a Civ game, it's about as crazy as the "hey, you have hexes now" change.

This one-unit rule means that you actually have to think about how you deploy your military forces. It also means you'll want to upgrade units, or make sure they survive skirmishes in order to build up veterancy. It leads to moments like in 300 -- place a small but powerful group of fellows at a key terrain point, and watch them chew up the encroaching enemy. It also affects the defense of cities; in fact, cities are essentially one unit as well, and they defend themselves from attack (while benefiting from having a single unit garrisoning within for a defensive bonus, or using masonry research to build powerful walls).

Another wrinkle to Civ V's combat is that ranged units have their own special properties. Since unit placement is so key now, you can have ranged units attack from many tiles away -- a particularly easy-to-grasp example is having archers fire on an enemy two tiles away, and after that softening, to have their warrior pals close in for the final blow(s). Utilizing ranged combat and one-unit-per-hex deployment wisely makes for more interesting (and cooler-looking) tactical battles in a session.

There are a lot of other little things that make Civ V feel different, such as City-States -- which are individual cities with their own technology tree and A.I. personality that will never expand past its lone border but will play a big role in diplomacy (you can be nice to a City-State, or raze it and face the wrath of one of its allies as a result). Or how barbarians have a home city with their own technology tree as well (watch out for barbarians wielding machineguns!). Or how you can enter a research agreement with another Civ, in that you both pour time and money into a joint project, and can reach results quicker; but if you break the agreement, the time and money is then lost. Or how a domination victory lies not in smashing every city to the ground, but in capturing all the capital cities. And I haven't even seen other stuff like multiplayer or lategame play. But even as such, it's easy to see that Civ V is not only going to be a hugely significant PC game, it really is more than "a previous game with a bigger number."

You know, I've never played any of the previous Civ games, though they seem like they'd be right up my alley. Maybe I'll try one of them out sometime.

This game's coming out fourth quarter this year.

[Prince Toad]

Hmm, looks like it'll be an even bigger leap forward than Civ IV was. The no-stacking thing is especially intriguing for me, since I'm into tactical games like AW. This will definitely prevent me from getting much work done next semester.

[Robotazy]

I played CivRev, so I am intrigued by this iteration.

Mostly because I won by stacking units. It means I have to rely more on technology.

[Valigarmander]

Civilization V Conquers the U.S. September 21

2K Games revealed the ship date for Sid Meier's Civilization V this morning. North American fans of the longrunning PC strategy franchise can pick up the latest sequel starting September 21.

This news follows the announcement earlier this week that the Steam release of Civilization V will feature a number of exclusive extras, including Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, behind-the-scenes videos, and -- for anyone who preorders, at least -- a Mesopotamia map pack.

Look for more coverage of Civ V as we inch closer to its September release date.

Looks cool. Makes me wish I had a computer that could run new games.

[heh]

definitely gonna buy this at some point, no unit stacking owns since it will mean i can actually outsmart the enemy instead of just out-economying them

e: also hexs own

[Kil'jaeden]

I can see this being a big improvement as far as battles go. Battles were kinda boring before because it was all about massing a group into a stack and just using attrition when things got to kingdom and empire levels.

[Valentine]

Played Civ 3 and 4 a bit so this will be cool. The problem is that these games are so damn time consuming. I don't think I have room for it without sacrificing some other past time I enjoy.

[Prince Toad]

^^Yeah, I'm excited about the changes to combat, especially since I'm a military strategy kind of guy. Even something as simple as "melee in front ranged in back" makes a big difference. I actually already pre-ordered, since I'm know I'm gonna want this and you get some free **** for pre-ordering.

^That may be a problem, especially since they're releasing it during the school year (and I have so many other games to get through). Oh well, nothing to be done about it.

[I am nobody]

I was a big fan of the city and worker micromanagement aspects of Civ III, so I'm definitely disappointed to hear they'll be toning them down once again. That said, I like the military and diplomacy changes a lot.

I'm going to get the demo (which comes out sometime in September) before pre-ordering since I hated Rev and wasn't the biggest fan of IV.

[Prince Toad]

Tomorrow!

Oh, for anyone who's interested, the complete manual is up on the site. I spent a while looking through it yesterday. They have all the details about civs and units and how the game works and everything. Interesting reading, if you're curious about it.

[I am nobody]

I preordered it yesterday on Steam and have it all ready to play for tomorrow morning. I'm still not sure about some of the changes, but it's hard to be too worried about a game with a 96 metacritic.

[Metal Man]

I plan to get it eventually, I got bored after they perfected the stacked-battle mechanic back in Civ 3.

[Valigarmander]

Unfortunately, I don't think I'll be getting this one right now as I have too much stuff going on and already a bunch of other games I need to play.

I might get this game once it's 15 years old like I do with all PC games though.

[Valigarmander]

Civilization V Review for PC from 1UP.com

They gave it a C.

[heh]

must have not bribed them enough

[Rainbow Dash]

i wish my laptop ran this better

:negative:

[I am nobody]

And that's why I don't use 1-Up for reviews.


Great game so far, but I really wish my graphics card was better and my CPU didn't run so hot when playing it. Once I get to the late-renaissance with 6+ civs, I have to stop playing occasionally or my laptop overheats.

[Fairlight Excalibur]

I really have not touched any Civilization games since the very first one, although even back then they were smart enough to limit the armies to one unit per space. <.<'

[Prince Toad]

My God... it's cripplingly addicting. I fear my productivity may never recover. I'm pretty sure it's actually a very good game though. Most of the features we've been hearing so much about-- one unit per tile, city-states, road maintenance, etc.-- are big improvements, in my opinion.

That said, the 1-Up review does raise a couple relevant issues. There are definitely a few annoying bugs-- I've had a crash and a corrupted save file (thankfully it was okay since I had an autosave, but still annoying). The lack of information about other civs, especially during diplomacy, is a bit infuriating. The point about Social Policies just being an alternate tech tree is especially insightful. I hadn't thought of them that way, but now that it's been pointed out, I can't really disagree. There are minor differences between tech and culture-- culture expands borders and grants bonuses, while tech leads to new units, buildings, and abilities-- but the fact is you can win by both of them, and the mechanisms are extremely similar.

Their biggest problem, that the AI sucks at tactical combat, is one I haven't really noticed. I've been tearing up the enemy armies in my game, granted, but that's mostly because I've had horses and iron and my enemies haven't. I'm about to get into a big transoceanic war with the only other remaining power, though, who has a comparable military to mine, so we'll see if I start to notice poor AI more once I launch the invasion.

(Side note: Val, please change your damn avatar. It's horrifying... but so hypnotic...)

[Valigarmander]

I'll get to it once I find a better one.