Overview of civ5 previews

[Shabbaman]

I just read a preview on Kotaku. Most notable things:

The ground looked good, lifted naturally by mountain ranges and cut by rivers. As good as those graphics looked, the game is supposed to be able to run on the widest range of PC hardware specifications supported by the series yet, from laptops Civ fans use on planes to high-end PCs. The current minimum spec Firaxis is hoping to accommodate are 256 MB video cards and dual core processors. That target might change.

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.

This explains the odd border in the pictures we saw. Nice feature.

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.

Wut? Firing cities?

[Robi D]

I suppose their might be some fixed weaponry in the citiy itself or it might mean units in the city fire back automatically much like a fighter on intercept attacks bombers.

The whole new way of border expansion sounds interesting

[Shabbaman]

Yes, something like coastal batteries

[Socrates]

Originally Posted by Shabbaman

This explains the odd border in the pictures we saw. Nice feature.

I've always thought that the border expansion in Civ was too simple and mechanical. And boring. Very welcome addition !

Wut? Firing cities?

Age of Kings has this IIRC. You would ring the bell so that people gathered inside the forum and fired at the enemy.

[BCLG100]

archers can fire over lakes or something is what i hear

[Robi D]

Found a preview at IGN. Here is the link;
http://au.pc.ign.com/articles/107/1075587p1.html

There is a bit i'll quote here for the lazy which explains the firing cities and one unit per tile err hex for battles

One of the biggest changes to the game is the new one-unit-per-hex restriction. Previous Civ games have been dominated by the "stack of doom" where players create an unstoppable super unit by piling all of their units in a single square. That strategy is not available in Civ V, which should, the designers reason, pull combat away from the cities. Now when an invading army enters your territory, you'll want to send your spearmen and warriors and swordsmen out to fight them in the fields around your towns. Cities will automatically defend themselves now, and can benefit from increased defense based on certain structures or technologies, so you don't necessarily need to garrison a unit for defense but you can if you want to.

Because you're limited to just one unit per hex, battles have the potential to be much more tactical, both with regard to the placement of your units and geographical obstacles. We saw a few battles that highlighted the significance of the new system. In one, two groups of units were facing off against each other around a one-hex lake. An archer unit was able to fire at enemy units on the far side of the lake and stay protected from melee attack by two allied units on either side. In another battle, a small group of powerful units were able to hold off a much larger attacking army in a narrow mountain pass. Because the attacker could only bring one unit into the fight at a time, the defender was able to eliminate the numerical disadvantage.

I like the fact terrain will have a greater influence on things and that battles wont be centred around cities only. All the other promises in the article sound good too, but i'm going to wait and see how it actually turns out before rushing out to buy it. Also they got rid of espionage as well as religion

[Shabbaman]

My guess is they'll add espionage in an expansion, as with civ4. By the way, would this be the first civ version where building fortresses (or the great wall...) will actually make a difference?

[Robi D]

Originally Posted by Shabbaman

By the way, would this be the first civ version where building fortresses (or the great wall...) will actually make a difference?

It looks like it

[Beam]

And probably the first where units in a city don't affect happiness.

[Socrates]

It looks like tactical skills will be needed on the main map. Although I like the sound of "tactical", I hope it is not too much detailed.

And I'm starting to think that one should really seperate strategic movements and tactical movements (a la Heroes of Might and Magic), because firing from 2 tiles away really looks stupid. I'd rather see armies meeting in a same tile and fight there with the help of a distinct micro-battlefield.