Civilization 5 Announced

[SevenSpirits]

The systems they've switched to all look really well designed to me. It does look like they've greatly reduced the number of (non-military) items in the game though: buildings, improvements, resources, specialists...

I'm not happy about that, but it should still be a good game, and worst case I think a mod of Civ V will be the best Civ game made so far. There's a lot of potential there.

[Jowy]

http://well-of-souls.com/civ/images/tech_tree3.jpg
Full tech tree (might not be the final version though)

[Sullla]

I really hope so, thyrwyn. I tend to be of the school of thought that says, "don't believe anything the developer says until you can play it for yourself." I've seen so many games where the developer and publisher were lying through their teeth just to build up hype (Spore, anyone?) Yes, I'd like to give Firaxis the benefit of the doubt. No, I'm not going to do so. Too many mediocre games released from them in the past four years: Railroads!, CivCity: Rome, Civ Revolutions, Civ4 Colonization. Not exactly a murderer's row there.

I'm inherently nervous when I see things like Civ5 bringing back lethal bombardment artillery. Those of us who played Civ3 to death see that and think, "Holy crap! That was totally broken in Civ3!" And of course the game mechanics could be totally different in this game, so who knows. If anything, I agree that the biggest problem with Civ4 was an overload of complexity, and a process of simplification would benefit the franchise. But that's easier said than done, and you have to be careful not to break the core design of the games in the process. Hope they knew what they were doing!

Very few people are talking about the new happiness model, and that's going to be the biggest change in Civ5. Forget the endless gyrations over "one unit per tile." As far as I can tell from screenshots, gold per turn maintenance from cities has been entirely eliminated. Instead of economic cost and happiness being the limiting factors on expansion in Civ5, it looks like you're just going to have happiness alone. It's... a very radical change from Civ4's most basic design. I fear that this will lead to the ICS mass-city-sprawl of Civ3 and earlier (since more cities doesn't penalize you and more cities is always good) even with the unhappiness penalty associated. This would also mean that you could do massive tile swapping/sharing amongst those huge 37-tile radius cities, thus skipping the need to buy tiles with gold. You could presumably run min gold and min culture, expanding like the plague and paying attention to nothing but the happiness meter. Hope that's not true, and ICS isn't the One Right Strategy ™ but we will see.

I still don't understand how research/gold/culture are going to work either. Tiles clearly produce food, shields, and commerce just as they always have. Then "something" happens, and that commerce turns into research, gold, and culture. What's going on under the hood - what step in the process are we missing? Where is that research coming from??? I really hope it's not something as lame as locked sliders - like 50% of your commerce always becomes research. Pretty sure they have something better in mind that that! But what (?) We need more info here.

[SevenSpirits]

There are no sliders and in fact no commerce. What you thought was tiles producing commerce was actually tiles producing gold. Every citizen produces one science. Buildings can presumably help with science too. It seems you need buildings to produce culture.

I think the split of commerce into non-interchangeable currencies is great, though it's confusing why they don't have more different improvement options given the greater number of possible yield combinations. (Instead there appear to be fewer types of improvements!)

It also looks like they've tweaked the costs of things in hammers/gold/science/culture so that 1 hammer is more equal in value of 1 of the others. (E.g. buildings/units are more expensive, techs are cheaper.) That's probably good too, even if it's mainly an intuitive help for new players.

[DMOC]

I am so psyched for this ....

[T-hawk]

Every citizen produces one science.

That sounds like a recipe for big-get-ahead snowballing. But there may be some checks against that that we're not seeing right now.

It also looks like they've tweaked the costs of things in hammers/gold/science/culture so that 1 hammer is more equal in value of 1 of the others. (E.g. buildings/units are more expensive, techs are cheaper.) That's probably good too, even if it's mainly an intuitive help for new players.

Commerce and hammers were closer to par in the older Civ iterations, so this is really going back to original behavior. They got out of whack only in Civ 4, where the tile improvements (towns) and specialists allow one citizen to produce 6 or 7 commerce or specialist beakers, as opposed to just 1 or 2 hammers. Plus the best way to produce hammers in Civ 4 isn't actually to produce hammers, it's to shortcut that process by draft and whip and chop. I wouldn't mind at all bringing that back to basics.

it looks like you're just going to have happiness alone. I fear that this will lead to the ICS mass-city-sprawl of Civ3 and earlier

Is this right? :

There is now only 1 happiness number for your entire empire. Unhappiness is based on number of cities and total population. Luxury resources each add 5 happiness.

It sounds like Civ 4's system, except operating at the civ-wide level instead of per city. Every pop point, ICS or not, counts towards unhappniess. A luxury resource enables 5 happy citizens across the empire, not 5 per city. This seems a reasonable system, if perhaps a bit of changing something for the sake of changing it. But we'll see how it plays.

[SevenSpirits]

It sounds like Civ 4's system, except operating at the civ-wide level instead of per city. Every pop point, ICS or not, counts towards unhappniess. A luxury resource enables 5 happy citizens across the empire, not 5 per city. This seems a reasonable system, if perhaps a bit of changing something for the sake of changing it. But we'll see how it plays.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure this is an anti-ICS mechanic. In Civ IV, every new city gives you +X happiness (pop capacity) where X is your happy cap. Under the Civ V system new cities are (I think) -1 happiness.

[Krill]

Just means you need to make sure that happiness resources are really well balanced. No real change there.

[Shoot the Moon]

Just means you need to make sure that happiness resources are really well balanced. No real change there.

Really? I hadn't read anywhere that a second say dyes doesn't also give more happiness, like how a second iron will allow more swordsmen. Unless you've read that somewhere, I guess it comes down to do you assume it works like civ 4 or do you assume it works like civ 5's strategic resources (and both I think would be reasonable assumptions. Then again I could have just missed where they said that).

[thyrwyn]

It has been specifically stated that more of the same luxury resource provide no additional benefit.

@T-Hawk: yes, there is now only happiness.

@Sullla: ICS could be a concern, though there are indications that it will not be - the price of social policies increases with each additional city, for instance.