Civilization 5 Announced

[BCAgamer]

I think 5-6 major cities would be great for a standard map by modern times, along with another 5+ lesser cities. I think that Civ 4 was fairly good in that regard, although slightly restrictive. 5-6 cities on a major map period would be too little.

[SevenSpirits]

It isn't a question of can, it is a question of optimal. The name Civilization alone implies something large, something sprawling. A bit of an empire so to speak.

If they designed the game where optimally you build 5-6 cities, and anything more than that becomes a drain, I think much of what makes Civ great would be nerfed.

Now if you have a write-up of a game that you won on Immortal running a OCC against AIs allowed to expand to their fullest extent, I would love to read about how that was accomplished. I would learn a lot.

I haven't played anything resembling a normal single player game recently, as I just got sick of the stupid AI. But, here's something my friend wrote about OCC deity space races: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=324408 (Obviously it's very specialized advice, but maybe you'll find it interesting.)

One thing to keep in mind with Civ V cities is they have about twice the workable land area and no local population cap, so you could easily play with half the number of Civ IV cities and have comparable population (which is what really matters). And that's assuming that your Civ IV pop was limited by workable tiles. (That doesn't happen until late.)

[Kylearan]

One concern I have about empires with fewer cities and having patches of wilderness even in the classic age is warfare. If your borders won't touch any enemy borders, attacking your neighbour might become less appealing. You have longer supply lines (through wilderness!) and less incentives to keep a captured city if it's not bordering your other cities.

But if they really have aimed for strengthening the war side of things in this game, they have probably dealt with this somehow - I have faith in them. Even more so after having read the Elemental: War of Magic forums for some time.

[Sullla]

Of course you "can" play and win with minimal cities in Civilization. But that's playing a variant, and only possible because the AI = dumb. The true test is always Multiplayer against other humans. Can you beat other comparable players if they continue expanding and you hold yourself to just a few cities? Err, not so much. And that is a good thing.

I'll also echo Speaker in my concern that Civ5's Multiplayer probably won't be very good, because we've heard nothing other than the fact that it exists. When a publisher is quietly sweeping something under the rug, it's a pretty bad sign. Compare that to Civ4's Multiplayer, which was extensively featured in pre-release media coverage:

http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/civilization-iv/650898p1.html
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/strategy/civi...33286.html
http://pc.ign.com/articles/650/650805p1.html

The Civ4 team couldn't wait to discuss the new MP engine, and had Internet reviewers playing matches against one another. I should know, I was there when it happened! They took away our QA PCs for the day and we watched TV in the lounge. The deafening silence on Civ5's MP is quite a contrast.

[Krill]

More than anything, the map generator is going to have to be nigh on perfectly balanced if the number of cities are being kept small. If your resources are all over the place, and you need to build a load of cities to grab the necesarry terrain, and another civ only needs to plant 2 cities to get all strat resources for the early game, a couple of happies etc...

[Cyneheard]

The only part of the game that sounds interesting from an MP perspective is the combat. But, really, if I just want a turn-based MP 1upt hex-based combat system, I'll just go play Wesnoth for free.

The economics of the game seem to be very heavily predicated on trusting the AI to do things for you properly (city states and puppet states in particular; research agreements and other diplomacy will work just fine for non-CTONs). That strikes me as incredibly problematic for MP play. The city-states will sometimes gift you Great People! And several of the special abilities simply won't function in an MP no-barbs no-city state environment (Greeks, Ottomans, Siam, and partially Songhai).

Somehow I doubt the map generator is going to be perfectly balanced. I get the impression they're focusing on naturalism/realism more there than actual balance. That's probably an outgrowth of Shafer coming from playing lots of Hearts of Iron, where the concept of "balanced" is in some ways nonexistent: How do you balance 1936 Germany against 1936 Poland?

[darrelljs]

I enjoyed the video at Gamespot. I'm pretty much with Kylearan on this one...they get the benefit of my doubt until they screw one up .

Darrell

[Square Leg]

Interesting video - Puppet cities?
I didn't really understand that... who defends them? a re they like a city state then?

[Speaker]

I enjoyed the video at Gamespot. I'm pretty much with Kylearan on this one...they get the benefit of my doubt until they screw one up .

Darrell

You mean aside from their last 5 or so titles?

[Twinkletoes89]

I'm really on the fence looking at that video - there some bits which I like and some which I really don't!

Good:

City States & Puppets look like they could be fun to play with - though would need to be well balanced at higher levels (which I likely won't reach anyway!)

One unit per tile warfare actually seems like it could work well. It would need some getting used to but heck it mught be worth it.

Bad:

New character animations seem like a massive waste of time to me. Graphics for graphics sake and will just make it harder to run for no great improvement.

City interface looks a bit clumsy and confusing. Might be ok but it will have to be a lot better than it looks to impress me.

The biggest issue is the demands on a pc. I have decent PCs but it looks like they may very well struggle to run this - which means I can't play it :-(

I think i'll be waiting a little while before I decide to buy it.