Civilization 5 Announced

[Adlain]

well im getting Civ V because if nothing else i want to complete the set. Still, i never condem a game before i play it - Hell im one of the few (that i know of) that actually enjoyed Myst 3

[Selrahc]

Quite a lot of FFH coders on that list. Kael, Opera, Nikis Knight, Xienwolf, Wilboman and a few others.

[Krill]

Which in itself is an interesting point, as we know FfH is supposed to be going standalone. Perhaps it will be based on CiV code...

[Kristian95]

nice to see Sirian in the tester list :D (I'm assuming he is Bob Thomas )

[Gold Ergo Sum]

I am posting a big write-up of the observations I make from reading the entire manual, but I thought I would post this because it clears up some of the fears people have about expansion:

You can annex a puppet city at any time.

So you can make a captured city a puppet city, ignore the happiness penalties until the war ends, and then annex it when you are ready to focus on consolidating your empire.

[haphazard1]

Been browsing the manual...BIG changes in great person generation. (See page 99)

It looks like GPP are still handled on a per-city basis, and not pooled empire wide. However, each type of GPP is now independent of the others. If a city is generating artist points and engineer points, those two pools are not combined. When one pool reaches the threshold for the next GP, you get a GP of that type and the other pool is not touched. GPP cost rises with each successive GP, as before.

So GP generation is now purely deterministic -- no random chance, no mixed gene pools. You will know exactly what type of GP you will get and exactly when you will get it. Overall generation will be slower since you do not get to combine GPP of different types, and there will be more "stranded" GPP which will never actually trigger a great person.

[Krill]

The bit that got me was the example said that the first GP cost 10 gp points, and hte second was 15. however, it didn't say that this was absolute in any way, just as part of the example for how the pools and overflow worked. If they are that cheap, then GP are definitely going to be ubiquitous in any strategy.

[Aretii]

Where did it say that? On page 99 it gives a hypothetical example, but it never out and out says that. I do not recall it ever stating what the first level of GP generation is.

Only takes one GP to start a GA, but GA are weaker due to the partitioning of commerce. I suspect the tile improvements will see heavy use, especially the Great Scientist one.

[haphazard1]

Aretii, it always costs one GP to trigger a golden age but each successive GA gets shorter. I think I saw a thread indicating the minimum is 3 turns, but I am not sure of that.

The "costs 10 GPP" is from the example. Either that is just a hypothetical example figure for simplicity, or GP really are going to be much more common.

A couple other things I have noticed in the manual:

- Jungles now turn into plains when chopped.

- Forests have a set yield no matter the underlying terrain type.

- "Bonus" resources (previously food/health) all produce +1 food except for fish at +2. The manual mentions something about gold, but none of the descriptions mention gold. If true, any bonus resource on a tile which can be farmed is useless as the farm will always produce at least as large a yield boost (and likely larger). And you can't trade bonus resources, since they have no other value or effect than the tile yield.

- There are now game/map settings for random map type and random map size. Should add a nice bit of unpredictability.

- Some of the most common .ini file settings such as auto-save frequency are now directly available in an options screen. Handy.

[Thoth]

Civ V's genius lies in the way that Firaxis has aggressively chopped the number of decisions that a player has to make during the course of a game

It's statements like these that have me convinced that Civ 5 will be a worthy successor to Civ III.