Civilization 5 Announced

[haphazard1]

Krill, I am not understanding your point/concern?

A ranged unit which can not actually capture a worker, but is in range of it, can fire at/shell the worker and damage or destroy it. Seems reasonable enough. I expect this will mostly involve naval units raiding your coasts and blasting your workers, as all naval units have ranged attacks. Barb triremes may be extremely annoying.

I wonder about naval ranged attacks -- the manual says units with ranged attacks always use them, even if they are adjacent. This makes sense, as a ranged attack means no chance of damage/destruction for the attacker. But combine this with enough movement points and space to manouvre and a faster ship can move in, pound its target, and then move back out of range. Or picture a "stern chase" scenario where a faster unit is pursued by a slower ship, and the slower ship never manages to get in range while the faster ship gets a ranged attack each turn.

Maybe the movement differentials are not large enough for this to happen, or I am missing some factor. But if this is possible, the AI had better know how to use these tactics or it is going to get chewed up and spit out. Maybe it will, and it will be human players getting chewed up until counter tactics are developed? One can hope.

Now picture the same kind of speed and ranged attack tactics being used on land....

[Krill]

Not really out of line, a knight costs 150 hammers...

haphazard, no real concern, I just find it amusing. I suppose the greatest concern would be that naval units could move in and bombard your workers on a coast and kill them, or that a couple of archers could destroy any worker on the border (effective range is 3 from FoW, which is quite far). And what is the downside to being damaged? Do workers not work at 100% if damaged?

[haphazard1]

Not really out of line, a knight costs 150 hammers...

Hmmm, I haven't looked through all the unit costs yet. I had read that units in general would be more expensive, and combined with the tile yields looking like hammers are going to be more difficult to come by that makes each unit more valuable.

But 150 for a knight? That's more than Civ IV infantry, and 2/3 more than a Civ IV knight. With scarcer hammers.... Production is going to be S-L-O-W compared to what we are used to, it seems. Combine fewer cities in an empire and builds tying them up for longer...this is going to take some getting used to.

[SevenSpirits]

Maybe the movement differentials are not large enough for this to happen, or I am missing some factor.

Most (all?) ranged units can't move again after attacking. I think only cavalry units (knights+) can move after attacking, as a special ability.

[Gold Ergo Sum]

National Wonders require a certain building to be created in EVERY city in the empire.

This seems very stupid to me. Yet another attempt to keep sprawling empires in check. And also, it forces you to build buildings you don’t need in specialized cities. If true, this is the single stupidest game mechanic I’ve yet heard.

[haphazard1]

Most (all?) ranged units can't move again after attacking. I think only cavalry units (knights+) can move after attacking, as a special ability.

OK, looks like you are correct on this. Most units can not move after attacking; most of the horse units can but do not have ranged attacks. An exception -- and now looking a LOT more interesting! -- is the Camel Archer unique unit. Manual lists it as ranged attack and can move after attacking, with range of 2 and movement of 3. Arabia may have a real winner here with some creative tactics.

Still seems odd that camel archers require horses, though.

And a possible answer on food resources -- there is a note later in the manual claiming that all worked resource tiles produce gold. If true, this would make them much better. The section on resources lists almost all of them as producing no gold, though, so this is still not fully answered.

[haphazard1]

National Wonders require a certain building to be created in EVERY city in the empire.

This seems very stupid to me. Yet another attempt to keep sprawling empires in check. And also, it forces you to build buildings you don’t need in specialized cities. If true, this is the single stupidest game mechanic I’ve yet heard.

No question that this is meant as still another brake on expansion. But as long as you only need to have the prereq building in every city when you start construction of the national wonder (or at worst throughout construction), then it is not too bad. Just build your national wonders during consolidation periods, then launch another wave of expansion.

If necessary, you can always cash rush the prereq building in your weaker cities. This sure makes marginal cities a tougher decision, though. I think the whole philosophy of squeezing in fishing villages and filler cities wherever you have space is pretty much toast in Civ V. This is probably part of why we are seeing so much empty space later in games, and non-contiguous empires. The spots that would be filled by smaller/marginal cities are just left empty. Not very realistic once you get beyond the earliest eras, as pretty much every scrap of land capable of supporting life (and thus of supporting people paying taxes!) was claimed by some empire or another.

If true, I am saddened by this change. I loved squeezing in a fishing village or a filler city in gaps in my empire, and then seeing just how much I could make out of them. Coastal tiles, windmills on ice hills, waterwheels on tundra rivers...it was amazing how much you could do with bad land. Sullla's report for his Azteskimos in Epic 2 comes to mind, with his windmill economy and fishing villages. But in Civ V with the happiness system and national wonders, cities like this will probably never be built.

[Jowy]

GameTrailers.com released a very good video review of the game. For us fanatics the most interesting thing is probably the games shown.. they definately felt like they were actually played by the reviewer, not a WB'ed scenario like in the GameSpot one. Some of you should be happy to spot quite a large empire there, I counted 15 cities, and little unoccupied land left in the world map by 1943AD.

[darrelljs]

Thanks for the link Jowy...that was a better than average review. One of the user comments that caught my attention:

Thank the gods they moved their online machinations to Steam, the multiplayer accessability was always a bit niche in Civ4.

Darrell

[haphazard1]

Good link, Jowy, thanks. Not a lot of new info, but some interesting shots and it did look more like an actual game.

I am a bit curious about some of the city placements shown. Several cases of cities quite close together...I wonder what the actual limits are?