WARNING: INCREDIBLY LONG. FEEL FREE TO IGNORE.
These are my observations from sitting down and really poring over the manual for a decent number of hours.
First of all, there are several discrepancies in the manual, such as listing the same Wonder as doing different things, or information that seems inaccurate based on more recent builds.
So far, my favorite thing about the game is the great number of buildings to be constructed in cities and the unique prerequisites required. It makes the settling of cities in specific places even more important and the presence of certain resources near a city more valuable locally. And some buildings also make some tiles that have few uses (jungles, mountains, desert) useful. Even when specializing, most cities contained the same buildings by the late game in Civ IV. I like that cities may be more unique now.
By the same token, my least favorite thing about the game is that 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 seen.
You do indeed receive some gold back for deleting a unit.
Zones of Control-Combat units exercise a ZoC in the tiles around them, and if an enemy moves from one tiles within the ZoC to another, the enemy unit expends all movement points. Weird.
Not sure how I feel about embarking. Certainly reduces the micro, but if embarked units cannot attack/defend, I would prefer to just build a transport. And do I really have to use a promotion every time I want to send a unit abroad?
“You may have a chance to negotiate yourself out of a Declaration of War.” Interesting.
Attacking units receive a 15% flanking bonus for each unit adjacent to the attacked enemy unit. I like it. Tactics.
Attacking units receives a bonus for attacking from a hill. Hills appear to be KEY tactically.
Forts can be constructed in neutral territory.
Fortification provides a 25% defensive bonus on the first turn, and 50% on all subsequent. Wow.
If a unit wakes from fortification with the ALERT function, it retains Fortification bonus until moved.
All navals units are ranged units, and can attack land units within their range.
Barbarians hold Settlers and Workers captive in the nearest encampment. Whatever civilization destroys the encampment gets those units. I really like this idea.
City’s combat strength doesn’t reduce as it takes damage.
All other units combat strength reduces by roughly 50% of its reduction in hit points. So a unit whose hit points have dropped from 10 to 2 (80%) will lose roughly 40% of its combat strength. This makes Japan very powerful as their leader trait means combat units fight at full strength even when damaged.
All units have 10 hit points, and all cities have 20 hit points. All land units heal 3HP/turn in friendly cities, 2HP/turn in friendly territory, and 1HP/turn in neutral/enemy territory. Naval units can only heal in friendly territory and heal 2HP/turn. Cities heal 1HP/turn every turn.
Great Generals provide a 25% combat bonus to all units within 2 adjacent tiles.
If an experienced unit dies, half of its XP is removed from the pool of XP to create the next Great General.
Siege units must expend one movement point to setup before attacking, or to disassemble before moving.
Units gain 5 XP for melee attacks, 4 XP for defending against melee attacks, and 2 XP for attacking or defending against ranged combat. No unit can obtain more than 30 XP against barbarians. No more barbarian farming your way to a super unit.
Roman Legions are 13 combat strength, instead of 11 for a Swordsman, and the Legion can construct roads and a fort. Very strong. The other Roman UU is a Ballista, which has an 18 ranged attack, instead of a 14 ranged attack of the Catapult, and doesn’t need to be “setup.” Rome has beast UU.
The Camel Archer is very powerful and has no comparable standard unit like Horse Archer. On first glance, this seems the best UU in the game.
You cannot raize a city-state or an opponent’s capital city.
You can annex a puppet city at any time.
If you capture a city of a formerly eliminated civilization, you can liberate it and it returns to play. Bizarre.
All national wonders and military buildings in a captured city are destroyed. All other buildings have a 66% of surviving.
When you capital is captured, your palace is moved to another city until you recapture your capital.
Buildings cost between 0-10 gold/turn. In reality, most cost between 0-3.
You can see what tile your city will claim next due to cultural expansion before it expands, to plan ahead.
You can build roads in enemy territory. Not sure what this means. Can you use them?
Farms can be constructed on any tile (except ice/mountains) without a resource.
When an improvement is pillaged, it takes 3 turns to rebuild.
Barbarians merely pillage your cities, costing you some gold. You lose some of your gold (and your city) if captured by a city-state or other Civ.
Going negative in gold with no surplus gold will subtract the difference from your beakers/turn.
You get 3 beakers for your Palace and 1 beaker for each population point in every city.
Trespassing in a city-state degrades relations unless you are Friendly.
City-states will always accept peace unless allied with an enemy.
Declaring war on too many city-states can cause all the city-states to declare war on you.
Settled GP now create a tile improvement which must be worked.
The Great Library is the Civ IV Oracle. It appears that slinging Civil Service is going to be just as powerful.
A couple of wonders stand out as remarkably powerful:
Cristo Redentor-Reduces cultural cost of social policies by 33%.
Sistine Chapel-Produce 33% more culture in all cities.
Angkor Wat-Reduces cultural cost of new tiles by 75% (
).
The synergy between those 3 Wonders seems very high to me.
Great Wall-Movement costs for enemy land units inside your cultural borders reduced by 1 movement.
Himeji Castle-Additional 25% combat strength to units inside your cultural borders.
Couple Great Wall and Himeji and you will be invasion proof in a non-SoD world.
Hagia Sophia-Generate GPs 33% faster.
Two different Wonders increase the length of Golden Ages by 50%. Combined those two, and look out.
Many happiness increasing wonders.
Two different Wonders give a free social policy (one early, one late game).
Several wonders create a free GP (or two).
Gandhi is fascinating. Unhappiness from amount of cities is doubled, but unhappiness from population is halved. Will synergize with Tradition social policies. If you can build The Forbidden Palace, you reduce the unhappiness from number of cities by 50%, canceling out the negative aspects of Gandhi as a leader. Could be really powerful. Order social policy “Planned Economy” also reduces unhappiness from cities by 50%.
Given the strength of it’s UU and its powerful trait (25% production bonus to buildings the capital already produced), Rome seems the clear winner of the Civ contest to me. Persia’s leader is solid too (50% longer Golden Ages and increased combat effectiveness during Golden Ages). If you plan to go for Domination, Japan will be vicious, as its units’ combat strength doesn’t degrade with damage. The efficacy of Greece and Siam will depend on how city-states actually play (along the Patronage social policies, they could be overpowered). Songhai could be strong on an Archipelago map since its Embarked units can defend themselves.
It seems obvious to me that you will want to unlock Piety in the Classical era for the +2 happiness, and then use the Free Religion policy to get two free social policies. And only then would you switch out to Rationalism in Renaissance era.
Rationalism’s “Scientific Revolution” seems broken. Get two free techs? Just save that for as late as possible and sling some crazy expensive techs.
Domination victory happens only when one player has possession of their original capital. So it doesn’t matter if you possess each of the opponent’s capitals, you just have to be the only person who still holds their original capital. Weird, but could create some interesting (or broken) tactical situations.
The techs don’t do as much. Most of them unlock a new building or unit. Very few make any passive changes or changes to land improvements or tile yields. Seems like another 10 techs could’ve been added.
Tile types seem to have less difference in yields. For instance, Grasslands and Flood Plains have the exact same base yields. Unless techs/improvements are different for each tile, then why differentiate between them? The manual anecdotally makes it sound like there are differences between Grassland and Flood Plains for instance, but the base yields listed don’t reflect that. Must be missing something.
By the same token, all the food resources only add +1 food, except fish which add +2.
All the luxury resources provide only +2 to gold, except Gems which provide +3 and Whales which provide +1 Food, +1 Gold.
Strategic resources all provide only +1 to production. Numerous buildings require access to a certain strategic resource to build it.
Rationalism’s “Free Thought” allows +2 beakers for each Trading Post. This will make Trading Posts way more valuable.
We love the King is now a task requiring you to get a certain luxury resource for a city. If obtained, you get 20 turns of 25% increased growth.
These are my observations from sitting down and really poring over the manual for a decent number of hours.
First of all, there are several discrepancies in the manual, such as listing the same Wonder as doing different things, or information that seems inaccurate based on more recent builds.
So far, my favorite thing about the game is the great number of buildings to be constructed in cities and the unique prerequisites required. It makes the settling of cities in specific places even more important and the presence of certain resources near a city more valuable locally. And some buildings also make some tiles that have few uses (jungles, mountains, desert) useful. Even when specializing, most cities contained the same buildings by the late game in Civ IV. I like that cities may be more unique now.
By the same token, my least favorite thing about the game is that 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 seen.
You do indeed receive some gold back for deleting a unit.
Zones of Control-Combat units exercise a ZoC in the tiles around them, and if an enemy moves from one tiles within the ZoC to another, the enemy unit expends all movement points. Weird.
Not sure how I feel about embarking. Certainly reduces the micro, but if embarked units cannot attack/defend, I would prefer to just build a transport. And do I really have to use a promotion every time I want to send a unit abroad?
“You may have a chance to negotiate yourself out of a Declaration of War.” Interesting.
Attacking units receive a 15% flanking bonus for each unit adjacent to the attacked enemy unit. I like it. Tactics.
Attacking units receives a bonus for attacking from a hill. Hills appear to be KEY tactically.
Forts can be constructed in neutral territory.
Fortification provides a 25% defensive bonus on the first turn, and 50% on all subsequent. Wow.
If a unit wakes from fortification with the ALERT function, it retains Fortification bonus until moved.
All navals units are ranged units, and can attack land units within their range.
Barbarians hold Settlers and Workers captive in the nearest encampment. Whatever civilization destroys the encampment gets those units. I really like this idea.
City’s combat strength doesn’t reduce as it takes damage.
All other units combat strength reduces by roughly 50% of its reduction in hit points. So a unit whose hit points have dropped from 10 to 2 (80%) will lose roughly 40% of its combat strength. This makes Japan very powerful as their leader trait means combat units fight at full strength even when damaged.
All units have 10 hit points, and all cities have 20 hit points. All land units heal 3HP/turn in friendly cities, 2HP/turn in friendly territory, and 1HP/turn in neutral/enemy territory. Naval units can only heal in friendly territory and heal 2HP/turn. Cities heal 1HP/turn every turn.
Great Generals provide a 25% combat bonus to all units within 2 adjacent tiles.
If an experienced unit dies, half of its XP is removed from the pool of XP to create the next Great General.
Siege units must expend one movement point to setup before attacking, or to disassemble before moving.
Units gain 5 XP for melee attacks, 4 XP for defending against melee attacks, and 2 XP for attacking or defending against ranged combat. No unit can obtain more than 30 XP against barbarians. No more barbarian farming your way to a super unit.
Roman Legions are 13 combat strength, instead of 11 for a Swordsman, and the Legion can construct roads and a fort. Very strong. The other Roman UU is a Ballista, which has an 18 ranged attack, instead of a 14 ranged attack of the Catapult, and doesn’t need to be “setup.” Rome has beast UU.
The Camel Archer is very powerful and has no comparable standard unit like Horse Archer. On first glance, this seems the best UU in the game.
You cannot raize a city-state or an opponent’s capital city.
You can annex a puppet city at any time.
If you capture a city of a formerly eliminated civilization, you can liberate it and it returns to play. Bizarre.
All national wonders and military buildings in a captured city are destroyed. All other buildings have a 66% of surviving.
When you capital is captured, your palace is moved to another city until you recapture your capital.
Buildings cost between 0-10 gold/turn. In reality, most cost between 0-3.
You can see what tile your city will claim next due to cultural expansion before it expands, to plan ahead.
You can build roads in enemy territory. Not sure what this means. Can you use them?
Farms can be constructed on any tile (except ice/mountains) without a resource.
When an improvement is pillaged, it takes 3 turns to rebuild.
Barbarians merely pillage your cities, costing you some gold. You lose some of your gold (and your city) if captured by a city-state or other Civ.
Going negative in gold with no surplus gold will subtract the difference from your beakers/turn.
You get 3 beakers for your Palace and 1 beaker for each population point in every city.
Trespassing in a city-state degrades relations unless you are Friendly.
City-states will always accept peace unless allied with an enemy.
Declaring war on too many city-states can cause all the city-states to declare war on you.
Settled GP now create a tile improvement which must be worked.
The Great Library is the Civ IV Oracle. It appears that slinging Civil Service is going to be just as powerful.
A couple of wonders stand out as remarkably powerful:
Cristo Redentor-Reduces cultural cost of social policies by 33%.
Sistine Chapel-Produce 33% more culture in all cities.
Angkor Wat-Reduces cultural cost of new tiles by 75% (
).The synergy between those 3 Wonders seems very high to me.
Great Wall-Movement costs for enemy land units inside your cultural borders reduced by 1 movement.
Himeji Castle-Additional 25% combat strength to units inside your cultural borders.
Couple Great Wall and Himeji and you will be invasion proof in a non-SoD world.
Hagia Sophia-Generate GPs 33% faster.
Two different Wonders increase the length of Golden Ages by 50%. Combined those two, and look out.
Many happiness increasing wonders.
Two different Wonders give a free social policy (one early, one late game).
Several wonders create a free GP (or two).
Gandhi is fascinating. Unhappiness from amount of cities is doubled, but unhappiness from population is halved. Will synergize with Tradition social policies. If you can build The Forbidden Palace, you reduce the unhappiness from number of cities by 50%, canceling out the negative aspects of Gandhi as a leader. Could be really powerful. Order social policy “Planned Economy” also reduces unhappiness from cities by 50%.
Given the strength of it’s UU and its powerful trait (25% production bonus to buildings the capital already produced), Rome seems the clear winner of the Civ contest to me. Persia’s leader is solid too (50% longer Golden Ages and increased combat effectiveness during Golden Ages). If you plan to go for Domination, Japan will be vicious, as its units’ combat strength doesn’t degrade with damage. The efficacy of Greece and Siam will depend on how city-states actually play (along the Patronage social policies, they could be overpowered). Songhai could be strong on an Archipelago map since its Embarked units can defend themselves.
It seems obvious to me that you will want to unlock Piety in the Classical era for the +2 happiness, and then use the Free Religion policy to get two free social policies. And only then would you switch out to Rationalism in Renaissance era.
Rationalism’s “Scientific Revolution” seems broken. Get two free techs? Just save that for as late as possible and sling some crazy expensive techs.
Domination victory happens only when one player has possession of their original capital. So it doesn’t matter if you possess each of the opponent’s capitals, you just have to be the only person who still holds their original capital. Weird, but could create some interesting (or broken) tactical situations.
The techs don’t do as much. Most of them unlock a new building or unit. Very few make any passive changes or changes to land improvements or tile yields. Seems like another 10 techs could’ve been added.
Tile types seem to have less difference in yields. For instance, Grasslands and Flood Plains have the exact same base yields. Unless techs/improvements are different for each tile, then why differentiate between them? The manual anecdotally makes it sound like there are differences between Grassland and Flood Plains for instance, but the base yields listed don’t reflect that. Must be missing something.
By the same token, all the food resources only add +1 food, except fish which add +2.
All the luxury resources provide only +2 to gold, except Gems which provide +3 and Whales which provide +1 Food, +1 Gold.
Strategic resources all provide only +1 to production. Numerous buildings require access to a certain strategic resource to build it.
Rationalism’s “Free Thought” allows +2 beakers for each Trading Post. This will make Trading Posts way more valuable.
We love the King is now a task requiring you to get a certain luxury resource for a city. If obtained, you get 20 turns of 25% increased growth.
.
