We were invited by 2K Games to see an early build of the next iteration of my personal favorite time sink, Civilization 5. While it was only an eyes-on presentation, it’s fairly obvious after seeing the game in motion that a bunch of things have been made better.
The first thing you can see is that the grid is composed of what Firaxis likes to refer to as “Hexes”. These give the world a more natural feel than the square grids of old.
The time spent developing the console version, Civilization Revolution, was apparently time well spent. Not only did it sell very well, but it also led Firaxis to learn a few things about simplifying the game a bit and making things more streamlined. Not to say that the newest PC Civ is going to be a “baby game”, as it actually still seems complex. One of the things they did was bring the advisors back. They were missing from Civ IV, but the positive feedback from having them in Civ Rev made it possible for them to return.
A few new changes were shown as well. Notifications that pop up on the right side of the screen make an appearance once something that needs your attention happens. Rather than stop the gameplay and have you choose an item from a menu after you’ve researched or built units, these notifications make it possible to make these choices when you’re ready to, keeping the pacing of the game quite nicely. Another thing these notifications do is bring you straight to some action that’s going on off screen when you click on them, such as a ship sinking across the world.
In previous Civilization games, the leader of other nations was represented by half of their body that either smiled or glared at you in anger, not really saying much. Now once you open up dialogue with a leader, you’re taken to a different screen with a full-bodied representation of the leader, with a background that shows what kind of personality they have, like Tokugawa standing in an open, peaceful looking field or Napolean negotiating with you from a battlefield.
Not only is their presentation different, the way the leader’s AI adjusts to you as well. The example given was if you’re successful at thwarting Elizabeth’s attack at sea, she’ll change her strategy and try to go after you elsewhere.
Religion was taken out of this version of Civilization. In it’s place is a new City-State system that allows you to come across a small settlement of about a single city, which you can either choose to help or conquer. If you help these city-states, you’ll receive benefits based on what they specialize in, like a steady stream of gold coming in each turn or military units.
When you place settlers in an area, you can apparently buy up land around the unit. If you end up buying too much land near the territory of another nation, the leader will call you out on the problem.
Combat has received a nice overhaul as well. Before the outcome of a war between nations depended on how many units each side has stacked into one square. Now each tile is limited to one unit, which are now represented by a bunch of the same type instead of a single person. When these units are damaged, the number of people in the group goes down. Where each battle use to last until one side’s Hit Points are depleted, now each fight seems to last longer and can end with a unit being injured instead of just dead.
Since each tile can only hold one unit now, city defense now relies on them being surrounded by protectors. The cities are also now able to fend off enemies on their own.
Archers and other ranged units can now fire over warriors or spearmen in front of them to soften up the enemy before a strike.
That’s about all we got to see during our presentation. Civilization V is set to be released in the Fall of 2010, a time when my roommate and I will once again be awake at 3 AM wondering where the time went.
No related posts.
Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.
