[PC]Civilization V coming!

[Martinus]

You could have changed the option to "favorite religions".

[Martinus]

But I agree that while religion being another factor in the strategic equation was kinda cool, they did not manage to get it to behave in a historical way. (Yeah, I know the game is not very historical, but at least with the spread of civilization etc. it pretends to follow historical development patterns). So I can kinda see their point in axing it, as it was a choice between a totally ahistorical gimmick or a historical simulation of religious relations that would be bound to offend somebody (it's akin to leaving slavery out of Colonization).

[Alatriste]

...it's akin to leaving slavery out of Colonization).

Which ironically offended people...

Reagarding religion in Civilization, I'm of two minds: I liked the idea, but disliked how they implemented it. Perhaps if they allowed players to create their own religions, with advantages and balanced disadvantages...

[lustindarkness]

http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=238687&site=pcg

Civ V interview: losing religion, and teaching the AI to lie
11-Mar-2010 Civ V's lead designer explains the game's most daring decisions.
1 CommentsCivilization V is on its way, and it's changing some of the fundamental ways a Civ game works. The square grid is gone, unit stacks are gone, even God is gone - they've scrapped the religion system. We talked to the game's lead designer Jon Shafer and producer Dennis Shirk to find out the reasoning behind these changes, and what they're focusing on instead.

PC Gamer: What makes a good Civ game?

Jon Shafer: Every Civ game has its own charm. The core is always that it has tiles and it has turns, and this is something we've talked about in the past with Civ 4. The ability to pace the game with the turns. Also, the core of the Civ gameplay is always that one-more-turn sense. When we're designing it we always want to have some mini-goal that's in the back of your mind that's telling you, "You shouldn't go to bed yet. There's more that you can do."

PCG: What are the biggest differences between Civ V and and IV?

Jon: There's a few things. One of the big ones is that, instead of square tiles, we're going to have hex tiles. There's a couple things with hexes that give the advantage over squares. First off, graphically they look better, because no tiles share corners. You can have more of an organic look. You don't have to have 90 degree angles everywhere, you can have it more free flowing. It also helps out with gameplay. Everyone who plays Civ knows that when you move your units, or whatever, visibility range, you generally want to go along diagonals, because you cover more distance that way than if you go a straight line. With hexes that's no longer a factor, so there's benefit in gameplay and in the visuals.

Couple other things. We're really excited about the changes we're making to the combat system. Anyone who's familiar with the old SSI [Strategic Simulations, Inc] games like Panzer General will recognise the change that we've made. That's the inspiration behind the system. We really liked the mechanics in that game, so we took the basics from it and iterated on it.

Some of the details on that is that instead of having big stacks of units like players are used to, you're only going to be able to have one military unit on each tile. So you'll see fronts form on the battlefield more, instead of these big masses. We're also going to be introducing ranged units to the game, like archers and catapults. They'll be able to fire over multiple tiles and hit enemies away from them. We think those things will make the combat really exciting.

PCG: Is combat more of a focus, or diplomacy?

Jon: We're trying to keep that balance. We definitely don't want Civ V to only be seen as a wargame. We are adding depth there, but its depth you'll see if that's the area you're interested in. Diplomacy is one of our big focuses. We wanted to have the other AI players have their own agenda, so they develop a plan on how to win the game, how to deal with their neighbours. They determine whether they're going to be hostile or deceptive, so they could pretend to be your friend and then backstab you later. So there's more going on under the hood than there ever has been.

PCG: So when you're selecting an opposition leader, does your choice determine that, or are they adaptive?

Jon: It's a mix of both. We wanted the AI players to be recognisable, so they're not just completely random personalities. Ghandi will play a certain way, George Washington will play a certain way. But it's also not hard and fast. If someone realises that, say they're on an island somewhere, they'll be able to recognise that and think, hey, building a big navy will help me out this game, so I'm going to go that direction. Or if they're in a landmass surrounded by a bunch of players, you might have an aggressive leader who's a bit more conservative because he realises his situation is tenuous. We wanted to have that mix where you generally recognise how characters act, but it's not predictable.

PCG: What have you streamlined from previous games?

Jon: We made some changes with religion. Because diplomacy is one of our focuses with Civ V, planning what an AI leader is thinking, how he's going to win the game, that wasn't something that was meshing very well with the religion system. In Civ IV, the religions were primary factors of who liked whom and who disliked whom. And that wasn't meshing very well with what we wanted to do, so we decided to move on without the religion system. But that's mainly because we wanted diplomacy to have more depth and not be so predictable. We wanted to make sure that the AI leaders were taking into account the same things as the player was taking into account. A player might not care what religion you're running, but they might care quite a bit if you attack one of their friends.

Let's see if there's a couple good examples...

Dennis: Jon's point about stepping away from religion is a good one. We want people to remember that as these systems are taken away, in favour of new systems, we're never leaving gaping holes where people are going to be saying, 'Oh my god, they took out religion, what am I going to do now?'.

We're putting in new mechanics, especially with diplomacy, that are making the game an entirely new experience - especially with things like city states. City states are a new mechanism on the map. They're smaller, single city, weaker NPCs scattered throughout the map. They never really grow that much, but they're there to grease the wheels of diplomacy.

Jon: There are a few mechanics of making making friends with them and getting rewards, and you can kill them of course if you want. But the thing we're excited about with these is: say you've made friends with a particular city state, and another AI power that's more militaristic decides he wants conquer it. You have this interesting situation that didn't exist in previous Civ games. Rarely were you concerned about other players, their survival, their situation. Now you can have this web of client states who are subservient to you and working towards your victory, and protecting them is very much in your interests. It works both ways. If you're a militaristic player, you now have to worry about who you're attacking because it might bring in a larger alliance against you.

PCG: Will the city states persist throughout the game or will they die out?

Jon: They start at the beginning like all other players, and they'll stick around to the end if they're able to survive that long.

Dennis: I was playing an excellent game the other day. City states that are close to your borders are candidates for you to take, because they give very good resources. I ended up taking a neighbouring city state, and that immediately sparked off a war with another civilization that was getting benefits from being friends with that city state. That war went on for some 200 years, with them trying to liberate the city state and me trying to keep and claim what I felt was mine.

PCG: What do you think is the central appeal of the game?

Jon: Civ V is a different flavour of Civ. It's the opportunity to live out history in an exciting fashion. I think a lot of people have read historical books or movies and get excited about that kind of thing. Anyone who has watched Gladiator or Braveheart and that sort of thing, it's an opportunity to get into history yourself, almost as if you're an actor in the story. I think that's the biggest draw of the game, in addition to the strategy and the mechanics, it's really the experience of living history.

Dennis: This gives everyone the opportunity to be great. A 13-year-old can come in and play it and they can either succeed greatly or fail greatly, and take something from it and then try something new. It caters to the hardcore. If you're one of those numbers people, then that's open to you.

PCG: How does Civ V treat established history: are you mostly trying to stick to it, or rewrite it?

Jon: We like to stick to using history as a backdrop for the story that emerges as you play, so you might end up with particular situations that have a nod to history but they're pretty much coincidental. In one game I was playing the other day, one of the city states in the game was Venice. And I was Rome. And starting next to Venice is a neat situation, like, 'Oh yeah, that makes sense'. History is the framework for the game, it's not something that we want to stick to completely. Ultimately we're catering to that interest in history, and we want you to feel like you are a leader, but you are the leader of your own nation in your mind, less so than behind a specific character in a specific time period.

PCG: You mentioned the combat before, how will allies work?

Jon: Generally it's building relationships. There's not a ton of formal arrangements you can make, there are some, but a lot of it is based on how you behave in terms of the game rules itself.

If you build your city next to an AI's capital, in previous games they would be like, "Oh whatever." But now we've added additional logic that lets the AI evaulate what's going on in the game as a whole in the same manner as a human would do. So if you build a city next to someone's capital, that's actually going to annoy them. They'll realise that you're settling very aggressively, and that will have an adverse relationship on them. They'll call you up and will say, hey, you're expanding there, don't do this. If you continue doing it, they'll notice that as well, and if they might actually ask that you make concessions, like give them money or something in exchange for keeping their friendship. Otherwise you could have a cold war situation.

So in terms of working with the AI players, we wanted to focus a lot on the acts of being a good neighbour, the acts of being a good ally, moreso than specific individual arrangements.

We do have some additional ones, like the research. You can have both players spend a sum of money upfront and over time together you'll get a research bonus so that it stacks up over time and the longer it goes on, it crosses a tipping point where you've got more out of it than you've spent upfront. But if relations breakdown before that point, if you attack somebody, then that becomes a very wasteful move. You want to make sure that you make these agreements with people you really trust. We're trying to attack both areas, but the focus is on how players behave rather than formal arrangements.

PCG: Is there support for the backstab player?

Jon: There are some AIs that behave in that manner. So I just mentioned the research agreements. There's some AI who to lull you into a false sense of security will offer you a research agreement and will use that to make you lower your guard and then attack you afterwards. There's a lot of situations where the AI players will use deception, because they have the ability to respond as the player does.

One example I mentioned before was if you settle near an AI, they ask you to please not do it, and you have the opportunity to tell them, 'Don't worry, we'll be nice,' or 'We don't care what you think, whatever'. And if you're more direct, then that's something that people recognise, but they won't hold it against you. But if you say that you're going to be nice, and then you go back on your word, then that's a much more serious incident and players will take notice of that. The AI can also perform in that same manner, where they'll respond to you and say, "Oh, we're just passing through, don't worry about it," and then they'll attack you.

PCG: What are the multiplayer plans?

Dennis: We're going to have the same basic modes that we had in Civ IV, but we're going to be talking about that soon.

PCG: Do you see Civ V as an incremental progression of Civ, or a revolution?

Jon: It's more of a revolution than a refinement. The basics are all still the same, but the new combat, the focus on diplomacy, the city state, those are all new mechanics. We lean in the direction of trying to innovate rather than refine. We recognise that Civ is a great game, and we didn't want to just keep piling on top of that base. We wanted to create something that was good in its own right, where we could try new things and provide a new flavour of Civilization.

PCG: Any other changes you want to mention?

Dennis: The modding tools that we're providing with Civ V. While V is every bit as moddable as Civ IV was, the tools that we're providing eclipse everything we've had before. We're including a standalone world builder that anybody could use to create their own worlds. Another thing we're adding is an in-game mod browser, so within the brower in-game you can go to our system and download and install mods directly. People will be able to upload their mods into that system. We're really trying to bump up the community aspect.
Richard McCormick

More interesting recent stuff at http://www.civfanatics.com/

[MadImmortalMan]

Nice. I was speculating about whether they were going to one unit per hex. Looks like it's true. And they're exactly right about the religion system. I can totally abuse that in Civ4 to create whatever diplomatic situation I want by planting religions in AI lands selectively.

[Darth Wagtaros]

No more Monster Stacks of Doom is kinda nice, but I hope managing multiple units will be doable.

[MadImmortalMan]

Another thing is that units will not necessarily die when they lose a battle. Recovering them to full strength will take resources and time. I assume they get pushed back a hex or something. So you will have battle fronts and achieve breakthroughs, encirclements and all kinds of other stuff.

[DGuller]

I wonder how you'll store your units during peacetime if you can only do one per hex.  You can't park them all in the cities, but it would be annoying to have to keep them deployed out in the field permanently.  I also wonder how city defense will work.  Does losing one battle cost you the city?

[Berkut]

I wonder how you'll store your units during peacetime if you can only do one per hex.  You can't park them all in the cities, but it would be annoying to have to keep them deployed out in the field permanently.  I also wonder how city defense will work.  Does losing one battle cost you the city?

Just leave them all sitting out in the forest.

[Darth Wagtaros]

I wonder how you'll store your units during peacetime if you can only do one per hex.  You can't park them all in the cities, but it would be annoying to have to keep them deployed out in the field permanently.  I also wonder how city defense will work.  Does losing one battle cost you the city?

I do that now sometimes.  It is convenient to dump them in unused tiles so long as there are roads. 

Just leave them all sitting out in the forest.

[Kleves]

Will unit facing matter? It would be pretty cool if you could actually flank units.

[Kleves]

I also wonder how city defense will work.  Does losing one battle cost you the city?

Previously players would create a ton of cities in order to grab up all the important land around them, placing "stacks of doom" within the cities for defense. Civ5 does away not only with the stacks, but also with traditional city combat. Cities now defend themselves, with their HP based on their total populations. This means that players now have to focus on placing their armies in a formation that better defends the territory around the city (ideally keeping enemies from ever reaching a town to begin with), as well as build fewer cities overall so that the few they have can expand enough to reach large population levels. To help with this players can spend their gold to absorb new pieces of land around the city, making land-grabbing more an exercise of healthy empire building than an exercise in who can spam cities and create some sort of prehistoric urban sprawl.

From http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/sid-meiers-civilization-v/1076627p2.html

[sbr]

I am not sure how much I like the changes they are making, but I do like to see them doing what appears to be a radical change in some major game mechanics.

[DGuller]

I wonder how you'll store your units during peacetime if you can only do one per hex.  You can't park them all in the cities, but it would be annoying to have to keep them deployed out in the field permanently.  I also wonder how city defense will work.  Does losing one battle cost you the city?

Just leave them all sitting out in the forest.

[DGuller]

I also wonder how city defense will work.  Does losing one battle cost you the city?

Previously players would create a ton of cities in order to grab up all the important land around them, placing "stacks of doom" within the cities for defense. Civ5 does away not only with the stacks, but also with traditional city combat. Cities now defend themselves, with their HP based on their total populations. This means that players now have to focus on placing their armies in a formation that better defends the territory around the city (ideally keeping enemies from ever reaching a town to begin with), as well as build fewer cities overall so that the few they have can expand enough to reach large population levels. To help with this players can spend their gold to absorb new pieces of land around the city, making land-grabbing more an exercise of healthy empire building than an exercise in who can spam cities and create some sort of prehistoric urban sprawl.

From http://pc.gamespy.com/pc/sid-meiers-civilization-v/1076627p2.html

That sounds like something I've been waiting for.  There has to be a much better way of allocating the tiles to the city, and this sounds close to what I wanted.  Hopefully those allocations would remain even after the city changes hands, so they would act more like provinces with fixed boundaries.  One of the most annoying things ever in Civ IV is the foreign culture completely choking off the conquered border cities.