Three more reviews have popped up from GDC. They are at UGO, GameSpy and Shacknews.


These reviews simply repeat the information presented in other reviews since the GDC presentation is the same for every demonstration. However it's worth reading these articles to get the different perspectives all these reviewers are having.

A few more sites have posted Civilization V articles from the Game Developer Conference in San Fransisco. The latest three are from VentureBeat, G4TV and The Escapist.


Summary of new points:

• "Firaxis showed the Americas, Europe, and African continents as they competed for resources and territory." (VentureBeat).
• Communication with map creators possible from in-game (VentureBeat).
• Number of players in MP games similar to Civ4 (VentureBeat).
• Elvis is back? (G4TV.
• Cities have Hit Points based on population size, and garrison and bombard defenses (G4TV).
• In development for 2 and a half years (Escapist).
• Allied units cannot share the same tile (Escapist).
• Firaxis to host "featured mods" and allow links back to fan sites (Escapist).

As more information comes out we will keep you apprised.

Game Informer posted a video interview with Dennis Shirk as well. This interview covers pretty much the same ground as the Gamereactor one (see as reported earlier), but it's always good to hear the developers talking about the game in their own words. Two interesting new bit of info that Dennis does reveal are that units don't necessarily die if they lose a battle, and in Civ5 it will be mathematically impossible for a Spearman to beat a Tank! Of course, that's one promise we've heard before...

WePlayCiv now has a presence on the popular social networking sites Twitter and Facebook! Technically we've already had a Twitter account since the site started, but we didn't really use it before. From now on we'll use it to link to news stories and post other updates related to the site or the community (e.g. downtime reports when the site is unreachable, updates to the Civ5 Info Centre, etc). You can follow us at http://twitter.com/weplayciv.

Our facegroup fan page also came online today, which we will also update with news and events, and which you can use to get in touch with other WPC users on Facebook. Check out the page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/WePlayCiv/353565413147.

If you have suggestions on more and better ways for us to use these services, don't hesitate to let us know!

• 2 comments

German tech site Heise online has posted a preview of Civilization V from GDC. The article contains no new info of note about the game itself, but offers two new tidbits about modding tools and scenarios. Specifically, the article states that:

Translation: Civilization V will come with an elaborate editor, with which users of the game can change the rules of the game to their heart's content.

This sounds more like a Civ3-style editor than Civ4-style XML files.

Translation: Aside from the User-mod integration the game will not come with any particular scenarios, as the developers would rather focus on the core game [...].

Civilization V Producer Dennis Shirk was interviewed by Gamreactor TV, you can watch the video on their website. In the interview, Shirk goes over a few key features of Civ5:


He explains that the choice for hexes rather than tiles was made because hexes create consistent movement, allow for more organic and natural feeling terrain and remove ambiguity on where units can and cannot go. The reason for only allowing 1 unit per tile rule is to counter the Stacks of Doom problems of previous games, as well as to move units away from cities. There are more strategic options now as players will have to use melee units in the field to defend both their cities and their ranged units.


The way cities behave in combat has changed as a result of this: cities can now defend themselves, and the bigger they are, the more hitpoints they have. This defensive strength can be improved further by garisonning a unit inside the city. Also, inventing Masonry unlocks City Walls, which in Civ5 lets cities bombard units within a radius of 2 hexes around it.


When asked about diplomatic changes, Shirk notes that not much has changed in the basic system compared to Civ4, but leaders now have full-screen full-body animations and speak their own language. They also all behave differently due to having different flavours.


If anyone was worried about there not being any Fog of War in the screenshots released so far, Dennis reassures fans that it will return in the final game, it's only removed for demo purposes to show off the new terrain. He notes that currently the game is still in pre-alpha stages of development.


City states are brought up as well: they give players more to do in the early game. They can give players missions, like helping to fight off Barbarians. Once you have established a friendship with a city state and are getting bonuses from them, the AI might try to capture it to deny you these bonuses. This may force you into action to defend your partners.


Finally, the interviewer asks about fan community integratation. Shirk explains that an in-game mod browser will allow anyone to search, download and rate mods without having to have any knowledge of fan communities or how the Internet works. For modders themselves, the tool set will be much better than in Civ4, there will be a strong focus on easy of use: Firaxis wants anyone to be able to make mods, not just expert programmers. The World Builder will be a stand-alone utility in Civilization V, it will no longer be integrated into the game.

• 1 comment

Stephen Totilo of Kotaku reports from the Game Developers Conference (GDC) that in Civilization V, road spam will finally be a thing of the past.

At this time Firaxis is not willing to elaborate on how the new road concept will work in the game, but they noted that they will put a stop to this issue that has plagued the franchise since its inception.

• 1 comment

Edge Online reports that Brian Reynolds participated in a Game Developers Conference (GDC) panel discussion today to talk about his new job as Chief Designer at Zynga where he works on Facebook games like FarmVille and Mafia Wars. Focus of the panel was what makes this new genre of gaming so appealing to veteran designers like Reynolds. Brian on the subject:

Brian and the other panelists discussed that the experimental nature of the genre appeals to them, and the huge amount of metrics that designers can collect on how players play the games, thanks to which: "Finally game design has become a game for game designers". The panelists discussed their desire to add more complexity to the games to make them more like the games they were used to designing in the past, but they realise that the genre owes all its success to its simplicity. In the future of this type of gaming they don't see more complexity, but rather more social interactions.

• 1 comment

Four new Civilization V previews have been posted on the internet: Kotaku, Joystiq, Gamespot and 1UP


Each article goes into different levels of detail, and there is a lot of double up with already known information. However some tiny new bits of information have been gleaned from the articles:

• Aimed minimum specs to include 256 MB graphics cards and dual core processors (Kotaku).
• Cities can fire back when attacked (Kotaku).
• Technology and Culture victories contain new surprises (Kotaku).
• Producer noted that all Civ games eventually come out on Mac (Kotaku).
• Confirmed DX11 native (Joystiq).
• Different terrain for different continents (Joystiq).
• Leaders respond with spoken speech and body language (Joystiq).
• City-states can give you units if friendly (Joystiq).
• In-game web browser, play Civ Network from within Civ 5 (Joystiq).
• Full support for modders, including online database of mods, voting and forum access (Joystiq).
• Russell Vaccaro designing Civ 5 interface (also helped design Civ Rev interface) (Gamespot).
• Ruins instead of goodie huts (Gamespot).
• Greece confirmed (Gamespot).
• A troop operates like a single unit from previous Civs, example being "troop of warriors which act as a single warrior unit" (Gamespot).
• City-states will have different specialisations, such as Militaristic (Gamespot).
• City-states offer missions (Gamespot).
• Referred to "a single battalion of troops that occupies any given hex" (Gamespot).
• Units will suffer maintenance costs and be able to earn bonuses through combat (Gamespot).
• Rivers give defense bonus (Gamespot).
• Cities defend at a level determined by growth size and structures in the city (Gamespot).
• Religion may be cut, but new features to replace it (Gamespot).
• Alexander the Great (1UP).
• City-states will have their own Tech tree and personality (1UP).

There are also a couple new screenshots, visit the Civ 5 forum for details.

Soren Johnson gave a keynote speech at the Game Developer's Conference (GDC) earlier today. In the talk, titled "Theme is not Meaning", he looks at the separation between the mechanics of a game and it's theme, arguing that the meaning is derived from the former much more so than the latter. One example he gives of this is the board games of Risk and Diplomacy: while they have the same themes, they have very different meaning as a result of the differences in their mechanics: the simultaneous and rule-based nature of Diplomacy makes it a game about diplomacy, while the turn-based and randomised mechanics of Risk make it a game about risk.

A detailed summary of the talk is available at the Edge Online website, and the actual slides of the presentation can be downloaded from Soren's Blog -- both are highly recommended reading.

In the talk Soren addresses a number of Civilization-related points. He notes that Civ's theme is world history, but the meaning is being god-king. Civ's mechanics and therefore its meaning cannot be about history, as having the mechanics closely approximate world history would make it a failure as a game: consequences would often not be fair or clear, the player would lose a lot of control and the outcome would be entirely deterministic, as explained in Guns, Germs & Steel. Soren explains he tried to incorporate elements from GG&S into Civ3 but that led to some of the game's biggest flaws, like the resource placement algorithm that could lead to entire continents ending up without key resources.

Soren argues games with social themes should not attempt to model society or history, but rather the life of historical figures. In the epilogue of the Powerpoint presentation, Soren gives a fascinating explanation about the meaning of Civlization 4, citing specifically the Civics system and Mount Rushmore as examples of why to him Civ4 is about the failure of ideology. Also, elsewhere in the sheets he explains why Tetris is a game for Nazis.

Update: A very detailed summary (almost a transcript) of Soren's talk can now be found on Destructoid.

• 6 comments