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.

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