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Civilization V Announced For This Fall
sopssa writes "2K Games announced today that they will be releasing Civilization V in the fall. For the first time in the series, the square tiles will be changed to hexes, which 2K Games says provides 'deeper strategy' and 'more realistic gameplay.' Civilization V will also include a new graphics engine, new combat system including ranged bombardment, multiplayer and good support for the modding community. 'Each new version of Civilization presents exciting challenges for our team. Thankfully, ideas on how to bring new and fun experiences to Civ players never seem to stop flowing. From fully animated leaders and realistic landscapes, new combat tactics, expanded diplomacy and shared mods, we're excited for players to see the new vision our team at Firaxis has brought to the series,' Sid Meier said. In addition to Civilization V, the Facebook-based Civilization Network will also be released during 2010."
Please, please, follow the example of Blizzard and release a Mac version at the same time, or even on the same media. I don't want to wait a year or more for the Mac version to come out!
It was 1995 and I was in the computer lab playing Civ II. I was just starting to get the hang of it when my wife-to-be popped in to see if I wanted to go down to the Commons for lunch. I wasn't hungry, so I passed. I played myself into a corner, and decided to start a new game. Just as it was getting rolling, my girlfriend popped in again and asked if I wanted to go to dinner.
I looked in amazement at the game in front of me and realized that it had eaten 6 hours of my life without my realizing it.
I had never before enjoyed a computer game as much, and have likewise never since.
Civilization 5's success will ultimately depend on how moddable it is. If it is less moddable than Civilization 4, there is no way it will have any staying power.
Before you mod me down; I know, I mod for Civilization 4.t
If our elected representatives no longer represent us, do we still live in a Democracy?
A new engine concerns me... a bit. Although my favorite game in the series is Civ4, it did have some growing pains with the new 3D engine. Hex is a welcome addition if used properly, and who knows what other tweaks they have in store.
One feature I'd love is (and maybe it exists) being able to have someone host the game, and then call in when your ready to make your turn. Basically a dedicated server you can come and go (password protected or something like that)
Bad news for my sleeping patterns and forgoing having any sort of life this fall...
+1 seconded. AC is still the best in the series. I love Civ IV, but miss the ability to design my own units. An updated AC for Linux would also be acceptable (low resolution and 256? Colours doesn't look good on a modern widescreen monitor).
I know it will result in a much more natural city-radius, but adapting to the new tile shape will be hard at first. After almost two decades of playing Civ games (both the main line and the various spin-offs) i've got that "5x5 with the corners cut off" plus shape imprinted in my mind at some basic level. For the first couple hours of Civ 5 i'll probably be counting out the tiles just to double-check which resources will be within range of which potential city spots, and where the next city would have to be not to overlap.
And is it just me, or did the fact that the old city-radius shape didn't tile perfectly actually add another layer of strategy to the game? Did you want to place your cities close together to maximize usage the tiles within your territory but forcing cities to compete with each other over resources, or space your cities out so that each city got as many resources as possible even though that would mean some areas in between wouldn't be exploited at all?
With the hex-based tiles it should be possible to perfectly tile your cities so that all tiles are being exploited but none are being overlapped, unless they decide to do something really strange with the radius shape. (Possible conflicts with unbuildable terrain aside of course.)
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I have loved many of the old versions of Civ, spending far too many hours playing them. Heck, learning how to hack the original Civ was a siginifant contributing factoring to me choosing IT over business.
All that being said, the last version turned into the green eco-facist game from hell. Any game that extended too long became one giant environmental nag session. Didn't matter how 'green' you were, someone else was polluting and everything quickly turned to waste with reasonable way to get restore things.
I'm not opposed to the pollution bit to some level, it's always been a part of the game, but it should never /become/ the game. The bottom line was that the fun got stripped away, because someone took their green preaching too far! The game wasn't fun to play, and I simply stopped playing.
I've got to say, my favorite of the Civ combat systems is still in Call To Power ("The Civ Game that Never Was"). Actually, that was my favorite of the games in a lot of ways... I've never really understood why no one else liked it. Multi-unit combat, ranged units affecting what happened between the non-ranged units, and good use of flying units.
Game X didn't have DRM, so it's fairly safe to assume the same for Game X+1 even though they're being developed by different companies, and X+1 is being developed by a company owned by EA, whose DRM is notorious in the gaming world.
I just want a combat system where a bunch of archers on horses will not win against a tank on flat ground.
I don't need to test my programs.. I have an error correcting modem.
It's impossible to cover a sphere with hexes. Try it; I spent hours back in 8th grade trying to prove the topologists wrong. Not as many hours as I spent trying to trisect an angle with a compass and straightedge, though.
The benefit of hexes on a map is that moving to any adjacent hex is the SAME distance. On a square grid, four adjacent squares are at a distance of 1 unit, and four at a distance of Sqrt(2) units. That's why on a square map, you could travel somewhere moving diagonally up half the way, diagonally down the second half, and it would take no longer than moving directly toward the target. Hexes don't have that problem, which is why they're considered more realistic.
Civ, though, was using an offset-square map, which is no different than a hex map, so I think it only amounts to a different look plus a marketing spiel.
+1 seconded. AC is still the best in the series. I love Civ IV, but miss the ability to design my own units. An updated AC for Linux would also be acceptable (low resolution and 256? Colours doesn't look good on a modern widescreen monitor).
Colors didn't look too good on an old-fashioned CRT either. Still one of the greatest games ever made, though.
I've been really ambivalent about Civ IV, because of the "phone home" DRM.
I look on wikipedia, though, and find that they've had a DRM-free version available for several years now. I was an addict, and bought the DRM'd version anyway. I've resisted buying pretty much any current PC game in part because of the DRM. (My relatively recent system upgrade might play some part too... :) )
Y'know, I'm going to go reward them for the DRM-free version by buying it. And I'll be writing them as well: I'll buy Civ V if/when they release it DRM-free too.
Dear game and movie studio's of the northern hemisphere (and whoever else it may concern),
Please stop using seasons as indicators as to when things occur if they're not actually related to the season they happen in.
Yours Sincerely,
The Southern Hemisphere
P.S. Either that, or release Civ. 5 by May 2010