Sid Meier's Civilization V Message Board
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The release of Civilization V: The Complete Edition rather suggests we’ve reached end of the line for Firaxis’ latest history-spanning strategy game, and thus can start drawing up our mental wishlists for Civ VI. Though if I’ve learned anything in this business, it’s that there’s any number of final-sounding adjectives left in the game names cupboard. Be braced for Civ V: Ultimate, Civ V: Director’s Cut, Civ V: What They Couldn’t Show Ghandi Doing In Cinemas, and Civ V: In A Different Box.
Back to that shortly, however. The Cool Thing happening off the back of this new omnibus edition is a new and free Civ V scenario that’s being given to existing and future Brave New World owners for no-pennies. Said scenario is also a little bit Colonizationy (but only a little bit). … [visit site to read more]
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I’ve founded religions, spied on my neighbours and sent a spaceship in search of a new home on a distant star. The promise of a Brave New World was enough to bring me crashing back down to Earth though, and I’ve been making new friends, meeting old enemies and creating great works of art. This latest expansion takes on the greatest challenge of all – injecting some meaningful activity into Civilization’s end-game. I’ve spent a week uncovering its charms and chores, and here’s wot I think.
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Civ V brings out the worst in me and Brave New World may be the expansion that changes all of that. I was approaching the industrial age in a recent multiplayer game when I realised what a terrible ruler I was – ‘terrible’ not because I was a failure but because I was too much of a success. I was the coal-devouring, smoke-belching face of global domination, like a nightmarish Punch cartoon come to life, the leader of a people who saw foreign nations as obstacles to be removed. Civ V is a strategy game that encourages the drive toward victory rather than the establishment of a culture with character. Brave New World may change that when it is released on July 12th. Here’s an early launch trailer.
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I am saddened to admit that I am not a Civilization player. My brain does not work in that way. No matter how much I try, I just bounce off the game, and then I’m pushed out the way by mean Civ bullies who mock my tactical and diplomatic failings. It’s like home economics all over again. But I’m a bigger man than those meanies, and don’t begrudge Civ fans the opportunity to see the new expansion pack, A Brave New World. And I don’t begrudge Revison3 the hits for the preview that I am shamelessy yoinking. Do click here, as that Sessler guy seems like a nice chap.(more…)
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There’s going to be a second major Civilization V expansion. It’s called Brave New World, it introduces 9 new Civs, the concepts of tourism, ideologies, international trade routes and archaeology, and basically it sounds like it’s pretty huge on an under-the-hood front. I had a big chat with Firaxis lead programmer Ed Beach and senior producer Dennis Shirk on what’s in there, why, how it works and why we’ll be forming impressive in-game art collections.
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[CRASH]
- DX9 Range-strike crash. A city-strike or ranged unit could cause the game to crash when playing in the DX9 version, mainly in full-screen, but could occur in windowed mode as well.
- DX9 Cascading graphics failure crash. On certain video cards, after playing for a short amount of time (or across a number of short games), the game could exhibit strange graphical behavior (rapidly blinking graphics, terrain unloading, etc.), which could eventually lead to a driver failure or hang.
- DX9 multiple start crash. Fixed an issue where the DX9 version of the game could become unstable or crash if started multiple times in the same session.
[BUG]
- Auto-Annex, no pop-ups bug. Fixed an issue that was causing the pop-up queue to stop displaying in-game pop-ups until the game was reloaded. NOTE: The cause of this could also exist in existing mods. Please see our note at the bottom of the change-list on how modders can correct this.
- Mod constant reload. Fixed an issue causing mods to constantly reload each time the user visited the mods area. Could also cause modded saves to be corrupted or crash on load.
- Denmark Trait not working. Fixed an issue causing Denmarks trait (allows disembarked units to have an extra move after landing) to not function correctly.
- Inefficient Pathfinder issue. Fixed multiple issues with the pathfinder that was causing units to exhibit inefficient movement choices.
- Exploding workboat graphic. Fixed an issue where the Workboat model exhibited graphical corruption.
- Grey terrain/checker-boarding. Fixed an issue on slower video cards where terrain displayed in large quantities, or with rapid draws (like clicking rapidly around the mini-map), could cause the game to unload the terrain system, resulting in large amounts of checkerboards.
[OPTIMIZATION]
- Multiple Terrain optimizations.
[MODDING NOTE]
Modders need to ensure they are calling the SerialEventGameMessagePopupProcessed event immediately with pop-ups. Here's an example from the ReligionOverview.lua, changes are in red.
function ShowHideHandler( bIsHide, bInitState )
if( not bInitState ) then
if( not bIsHide ) then
UI.incTurnTimerSemaphore();
Events.SerialEventGameMessagePopupShown(g_PopupInfo);
TabSelect(g_CurrentTab);
else
if(g_PopupType ~= nil) then
Events.SerialEventGameMessagePopupProcessed.CallImmediate(g_PopupInfo.Type, 0);
end
UI.decTurnTimerSemaphore();
end
end
end
ContextPtr:SetShowHideHandler( ShowHideHandler );
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- Older saves with DLC leaders (including Genghis) will no longer "shift" when loaded into the patched game.
[CRASH FIXES]
- If a user does not have a religion, and receives a religion from another Civ, setting the "automated faith purchase" option could previously cause a crash when the purchase tries to fire for either the player, or the AI. This has been corrected.
- Fixed an issue where a user could click on a city banner during the AI turn, and the game could crash depending what AI process is happening at the time of the "click."
- Into the Renaissance - If an AI player has open borders and a friendly relationship with another Civ, they would sometimes send a Great Admiral to park in their city. If the city tries to purchase a civilian unit while the Great Admiral is parked there, the game could crash. This is corrected.
- Scenario hang - There was a chance that when you won a scenario, the game could hang. This has been corrected.
- Fixed an issue where any user with special characters in their Windows name will be unable to load saves.
- If a player has Steam in "offline mode", and clicks on Mods, into the modding area and then backs out, the game could crash. This is now corrected.
- Game Hang on turn 0 - After patching, many have reported being unable to interact with units or end the first turn. This is now corrected.
- Game could previously hang on "Unit Needs Orders" after the player clicks next turn. This has been corrected, and the camera snap has been fixed.
- A crash that could occur in Hot Seat if the game core threading had been disabled is fixed.
[BUG FIXES]
- Fall of Rome Scenario - Golden Ages were switched to providing bonus culture earlier in project. We've removed the culture bonus from Golden Ages for the scenario.
- Open Borders that do not exist - If the AI is trying to renew an open borders agreement, but has something more important to talk about in the queue, the system would still record the Open Borders agreement as being active (even though it is not actually in place). This has been corrected.
- Military Caste (+2 culture from garrison) was not working correctly. Whenever a civilian unit embarks, bulbs, or is deleted, it subtracted 2 culture, and kept adding up each time this happened, leaving the city at permanent negative culture. This has been corrected.
- The "Peace Loving" belief was not functioning. This has been corrected.
- When cities bombard attacking units, death animations would now play correctly.
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How often do you find yourself looking at Civilization V and thinking, ‘all this science and culture is fine, but there simply aren’t enough deities knocking about the place’. If the answer is ‘very often’ you might already have bought the Gods and Kings expansion. If not you could read my thoughts on what it does for the game or you could even try it for yourself. There’s a demo on Steam and, brilliantly, it’s standalone; you won’t need the base game to try it. Handy that, for those who held off buying in the hope that an expansion might make the whole thing more appealing. Embarrassingly, I’m not actually sure how much the demo contains but I’d bet fifty pence that it sets a limit on how many turns you can play for.
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I'll spare you the big overarching explanation of why Civilization V, and frankly the Civilization series in general, is a delightfully soul-devouring time suck. Many words have already been written on this subject, many of which are likely to be more eloquent than my own. All I will say on the subject is that if you have extricated yourself from Civ V in the time since its release in 2010, and hope to avoid plunging headfirst back down that rabbit hole of "just one more turn" addiction, then by all means, avoid the newly released Gods & Kings expansion back. Because if you don't, you're going to be sucked down that hole yet again, and God only knows when you'll find yourself able to wrest free of it again.
Choosing your religion is kinda arbitrary, since you'll be formatting it to fit your own style anyway. Just like real life!It's not that Gods & Kings does anything to especially revolutionize, or even dramatically improve Civilization V. In fact, for an expansion coming nearly two years after the game's original release (with only some DLC civilizations and map packs to supplement the time in between), it's actually a bit lighter on content than you might be expecting. However, the content that is in there is unquestionably good, making this expansion as devious a gateway back into the throes of Civ V addiction as you're likely to find nowadays.
The biggest addition to Gods & Kings is the religion mechanic. Though religion has existed in the series previously, the version of religion built for this expansion is far more detailed and involved than anything previously seen. It's in keeping with the spirit of the game in that it is a concept that can be built out in a variety of different ways that suit your particular play style. All religion is predicated on faith, which like science, production, and gold, you'll earn over time by building items and structures that increase it over time. Early in a game, you'll have the option to choose a "pantheon," a culture-specific religion that allows you one statistical benefit. This could be something as simple as more gold attained from spaces that generate faith, or more rapid border expansion via the "religious settlements" option. Once your pantheon is founded and your civilization begins to grow, you'll eventually spawn a great prophet, a unit that can be used multiple ways down the road, but initially will be consumed to create your religion.
Religion is non-specific in Gods & Kings. Which is to say that there are religions pre-made in the game that run the gamut from Christianity to Zoroastrianism, but it's not as though choosing Christianity will suddenly grant you a Jesus unit you can use to turn lakes into wine vineyards and eventually sacrifice for the sake of some kind of martyrdom boost. The names are just templates. You can name them whatever you want, actually, and the additional benefits you reap from the religion don't have any specificity to the religion itself. They're chosen by you when you first found, and then eventually improve your religion. Again, it's all tailored to how you want to play.
Like all things in Civilization V, religion is really more about expansion and diplomacy than anything especially holy. You can build prophets, missionaries, and even inquisitors to spread your religion and stamp out opposing religions. Making other cities and city states fall under your religious banner helps build influence with them. Likewise, pushing enemy cities into your kind of faith helps reduce resistance should you decide to conquer them. It doesn't mean they won't put up a fight, and in fact it may rile up the opposing leader to do something drastic against you. But if you use religion correctly, you'll be dominating the world in no time.
The other big mechanical change is espionage, a more passive mechanic that allows you to plant spies in rival civilizations' cities and city states. The key benefits to espionage are technology and alliances. Planting a spy in a city state ensures that your spy will continuously rig elections in your favor, and even conduct coups if the city state is loyal to another civilization. For major civs, you can place spies in key cities to both keep an eye on what rival leaders are planning, as well as potentially steal the technologies they develop. It's a helpful boost that gives you a bit more diplomatic interaction with your opposing civs, but truthfully it doesn't do a whole lot to change the overall flow of the game. It's just a nice little bonus that, frankly, you might just forget about as the game goes along.
The nine new civilizations bring the total number up to 34. Which is kind of a lot.Most of the other changes come in the form of tweaks to the existing game and in the form of new civs and items. There are nine new civilizations in Gods & Kings--including the Celts, Swedes, Carthaginians, Ethiopians, and more--each with their own unique units and abilities. In-game, you'll play Gods & Kings pretty much exactly as you did in the main game, though a few adjustments have made for a smoother experience, especially in combat. Ground units can now be stacked with naval units, making it easier to attack sea-adjacent cities, and combat in general has been switched from a 10-point system to a 100-point system. Opposing A.I. has definitely been improved a bit, though other civs can still be oddly non-aggressive when it's clear that you're about to start wrecking shop all over them. Their strategies have improved in some key areas, but with all the additional tools at your disposal to help depose your enemies, odds are you'll want to stick to some of the tougher difficulty levels if you want a noteworthy challenge.
All of this, plus three new scenarios, including the steampunk-themed Empire of the Smoky Skies (which I've detailed previously here) makes up this add-on. It's a good chunk of content that probably would have looked a lot more impressive a year ago. Given how much time and piecemeal DLC has passed since Civilization V first hit store shelves, Gods & Kings suffers only by virtue of not being overwhelming in its revamping of the Civ V formula. And yet, neither is it underwhelming, given that the things it does add are all distinct improvements, and some are even pretty fantastic. This is a useful and enjoyable expansion to a game that's still one of the great time-stealers of this generation. To put it succinctly: it is more Civilization V to add to your copy of Civilization V. If you still have even a flicker of a desire to play more Civilzation V, that news should be all you need to justify picking up Gods & Kings.
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Civilization V makes people angry. I’ve seen it first hand; perusing the shelves of a local boardgame emporium I was moved to express an opinion about hexes and how much I enjoyed their use in the game. Upwards of twenty furious men immediately formed a stack of doom and pummelled me into submission. “But perhaps the Gods and Kings expansion will make the game more like Civ IV?” one of them asided to his neighbour even as they afflicted my face with blows. “It won’t!” cried future-me from another dimension, at which point my assailants redoubled their efforts to maim me. Thanks future-me. Here’s wot he thinks.
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Civ V is integrating with Steam Workshop with the intent of making the use of mods much more user friendly. Create mod collections, browse what’s available through Steam and then fall to your knees in anguish because Fall From Heaven is nowhere to be seen in this version of the game and never will be. I haven’t explored the modding scene for this one a great deal, although now is the time for revisitations with the Gods and Kings expansion pack due on June 19. I’ll be telling you wot I think about that in due course and might be tempted to dip into modland as well.
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- Steam Workshop enabled.
- DLL swapping is now possible in-game.
- Updated mod browser to utilize Steam Workshop.
- Font Icons are now moddable.
- Unit art is now fully moddable.
- Mods are now activated the moment you click "Next" on the mods browser rather than when you click "Single Player."
[ADVISORS & TUTORIALS]
- Improved the queuing and prioritization of advisor pop-ups.
- Unique advisor portraits per era now show up for the advisor counsel screens and advisor info screens.
- Adjusted advisor levels down a bit so that experienced users won't see so many tutorials.
- Fixed several issues with the Tutorials.
- When selecting "Learn as you play," all tutorial messages are now enabled despite having your options set to "No Advisors."
[MULTIPLAYER]
- When switching players in hotseat, have the new players existing notifications rebroadcast to them. This allows the player to see non-expired notifications such as deal proposals.
- Fix Diplomacy Deals in Hotseat.
- Add a few multiplayer error messages to let the player know what went wrong (disconnects, gets booted, etc.).
- Add invite button to in-game view. (This brings up the Steam Invite list, which is different from the Shift-TAB overlay).
[UI]
- Main Menu now contains an option to activate/deactivate specific DLCs.
- Quick combat and Quick Movement options are now part of the Options menu and can be changed during gameplay.
- Options menu now contains "Skip intro video."
- New Loading screens have been implemented.
- Diplomacy: Disabled modifiers for trying to win the same way.
- Diplomacy: Layout changes to diplo modifiers for better readability and more information.
- Mods and DLC used in a game are now stored in the Hall of Fame database (Only games which match currently active DLC are displayed in the Hall of Fame).
- The "Time Spent" message now displays in the saved replays.
- Load Replay Menu now defaults to "Sort by Last Modified."
- Added a "Retire" button to the game menu.
[GENERAL]
- In some cases, previous saves may not work correctly after updating.
- Several text bugs fixed (in all languages).
- Prevent escape from being used when a leader requests a luxury resource from you.
- Social policies may not be unlocked unless the player has founded at least 1 city.
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What happens when you play a single game of Civilization II across ten long years? Well, carpal tunnel syndrome and a lifelong fear of pixels smaller than than the size of a fist. Also, an in-game world which is “a hellish nightmare of suffering and devastation”, riddled with nuclear fallout and caught in a terrible stalemate between three ultra-nations which have been at war for millennia.(more…)
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Generally speaking, preview builds of games are not meant to be played for long stretches of time. They're unfinished code, and often don't have all the pieces in place, meaning it can be difficult to even progress, let alone have much fun. Normally, my rule is to not spend more than a few hours, at absolute most, with preview games, especially if it's a game I'm excited to play when it eventually hits retail, since I don't necessarily want to see too much before it's done.
As with all rules, there are exceptions. In my case, apparently those exceptions involve anything with the words "Civilization V" in the title.
Gods & Kings most certainly has those two things, but it's got a lot more than that, too.Gods & Kings is Firaxis' full-fledged expansion to the hit 2010 strategy game, which hits stores next month. I don't know why Firaxis chose to create an expansion and release it nearly two years after the original hit shelves, and I don't especially care, either. I've been far too busy sinking way too many hours into this thing over the last week to worry about the hows and whys of it all. After 16 hours of playing Gods & Kings, frankly, I'm just glad it exists at all.
Having not really played much Civ V since it ate up most of my winter 2010, it was disturbing to me how easily I fell back down this terribly time-consuming rabbit hole. Firaxis has been sporadically supporting the game via various DLC packs over the last couple of years, but Gods & Kings is the first major functional addition to the game since its release. That new functionality comes in the form of espionage and religion, two things that slide so easily into the old Civ V gameplay, you'll be amazed they weren't there all along.
Religion is by far the biggest change, overall. As with all things in Civ V, religion is simply a tool you, the master of your particular civilization, can use to help expand, evolve, and conquer. You use faith as you would culture or gold. It's a resource you accumulate by building religious structures and a variety of other things as the game goes along.
Initially you'll just found a pantheon, which is a non-specific religion that provides you a single benefit of your choosing, ranging from additional gold via tithing to rapid expansion via "religious settlements" (which are not actually a buildable unit, but rather a rapidity increase to your existing border expansion rate). Over time, as you accumulate more and more faith, eventually a religious prophet unit will appear in your main city. Like the great artists, engineers and the like, you can use this unit in a variety of ways, though the first time, you'll probably want to use him to found your religion.
You can choose from several different religions, from Christianity to Sikhism, though in truth, the religions have nothing to do with the real life ones. Christianity, for instance, doesn't suddenly earn you a Crusade army. The names are just there for familiarity's sake, and you can even rename your religion, if you like.
Religion is no more complicated than any of the other strategic elements in Civ V. It's just way more sacrilegious. In a fun way, of course.Founding a religion provides multiple new boosts to whatever categories you're looking to focus on. Again, the options run the gamut from resource building to increased conversion rates. Yes, you can use your prophets, when they appear, to help convert other cities and city states to your particular faith. Depending on your friendliness with the cities in question, this can either be viewed as an act of friendship, or an act of war. Bringing religious followers to city states can help keep them under your wing, while doing so to other major civilizations tends to come with more dire consequences.
As is generally the case in recorded history, forcibly converting citizens of another civilization tends to lead to unhappiness from the leader of that civilization. Fortunately, there are other ways to deal with those pesky rival Civs besides religion bombing them.
One such method would be the newly-designed espionage system. You don't get espionage until a good chunk of the way through a given game, but once you do you'll be afforded spies. Spies are not on-the-board units. Instead, they're largely dealt with via a menu on the main game screen. Going to this screen allows you to move spies between cities you've made contact with in order to learn things like which leader is plotting against which other leader, who is building what, and what technologies are being developed elsewhere. If your spy happens upon a tech that you don't have, you can steal it from your rival.
This, of course, does come with a few caveats. Spies can be caught, and when they are, they die. This also damages diplomatic relations with the rival you're spying on, which may or not even matter in the end, but could be a prelude to war. Also, rivals can spy on you as well. You can build police stations and assign spies to your own city to provide counter intelligence, but odds are at least one or two things will slip through your fingers over time.
These two systems add a nice chunk of additional strategy to the already content-rich gameplay systems of Civ V. They don't completely alter the structure of the game, but rather simply provide new road maps to victory using the same types of strategies one would use in the original game.
There's more here, too. Gods & Kings also comes with nine new civilizations (including Sweden, The Netherlands, and The Celts, among others), a gaggle of new units, and some new scenarios to play through. Including one especially strange one. While just about everything in the Civilization series has had its roots in some whimsical version of our world history and reality, the new Empires of the Smokey Skies scenario is pure steampunk fantasy.
Yup, steampunk. Airships, steam-powered tanks, old white guys with mechanical monocles, the whole nine yards. You play the game as you would any other scenario, but every unit is newly built to fit a steampunk aesthetic. Even the tech tree is wholly its own, allowing you to research everything from galvanomagnetism to the more nebulous concept of "The Great Idea" (which is pretty much just a culture boost).
Did Civilization V really need a steampunk mode? Based on the fact that now you can build military grade blimps, yes. Yes it did.Like other scenarios, this one features its own set of win conditions. Specifically, you have to capture and hold at least three of five different titles. These titles include greatest wealth, highest producing city, number of policies enacted, number of state-of-the-art units built, and the number of great buildings owned. You have to hold those titles for at least five turns, and once you do, you're the King of Steampunk Land.
The whole thing feels like an extremely elaborate mod, but it's also kind of great. It has a whole other feel to it from the rest of the game that I frankly kind of wish could cross over into the main one. I don't know why, but the idea of commanding an army of steam-powered dirigibles as the lord of the Aztecs just sounds awesome to me.
Look, I realize that as great as all this sounds, it's still an expansion to a game that you likely put down in favor of other things long ago. If you didn't, you wouldn't even need this preview, because you've probably already pre-ordered it. For those who did put aside Civ V some time ago, all I can say is that Gods & Kings is as valid a reason to pick the game back up again as you're likely to ever get. The game itself as as fun as ever, and the new additions feel significant enough to justify not just releasing them as piecemeal DLC. I can't say I'm exactly happy about the fact that Gods & Kings has given me the Civ shakes all over again, but considering I've been having a lot of fun playing through it, I guess I can't complain too hard.
I'll remind myself of that the next time I'm sitting bleary-eyed in my boxers at 3am desperately trying to muster enough coherent thought to decide on my next policy upgrade while my girlfriend is screaming at me to come to bed.
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Sometimes the work that goes into a mod is breathtaking. Civilisation V NiGHTS is such a thing, born perhaps equally out of admiration and frustration. The team, led by Markus Beutel, have looked at Civilisation V, stripped it down and rebuilt it from the ground up. They describe the mod as a total conversion but that doesn’t mean it gives you fantasy units, adds magic or allows the use of Achron-style time travel (which I now want, mod community). Instead, this is a remake of the game Firaxis released. A game that is conveniently 75% on Steam this very weekend. The mod has been available and actively updating for almost a year now by my reckoning and it is currently the only way I play Civ V. And I play Civ V a lot.
(more…)
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Civ V’s one of those games I’ve somewhat taken my eye off since launch. While lovely to point my ocular organs at and with a natty new take on Civly combat, it seemed to lack the identity and variety of the evergreen Civ IV. Importantly, however, it’s apparently been a continuing slow-burn success, given the steady trickle of new patches and DLC over the last year or so. Latest to the latter’s ranks is the introduction of Korea as a playable faction, and a clutch of new wonders.(more…)
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Wow! It’s a good day for passable games getting additional modes. Civilization V, which Alec and I both saw eye to eye about, will be getting updated with a hot seat mode within the next couple of months (hotseat being a multiplayer mode where several players take turns taking… uh, turns on the same PC). Which might seem like a long time to wait for a feature that appeared in Sid Meier’s Civnet way back in 1995, but presumably the technology behind it is now so old and irrelevant that nobody understands it anymore, like the tech behind the Apollo space program or the recipe for Greek Fire. Is that likely? I think so.
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Big Download note that the patch that makes significant balance changes to Civ V (as well as adding a range of bugfixes and a new building, the Aquaduct) has landed just in time for the Polynesia pack hitting this Thursday, and dutiful Steam might just have updated your game already. You can read the full patch notes here.
Guess what I’ve got waiting for you beneath the jump. That’s right! It’s a twenty five minute video review of the new patch by an Eastern European man. Enjoy! (more…)
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As you'd assume after reading the name of the DLC, the paid addition introduces the grand Polynesian civilization to the game. I'm not too clear on what makes these guys awesome, but the PR mentions an all-new skill tree that includes “the fearsome Maori Warrior” and the “enigmatic Moai.” And in case you were wondering, yes, Kamehameha, is the leader.
As for the scenario part of the DLC, you’ll be tasked with controlling one of four Polynesian kingdoms in a journey to, what else, conquer Polynesia. Special features for this campaign include the ability to expand without injuring cultural growth and a focus on islands and sea-faring. It's called "Paradise Found" for a reason, you know!
This is a PC-exclusive add-on at the moment--no Macintosh release details were noted.
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VG24/7 has word that a Polynesia Pack will be available for purchase for Civ V this Thursday, adding a new Civilization and a new scenario for the tidy sum of £2.99. Firaxis are releasing a free map pack on the same day, too. You’ll find all your precious details and some ukulele music after the jump.Jump! >>
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