New News for Civ V

Only recently announced, lots more details are now coming out about Civilization V during this week's Game Developer Conference. A big theater presentation about the new game is chronicled in a great write-up at Kotaku.

There are a couple really interesting things that have changed. First, the difference in combat and how units can share spaces. One of the things that have bugged me for the longest time is unit proliferation and how you can have a million infantry units. It's a bear to manage, and it feels like individual units are almost useless. I've been happier with modern strategy games like Demigod, Sins of a Solar Empire, and Company of Heroes where a handful of great units are preferable to hordes of vanilla ones. Well, it seems that Civ V is taking a page out of their playbook. Units in Civ V will now no longer stack in spaces (beautiful, beautiful hex spaces), requiring you to have fewer at any given time. This makes combat a far more manageable affair, and treats units more like armies rather than a smaller squad. Big change, and I really like it.

The other addition that interests me is this idea of city-states. Apart from multi-city civilization that are the main factions in the game, city-states may arise in the game. They are just that, a nation of one city, that you can trade with, fight, etc. It gives a little more dynamic political climate, some more unpredictability, and some more differences in the size of your potential enemies or allies.

The game just looks gorgeous, and I'm excited to try out a fresh take on the Civ series. Even if I am a latecomer to the franchise, I love the core gameplay of turn-based strategy and open-ended empire building. Should be good.