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Civilization V Preview


Firaxis gives us an in-depth look at the
latest sequel.


March 8, 2010 -
Last week we had the good fortune to visit Firaxis and get a
firsthand look at Civilization V from
several of the game's creators. Not counting the Colonization mod, this
is the series first return to the PC after making the leap to the
console and handheld platforms with Civilization Revolution. Some fans
feared that the leaner (and loonier) style that Civ displayed on the
consoles might bleed over into subsequent PC sequels. Based on the
pre-alpha version we saw, that doesn't seem to be the case. There's a
fine line between making a game easier and making it easier to play,
of course, but Firaxis is committed to maintaining the depth the fans
have come to expect.




The first suspicions of a market-driven compromise are usually generated
by the dreaded "A" word, accessibility. While it's true that some game
systems, like religion and espionage, have been removed, fears that
Civilization Revolution on the console has dumbed down the gameplay of
the PC sequel are unfounded. In the case of Civilization V,
accessibility just means the developers want to make it easier to
understand and manipulate the complexity within the game. Most of these
are merely matters of convenience rather than cutting back and, with
that in mind, it's clear that the interface for Civ Rev has definitely
impacted the presentation in Civ V.




Basic commands and notifications have been simplified and pushed into
the corners of the art deco interface. The few unit actions that players
use all the time will be aligned on the lower left edge of the screen,
but you can expand the list to include the whole range of possible
actions. Small icons will pop up each turn to notify players of new
events that might require attention and clicking on those icons will
take players to the location in question. The idea is to give the player
as much information they need without ever taking them out of the game
itself.






The whole game has a very painted look.

Advisors
are also making a return to counsel new players on particular aspects
of the game but their overall tone will be much more serious than in
previous versions of Civ. New players will also be saved from wasting
time by having the "End turn" button transform into a "Choose
production" button if a city happens to be sitting idle. Even with the
streamlined interface, veteran players will still be comforted to see
that the top line of the screen reveals the presence of the hardcore
elements, tracking things like science and gold production, happiness,
culture, resources, and even the time remaining on any Golden Ages.




One of the biggest changes to the game is the new one-unit-per-hex
restriction. Previous Civ games have been dominated by the "stack of
doom" where players create an unstoppable super unit by piling all of
their units in a single square. That strategy is not available in Civ V,
which should, the designers reason, pull combat away from the cities.
Now when an invading army enters your territory, you'll want to send
your spearmen and warriors and swordsmen out to fight them in the fields
around your towns. Cities will automatically defend themselves now, and
can benefit from increased defense based on certain structures or
technologies, so you don't necessarily need to garrison a unit for
defense but you can if you want to.




Because you're limited to just one unit per hex, battles have the
potential to be much more tactical, both with regard to the placement of
your units and geographical obstacles. We saw a few battles that
highlighted the significance of the new system. In one, two groups of
units were facing off against each other around a one-hex lake. An
archer unit was able to fire at enemy units on the far side of the lake
and stay protected from melee attack by two allied units on either side.
In another battle, a small group of powerful units were able to hold
off a much larger attacking army in a narrow mountain pass. Because the
attacker could only bring one unit into the fight at a time, the
defender was able to eliminate the numerical disadvantage.






It's all worth it once
you start shooting flaming arrows at cities.

Civ
fans are already very familiar with the terrain-based combat modifiers
(crossing rivers, holding hills, etc.) and appropriate unit match ups.
Adding in the additional burden of managing an army spread out over a
large area just means doing it all on a different scale and making sure
that your ranged units stay clear of melee. Fortunately, the game will
allow adjacent allied units to swap positions, so you can keep fresh
troops engaged with the enemy and rescue your ranged units from contact
with melee fighters.




As fun as they are, battles are just the basic components of victory and
without a clear direction you can win every fight and still lose the
game. A lot of effort is being made to ensure that the AI in
Civilization V behaves in a way that makes sense. As we watched a test
game play out in front of us, AI programmer Ed Beach explained the way
the AI uses subsystems to create and execute its strategies. At the
lowest level, the tactical AI uses the forces at hand to win a battle on
a local scale. One step up from that, the operational AI picks which
battles to fight and makes sure that the necessary forces are available.
Moving even higher, the strategic AI manages the empire as a whole,
focusing on where to build cities and what to do with them.




At the top of the ladder is the grand strategic AI, which decides how to
win the game. If the grand strategic AI decides to go for a conquest
victory, the strategic AI will build the infrastructure needed to wage
war and the operational and tactical AIs will choose and fight the
battles. That way the tactical AI won't be fighting battles merely for
the sake of fighting battles, but because those battles are relevant in
the grand strategic AI's big picture. In the case of the conquest
victory, the AI will be aiming to capture the other civ's capitals,
which is all that's needed for a military victory this time.