Posted by Calixte Pictet | 3 comments
Civilization V to be released this fall
Civilization has been my favorite game for quite some time. Some people may be put off by anything that’s played on a turn by turn basis, but anyone who’s played Civilization will tell you that the gameplay has nothing to envy to any other game in terms of excitement.
The concept of all the games in the Civilization franchise is simple: You, leader of a nascent civilization (we’ll use the American spelling), build your first city. As time goes by, you expand your city into a nation, helping it advance through the ages while cooperating with (or fighting against) other nations.
In a way, Civilization is a fan-fiction of history. The “civilizations” you can play (actually called “Empires” in the game) exist or have existed in history, but you (and the other players in the game) are the one(s) who can bring them to glorious victory or miserable downfall.
Over the years, Civilization grew and evolved. Civilization IV the greatly controversial successor to Civilization III brought the game to a new level, with (useless) 3D graphics and a simpler interface, but without compromising the complexity of the game that it’s hardcore fans have come to love. These last years, Firaxis seemed to be more interested in bringing the civilization franchise into yet-unconquered territory. Video-game consoles have been served with a moderately successful title, Civilization Revolution), but the game has even appeared on the iPhone and soon as a Facebook application (though that game will probably not be that great, even according to Sid Meier, Firaxis’ head).
But Civilization, unlike most games, has a good portion of hardcore fans, and these fans are unwilling to leave the PC for another platform that provides them with a simplified and therefore more limited experience. Most continued to play the last version of the PC game: Civilization IV (and it’s multiple expansion packs). It is no coincidence that when Firaxis recently announced the new iteration to this timeless franchise, fans got excited. However, the trailer was less than informative. Civilization’s overwhelming popularity means that gamers avidly watched the video again and again, and speculated on what it meant. Unfortunately, it didn’t mean much, and apart for some rather boring claims nobody learned much about anything
If you were biting your fingers when that announcement came out, you might be disappointed, because the most important questions still remain. What will Civilization V bring to the franchise? What will have changed? What will the team add? Fortunately for us, some people (get ready to hate them) were lucky enough to see the game in action, and though even they could not try it, the demo they attended was informative.
Sound and graphics
The first change we’ll notice is in the graphics. Civilization is more about gameplay and strategy than aesthetics, and to tell you the truth, as much as I liked Civilization IV’s 3D graphics, I would be ready to move back to Civilization III’s graphics if they came with a better gameplay and interesting features. Nonetheless, the art team seams to have worked more than ever for Civilization V, and I’m not disappointed.
Most importantly, the square tiles have been replaced by hexagons. If you play the game with the tile grid, you’ll see a bee-hive structure. Not only does this greatly improve the gameplay (more on that later) but it also creates a more realistic environment. No longer will we see rivers and mountain chains twisting away at right angles. Continents, coasts and landscape will feel more organic and realistic.
Another major change is the transformation of the leaders’ “boxed heads”. In the previous Civilization games, leaders of opposing nations would appear in an in-game window when you talked to them. But the days when the caricature of a dead emperor’s bust making funny and exaggerated gestures towards you is dead. Now, the leaders will be full-sized, more realistic, and slightly idealized (Bismark will be slightly thinner than he was, for example). In addition, you will see the leaders in a different environment according to the situation, and though the only screenshots we have seen place them each inside a large room 
with red curtains, we will aparently be seeing them in plains, battle-feilds and on cliffs. Talk about an out-of-world experience!
In addition, the leaders will all have different personalities, ways of moving and reacting to events (Caesar declares war in a very nonchalant manner, Washington seems depressed when he looses, etc.) and will speak their native tongue. This means that while I will be able to understand what England’s Queen Victoria, America’s President Washington, and France’s Napoleon are saying, what Greece’s leader (Pericles?) will say will be Greek to me (and I’m not even going to start talking about Wu Zetian’s Chinese). It will be interesting to see the ancient leaders speaking languages that have’s been spoke for several thousands of years.
Units, battles, and basic gameplay
Though Civilization will always be Civilization, it seems as if this new version will be bringing some interesting new stuff. First thing we’ll all notice, of course, is the new tiles. As said above, the square chess-like tiles will be replaced bu hexagons. This is a welcome feature as it resolves a lot of small problem previous Civilization releases had. First of all, movement will be more realistic and natural. With square tiles, units that moved to tiles could move twice diagonally and end up in the same tile they would have if they moved straight forward. Also, it was almost impossible to block any unit by creating a diagonal “unit wall, as anybody could just pass through diagonally. The most important gameplay change, however, is not directly linked to the hexagonic tiles, but rather enabled by them.
Previous Civilization Games had limited tactical options. Though most games include huge world wars in which many nations take part, war-mongering was never the goal of Civilization, but rather one of several routes you could take. Military strategy was nonetheless rather boring. Basically, players would build huge stacks of units and ravage everything on their path. The good news is that these “stacks of doom” will be dissapearing. Civilization V will implement a “one unit per tile” rule. Only one unit of each type (military, workers and air) will be able to stay on any tile at once. This may seem weird (or even impossible) for long-time Civilization players, but it will actually
bring a whole new dimension to the game. Since it will be impossible to defend cities (which are one-tile sized) by stacking troops behind the walls, battles will move out in the fields. Other changes, such as ranged units (archers, catapults, etc.) shooting above one tile will make the game all-the-more strategic.
For example, you can shoot over a lake that’s protecting your archers that are weak in hand-to-hand combat while attacking that same unit with clubmen or swordsmen. Also, it will now be possible for a small number of units to hold a huge army at bay by protecting a small passage between two mountains. The one-unit-per-tile rule will lead big wars to being more about fronts, breakthroughs and getting veteran units to the right places than bringing your horde and smashing everything up.
Furthermore, Civilization fans will be pleased to discover a new resource-management system. In the previous versions, once you had gained access to iron, you could build as many swordsmen as you wanted. Now, resources will be limited, which means that your access to iron will give you the possibility to build only one single unit with it. This will become very interesting in the modern era, where war could break out for important resources like oil or uranium. Controlling territory becomes all the more important, and again, adds even more strategy to the game.
This creates a good balance of military strategy and complexty without creating and in-game battle engine similar to the Total War franchise (which would transform Civilization into a war game). Civilization fans will have to come up with new tactics, and rethink the way they play the game. However, Civilization will remain Civilization as we know it.
Artifical Intelligence and diplomacy
Civilization is more about strategy and interactions with other nations than any other game out there that I know. This is why the primary request of fans was better diplomacy, and a new (more realistic and and more intelligent) AI. It seems they won’t be deceived.
Diplomacy will be spiced up by the all-new city-states concept. City-states look like regular players, except that they never own more than one city. This makes them NPC’s in the sense that they’re not trying to win, but are playing the game nonetheless. They may ask you favors, and reward you if you have helped them well. These favors can range from military (liberate them or destroy one of their enemies) to commercial. They will take a part in diplomacy and will be crucial to the balance of powers between empires.
New concepts will be introduced, and the entire diplomacy system ameliorated. Trading technologies, a concept that always felt awkward in the last Civilization versions, will be pushed a step up. Instead of trading the technology as-is, you will be able to make research pacts with a friend so as to combine you scientific powers towards one goal. These deals can be carried on or broken, creating great diplomatic incidents.
Of course, the most fundamental part of the game is the AI. In this domain, the developpement team is not set to disappoint us. The computer’s artificial intelligence has been redesigned from the ground-up to be more intelligent and to provide more long-term strategies. It will sense when you are preparing to attack it, for example, when you place too many military units at its borders. 
Its reactions will supposedly become more realistic, with the computer sensing that you are becoming a threat if you rise in power to fast.
Contrairily to Civilization IV’s AI, this new AI is actually subdivided into four different but interlinked engines. These engines are like layers. The lowest levels control the actions of the computer player on the moment, making immediate decisions while the highest levels compute the civilization’s long-term strategy.
At the lowest level is the “tactical” AI. This engine calculates and organizes the battle on the local scale. It places the units, decides which should fight and when, etc. One step up from that is the “operational” AI. This engine choses which battles to fight and makes sure the necessary units are available. It operates on a case-by-case basis and is still focalized on single problems (e.g. how to conquer a city, does the computer player have enough forces available to defeat the enemy, etc.). Above that still is the “strategic” AI. This AI manages the empire as a whole. It decides where to bulid cities, when to declare war and against whom. Above all these layers is the “grand strategic” AI. It decides how the computer should play to win the game. It chooses which type of victory (conquest, domination, diplomatic, technological, etc.) all the other AI engines should strive for. If the grand strategic AI has decided to go for a conquest victory, il will communicate to the lower levels to act in accordance to it’s decision (build armies, attack this or that nation, etc.). This means that the computer will never wage a war or fight a battle merely for the sake of it, or to piss you off, but rather because it is striving in one direction.
This may seem complicated and far-fetched, but apparently, it’s working. The development team is constantly running AI games in a test environment to get a better sense of the relationships between all these systems. The people at IGN, who have witnessed a running game at Firaxis while they were running AI vs AI tests, illustrated this with an example: In their scenario, the “Songhai start out very close to the city-state of Rio de Janeiro. Askia, leader of the Songhai, is very conquest-oriented, so it’s no surprise that he tends towards military action. His civilization immediately went into warrior-rush mode and he soon had six warriors heading off to capture Rio. Unfortunately, along the way a few of the warriors were lost in an unexpected fight with barbarians. So now the AI has to decide whether the tactical AI can even win the fight against Rio and, if not, what other adjustments need to be made at the other levels. Each of those four levels also has a unique opportunity to set or be influenced by the AI’s research and diplomacy goals, which requires even more flexibility and cooperation among the various subsystems.”
Verdict
Civilization V isn’t out yet, but already thousands of fans are yearning for it. The previews that we have seem to bring more questions than answers, but what we know of it seems to exceed expectations. Firaxis is definitively bringing the Civilization franchise to a new level.
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Errata:
1- England’s Queen will not be Victoria, but Elizabeth.
2- It is not clear whether leaders will each have their own special background environment or if their setting will change according to the situation. One report (by IGN) seems to contradict this claim, but it’s not definitive so we’ll have to see how that turns out.
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Sources: IGN review, EuroGamer, and ShachNews
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