Spotlight

Gods and Kings adds 9 new Civilizations to Civilization 5. Additionally, it adds Spain from paid downloadable content (DLC). Each Civilization as two Unique Item that can be built. The first item is a Unique Unit (UU), the second item is either a Unique Unit, a Unique Building (UB), or a Unique Tile Improvement (UI). There 12 new Unique Units, 3 Unique Buildings, 1 Unique Tile Improvement, and 2 unknown Unique Items.

Gods and Kings adds 9 new wonders to Civilization 5, it adds 1 new national wonder, and 1 new natural wonder. Additionally, it changes a wonder.

New Buildings

Gods and Kings adds 13 new buildings to Civilization 5. At least 3 of the 13 buildings are Unique Buildings (UBs). This means they can only be build by one specific civilization.

The Civilization 5 addon Gods and Kings adds 27 new units to the game and changes the combat system. Here are the details:

Combat System

• All unit values were completely revised.
• More early (WW1) aircrafts.
• Naval units have been split into two types: Naval melee and naval ranged units. (Ed Beach)
• Melee ships can pillage or capture cities. (Ed Beach)
• Embarked units now have Defensive Embarkation.
• Embarked land units can be stacked with naval units. (Ed Beach)
• Units have now 100 hitpoints instead of 10, so that the combat system can be better fine tuned. (Ed Beach)
• The damage a unit makes has been increased from 4-8 to 24-36.
• So far 2 units could destroy a unit of equal strength, now 3.5 units are needed to destroy a unit of equal strength.
• This makes it more difficult to defeat cities and units.
• Catapults for instance can now survive a melee attack.
• The AI (artificial inteligence) can compose its armies better.
• The AI can plan and execute sea invasions within 10 turns instead of 50-60 turns.
• Completed the Archer upgrade path: Archer -> Composite Archer -> Gatling Gunner -> Machine Gunner (added) (Ed Beach)
• After a promotion a unit's health is only restored up to 50%.
• No penalty in combat on plains.

Bengt Lemne from Gamereactor has interviewed Ed Beach the gameplay designer of Firaxis for the Civilization 5 addon Gods and Kings. They were talking about religion, diplomacy, and combat in Civ5:G&K. Here is the video of the interview and a transcript, which has been edited for style and clarity:

Bengt Lemne:
Gods and Kings, I just got a demo, and I thougfht it is similar to the press release about it: A new expansion, they are writing about religion for Civ5. For me it's not a huge deal, because I played religion in Civ4. But vow, when I saw the demo, that's gonna change the game as I play it, completely.