Civ5:G&K

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.

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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.

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Apolyton has missed the release of Civilization V: Gods and Kings, and with us the rest of the world except the guys from squidoo. If we believe them than Civilization 5: Gods and Kings "was released June 19 in North America and June 22 internationally." (Emphasis by me). So that was last year or what! ...

Apolyton is counting down to the release of the Civilization 5 expansion Gods and Kings in America on June 19th 2012. The expansion is released in Europe on June 22nd 2012.

If you ever needed a reason to visit our forum home page, now you definitely have. ...

VideoGamer visited a Civilization V: Gods & Kings 'behind-closed-doors' presentation during GDC 2012. They posted an article that sums up a couple of details about the new Civ5 expansion pack.

Religion:
• There are 20 different Pantheon beliefs to choose from, such as the God of War or the Goddess of the Hunt.
• Your pantheon choice rolls into your religion, and you'll also get to choose between two more bonus abilities. The first is the Founder belief, which gives you rewards for spreading the religion to other cities, and the second is the Follower belief, which will confer bonuses to any city (and any civilisation) that follows your religion.
• Certain units, like Pictish warriors for the Celts, generate faith when killing other units.
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The earlier announced Civilization V Expansion Pack Gods & Kings gets explored more in dept by online game magazines Gamespot and Kotaku.


Both sites discuss the unexpected XP with Ed Beach, Lead developer of Gods & Kings.

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The Civilization V Expansion Pack Gods & Kings has just been announced on 2kgames.com.



The expansion comes with "Tons of New Stuff" like "27 new units, 13 new buildings, 9 new wonders, and 9 new playable civilizations. Among the new civilizations are the Netherlands (William I, Prince of Orange), the Celts (Boudicca), and the Mayans (Pacal the Great)."
Most important of course are the new game elements. Religion is back! Back in September 23rd 2010 Apolyton Civilization Site already discovered that Religion was was removed from [vanilla] Civilization V. Today the official announcement of 2K Games reads: "Using the new "Faith" resource, you'll be able to found your own religion and grow it from a simple Pantheon of the Gods to a world-spanning fully-customized religion."
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