Info from German magazine article

[ZargonX]

Sounds like warfare is going to be a lot more strategic, which excites me. I am picturing the Panzer General system, where you advance your front lines followed up by support artillery, making sure to use terrain fully to your advantage. This could make for some dynamic battles for more dependent on strategy rather than pure numbers. We'll see how it plays out...

[Krill]

Yes I'm really going to have to wait to play this mechanic before I can decide if it is balanced or an over killl strategy just to get rid of SoD.

In theory defending land as apposed to just cities isn't bad, I mean we had "zones of control" around Civ2 units that essentually did the same thing in that game, although losing an entire stack of units when one was killed was a bummer.

In the end if combat is not exciting as well as balanced then the decision is a bad one. You can say all the bad things about SoD's, but they were exciting when you had your SoD trying to out double move your apponents SoD :P

CS

We already have ZoC in CIV. It's the combination of collateral and roads, an attacker walks up to you, you road to him and smack his stack before he can attack you. The only difference is implementation.

[CanuckSoldier]

I sensing a unit cap behind all of this...

Yes I'm really going to have to wait to play this mechanic before I can decide if it is balanced or an over killl strategy just to get rid of SoD.

In theory defending land as apposed to just cities isn't bad, I mean we had "zones of control" around Civ2 units that essentually did the same thing in that game, although losing an entire stack of units when one was killed was a bummer.

In the end if combat is not exciting as well as balanced then the decision is a bad one. You can say all the bad things about SoD's, but they were exciting when you had your SoD trying to out double move your apponents SoD :P

CS

[OzzyKP]

No tech trading!

[MikeH]

You don't really need a hard limit, just need to make unit maintenance hurt the economy if you have too large a force. If your economy can't support the units, you can't build them.

Which is what happens normally, the only thing with earlier Civ versions is that unit maintenance becomes less of an issue in the modern age as the economy develops, whereas the reality is that massive armies are extortionately expensive to maintain in any era, especially when at war, no matter how good your economy.

[Krill]

Well 1 unit per tile means there's a unit cap for the entire game of however many tiles there are doesn't it?

That's one way of making a hard limit, but I'm thinking, with the larger city areas, that there will be a hard cap placed much lower down. Hopefully not population = number of units, but something along the lines of a city improvement allows x units, social policies affecting unit caps. Hard caps, and making it too expensive to spam units is the only way to cut out the insane amount of unit micro that the game would devolve into. No more 100 unit armies on a single tile, and 100 units spread over a front that is 10 tiles wide is probably worse for the micro. Admittedly, it would make MP easier for new players, as it would take the emphasis off building an army, and onto using it effectively, which is a good thing in my eyes. The combat system itself will likely be much more tactical, and the schism between economy and military should help those players that want to build (al;though the n00b SP players that ***** about the game being made warfare centric are too stupid to realise the depth of the change and its' affects).

[SpencerH]

The most important looked for change is combat for me, so this looks very promising. Of course I'd buy Ci V (better than CIV V no) no matter what.

[MikeH]

Well 1 unit per tile means there's a unit cap for the entire game of however many tiles there are doesn't it?

[Krill]

I sensing a unit cap behind all of this...

[MikeH]

This does all sound very promising.

Like the comment about the reason for removing religion. It's a good point.

[Robert]

I like it a lot that the battles take place away from the cities!
protect your borders, find strategical positions there. Good that the environment gives (dis) advantages to units even more.

I hope that those '1 unit per tile' armies can be mixed a bit though.
But perhaps it's more like strategy and civilization combined.
Bottom line is that a civ can contain only a fixed number of armies. Dependant on the size. Does that not give too much of an advantage to larger empires?
Will ships be able to carry more armies? So many questions

[Robert]

Thanks for the heads up! (stealing from CFC is not that bad since they did it from us as well past week, but good that you credit them properly!)

I've created a news story about it that includes the cover of the magazine:

The German magazine Computer Bild Spiele covers the upcoming Civilization 5 in their latest edition.
"Schalke 04" reports some interesting information on Civilization Fanatics Center.

The new combat system will only allow one unit per tile, focussing combat to the borders of a civilization instead of around the cities. "If you breach a frontline you can go for the cities" Schalke 04 quotes the magazine.



Other interesting parts of the article are that the social politics system will work a bit like the tech tree, where you can decide for your civ yourself how deep you want to go into any branch.
For more information, read the thread started by vulture in our forums. It includes ao. that cities influences 3 tiles into all directions.

[vulture]

An article in Computer Bild Spiele today contains some new information (and some old information too...). Shamelessly stolen from civfanatics http://forums.civfanatics.com/showpo...7&postcount=65

Here is a short summary of all infos, however there will be some redundant information:

- one new leader is known, "Wu Zeitan" probably for China
- All leaders played by AI shall orientate on their historical examples, eg Elisabeth II tries to rule the sea
- Wonders of the world will be in Civ V as well, eg hanging gardens which make your people happy (so obviously there will be a happiness system)
- just one unit per hex! (the magazine makes no distinction between military and non military units)
- it is very important to use combined armies.
- terrain becomes more important: hills increase sight for normal units and strength for artillery units
- main goal is to make fights more interesting and to keep them away from the cities. Frontlines will be the new kind of fighting. If you breach a frontline you can go for the cities
- old military units will be converted into new ones, depending on your technology. The article implies that this could happen automatically, however: it may very well be, that the article is just written poorly.
- no religion. Lead Designer John Shafer thinks that religion in Civ led to a situation where civs where diplomatically divided by religion. He wants to have alliances having a bigger influence than religions.
- cities can grow bigger and have influence on 3 hexes instead of 2 tiles in any direction
- culture is responsible for the growth of your boundaries. The "fat cross" of a city remains the same if you capture it. So no need for a new culture expansion when you conquer a city
- allied Civs help you with your science, even if they research another tech
- having a one city Civ as your ally shall provide more benefits than to conquer it
- diplomacy shall give you more benefits, than just to conquer
- there will be no tech trading at all! Reason for this is to prevent backward civs to become militarily very strong over night (or over one turn )
- there could be a new trait, probably "traditional" Wrong info: "traditional" is not a new trait, it is one of the branches you can choose in the social policies [bold text from civfanatics article author, correcting the magazine article]
- a whole new concept: "social policies". this comes directly from John Shafer:
You can "plan" your Civ now. Similar to the tech tree (i guess) there will be a "Civilization tree". You can choose which part you want to go and get several bonusses by this. You can either go deep into one branch of the tree or you follow several branches.

city radius extending to 3 hexes is new, and means that cities can have 36 tiles in their radius (plus the city tile itself), suggesting once again a slight shift in the game scale that goes along with the one military unit per tile change.