Dutch magazine "InsideGamer" writes about ships and maps sizes.

[Robert]

edit: Map size update at the bottom of this post!

The Dutch magazine "InsideGamer" had the opportunity to talk with Jon Shafer, leader designer of Civilization V. The article is written in Dutch. Which is not even a tiny bit of a problem for you native Dutch news editor.

The article is written in an informal mood. And as can be expected from a Dutch interviewer, it quickly moves to the topic of ships. In Civ 5 ships will get a more important role. Two reasons are listed why every player will focus more on their fleet. First of all, all ships will be able to carry units. "This must make it more attractive to aim for a large fleet" Shafer says. Apart from that will ships have a very large reach of bombardment! Up to 5 or 6 hexes!



Some questions are raised about how the game deals with cities that are completely encircled by enemies. Jon Shafer explains that a city has been lost or given up by then already. "At a certain moment you'll notice that, when you're about to lose a city, you won't let yourself be closed in but give up your city and pull your remaining troops back to another city to defend it."
This leaves the original question unanswered; what happens if a city is encircled by enemies and your city produces a new unit?

The article ends with another two new bits of Civilization V information;
Armies will receive reinforcements automatic. This process goes slower outside your territory and maps can contain up to 2500 hexagons. Shafer answer comes with a joke: "You did never expect that, did you, that I would have an answer on that question!"

You can read the article Here (translation).

EDIT with UPDATE:

Some confusion spread after reading the 'map-size remark' in the recent InsideGamer Article.

Apolyton Civilization Site decided to phone Gerard van Nieuwenhuijzen, author of the article, and asked for clarification. He was kind enough to answer our questions.

Maps can certainly be larger then 2500 tiles!
The `2500 tiles` remark was given as an informal adlib by Jon Shafer to show that he was able to give a number in response to even the most detailed questions. This is in line with the informal setting of the article in general. So no reasons for us to panic yet!

Gerard was even able to confirm that maps will at least be the size of the civ4 general maps. At the end of our conversation he pointed us into the direction of another interesting source of information. Keep looking here for more! Thanks a lot to Gerard and InsideGamer.

[Krill]

CS, you're Dutch, did Trip really say the map will have 2500 hexagons?

[giblets]

Ships can bombard 5 to 6 hexes away. That's crazy.

[Boris Godunov]

Ships can bombard 5 to 6 hexes away. That's crazy.

Indeed. That's effectively a bombardment range of hundreds if not thousands of miles, depending on the map size.

To me that sounds like a little too much of a move into tactical combat rather than strategic. I'm all for gameplay over realism, but when you push that envelope too far, I think it will hurt the feel of the game.

I think the obvious aim here is to provoke big naval battles in the open sea, as you would need to keep enemy ships far away from your coast.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

All ships can carry units

HELL YES

[Ming]

I wonder if the ships will have to be on a costal hex to bombard inland... or whether they will be able to bombard costal squares from 4 or 5 hexes away.

Hmmm... we shall see.

But what is obvious from this story is that naval power will be far more important than in the past. I hope they don't give it too much importance.

[The Emperor Fabulous]

Navies have always been one of my favorite aspects of the Civ games. There's something so satisfying to me about having a massive fleet steaming towards enemy harbors, much more so than a massive stack of land units.

I usually even take the time in Civ IV to name each of my ships.

[OzzyKP]

Navies have always been one of my favorite aspects of the Civ games. There's something so satisfying to me about having a massive fleet steaming towards enemy harbors, much more so than a massive stack of land units.

I usually even take the time in Civ IV to name each of my ships.

NERD!

[Theben]

I'm hoping that 5-6 hexes is missile bombardment, and that earlier forms are at most 2.

Then again they have archers firing from 2 hexes away. While I like the idea of civ V, I'm really beginning to wonder WTF is going on with some of these concepts.

[Lord Avalon]

If that's all the range that ships have, then there's no way archers should have 2.

[Robert]

CS, you're Dutch, did Trip really say the map will have 2500 hexagons?

Yes, I've been examining it because it seems to be a bit small (25x100) but that's what at least the dutch magazine says. It's of course a dutch translation of an english interview. But I can't imagine that Jon meant to say that it's 2500 hexes in width since that's way too much. And 25000 (100x250) seems to a bit large.

A 2500 hex map has place for appox 50 cities (if 50% of the map is water). That's really way too few. How large were Revolutions maps?

And about ship bombarding, I can assume that only modern ships can bombard that far away, it may grow over time. It makes modern warfire very interesting if ships can bombard that far!

[Kropotkin]

I´m a tad concerned about this focus of long range combat as well. I don´t want to plan my border defense of crack legions on a perfect strategic hill just to see them being slowly decimated by some archers or a frigate two hexagons away without any possibility to do anything about it without leaving my fortifications.

[MikeH]

Support them with archers of their own. Use cavalry to clear the archers away.

Another interesting tactical challenge.

[MikeH]

2500 hexes does sound low.

[ColdPhoenix]

How many tiles are on a standard size Civ 4 map?