Among the games that have occupied the most hours of my life, I am pretty confident in saying that the Civilization series takes the #1 spot overall.  Since I first had a 5.25″ floppy thrust into my hands by an excited friend on the back of the school bus right up through yesterday, Civilization games have always had a place on my hard drive and in my heart.

For those that have never played it, or somehow managed to never even hear of it, the Civilization games put the player in control of a (you guessed it) civilization.  Starting from the stone age with just a simple settler and a club-wielding warrior, you build your first city, get your scientists researching more efficient ways to knock stones together, and start exploring the world.  Civilization games are quintessential 4X games (Explore, Expand, Exploit, and Exterminate), giving the player the opportunity to choose how his people will develop, how they deal with the other societies of the world, and the ultimate path they take into the future.  One of the defining features of the original Civilization was the player’s ability to not just win simply through eliminating all rivals, but to allow victory through the peaceful means of researching and scientific development, becoming the first to  launch a ship towards Alpha Centauri.  Later games in the series expanded these options, allowing victory through diplomacy, religion, or even cultural domination.

Civilization games are notorious for infecting players with “One More Turn” syndrome; making them unwilling to quit until they’ve squeezed in just one more turn to see what happens next.  This often leads to sitting down to play for a bit, then looking up and discovering it’s three in the morning.  I know; it’s happened to me more than I’d care to admit.

It’s been five years since Civilization IV came out, and though two meaty expansion packs have been released in the interim, it was with great excitement that I greeted the announcement of Civilization V‘s imminent release.  It was with even greater excitement that I got a chance to sit down for a special showing of it at PAX East to see just what changes were in store for those of us that just can’t refuse it’s charms.

If you know Civ, then when the first screens of Civ V came out, the first thing you probably noticed was a matter of geometry: hexes, to be exact.  Since it’s inception, Civ games have used a square-tile based map, so the jump to hexes is a significant one.  The shift to the hex grid allows for far more organic maps, Firaxis explained, as well as eliminating some of the peculiar movement oddities of previous Civ’s regarding horizontal vs. diagonal movement, and strange virtual canals created at odd water/land intersections.

The second thing you probably noticed was how wonderful the maps themselves looked: rich, lush colors spread across rolling hills, steep mountains, and flowing rivers.  Terrains were well defined (and I think I might have seen the return of swamp tiles in there…) and meshed seamlessly with each other.  Despite the jump in graphical quality, the designers say they are well aware that plenty of people are playing Civ on older computers or on laptops while jetting cross-country, and that the game will scale to run smoothly even on lower spec machines.

The third thing you might notice, if you have an eye for such things, would be the streamlined UI.  Gone are the panels of information and multiple buttons cluttering up the bottom of the screen, or the pile of notification windows avalanching from above.  Taking a cue from their experiences on Civilization: Revolution for consoles, they looked at some new ways of reducing information overload for players, and of opening up more of the view of the world itself to draw players in.  Unit options now occupy a few buttons along the left of the screen, with “key” functions quickly available, and a pop-out tab for accessing less used features.  Important notifications now trickle down the right side of the screen represented by different icons, allowing the player to decide what order (if at all) they wish to look at things.  All in all, these changes give the game a much cleaner look, and I do think they will go a long way to decreasing some of the scare factor to newer players; being met by a beautiful world instead of a wall of information tends to be far more inviting.

Digging in past the aesthetic changes,  we were shown that some of the biggest changes look to be focused around the combat system.  Previous Civilization games have often hinged on the concept of the “Stack of Doom:” which player can throw together the largest army in a single stack and send it rampaging around the world.  Civ IV tried to mitigate some of the stack fever somewhat with barrage damage, flanking units, and the like, but for the most part a giant pile of units was a pretty good path to victory.  Civilization V looks to change all that, and takes a huge stride forward right away by eliminating the ability to stack units, period.  Now, a single unit can occupy a single tile and that’s it.  To many fans, this sounds like sacrilege, but after seeing it in action, I think it’s  a great step forward.  Lead Designer Jon Shafer has stated that he modeled the combat system around some of the concepts of the Panzer General series of wargames (which, if you recall, I am a big fan of) and you can quickly see those influences at play when looking at the system.  Now, instead of two piles of units clashing into each other like two drunken walruses, battles take place across actual fronts, with stronger melee units arrayed in the front and more delicate missile units behind them.  Ranged units can now fire over distances, allowing them to pepper enemies from safely behind their lines, and they can also provide support on defense (like artillery in PG), making them incredibly valuable.  Additionally, with one-on-one battles, terrain becomes much more important, as a single unit blocking a narrow mountain pass now has a much greater chance of holding out in that position, meaning the enemy has to find better ways to dislodge them (or avoid them).

One critical note that I learned during my time with Civ V that may assuage many fan’s fears is that combat is no longer all-or-nothing.  A unit that loses a skirmish will now retreat, and only after a series of protracted losses will they be utterly destroyed.  Again, this means that single units can hold territory more effectively, but it also means that individual, experienced units become far more valuable.  As the Firaxis representative explained, you are far more likely now to end up with a unit with a deep history and a deep personal attachment; perhaps the Mech. Infantry you are using to take your opponents final capital started it’s life as a Spearman some thousands of years earlier, and that can mean a lot to a player.  Units will no longer be throw-away things, and the simple concept of “just build more” won’t necessarily win you the day anymore.

City States are another new addition that look like they could greatly alter how player’s approach the world. They exist as one-city civilizations that will never expand beyond that, but can create some interesting options for the player.  Obviously, the player could simply attack them and take a city, but they could also befriend them to gain certain advantages (in the example we saw, a Maritime City-State granted a food bonus to the player’s cities), use them as pawns in diplomatic negotiations, or simply ignore them.  Overall, it looks like they could provide some interesting catalysts for diplomatic and military upheaval, and I’m interested to see more of them in action.

On the subject of cities, a civilizations borders once again expand outward from individual cities, but this time they do not simply grow equally in waves of expansion.  Now they push towards key resources, following the natural lay of the terrain.  In the demo, we saw how a series of tiles along the edge of a river were engulfed by growing borders as they made their way towards a resource downstream.  It gives the layout of a territory a much more organic feel, and lest any players feel like things are completely out of their hands, we were shown that players can spend gold to “purchase” specific tiles adjacent to their lands.  While this is a quick way of gaining land, it also means you have less gold to spend elsewhere.

On the diplomatic front, opposing leaders now appear in appropriate environments, and speak to you fully in their own native language.  Again, these are aesthetic touches, but they are nice from an immersion standpoint.  While we didn’t get to see too much more of diplomacy in action, it was revealed that Research Agreements, along the lines of those in Master of Orion II, are to be included.  Basically, both civilizations will put up a certain amount of money, and will gain a research benefit for a set duration.  While generally beneficial, it looks like something that could also be used to trick opponents into locking up portions of their budget when they might not realize they’ll be soon needing it.

Overall, it looks like there are a lot of changes on the way in Civilization V, and while we’ve seen some key ones, I have no doubt that many more will be revealed to us in the months ahead.  While some long-time players are of course dubious of what’s to come, what I’ve seen so far has been very encouraging, and I look forward to learning more.  At the beginning of our session, the Firaxis representative said something that I think sums up their philosophy towards Civ V: He said that many consider Civ IV the “perfect” Civilization, so if that’s the case, why not start from the ground up and build some new experiences into Civ V?  The Civ V team seems ready to look towards innovation instead of iteration, and so far it looks like they have made a wise choice.