• Hexes – The biggest change is that Civ 5 threw out the square-based tile system of earlier Civilization games and uses hexes. This allows for more organic looking continents and avoids the often ugly looking “Fat cross” and 1-2-1 movement of units on square tiles.
  
• No Unit Stacking – Civilization V lets you only stack one unit per tile. Well, technically two, you can put one civilian (Settler, Worker, etc.) per tile and one military unit to protect it. This removes the “Stack of doom” gameplay that dominated Civ 4.
  
• Ranged Military Units – Some military units, like archers or artillery, are ranged. This means they can hit a target up to 2 spaces away (Assuming there’s nothing blocking their view like mountains), and will take no damage in return. This is great for softening up enemy units and cities before going in for the kill with your melee units.
  
• Embarkment – Once you research the right tech, your units can now go on water without needing dedicated transport ships. However they’re unable to fight back when doing this, so you must keep dedicated naval units to protect it. In the expansion, embarked units now offer some resistance however it still isn't as good as a dedicated ship.
  
• No Tech Trading – Presumably because it was too easy to exploit the dumb AI, you can no longer directly trade techs, but secure “Research agreements”, which involve dumping some money down up front, in order to receive a huge chunk of bonus research down the line.
  
• Fully Voice Acted Leader Scenes – Civ 5 uses absolutely gorgeous full screen graphics in leader scenes where the leader will speak to you in their native tongue. Even civilizations who spoke languages that are long dead.
  
• Happiness is now nation-wide – Instead of individual city happiness you now have a set number which is based on how many cities you have, how big their population is, and various modifiers from “luxury” resources like wine or incense.
  
• Culture is now different – While culture does control your borders, borders will increase one tile at a time instead of extending out all at the same time in the “Fat cross” formation. The real use of culture now is to buy into “social policies”. MMORPG like “skill trees” that grant passive benefits to your empire. The more cities you have the more it costs to buy a new social policy, so smaller empires will grab more than big ones.
  
• City-States – City States are single city “minor” civilizations who aren’t trying to win the game. You can pay them cash or fulfill “quests” to get their favor, and they will reward you with resources, units, culture and other things.
  
• Resources are limited – Instead of granting you unlimited iron, horses etc. resources now give you a set amount. Since units that use resources are often more powerful than units that don’t in the same era, you must strategically make use of what’s given to you.
  
• Roads and Railroads now cost upkeep – You must pay upkeep on each tile roads occupy, requiring you to make the most of a few roads rather than covering every tile in them.
  
• Changes in victories – There are 4 victory types, some work slightly different from their Civ 4 versions.
  Cultural – Won now by completing 5 Social Policy tracks, and then building the “Utopia Project”. If you have Brave New World it's quite a bit more complex. You generate “Tourism” and you win if your tourism outpaces every other nation's culture. Think of tourism as your offense and culture as your defense.
  Diplomacy – Won by building the United Nations and having city states and civs vote for you in an election. Major civs may no longer vote for themselves.
  Domination – Now to win you must capture all opponents capitals, not all their cities. While a civilization isn’t knocked out of the game by losing their capital, they cannot win until they get it back.
  Science – Pretty much the same as it was before. Fill in the tech tree, build spaceship parts, go to Alpha Centauri.
  

• America – Washington
  
• Arabia – Harun al-Rashid
  
• Aztec – Montezuma
  
• China – Wu Zetian
  
• Egypt – Ramesses II
  
• England – Elizabeth
  
• France – Napoleon
  
• Germany – Bismarck
  
• Greece – Alexander
  
• India – Gandhi
  
• Iroquois – Hiawatha
  
• Japan – Oda Nobunaga
  
• Ottoman – Suleiman
  
• Persia – Darius
  
• Rome – Augustus
  
• Russia – Catherine
  
• Siam – Ramkhamhaeng
  
• Songhai – Askia
  

• Expand Early - It can be hard to do so early on because you have so few hammers but more cities mean you're putting out more units at a time. While you shouldn't go overboard, settling early means cities have more time to grow and you get better picks of the land.
  
• The AI will pay you for stuff - It's tempting to just trade resources for resources but that's not always necessary. As of Brave New World you must make Declaration of Friendships to trade cash, but Gold Per Turn is still ok, and if you make an early friend you can sell them a resource. They also will pay for things like open borders or embassies.
  
• Settling on top of a luxury resource grants that resource - Assuming you have the tech, settling on top of some silver will get you access to that silver. This is good because it saves you several turns trying to harvest it.
  
• Keep a standing army - It's easy to forget this. Even if you're going for a peaceful game, keep a standing army. The AI can smell weakness. On the defensive you have the advantage so you can win with a much smaller army than they would need to take your city. Keep your army stationed to ward off any wanna be conquerors.
  
• Stay focused yet flexible - Finally, keep in mind your victory early on. What do you need to do to win? Civilization is a balancing act, in a science victory you need a lot of science sure, and you should keep that as your priority, but you also need to balance that with a solid army and a good economy. Try not to spread yourself too thin by building every building in every city. Focus on what you absolutely need to have right now. And remember to adapt, if wars on the horizon, there's no shame in slowing your research a bit in order to crank out a small militia.
  

• Religion and Espionage are back – Yep, two features sorely lacking are back completely redesigned.
  Religions are no longer just a diplomacy modifier. Now they are designed from the ground up with many passive traits to boost your civilization, earned with the new “Faith” points system.
  Spies are completely different from Civ 4. They are not units, but a menu where you control up to 3 spies and send them on missions to sabotage other civs or city-states.
  
• 9 New Civilizations
  Austria - Maria Theresa
  Byzantium – Theodora
  Carthage – Dido
  Celtic – Boudica
  Ethiopia - Haile Selassie
  Huns – Atilla
  Mayans – Pacal
  Netherlands – William I
  Sweden - Gustavus Adolphus
  
• 27 New units
  
• 9 new wonders
  Alhambra
  CN Tower
  The Great Firewall
  Great Mosque of Djenne
  Hidden City of Petra
  Hubble Space Telescope
  Leaning Tower of Pisa
  Neuschwanstein Castle
  Terracotta Army
  Plus an additional national wonder, The National Intelligence Agency
  
• New City States To fit with the new religion mechanic, new “religious” city states are being added that give bonus faith for being allied, and Merchant city states, which give special luxury wonders (like jewelry) you cannot get otherwise, making them very valuable.
  
• Revised tech tree General housekeeping is being done to reorder the tech tree, some old units require different techs than before, new units are slotted in and certain eras that previously went by quickly now go on for longer.
  
• Better AI Turns out this one was (mostly) true. While still not perfect, the AI will flake on you from time to time, it seems to be a lot better both at not holding grudges for quite so long and knowing how to use ranged units better, and how to properly retreat.
  

• Updated Culture System - The culture system is being completely reworked. With strong culture you can influence other nations, even changing their ideologies from hardcore capitalism to glorious egalitarian communism or nationalistic pride. The cultural victory is also being scrapped, no longer can you just sit in your own corner and build cultural wonders till you are the winner. You have to get out there and make your civilizations culture be known.
  
• Updated Diplomacy: World Congress - An attempt at fixing the lacking diplomacy of Civilization V, the world congress is a meeting of the nations to decide on matters that affect the entire world (And allow you to screw over nations you don't like). Feel a nation is getting too big? Vote on a trade sanction against them, or convince people the next World Games should be in your country.
  
• International Trade Routes – You will no longer get gold from river tiles. Instead you can send caravans out to other nations to share gold and resources, and will also affect the spread of science and religion with neighboring nations. You can also disrupt the trade of civilizations you're at war with by attacking the caravans.
  Additionally domestic trade will be added, you can send caravans from your major cities to supply food or production to other cities, helping kickstart a small new colony or fuel production of a wonder in your capital.
  
• 9 New Civilizations
  Assyria - Ashurbanipal
  Brazil - Pedro II
  Indonesia - Gajah Mada
  Morocco - Ahmad al-Mansur
  Poland - Casimir III
  Portugal - Maria I
  Shoshone - Pocatello
  Venice - Enrico Dandolo
  Zulu - Shaka
  
• 8 New Wonders
  Borobudur
  Broadway
  The Globe Theater
  International Space Station
  The Parthenon
  Prora
  Red Fort of Delhi
  The Uffizi
  
• 2 New Scenarios -
  War Between The States - Play as the union or the confederacy in the American Civil War.
  Scramble for Africa - The international powers are attempting to colonize Africa. The rest of the world will be static while Africa will be randomly generated each game, much like the Quest For The New World scenario in the Spain/Inca Pack.
  

RagnarokAngel fucked around with this message at 08:30 on Jul 22, 2014

RagnarokAngel fucked around with this message at 07:40 on Jul 9, 2013