Civilization 5

I remember the first time I played Civilization 4... the game loaded, and then began singing to me. I had been worried about all the changes they were making to my beloved series, but in the end it turned out to by my favorite iteration yet! A lot of folks are similarly worried about Civ 5, but I have to say that after seeing the demo, I'm not too worried. Our highly anticipated game is in safe hands.

The game world is beautiful. Absolutely beautiful. Now bear in mind, the build we were shown was an early Alpha, so this information may not remain accurate. From what we were told: roads are no longer going to be integral for your empire, but rather will act as a trade link. You'll want to build roads as minimally as possible, because they will actually hinder resources gathered from the tiles they exist in.

Did I say tile? I meant to say hex. If you haven't heard, Civ 5 is switching to a hexagon system that I think looks pretty interesting. It will certainly add a lot of new strategic possibilities when units are engaged in combat. The design team said that they really wanted to revolutionize the way wars occur in Civ 5. To this end, they're limiting military units to one per hex, giving ranged units the ability to fire from afar, and making units a lot more expensive and a lot more powerful. Combat will no longer necessarily leave one unit wiped out, and ranged units can play a significant role in backing up melee units.

They are also limiting cities to where only one unit can garrison them. The general idea is that wars will occur and be decided outside of the cities. And obviously, no more Stacks of Doom. I love the direction combat is taking since one of my least favorite aspects of Civ is unit spam.

I asked a few questions towards the end of the session. From what I was told:
-Civilization/Leader traits will be very distinct and heavily contribute to the playstyle
-Unique Units will truly be unique, not just a small stat bonus but something that other units can't do
-City States are in the game to "make things happen" between the larger empire-like civilizations, and are very effective at that; they provide substantial bonuses if you're friendly with 'em (depending on the city's focus, such as war or economics), but can also be captured
-Conquest no longer requires you to eliminate all over civilizations; just take and hold all their capitals (which I'm not too thrilled about, actually)
-Barbarians will have a "home city", and if you capture the home city you stop the barbarians (unknown if this is going to be literally one home city on a world, or if it'll be lots of home cities that spawn barbarians continuously and can be captured one by one)
-You can spend gold to "purchase" an expansion of your cities borders
-Cities will expand an additional hex, rather than two like in previous games it'll go out to work up to three hexes away

Overall, I'm really excited about what I saw and looking forward to the finished product. I can't wait!