Civ V Brave New World Q&A

[Pendragon 6]

Dennis Shirk is hosting a Q&A and gameplay footage from the new Civ V expansion on Thursday. I plan to ask a few questions about some of the bugs and problems with the current version, and some of the features of the new expansion.

 

http://www.facebook.com/events/111384405698994/

[Andytizer 269]

Wow that sounds great. If you could link back when it's over we may pick out a few choice quotes for our blog.

[Pendragon 6]

So the Q&A just ended. Unfortunately, because it was a video chat, I wasn't able to get exact quotes, and had to take notes quickly, so I didn't get everything. This is what I got from it:

 

Multiplayer is being overhauled. There are some bug fixes and new game modes, including a new feature called hybrid mode. Hybrid mode lets you play simultaneous, except during battle, when it becomes turn based. This sounds like a great step in fixing some of the lag-related multiplayer issues. Pitboss was also confirmed.

 

The new changes to multiplayer will be released as a patch prior to Brave New World and will not require Brave New World.

 

Aside from that, there wasn't a lot of technical questions answered, but a lot of good questions were answered.

 

There was a demonstration of the new trade route system (reused from PAX). The three confirmed leaders were all shown in some degree, and an additional leader was shown as a shadow image (I got a screenshot of it).

 

Christianity has been split into 3 denominations.

 

There was a comment by Dennis Shirk that suggested that city flipping from culture has returned.

 

New espionage feature: diplomat. Diplomats cannot steal techs, but they can share intrigue and spy on congressional voting. They can be used to influence votes.

 

Diplomacy has been improved, but he wasn't specific on how. He did mention that other civs would not declare you a warmonger for capturing one city.

 

Airports and airlifting will be added in the new expansion. I didn't catch all of the details on how airlifting worked, however.

 

Great Artists, already known to be split into new types such as Great Writer and Great Musician, will each have their own special ability. For instance, Great Musicians have the Concert Tour ability.

 

A new technology, Internet. A new unit, XCOM Squad for late game combat. They have a drop ability like the paratrooper.

[Nicereddy 109]

Next time try using Google+ Hangouts. They allow you to record them and post them on YouTube (privately or otherwise). It's probably good for interviews so you can watch it again later.

 

These look like interesting additions, was there anyone else in the video chat besides you and him?

[Pendragon 6]

There was a lot of people in the chat. No one got to speak directly to him, instead another person read the facebook page and chat and picked questions to ask, which he did over skype. So it was a video and a chat.

 

This should be the video part. http://www.twitch.tv/2k/c/2142409

 

-----

 

The is the first part of an edited transcript of the video chat. The chat is between Senior Producer Dennis Shirk and Community Manager Kate Distler. I have removed some of the chatting and introductions to questions, non-question related sections such as the poster trivia contest, and unnecessary "ums" "ands" "buts" and stuttering. Emphasis added by me on things I found particularly interesting.

 

KD: "Dennis, what can you tell us about multiplayer?"

 

DS: "Well we've got a full multiplayer team for this expansion, which is really nice, and they attacked a few different options. We've done a lot of polish, a lot of bug-fixing. We've got some new turn modes. We've got an observer mode so you can go in and watch a game. We've got sequential turn mode. We've got a hybrid mode, that actually lets you all play at the same time, but when combat occurs, stuff like that, it actually switches to turn mode and then goes back to regular at the same time it would after it's done. And obviously, the long, long-awaited pitboss. So there's a lot of great things that are coming out, and it's not just for Brave New World, those are going to be patched into all versions of the game, so whether it's base game, Gods and Kings, Brave New World, it's coming out for all of them."

 

KD: "Since trade and tourism are big components of this expansion, will corporations and airports be included in the game?"

 

DS: "Corporations, no. Airports, yes. We are bringing back the airlift. So what's nice about the airlift being special with one-unit-per tile is when you do do an airlift and then you send the unit across, it doesn't just pile up in the city. It actually fills up all the hexes around the city, so as long as your unit has movement when it moves into the airport, you can go. Airports actually come into play for tourism now as well, it actually gives tourism boosts. So the more airports you have, hotels, things like that, you get a lot more boosts that way as well."

 

KD: "As there any new religions or belief systems?"

 

DS: "There are. We've split up Christianity, first off. That was an easy one because it seemed like most of the civs in the game always went for Christianity because that was their flavor, a lot of European civs. So we've actually split that up into Catholicism, Protestantism, and Eastern Orthodoxy, I think. We've also got a whole new section called Reformation Beliefs, so in Piety, we've raided the Piety branch a bit. If you unlock all of the Piety trees, you actually get to pick a Reformation Belief. These are really powerful beliefs, specific to those who finish the Piety tree, and you get to pick one. There can be tourism boosters, you can actually purchase science buildings with faith, a lot of good options there for religious players, especially when it is tying into the culture game."

 

KD: "What sorts of new roles or features will spies get in this expansion?"

 

DS: "We've added a new type of spy called a diplomat. That's not too cynical. But what you can do with a diplomat is you can assign him to a capital of another city. He doesn't steal techs, you don't have to worry about your diplomat getting killed that way, but he does still listen for intrigue, and what he does is he kind of reports back to you and lets you know how a civilization is going to vote in the World Congress. So you get a little bit of information from that. But he does open up another line of communication, too. So when the World Congress is in play, if you've got diplomats out there, you can actually go to other civs and offer to buy votes or trade for votes. They might come to you and say 'I really want you to vote a certain way.' So in that period after resolution are proposed and the vote actually takes place you can go around and kind of line up your little power blocs, your voting blocs, and make your own model miniature UN, so to speak."

 

KD: "Is there any chance of a happiness-per-city system, alongside with any new kind of happiness systems?"

 

DS: "The happiness system isn't changing too much. We like the way that it was ending up with Gods and Kings, aside from obviously always needing more balance. We're always working on getting the AI back to a normal playstyle on par with the players, but that's just going to be ongoing. But the happiness system that's in now is probably going to be the one that people are going to see generally for Brave New World."

 

KD: "Dennis, how do you keep your people happy? That's a question I have, because sometimes I'm playing and I think I'm going okay, and I'm feeling pretty happy, and all of a sudden my little guy's like 'no. You're terribly unhappy. No Golden Age for you!' What are your best strategies for keeping everyone happy?"

 

DS: "Well you're doing it wrong. Obviously. There's all kinds of buildings you can actualy use to increase your happiness. There's religion stuff, there's policy things. It's just always balancing that out. There's a lot of ways. In Gods and Kings one of the things actually players have been giving us feedback on is there is a little too much happiness in the system. So I don't know what you're doing wrong, I apologize."

 

KD: "All of the things...clearly..."

 

DS: "That's just going to be something that again, we continue to just keep playing it and keep balancing it and come up with a happy medium. So it's not too challenging. One of the things that's going to be really interesting in terms of happiness is something Ed hasn't talked about too much with the Ideology system that comes into play at the end of the game. If you're playing a strong culture game and you've got a lot of tourism being generated, you're really pressing outward. Let's say I'm a Freedom civ, I've chosen Freedom as my Ideology and somebody else is an Order civ, and my tourism is overwhelming them really strong. I'm actually going to start causing their people to be more and more unhappy. So that player has a couple options. He can either ignore it until his population becomes so unhappy that his cities start to flip over to my side. He can start building new happiness buildings. He can start generating more culture to defend himself. Or he can just invade. It's just one of those neat little systems at the end of the game that's hopefully going to cause a lot of cool things to happen. We're trying to avoid having that straight line to victory be so straight that nothing occurs in the game that causes things to go sideways."

[Andytizer 269]

It's a same I couldn't get to this earlier as I had the most hectic day ever.. and it now looks like PC Gamer has a pretty good preview up on their site.