Firaxis has just released the new Gods & Kings expansion for Sid Meier’s Civilization V, following up on last week’s patch. The expansion features some significant rules changes and two entire new subsystems (Religion and Espionage returning from Civ4), as well as the expected new civilizations, units, buildings, etc.
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If you have turned off the Civ5 intro movie, you might want to turn it on again briefly to see the expansion’s new movie. (Or just watch the WMV file directly…)
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There’s a new manual for Gods & Kings that gives an overview of all the changes and additions, but it’s not installed automatically. You need to download it from your Steam product page, or directly from Steam links collected on Civilization Fanatics. When you open the new combined PDF manual, simply click on the Gods & Kings cover to jump to the expansion section on page 236.
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Also on CivFanatics, a thread entitled Gods & Kings: Introductory Guide describes the new expansion features in great depth.
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Both tactical and strategic AI seem improved compared to the incompetent bumbling in the base game, judging by my own experience and reports from other players. On the other hand, the generous AI bonuses on various difficulty levels seem to have remained much the same.
I’ve updated my Civilization 5 Manual Addenda with the above information, plus some relevant changes: Great General citadels now perform culture bombs; Spies reveal territory around foreign cities; naval units stack with embarked units; and Bomb Shelters reduce population loss from nuclear attacks. That’s just a fraction of the full feature list, though – please read the expansion manual and the CivFanatics guide for all the details!
Yes! Religion was awesome in civ 4, can’t wait to get this.
If you liked Civ4 and the Civ5 base game you’ll love this expansion. Having finished a first game I can say that religion is similar to Civ4 but more detailed, and nicely integrated with an enhanced influence system for city states. The reworked espionage is streamlined in the best sense, siege units are rebalanced, the AI is significantly improved… well, it’s just generally awesome in every respect. :)
Good to hear – the AI certainly needed some sorting out. Is there a “religion” path to victory? Or is it particularly suited to a certain type of victory?
There’s still only the UN diplomatic victory, so no Apostolic Palace equivalent. Each religion gives customizable bonuses, some based on the number of cities (owned or foreign) where the religion has the majority. In that sense it’s a bit like corporations from Civ4.
But religion is best suited for diplomatic victories due to some other changes. First, it’s much harder to just buy off city states, so religion is important as another means of peaceful influence. City states offer new religion-based quests, and those with the same religion have 25% slower influence decay. Second, major civs can no longer vote for themselves in the UN election. AI votes are now determined by diplomatic attitudes, and those are influenced by majority religions (same = good, different = bad).
Diplomatic victory is hugely improved overall. It was a bit of a joke in vanilla Civ5, you just bought up all city states before an election while completely ignoring major civs. That’s no longer possible, you really have to work for (and against) diplomatic victories. Religion and espionage and major civ diplomacy are all factors here.
Hmmm, wasn’t such a fan of corporations, but still keen to give it a whirl. Thanks for the info