CVG reports that PC Gamer gives Civilization V 93% in their October issue. Which is 1% less that Civ4 got. They describe the game as not necessarily better, but adds that such an achievement would have been almost impossible.

This is more of an equal that exists in parallel, offering a fresh and invigorating style of play with more emphasis on combat.

The magazine is available for purchase online for the facile price of £5.99.

Voodoo Extreme has a new, and very cool, preview of Civilization V. The previewer is a long time Civ fan and seems to like the new direction of the series. Apart from the reiteration of the various [known] features we also get a nice sump up of one his game sessions, playing as the Egyptians. It’s a good read.

BradyGames’ official strategy guide for Civilization V is now available for preorder at Amazon. It ships September 10 and will set you back $13.49.

Civilization V Official Strategy Guide (paperback)

There’s no info on the product at BradyGames’ web site yet. But keep checking and I’m sure something will turn up eventually.

2K Games had previously more or less promised to have the demo out before the release of the full game, unfortunately that won’t be the case. The demo will be available for all to download via Steam (most likely) on September 21st, the same date as the North American launch date.

Source: civilization5.com

PC Authority has compiled a list of 13 new lovable features to look forward to in Civilization V. In the list we find city states, one unit per hex-rule, and the ability to buy tiles.

Expansion is much slower in Civilization 5 than it was in Civilization 4, but a new touch is to add the ability to buy tiles. If your city needs a resource such as gems, you can stretch out your hand and purchase the land with that resource

Check it out for a nice summary of what we can expect from Civ5.

Podcast 8 from the guys at Firaxis just reached us. In it Ed Beach, Lead AI and Gameplay Programmer, and Jon Shafer, Lead Designer, shed some light on one of the most important aspects of Civilization gameplay: Battles and combat.

Shafer: [...] combat is now non-lethal. So when you attack a unit, he can sit and take that attack and still be in place and ready to continue to defend that terrain in case someone else is gonna come after him. So what you wanna do is often times to break an enemy line use two or three units in conjunction with each other, sometimes setting up a ranged attack to soften them up ahead of time.

This is pretty interesting:

Shafer: Hills allow your ranged units, if stationed on them, to shoot over other obstacles. Normally if you have a very dense forest your ranged units aren’t going to be able to shoot as far as they normally can. However if they’re on a hill they can actually restore their range so identifying hills and getting your ranged units on top of them will be something that’s pretty important to winning.

There’s also a transcript available.

The games fair in Cologne, Germany is over. The guys at Apolyton took a trip there and played the game, thus giving us extensive coverage of Civilization V, including a hands-on experience.

Courtesy of apolyton.net

They’ve also written an thorough guide to the ancient and classical social policies available in Civ5. Note that “Independence” should read “Liberty” to avoid confusion. In total there are ten policy trees, each containing five policies.

Apolyton met up with Jon Shafer. Not much Civ5 info however. Apart from this:

We have been told that it will be possible to browse the community from within civ5; how does this work?

Members of the community will be able to upload mod packages using a special tool to this central service. Uploaders will be able to specify a web link to whatever “homepage” they’d like to specify. The community will also be able to link into this system from the outside, but we’ll have more details on that soon. Additionally, there’s a web browser integrated into Steam [...]

And this:

What’s the most awesome yet unknown thing in Civ5 that fans such as yourself would like to hear about most?

[---] coastal cities can be quite productive and valuable, and a single nearby enemy boat can render the water unusable. So, control of the seas is pretty significant this time around.

[...] I suppose I could mention that there’s a long-running easter egg planted somewhere. It’s nothing earth-shattering, but anyone who’s been in the Civ community for a long time should get a kick out of it.

Stay tuned for more GamesCom goodies.

GamesCom is underway in Germany, and reports from it have begun to emerge. Montesquieu over at civforum.de gives us (in German) some tidbits.

• Civ5 plays like Civ!
• You can play the entire game in strategic view, which is good for laptops and less powerful setups.
• Nearby enemies are easily spotted with right-hand interface messages.
• Early in the game a city’s bombard capability gave a barbarian warrior 2 damage.
• “it is mathematically impossible for a spearman to defeat a tank”
• Transition technologies are gone. “All technologies provide new units, buildings, wonders, or switch to new free Social Policies.”
• Different game speeds are in.
• Wars are faster and less tedious.
• LAN play is in.

Continuing Dutch gaming site Tweakers.net has posted a hands-on preview of Civilization V from the exhibition. Here are some thoughts gathered.

• Surrounding enemy units is ever so important.
• Cities’ inherent defense capabilities frees up units.
• City states doesn’t grow. (I’m assuming territorially here)
• Winning by military means is now more interesting.
• Diplomatic victory still requires UN support.
• Removing some features has proven to be a simple but effective way to improve the game.
• Civ5 is much more challenging then previous installments.

Don’t miss the screenshots added to our gallery.