Civilization V: Gods & Kings devs talk about new game features

Civilization V expansion pack "Gods & Kings" is on the way, with plenty of new content for Sid Meyer's PC masterpiece.  Producer Dennis Shirk and Lead Designer Ed Beach take a deeper dive into the rebuilt game systems in Gods & Kings, including the new religion, espionage, combat, and naval systems. Check it out!

Game info: Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods and Kings is the first official expansion pack for the Turn-Based Strategy game, Sid Meier's Civilization V.* It features the introduction of religion as a major gameplay component to the game, through a faith-based mechanism. It also adds additional diplomatic abilities to those found in the base game. Additional features include, a variety of benefit types for the establishment and adoption of religion, spies that both level with mission completion and that can be a liability if captured, several new playable civilizations, improved battle abilities, and new units, buildings and wonders.

Expanded Power with Religion and Enhanced Diplomacy

The Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods and Kings expansion pack* introduces the power of religion and improved diplomatic abilities to Civilization V. Religion, used as a major tool, was left out of the 2010 base game release, but now joins culture, technology, diplomacy, and warfare as the fifth pillar of the game's turn-based statecraft and empire building game mechanic. Use of religion begins during a civilization's infantcy, with the player interweaving select core beliefs with particular realities of their civilization. This in turn unifies people and generates faith, setting the stage for the emergence of unit's like The Great Prophet, Missionaries and The Inquisitor, along with the founding of a religion. Religions available initially correlate to actual world religions such as Buddhism, Christianity, Confucianism, Hinduism, Islam, Shinto, etc., but they are designed to be renamed and customized with player chosen tenets. Civilizations that found religions enjoy certain exclusive benefits, while a later series of benefits connected to a religion can be enjoyed by any civilization that is converted to it. This includes rival civilizations. As the timeline of the game progresses to the renaissance and beyond, religion becomes less important, but remains a surprisingly powerful tool.

The Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods and Kings expansion pack also improves on the base game's use of diplomacy, especially in the area of espionage. With spies players can do a wide range of things, including steal technologies, provide intelligence, rig elections, and even counter the actions of foreign spies planted domestically in their own cities.

New Unit Battle Abilities and New Civilzations

Although religion and diplomacy are potent tools of state craft, war is inevitable. This is why Sid Meier's Civilization V: Gods and Kingsincludes expanded abilities to units in battle. Improvements include: expanded general health of units to ensure more time for strategy and changes to forces during exchanges, the inclusion of early multi-winged aircraft, expanded offensive abilities of naval units pitted against other ships and against land tagets, and improved defensive abilities of ground units during transport by sea.

Gods and Kings also includes additional civilization not included in the initial release of the base game. In many cases, following the theme of the expansion pack these new peoples possess an extreme potential for influence by/and manipulation of religion. A sampling of the new civilizations available include, the Celts lead by Boudicca, the warrior queen of the proto-British Iceni tribe, and the Maya featuring Pacal the Great the long-time ruler of the powerful city-state of Palenque.