One more turn.



One more turn.



The time has come to lose sleep once more.

href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/90012"> src="http://www.tentonhammer.com/image/view/90012"
style="border: 2px solid ; width: 300px; height: 300px;">

style="font-style: italic;">If I went to war with this
City-State, their Crossbowmen would lose to my lowly Warrior!
 Protect your ranged units at any time so they're not taken
advantage of when you're not expecting an attack.

 Civilization V hits the ground running with a
plethora of new
features and systems that seem rather daunting at first, but we’ll
cover the biggest ones to make your empire’s wars successful!



For the uninitiated, the Civilization series is a turn based strategy
game about taking an empire through the ages.  You’ll fight
with club, sword, musket and rifle through history in a race for
technology, resources, and more.  Combat has always had its
own special flavor from game to game, and they reinvented the wheel yet
again with the fifth game in the series.   Jumping
into the game and playing the tutorials is one way to learn all of
these key changes of course.  But why sit through a boring
tutorial when you can get everything you need to know about the new
combat right here and right now!



Combat Changes



No Unit Stacking

Wha?  You mean I can’t run around with 40 units in one square,
obliterating everything in my path just by hammering in the direction
of my opponent’s capital?  Such is the case I’m afraid, and it
makes having a technologically advanced army that much more valuable
than before when only one unit can engage from a given square at a
time.  It also makes moving your army around en masse more
difficult since units cannot end their move in the same square.

 

This hurts the defensive side too, because at the same time the unit at
the forefront is required to take the brunt of the attack.  In
previous games, you could put an archer, a spearman, and a maceman in
the same square and effectively beat off most similar attacks without
siege easily.  Now you have to be much more careful about who
is on the front lines.



Two Men Enter, Two Men
Leave

Now when two sides are evenly matched or close to it, a clash will
result in both sides losing a good chunk of their HP but surviving the
conflict.  Both sides will get experience points for the
battle.  If you’re fighting on an even technological level
with your opponent, you’ll need to bring in the next unit to turn the
tide.



Direct Ranged Combat

Archers and other ranged skirmishers no longer fight like melee
units.  They now can strike from 2-3 hexes away, and not
suffer a counter attack at all.  The downside is that their
melee combat strength if engaged is absolutely pathetic.  If a
ranged unit gets the first strike, it may survive to land another one
that could prove decisive.  If engaged immediately by cavalry,
the ranged units will be routed instantly more than likely.



New City Combat

Capturing a city is different this time.  A city has a
strength gauge much like a unit, and it takes multiple attacks to wear
it down to the point of capture.  Each melee strike will
strike back against the attacker, and every turn a city gets a free
ranged attack at the target of their choosing.  The strength
is largely dependent on the population of the city, and the presence of
any walls, castles, or other defensive structures or wonders. 
A city restores its strength over time even while besieged, so taking
down a large town requires a surrounding of the city, and bombardment
from afar.  A city can have one garrison unit, which has
heightened stats and heals quickly.



An important thing to note is that the inclusion of the city strength
and bombardment systems mean you no longer are required to have a
defensive unit in every town to prevent a random takeover by
barbarians.  



Flanking

To give some bite to the idea of strength in numbers despite a world
without stacking units on a square/hex, the attacker will gain 15%
bonus strength for each unit around the target beyond the
first.  If you can’t wield the weapons your opponent is, then
build what you can and surround them before they can build more!



Conquer the
World?  Not while the peasantry riots!

So you’re tearing a swath through the world left and right virtually
unchecked?  Make sure you’re still managing your empire and
keeping a very close eye on your happiness level.  If you hit
very unhappy, your units will get a whopping -33% penalty in
combat.  This can instantly turn a winning war into a losing
one that you wish you accepted the surrender terms of before.