New details for the upcoming Civ V expansion Gods & Kings dated 13th June 2012.
Dennis Shirk, Producer, and Ed Beach, Lead Designer discuss the faction abilities for the new civilisations that will be included in Gods & Kings. Specific civilisations seem to have completely different play styles with the inclusion of different replacement units, such as the Huns who has battering rams instead of spearmen and Carthage having free access to the port building as well as other trade improvement bonuses and the ability to cross mountain tiles.
To me, what was most interesting was the option that was visible in the video during the discussion of one of the Netherlands’ faction specific naval units, which has the ability to take coastal cities. When the unit takes Madrid from the Spanish English the option of ‘Liberate’ appears which could imply that you don’t necessary have to destroy the cities you conquer. This option seems to imply the ability to restart the Civilisation but with a more positive outlook to your faction, or the ability to turn the city into a city-state. Either way this brings a development to conquest, giving capital cities other options that simply to capture them as in original Civ V you only had to option to raze cities with non-capital cities.
Personally I can’t wait for the 22nd of June for this to be released so I can try out the Celts and the Carthaginians, and with the huge amount of additional content coming with this expansion its a necessary purchase for any Civilization fan out there!
This seems to be an incredibly popular piece my friend!
Madrid was owned by England in that video. You could always liberate capital cities of other civs in Civ V.
Thank you for pointing out my mistake with it being England instead of Spain. I have never seen the liberate option for capital cities before, what are the prerequisites for it to be an option?
I was playing as Arabia, had already liberated the Huns from the Greeks. However, when I captured Rome from the Greeks, I was unable to hand it over to the Romans.
The liberation mechanic seems a little broken to me, if you liberate a city (be it a dead civilisation’s capital or a city state) in theory you should gain massive diplomatic bonuses via improved relations with that civilisation and eventually their vote for you in the UN guaranteed. However this doesn’t always seem to be the case, with liberated Civs denouncing their liberators a few turns later.
But back to your scenario, I had the same thing playing as Byzantium vs the Egyptians, I was able to liberate a faction capital from the Huns (but I chose not to) but I dont seem to recall having the choice to liberate capitals from the Egyptians. And from this I would guess, and by all means this is simple guess work on my part, it could have something to do with how long the city has been subjugated for. I dont think the city has to be a puppet to allow it to be liberated, although the exact mechanics of liberation allude me, so usually I find myself ‘liberating’ them from their homes.