Civilization V: Gods & Kings Expansion, First Look

By Brant Guillory, 20 June, 2012

Firaxis just dropped their highly-anticipated Gods & Kings expansion to Civilization V. With the introduction of Religion, and a bunch of new civs to play, grogs should be busy for a while.

Even the load screen is different

Two of the new civilizations - the Swedes and the Ethiopians. And no, the Swedes don't get sent home after a valiant, but ultimately fruitless, effort in the group stages.

New setup features - many more city-states (I like to max this setting out), and some new options for custom map types.

Changes to the tech tree include rearranging some of the connections, new techs - such as GUILDS and DRAMA AND POETRY - and reconfiguring some of the techs that grant access to buildings or wonders.

Playing as the Celts, you can see Faith as a new metric tracked in the game. The Celts happen to load up on faith from unimproved forests around their cities, so they get religious pretty early in the game.

The Austrian unique building. If you like playing with lots of Great People, you'll love these.

New religious buildings that increase your civ's faith, just like others increase culture or gold or production.

Two new categories of city-states, Religious and Mercantile.

New luxury resources, like Citrus, Salt, and Crab are available.

Two new luxury resources - Porcelain and Jewelry - are only available from city states.

Best thing about the new city-state screens? The "Find on map" command on the bottom right of the screen. Invaluable if you're accessing the city-state info from the Diplomacy Overview screen.

Hey, I get to choose a pantheon! First step toward founding my own religion.

What's nice about the advisors is that they have a "new to this expansion" setting that focuses their advice only on the changes to the new game.

When you choose a pantheon, you start with a particular direction for your initial worship.

There are some new natural wonders in the expansion.

The Celts get a Pictish Warrior in place of the Spearman.

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