Civilization V Has Social Policies Instead of Government Choices

E3 was pretty high powered this year, with Nintendo unleashing the industry changing Nintendo 3DS, the handheld that can deliver full three-dimensional gaming without any glasses, and with Sony and Microsoft really working hard to show off the motion tracking abilities of the PlayStation Move and, respectively, Kinect.

But the real game changer when it comes to PC gaming could very well be none other than Civilization V, the turn based strategy title that Firaxis, under the direction of Sid Meier and Jon Shafer, is planning to deliver in September.

There are quite a bit of changes made to the series, like the introduction of hexes instead of squares as the smallest piece of land that is usable and the fact that military units are no longer able to stack in any given square. But another big change was only unveiled at E3 and involves major changes to how the government and social policies for each empire are handled.

Jon Shafer, who is the main gameplay programmer working on Civilization V, showed off a new system emphasizing how countries evolved their values as they progressed through history. Culture is produced by all cities in the game and as the player gets more of it, they can spend it in order to adopt various social policies.

There are 10 branches that can be chosen from, each of them moving along as history progresses and allowing the gamer to specialize in one of them or pick and choose those elements that they see as advantageous to their empire.

Cultural victory is tied to getting a certain percentage of the policies, so going for it will not only be more interesting but will actually make the player more capable as they approach the endgame. Imposing certain policies can also be linked to the diplomatic element of Civilization V.