Civilization 5: Gods & Kings expansion announced

By Wesley Yin-Poole Published 16 February, 2012

Out this spring.

2K Games has announced Civilization 5: Gods & Kings, an expansion out this spring.

It includes nine new civilizations, nine new wonders, three original scenarios, 27 new units, 13 new buildings, and new technologies and resources.

The new civilizations include Carthage, the Netherlands, the Celts and the Mayans, each with unique traits, units and buildings. Gods & Kings also adds nine new leaders, including William I, Prince of Orange, Boudicca and Pacal the Great.

The new scenarios are the medieval period, the fall of Rome, and Empires of the Smoky Skies, a Victorian science-fiction scenario.

Gods & Kings also sees the return of religion. You seek out a Faith, choose a Pantheon of the Gods and create Great Prophets to found and spread their religion across the world.

Elsewhere, the combat system and AI have been reworked to place more emphasis on a balanced army composition. The navy is now split into two different ship types: melee and ranged.

Diplomacy and espionage have been enhanced, and two new city-states have been added: Mercantile and Religious.

Screenshots are below.

Picture of Wesley.

About Wesley Yin-Poole

Wesley is Eurogamer's news editor. He likes news, interviews, and more news. He also likes Street Fighter more than anyone can get him to shut up about it.

Read more articles from Wesley by visiting the Wesley Yin-Poole archive page.

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Comments (25) Latest comment 3 months ago

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  • SteelPriest #1 3 months ago

    yay, religion!

  • Shikasama #2 3 months ago

    Looks like I'll be adding to those 137 Steam hours then.

  • Eldritch #3 3 months ago

    I'm afraid more rip-off DLC won't turn Civ 5 into less of a disappointment. The first Civ ever to disappoint me.

  • tenebrae #4 3 months ago

    Can I choose from dead pantheons this time around? Like egyptian, norse, greek?

  • dudefella #5 3 months ago

    Netherlands repping, finally! I'm scared to get this though, as every time I boot up Civ 5, I can pretty much write off the rest of the day.

  • Eldritch #6 3 months ago

    @dudefella Yes, especially if you don't disable the intro cinematics.

  • Nevflinn #7 3 months ago

    I'm not sure if we need this.
    The main game was fun, and it had no gods or kings - only man.

  • UncleLou #8 3 months ago

    Nice, day 1 for me. Love Civ V to bits personally, not any less than I loved Civ IV (and could never go back to unit stacks).

  • DreadedWalrus #9 3 months ago

    I loved Civ IV, but couldn't really get into Civ V, as I'm more of a defensive, diplomatic player, who prefers to expand without military aggression, and the options weren't really there for me to play my style. I've been waiting for a "Beyond the Sword"-type expansion since launch... hopefully with the re-addition of religion and expanded diplomacy options, this will be it?

  • Toothball #10 3 months ago

    Sounds like a nice pack. I tend to play Civ with a friend who has been playing it for years. Never quite managed to get my head around Civ 4, but I was getting along with 5 as there was less to think about. My friend on the other hand didn't get on with it so well so the games dried up a bit and I followed him onto Shogun 2. Maybe we'll get back to some Civ with this.

  • bobfish09 #11 3 months ago

    Religion, improved Diplomacy... sounds very good so far.

  • cianchristopher #12 3 months ago

    Iv'e already logged 6,087 hours on Civ V. This'll comfortably add another 3,653 hours on top of that.

  • Hudstar #13 3 months ago

    Great. As if my addiction to CIV V could get any worse, along comes this expansion. I think it might kill me.

  • niroe #14 3 months ago

    Excellent! Have neglected my Civ time lately, guess this will give me a reason to waste many more hours.

  • SaintDaveUK #15 3 months ago

    "Empires of the Smoky Skies, a Victorian science-fiction scenario." This is either going to be very good or very bad.

  • Hunam #16 3 months ago

    Wait, are they selling me an expansion pack of things that they took out of Civ between 4 and 5?

  • rawtheory #17 3 months ago

    If you know what good for ya you'd download and install this mod for civ 5. It makes the game goooooooood :)
    forums . civfanatics . com/showthread . php?t=399510
    Edited by rawtheory at 16/02/12 @ 16:31

  • phantasma #18 3 months ago

    That's quite the surprise.... after the prolonged silence from the devs, i almost assumed they had dropped CiV entirely and would rather focus on an inevitable sequel.
    Let's hope this expansion will improve some of the obviously neglected features like diplomacy and turn the game into the timeless classic that IV was.

    Although i'm a bit cautious towards the return of religion.
    In IV it was a rather dull mechanic and would always create diplomatic blocks (which would make the prevalent runaway civs of V even worse), so i didn't miss it in CiV.
    Let's see how it'll turn out.

  • Lamb #19 3 months ago

    Religion as DLC, great.

  • Lamb #20 3 months ago

    Also they took out the spys which were a great addition in Civ 4.

  • enigma #21 3 months ago

    Now this is more like it. CIV V is the first Civ that didn't click with me which is a real shame as I'm a huge fan of the series. I've never become bored by a Civ game before but i did pretty quickly with this one.

    The DLC they were releasing was useless to me as I'm hardly going to buy extra civs for a game I don't play, so was hoping they'd release a full fat expansion along the lines of Beyond the Sword that added new gameplay mechanics that would hopefully make the game interesting for me again. I'll be watching how this turns out with interest.

    I really want to like this game again. There's a huge Civ shaped hole in my life :(

  • hiddenranbir #22 3 months ago

    Civ 5 broke my civ-addiction.

    Still, look forward to them bringing depth(and flavour) back to the granddaddy of strat-games.

  • shadow651 #23 3 months ago

    glad this was announced, I was worried they might have abandoned support for the game

  • DapperGent #24 3 months ago

    Civ 4 wasn't amazing until Beyond the Sword (imo) post BTS it's fantastic, I still play it an awful lot.

    Civ 5 with the best will in the world is still in a complete heap (imo) I really hope this xpack fixes the ways that it's shit rather than just adds more civs etc.

  • Mogwha #25 3 months ago

    I really like Civ 5 but I dont love it in the way I did Civ 3 and 4. A lot seems to be in the balance with this expansion. I hope to God (& Kings) that Firaxis pull it off. :/