Civilization Wiki
Register
Advertisement

BackArrowGreen Back to Civilization V

Civ5 pc fob pegi2

Cover art of Gods & Kings, featuring Boudicca and Attila

Sid Meier's Civilization® V: Gods & Kings is the first expansion pack released for Civilization V. It was released June 19, 2012 in North America and June 22, 2012 worldwide. As the name shows, the expansion focuses on a brand new feature - Religion, which adds a whole new level of development for a civilization. Although it doesn't lead to a separate victory, Religion offers a complete new system of bonuses for a nation, allowing it to enrich its abilities in many new ways. The system also introduces an exciting layer of peaceful competition, as different religions strive to gain the hearts of the citizens.

Another new feature is Espionage, which adds the opportunity to conduct industrial and military spying in other nations, or conduct secret operations in City-States.

Gods & Kings includes an overhaul of the combat system, redesigned for longer, more tactical battles and more balanced military advancement through the ages. The technology tree has also been redesigned, balancing the number of techs in all Eras and splitting the last Era in two for a more exciting endgame.

The expansion also includes 2 new City-State types - Religious and Mercantile, and many new City-States. It also introduces 9 new civilizations and leaders, 9 new wonders, 27 new units, 13 new buildings, and new resources and technologies.

New content

Civilizations and leaders

Technologies

Luxury resources

Units

In addition to the unique units of the new civilizations, the following units are introduced in Gods & Kings:

Buildings

Wonders

World Wonders

National Wonders

Natural Wonders

Religion

Religion involves gaining faith from your people. This can be done in a few different ways, including constructing certain buildings and wonders, being successful at combat, discovering ancient ruins, and from a Religious City-State.

Gaining enough faith will allow for you to build a Pantheon. You can choose from a whole list of Pantheons, each representing a different ancient Belief which comes with a certain benefit. Eventually after you've built your Pantheon, you can found a religion by spawning a new type of great person, the Great prophet. You can then choose from another list of Beliefs which will form your Religion. After that, your religion will start spreading through the world and compete with the other religion for the hearts and souls of the people, a mission which can help you immensely in achieving any type of victory.

Espionage

Espionage can be used in multiple ways. Like in Civ4, Spies can steal techs from other Civs, but they are not a unit on the map that you can build. Espionage is unlocked when the Renaissance era is reached, this will unlock 1 spy for every age after, an additional spy may be gained from building the National Intelligence Agency National Wonder. When stationed in your cities, spies perform counter-intelligence to prevent other spies from stealing your technologies. Another way to use them is to send a spy into a city-state to rig an election, increasing your influence and decreasing the influence of other civilizations. Spies can also be used to stage a Coup in city-states, a risky move with big payouts if successful. Spies can also be used to gain information on what opposing civilizations will be doing next. If a Spy is caught while stealing technology, they will be killed, and a new, inexperienced Spy will eventually replace them.

City-States

The two new City-State types are Religious and Mercantile. Religious City-States reward additional Faith, while Mercantile City-States reward their friends with happiness and custom luxury goods which can vary depending on the City-State. These luxury resources can only be obtained from the Mercantile City-States, giving the world's strongest armies a valid reason to make a few friends rather than to just pillage their way across the continents (or pangaea).

Combat

Combat has moved from a 10 point system to a 100 point system. This allows for a slower and more flexible system. Additionally, Naval Combat has expanded to include both ranged and melee units. Melee naval units can conduct raids and pillages on coastal cities to get gold and, if the city is weak enough, capture it.

Scenarios

Gods & Kings also includes three new scenarios:

  • Into the Renaissance: Grow your medieval kingdom into one of the great nations of Renaissance Europe, fending off outside invasions from Mongols and Ottoman Turks and fighting the religious wars of the Crusades and Reformation!
  • Fall of Rome: Play as either Eastern Rome or Western Rome trying to fend off the barbarians OR as one of the barbarians themselves.
  • Empires of the Smoky Skies: Build flying airships and huge tractor-like tanks from the unique tech tree of this Victorian science-fiction scenario, then spread your empire across the pre-industrial world.

"Civil War" Scenario

If one looks inside the files for Gods & Kings, they can find many unused files that likely would've been used in a Civil War scenario between the northern and southern states of the U.S. Some of these files include:

  • "CivilWar.mp3": Details to the scenario with a brief history and overlook of the war.
  • "HeadingTechCivilWar(insert tech name)": Simply a bold statement stating you have discovered a tech.
  • "TechCivilWar(insert tech name)": Historic quotes pertaining to the tech.

The Civil War Scenario was not added with Gods & Kings, but it is now available with the Brave New World expansion.

Gallery

Civilization Series
Game Expansion packs
Civilization
  • None
Civ II
Civ III
Civ IV
Civ V
Beyond Earth
Civ VI
Official Spinoffs
Other Games
Comparisons
Advertisement