[One of our] major goals with Civ V is that the game be accessible to more people than the previous Civ games. The best way to address that is by improving the interface and providing players with new tools for learning the game.

  I really hope they just mean the interface and advisors, but the "accessible" bit scares me.

No longer are diplomatic modifiers shown since this used to give away pretty much everything your computer-controlled rival nations were thinking.

So they can be min-maxed only by people willing to dig into the code, find out the diplo modifiers, and "count the cards" of the AI player's diplo standing?   I see what they're going for, but people will figure out how it works.

Other than those, it looks quite enticing.   And the screenshots are so beautiful.  *Sigh* Too bad I won't be buying the game.

I'm note sure how I feel about the non stacking units.  I was kind of hoping for a tactical battle system "like MoM", but then again we do have elemental

I'm glad you like it.  I really just don't think it's a style of combat that interests me.

They're maximize sales while minimizing expenses by not making different versions (or minimizing differences) for different systems.

edited: lol Bonscott posted essentially the same thing using the same terms while I was posting this.

Well, some of that is fixing UI problems in Civ 4. Notifications are way better then a barrage of modal dialog boxes every turn, but are also "simpler".

Advisors existed in the previous Civ games and were removed, so bringing those back can't really be an attempt to dumb it down for consoles either.

It wouldn't be the first time fans were told not to worry while the next game in the series is trying to pull in new blood, and that worry turns out to be warranted.

Ok seriously.....

I hope they allow you to create combination units - part cavalry part archer for example- otherwise, with only a single unit in a stack your going to be stuck using one type of unit or another for combat and it's a game of rock-scissors-paper as to what type of unit you get matched up against - if you have cavalry your going to go against other cavalry (at which point unit strength and/or blind luck determine the outcome) or against infantry (where you have a clear advantage) or pikemen (where you have a clear disadvantage). Archers/other shooting units are kind of a third wheel and don't make enough tactical difference to matter in this discussion. In Civ 4 you could make a stack and have a few archers, a few infantry, some pikemen, and have cavalry nearby to swipe in and make your stack bigger when needed. This would cover your bases and make battles really more of a difference of strength and unit type- something I fear may be less impactful in Civ5.

Is this slated to come out on consoles?  That's the first I've heard of that.  Usually that is bad news but occasionally it works out.  We'll see.

Indeed, Civ games haven't been dumbed down...yet.  But it seems to be a trend these days, to take good, well-established titles and dumb them down, "to improve accessability."  *Cough*SupCom2*Cough*.

Yep, I couldn't agree more - it's aggrivating as heck.  However, I don't get that sense at all from the gameplay video or the interview.  Streamlined, maybe (but let's face it - Civ 4 could definately be streamlined).  Dumbed down?  I don't believe that's happening here.  It helps it's PC only, too.  Something to bear in mind, maybe? 

Not that I'd disagree with your pecismism - it's hard one with games like Fallout 3 (which is a big offender of "Consolidos" if ever there was one) running around, but again, I don't get that sense from the Civ 5 stuff released so far. 

LOL - fair enough!    I think as I get older and dumber though, I like the idea of a little hand holding.  

They aren't doing that - you're jumping to conclusions without watching the linked footage or reading any of the recent interviews, it would seem.