With over nine million units sold worldwide, and unprecedented critical acclaim from fans and press around the world, Sid Meier's Civilization® is recognized as one of the greatest strategy franchises of all-time. Now, Firaxis Games will take this incredibly fun and addictive strategy game to unprecedented heights by adding new ways to play and win; new tools to manage and expand your civilization; extensive modding capabilities; and intensely competitive multiplayer options. Civilization® V will come to life in a beautifully detailed, living world that will elevate the gameplay experience to a whole new level making it a must-have for gamers around the globe!

In Civilization® V, players strive to become Ruler of the World by establishing and leading a civilization from the dawn of man into the space age, waging war, conducting diplomacy, discovering new technologies, going head-to-head with some of history's greatest leaders and building the most powerful empire the world has ever known. Required Specifications
The game will have to be verified online through Steam on first installation

Interface

Civ 5 Will have a more streamlined interface on the main screen (IGN)
This will be augmented by an in game notification system that directs you to important issues on the map (Gamespot)

AI

AI now works on four levels, Tactical (unit battles), Operational (The entire War Front), Strategic (Manages the entire empire) and the Grand Strategic (how to win the game) (IGN)
Once the Grand Strategic AI determines how they want to win the game, each of the other AI levels work in tandem to reach that end goal. This also allows for the most flexibility when dealing with the changing game.

Multiplayer Information

Multiplayer modes confirmed are hot seat, play-by-email, LAN, and online multiplayer (Tomshardware)

Multiplayer will be provided by Steamworks

Music

The music will be biased around the four regions of the world, with peace and war music playing in tune to gameplay.
Internal Architecture

Civ 5 Contains a new graphic processing system new built from scratch for the game. (Tomshardware)

The new graphics engine spawns numerous small jobs, which make more efficient use of multi-core CPUs as well as implementing a new message-passing architecture, in which the main game engine communicates with the graphics subsystem through messages. (Tomshardware)

The game has been optimized for Direct X 11, benefiting players even if they do not have DirectX 11 capable hardware. (Tomshardware)

Memory allocation has been completely discarded in Civ 5.