Eurogamer: You've talked about the modding tools you're giving away - what will people be able to do now that they couldn't do before?
Jon Shafer: The main thing is, in terms of the creation of maps we wanted to make that a lot easier. We have an individual that's been working on the world builder tool for a long time now, and one of the first things I said to him was to include an undo and a redo fucntion. I've made a lot of maps, and something as simple as that makes a huge difference.
What's really new is a complete level of polish and dedication into that map-making process.
Dennis Shirk: My 15-year-old son could make a map now. That's not to say we've simplified the process, everything is still as moddable as it was before, just that the toolset is so much more streamlined and simple now.
Jon Shafer: We're going to have a utility that packages up the mods you make, too. In Civ IV, there were hundreds of files, tons of directories, and you toss in a readme, and hope people read it, and don't install the mod into their system directory. This utility puts it all into one file that you can distrubute, and unbundle with Civ at the other end.