The changes in Brave New World mainly target the latter half of the game. The World Congress, for example, only gets founded when one nation has researched a certain tech, and has discovered all of the other Major Civilizations in the game – something that can take a while, and not necessarily something you’ll always be able to do first. The person to found the World Congress (which later becomes the United Nations) gets to be the first host for the first session. A session lasts 30 turns, and in each session two resolutions are put forward to be voted on. The host chooses one resolution, and the opposition with the most delegates (if there’s more than one, it’s chosen at random) gets to propose the other. The resolutions aren’t voted on until the end of the session (we think anyway – it certainly doesn’t happen right away, and not within the ten or so turns we got to play through). At the start, everyone gets 1 delegate, aside from the person who founded the congress, who gets two. As time goes on, more delegates become available and even city-states can get involved. The Diplomatic Victory is also tied into this, as now when the World Congress changes into the United Nations, the World Leader vote starts. When you win that vote, you win the game. You can also buy votes for resolutions by turning a Spy into a ‘diplomat’, which doesn’t steal technology but exerts influence.
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| The world congress. Sadly there’s no resolution to declare world holiday’s or anything. I could do with a break... |
The other ‘Major’ feature of the game is a re-working of the Culture system. Now, there are two culture values: Tourism, and the generic culture that was originally there. You still use that culture to unlock social policies, but you also can develop your empire to develop Tourism now as well. Tourism can be thought of as ‘offensive’ culture, and normal culture as ‘Defensive’. To get a Culture Victory, you nnow have to produce more Tourism than every other faction’s Culture production, in order to reach maximum influence with them. Once you achieve that you win – you must also make sure your own generic Culture out-put is high, to avoid getting influenced by other nations with high culture. This ties in to the re-worked Policy tree – most of the usual ones are still there, with some changes, whilst other trees, like Commerce, have been split up into two trees to cover a wider scope.
Freedom, Order and Autocracy are still there, but they’ve been given more emphasis in the fact that they are ideologies. When you enter the Industrial age, you’re asked to choose one ideology to follow, and these ‘super-trees’ can be followed through over-time just like the other Social trees. Civilizations of the same Ideology will get along better, whilst opposing ideologies won’t get along. Furthermore, if you have a high Tourism output (or someone else just has a low Culture output), you will start influencing that civ, and their citizens will get increasingly unhappy if they’re not of the same ideology. Eventually, that civ will either have to declare war on you to protect their way of life, or give in and switch over to your way of thinking. The Culture game has also been improved by expanding the amount of cultural great people you can have – the Great Artist is now joined by Great Musicians, Great Writers etc… and these great people can create ‘Great Works’, which can be stored in wonders and other buildings that generate even more Culture.
The only other features of note at this point are International Trade Routes, and Archaeological Digs. Cities can still be connected to each other via Roads etc… although this isn’t classed as a ‘trade route’ anymore, and just a City Connection. Instead, your empire now has a set number of Trade slots, depending on building, techs etc… you then build Trade Caravans (land or sea), and then you can choose who to trade with for the next 30 turns. This mainly nets you a large amount of gold per turn, but it can also be used to spread religion, even Science. The Trade UI is pretty straight forward, with the potential partners divided by city-states and major civs. You can also use Trade Caravans to trade ‘internally’, for example by sending food or production to a city that lacks it. After 30 turns, you get to re-choose what trade that unit does.
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| If the Archaeologists dig for long enough, they might find the programming code that underpins their entire world |
Archaeological sites aren’t really anything major – just a nice little meta-game that you can engage with. When you’ve researched ‘Archaeology’, a new resource appears on the map called ‘Archaeological site’, which can only be built upon by a special unit of archaeologists. Once they dig up the site, you can either extract a great work to put in one of your wonders, or build a monument on the tile. Either option produces a certain amount of bonus culture. What’s great about these sites is that they are always on a tile where something significant happened earlier in the game, so the site of a battle, or where a barbarian camp used to be, etc…
That’s all the major and interesting things that we know of at the moment. Official stats list Nine new Civilizations (with unique units and buildings to boot), Eight new wonders, and an undefined number of new units, buildings and techs. There will be more scenarios added to the game than the ones that have already been talked about – The American Civil War and the Scramble for Africa. Unfortunately we’re not allowed to talk about them, but for any of you who enjoyed the scenarios from the last expansion, know that your needs are being looked after. Civilization V: Brave New World will be out on PC on July 9th 2013 in North America, and the rest of the world on July 12th.
Most Anticipated Feature: Well, I’m a Domination player, so there’s nothing here that’s really floating my boat, but I reckon I’ll have fun with things like the World Conquest and trade routes etc...
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