A Quick Overview of Civilization V: Brave New Worlds

Fans of the Civilization V: Gods & Kings expansion (our review) are in for a treat! Firaxis is set to launch the second major expansion to the Civ V franchise this July. Just as Gods & Kings radically rebalanced many aspects of the game and added additional eras to the technology timeline, Brave New World looks to be a major balance and reworking of the entire culture system but similarly doesn’t stop there.

Details are still coming out, but in addition to the above, Brave New World will be introducing two new policy trees, ideologies, nine (yes, nine) new Civilizations, archeology, and great works. Even though they are adding two more policies, gone is the rush to complete policy trees. Instead, in order to achieve a cultural victory, each Civ will have to apparently increase tourism output, which itself looks to dynamically change depending on imports and exports as well as tourism between other players and city-states alike.

Archeology is an intriguing game mechanic that plays into culture, but also will renew interest in the mid and late-game map exploration. Once archeology is researched, sites of battles that take place during the early stages of the game will have the potential to allow archeological digs to be built for cultural or tourism uses.

Great works is a new system that ties into offensive as well as defensive culture play, where artists, musicians, and writers that are created can then be used to produce great works. These aren’t actual map units but rather replace the usual method of simply adding new cultural buildings to a city to increase a civilization’s culture output. To keep things complex, great works can’t just be created, but will apparently have to be curated and even traded as a sort of new resource for those seeking a cultural victory.

Another long awaited change is with the diplomacy system. Brave New World will add a World Congress system starting around the Renaissance era that in concept functions similarly to the UN. Although gold still plays a major part in diplomacy, other factors such as tourism, trade, and general deal-making will now come into play.

Firaxis has posted a short feature trailer titled “Policies & Ideologies” for those interested.  We aren’t quite sure if owning Gods & Kings is a required prerequisite for the new expansion, but gamers will certainly need to own Civ V to play it. Brave New World is due out July 9^th for the US and will go live internationally on July 12^th. Pricing remains unknown at this date.