Part 41: BRAVE NEW WORLD YEAAAAH!

Okay, so I originally started this LP to not only show off Civ V G&K, but to stave off the cravings for the upcoming update, Brave New World. Well, guess what, Brave New World is out! And I got permission to show it off! So, sorry, Smoky Skies, you're on hold for the time being, I'm going to show off a blind run of the new stuff in Brave New World!

Brave New World's mission statement is to make the endgame of Civ V more interesting. In Vanilla and G&K, once your early strategy paid off it snowballed and few players could stop you, but you similarly couldn't thwart a runaway civ just as the game against Austria showed last time.

Nine new Civs, too, and I haven't even had the chance to show you all the G&K ones, heh. Well. Let's do a shotgun impression and show off as many of the new Civs at once!



We are playing as Poland because Poland's Trait is "Solidarity." They get a new free Policy every technological era. This would have been utterly game-breaking in the old version of Civ V, but the culture victory has been reworked.

Poland also gets Winged Hussars! YEAAAAAH you know a soldier is badass when he rides into combat with friggin' wings glued to his back. Let's get this show on the road!









An excellent starting position, with marble, wine and a river! However, rivers no longer give us gold alongside them. No more panning for gold for us! If we want to generate an income, we need to make use of other mechanics.

The Circling Arrows symbol at the top is our trade routes (currently 0). Setting them up with other Civs or city-states is how we make money now. Note that there's a Caravan in Animal Husbandry--we won't get to make a caravan until we learn how the hell to use horses.

The Briefcase is Tourism. Tourism is Offensive Culture. If you produce more tourism than other civilizations produce native culture, you overwhelm their societies with all sorts of flavor-of-the-month stuff and their people like your country more than they like their own. Do this with every country and you win the new Culture Victory. This may be a bit less defensive and turtle-y than the culture victory before, but it makes a bit more sense.

There's one other, really, really damn significant change I can see that nobody advertised when previewing this game:



Science actually gets docked a tiny bit if you over-expand! Even for puppets! This is to hamper leaders who plop out a ton of tiny, stupid little cities. Guys like Kamehameha and Hiawatha will no longer benefit so much from city-spamming. Of course, more population equals more science, so this isn't a huge disadvantage so long as you know what you're doing. I hope, anyway.



Thanks, Advisor! How do I generate Tourism?



Ah, I see…so we need to go hunting for artifacts. Great Works are apparently created by Great Artists, Writers and Musicians, too. And cultural buildings are "slotted" to put the works into. Damn! This is complex but compelling!



It looks like there's a slot for a Great Painting in our Palace. The rest of these will unlock as our city grows.

I send my warrior west while growing Warsaw, and encounter a new face!



Well met, Sultan of Morocco! What a beautiful desert night sky. I hope we both benefit from meeting each other. I would certainly hate to have to kill you with angel-lancers. 'Cause that's a thing I've got.

According to the Civilopedia, Morocco gets extra gold and a little culture for each international trade route, but the other nation gets more gold too, so it's mutually beneficial. I think I really do want to be his friend! They can also construct a unique improvement in the desert so the desert doesn't suck. Mini-Petra!

Hmm, if that's the case, then what's Petra do now?



No more gold for desert tiles, but an extra trade route. Handy. This game is really going out of its way to make sure that we don't generate gold from the terrain any more, but from other Civs. Militaristic Civs that piss off the world are probably going to have their economy in the toilet, unless their only friends are city-states. People who just consume city-states are going to have to be careful now.

New Policy time! And it's…duwhaaaa?



Piety's open from the start. It's also much different: it's entirely religion-based now, with all the cultural stuff moved to the new "Aesthetics" policy tree. Commerce has been split too, from "Ships and Money" to an all-money Commerce and a Ships-based Exploration tree. "IDEOLOGY" is where Freedom, Order and Autocracy have been moved.

One other huge, huge change:



See that? Policies are now required for certain wonders. The growth-based Tradition tree gives us the growth-based Hanging Gardens wonder, while the development-based Liberty tree gives us the development-based Pyramids wonder. This means that specialization is even more important now (though I suppose you could spread yourself thin and just adopt everything, too…) It also means that wonder-hogging assholes can't snipe your wonder so easily!

So what I'm saying is, under these rules, Boudicca couldn't build the Great Mosque of Djenne unless she actually had points in Piety. Unlike the Pacal game

So, uh, let's go with the basics: Tradition!

Few turns later, I meet this stout warrior:



Indonesia is a huge archipelago nation and according to the Civilopedia, they get unique luxuries if they settle colonies on other continents. Spice Islanders! Interesting, huh?



It looks like we do still get some gold for luxuries, but that's not much compared to the gold bonanza that rivers used to be. Getting other people to pay us for our stuff and sending caravans is key. I also should settle a coastal colony soon so I can explore the sea, I think this is a continents map. The spot I've picked out is guarded by barbarians, though.



Damn them! Well, we'll soon sort them out.



Looks like the pantheons are mostly the same. I'm going to go for Stone Circles, with that marble quarry, we'll have more faith points than the average joe and will hopefully be able to spread our faith around faster.



We've got camels! Our caravan can be set to have a different trade route or a different home city…and can stack with noncombatant units, so they don't get in the way of our workers. Let's test this sucker out!



Interesting! So, we get more gold for having our city on a river--just through trade routes now instead of off the land. I assume this is because rivers were natural trade routes, which, if I recall correctly, was the original explanation for water giving us money in the first place. Resource diversity also affects how much money we make. They've got stuff we don't, so they get more money than we do, for now. I think once we harvest that marble our resource diversity will go up and we'll make a little more money ourselves.



And off they go! We get gold per turn, but they still have to make a physical journey--so they could be attacked by barbarians! We can't "steer" their trade route either. That means we need to be diligent and have a decent standing army.



According to this, we can also set up internal trade routes to stimulate the growth of our own cities. Handy! But we need a Granary first.



Oh, shit. Barbarians, don't you fucking dare attack my caravan!



AUGUUUGGGGHHH!

Well, now we know what happens when they raid your caravans. It looks like he healed himself up fully and reproduced by mitosis. GAAAAHH. If ever there was a reason to take Honor and wipe these bastards out, this is it!

Well, we have already learned a lot about this expansion in just a short amount of time. It seems even more sophisticated than Gods & Kings, but yet still simple enough to grasp. Next time, let's see how far the Polish can go!

State of the World:



Continents, this time. Interesting!