The jump from vanilla Civilization 5 to the Gods and Kings expansion completely changed the way people played. Gods and Kings made siege units available to all players (not just those with iron) to help with the inevitable military campaigns a civilization will eventually encounter. The technology tree followed a more logical progression and further increased the importance of science output. Most notably, the addition of religion added a huge benefit to civilizations willing to dedicate time to constructing faith producing buildings. The expansion not only brought more units to build, religions to found or wonders to construct, the expansion brought absolutely necessary improvements. Civilization 5: Brave New World doesn’t drastically change from Gods and Kings, but the addition of the World Congress and greater importance of Culture, will help bitter players – who failed at a military conquest – at least still believe that victory remains achievable.
Right at turn zero you will notice that water tiles and tiles adjacent to rivers no longer provide gold bonuses. To make up for the gold loss, players will establish trade routes via caravans or cargo ships to send and receive gold to neighboring cities. Unlike regular trades, a player can establish a trade route without permission. When you select a city or city-state to trade with, the caravan or cargo ship will provide gold, science and religious influence, with returns in greater amounts. Both players benefit from trade routes, but the player who established the trade will benefit significantly more.
Trade routes ultimately just replace rivers and water tile gold bonuses, but also prevent players from war mongering. You will quickly notice the downward spiral of your city growth if you choose to ignore trade routes or decide to declare war early. Without any buildings or tiles to provide a steady source of gold, military campaigns without the economy to support the funding, will ruin your chances of winning. Once you declare war and find you can sustain a healthy economy without your neighbors, and then you can also establish trade routes between your own cities to send large amounts of food or production.
Near the beginning of the game you will put heavy emphasis on trade routes, but once you start building markets and banks and eventually reach the limit for routes allowed, it quickly becomes a trivial decision process where you will always just pick the trade route that provides the most gold. The role of trade routes proves significant to your economy, but the process of establishing them requires very little risk reward management.
Once your gold reaches comfortable levels, you can begin focusing on your city’s Culture and Tourism output. Culture and Tourism represent different types of culture. Culture generation helps you adopt Social Policies while Tourism acts as offensive type of Culture that doesn’t tangibly benefit you; it hurts other players. To generate Culture you can construct wonders, buildings or adopt Social Policies to increase your output.
With a steady flow of Culture, you will begin to generate Great People such as Great Artists, Great Writers or even Great Musicians. These Great People will drive your Tourism through constructing Great Works. Think of Tourism as a Culture that influences other civilizations. To achieve a Culture Victory, a player must produce more Tourism than all other civilizations create regular Culture. To increase Tourism, trade routes, open borders and religion will provide bonuses. Great Works create pieces of art or music you put into Culture buildings to produce even more Tourism. Unlike the trade routes, creating Great Works requires players to make tough decision depending on the situation. If a Great Artist spawns, a player must choose if they would rather create a piece of art for the Tourism gain or start a Golden Age for a temporary economy boost.
Outside of their cities, players must also deal with addition of the World Congress. The World Congress brings all the players together to assign their delegates to vote for certain proposals. The first player to meet everyone will become the World Congress leader where they will make a proposal. This proposal ranges from banning luxury resources, imposing trade embargos or assigning the world religion. To obtain delegates, players must build friendly relations with city-states and other players. When voting, you assign your delegate votes for or against proposals depending on what you value. Since each vote counts, players must make a create attempt to ally with city states all over the map rather than those close to them.
The World Congress will either benefit everyone or really hurt one player. Unless a player carries majority amount of delegate votes, proposals should aim to please most people in order to pass. Say if players agree to impose a trade embargo on the game’s leader, then the leader’s happiness and gold no longer obtained from trades will provide an opportunity for the other players to catch up. Through the use of Spies and friendly relationships with city states, a player can put themselves in a position of power to dictate the pace or difficulty of the game.
