If managed properly, the World Congress can even win you the game without much effort. Brave New World introduces a different branch of Social Policies called Ideologies. Ideologies consist of three different branches in which the player can only adopt one of. Order, Autocracy and Freedom work in conjunction with Tourism and the World Congress to provide shift the beliefs citizens want to follow.
For example, in a five player match, if four civilizations choose Autocracy and the remaining civilization chooses Freedom, that civilization’s cities can enter in a rebellion. The population will begin to demand the dominant Ideology (chosen in the World Congress) which can produce unhappiness and revolution in cities following the minority ideology. In one session I played, an opposing city rebelled and just joined my civilization, and came under my control. The dominant Ideologies, no matter how much more useful your Ideology proves to your situation, will force players with minority Ideologies to switch over or face uncontrollable unhappiness.
Previously, Culture Victories came from turtling civilizations no longer relevant in either Literacy or GNP output. Brave New World aims to make a culture victory a viable method outside of the primary military conquest, but Firaxis doesn’t quite reach that goal. No matter the situation, war will always produce the best results to winning. If I lead in science, I won’t try to achieve a Cultural Victory, I will steam roll the next best civilization who wields inferior units.
With the science lead, I can also reach certain technologies faster and produce Culture or Tourism wonders first, making the weaker civilizations automatically less threatening for a Culture Victory. Since Culture will drive Social Polices, and foreign Tourism will generate unhappiness, players obviously cannot ignore them. But if I find my civilization suffering from unhappiness because of Foreign Tourism or Ideologies that I don’t follow, then I aim to eliminate the source of both those problems.
Civilization 5: Brave New World increases the importance of Culture and Tourism generation, but it doesn’t account for the inevitable wars between civilizations. I can discuss how human nature dictates that we will always fight, but I will instead point to the fear of not owning the most cities since most of the time: more cities mean more science. With the best science, you can accomplish most things in Civilization 5.
With Brave New World players will find nine new leaders to build a civilization around. Of the new leaders, Poland’s unique unit, build and ability pushes Casimir III into the top tier of civilizations. Most notably, his unique ability, Solidarity, grants a new Social Policy every era. With the additional policies to adopt, Poland quickly becomes a Culture powerhouse who gets even better with the Ducal Stable that grants both production and gold for every pasture.
My personal favorite civ, the Shoshone, use their Great Expanse unique ability when settling cities. The ability’s immediately larger borders lets you take more parts of the land faster without additional settlers or buying of tiles. Shoshone will easily annoy neighboring players as they watch you swallow up all the land you share with minimal amounts of settlers. The unique scout unit, the Pathfinder, will share the same strength as a warrior and allow the player to choose the benefit of a discovered ruin. The ability proves useful early but becomes irrelevant after players discover every ruin.
Venice also joins the list of newest civilizations but with a much different ability set. Their inability to settle cities with settlers grants them twice the amount of trade routes. To expand, when Great Merchants spawn, you can bring them into city-state borders to puppet the city. With the gold bonus acquired from trade routes, Venice can purchase buildings and units within the city, but nothing else. Firaxis’ different approach with Venice ultimately ends up as an interesting experiment that doesn’t quite work. Nothing with frustrate a Venice player more than not settling a city on great land next to them. Even worse, stunted expansion because city-states don’t appear anywhere near the Venetian capital, limits Venice every more.
Civilization 5: Brave New World helps deliver on the promise to make a Culture victory a viable option through Tourism, yet the power of the World Congress and importance of Social Policies makes Brave New World a worthy expansion. No matter what bonuses Firaxis gives to a Culture and Tourism focused civilization, the path to victory will always prove easiest with military conquest. The way to win in Brave New World lies in a players influence in the World Congress. With majority of delegate votes, you won’t vote to your elect your victory, but you will at least make the leader increasingly frustrated with trade embargoes blocking the road to victory.
Civilization 5: Brave New World was developed by Firaxis and published by 2K Games. It was released on July 9th, at the MSRP of $29.99. A copy was purchased by the reviewer for the purposes of review.
