Civilization V: Brave New World (Cultural Victory)

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Civilization V: Brave New World

TITLE: Brave New World

DEVELOPER: Firaxis Games

GENRE: Turn-based Strategy

YEAR: 2013

Hello everybody! Today is my first review of just an expansion pack, not a full game.  For those of you who don’t know what the Civilization series is about, here is a quick rundown. Civilization is a turn-based strategy game that gives the player control of a certain empire (Player’s choice) and allows the player the develop his empire over time (it can take a long time, my first completed game with Brave New World took 8 hours and 20 minutes.). The play can win by completing one of the five victory conditions:

• Scientific Victory
• Cultural Victory
• Domination
• Diplomatic Victory
• Time Victory

Alright, I am pretty sure that covers the basics of the Civilization  series, now to cover what is new in Brave New World.  Let me put this out there right now, Brave New World is strictly cultural additions. It completely revamps Civilization V‘s original cultural victory system. For example, instead of focusing on cultural points, in order to win cultural you have to win using tourism.

In addition to the tourism section, they changed the cultural social policies as well, they have added two new policies and changed the rest to ideologies.  The great people/great works has been greatly expanded as well, now having only certain great people have the ability to activate golden ages, repair units, create defensive/productive structures, etc.

 One of the final most impressive features of Brave New World is the civilization/leader list. While the original only had 18, through DLC they added 7, the previous expansion pack Gods & Kings added 9, as so does Brave New World.  That brings the total amount of playable civilizations up to 43.  Below are a list of the new civilizations/leaders:

• Poland- Casimir III (CULTURAL VICTORY)
• Brazil- Pedro II
• Assyria- Ashurbanipal
• Zulu- Shaka
• Portugal- Maria I
• Indonesia- Gajah Mada
• Morocco- Ahmad al-Mansur (FAILED HALFWAY)
• Venice- Enrico Dandolo
• Shoshone- Pocatell0

FROM GOD & KINGS:

• Ethiopia- Haile Selassie

Now the bad things about Brave New World. Honestly, there are not many things to complain about on this one. The only major con it has is that it is almost entirely cultural based. It doesn’t affect your game too much if you aren’t worried about cultural victory.  Most of my empires focus on culture and economics,  so Brave New World changed my game quite a bit.

Poland FTW…

PROS:

• New Civilizations
• Some Gameplay changes.
• New civilizations are relatively balanced.
• Expanded Culture system.

CONS:

• Unless you are playing for a cultural victory, not much as changed.

SCORE: 9.0/10

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