Civilization 5 producer Dennis Shirk answered a few questions about Civ5: Brave New World on a Q&A session hosted by 2K Games.
9 new Civs were announced for this second Civ5 expansion. We already knew about three of them: Pedro II of Brazil, Ashurbanipal of Assyria and Casimir of Poland. In the Q&A session, 2K teased a new Civilization to be included in BNW. This fourth Civ turned out to be … Maria of Portugal. One day after, 2K confirmed the fifth Civ, Shaka of the Zulu.
These two new Civs were highly anticipated, so, they weren’t really a big surprise. No more details were given about the two new leaders, at least from what I could understand. So, we’re left with four unannounced Civs to go. Could it be the House of Medici of the Republic of Florence, Italy? Maybe it’s a new tribe from North America? South America? Or, perhaps a new Asian Civ? What are your guesses?
Civ5: Brave New World is for the Builders
Dennis confessed to prefer a more peaceful and building style of gaming. I’m with you Dennis. Unfortunately, Civilization 5 vanilla (the original version) didn’t offer much more to look for than war. There was no religion or espionage and diplomacy was absolutely horrendous with its bipolar behavior. And, well, there were lots of issues with Civ5 vanilla. It was clearly an installment more suited for the warmongers.
Gods & Kings, the first expansion to Civ5, added religion, espionage and fixed diplomacy, which finally allowed viable long-term alliances to be forged and much more to look for. Builders were given a chance now. Civ5: Gods & Kings was really an excellent expansion pack in my opinion.
Brave New World “will be more for the builders”, said Dennis. And, for micromanagement lovers, I would add. The culture victory has been overhauled. There’s the new Tourism, International Trade and Archaeology mechanics now. And, there’s the World Congress, which if I understood correctly will function a bit like a real United Nations in mid-game, which will allow Civs to vote and pass resolutions – like sanctions, embargos, etc – on particular Civs.
Sid Meier's Civilization 5: Brave New World - Shaka of the Zulu
A Culture-flip kind of mechanic was also confirmed. So, now, as before in Civ4, it should be possible to use culture (and now tourism) as a way to actively influence your neighbors and possibly gain land, favor or even cities from that pressure. It’s not clear yet how exactly this “culture-flip” mechanic will work, but it sounds like it should be possible to turn or subjugate neighboring Civs (or even turn them into vassals). But, it’s still unclear how that will work exactly at this point.
More resources were confirmed, however no specific ones were revealed. Coffee was not confirmed nor denied, but it looks likely (and logically) that it will be in. The Q&A seemed to suggest that. About not revealing particular resources, Dennis justified that with the need to not disclose the new Civs to be unveiled, since it would be easy to guess which would those be from the new resources. Humm…
Natural Wonders were teased to have a bigger role now besides granting a small economic boost. That makes all the sense with the new Tourism mechanic.
Firaxis also advanced that there will be a new type of spy, the Diplomat. These can be placed in your rivals’ capitals like regular spies, but they will not steal technologies but only report back that particular Civ’s activities.
Questioned about changes to other game systems, Dennis explained that no major changes were made either to the combat system or the diplomacy system. Speaking of diplomacy though, Dennis said that it “will be less schizophrenic” now. I think Civ5 vanilla’s diplomacy was absolutely schizophrenic. That was fixed with Gods & Kings, but if Dennis says it’s even less erratic now in BNW, then that’s wonderful news for builders.
About the tech tree, Dennis said that there will be slight changes only. He said that the big focus was really not there but on the new systems. Only the Internet new tech was confirmed.
Sid Meier's Civilization 5: Brave New World - Maria of Portugal
There’s also big news for multiplayer gamers. Multiplayer will receive a significant overhaul, which should also include the re-introduction of the Pitboss concept, a Civ application which should allow for a much smoother multiplayer experience.
Airports are back, corporations are not. Firaxis confirmed that a system similar to Airports, and air-lifting in Civ4’s late game, will be also available in Civ5:BNW, which allows your units to travel instantly between cities with an airport. Asked about corporations, a Civ4: Beyond the Sword flag feature, Dennis confirmed that they will not be in.
Conclusion
So, in summary, Civ5: Brave New World, the second, and perhaps last expansion to Civ5, will be more “for the builders” and mostly about a culture and trade mechanics overhaul, with the introduction of the Tourism and International Trade Routes mechanics.
Diplomacy gets the World Congress new mechanic, espionage gets a peaceful new type of spy, and there’s also the new Archeology concept, which will allow you to explore specific map locations, supposedly where big battles were fought once or on remnants of barbarian sites destroyed long ago.
No major changes are to be expected on combat and tech progression though.
Sid Meier’s Civilization 5: Brave New World is targeted for release on July 9th 2013 on North America, and July 12th 2013 worldwide, for the PC and Mac.
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Civ 5 is a nice game i have bought all packages for 10 bucks at steam
But I would like to hav emore dynamic in the beginning..
And no american civilization at 4000 BC..
Alexander has conquered half of the world 300 BC in 10 years.
But I can only walk one tile every 40 years at 300 BC…
And in some games I had two tousand years of war…
There should be a war mode and a peace civilization mode..
They need a revolution for the next part..
I want civilizations which fail of inner problems and quickly grows (like the reality [roman civilization and the USA])
And I want to play countries with mass population and no technology like china 20 years ago..
But in this game the one with the highest population is always the one with the highest technology level..
And I want more spies..
There’s a new spy type now, the Diplomat. Maybe you missed that part of the post.
I’m pretty sure with marathon-gamestyle one move doesn’t equal 40 years…
Marathon game speed is 5 years per turn, making the game last a total of 1,500 turns. It takes about 1 to 2 weeks to complete one game with 2 players and 6 AI.
The USA is still going first of all.
Why don’t we list some notable ACTUAL failed states where the failure was internal and not from an external aggressor army.
China
the USSR
East Germany
Cuba (military coup)
Tunisia & Egypt (see Arab Spring)
Libya (probably doesn’t count as Arab Spring because NATO forces jumped in)
South Africa
Now if you scrutinize, you start to see that in a way, all of these had external factors. No state is an island unto itself.
Hey Harris, the games you’re looking for are made by Paradox Interactive. I first got into those games because CIV was too ‘gamey’ for me after a while. I got into the Total War series as well when I was 8 or 9 because they had tactical and strategic gameplay but after a while that got stale too. Than I found Europa Universalis II and have really never turned back. I suggest you look up Victoria 2, Crusader Kings 2, and Hearts of Iron 3 for games that let you build up an empire in a semi-realistic way.
Lots of cool stuff in this expansion.Late game was always shit in previous Civs so this is a good step.I love the new World Congress and trade factors too.
I could not care less about adding more nations,never have.
Yea, Civ late games were always lackluster. It’s a general 4X issue as we all know, but still, Civ games always suffered from late-game boredom big time.
At some point in time in your game you always feel like playing a new game from scratch. That’s both good and bad. It’s bad because you rarely finished games, but it’s good because at least you felt the urge to play a new game and not simply dump the entire game.
I’ve been following Civ5:BNW closely as you all know, and I can feel that they had the “end-game” issue always in their mind when designing this expansion. The new culture victory should prove much more interesting now, and the diplomacy victory seems to have a new twist, with the World Congress.
I, on the other hand, like to see new Civs added. It’s always refreshing to read their background info and play their unique abilities, with and against. I guess if you’re Portuguese, Polish or Brazilian you’re very happy to see your leaders in.
Oh, I tought it is something wrong with me that I almost never finish a Civ game but get bored around hitting the modern times.
This is a psychotic dilemma for me, because I’m keen to play with modern units, but when I reach them, I get bored.
So if I think about civ warfare, archers, knights, lancers and musketeers are the first things what comes into my mind :) Somehow most of the real warfare events happen in that period…
As someone born in a Portuguese-speaking country, I’m glad the new Civ5 expansion will add Portugal and Brazil.
In that kind of game, Spain has been a more obvious choice than Portugal.
In South America/Latin America, the pre-Columbian civs have been more popular among the devs, so it’s nice to see a modern nation like Brazil in the game.
And thankfully, they chose Pedro II over his father, Pedro I, to represent the Brazilian Nation.
This is looking better and better to me. I might buy this day one for a change instead of waiting on it to go on a steam sale :). I love wargames, but a game like Civ, it should be only a last recourse to go to war. And this looks like it’s heading in the right direction.
Now hurry up and do Alpha Centauri 2!
CiV for Builders?
Count me in.
I love building, and have found it a shame that even after G&K, I still have trouble running economic games that way– everything devolves into either catapult era or frigate era warmongering for me… and I never really get to see what happens with tanks as I either get rolled or roll everyone by then.
I’m happy to see Firaxis continuing to support this game years after its initial release. It sounds like they have been moving it in the right direction with each new expansion. I’m very interested to see how interesting and varied the gameplay ends up being after its release.
Unless the AI is totally different, I can’t see anyone enticing me back to Civ V. The other nations don’t play to be a success in their own right, they play to stop YOU winning and it’s really, really irritating. It’s odd thing to say, but it just feels to transparently ‘gamey’ and not enough like you’re sharing a world with several other actual nations who might have heard of co-operation and non-military alliances…
I agree with Scimarad about the AI. Its hard to look forward to the expansion if the AI is still so weak that you already pretty much know in advance that its not going to be any challenge whatsoever. I also refuse to play at the higher difficulties because I don’t find it to be any fun to play against an AI that is just as dumb as before but is able to get the upper hand only because it cheats massively.
Yep keep enjoying CIV4 and its mythical supermhuman A.I,not.
Who mentioned anything about Civ 4? That had it’s own entirely different problems…
I am really getting bored really fast with civ games! :( they just year after year recycle the same old mechanics on just more shiny graphics, it has for me gotten so dull and I feel Firaxis have gotten rather sloppy and just look at civ as a cash cow and have lost the passion for innovation!.
In my opinion Call to Power 2 was a far superior game then any of the civ games at least you had diamond and genetic ages and more futuristic content that felt really great to play, sure civ 4 had mods that made it futuristic but that’s down to the modders not firaxis who i feel just could not care a less what their customers want and if you don’t believe me just try contact them!.
I play a lot of CIV 5 multiplayer via Steam and I’m looking forward to the expansion, particularly the promise of more stable multiplayer. Currently about half of the games set up on Steam crash; they either freeze at start or freeze when a player drops.
I’m also hoping they address some of the balancing issues, nerfing the more powerful civs like Spain and the Huns while buffing some of the 2nd tier civs such as India. Unit balance needs work too. Right now naval games are simply a race to frigates. There is little you can do if an opponent shows up next to one of your coastal cities with five or six frigates (and a privateer or two) before you have the tech.
As it is, Civ 5 is one of the best multiplayer strategy game experiences I’ve ever had. A few minor tweaks and better multiplayer stability will make it even better. New features and civs are icing on the cake.