How good is BNW, in your opinion?

Haven't bought it yet, just dropped in to see what people thought of the new xpac, so far. After playing it for a week or so, do you think it's the bestest thing since fried ice cream, or do you think it is a tad rough yet and needs some more balancing/patching before it really hits its stride? Thanks for your views.

best game ever!

I would value it around $15-20 right now. If you can get it cheap on steam sale, great. But a lot of the mechanics in BNW don't really work well with the game-play and there are a lot of exploits right now. The game feels a lot slower and the warmonger penalty is more pronounced, so warring is a less viable path to victory. All in all, a lot of people like the pack more than I do, so take my opinion with a grain of salt, but I'd say you ought to wait until the price goes down and the game gets patched and balanced.

It's a masterpiece. I'm a huge civ fan, standing at 284 hours played on my steam account, but I didn't play Gods and Kings that much. But Brave New World, oh boy. I think 50 of those hours were spent so far in BNW.

It's like they finally got the cake mix close to perfection. The balance is great, the gold starvation makes the early game a lot more interesting regarding choices, instead of one "best" opener. You can still go for early war (and some aggressive leaders still do, eg, Khan), but since the opportunity cost for a failed early war is so great, you really have to focus on it to make it happen.

The culture victory revamp is great, and the new ideologies are close to the civics from Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, a favorite of mine. The new civs are interesting, with some unique ones such as Venice. The new Great Works, Archeology and Tourism make the mid/late game also more interesting.

This is the best civilization ever, even edging out Beyond the Sword. There are maybe some very minor balance tweaks that are needed, but it feels like nitpicking compared to say, vanilla Civ5 or the pre-patch GK. After releasing this, I am wondering how they can top this in a hypothetical Civ6.

Absolutely worthwhile. Trade routes feel like a natural addition, the new civs are solid, and religion has been made even better. It's hard to believe that the original Civilization 5 is even the same game.

It is less for warmongers now and more for empire builders, if you go for that sort of thing.

The new culture mechanics are excellent. The idea of "Attack" and "Defence" with respect to Tourism and Culture works really nicely, and the Archaeologists surprisingly add a new level of diplomacy as you try to negotiate dig sites with other civs (they get mad if you "steal" artifacts in their territory). Also, the culture victory is now RELATIVE to the other civs in game, so if you don't get a perfect start, you can still win if the other civs get bad starts as well.

I enjoy it greatly and I wouldn't want to play Civ 5 without the BNW features. The mechanics brought into the game by BNW feel great to use and make you wonder how they were missing in the first place.

I haven't seen any game breaking balance or bug issues and minus what I see on the forums I haven't even seen any bugs. It may vary from system to system but I feel like it's a solid addition and well worth it.

I was one of those people who loved Civ 4, then bought Civ 5 on release day and got bored with it by the end of the week. I briefly got back into it when Gods and Kings came out, but it still wasn't enough to really hold my interest.

Brave New World, though? I preordered it on a whim the day before it came out, and now I can't tear myself away from it. Trade routes and more involved cultural mechanics, along with the espionage and religion from G&K, are just the right mix of complexity and choice to keep things fun.

Simply put: it's good. REALLY good. If you didn't like Civ 5 before (and I didn't, as I mentioned before), this might be enough to redeem it in your eyes. I'm sure yet if it will supplant BtS as my favorite Civilization game, but it's pretty close.

I'm loving it. Although, you can browse through this sub-forum and see that many people have an issue with the new "kumbaiya" AI.

Brilliant. I feel the changes though penalise war mongering a bit too much. Im not sure how anyone can consider early war with the lack of early gold, and then later on with the severe diplomacy penalties related to it.

So great, but needs some balance, and a few bugs to be tidied up.

9/10

best ever since fried ice cream

probably really frustrating for warmongers though

New features: mostly good, trade routes add depth and co-operation elements, science leak from them is awesome to balance science runaways. WC is nice but very easy to rig by the founder and with Forbidden palace. Great Works are a decent addition, but the interface for juggling them is horrible. Tourism and ideologies are pretty much what I expected. 8/10

AI: it's better at things other than plain warmongering, although it can and will still declare wars to take advantage of poorly defended neighbors - occasionally. Had an Emperor game with a military powerhouse sitting idly next to me, a large civ with a single crossbowman for defense until the industrial era when I started militarizing rapidly. Seems to care too much about warmongering, too little about other runaways. Especially angry about CS conquests, even if they weren't protecting the CS in question. On a positive note, it understands the concept of losing a war better even if one doesn't take a single city, and can offer massive "reparations". I'd give it 6/10, needs work.

Balance: warmongering and wide play in general have gotten many nasty hits from the Nerf Gun. Each city increases science cost, making puppet spam less valuable. Happiness buildings only give +2 happiness each, making cities even more incapable of supporting their own population with them alone. At the same time, Tall has been buffed somewhat by the addition of trade routes that allow them to reap lots of gold from a single market city. I like the fact that playing Tall works well but wideness is penalized too heavily at the moment - going wide in the early game feels like walking on fire with shoes made of broken glass. 6/10, needs work.


Bottom line, 7/10, definitely worth buying but also definitely in need of improvement as well.

I still haven't finished my first game, but so far, I think it's better than Gods and Kings.

Played two games, but already can't go back to GnK. To me it's almost hands down good. They just need to make the AI DoW the human occasionally as opposed to almost never, no matter which civs have such an opportunity.

They're really on the right track. They have all the right ideas in play, but they need to tweak the implementation.

I love the ideologies. The cold-war that ensues from them offers a feeling of tension and camaraderie that I have never felt in Civ V before.

Pre-BNW ciV now just looks incomplete if you've played a couple of games with the new expansion. It adds a lot of depth and flexibility that the game or orginally lacked and you have to be much more proactive in the later game.
There's still some issues with the AI and balance, but it's a big improvement and a great game.

JustinianIV said:

They just need to make the AI DoW the human occasionally as opposed to almost never, no matter which civs have such an opportunity.

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Well, for what it's worth I got attacked pretty early in two of my first three games. Once by Genghis and once by Attila. I don't miss the stupid warrior rushes the AI used to like so much one bit.

Try the BNW demo.
You can play 2 full eras (medieval + renaissance) + you'll see 6 (of the 9) new civs.

GoodSarmatian said:

Pre-BNW ciV now just looks incomplete if you've
Well, for what it's worth I got attacked pretty early in two of my first three games. Once by Genghis and once by Attila. I don't miss the stupid warrior rushes the AI used to like so much one bit.

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I have heard of these warmongering civs DoWing in BNW, but the problem seems to be that it is only these civs which DoW. Shaka is probably the most likely to DoW.

Every civ should have the capacity to DoW the human player given enough reason.

Then there is the problem of some of the Civs not DoWing, despite having UAs or UUs designed for early war.

Just played a game against China, America, Shoshone, Siam, Portugal, Dutch, and the Iraquois. They were all talk. In fact they didn't even do much of that.

I also would recommend it! The trade routes make it really interesting and add a lot of options, like considering the trade-off between helping another of your cities with food and hammers or making more money and tech. They also help religion spreading and add more to consider when dow-ing.

Great works are also awesome, i kind of enjoy the minigame of finding the best combination for best theeming bonuses. I also LOVE to warmonger to steal great works.

Bottom line is a great game in my opinion!

However if you are multiplayer centered, BNW is a huge letdown. G&K is a lot better in my opinion, BNW is pretty underwhelming.