Is this expansion any good? Review Brave New World

Honestly, after two half-playthroughs, I'm not thrilled with Brave New World so far. Two of the new systems -- trade route and great works -- seem like they add more fiddlyness than fun. I'm spending lots of time staring at the Possible Trade Routes screen and the Manage Great Works screen. And for what? Honestly, I think I liked how gold and culture worked in Gods and Kings better.

Well, to be fair, the Culture Victory via "Utopia Project" was pretty dull before Brave New World. But I'm not convinced that an Amphitheater that gives 1 and has one slot for a Great Work of Writing that will give 2 (and also we call two of it "tourism" as well) after I build a Writer's Guild and earn enough great people points for a Great Writer... is an improvement over that an Amphitheater that simply gives me 3 . Why all the extra work?

And trade routes...
* Why is it such a pain to protect my trade routes from random barbarians, unless I want to spend tedious minutes moving my units back and forth every single turn?
* Where should I build Marketplaces or the East India Trading Company? Will that be the difference between the AI making a trade route with that city vs. with another civilization? There's no way to tell!
* Would building a Caravansary/Harbor in this city allow it to reach a new destination that would be more profitable than one of my existing trade routes? There's no way to tell!

Things I like:
* The restructured social policy trees. Piety and Commerce had split focuses in Gods and Kings. This wasn't such a huge problem until they added bonuses for completing a tree, which made me feel bad when I only needed half of Piety or half of Commerce. So I like that they split off Aesthetics from Piety and Exploration from Commerce.

Things I haven't gotten to try yet, but look promising:
* The new World Congress/UN.
* Ideologies.

I suspect that this expansion, like the base game and Gods and Kings, will require one or two more patches before it reaches its full potential:
1. More clear UI and up-to-date Civilopedia.
2. Some pain points addressed (like the tedium of protecting trade routes).
3. Inevitable balance issues.
4. Inevitable "pacing" improvements. (Are techs usually coming too slow or too fast at certain eras?)
5. AI improvements.
6. Diplomacy improvements. Trade routes don't seem to interact with diplomacy at all, which is weird.

I gave it a 10, a must-buy for the civ fan. It honestly doesn't feel like an add-on as much as Vanilla and G&K now feel like the alpha/beta for BNW. That's how well the features work together, with nothing feeling incomplete/worthless like corporations did in BTS. Science had always been vital for all the victory conditions; but now religion, culture, espionage, diplomacy and money grubbing are vital too.

In the 3 games I've played so far I haven't run into any perpetual peace (1st game on prince, next 2 on King; yes I'm not good, thank you) or other assorted AI wackiness. I never liked the constant DoWs when I had 2 less archers than the AI or something silly like that, so I rather like the new game. For the first time in the Civ series I find culture to be an interesting option and the ideologies form political blocs that feel less artificial than in the past.

Something that surprised me was how interesting the World Congress is. When it came time to propose resolutions I stressed out way too much trying to pick the best resolution, there was nothing perfect. Something always pissed off a potential friend, helped one of my enemies or didn't really help me; so I really had to weigh my choices. Plus, I felt especially devious spreading my religion through trade and bribing neutral civs to get my religion declared the world religion as step 1 on my path to cultural dominance.

I will say that as a person that never played a complete Civ 5 game until now, the Civilopedia in this game is pretty damn awful. It makes Civ 4's civilopedia look like a work of art. It also doesn't seem to just be a BNW thing, the entire way if was written, categorized, and hyperlinked is inferior.

Luckily it only took me about a game to get up to speed on how to play. I agree that tourism is a bit wonky in its intuitive nature but I like their intentions.

I love how games go to the modern age now. If you played to the modern age in Civ 4, you felt a certain sense of shame. I like anything that slows down tech pace, adds more eras, and keeps the game interesting til the end.

Areas for improvement:

- Not sold on 1UPT, I'm fine with using the system, I just feel it could use some quality of life enhancements, like when I'm trying to move 20 units from one place to another, its a huge pain in the ass.
- AI still seems awful at naval invasions, especially with how embarked troops take a huge penalty, it seems even harsher than Civ 4.
- Would still like more aggressiveness, and obviously continual development into making the AI not suck as much at war; I feel like it is even easier in this game to punish the AI in war than Civ 4, but maybe I am wrong.

Things that stand out to me as a Civ 4 player:

- Really like how naval units feel more useful in this game. Navy was always a hard subject for Civ, and while its not perfect, I think it is a step in the right direction (navy taking cities, being able to bomboard into land, protecting trade routes, pillaging trade routes, bonuses to economy for coastal cities)

- All the subsystems seem to work well together and/or bring good flavor to Civ

- Fantastic civ designs and abilities

I gave it a 9/10. It's really close to a must-buy, especially if you've been playing Civ 5 vanilla or G&K regularly. The culture victory is undeniably improved, the World Congress and ideologies vastly improve late game diplomacy, and tweaks to the social policy trees have resulted in probably the most balanced and interesting set of them to date. Also, I am in the camp who thinks there is noticeable improvement in big picture AI behaviours - I've played games where the AI keeps lasting peace and friendships, but I'm now in a game where the AIs have ganged up on me in a very reasonable way. Finally, I'm on the fence on whether trade routes are ultimately a better gold system, but it does add some interesting decisions to how you earn gold during the case of the game.

Things that haven't significantly improved: naval combat AI (though the AI does build early navies it seems), and a far too harsh warmonger penalty for your first DoW, even if it is against a mostly hated AI. IMO, I think that this was a large oversight and while it can be fixed, it never should have made it into the released game in its current state. I guess naval combat AI will always be a black mark on an otherwise fine game at this point. These are two negatives that hold me back from a 10/10, but the rest is overwhelmingly positive.

Of course there are also things that need some minor balancing adjustments, but that is inherent in every new strategy game expansion; I think to regard those things as a negative is an unfair standard.

Ultimately, I think BNW is absolutely the definitive Civ 5 experience, much like BtS for Civ 4. Which one is the better game is certainly up for debate, but BNW hits almost all the right notes for improving Civ 5.

8/10.

Great mechanics and additions, but I can see lots of stuff is still beta.
Very little real, full deity testing happened, in my opinion.

I said it on another thread, but, bears re-iterating:

BNW is among the better expansions of the past three games. This expansion added
- Some of the most unique civs of the series
- World Congress
- Competitive projects
- Trade Routes
- New Cultural Victory conditions
- New wonders and various tweaks

I'd say this is one of the best expansions. Gods & Kings I'd give about a 6, as aside from religion and civs, it mostly added tweaks, adding composite bows, nerfing Iron, etc., while BNW adds a greater depth to the game in general.

I voted '9'. The only area BNW loses in when compared to G&K is the scenarios... Fall of Rome does just about everything the American Civil War scenario does, but better, and Empire of the Smoky Skies and Into the Renaissance are both just as good as Scramble for Africa. I know a lot of people may not care about scenarios, but I've played Fall of Rome a number of times, and it's still something I break-out when I have time to play Civ 5 and want a change of pace.

10
It changed the metagame on me, which has breathed new life into Civ. We'll get balance patches and tweaks will be made i'm sure, just as there was during the end of the life cycle for BtS

In the end, Civ 6 will get released and everyone will be in an uproar at how bad the vanilla is and wonder why they can't make a new game like CiV:BNW

rexman07 said:

Well, to be fair, the Culture Victory via "Utopia Project" was pretty dull before Brave New World. But I'm not convinced that an Amphitheater that gives 1 and has one slot for a Great Work of Writing that will give 2 (and also we call two of it "tourism" as well) after I build a Writer's Guild and earn enough great people points for a Great Writer... is an improvement over that an Amphitheater that simply gives me 3 . Why all the extra work?

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Well I do like how there can be small hunts going for finding the right works to fill your slots to get the theming bonuses, and it gives you something "to do" in the game, which has been a point of criticism earlier. Many players felt the game went by too fast, particularly in the later eras, and this is actually where one of my points of criticism comes in, because it seems some new game features were added simply to stall the game without actually giving us much new to do.

Science has been slowed by a "per city" penalty which means that much of the game now seems like an endless wait just to get one new technology, where they could instead have fleshed out the technology tree a bit by adding some more techs to fill some of the many gaps - which would have had the same slowing down effect without the feeling of less happening per turn.

Trade Routes are a great concept, but I don't like how they are essentially an all-or-nothing for your Gold income. This makes warfare, particularly early in the game, almost impossible, because war will cripple your trade system, and this may well be a major reason for the sudden void that seems to have appeared in early game. Instead we seem to be spending ages on finishing those very production-heavy Caravan/Trade Ship units, only to have them robbed by Barbarians - not very fun.

Culture victory is much more fun, but I don't like how the only major source of Culture now is through Great Works. It sort of narrows you down a bit too much in the approach you can take to the game. I do get the impression, both with regards to Trade Routes and Culture, that the developers were so excited about their new features that they wanted to make sure that they really had an impact, but in that process went so far that they essentially overwrote all the old game elements so that the new features are now the only ones that have impact on game. That is definitely something that needs tweaking - Great Works as a major source for Tourism - fine, but let's have some more sources for regular culture also.

Social Policies have gotten a major boost from the tree splitting, but there still is some severe balancing to do. Honor still seems inferior as opening tree, and Exploration plain sucks. The fact that you also get a diplomatic penalty for excavating hidden Antiquity sites within the lands of civs that can't see these sites is the final nail in the coffin for this tree. Commerce also is lacklustre now that some of the more interesting policies are taken out, and Patronage is underwhelming in many of its policies.

Anyway, that was my rant about BnW.

kaspergm said:

This makes warfare, particularly early in the game, almost impossible, because war will cripple your trade system

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i think effect of warfare on trade is overestimated. there are enough partners to trade even if you are at war with 1-2 civs or CS. playing as Venice on the small map i was in state of war for the most of the game and it costed me only 2 robbed caravans.

i'd like caravans to have some sight though, it would be both more interesting and realistic
maybe caravans even should be used for fogbusting, e.g. you click "find new trade route", and if there are any reacheble cities in the fog, caravan picks one of them randomly and goes there, opening the map.

9/10; better than G&K IMHO. It just feels so complete in a way.

There's little touches everywhere and tweaks to AI behavior like bards not beelining for open settlers, or the AI prophets passing through your lands and not being a jerk and trying to convert your cities even when the two world leaders are the best of friends. New players may not appreciate it, but knowing how the game used to behave, the expansion feels refined.

Trade routes and world congress are great concepts; It brings a whole new dimension to compete over. It's quite realistic in the sense that this is the first Civ game where you feel like playing multi-layered chess games that isn't limited to moving troops on the map, but politicking and diplomatic manipulation, while engaging in spreading religion and tourism. It's as close to a game of geopolitical chess as anything, without being rigidly tied to a time period or a scenario.

I'm enjoying the game, but is it worth $30? I'm not sure. I would have preferred to pay $20. Although technically I'm getting more than 1 hour per dollar which is pretty good in my book. Although much of that fun is from Gods and Kings. Meaning the base game is why I'm playing so much. So far I haven't used tourism at all (is there any point if you aren't going for cultural victory?) And have used trade routes sparingly. I'm not far enough along to use ideology (should I be saving civics choices for this?)

Quick question: I haven't seen it mentioned in the threads. How do I do World's Fair in the World Congress? I put the petition up, but nothing seemed to happen. I'm now getting a message saying I only have a certain number of turns to deliberate (I think they use a different word I can't remember) the proposals. So how do I deliberate these proposals?

Disgustipated said:

I'm enjoying the game, but is it worth $30? I'm not sure. I would have preferred to pay $20. Although technically I'm getting more than 1 hour per dollar which is pretty good in my book. Although much of that fun is from Gods and Kings. Meaning the base game is why I'm playing so much. So far I haven't used tourism at all (is there any point if you aren't going for cultural victory?) And have used trade routes sparingly. I'm not far enough along to use ideology (should I be saving civics choices for this?)

Quick question: I haven't seen it mentioned in the threads. How do I do World's Fair in the World Congress? I put the petition up, but nothing seemed to happen. I'm now getting a message saying I only have a certain number of turns to deliberate (I think they use a different word I can't remember) the proposals. So how do I deliberate these proposals?

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To answer the World Congress question, resolutions take 3 stages. Stage 1, the proposal: the host and the player with the highest delegates each propose a resolution (World's Fair, embargo civ, etc) Stage 2, diplomacy: This stage takes place for x number of turns between stage 1 and 3. During this point you can use your diplomats to garner support for against particular proposals. You will see a number over the diplomacy button in the top right indicating how many turns until the next stage. Stage 3, the vote: At this point you actually vote on the resolutions, you can divide your delegates between the two, it's not all for one. The "yay" votes are counted against the "nay" votes to determine whether the resolutions pass. It's at this point where the resolution would actually be enacted.

It seems you are still in stage 2. If anyone was opposed to you drafting the proposal, you may want to send out some diplomats to other civs. Establishing your spies as diplomats requires you to assign a spy to a capitol, you will then be told to choose "spy" or "diplomat". After you have a diplomat with a civ, you can trade votes with them in the standard trade screen for luxuries, gold etc.

Disgustipated said:

I would have preferred to pay $20.

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Haha. I'd rather they give me a thousand bucks to play it.

9/10

Trade routes and culture victory are very well done. Best part of the whole expansion is the scramble for Africa scenario and the Zulu. Without these the rest of the game is only 8/10.

8 out of 10? 9 out of 10? From the impression I got from reading the forums I thought I`d be seeing lots of `5`s and `6`s. Is it just people who bought the game and don`t want to look like they made a mistake voting high or just those who give it a low score not bothering to vote?

Not sure what psychology is working here.

Maybe the game is ok, even with dumb things like the Xcom squad. hmmm...

Socratatus said:

8 out of 10? 9 out of 10? From the impression I got from reading the forums I thought I`d be seeing lots of `5`s and `6`s. Is it just people who bought the game and don`t want to look like they made a mistake voting high or just those who give it a low score not bothering to vote?

Not sure what psychology is working here.

Maybe the game is ok, even with dumb things like the Xcom squad. hmmm...

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Are you new to internet forums? People who complain always get the most attention. Discussion usually evolves around flaws of the game. People who are 100% content with the game, don't voice their opinion as often as people who hate it.

Civfanatics keeps the haters in check though. It's generally a pretty friendly environment. Still there is no point in discussing features that everybody loves.

@topic: The more I play BNW, the more I love it. Added a lot of depth and critical decisions to the game and the AI mostly makes more sense. I know I'll sink hundreds of hours into it, so it's a 10/10.

Socratatus said:

8 out of 10? 9 out of 10? From the impression I got from reading the forums I thought I`d be seeing lots of `5`s and `6`s. Is it just people who bought the game and don`t want to look like they made a mistake voting high or just those who give it a low score not bothering to vote?

Not sure what psychology is working here.

Maybe the game is ok, even with dumb things like the Xcom squad. hmmm...

Click to expand...

People will always make suggestions for improvements. Like AI aggression. I'm still in my first game, and no one has declared on me. But their have been wars. Atila seems to stir up a bunch of trouble, and no one likes him.

Xcom- this doesn't bother me too much since they made the other game. But it doesn't make sense. X-com are supposed to fight aliens, not other Earth civilizations. It's still better than GDR.

I'm not done with my first game, but I gave it an 8. For the record I give the original Civ5 release a 2.

Disgustipated said:

People will always make suggestions for improvements. Like AI aggression. I'm still in my first game, and no one has declared on me. But their have been wars. Atila seems to stir up a bunch of trouble, and no one likes him.

Xcom- this doesn't bother me too much since they made the other game. But it doesn't make sense. X-com are supposed to fight aliens, not other Earth civilizations. It's still better than GDR.

I'm not done with my first game, but I gave it an 8. For the record I give the original Civ5 release a 2.

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I agree it`s better than GDR. It`s really just naming them Xcom that ruined it; like you say it has nthing to do with Civ5 and is an anomoly. Hmm. Still deciding on whether to buy or not.

I gave it a 10. I'm only about 2/3 of the way through my first game, but I am absolutely in love with almost every new feature and mechanic I can think of. The tangled web of interrelated parts that must be navigated when considering options is really quite impressive.

9 out of 10; the only reasons I wouldn't give it a 10 are that there are some obvious balance tweeks that need done to the new mechanics along with the AI still failing economics 101 in regard to GPT pricing.