Social Policies/Culture

At E3, we'll reveal the social policies system, a major new feature that we haven't talked much about before. As players accumulate culture over time, they're able to spend it to adopt social policies. There are 10 branches to select from, most of them requiring the player be in a particular era to utilize. Each branch is themed around a different aspect of the game. For example, the early-game "honor" branch provides bonuses to one's military, while the later "commerce" branch improves one's gold output.

With the policies system, we wanted to keep the feel of mixing and matching to construct one's government that was part of Civ IV, but we also wanted to instill a sense of forward momentum. Rather than having to switch out of one policy to adopt another, you build upon the policies already unlocked. The thought process we want to promote is "What cool new effect do I want?" rather than the feeling of needing to perform detailed analysis to determine if switching is a good idea.

The cultural victory is now tied to unlocking a certain amount of the policies tree. The policies give quite a bit of punch to the cultural side of the game, in addition to being a viable path to victory.

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