Today we learned that France will have a new UA:
City of Light: Theming bonuses doubled in capital.
So if you have Great Works that fit a certain theme in a culture building, you get a bonus, and for France that bonus is doubled in the capital. We have seen so far that a Museum will have a theme for the period (so you get the bonus if for example you have two Renaissance Great Works), and that the bonus is 2 culture and 2 tourism, which is the same as the value generated by one Great Work on its own.
Implications:
1) Some UAs can apparently get a drastic overhaul. While the French UA retains its cultural theme, it goes from being more suited to a wide empire to something that explicitly encourages a tall capital and wonder building. I'd say that India, the Netherlands, Arabia and the Ottomans are also likely to see a change in UA now we know this.
2) So far in Civ5, every civilization's UA has given at least some benefit by at latest the Classical era. Even Austria could have married its first city state by that time. From what we know at the moment, the first building with two Great Work slots is the Museum, which becomes available in the Industrial era, which would make France's UA only work from that point. As the two more or less modern new civs that have been announced, Brazil and Poland, both have UA that work early on in the game, it seems unlikely that the design will be that Mediaeval and later civs will have a UA that only kicks in from that point (although their UB/UU/UI will still be tied to that period). So I think there are two options for France to get to use their bonus early: either they get an additional Great Works slot in their Palace, which would nicely fit in with the size and opulence of the Palace at Versailles, or there is an early game wonder with two Great Works slot, out of the current ones the likely candidate would be the Terracotta Army. The problem I see with the latter is that France's ability to use their UA is already going to be really tied into building a few specific wonders, the Louvre and most likely the Uffizi.
City of Light: Theming bonuses doubled in capital.
So if you have Great Works that fit a certain theme in a culture building, you get a bonus, and for France that bonus is doubled in the capital. We have seen so far that a Museum will have a theme for the period (so you get the bonus if for example you have two Renaissance Great Works), and that the bonus is 2 culture and 2 tourism, which is the same as the value generated by one Great Work on its own.
Implications:
1) Some UAs can apparently get a drastic overhaul. While the French UA retains its cultural theme, it goes from being more suited to a wide empire to something that explicitly encourages a tall capital and wonder building. I'd say that India, the Netherlands, Arabia and the Ottomans are also likely to see a change in UA now we know this.
2) So far in Civ5, every civilization's UA has given at least some benefit by at latest the Classical era. Even Austria could have married its first city state by that time. From what we know at the moment, the first building with two Great Work slots is the Museum, which becomes available in the Industrial era, which would make France's UA only work from that point. As the two more or less modern new civs that have been announced, Brazil and Poland, both have UA that work early on in the game, it seems unlikely that the design will be that Mediaeval and later civs will have a UA that only kicks in from that point (although their UB/UU/UI will still be tied to that period). So I think there are two options for France to get to use their bonus early: either they get an additional Great Works slot in their Palace, which would nicely fit in with the size and opulence of the Palace at Versailles, or there is an early game wonder with two Great Works slot, out of the current ones the likely candidate would be the Terracotta Army. The problem I see with the latter is that France's ability to use their UA is already going to be really tied into building a few specific wonders, the Louvre and most likely the Uffizi.
Just make sure you have researched Archeology already.
