From my review of the game (
http://www.thegamescouts.com/2013/07/civilization-v-brave-new-world-review.html):
Culture is significantly more difficult to accumulate in Brave New World. Before, most of the culture a civilization gained came from buildings and then coupling the right social policies and wonders to maximize the culture output of your empire. While knowing which social policies to pick and wonders to build is still a very important part of the culture and tourism game, the culture given to players from culturally oriented buildings—culture that formed the foundation of your empire’s cultural output—has been significantly reduced. Whereas an opera house used add +4 culture to your empire, it now only adds +1 culture to your empire but contains a slot for a Great Work of Music that, when filled, provides additional culture and tourism. The culture that now forms the foundation of your empire’s cultural output is tied to a system that forces players to rely on the production of Great Musicians, Great Artists, and Great Writers to fill the requisite slots provided by buildings such as the opera house and museum.
But, tourism is what really makes managing these systems important. In order to have a good shot at winning a cultural victory, your tourism output will need to be maximized. Tourism can be gained in the same manner culture can; however, the tourism that forms the foundation of your tourism output doesn’t come from buildings, social policies, and wonders, as those simply enhance the tourism output of a civilization. Tourism is gained by filling Great Work slots in various buildings and wonders. Certain wonders provide “theming bonuses” but the requirements for these bonuses differ. Some require you fill the slots with works of Great Writing that come from different eras and different civilizations, while others require works of Great Art from the same period of time and the same civilization. But, if you’re able to meet the requirements, you’ll get a very helpful theme bonus that is worth an increase in the amount of tourism your civilization is generating. Getting the tourism yields that will form the basis of your tourism output is difficult. And therein lay an important point.
Now, more than ever, it is important for players to engage Civilization V’s city management system. The addition of the three new Great People mentioned above, come with the addition of three new buildings called guilds. The writer’s guild, artist’s guild, and musician’s guild all contain slots for city specialists that, when filled, will produce yields that earn the player points toward a great person. If the two slots in a writer’s guild are filled, then the city will eventually produce a Great Writer, and so on. Cities have never had an unlimited number of specialists, but the new culture/tourism system requires players to manually manage their cities’ citizen allotment in order to maximize the yield of whatever victory type they happen to be going for. It is now doubly important for culture players.
