Hello,
Got finally my hand on BNW for a part of the weekend and found it quite refreshing. Adds definitely to the game diversity, to the fun of it altough certain points could be addressed in a new patch definitely. But overall, it's all good news and I m having a good time.
To put things in context, I was playing G&K in Std size, std speed, mostly continents (save for the odd pangea) in Emperor but could win Immortal.
The PRO's:
1./ They improved early game
Yes, early game becomes a lot more situationnal now. No more systematic gold rush (which was becoming borderline exploit) to output settlers, libraries, workers, bribe CS. More sense to barbarians in the beginning and it feels alright now to give more focus at the start of the game to civilize barbs rather than ignoring and taking on neighbours.
Also your behaviour towards neighbour becomes key and you HAVE to give it some focus if you ever want to sign the goodly DOF. Never take an AI last city on your continent if you want to keep friends.
Finally, this age don't fly by anymore, it unfolds much more slowly and let's you enjoy the early eras
2./ They added game diversity
Lots of more things to consider and do ! Great. Caravans, world congress, indi's looking for artifacts, more policy choices. Natural wonder are now becoming strategic places. All in all adding to making this game different from the other and less "just click to next turn waiting that next research" feel. Some features like caravan for example feel like a minigame and you can use them to boost prod, growth or even expand your religion. Especially like the fact that caravan now helps develop cities which could not (for space reason) be placed on an ideal land.
3./ You feel more comitted to a VC
Once you reach education and (normally around there) complete your first policy tree, you definitely have to make a choice that will influence the rest of your game. And you got to ask yourself. Am I going science, domination, culture ? I like the fact that opera and culture building after medieval bring you only +1 culture and same for wonders. It's no longer: "Oh I do spam every culture building to get rationnalism faster"
4./ Cultural victory
Although some could say, it's a new way of stacking new beakers or that it's too easy, give the dev some credits, it's a lot better than it was before
Areas of imPROvements
Now as any new system which needs to be tested and experienced, we got a few area of improvements in BNW and some not too late patching could easily make the game a really huge hit (was the same with Vanilla, it needed patching clearly)
1./ Gold in middle - late game
Maybe a little too easy to come by compared to beginning. In a last game I had 4 founded city, 4 puppets and was making 135 G just from connecting cities together, PLUS and additional 80 G from city PLUS an additionnal 100G from cargo ships... generating 300G / turn shortly after astronomy. This plus a few DOF and I had quickly 13 CS licking my boots. This leads to diplomatic victory being a little bit too easy to come by. I may be wrong but the number of "coup" has decreased significantly
2./ AI likes culture victory too much - where are the early game wonders
Yes, having Siam, Byzantium, Sohstone and France go for cultural victory on the 7 civs I had in front of me was heartbreaking. It took to run away in science or conquer to hope get any chance at building wonders. SInce some of them have become quite powerful, it's a shame.
3./ AI is abit too shy now ?
I do not say that having a CIV become a runaway by eating off the world thanks to no happiness constraint and generating huge science thanks to 30+ cities was preferable. But in emperor, AI seem to like sitting on their 3 first cities for ages. Haven t seen any of them conquer a neighbour yet. Lack aggressivity
4./ Policies need to be rebalanced
With the emphasize on trade roots, certain economic bonus in policies need to be revamped. Certain bonuses are now too weak to be worth going down the policy route. Tradition, liberty, honor remain good but given the money you make middle game, commerce is only worth going if you plan to take the 6 policies for +2 hap / lux
5./ turn duration ... wheeze
Sadly enough, it seems that minimum hardware requirements for playing late game have increased. Its got a lot slower now given how many new things need calculating. I hate buying an expansion to then feel like I should need buy a new computer to run the same game
6./ Culture is ok, dom was fine - what about science and diplomacy
Science vic seems incredibly boring now compared to the other solutions. And diplomacy is just lump gold trading. They tried to improve science victory by making the space ship a lego but it's hardly hard to do or bring any depth. For diplomacy a good way could be to not guarantee a vote from an ally CS. Ally CS already gift plenty of things and are powerful enough. When it comes to each individual WC votes, I think AI should be able to influence them using spies / diplomats / threat to turn them away for a specific vote.
Got finally my hand on BNW for a part of the weekend and found it quite refreshing. Adds definitely to the game diversity, to the fun of it altough certain points could be addressed in a new patch definitely. But overall, it's all good news and I m having a good time.
To put things in context, I was playing G&K in Std size, std speed, mostly continents (save for the odd pangea) in Emperor but could win Immortal.
The PRO's:
1./ They improved early game
Yes, early game becomes a lot more situationnal now. No more systematic gold rush (which was becoming borderline exploit) to output settlers, libraries, workers, bribe CS. More sense to barbarians in the beginning and it feels alright now to give more focus at the start of the game to civilize barbs rather than ignoring and taking on neighbours.
Also your behaviour towards neighbour becomes key and you HAVE to give it some focus if you ever want to sign the goodly DOF. Never take an AI last city on your continent if you want to keep friends.
Finally, this age don't fly by anymore, it unfolds much more slowly and let's you enjoy the early eras
2./ They added game diversity
Lots of more things to consider and do ! Great. Caravans, world congress, indi's looking for artifacts, more policy choices. Natural wonder are now becoming strategic places. All in all adding to making this game different from the other and less "just click to next turn waiting that next research" feel. Some features like caravan for example feel like a minigame and you can use them to boost prod, growth or even expand your religion. Especially like the fact that caravan now helps develop cities which could not (for space reason) be placed on an ideal land.
3./ You feel more comitted to a VC
Once you reach education and (normally around there) complete your first policy tree, you definitely have to make a choice that will influence the rest of your game. And you got to ask yourself. Am I going science, domination, culture ? I like the fact that opera and culture building after medieval bring you only +1 culture and same for wonders. It's no longer: "Oh I do spam every culture building to get rationnalism faster"
4./ Cultural victory
Although some could say, it's a new way of stacking new beakers or that it's too easy, give the dev some credits, it's a lot better than it was before
Areas of imPROvements
Now as any new system which needs to be tested and experienced, we got a few area of improvements in BNW and some not too late patching could easily make the game a really huge hit (was the same with Vanilla, it needed patching clearly)
1./ Gold in middle - late game
Maybe a little too easy to come by compared to beginning. In a last game I had 4 founded city, 4 puppets and was making 135 G just from connecting cities together, PLUS and additional 80 G from city PLUS an additionnal 100G from cargo ships... generating 300G / turn shortly after astronomy. This plus a few DOF and I had quickly 13 CS licking my boots. This leads to diplomatic victory being a little bit too easy to come by. I may be wrong but the number of "coup" has decreased significantly
2./ AI likes culture victory too much - where are the early game wonders
Yes, having Siam, Byzantium, Sohstone and France go for cultural victory on the 7 civs I had in front of me was heartbreaking. It took to run away in science or conquer to hope get any chance at building wonders. SInce some of them have become quite powerful, it's a shame.
3./ AI is abit too shy now ?
I do not say that having a CIV become a runaway by eating off the world thanks to no happiness constraint and generating huge science thanks to 30+ cities was preferable. But in emperor, AI seem to like sitting on their 3 first cities for ages. Haven t seen any of them conquer a neighbour yet. Lack aggressivity
4./ Policies need to be rebalanced
With the emphasize on trade roots, certain economic bonus in policies need to be revamped. Certain bonuses are now too weak to be worth going down the policy route. Tradition, liberty, honor remain good but given the money you make middle game, commerce is only worth going if you plan to take the 6 policies for +2 hap / lux
5./ turn duration ... wheeze
Sadly enough, it seems that minimum hardware requirements for playing late game have increased. Its got a lot slower now given how many new things need calculating. I hate buying an expansion to then feel like I should need buy a new computer to run the same game
6./ Culture is ok, dom was fine - what about science and diplomacy
Science vic seems incredibly boring now compared to the other solutions. And diplomacy is just lump gold trading. They tried to improve science victory by making the space ship a lego but it's hardly hard to do or bring any depth. For diplomacy a good way could be to not guarantee a vote from an ally CS. Ally CS already gift plenty of things and are powerful enough. When it comes to each individual WC votes, I think AI should be able to influence them using spies / diplomats / threat to turn them away for a specific vote.
