Initial thoughts

[Thalassicus]

Let's post our initial thoughts while playing BWN over the next few weeks.

I recommend finishing at least 1 culture victory, 1 conquest victory, and play to the Renaissance with each of the new leaders. Then start trying out mods.

My favorite part is how everything ties together. Espionage can buy votes at the World Congress, which can embargo trade with a leader. Trade spreads religion, and religion influences tourism. Enacting a world religion or ideology in the Congress has a profound impact. It's all connected now!

Here's a tip: you can move a diplomat after purchasing a World Congress vote! Purchase one vote, then send her to a new leader, and purchase another vote. Each one takes about 5 turns to accomplish. We can purchase half the votes on the Congress to assure our resolution passes. This is really helpful to establish an early World Religion.

I find trade routes more exciting than passive terrain yields for rivers/coast. Ports are really vital, as sea trade routes provide double gold! Trade routes also naturally balance tech progress from science streaming out of highly advanced nations. I noticed foreign trade income is about a third of our total gold supply by midgame. This means losing trade routes can really cripple our economy. Some of the trade boosting buildings encourage us to cluster all our trade in one city, but if we do, it makes our routes more vulnerable to a mass attack. It becomes critically important to protect those routes with land and sea units.

One other small thing I like is they included more stuff in the Score, like policies and great works. We now have the tools necessary to make peaceful victories give as much score as domination.

The best approach to culture victory seems like:

Spoiler :

Peaceful religious spread in the early game, followed by conquest in lategame. Use religion and trade routes to build tourism with the majority of empires. One or two remaining leaders will usually have really high culture with lots of Great Works. These holdouts are super hard to influence with tourism, so go conquer them for a quick and immediate culture victory.

 

[Tomice]

Some of the trade boosting buildings encourage us to cluster all our trade in one city, but if we do, it makes our routes more vulnerable to a mass attack.

What about a starting position where most of your cities will be coastal (think of Italy, Britain or Japan). Will more than 1 coastal city be worth it? Is there any point to a coastal city without trade routes?

 

[Thalassicus]

I recommend building ports anywhere there are fish. Lighthouses now give production to sea resources. Fish give up to 5 2 4, better than any land tile. The second policy in the Exploration tree also gives 1 to every port building, a huge happiness bonus. Not every empire will get the Colossus or Trading Company, the world and national wonders which improve trade routes and encourage clustering trade.

In my current Moroccan game, I have two port cities on opposite sides of a large continent, to trade with people on the different sides. Morocco gets a bonus for each different civilization we trade with. One of my other coastal cities has 3 fish resources and surpassed my capital in population.

 

[Ahriman]

On balancing wide vs tall, it sounds like there is now a science penalty for wide?

http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=500109

This will have implications for how powerful science buildings should be - possibly weaker than they were in GEM, so that tall doesn't get too much science benefit.

 

[Thalassicus]

So... if one empire has 5 cities, and another has 10, the larger one researches 17% slower. However, the larger one also has more science income, so the overall tech rate is likely the same in both empires. I think that's effective. I do prefer such things through visible effects the player can understand, instead of hidden away in a passive effect, but it's not too bad.

I like the game to provide us one tech every 10 turns or so, from the beginning of the game to the end. The details of how we accomplish that aren't too important to me. G&K, BNW, and Gem have close to that tech pace.

 

[Brannock]

Balance seems both greatly improved and much changed in BNW. I doubt we will be able to implement many of the GEM changes without radically changing the balance of BNW.

Trade routes in particular will have a drastic impact on the gold changes that were present in GEM.

I am getting culture at a very healthy clip - three full trees filled at turn 220 as Brazil - and don't feel constrained by the lower culture rates of the vanilla game.

Jungle tiles are frustrating once again. Bananas are an exceptionally poor resource, especially as Brazil where you will be wanting to take Sacred Path for culture from Jungle tiles. Cutting down the Jungle (giving up 1 culture and 2 science) for +1 food is a poor trade. Spices fare a bit better but still not great.

I am utterly in love with the trade routes and Great Works mechanics that they've added in BNW. Gold and culture now feels extremely engaging. Production is now perhaps the least interesting resource, with science a bit above production.

 

[Thalassicus]

I also really like trade routes and great works. I think they are fantastic and innovative ideas which fundamentally change the Civilization series for the better.

Trade route gold basically replaced passive gold from terrain, so our overall gold supply is about the same as unmodded G&K.

Brazil has more gold and culture than average civs because of the unique improvement, so be cautious of using Brazil as a baseline. With most leaders, I can get 10-15 policies before unlocking an ideology, which feels too low to me. I'd like to choose about 5 more policies.

 

[Ahriman]

I really like the trade routes, and I agree that the economy has been totally overhauled and we won't easily be able to go with GEM values, and will have to think really carefully before tweaking. Removing gold from rivers and coasts has been interesting too, though it now makes terrain even less meaningful than before.

But I'm confused about tourism. Does it actually give you anything, at any point before you win the game (which looks on paper to be incredibly difficult without mass conquest - I'm in the Renaissance era and I have ~80 culture income and 8 tourism)? It feels like tourism should do something for you, like provide gold income itself. Also, definitely rename to Prestige, tourism just feels silly.

I disagree that 15 policies + ideology is too few. One of the things I disliked about GEM was how it made it too easy to get too many policies. I prefer it when you can only get a few trees each game and so have to carefully pick which ones you pursue, I dislike it when it's easy to get most of them.
I think we will still want to rebalance and increase the power of many policies (many of them feel a bit weak), but I don't think we will need to make it easier to get more of them.

 

[Dunkah]

So far I am loving it.

Trade routes are awesome. They change the way the game is played drastically for me. My first game as Morrocco I bought a Caravan before I got a shrine or monument even though the 28 turns it took were just about equivalent to what the other two buildings would have cost. My caravan was wiped out by a Barbarian Horseman in about 3 turns. Doh! OMG!

So second game I waited and built up a couple of units and am using scouts with the extra vision promotion to keep the barbarian camps from spawning too close. I also learned that Granary was needed to do the internal routes. I was like "WTH"... Very rarely did I ever prioritize the Granary.

But since I built the Granary, Colossus and the India Trading Co in my Capital I have all of my trade routes in the one basket.

Felt like I had to spread out the Writers, Artists, and Musicians guilds to different cities so that I had spare population to fill the specialists slots. Have about 24 Tourism at the time I have discovered Printing Press. Got almost all of the other civs on the run culture wise. Have about 15 policies.

Just started sending out my Trade Routes to further distances but the borders are pretty close so there aren't a lot of spawning areas to be found.

So far only 1 DOW in the whole game. (and not from me).

 

[Thalassicus]

@Ahriman
Tourism becomes important when people start picking ideologies. Tourism causes influence with other leaders, and if you have enough influence over a leader, it makes their people want to switch to your ideology. This can add 10-30 unhappiness to leaders of opposing ideologies. Most sources of tourism also contribute to culture, which helps get policies and border expansion.

 

[mitsho]

But to defend against Tourism you need more culture, not tourism, right. So amassing Tourism only helps if you want to make other civs angry. Which can be okay, I haven't played after all

 

[Thalassicus]

Tourism is only necessary if we want a culture victory. However, most sources of tourism also give culture, which is useful for anyone. Tourism mostly comes into play after we get archaeology (museums and dig sites), so we don't have to decide until relatively late in the game.

 

[tedoll78]

Played one half of a game last night. The change in how gold income works was a shock for about an hour or two, but I quickly got used to it.

Two thing I really miss about CivUP: Great Persons don't erroneously count towards your military units limit, and their tile improvements can connect luxury resources. It's forced a bit of a change in my play style in the meantime.

(And it's really good to see you back, Thal. I've quietly followed your work for a good while, and I'm a huge fan of how transformative your work has been to an already fantastic game. Many thanks for more than 1000 hours of quality playtime.)

 

[Ahriman]

However, most sources of tourism also give culture

So do I get culture income from having a great work housed in one of my buildings?

 

[Thalassicus]

Yes, great works give 2 2:c5tourism:. Great works triple our culture since most culture buildings give only 1 now (which I think is a bit low... 2 would be better).

 

[albie_123]

So, just downloaded and installed! My initial impression - and I mean 30 seconds after starting a game initial - is the subtle yet distinctive urge to throw my laptop out the window while cursing loudly due to having to deal with the Vanilla UI again.

 

[Ahriman]

So, just downloaded and installed! My initial impression - and I mean 30 seconds after starting a game initial - is the subtle yet distinctive urge to throw my laptop out the window while cursing loudly due to having to deal with the Vanilla UI again.

I think we all had that.
And I actually think the BNW UI is slightly better/more informative than vanilla Civ was (it gives more information about the source of various incomes).

 

[albie_123]

First trade route is up, love the graphic overlay, really gives a strange sense of accomplishment seeing your trade unit move across it automatically.

The yields given by trade routes seem very, very powerful - mind you, I only have one at the moment so it's not too incredible, but I can imagine having 6 or 7 going will really bring in some heavy gold.

The removal of gold from coasts and rivers has really taken away the unique feeling of these terrain features. Something needs to be done there - I think in the former's case, Isles along the coasts like in GEM will be enough. For rivers, I have no idea. A good first option would be to reintroduce the bonuses to villages and mines.

 

[mystikx21]

For rivers, I can see a couple approaches
1) To improve river-related buildings. Water mills are not great in GEM, but 3 is a lot in the early game. They're much better and useful in GEM than they are in vanilla. Hydro Plants don't require aluminum in GEM either. We could modify these further to provide some other benefit to river cities, or modify other buildings. Perhaps higher still trade yields? Extra gold % from river buildings? Etc.
2) To shift around river-related tech bonuses to yields for mines and farms and villages. Another option might be to add a river yield to pastures and plantations or camps as well (either food or gold). Those improvements could (usually) use some assistance anyway.

I am in general agreement that the GEM approach of seeding coasts with resources or isles is probably sufficient from early playthroughs to keep coastal power in play. Trade routes from coastlines are already quite a bit more valuable. They could be boosted slightly if any further adjustment to coastal value is needed with a building or tech related bonus.

 

[mystikx21]

Other initial thoughts.

1) I like the graphic changes to roads and jungles, except that it seems really hard to tell that I have spices on jungles. Harder than it needs to be at least.

2) Canvansary is pretty useless without it being in a likely trade city (interior cities often). Reducing cost is a half measure. It looks like Thal's moved the Aqueduct effect on exotic food bonus to them as an early CEP change. Which is a start (they're also free upkeep). The GEM habit of clustering some bananas around helps too.

3) Hand-Axe barbarian doesn't really add much. It's a little harder to kill than the Chariot Archer would be, but it's less annoying to do so (chasing down a Chariot could be annoying without mobile units early on and it's likely to pillage or hit and run with move after attack on from GEM).