I was so hoping it was a hoax...
I mean, I like that Venice is in, but the way they are designed (provided the leak is true) seems rather lacklustre. A boring naval unit that will powerful in it's era, then fizzle out rapidly because it has no special promotions. The Merchant of Venice and UA are kind of cool, but it just sort of feels like "Austria with a twist" and greatly restricts your play style. And it feels kind of silly that Venice can only puppet cities, their empire was quite large. Many of the civilisations "simply" united and conquered their empires, rather than building them from the ground up, but only Venice gets singled out here.
And the Shoshone, well they kind of killed my excitement for the game. It's a civ that feels like it was only included for the Americans. Even as a Canadian, I find it hard to get excited about them. Not to mention a completely boring play style. Oh your scout can pick its ruin finds, cool. After 50-60 turns, now what? You have a few Scarchers and some free techs. Sure, it might give you an early lead, but now you're just a civ with bigger borders. It feels like France all over again (I know France is very strong, I'm talking more about their uniqueness suddenly disappearing), and I imagine that was part of the reason they changed France, beyond making them fit with Tourism better.
All and all I'm rather disappointed. None of the civs in this expansion really stood out to me, I was so hoping there would be a big surprise to re-ignite my interest in this expansion. Oh well, Trade Routes, World Congress, and Ideologies still look cool.
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