1. Morocco. Mechanically probably not the most interesting civ, but I like a civ that works with the trade route mechanic (rather than just getting bland bonuses to the number of trade routes), however most of all I like the kasbah as an improvement; Morocco can be a true desert civ rather than one reliant on Petra and resource tiles in a desert landscape (although both will help), plus there's a civ that will actually want to build fort improvements. Berber cavalry are nice too. It will probably fall down the list as I play, since it looks like a solid but very conventional type of civ, but it's the one I'm most looking forward to immediately. Downside: Playing with Morocco, I won't get to see the expansion's best leader screen among my opponents.
2. Indonesia. Indonesia has a couple of nice effects that work with trade without actually being a trade civ; it could be a clever design, it could be something of a mess. The candi is the most interesting unique in the expansion to my mind. While I'm not quite sure about the implementation, I like the idea of a civ that rewards you for settling on other landmasses. Downside: Not a fan of kris swordsmen.
3. Venice: This will be remarkably interesting to play, and ties in well to Venice's historical flavour to boot - a city-state that developed an empire (and then went back again), with the 'no annex' rule emphasising the dominance of Venice itself - and which, contrary to all the fuss made about the Great Merchant, seems more likely to expand through naval conquest of coastal cities than occasional city-state buyouts.
4. Assyria: There aren't many science civs, and Assyria definitely takes a different approach from the city-spam Maya, or the turtling Koreans and Babylonians. And having tech theft back is simply thematically appealing. On the downside, to date science civs have tended to have 'cookie-cutter' strategies and tend to become stale quickly.
5. Shoshone: I've always thought there should be a civ with a unique Scout, a fairly obvious gap, and the extra starting territory is a very nice UA. I don't have any feel for who the Shoshone were in reality, however I look at this and think it seems a good fit for a Native American 'civ'. Except for calling the Pathfinder's ability Native Tongue - how quickly the designers forget that they gave us "ancient ruins" in this edition rather than tribal villages. Ruins tend not to be very talkative...
6. Portugal: The aforementioned +1 trade route is uninteresting, but redeemed somewhat by synergy with the Freitoria (though I'm not very clear why that's preferable to Indonesia, which can gain greater trade benefits earlier). I like exploration and the Nau helps in that regard, but I don't have any strong feelings for or against Portugal mechanically and it seems unlikely to play substantially differently from most civs - extra trade routes and extra gold are nice free perks, but nothing that promote novel play.
7. Poland: As low as it is because Poland's focus exploits the ideology mechanic, and it's going to take playing with before I know how I feel about the way that plays out. Otherwise it looks powerful but somewhat uninteresting, and probably not likely to substantially affect how I play beyond era-rushing right at the game's start and then past the medieval period. Again, a "free perk" civ doesn't seem likely to play substantially differently. Winged Hussars look nice, though.
8. Zulu: The ranged-then-fight idea for the Impi is both novel and appropriate for the unit, and overall it looks to me as though the Zulu succeed in going for the 'melee swarm' playstyle better than Germany. People wanted the Zulu for that very 'Impi-rush', and Firaxis might have nailed it with them this time. Of course that's not very interesting to play - it seems pretty much everyone clamouring for the Zulu wanted them as AI opponents, not as an actual civ to control.
9. Brazil: I really can't get worked up (positively, at any rate) about a civ that does almost nothing until the late game, and compounding that is the fact that this is another 'free perk' civ; you can work to produce golden ages, but you can do that with any civ and the bonus you receive as Brazil during a GA is not one you need to work (in contrast to the way you need to exploit Persia's units to take full advantage of the GA bonus). There are only so many ways to play to maximise Golden Ages, and I'd rather play Persia if going down that route. Add a late-game UU that does nothing the standard unit doesn't except add to Golden Age production, and a passive-bonus UI that doesn't change anything in your decision-making (unlike, say, the kasbah which is an alternative to several other more specialised improvements, or the freitoria which works differently from other UIs - or indeed the pre-existing terrace farm or Moai - you'll only ever build wood camps where you were going to build trading posts anyway, and trading posts don't compete with other improvement types. There's also little obvious synergy between a UA that heavily pushes tourism and a UI that provides a minor culture bonus), and you have a civ that looks as dull to play as it is thematically incoherent in comparison with Brazil as a real-world nation. Even the people who were vocally clamouring for Brazil to be added as a civ seem unhappy with the way it's been presented in BNW. In fairness, much of this is the fault of the tourism mechanic insofar as we know it, which appears to do very little until late in the game when ideologies emerge, and which even then will have limited effects against AIs with their intrinsic happiness bonuses.
I really would have liked a civilization that had a bonus to creating Great Works *cough* Italy *cough*
We don't yet know what changes have been incorporated into existing civs other than France - chances are some won't relate particularly to the new mechanics (as with the Ottomans in G&K), while others will (like England in G&K). In interviews the designers made a big deal of describing the 'tourism' mechanic as reflecting the way the Romans exerted cultural influence on surrounding and subject societies, which I've wondered before might be a hint. However, it's not especially obvious what bonus to creating Great Works you could have beyond (a) producing extra Great Artists etc. (which Brazil does), or (b) providing extra bonuses based on numbers and types of Great Works (which France and Assyria's Royal Library do). Something along the lines of gain X for every GW of <civname> maybe, but that would be rather bland and less flexible than a theming bonus while essentially being much the same thing. There are certainly good candidates among existing civs, including Greece, Rome, India and China, without resorting to horrible 'agglomeration' civs like "Italy".
3. Brazil
The uniques are all interesting in some capacity, but I'm most looking forward to what they offer in general, that being a viable jungle-start game.
If you start with Guilds, sure, and providing that having your capital as your gold hub is going to carry you to the later game. They seem much better suited to expanding to jungles later in the game like, well, pretty much every civ. Any civ can have as viable a jungle start as Brazil by going for Oral Tradition (though long-term Brazil with Oral Tradition would obviously do better still) since jungles have only plantation luxes in them, and usually those in quantity.
Agreed on most of the rest, although:
8. Shoshone
Exciting for 50 turns, boring for the rest.
But those 50 turns are the formative game stages - this gives the Shoshone quite a lot of flexibility to determine how to play a particular game depending on the landscape and their findings, without being constrained to a particular later-game playstyle by their uniques. There really aren't many civs that are 'exciting' this early. And as a Native American civ they should have strictly early-game benefits.
Gameplay aside, the choice of civ is awful.
So's Brazil (although the Shoshone don't have the excuse of fan pressure), or come to that Sweden or the Huns (though I like both gameplay-wise).
9. Indonesia
Map-specific UA, unreliable UU, and a faith-producing UB that won't help with the most important aspect of faith: winning the religion race.
I think too much premium tends to be put on "winning the religion race" - the AI typically neglects choice beliefs, and late religion actively favours one of the stronger founder beliefs, Interfaith Dialogue. And while (like most faith Wonders and like the Grand Temple) it won't particularly help you get early religion, it can help you enhance your religion earlier, and it has a base +2 faith in addition to extra from other religions (if it counts your religion, then if you are the first to found a religion you get +4 faith from a building that produces 0 faith for anyone else). But the interesting feature is that, unlike most buildings, it can actually be worked to maximise its effects, and it has a good deal of synergy with a trade-focused playstyle.
Teching towards either unique requires teching away from the other. Swordsmen are useless.
The second sentence being exactly the reason the first isn't an issue of any kind.
Venice : KINDA INTERESTED - Venice is...wierd. But that's cool. I might give them a shot. I just have no interest in them historically, and we didn't need yet another European Civ...least of all one that scrapes the bottom of the barrel like this.
In fairness, the rest of the barrel is almost empty.
Poland: ACTIVELY DISLIKE - European Civ that has existed for all of 100 years combined when it wasn't being taken over by someone else. I make light of Poland here, but there were better choices for this expansion. All I'll see any time they appear in my game is the vast European bias the game's developers seem to have. And nothing has proven yet that a free Social Policy every era isn't overpowered. I am not amused by this Civ in the least.
While Europe is overexposed, almost all civs from the region are Western European, with Russia the only exception to date. On that basis alone Poland fills a gap and to my mind is an honorary 'non-European civ' for the numbers. I'm not sure where you get the 100 year figure from (or why Brazil isn't equally undeserving on the same basis), since the period represented by the civ (other than the UA) is the Kingdom of Poland, which lasted as an independent entity for five centuries before forming a commonwealth with Lithuania in which Poland was the dominant partner (which survived for another 200 years), not the state formed in 1918 (any more than Greece represents the state formed in 1830).
The Shoshone with their scout and territory for free both and Poland with its free oracles per era. While social polices are not integral to a cultural victory they are a very important bonus for every civ. Having 6-7 more bonuses than everyone else without doing a damn thing just isn't fair and requires no strategic thought. In essence you can fill up a tree without a single culture point.
The difference I see with the Shoshone is that their bonus, while free, is still something you only gain a benefit from if you exploit the opportunities it provides. Poland just gets you to social policies you were going to take anyway more quickly - once people work out the new policy balance and optimal choices, the policies you select will be the same game after game irrespective of how quickly you obtain them. So I don't see Poland as meaningfully adding flexibility, or taking any decision-making to work to your advantage (unlike the Maya, who also have an era-based freebie, because Great People are much more context- and timing-dependent than social policies).
A lot of civ don't need to do anything to get their bonuses
And these tend to be the boring ones to play.
France in Vanilla and G&K simply had to found a city,
And was a strong but very dull civ as a result. Even here, however, there was some working involved, because focusing on when and how much to expand was needed to maximise the value from the UA. That's not the same as getting something purely for free, such as a new policy whenever you enter an era.
and in BNW it kinda remains the same (they just have to get the correct works to get the themeing bonus, which won't be that hard really in the cases where they have to be from the same era)
Again, getting the correct works, and in the capital, will take work, and you also need to play a particular style that favours developing your capital and beelining technologies that produce buildings and Wonders with Great Work slots. This represents quite a major shift in playstyle beyond merely accumulating Works. The truly free bonuses are the ones that reward you regardless of how you play - you don't need to play a particular way to gain a bonus.
Russia just has to develop a tile
Also a boring civ. Although you also need to focus on unit production and aggression to get much value from having double the number of strategic resources,
Japan needs to get injured
Quite likely the most boring civ in the game, with a UA that seems designed for the AI's benefit more than a human player's.
Ethophia just has to remain small.
Not true. Ethiopia has a UA that favours playing small, but a UB that favours playing wide - it can adopt either strategy, and gains different benefits in each case. And "just playing small" dictates nearly everything about how you play the civ in any case, so it's hardly a free bonus you aren't working for.
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