Other than combat, Dennis Shirk told me about the new social policy system which replaces the civics of Civ IV and integrates with the culture system. "With the social policies, you have ten different branches that you can go down. Liberty, Tradition, Piety, things like that, and they all have policy trees underneath them," Shirk told me sitting at a booth in the 2K Games lounge. "Culture is the currency for these trees, so you're unlocking these trees as you go through time. The further in time you are, the more trees become available to you; and you're using culture [points] to buy these powerful policies."
There are ten trees in total, and each has about four or five policies to unlock within them, but you'd be hard-pressed to unlock them all. "If you fill 6 out of the 10 trees, fill 'em all up, that unlocks a world wonder called Utopia. It's the biggest wonder in the game. If you build it, and no one stops you from building it, that will win a culture victory," Shirk said. "Before in Civilization IV, it was about maintaining the top 3 cities that have the most culture output, [lead designer] Jon [Schafer] really wanted to do something cool with culture and make it something that you can really strive for."
One example given of a social policy was that under the Tradition tree is a policy called Aristocracy, which gives +33 percent bonus to building wonders. The goal is for these policies to be important for everybody, and not just the culture players. "Even if you weren't going for a culture victory, if you're going for the military path or the science path, these are really powerful modifications that make your civilization really, really unique," said Shirk.
