Originally announced around a month ago, Sid Meier’s Civilization V: Brave New World, the latest expansion for the popular strategy game from 2k Games and Firaxis Games, has had some new information released regarding its new features.
Previously, Poland and Brazil had been announced as two of the nine new civilizations. In addition to those two, the latest Civ V expansion marks the return of the Shaka led Zulu, as well as introducing Maria’s Portugal and Ashurbanipal’s Assyria.
Where Gods and Kings focused on expanding the early game, Brave New World is meant to flesh out the middle and end game. It will also be making cultural and diplomatic victories more varied and worthwhile. Three of the several features that will contribute to this have been explained in a bit more detail: international trade routes, archeology, and world congress.
Civ V previously had national trade routes between cities, but Brave New World brings with it the ability to build international trade routes between you and your allies. Considering Civ IV had foreign trade routes, it was a bit strange that this was missing for so long.
These trade routes will provide benefits for both players. The amount you can create as well as the distance they span will be limited, but later on in the game, cargo ships can be made to travel further distances.
As part of the tourism feature being added, players will be able to uncover artifacts via archeology. These artifacts will aid tourism, can be used for stat bonuses, and will go into Great Work slots in Wonders. Artifacts in the game will be created by that game’s history, including finding old weapons from historical battles your country fought.
What’s pretty interesting about archeology is that it’s not limited to your own borders. If you have open borders with a country, you can dig in their land. This will most likely upset them, however, so take note of that.
Do you ever feel like it’s hard to truly punish another leader? Denouncing only goes so far. Thanks to the addition of World Congress, players and AI will be able to band together and make votes that can encourage players to act or not act in a certain manner.
Now in Civ V, countries can vote, along with their allied city-states, to institute things like a standing army tax, making discovering other countries’ preexisting technologies much faster, or even banning city-state trade.
It will be interesting to see how these changes affect the game. As someone who loves Civilization V to death, I am hanging off every word of these announcements.
