Bring on art, music, writing in ‘Civilization V: Brave New World’ expansion

How valuable is “The Red Badge of Courage”? What about “Blue Suede Shoes” or the “Mona Lisa”? “Civilization V: Brand New World” lets players explore their cultural side by increasing the benefits and work into building a civilization that defeats players with ideals rather than bullets and arrows.

While cultural victory has been an option, the new gameplay puts an emphasis on a new resource – tourism – to expand your influence over others. Accumulate more tourism and you win, but it will take a bit of work.

Think of tourism as your offense and your culture as your defense. Tourism influences how other civilizations see you and want to come to your cities. Great works of art, writing and music can be created and housed in special buildings to increase your draw from others.

Great Artists, Writers, and Musicians create great works known throughout history. Each one, when appropriately displayed, raises your tourism level and inches you closer to victory. New conditions and social policies help create these prized units faster – almost too fast.

Several times during my preview play, these units would appear and be ready to help me win. But without the right building to show off their work (i.e. – a museum for art, an opera house for music, or an amphitheater for writing), they merely sat and waited for their “show,” or were expended toward more culture or a Golden Age.

If you are thinking, “Hey, I could already get a Cultural Victory by completing five social policies,” you would be right, but that victory condition no longer exists. Instead of waiting to fill up the social trees in each policy, players can mix and match from all the social policies to better fit their style of play. Also, it appears the restrictions about which policies you could pursue has been dropped – creating the ability to tap into Piety as well as Rationalism.

A new policy, Aesthetics, has been created to boost tourism and culture creation. Some old ones – Freedom, Order, Autocracy – have been grouped together into Ideology. This new area is only triggered by the hitting a certain era or the creation of factories and grants bonuses depending on which ideology your civilization chooses to follow.

There has also been a change to trade with the use of caravans and cargo ship to physically travel to and fro between cities. You can choose (from your limited number of routes) which cities would be most profitable to trade while exposing your trade units to attacks from unfriendly foes. Do you go for the most gold or do you take the safe route?

You can also impact world conditions through resolutions in the World Congress. Each country earns delegates through size, standing and relationships with city-states. The resolutions also can influence your relationships with other civilizations if you propose something that benefits or harms them.

There are also collaborative international projects, like the World’s Fair, where countries can contribute resources to the mutual benefit of all. Once the project is completed, rewards are doled out based on the amount of contribution each county contributed.

Once I thought I understood the nuances of the new cultural victory, it seemed to be an easy path to win. Build the right buildings, create Great units, fill up the buildings, watch the tourists flock in. But nothing is easy in “Civilization V.”

Victory can still be achieved through domination (destroy everyone else), science (launch an Apollo spacecraft), and diplomacy (become the world leader). So not only did I have to do all those things to win culturally, I also had to spend time building up a defensive army, create buildings to boost science, and interact with city-states and other civilizations to keep my opponents at bay.

A religious victory is no longer an option. Religion has become what old culture used to feel like – passive and provides certain bonuses. But you can’t win by overwhelming another civilization with your dogma.

I discovered that cities don’t seem to fall as easily as they used to in the past. Rushing two or three units to an opposing city isn’t as effective, and will force players to plan ahead – thinking more tactically. It can be done, but it feels like it takes more resources than previously.

The adjustments to the cultural victory helped me with what I’ve described as “peacetime boredom.” Late in the game when everyone has built up enough strength to fend off attacks, the action seemed destined for a points victory or a rush to build the Apollo program. With tourism, I felt more active and involved in creating units that would have a direct impact on my success.

Just like creating a new tank to balance out someone else’s bomber, creating tourism lets me flex my cultural strength in an active way rather than the passive path it used to take. I felt more involved in the end game if I decided not to crush all other countries under my heel or commit everything to building my spacecraft.

It opens up options. It creates an interesting way to win without feeling overpowered or tacked on. Like other victory conditions, it takes planning in your building construction, your social policies and your unit creation. The trick, as always, is getting to your end goal before someone taking a different path reaches theirs.

I also have to mention the new expansion comes with a scenario – the American Civil War. It is short – 100 turns – and is all about domination. The end goals are defeat the opposing army and take their capital.

Being a fan of “Sid Meier’s Gettysburg” and Civil War history, I was excited about this scenario when it was announced. Playing it, however, left me feeling empty. As the Union, I marshaled my forces from surrounding cities and plowed my way to Richmond (ala Sherman’s march through the South).

Confederate cities and troops were no match for my massive army, constantly being resupplied with fresh troops from cities in the North. There were some minor skirmishes to the west, but playing those as a zero-sum game allowed me to keep the bulk of my forces focused on the Confederate capital.

While it did take several turns to take Richmond, the scenario felt incomplete somehow. Strategy doesn’t really play into it very much when there is only one goal – capital domination.

A second scenario, Scramble for Africa, is also planned, but was not available during this preview.

“Civilization V: Brave New World” expansion will be available on July 9 in North America and July 12 for the rest of the world. The ESRB rating for this expansion is pending. This preview was done playing an advanced preview only copy of the game on a Windows PC and using a Steam download.