Civilization V: Brave New World

Are you familiar with the game and new to the xpac or new to both?

I bought the game/xpac at launch and play at the Prince and King difficulties. I have won on all the different victory conditions at some point and time.

I probably should have figured that Specialist thing out at some point, huh? haha.

I don't enjoy higher difficulties. I generally just use house rules to nerf myself. Free hammers/happiness/food is gay as fuck. They need a better way to improve the AI other than making resources irrelevant to them because they get so much free shit.

Sean_sl said:

Ugh, 27 bucks? I think I'll wait for a real steam sale. That's more than I paid for Civ 5+ Gods & Kings combined.

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Generally I'd agree but Civ V is one of the few mainstay games I play frequently. It's a far better investment than 60 for a new console game or even 20 for a crappy RPG or FPS that I won't get 5% of the playtime.


I've played a few hours this AM, and I like a lot of the new features. Multi used to suck, but maybe I'll give it another go.

This link is crazy good. It has EVERYTHING in regards to the changes, features, units, buildings for Brave New World. This expansion is massive and feels more like CIV 6, than a simple tack-on with a few more leaders and units.

http://well-of-souls.com/civ/civ5_br...w_improvements

I think I am going to try a Shoshone + Liberty opening for fast, rapid expansion. Survive as best I can to the mid-game and go for Aesthetics Policy and Cultural victory. Also, the Shoshone's starting warrior unit gets 2 moves, ignores terrain costs, and gets to pick their benefit from ancient ruins... holy shit. Talk about OP'd. They will probably be nerfed before too long.

Fight_sl said:

Also, the Shoshone's starting warrior unit gets 2 moves, ignores terrain costs, and gets to pick their benefit from ancient ruins... holy shit. Talk about OP'd. They will probably be nerfed before too long.

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You can only pick each bonus once, and the unit is actually a scout so its not like you can upgrade it into a swordsman that ignores terrain movement or anything. He is a powerful civ for sure but not imbalanced.

lol, new unit, xcom squad. 110 Strength too, damn.

A lot of this expansion looks good...except the culture stuff. I hate diplomatic/cultural "pressure". You either kick their ass and they attack you, or you lose and your cities riot...Honestly not sure if I want to upgrade because of it..I can already feel the rage coming on of playing on a higher setting and barely keeping on with the military and getting crushed because of "tourism". (Though, I will say, it looks like they set the system up nicely.)

However, the trade routes, new units, archaeology and even the other cultural changes all look amazing.

I really like the reintroduction of trade routes to this series and being able to bump up the production or food on your cities. The Even the archaeology and antiquities function is a nice addition so that you have something to do other than click next move. I noticed some people on the global leader board are getting cultural victories after 10 or 20 turns which I am not sure how they do. I scored a diplomatic victory last night fairly easily primarily by becoming allies with every city state and crushing most of the major civs.

Is it just me or if you set a large map with 20 civs, its impossible to found a religion on immortal. Like straight up impossible even allocating all of your ressources towards it. I'd have to edit the xml to allow for more founders.

I'm loving the gameplay and the new challenges.

Barbarians really are far more challenging in this new iteration.

I'm so used to having a ton of cash early on that I'll have to change my playstyle as early game money is much slower and dependent on my caravans not getting smoked.

Nutron_sl said:

Is it just me or if you set a large map with 20 civs, its impossible to found a religion on immortal. Like straight up impossible even allocating all of your ressources towards it. I'd have to edit the xml to allow for more founders.

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Like Agraza mentioned, the AI doesn't necessarily get any better with higher than normal difficulty, the NPCs get free stuff and short cuts to make it harder to compete. It may also depend on what civ you've chosen with that many players. Boudica will make it easier on that level to found a religion quickly. Sometimes you have you to get lucky with a village rewarding you faith almost immediately to get the ball rolling too, but you also need to expand quickly and build shrines and temples as fast as you can if you want to build important religious buildings like the cathedral.

Gecko_sl said:

I'm loving the gameplay and the new challenges.

Barbarians really are far more challenging in this new iteration.

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Ah maybe that's what it was. I noticed my wounded unit was getting chased by a barbarian unit last night. They also pillaged one of my improvements chess master style. Thought it was kinda odd.

It's a bit tarded how fast pillaging is. I don't love when my whole civ is plunged into chaos b/c we lost our one wine resource sometime during the medieval period b/c of one random barbarian. Then it takes me like 5 turns to get a worker over there to fix it while I look for a cheap happiness rush I can employ to right the ship.

Agraza_sl said:

It's a bit tarded how fast pillaging is. I don't love when my whole civ is plunged into chaos b/c we lost our one wine resource sometime during the medieval period b/c of one random barbarian. Then it takes me like 5 turns to get a worker over there to fix it while I look for a cheap happiness rush I can employ to right the ship.

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Going negative for a few turns isn't the end of the world though, at least if you're playing a wide civ (which is really the only time you should have to worry about happiness - it's really not an issue if you build tall). If you're desperate for fast growth just make sure you have a solid buffer so that you don't go below 0 if 1 tile is pillaged.

Lithose_sl said:

lol, new unit, xcom squad. 110 Strength too, damn.

A lot of this expansion looks good...except the culture stuff. I hate diplomatic/cultural "pressure". You either kick their ass and they attack you, or you lose and your cities riot...Honestly not sure if I want to upgrade because of it..I can already feel the rage coming on of playing on a higher setting and barely keeping on with the military and getting crushed because of "tourism". (Though, I will say, it looks like they set the system up nicely.)

However, the trade routes, new units, archaeology and even the other cultural changes all look amazing.

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When I see shit like that, I long for an option that locks the tech tree at the end of a specific era...

My fun curve usually goes way down when modern armor and stuff shows up that just waltzes over everything

Quineloe_sl said:

When I see shit like that, I long for an option that locks the tech tree at the end of a specific era...

My fun curve usually goes way down when modern armor and stuff shows up that just waltzes over everything

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Well, to be fair, I think that's why they added "Xcom" units and a couple others, to counter giant robots. But I get what you're saying.

On that note, most of the reviewers are saying this expansion makes the end game a lot better. I agree with the IGN (Or whatever) review that in Gods and Kings, by the time you reach industrial, you have pretty much won or lost already. You can "lose" the game for yourself if you're winning, or the opponent can "lose" the game by not managing his momentum correctly, but you can't really "win" at that point--because of how one dimensional the strategy becomes at end game (Because everything builds on your overall strategy, Culture, Conquest ect.)

In this, supposedly, the end game is variable enough to get you back in the game by being adaptive...Which sounds nice.

Yea, I was basically going for conquest, and then I got hemmed in by a triple alliance that made it difficult to push in any direction since I couldn't manage military parity despite luring two of them into a ranged assault that favored me. So I had to turtle, and while I was doing this I turned to the new cultural system. When archaeology lit up the map with dig sites I hogged them up. I had 2 civs in my cultural influence and the other 5 getting sucked in when I won the diplomatic victory. The trade system really favored my central position on the continent whereas warfare did not.

The early 18th century through the late 20th completely transformed my society and I was given a solid chance to transform my strat. The 21st century just destroyed all of that cultural progress with a cheese diplo win. Everything accelerated.

The basic difficulty feels more difficult now, but there was a lot of give and take. I enjoyed it. Money can be a real bitch if you can't keep your trade routes maxed out though.

It's not just the end game units, it's also the game becomes way too bloated in my experience once everything is unlocked. Too many buildings, too many new resources, it just goes over my head at that point.

Where my fun usualy drops off is when planes make an appearance... Game becomes a turtle borefest of just sending planes to clean things up. I need a mod to disable any planes from the game.

Nutron_sl said:

Where my fun usualy drops off is when planes make an appearance... Game becomes a turtle borefest of just sending planes to clean things up. I need a mod to disable any planes from the game.

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The AI doesn't do a great job of building AA defences, but Air units only really take off if you've got Brandenburg + Heroic Epic to start with 60 exp and the repair every turn upgrade. America is a bad ass because of this and their unique bomber.