Civilization wears a special mantle within the realm of strategy games. As one of the first games in the genre and a progenitor of the 4X style, it not only spawned one of the most popular strategy franchises but also one of the most influential. Sid Meier's Civilization V took many core elements of gameplay back to their roots, retooling and refining them in an attempt to modernize the aging mechanics. It was a somewhat controversial move, stripping out much of the complexity that fans had come to expect, but after both Gods & Kings and Brave New World, the full beauty and elegance of what Firaxis has done is readily apparent. With exceptionally clever additions to many of the weakest areas of past entries, Brave New World isn't just the best Civilization has ever been; it stands as one of the most expertly crafted strategy games in recent memory.
Probably one of the biggest changes is Brave New World's inclusion of trade routes. In the past, international trade was handled solely by agreements between two heads of state and formed the core of the game's diplomacy system. Now, trade routes establish the new foundation for international relations. You have the option of building caravans and cargo ships and then either shipping supplies to and from your own cities or trading with other rulers and city-states. Distant civilizations and those with different luxury resources yield higher profits, but are vulnerable targets for hostile forces. Significant investment is necessary to reliably safeguard your income sources during the early game, but the trade-offs can be highly beneficial.
Much like the soft power exercised by real-world economic cooperation, the full potential of trade is elegantly subtle. Science, religious influences, and some cultural effects are also transferred via trade routes. If, for example, your civilization is significantly more advanced than the one with which you are trading, your advantage slowly begins to disappear as your trade route grants huge research bonuses to your trade partner. Similarly, religious pressure is transferrable and can be used to great effect if you're looking for a clever method of picking up converts. Additionally, if your favored stratagem in Civilization revolves around rapid expansion of your empire, then internal trade routes can be used to transfer food and production resources to new cities, allowing you to rapidly build up defenses and boost population growth.
Cargo ships are worth quite a bit more to raiders than caravans, and historically, merchant fleets have been the fuel of the world's mightiest powers. The oceans can be a big place, however, and even in the later stages of the game when you have aircraft carriers and battleships at your disposal, guarding several thousand miles of transoceanic routes can be taxing. What it does do, however, is provide a rare excuse to build and maintain powerful naval forces. This update not only brings Civilization in line with one of the more critical elements of history, but it does so in such a fun, unique, and genuinely creative way that the whole system couldn't feel more natural and fundamental to play.
The second major addition to the Civilization feature set is tourism. As an expansion of culture, tourism fundamentally alters one of the game's many win conditions. In previous iterations of Civilization V, cultural victories were handled in an incomplete way. Culture-producing buildings, wonders, and great persons would drive social innovation, allowing you to select new policies that gave your civilization certain bonuses supporting different strategies and play styles. After five social ideas had been completely adopted, you could start the Utopia Project and claim victory. While fun as a sort of idealized method of establishing global domination, the Utopia Project was very difficult to defend against, requiring either a powerful military action or a dramatically superior cultural output to be quickly developed--neither of which is easy at any stage of the game.
With Brave New World, that system has been retooled. Culture still allows for social innovation and the adoption of new, beneficial policies, but they are no longer the real key to a victory; they're simply a decent gauge of progress. A culture win now requires that your civilization hold significant sway over the majority of other civs in play. By fostering a society that creates great painters, musicians, and writers, and then displaying those works publicly in museums and theaters, you compete with others for the attention of the global community; the greater your influence, the closer you are to a win. Buildings, units, and various other features have all been added to support this play style and, most importantly, to help prevent other players from winning too quickly.
Later in the game, you have access to ideologies, which are three expanded trees that can help you further refine the focus of your nation. Freedom, order, and autocracy all support different strategies and play a role in diplomacy. Freedom is focused on helping more great writers, artists, and musicians find their way in your society. Order gears your civilization for raw industrial output and can help fuel a powerful war machine. Autocracy establishes a rigid social structure that can help you focus your society on the creation of wealth, science, and expansion. Countries with matching ideologies receive bonuses to trade and tourism on both sides, while those with opposing perspectives suffer penalties. Changing ideologies is difficult without a dissatisfied citizenry, but with some planning and basic information on your rivals, careful choices can help prevent other countries from gaining too much cultural influence.
New systems for managing great works, as well as the completely new archaeology mechanic, reinforce these ideologies. In Brave New World, most artists no longer produce one-off boosts to culture; instead, they create great works, modeled after real paintings, songs, or literary works from history. As your civ creates new great artists, they demonstrate the creative output of your country to the world. Paintings can be put on display in museums to help attract tourists, musicians can go on concert tours or create masterpieces that echo through your orchestra halls, and writers can compose a political treatise for a one-time culture bonus, or their work can be showcased in amphitheaters or art houses and used to help increase tourism.
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