Initially, the job of the World Congress is to vote on things like “the cost of how much it’s going to be to keep a standing army around” and “whether or not some of the resources are allowed to be created” (whaling being an example of something that might be outlawed by the Congress). The World Congress itself is another of Brave New World‘s additions, and its voting members can actually affect the rules of the game as it goes along. “So what we do now is, when we get towards sort of the Industrial part of the game, at that point the World Congress forms.” “We thought that the diplomatic body that votes on things could be a lot more interesting if it had a longer footprint on the game, and was active sooner,” Beach explained.

As it exists now, the diplomatic victory requires the player to form the United Nations late in the game, which could backfire if its members vote for another civilization to be the world leader. It’s already possible to achieve diplomatic and cultural victories in Civ V, but Brave New World changes how they’re won. “We wanted to give more ways for a builder-type of player, a non-militaristic player, to still create an amazing civilization and feel like they can overtake the rest of the world in terms of culture or their diplomatic prowess.” “There were a lot of things that you encountered after that, later in the game… that sort of culminated towards the cultural victory or diplomatic victory, that we thought we could improve on,” he said.

With so many elements working together, and so many hours already invested in the game, how can Firaxis improve upon the Civilization V experience with its next expansion, Brave New World? As Lead Designer Ed Beach explained to The Escapist at PAX East, the developers looked at how all of the systems were working together and found opportunities for improvement, hopefully creating an even more in-depth experience with more fleshed-out paths to victory.Īs Beach explained, the additions to Civilization V introduced in Gods & Kings focused on the first half of the game, about to the Renaissance era. For some of us, that means we’ve spent hundreds of hours marching units across continents and oceans, unlocking policies, frantically racing other civilizations to the finish line of the space race, and saying “just one more turn.” In 2012, developer Firaxis added even more moving parts to the already deep game, incorporating religion and espionage into the Gods & Kings expansion pack. Civilization V has been out since the fall of 2010.

Civilization 5 culture victory