Sid Meier's Civilization 5: Brave New World: Preview

The promising title of the new Civilization 5 add- on is suggestive of a reference to the immortal work of Aldous Huxley. The most naive players, perhaps, even managed to anticipate a separate scenario on the topic of consumer society from the dystopia "Brave New World", which in the original is called just the same Brave New World.

Unfortunately or fortunately, Huxley's creation has nothing to do with the next brainchild of Friv5Online Games Studio.... The direction in which we will now develop our civilization, in a sense, contradicts the main idea of ​​consumer dystopia. It is about the priority of cultural values ​​over others. Great works of art in the new expansion are at the forefront. At least, such an impression is produced by the press version of the game, which recently fell into our hands.

Addon is all about peaceful development. We are being asked to focus on trade, diplomacy and culture. The developers have prepared an updated cultural victory for us. That is, it is even more cultural and even, let's not be afraid of the word, cultural and tourist.

To gain the upper hand over rivals, you need to achieve cultural influence over a certain number of powers. To crush tourism, roughly speaking. Our task is to make the population of other countries come to us for sightseeing, and, on the contrary, keep their residents at home.

On the top panel of resources, next to religion, a new parameter has appeared, equipped with an icon with a suitcase. This is tourism. The higher the corresponding numbers, the more likely it is to influence the neighbors. From the temptation to travel far afield to gawk at other people's achievements, people are kept at the high level of our own culture - a familiar indicator thanks to which we have long been getting to tasty social institutions. The whole point of victory is to generate more tourism than other civilizations have produced cultural points.

A fresh look at culture has given rise to a completely unusual approach to some buildings. Previously, after all, as it was: they erected, say, a library in the capital, received a bonus to science - and forgot about this building until the end of the game. Now everything is different.

In libraries, museums, opera houses and inside some of the wonders of the world, special "slots" have been created for the great creations of great people. From time to time, outstanding artists, writers and musicians appear in the country who can rivet masterpieces that increase our tourist "power". It is not entirely clear, however, why frail geniuses are able to create only one work of art during their entire life.

By the way, if we are not too interested in a cultural victory, we can refuse novels, paintings and symphonies - each creator has a second "purpose". Thus, the artist will be able to "launch" the Golden Age in his homeland, and the writer can be adapted to create political documents that provide us with points of culture - the same one that was culture even before it became mainstream in Brave New World...

However, not only great personalities are making the history of tourism. Simple archaeologists - a new type of "unit" - are also able to contribute to the prosperity of the nation. It is enough to send a hardworking treasure hunter to a cell marked with traces of our own greatness in the past, and museums will be replenished with new artifacts, and overseas guests will have another reason to visit our country. However, if we are more concerned with protection from alien cultural influences, we can turn the excavation into a tourist attraction so that the local people can see: we ourselves with mustaches, there is nothing to go to our neighbors!

Finally, the construction of wonders of the world is also not in vain for culture: most of the unique buildings increase the level of tourism. People want to see the Eiffel Tower and the Parthenon. Even if both are sudden! - located in Morocco.

In the field of trade, the developers clearly decided to shake things up. Caravans that first appeared - it's scary to think! - in the very first Civilization and disappeared from sight already in the third part, suddenly returned. We are talking about specialized "units" capable of paving a trade route between two cities.

Surprisingly, caravans making a commercial route overland do not change their name until the very end of the game. Only at the initial phase, camels move around the map, and at the end - trucks.

From where and where to carry the gold - it's up to us. You can exchange resources with city-states. You can visit other civilizations, but it should be borne in mind that then, in addition to gold, the parties will receive a certain amount of units of religion and science. This is not always beneficial - if we are ahead of our rivals in terms of technological development, we are unlikely to want to share our accumulated scientific progress points with them.

Finally, no one bothers to drive the caravan through their own territory. From a prosperous city to a settlement where there is always a shortage of food, for example. The problem is that the number of trade routes is severely limited. Initially, we may have only one commercial route at all. Scientific discoveries and constructions increase the number of roads on which merchants can walk, but there is still no need to wait for abundance: nine trade routes are already a great happiness.

Somewhat depressing is the inability to buy scarce goods in other cities. At least in the press release, merchants carry gold, food, production units back and forth, help spread the faith, but they cannot bring some citrus fruits to the city so that their subjects rejoice.

Diplomacy has also become somewhat more diplomatic. As soon as any of the civilizations open a print press and get acquainted with a full set of neighbors on the map, the entire political elite immediately rises and goes to visit the discoverer - to the World Congress. The general gathering of rulers makes fateful decisions: establishes a leading religion, introduces "dry law", prohibits nuclear weapons. In general, everything is like in the good old UN, only earlier, bigger, wider, more interesting. You can, for example, take part in organizing the World Fair. Whoever invests more units of production in this event will receive the most interesting bonus at the end of the project.

Naturally, some of the resolutions help us, some harm. Therefore, it is so important to lobby for wise decisions and "fill up" unpleasant ones. The more influence we have in the world, the more votes we have at each meeting. Relations with neighbors largely depend on the line of conduct at the Congress - voting here is open, so that all the rulers know perfectly well who to beat the face for the embargo if something happens.

At the end of the game, the Congress happily turns into the UN. Extraordinary meetings are added to regular meetings, at which politicians choose a world leader.

By the way, the spies reappearing in our bins in Gods & Kingsare now able to function as diplomats as well. Such specialists can do a lot of interesting things - for example, buy the votes of other civilizations for the upcoming session of the Congress. Or conduct ideological propaganda among the population of other countries, thereby increasing our cultural influence on our neighbors.

It was not by chance that we mentioned ideological propaganda. Ideology was extracted from the system of public institutions and brought into three separate branches - freedom, autocracy and order. We have to choose one of these systems in order, firstly, to receive an appropriate set of bonuses, and secondly, to discover that the political doctrine that we adhere to indirectly affects tourism, culture and diplomacy. If we are building a state on the principles of freedom, and the Queen of Portugal decides to choose order as the dominant idea, this can create some tension in our relationship. Moreover, the high cultural and tourist influence on the Portuguese can lead to the fact that they begin to show dissatisfaction and want to change their ideology so that everything is as good for them as we are.

In addition to global innovations, which this time is really a lot, developers traditionally please fans with moderately fresh civilizations in the amount of nine pieces, well-forgotten and reborn wonders of the world, additional technologies and "units". In particular, the XCOM "improved paratrooper" appeared in the list of modern combat units - an unambiguous reference to the strategy of the same name, developed by the same Friv5Online Games Studio.

Of the two additional scenarios in the press release, only one, dedicated to the US Civil War, was available for review. Laconic both in essence and in form, this mini-campaign acts as if it were a counterbalance to the "peaceful" additions to the main gameplay. Here we are waiting for a pure "war" with a strict time limit, initially set by the cities and a very meager set of "units". The goal is to capture the enemy capital. In general, the standard opportunity to take the soul away for those fans of the series who are more to their liking the combat component of the game.

Apparently, Brave New World is a very high quality add-on. Even in the demo version, this addon opens up several new ways of developing the chosen civilization at once. The process is very addictive, and the series continues to keep its brand, despite the repetition of some successful finds from the previous parts.