I would if it were more compelling. I'm generally always looking for a challenge, so I tend to play on the biggest map my computer can handle at the highest level I can compete at. I've increasingly found that by the late 20th century, the game is either won or lost and there's no point to continue. Usually the game becomes mired down once flight is discovered and it's just one war after another. I'd love for the late game to be meaningful.

Hrm. I just saw in the help database where GMG distributed their keys for Mortal Kombat last week at UTC 2:00 on July 3. That'd be, um, 2 and a half hours from now if distribution time is the same for BNW.

There's no mention of Brave New World in the help database, though, so who knows.

I wouldn't trust any reviews from IGN. Here's a video review from someone who knows how to play Civ

Civilization 5: Brave New World REVIEW! - YouTube

Looks like preload time is 11:00 PM CDT for me with release time being midnight.

I'm not sure I can stay up that late night.. but I'm going to try. :)

I'll get around to playing something this weekend but in the meantime, I am looking forward to reading the civilopedia, watching tutorial and let's play videos and seeing people's hyped-up expectations hit reality. ;)

There's a preorder doodad on GMG that says "out 9th July," even. C'mon, guys. Key, please. :D

I normally wouldn't care when I got my key, but since it looks like I may be up at release time, I'd like to have what I paid for. I only went through GMG for the extra discount ... guess I may now know only buy things through GMG that I don't care about. They are cutting this way too close.

+1

Yeah, I bought through Steam just to make sure I got it. Not only that, but I usually don't buy many Day One releases, but I'm more than happy to give Sid Meier $10 extra just to show him some support and get it on time through Steam. I don't do that for many developers, but I'd do it for Sid in a heartbeat. Feel like I'm paying it forward. That guy has brought me more quality gaming hours in my lifetime than any other developer.

Agreed. I even loved SimGolf! Not the crappy 1996 version, but the awesome 2002 version.

I should have gone the Steam route ... first and probably last GMG purchase. I don't buy a lot of games anyway so it's no loss for them. My budget-mindedness won out this time, but getting what I want when I want it will win out next time.

GMG is great if you want to save 20-30% on a preorder, not so much if you want to play the game right away.

So how does it work with Steam on expansion packs? Does it just automatically update the title? Will I see it downloading? I purchased it but I don't see it listed anywhere. I must have gone through this with Gods and Kings but don't remember how it updated.

I bought G&K retail and it just downloaded the stuff (and appended to the main EXE apparently; Civ IV, Beyond The Sword seems to be its own thing, but not Civ V and G&K).

This is my first digital purchase of a Civspansion.

It just pops up and starts downloading. Nothing yet, but I'll keep looking back every three minutes. :)

Hmmm, running into an issue on Steam. Saw that BNW was unlocked, so I launched Civ V. In the DLC section, Brave New World Expansion Pack is there, but unchecked. I check the circle, but the check isn't sticking.

You may have to restart Steam a few times (for those waiting for it). It took me about 3 after before it kicked in. Download is less than 1gb so it should go pretty fast.

It downloaded, so I'm doing a verify integrity of the local game cache.

Downloading now.

Downloading here now too. Have to close and restart it from what I saw.

There we go. Verifying the cache fixed it.

Performing setup. 33 steps?????

Download took 9 minutes. Getting to step 14 took 17 minutes so far. Lol.

These new trade routes are going to take some getting used to. It says I can establish trade routes, but I don't seem to be able to build a trade unit yet.

edit: ah, have to research Animal Husbandry first

/waits patiently for GMG to get its shit together

Their rep on the forum was claiming it'd be in by an hour before release.

Only 50 turns into a first game as Venice. The trade routes still aren't making sense, and that is the biggest new thing I've seen so far. For Policies, there are several new trees, but it will be a while until they are unlocked for me.

Venice sounds like a fun challenge but a difficult one out of the box. Interesting to hear how it works.

It is almost like a One City Challenge, except you can make City-States into puppets with Merchants of Venice. Just did that to one City-State.

Barbarians seem to be "smarter" in this version. They will do better with healing, as well as upgrading their units.

Appears Gamersgate buyers are also code-less, so it's plaguing other retailers than just GMG. Is it a 2K problem, Steam trying to assert dominance, or incompetence?

Steam and GMG forums are in full meltdown mode.

Ok, if I don't stop now, I'll be up until 6am. :) The changes are subtle, but intriguing. It is going to take a while to soak it all in.

My code came in about 2 and a half hours ago, FYI. If you ordered from GMG, check your email; my account still doesn't have a code associated with it, but I got an email including it.

I got my code in my email a little before 4am CT. It doesn't show up in GMG unless I click download.

I left my pc on last night.. it's all loaded up and ready to go.

Will kick off a game tonight after soccer practice.

I'm going back to bed for a few (if I had known GMG would be four hours late, I'd have gone to bed earlier), but I fucked around with BNW for about half an hour.

I...think the Shoshone are going to be my new favorite Civ to play.

Also, per a press email I just got from 2K Games:


If you have vanilla Civ V and not Gods & Kings, you can skip straight to Brave New World unless you want the extra civs and scenarios (and pick up BNW in a Steam sale or something to get those civs cheap).

Fell asleep last night while playing the game. Did make it in a ways. Really like the changes to some of the victory conditions and how you achieve them. Gives you more options on how to win, which it didn't feel like it was quite as open before with G&K.

Playing some more now. Nothing like the one more turn influenza.

dola

It does feel like it's a bit harder to keep the civ happy. Going to have to play through a bit more to see if it's just this game or if things were adjusted slightly in the new expansion.

My first game is the opposite. I'm swimming in happiness, and that's usually a weakness of mine.

What's a bitch is defending trade routes. I've built three trade routes and had a barbarian pillage them within three turns each time. You have to eradicate barbarians to have trade routes.

Following every step of pre-release there were two major changes for those playing straight up strategy: removing the three gold exploits and changing the victory conditions to something less cheesy or boring. Now if they can dial back happiness and policies so we don't get so much of them, that will to decision making.

Still trying to figure out the trade route stuff. My bank account is suffering right now.

Damn, Steam release in Spain is in two days, hate this stuff about zones with Steam, first i had to pay it in Euros, paying a 30% more than in $, than i need to wait two more days :/

It looks like you have to have a prospective partner (intra- or extra-civ) within a particular distance of the origination point or you can't assign the caravan to the route.

Goes to show you how differently I play these games than lots of folks. I don't even know of one, much less three, gold exploit.

I tend to play on "king" difficulty level and it's usually a toss-up as to whether I win. I really enjoy the game and have put over 190 hours into it (according to Steam), but I think I'm a bit more casual about how I play.

My fear is that it would be overly complicated, and it some ways it is. There a few too many caveats on when and who you can connect to and how many trade routes you can have.

My bigger pain is great artists. I had a great writer, but I only had a great artist slot. Sigh.

The Shoshone are evil bastards. I was friendly with them, then the asked me to join them in a war against the Aztecs. The Aztecs were on my eastern border and more powerful militarily than me, so I didn't really want to mess with them at the time.

Few turns later, I have a massive Shoshone army marching up my ass. They declare war even though there appeared to be no reason -- they didn't covet anything I wanted and they weren't ticked about anything. I had a diplomat in their capital, and he never saw this coming.

After they took my capital they offered me peace asking for two of my cities in return. I counter offered an unconditional peace and they took it. I've never seen the AI take a peace counter offer before. Nice.

Playing with the Shoshone next game. Can't beat them, join them.

Some of the Yogscast gang take on Brave New World-one as the aforementioned Shoshone-another as France, and the third as Venice who makes some rather unfortunate decisions :)

Civ 5: Brave New World - Part 1 - Gotta have Faith - YouTube

It seems that if you want trade routes, you have to focus your military on barbarians. Forget about trying any kind of conquest.

1 - Happiness seems much harder to come by.
2 - I'm thus far underwhelmed by trade routes.
3 - I think it's kinda neat that certain wonders can only be built if you pick a certain social policy.
4 - It's extremely minor, but I like the fact that iron is revealed with bronze working, instead of iron working.
5 - Those Egyptian sons of bitches are going down tonight. Got a map that started me on a good sized island with just me and Egypt. There can be only one.

Once you get the barbarians taken care of, trade routes are pretty lucrative. It seems that they also keep down random wars from breaking out, since being in a war cancels any trade routes you might have with that Civ.

I'm into the 1900s with my initial Venetian experiment. We seem to be holding our own. It will be interesting to see how the late game changes affect things from here on out.

Or else keep your trade routes short.


I haven't noticed that yet, but that's probably because of the Shoshone city sprawl on foundation (and I place my cities near luxury resources, so...)


I think for me it's a matter of not quite understanding how one earns them. I played a game last night where I had cities within the appropriate distance of three civs and two city states and I only had two trade routes available to me.


Yep, although I confess I don't quite understand how they decided which civs to pair with which policy tree. Liberty + Pyramids?


Yeah, the tech tree seems to have changed, and for that reason alone I'm regretting having gotten the digital edition instead of buying it at Best Buy. Yes, I'd have had to download the game anyway, but new tech tree dammit.

Certain dependencies have changed, both for researching techs and for the reward for those techs. Hell, some wonders have changed. Terracotta Army doubled my military size last night. That caught me off guard.

The iron with bronze actually works for me. It makes more sense to me to discover the resource, mine it, then research the uses. I think it was too much of AI advantage to simultaneously discover the resource and the units.

I do agree trade routes are a bit underwhelming thus far. Maybe will make more sense when I understand them more. If you're fortunate enough to get in a scenario without barbarian disruptions, they are a gold machine. If barbarians keep screwing with you, you are hosed.

Playing my second round with Shoshone ... they are fun. The larger cities off the get go are fantastic advantage. Your cities just grow like crazy. The Pathfinder unit is awesome as well, it's basically a scout that fights like a warrior.

I'm entering the 1800s now, we just had our first World Congress vote. Not really pleased with how that's implemented so far. There were two measures up for vote, but I could only pledge my delegate once. You have to have more than 1 delegate to vote on both measures.

On the vote, I voted no against banning incense because I had incense, and the measure failed by wide margin. The vote to ban gold was 5-5, and if I had voted to ban gold, it would have hurt my opponents.

I'm really perplexed about happiness. I'm having a much easier time maintaining happiness than usual. I had one minor bout of unhappiness with Shoshone, but that was because I'm on an archipelago map and there were no other Civs in my area I could reach without crossing oceans. Once I met other civs and could trade, it was all good.

I was a bit surprised by the changes in how unhappiness affects your production and military. It's incremental now instead of absolute, so there's a penalty for even the slightest unhappiness.

Having fun so far, but waiting to see what the game is like once I get the 20th century.

those guys crack me up with some of their minecraft videos, too

Shoshone are definately interesting...I had an interesting thing occur at the start of my game...Right before I settled my first city, I noticed a settler unit a little north of me, it was the city state Yerevan. I guess at the start of the game, City-States have a settler unit. I managed to capture it and Yerevan did not exist further in the game.

Has anyone else noted a bit of a decrease in performance as well? I expect the game to be sluggish in the later game (I play ginormous maps), but it seems to me that the usual bouts of lags and slowness are rearing their heads earlier.

On the flipside, my computer is starting to get a little long in the tooth, and is due for one of the dreaded 'big' upgrades - so it could be me.

Yes, I've noticed the same thing, but my rig is about three years old.

I've noticed a bit of slowdown compared to G&Ks as well , and I'm on a beast of a desktop.

Mine is a little slow but wasn't sure if that was due to the map or the fact that I've been multitasking a lot lately and haven't rebooted recently.

Mine is slower as well, but it was this way when GaK came out, then the first patch really helped it along. I expect that it will be addressed in the first couple of patches for BNW as well.

Also I'm really digging (pun intended) the new route to culture win. I just hit archeology and I have no idea if I will be able to pull it off. I'm not sure if to win my tourism has to outstrip there culture on a 1:1 basis. If so, I'm in a huge hole and it's going to be tough to get there without some bloodshed.

So far I'm generally giving the changes a thumbs up. After getting thoroughly whipped in my first game, I stepped down from Immortal to Emperor level to acclimate myself more.

In my second game with the Shoshone, it looks like a race between me and Germany with Ethiopia lurking. I use random maps, and got an archipelago map that has limited some of the wars. I have two large land masses all to myself with one city state, then there is a third land mass with two of my cities, two Arabian cities and one German city. I think if world war ever breaks out, it will be there. Germany and I are not getting along right now.

Trade routes seem over rated. They generate a crap load of gold so you have to develop them, and they are integral to developing city state relationships. But after a while they seem to just to be one of those tasks you have to do.

The World Congress is pretty cool. Ethiopia keeps trying to shove their religion as the world religion. When I got a chance to offer a resolution, I offered up the World's Fair and won it. The reward is ridonkulous. You basically get a free social policy, a golden age and I believe double culture for 25 turns.

I also kind of like the new social policies and ideologies. There are some very powerful rewards in ideologies. On the bright side is that it's no longer just a race to five policies to win. On the downside, a culture in is going to be difficulty on a big map. I'm absolutely dominating the world in tourism in this current game, and the only civ I'm close to influencing is France, and Germany will have them conquered pretty soon.

So far, I give the changes a thumbs up. Now let's see if it gets too monotonous.

Nifty notification just came in ... The people of The Zulus have risen up and forced their leader to adopt the Order Ideology. Interesting. They were listed as being in resistance on the Culture Victory screen. They were the only other civilization that adopted Autocracy just like me.

Now Ethiopia has a Civil Resistance, and they are the only other Civ besides my not to have Order as their ideology. Is the Order Spring coming to The Shoshone next? My people are the second-happiest in the world (90 happiness) and I'm easily the most influential culture. Hope I'm not next.

Best thing about the caravans/cargo ship's so far is the ability to ship food and hammers to a new city. I've got 4 cities with 20+ pop and just placed a fifth for some aluminum. The new city is rising fast which is pretty cool.

I haven't played Civ 5 multiplayer, but this might be an easier way for those of you who do:

Civilization 5's online match-ups made easier with Giant Multiplayer Robot | Mods, News | PC Gamer

One annoying flaw remains on the last turn of the game. I was in a nip and tuck battle with Germany for the game score lead. In the last couple of votes for world leader I had over 40 votes heading into the turn, only to have enough coups launched against my allies to take me down short of 40.

Late in the game I began running into a gold crunch, and Germany passed me in the game score. So I launched an attack against Germany hoping to take a city or two and pumped my gold into city states. I made one tactical error, deciding to liberate an Arabian puppet city I recaptured from Germany, which Arabia lost again a couple of moves later. I also started my attack late -- if I had one more turn, Munich would have fallen to me.

But I had bumped up to 46 world leader votes, and old suffered three coups leading up to the vote in turn 500 ... only for the vote to never take place. Game over. I would have won the game with 40 votes, but Germany had the higher game score. I don't know why the game still tells you there will be a world leader vote on turn 500 if it never takes place.

Just wrapped up a game on King that I was absolutely dominating in culture and science. Had a game score about 400 higher than the next civ. I thought I was cruising to an easy victory and wasn't really paying attention to City States as it's such a pain in the arse. Needless to say Alexander became allied to all 20 City States and won via Diplomacy in about 1950 despite being about 800 behind on game score. Lesson learned I suppose.

BNW is making people pay more attention to a lot of things. My current Immortal game is playing like Deity+; just struggling on a challenging map, except for gold.

I just got all of the addons and BNW and I loaded it up today. It did a very big DL before starting and then when it did I started the game using the windows 8 configuration since thats what the startup recommended. Well in game Im constantly crashing. So much so that its unplayable. Any suggestions??

I get crashing on the windows 8 mode on my gaming laptop as well. I just play it on the best non-windows 8 version and it runs with no problems. But I personally don't care about not having touch screenesque controls.

Ok, I dont even have a touch screen so I only picked it because it was recommended....

I just tried the DX 10/11 version and it didnt make it past the loading screen before a CTD

Wow and DX9 looks terrible. argh

Is the latest expansion worth getting?

Absolutely. Adds a lot more to the game. World Congress/UN is much more important and the religions/culture parts of the game become more useful and relevant than they were before.

100% agree with Mizzou. The new expansion helps create a complete experience that was lacking after G&K. It's a big jump in my opinion.

BNW is incredible.

BNW is incredible, as long as you go for anything other than Diplomacy Victory (which is extremely easy). I've only had a chance to play a few long games and playing at Immortal, the other victories (esp. Cultural) are challenging as long as you don't roll all passive AI opponents.

Speaking of BNW, Amazon has it for $14.99 right now (you get a Steam code for redemption) : Amazon.com: Sid Meier's Civilization V: Brave New World [Online Game Code]: Video Games

If you don't have any Civ V, you can get Civ V Complete + the BNW expansion for $29.99: Amazon.com: CIV V COMPLETE GOLD [Online Game Code]: Video Games

Thanks Sack (or should that be Curse you Sack?)-been waiting on a good deal on Brave New World. :)

I accept thanks and curses equally. :cool:

$12 for Brave New World.

Newegg.com - Sid Meier's Civilization V: Brave New World [Online Game Code]

Playing CIV with BNW is dangerous to my free time. I played Venice last weekend and never had so much fun (I liked the Shoshone as well) but it is such a time consumer when I have so much else to do...too addicting.

Yep, given my usual meticulous style of play, BNW games are taking even longer - into the 30 hour range - but enjoy every minute of it. Been playing a science-centric game on immortal all weekend because I really wanted to learn how to focus on food and growth to get high bpt. Now if I can get the last techs and build the parts before my long-time nemesis, Greece, wins diplomacy. I've done well in Civ5 against most opponents but I really love/hate having Greece in my game, they are one of the few good AI opponents. My first BNW game was with the Shoshone and liked them a lot; I will try Venice sometime as well.

I don't know how some of you manage to play the game at that level. I have a blast with the game, but usually play at the middle level or one above and find it to be plenty difficult for me. I'm obviously not very good at the game. :)

Practice and lots of studying, like anything else you want to get good at. While BNW is much more involved (having to pay attention to everything constantly), deity and immortal do play easier at times if you have a majority of passive AI opponents.

+1

Yeah, I'm with Stupids. I can't play at Immortal or Deity at all. I can barely manage to win on Prince difficulty most of the time.

+3

Diety is kind of silly and if I ever reached a point where I needed to play on it to be competitive, I'd quit. At that point the AI is cheating so hard that you have to utilize as many exploits as possible to defeat them. It ceases to be a strategy game at that point and more about who knows what cheats to use and when.

And while I love the game, I do wish more effort went into the AI. It's improved and they've eliminated some of the more well-known exploits, but they still do some dumb things that I think could improve the game dramatically and increase difficulty without having to resort to cheats.

I have intentionally steered clear of any Civ communities for this reason. As frustrating as the game can be at times because I feel I've never fully mastered it, I still enjoy my struggles trying to figure out ways to win as opposed to finding ways to micromanage the game and feel like I'm working more on manipulating the game.

While I have already logged 230+ hours or so on Civ V and, very likely, multiples of that on Civ IV, I am by no means an expert. I have mastered "prince" level, but my record on "king" is spotty at best.

I would never call my playing style meticulous. Every once in a while I venture into the Civ communities, but I never really understand all of their exploits and methods. I'm fine with that. I still love the game and enjoy playing it.

I have tried Immortal level but never played Deity. Emperor gives me the most challenge I can handle. My win rate is low on Emperor, but I'd rather get my ass kicked 90 percent of the time than pile up less satisfying wins.

I'm like MBBF, I sometimes research rudimentary strategies for how to play with a specific Civ I've never used before, but I've never looked up cheats and exploits.

I will give you an idea of what a good science strategy would be that has nothing to do with "cheats and exploits". Growth is the key to science which is the key to everything. Are you getting Education (which has universities that allow you to run your first two science specialists) researched by turn 120 (roughly) and getting 250 bpt shortly after that? Are you getting Scientific Theory (public schools) by turn 170 and Plastics (research labs) by 220?

To do all this, are you quickly growing your cities so you have 3 cities size 7-8 (with National College) by turn 80-95? Or are you not settling good food sites or are you wasting time building early wonders apart from Pyramids or Oracle? Are you only choosing Tradition or Liberty and not both (except for openers)? I hope you are not wasting time with Honor or Piety in the early game.

It doesn't matter if you are going for space, cultural or domination - getting and increasing the tech lead by mid-game is critical so you have the first shot at key wonders or military superiority or to the ending techs. That's what the higher levels demand and it all starts with growth.

Yeah, I must suck. :)

Do you use the new caravans to enhance that growth or are you just very focused on finding food-rich locations? I tend to look for locations that are focused on resources/luxuries regardless of food, but maybe that's not the best idea. I do tend to have slower growth than most civs.

blegh - sounds like the recipe on how to make playing a game not fun anymore.

Alright boyz, here we go!!! Civ 5 first impressions & tips thread!
 

Those are good questions. Up through G&K, I would settle sites depending on the number of luxuries in the 2nd and 3rd rings. But in BNW, I learned that food sites (rivers, grass, cows, wheats) are more important.

As far as your first or two caravans, some do send food to the 2nd or 3rd cities to help them grow quickly. Alternatively, if you don't have the big gold luxuries, it may be better to send the caravans off to trade. One of the advantages of doing that early is that you can pick up an additional 3-6 science, which is huge in the early game.

The fun is in the challenge because there are tons of variables and conditions that you have react to. But that's why there are easy levels, :)

Stupid question. In BNW, if I send a caravan to one of my cities, and it says that it will send 4 food. Does that transfer the food from one to the other, or does it create 4 food out of nothing?

Yeah, this is the part I'm having a hard time balancing right now. I get along pretty quickly and then suddenly hit a wall with gold or unhappiness issues. Last night, I was Baducca (sp?). Got piety early and really focused a lot on faith. Was able to buy a couple of buildings with faith for my cities really quickly (think it was padogas and mosques). I went to war to take over a weak Ottoman civ and had some real issues because I started the war with only around 12 happiness. Had a big civ, (8 cities by turn 160 or so) but was really struggling to keep happiness above zero.

Here's an example of a challenge that's fun. In my current game, which I have been working at a lot since Friday, I'm trying to get the last few techs to quickly build the last two parts. Then there is Greece, who has always given me trouble in civ5, trying hard to win diplomacy. World leader votes are coming up every 20 turns and twice before, they have had a commanding lead in delegates. In addition keeping my tech rate high (around 850), I also have amass lots of gold during those 20 turns so I do not lose. I've done it twice but not sure about the third time, going to be a tight race. All this with 3 cities, two which are relatively small.

Albion, out of nothing as long as you have required buildings (granary, workshop).