You can send food between cities in your civilization, or trade with foreign cities in the hope of getting more money, as well as possibly spreading your religion or getting more science. In addition to the usual swap meets between leaders, you can now set up trade routes between cities. Trade has a new approach in this expansion. Your influence grows from cultural buildings, masterpieces created by great artists, writers or musicians (and later in the game, archaeologists), as well as trade routes. As your civilization advances, your tourism will also grow – this helps to spread your influence. Rather than adopting policies and then eventually building the Utopia project, this cultural victory happens when you spread your culture around the world, eventually becoming the dominant influence in all other civilizations. Unlike vanilla Civ 5, Brave New World has a more realistic cultural victory. So, for me, Brave New World added a whole new level of interest to the game. If I’m going to get a military victory, I wait until I have helicopters and nukes and take over the world quickly and efficiently. It’s not that I’m against violence, but I just don’t enjoy early game battles – there is no joy in seeing my puny archers and warriors go up against other pre-historic units. In general, I prefer to strive for cultural or scientific victories.

Brave New World is an expansion with a focus on culture and diplomacy, which is a lot more realistic, but not necessarily suited to everyone. I think my favourite thing about the game is that no matter how you play (militaristic, cultured, etc), there is a way to win that will be satisfying. I love the Civilization franchise – before starting on Brave New World, I had sunk 100 hours into my Civ 5.

Brave new world civ 5 trailer