Civilization V Gets Diplomatic With Brave New World Expansion

The next expansion pack for Sid Meier’s Civilization V adds international trade and a World Congress to the core game.

Get ready to say “just one more turn” a few hundred more times. 2K Games has announced the next expansion pack for Civilization V, which introduces several new gameplay aspects while expanding on the existing civilizations, wonders, victories, and scenarios. Civilization V: Brand New World, which is due out this summer, focuses on culture and diplomacy, and “as you move through the ages of history you will make critical decisions that will impact your relationship with other civilizations.”

On top of nine new civilizations, eight wonders, four gameplay systems, and a slew of minor additions, Brave New World introduces international trade routes to the game. These allow your cities to spread religion, cultural influence, and science–while also becoming wealthy and prosperous, of course. With the need for international diplomacy heightened, a World Congress “votes on critical issues like implementing trade sanctions against rogue nations, limiting resource usage, designating host cities for the World Games, and the use of nuclear weapons.”

Brave New World also features a new lead-in to the diplomatic victory and an entirely new cultural victory. Instead of collecting social policies across five branches, as are the conditions for Civ V‘s current culture win, the expansion’s victory conditions task you with being “the first civilization with a majority influence in all other civilizations.”

Finally, two new scenarios let you act out the American Civil War or the Scramble for Africa. Scenarios are separate from the main game, with each having a unique set of rules and victory conditions. The American Civil War scenario is pretty much exactly what it sounds like: “Fight the ‘War Between the States’ from either the Union or Confederate side as you focus on the critical Easter theatre of operations between the capital cities of Richmond and Washington.” In Scramble for Africa, you’ll take on one of the colonial powers “scrambling to explore the Dark Continent” and reach its interior.

Civilization V was originally released in 2010, with its first expansion, Gods & Kings, adding religion and stealth to the game last year. Both were well received, and Brave New World sounds like it could, like Gods & Kings, give fans a reason to dump another 100 or so hours into Civ V. Civilization V: Brave New World is due out in the summer of 2013 for PC and Mac.