Civilization V’s Brave New World expansion again fails to make an interesting strategy game (review)

I’ve been resistant to the metaphor, but I cannot deny it any longer: Firaxis Games’ Civilization V, the latest iteration in the studio’s longest running and most popular PC strategy series, is a game mostly about filling up buckets, then emptying those buckets, collecting a prize, and taking back a slightly larger bucket to fill up again.

Firaxis’ newest expansion, Brave New World, only serves to underscore this cycle. It adds trade routes, which are just another way to fill up the gold bucket. It changes the culture victory condition from filling up social policy buckets to filling up tourism buckets. It adds nine new civilizations, which all have new ways to fill up the same old buckets.