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Great Work (Civ5)

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Great Works are a new feature introduced in the Brave New World expansion pack as part of the new Culture Culture mechanics of the expansion. They represent exceptional achievements of the culture of your civilization, capable of spreading its fame all over the globe. Unlike normal Culture Culture, which consists of base-level events such as regular theater presentations, novel writing, or the occasional inauguration of a new Monument, the appearance of a Great Work is a very important event, contributing to the "external" pressure your civilization exerts on the other civilizations, as represented by the Tourism Tourism stat.

Great Works are the exceptional creations of Great People. They can also be acquired via conquest, however, or after your civilization develops its interest in ancient Artifacts and starts digging them up from the ruins of the past.

When a piece of Great Work is completed, an actual image of the Great Work of Art, an excerpt of the actual Great Work of Music or an actual quote from the Great Work of Writing is displayed or played on the screen.

Types of Great Works[]

There are four main types of Great Works:

Artifact[]

Main article: Archaeology (concept) (Civ5)

These are remains from the past, interesting objects such as ancient pottery, metal objects, and golden trinkets. They are created by excavating an Archaeological Dig, and are largely identical to Great Works of Art (thus they go in their slots).

Special types of Artifacts have been added with the Fall 2013 patch, which are essentially landmark writings from antiquity. They can only be found from Hidden Antiquity Sites, and are equivalent to a Great Work of Writing, thus going into the respective slots (instead of into Great Work of Art slots where other Artifacts usually go).

Great Work Properties[]

Each Great Work belongs to a certain era and a certain civilization. For Great Works, this depends on which civilization produced the Great Person that made the work, and when exactly it was created. Here the game tracks which era the civilization was in when the "Create a Great Work" ability was activated, rather than when the Great Person itself was generated. For Artifacts, it tracks which civilization (or city-state) was involved in the event that generated the historical site, and in what era the event happened.

These properties are important for the Theming Bonuses (see below) of Museums and wonders.

Using Great Works[]

Great Works are used by placing them in appropriate buildings, where they can be accessed by the public. In fact, you can't even create a Great Work if there isn't an appropriate slot somewhere in your empire! Whenever you produce a Great Work, it is automatically placed in the appropriate slot available in the nearest city. You can later change the slot each Work takes from the Your Culture screen (see below). Indeed, it is highly recommendable that you get acquainted with that process, since you'll need to shuffle around your Great Works in order to activate Theming Bonuses in the appropriate buildings.

Slots are found in two main types of buildings:

Theming Bonus[]

Main article: Theming bonus (Civ5)

All buildings that contain more than one slot for Great Works are able to generate a special "Theming Bonus." To receive this bonus, you need to fill all the slots with Great Works of the appropriate properties, according to the special conditions of the relevant building. Mouse over the bonus number next to the slots in the Tourism Overview screen to find out the exact requirements for the theme for the building. Sometimes they could be "Different Eras and Different Civilizations", or otherwise "The Same Era and the Same Civilization", etc. Bonuses can be partial, or complete, depending on whether you've completed all or only some of the requirements.

Theming Bonuses provide extra Culture Culture and Tourism Tourism for the city and your empire.

Moving and Trading Great Works[]

Great Works can be looted from enemy cities, and they can be moved from building to building and city to city within your empire. This is done by opening the Tourism Overview screen, clicking on the "Your Culture" tab, selecting a Great Work in its slot, then clicking on an empty slot. The Work will then move to the new slot.

You can also Swap Works with other civilizations you're not at war with. This is also easy - just open the Swap Great Works tab in the Tourism Overview screen, choose one of your Works in the swapping slot above, then the Work you want to swap for from the list below. Note that you can only swap Works of the same type (e.g., a Great Work of Writing for Great Work of Writing). You don't even need to negotiate with the other civilization; the process is automatic.

Note that civilizations can choose which Great Works they want to swap, so you won't see all Great Works they have available - just the ones they chose to offer. Similarly, you can leave a Great Work in the swapping slot, and the other civilizations will be able to exchange it for another of their own. So, if you have some Great Works you have no use for, and you need some Works from a specific era or civilization to complete a Theming Bonus, but no one is willing to swap the Works you need right now, leave some of yours in the slot and wait - you may get lucky eventually!

List of Great People and Great Works[]

This list is incomplete. Please help expanding this list by adding more!
Links to Wikipedia or other appropriate sources are provided after the item.

Great Writers[]

Name Quote Notes
Aesop - Fables  "The tortoise plodded on and on. When the Hare awoke from his nap, he saw the Tortoise near the winning post. But he could not run fast enough in time to save the race. Then the Tortoise said, 'Slow and steady wins the race.'"
Vittorio Alfieri - Saul  "They shall record of thee, that David here
Himself surrendered to ferocious Saul -
March forth, O Israel, from thy peaceful tents;
March forth from them, O King."
Dante Alighieri - Divina Commedia (The Divine Comedy)  "The hottest places in Hell are reserved for those who, in times of great moral crisis, maintain their neutrality."
Ludovico Ariosto - Orlando Furioso (The Frenzy of Orlando)  "There never was such beauty in another man. Nature made him, and then broke the mold."
Aristophanes - Lysistrata  "You, man, are fool enough, it seems, to dare to war with women, when for your faithful ally you might win us easily."
Jane Austen - Pride and Prejudice  "I cannot fix on the hour, or the spot, or the look or the words, which laid the foundation. I was in the middle before I knew that I had begun."
Bertrand de Bar-sur-Aube - Girart de Vienne  "May God forbid the deed!
A King of France shall not be harmed by me!
If he forgives me, I'll be his man of liege,
And hold from him all my lands in fief."
Bhasa - Urubhanga (The Broken Thigh)  "The disease of suspicion is never in my being.
For I am a king who can respect the friendship
That flowers between a man and a woman."
L. Frank Baum - The Wonderful Wizard of Oz  "'Oh - you're a very bad man!'
'Oh no, my dear. I'm a very good man. I'm just a very bad Wizard.'"
Harriet Beecher - Uncle Tom's Cabin  "Tom opened his eyes, and looked upon his master. 'Ye poor miserable critter!' he said, 'there ain't no more ye can do. I forgive ye, with all my soul!' and he fainted entirely away."
Cao Xueqin - Hong Lou Meng (Dream of the Red Chamber)  "The cunning waste their pains;
The wise men vex their brains;
But the simpleton, who seeks no gains,
With belly full, he wanders free,
As drifting boat upon the sea."
Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures in Wonderland  "'But I don't want to go among mad people,' Alice remarked.
'Oh, you can't help that,' said the Cat. 'We're all mad here. I'm mad. You're mad.'
'How do you know I'm mad?' said Alice.
'You must be,' said the Cat, 'or you wouldn't have come here.'"
Miguel de Cervantes (Saavedra) - Don Quixote  "'Now look, your grace,' said Sancho, 'what you see over there are not giants, but windmills, and what seems to be arms are just sails, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone.'
'Obviously,' replied Don Quixote, 'you don't know much about adventures.'"
Geoffrey Chaucer - The Canterbury Tales  "Yet do not miss the moral, my good men.
For Saint Paul says that all that's written well
Is written down some useful truth to tell.
Then take the wheat and let the chaff lie still."
Anton Chekhov - Chayka (The Seagull)  "Why do I hear a note of sadness that wrings my heart in this cry of a pure soul? If at any time you should have need of my life, come and take it."
Chikamatsu Monzaemon - Shinjuten no Amijima (The Love Suicides at Amijima)  "To the ears of one possessed by the God of Death, reason and objections seem like so many idle complaints."
James Fenimore Cooper - The Last of the Mohicans  "Chingachgook grasped the hand that, in the warmth of feeling, the scout had stretched across the fresh earth, and in that attitude of friendship these intrepid woodsmen bowed their heads together, while scalding tears fell to their feet, watering the grave of Uncas like drops of falling rain."
Stephen Crane - The Red Badge of Courage  "He vaguely desired to walk around and around the body and stare; the impulse of the living to try to read in dead eyes the answer to the Question."
Ruben Dario - Azul  "Bagpipes of Spain, ye that can sing
That which is sweetest to us in the Spring!
You first sing of gladness and then sing of pain
As deep and as bitter as the billowed main."
Charles Dickens - A Christmas Carol  "You may be an undigested bit of beef, a blot of mustard, a crumb of cheese, a fragment of underdone potato. There's more of gravy than of grave about you, whatever you are!"
Emily Dickinson - Poems  "Because I could not stop for Death -
He kindly stopped for me -
The carriage held but just Ourselves -
And Immortality."
Fyodor Dostoyevsky - Prestupleniye I Nakazaniye (Crime and Punishment)  "Pain and suffering are always inevitable for a large intelligence and a deep heart. The really great men must, I think, have great sadness on earth."
(Sir) Arthur Conan Doyle - The Sign of the Four  "Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth."
Alexandre Dumas - Les Trois Mousquetaires (The Three Musketeers)  "All for one, one for all, that is our device."
F. Scott Fitzgerald - The Great Gatsby  "Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - to-morrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther, and one fine morning..."
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe - Faust: Der Tragodie  "When scholars study a thing, they strive to kill it first, if it's alive; then they have the parts and the'be lost the whole, for the link that's missing was the living soul."
Nikolai Gogol - Revizor (The Government Inspector)  "It is no use to blame the looking glass if your face is awry."
Maxim Gorky - Na dne (The Lower Depths)  "Happiness always looks small while you hold it in your hands, but let it go, and you learn at once how big and precious it is."
Nathaniel Hawthorne - Twice-Told Tales  "Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever."
Jose Hernandez - Martin Fierro  "I am a gaucho, and take this from me
As my tongue explains it to you:
For me the earth is a small place
And could be bigger yet"
Homer - Odyssey  "Men are so quick to blame the gods: they say
that we devise their misery. But they
themselves in their depravity design
grief greater than the grief that fate assigns."
Victor Hugo - Les Miserables  "The greatest happiness in life is the conviction that we are loved - loved for ourselves, or rather, loved in spite of ourselves ... To love another person is to see the face of God."
Washington Irving - The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.  "And he would have passed a pleasant life of it, in despite of the Devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was - a woman."
Jorge Isaacs - Maria  "I fell asleep sorrowful, filled with a vague foreboding of coming trouble. That lock of hair taken from a boy's head, that precaution of love against death, even in the presence of abounding life, caused my thoughts to wander all night about those scenes where I had passed, without knowing it, the happiest hours of my life."
Kalidasa - Abhijnanasakuntalam (Of Shantukala)  "Yesterday is but a dream;
Tomorrow is only a vision.
But Today well lived makes every yesterday a dream of happiness;
and every tomorrow a vision of hope."
Omar Khayyam - Rubaiyat  "The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on; nor all thy piety nor wit
Shall lure it back to cancel half a line,
Nor all thy tears wash out a word of it."
Ki no Tsurayuki - Kokin wakashu  "Argent pearls
Did my tears seem
Yet with the passing years
Chinese crimson
Have they become"
Rudyard Kipling - Barrack-Room Ballads  "And the first rude sketch that the world has seen
was joy to his heart.
Till the Devil whispered behind the leaves,
'It's pretty, but is it art?'"
Lanling Xiaoxiao Sheng - Jin Ping Mei (The Plum in the Gold Vase)  "The passions evoked by clouds and rain,
joining their heads and twining their necks,
within the bed curtains. Truly:
When feelings converge, one is apt to forget
what happens to a brocade girdle."
D.H. Lawrence - Lady Chatterly's Lover  "A woman has to live her life, or live to repent not having lived it."
Lucian of Samosata - A True Story  "I fall back on falsehood - but falsehood of a most consistent variety; for I now make the only true statement you are to expect - that I am a liar. This defense is, I consider, a full defense against all imputations."
(Sir) Thomas Malory - Le Morte D'Arthur (The Death of Arthur)  "Yet some men say in many parts of England that King Arthur is not dead, but had by the will of our Lord Jesus into another place; and men say that he shall come again."
Herman Melville - Moby Dick  "Call me Ishmael. Some years ago - never mind how long precisely - having little or no money in my purse, and nothing particular to interest me on shore, I thought I would sail about a little and see the watery part of the world."
Murasaki Shikibu - Genji monogatari (The Tale of Genji)  "One ought not to be unkind to a woman merely on account of her plainness, any more than one had a right to take liberties with her merely because she was handsome."
Natsume Soseki - Wagahai wa neko da aru (I am a Cat)  "Living as I do with human beings, the more that I observe them, the more I am forced to conclude that they are selfish."
Ovid - Metamorphoses  "Happy is the man who has broken the chains which hurt the mind,
and has given up worrying once and for all.
Be patient and tough; one day this pain will be useful to you."
(Francesco) Petrarch - Il Canzoniere (Song Book)  "How do you know, poor fool? Perhaps out there, somewhere, someone is sighing for your absence; and with this thought, my soul begins to breathe."
Edgar Allan Poe - The Raven and Other Poems  "Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,
In there stepped a stately raven of the saintly days of yore.
Not the least obeisance made he; not a moment stopped or stayed he;
But, with mien of lord or lady, perched above my chamber door."
Marcel Proust - Ā la recherche du temps perdu (In Search of Lost Time)  "There is no man, however wise, who has not at some point in his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man."
Qu Yuan - Chu Ci (Songs of the South)  "Two monarchs then, who high renown received,
followed the kingly way, their goal achieved.
Two princes proud by lust their reign abused,
sought easier path, and their own steps confused."
Francois Rabelais - La Vie de Gargantua et de Pantagruel  "Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you,
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous."
(Jalal al-Din Muhammad) Rumi - Masnavi  "Knock, and He'll open the door.
Vanish, and He'll make you shine like the sun.
Fall, and He'll raise you to the heavens.
Become nothing, and He'll turn you into everything."
Johann Friedrich von Schiller - Die Rauber (The Robbers)  "Not that I have any doubt but that justice would find me speedily enough if the powers above so ordained it. But she might surprise me in sleep, or overtake me in flight, or seize me with violence and the sword, and then I should have lost the only merit left me, that of making my death a free-will atonement."
William Shakespeare - Macbeth  "Life ... is a tale
Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,
Signifying nothing."
Mary Shelley - Frankenstein  "Learn from me, if not by my precepts, at least by my example, how dangerous is the acquirement of knowledge, and how much happier that man is who believes his native town to be the world, than he who aspires to become greater than his nature will allow."
Shi Nai'an - Shuihu Zhuan (Water Margin)  "Today our younger brother, Chen Da, went against our advice. He offended Your Excellency and has been locked within your honorable manor. Since we have no way to save him, we have come to die with him."
Sophocles - Oedipus the King  "Oedipus knew the famous riddles. He was a mighty king; he was the envy of everyone. Now he's struck a wave of terrible ruin. While you are alive, you must keep looking to your final day, and do not be happy 'til you pass life's boundary without suffering grief."
Edmund Spenser - The Faerie Queene  "For there is nothing lost, that may be found, if sought."
Henry David Thoreau - Walden  "I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."
Leo Tolstoy - Voyna i Mir (War and Peace)  "You can love a person dear to you with a human love, but an enemy can only be loved with divine love."
Mark Twain - Adventures of Huckleberry Finn  "But I reckon I got to light out for the Territory ahead of the rest, because Aunt Sally she's going to adopt me and sivilize me, and I can't stand it. I been there before."
Ueda Akinari - Ugetsu monogatari (Tales of Moonlight and Rain)  "The moon glows on the river;
Wind rustles the pine.
Long night, clear evening -
What are they for?"
Valmiki - Ramayana  "Valmiki the Poet held all the moving world inside a water drop in his hand.
The gods and saints from Heaven looked down,
And Valmiki looked down at the gods in the morning of Time."
Jules Verne - Vingt Mille Lieues sois les Mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea)  "Captain Nemo pointed to this prodigious heap of shellfish, and I saw that these mines were genuinely inexhaustible, since Nature's creative powers are greater than Man's destructive instincts."
Virgil - Aeneid  "It is easy to go down into Hell;
night and day the gates of dark Death stand wide;
but to climb back again, to retrace one's steps to the upper air -
there's the rub, the task."
Voltaire - Candide, ou I'Optimisme  "Fools have a habit of believing that everything written by a famous author is admirable. For my part I read only to please myself and only what suits my taste."
Vyasa - Mahabharata  "To save the family, abandon a man;
To save the village, abandon a family;
To save the country, abandon a village;
To save the soul, abandon the earth."
H.G. Wells - The Time Machine  "I think that at that time none of us quite believed in the Time Machine. The fact is, the Time Traveler was one of those men who are too clever to be believed: you never felt that you saw all around him; you always suspected some subtle reserve, some ingenuity in ambush, behind his lucid frankness."
Walt Whitman - Leaves of Grass  "Oh Captain! My Captain! Our fearful trip is done,
The ship has weather'd every rack; the prize we sought is won."
Yoshida Kenko - Tsurezuregusa (Essays in Idleness)  "The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty. Leaving something incomplete makes it interesting and gives one the feeling that there is room for growth."
Roberto Arlt - The Seven Madmen (Los Siete Locos)  "I'm telling you honestly – I don't know if our society would be Bolshevik or fascist. Sometimes I think the best thing would be to concoct such an unholy mixture that not even God could untangle it." Cut from the game (likely due to the quote used in the Great Work being quite controversial by including the words "fascist" and "bolshevik").

The following Great Writers and their respective Great Works of Writing also appear to be unobtainable in the latest version of Brave New World:

Great Artists[]

Either a "fake" or a removed artwork:

Great Musicians[]

There are a total of 71 in-game files for Great Works of Music, but only 70 Great Musicians and technically only 69 unique Great Works of Music that the player can hear.

There is a bug in-game where the Great Musician Mirabai, instead of creating "Payoji Maine," actually creates a second copy of Enheduanna's "Nin Me Schara." This Great Work is still displayed as Mirabai's "Payoji Maine," but when listening to both of these Great Works one after another one can clearly hear that they are the same.

As a result, two Great Works of Music - "Payoji Maine" by Mirabai and "Dervish Tune" by Mikhail Mishaqah (who never appears in the game) - are impossible to obtain.

Great Works from Hidden Antiquity Sites[]

Name Quote
Bakshali Manuscript "Five merchants together buy a jewel. Its price is equal to half the money possessed by the first together with the money possessed by the others, or one-third of the money possessed by the second together with the moneys possessed by the others..."
Book of Kells "In the beginning was the Word...and the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us."
Code of Hammurabi "196. If a man put out the eye of another man, his eye shall be put out."
Codex Borgia "Tezcatlipoca: He by whom we live. Lord of the Near and the Nigh."
Codex Perez "The prophecy of Chilam Balam, the singer, of Cabal-chen, Mani. On 13 Ahau the katun will end in the time of the Itza, in the time of Tancah"
Dead Sea Scrolls "Tell them this, 'These gods, who did not make the heavens and the earth, will perish from the earth and from under the heavens.'"
Epic of Gilgamesh "I will set up my name in the place where the names of famous men are written, and where no man's name is written I will raise a monument to the gods."
Jushichijo Kempo "Harmony is to be valued, and the avoidance of wanton opposition to be honored...Then what is there which cannot be accomplished."
Kedukan Bukit Stone "In the year 605 of the Saka calendar, on the eleventh day on the full moon of Waisaka, His Majesty took a boat to make a profit."
Linear B Shards "Thus saw Phugebris when the king appointed Augewas the do-mo-ko-ro...slaves women thirty-two...older girls five...younger girls fifteen...younger boys four"
Mawangdui Silk Texts "Bloody Hemorrhoid. Boil thoroughly one male rat in urine. Hot press with the vapor."
Nag Hammadi "But those whom he has anointed are the ones who have become perfect. For full jars are the ones that are anointed. But when the anointing of one is dissolved, it is emptied."
Papyrus of Ani "Hail, oh ye who give cakes and ales to perfect souls in the House of Osiris, give ye cakes and ale twice each day to the soul of Osiris Ani, whose word is true before the gods, the Lords of Abydos."
Roak Runestone "I say this the second, who nine generations ago lost his life with the Hreidgoths, and died with them for his guilt."
Rosetta Stone "...those who dwell in them, and unto each and every one who hold any dignity in them, now behold, he is like unto a god..."
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