Firaxis’ latest bite at the macro-scale building turn-based 4X ’em up cherry has hardly been with us two weeks, yet has already inspired umpteen illustrious tales of mighty empires, astute observations and bittersweet victory conditions here at RPS.
Wot did strategy aficionado Adam think? He loved it, of course, but there’s always room for improvement – and when a game is made up of quite so many simultaneously moving parts, mods tend to help make that so. Official support hasn’t quite breached the shores of Sid Meier’s Civilization 6 [official site], however that’s hardly stopped keen modders from getting their hands dirty in the meantime. We’ll add to this list down the line, but here’s the best Civ 6 mods available right now.
How to install Civilization 6 mods
Most games which don’t offer official modding support rely on Nexus Mods to house their tweaks and tinkerings. At the moment, Civ 6’s presence on Nexus is pretty nonexistent and much of its mods are instead found on the CivFanatics forum. Installation is pretty straightforward, though.
First, you’ll want to create a Mods folder in your Civilization 6 user directory (DocumentsMy GamesSid Meier’s Civilization VI), before extracting the mods you fancy to subfolders within the main one. As Adam explored previously, Civ 6 also lets you mess around with its XML and Lua scripts manually – which means you can make direct changes to files, should that be something you’re interested in. This is done by right clicking on the game via your Steam library, selecting Properties, then Local Files, then Browse Local Files. From there, simply select the file you want to muck around with, but note it’s probably worth saving a copy beforehand.
NB – Some of the mods listed here come with their own disclaimers which should be read and understood prior to installation. Details of such can be found on each mod’s page.
Moar Units
By deliverator
You enjoy a healthy sense of adventure and adore a rousing debate or the challenge of learning new things with your Mars in the ninth house. This position has. The placement of Mars in 9th house gives unique and attractive personality to its native right from his birth. He will be lucky and may attain the high position. Dec 15, 2018 - People with Mars in the 9th House are very aware of their abilities and limitations and when it comes to achieving goals, they don't hesitate to. Apr 2, 2018 - Mars in the 9th house is probably one of the best natal positions it can have, at least concerning the native himself. Mars will activate all the 9th. Mars in 9th house.
Right, boring clerical stuff out of the road, let’s conquer the world. And what better way to do so than by bolstering your armies with more soldiers dying to, um, die for the cause. The more, the merrier and all that.
Deliverator’s Moar Units introduces both Rifleman and Cuirassier units – which lets Musketman units upgrade to Rifleman and Rifleman upgrade to Infantry; and sees Knight units upgrade to Cuirassier and Cuirassier upgrade to Tank, respectively. The mod also adds 12 new Unique Units by way of (deep breath): the American Minutemen, Arabian Camel Archer, Chinese Cho-Ko-Nu, German Hussar, Greek Hetairoi (Companion Cavalry), Spanish Jinete, Roman Equite, Russian Druzhina Cavalry, Norwegian Hirdmen, English Longbowmen and Mughal Sowar for India, and Sumerian Phalanx.
Each of these is treated to its own bonuses and perks – Minuteman units, for example, gain +5 Combat Strength when fighting in or adjacent to their home territory; while the Druzhina Cavalry gain +4 Combat Strength when up against melee units – the full list of which can be located on the mod’s page. Creator deliverator notes that the mod is “very alpha and untested” at the moment and therefore is “obviously likely to be a bit unbalanced.”
Smoother difficulty
By RushSecond
As a means of upping its challenge in harder difficulties, Civ 6’s base game adorns its AI with bonuses and extra units. As a result, enemies do become harder to contend with, but, in my experience at least, the scales tip so far that overcoming the odds in the game’s earliest stages becomes almost impossible.
Enter RushSecond’s Smoother difficulty mod which “smooths the curve of the AI”, meaning foes start with the same means as you do, however get better constant bonuses to Culture, Production, Science and Gold. In turn, this allows them to keep up the pace with tech and production and the likes throughout the entirety of the game – offering a greater threat without ever taking the piss.
Yet (not) Another Map Pack
By Gedemon
But what if bigger is better? Those of you familiar with series forerunner Civilization 5 might recall creator Gedemon’s Yet (not) Another Earth Maps Pack which introduced planet Earth to the 4X strategy game varying sizes. This ‘un does the same by adding an ‘Enormous’ map size at 128×80; a ‘Giant’ map size at 180×94; and a ‘Ludicrous’ map size at 230×115. Sheesh.
Across all sizes, a staggering 50+ civs can be set and while the mod is in its ‘alpha 3’ state at the moment, Gedemon has put the former setting through 500 turns in autoplay with 32 civs without issue. He or she does lead with the following warning, though:
“The giant map is already way above the size of the huge map, it may or may not load on your PC (and will take some time to do so), the Ludicrous map is the max map size before the game refuse to load, and will take more than 4-5 minutes to load (or crash). I’d suggest to lower the textures size in the video option, the game use almost all the 6GB of VRAM of my GPU.”
It’s also worth noting that by turn 240, the average turn time was two minutes, while at turn 470 that jumped to four minutes.
PhotoKinetic Westeros
By 12@!n
Perhaps the most divisive thing about Civilization 6 is its vibrant cartoon-like aesthetic. While Adam feels it’s a “treat to look at”, a sizeable chunk of players don’t share his view – not least modder 12@!n. “I wasn’t too smitten with the ultra vibrant colors of Civ VI, and this corrects that,” they say. “I modeled it after the Game of Thrones opening sequence.”
By virtue of a number of recalibrations, adjustments, enablements and disablements – not least the addition of a togglable heavy depth of field for a tilt-shift effect – PhotoKinetic Westeros is the end result and, hate or love the original look, it’s really quite impressive. Shader mods are a funny thing because they’re generally applied to games which already look pretty – like The Witcher 3s and GTA 5s of this world. Their outcome, then, is largely open to interpretation and is often boils down to personal preference. This mod is no different, yet there’s no arguing it completely transforms the base game to something almost unrecognisable to its source material.
PhotoKinetic Westeros is perhaps the most difficult to install on this list, however step-by-step instructions are duly provided by its creator.
Historicty++ and Civlopedia On Main Menu
By sukritact and Remgrandt respectively
One for all you history buffs out there who just cannot stand the liberties Firaxis have taken with historical accuracy. “So after having dealt with two fruitless attempts to get Firaxis to do something about historical accuracy in the game. I’ve finally just decided to make a mod for it,” says the creator of Historicity++, a mod from sukritact that amends the “numerous” historical oversights in the game’s text he or she has stumbled upon.
“Notable changes include fixing the Kongolese UU to an attested Central African name and correcting ‘Sumeria’ to ‘Sumer’ as is more commonly used in most circles,” the creator continues. “Also, MALAYSIA IS NOT KNOWN FOR ITS WATS. This mod will be continually updated as errors arise or are discovered.”
Civlopedia On Main Menu, on the other hand, does exactly what you might expect: it plops Civ 6’s extensive and informative encyclopedia as is into the main menu, where you can then access the game’s background history before kicking a ball. Remember to give sukritact a nudge if you spot any discrepancies!
Honourable Mentions
Anno Domini (Civ 6 Version)
By Rob (R8XFT)
A “medieval era total conversion mod” with a revamped tech tree, new buildings, new wonders and 14 different civs.
Quick UI
By vans 163
Designed to reduce the amount of clicks required to manage your empire. Handy.
Tundra Farms
By Alesque
Lets you build farms on tundra and on tundra hills once you have the civil engineering civic.
Xenoblade Chronicles Civilization
By Mav 12
Adds a civilization based on Xenoblade Chronicles.
Given it’s without official modding support, and the fact that it’s been out all of two weeks, Civilization 6’s modding community is already starting to flourish. The list above is but a gathering of the best available right now, but, as noted at the top of this here list, we’ll return further down the line to add the biggest, brightest and best as they become available. Until then, happy civilization sprouting!
Posted by10 months ago
ArchivedStickied post
Hello again,
I’ve spent some time working on the religion changes for my mod and ended up making a bunch of other changes too. There is now a new version available, and the changelist is here too (I cannot be bothered to format the Docs document into Reddit post so I’ll just share a link for the changelist):
Install it by extracting the folder to your Civilization 5 DLC folder, and remember to REMOVE previous versions of the mods (usually named NQmod/MP_MODSPACK). Follow Fruity’s instructions for installing v12.4 if you have any issues, it follows the same procedure.
I was in contact with Fruitstrike again and we talked about the name of the mod, and while he recommended I keep it as NQmod (I feel like he would be happy to “pass on the torch” for someone new), I have decided against it. I want to try out new things and have fun with changes, and while I’ll try my best to not create anything too crazy, my first priority is not doing changes for game balance - it’s because they’ll make the game more fun to play for me. So if you only want minor balance changes, I’m sorry to say that this probably not the mod for you. Everyone's welcome to play it and give feedback, but this mod started out as my own pet project, and I want to keep it that way.
I also don’t want to hijack the Reddit page, as it should really stay as a place where people can discuss the currently mostly played mod or meta or whatever, not as a place for me to promote my own stuff. So my next priority is gonna be writing some Google Docs pages, such as a cumulative changelist and so forth. I’ll make a short post here when those are ready, and after that I’ll be keeping my stuff on those Google Docs. And while HellBlazer made a stickied post about my v13.0 being the latest version of NQmod (thanks for that), I think in the future the stickied post should maybe contain links to the newest versions of all the mods that are based on NQmod (so mine, lek’s, and last Fruity’s one v12.4)? The documentation and download link to Lek’s stuff should be stickied somewhere at least, since those are a bit difficult to find if you don’t know where to look.
I’m fairly happy with this version myself so far, I’ve included pretty much all changes and tweaks that I can do by “surface level” modding (XML, LUA, and minor .dll tweaking), without having to create new columns and/or tables to the .dll. Which is something I’m not sure actually ever even want to be doing, because Firaxis’ code is sometimes complete spaghetti, it’s quite a lot of work, and I don’t want to turn into a person who only mods the game but never plays it - last month or so I’ve only booted up Civ5 for the purpose of testing something. So don’t expect any bigger changes like this anymore. That said there are couple of smaller things I still want to change and I do have some bigger ideas on what I might want to do with the mod in the future, but that would be in a long long time from now.
Cheers!
32 comments
Here are two of the best things about PC gaming: the Civilization series, and the ability to change your games by adding in user-created content. Modding Civ 6, then, is an expression of the very apex of PC gaming. It’s peak PC.
Since the Civ 6 modding toolkit came out in February 2017, the number of mods on offer has been steadily expanding. Civ 6’s modding community isn’t yet at the level of its timeless predecessors, but modders have now created enough new leaders, gameplay tweaks and AI improvements for you to swing your caveman club at. There are over 1,400 Steam Workshop,in fact, so plenty of options for every budding ruthless/benevolent leader.
Need even more tactical joy? Try out one of the best strategy games on PC.
So we’ve congregated the best efforts of Civ 6 modders from both Steam Workshop and Civfanatics.com, into a long unravelling papyrus of a list. All of the mods here are compatible with the Rise & Fall expansion pack, so no matter how invested you are in Civ, all of these mods will work just right.
Steel & Thunder Unique Units/Units Expansion
Deliverator’s comprehensive mod (formerly known as MOAR units) diversifies and brightens up the game with plenty of new units. The mod adds one unique unit to every civilisation in the game (including DLC and Rise & Fall civs), as well as 11 new global units that slot into existing upgrade paths.
New global units include, among others, Gatling Gun, Longswordsman, RIfleman, Naval Cog and Galleass. Listed below, meanwhile, are some of our favourite unique Civ units:
– America – AH-64 Apache
– Germany – Landsknecht – England – Ironside – Poland – Uhlan – Kongo – Medicine Man – Khmer – War Canoe
Steel and Thunder comes in two separate packs: Unit Expansion adds the global units, and Unique Units adds the civ-specific ones.
Civ 6 leader modsJFD’s collection
The biggest collection of Civ 6 leaders belongs to long-time modder JFD, who’s created and crafted over 30 of the great leaders from history such as Philip II of Macedon, Elizabeth I and Louis XIV. For those wanting some villains to rally against (or play as), there are a few bad eggs in there too, including Hitler, Mussolini, Ivan the Terrible, and Mr. Omelettes-and-Eggs himself, Stalin.
Each new leader has a portrait that blends seamlessly with the bold, vibrant Civ 6 art style, and comes with their own unique units, traits and agendas. As you can guess, old Adolf’s ‘Liebensraum’ agenda makes things pretty feisty.
Head over to JFD’s Steam Workshop page to see his full leader collection.
Civ 6 conversion modsQuo’s Combined Tweaks
Anyone who has spent some time on Civ 4 and Civ 5 forums will have heard of the great conversion projects like Rise of Mankind and Realism Invictus for Civ 6, or Vox Populi for Civ 5. These community-created mods spend years revamping the game rules, eventually creating a much deeper experience that borrows the best bits from across the series. Quo’s Combined Tweaks takes inspiration from those, revamping hundreds of rules to make for an interesting alternative to Firaxis’ vision.
There are way too many changes to list, but they include faster unit movement, more impactful governments and policies so you can really feel the difference between, say, Fascism and Democracy, and more powerful Wonders (which now steal tiles around them when built, and can be woo City States). Each civ now has several new unique traits too, making games a little more interesting and asymmetrical.
In a nutshell, it’s the most sweeping set of rule changes to Civ 6 available. Mod creator isau recommends using it with AI+, and says that it should be compatible with most unit, UI and map mods. You’ll need the Rise & Fall expansion for Quo’s Combined Tweaks to work.
Anno Domini
If you’ve always found Civ to be at its most compelling in the earlier eras, when mankind worshipped trees and thought the Earth was just a spinning plate on a giant celestial stick, then you’ll quickly settle into Anno Domini. Uta no prince sama iso english patch. Building on his experience of creating a similar mod for Civ 5, creator rob8xft mod sweeps us back to an old world of Germanic tribes, druidism, even way back to Minoan civilisations, and keeps us there with a bespoke tech tree that never goes beyond the classical era.
Anno Domini currently has 24 unique civilisations (though you can use some from the main game and JFD’s collection), as well as its own roster of policies and eras that zoom in on the ancient-classical period. It’s the most polished Civ 6 conversion mod to date.
R8XFT himself plays Anno Domini with Religion Expanded, which you’ll find further down this list.
Civ 6 map modsYet (not) Another Maps Pack
Gedemon’s YnAMP is the most feature-rich map pack for Civ 6. It contains a couple of variations on maps of Europe and Earth, as well as a script that generates Terra, a map split up into the historical Old and New Worlds.
Like in Civs of yore, you can create a game on Terra where all civs start in the Old World, then race to colonise the New World once they can build ships. This setup provides a welcome shift of pace just as a game can start to lull towards the middle stages, and really thrives in multiplayer when you know that all your rivals have their avaricious eyes on the land and plunder of the New World.
This modpack adds a wealth of options for tweaking maps before a new game, as well as Giant, Enormous and Ludicrous map sizes (the latter of which doubles as a stern benchmark tool for your PC’s RAM and CPU).
YnAMP also allocates civs with starting positions based on the kind of environments they were associated with in real life (coastal areas for naval civs, more arid climes for middle-eastern civs, and so on). This feature not only adds a touch of realism, but means that each civ’s starting location is likely to be better suited to their unique traits and buildings.
Civ 6 Religion modsReligion Expanded![]() Civ 5 Graphics Mod
There have been quite a few attempts to improve upon the flawed religion system in Civ 6, not least of all when Firaxis figured that adding Warrior Monks into the game would spice things up a bit – which it didn’t. Instead, the best changes to religion in Civ 6 come from the community.
A good place to start is pokiehl’s Religion Expanded, which adds 43 new religious beliefs, seven new fully-modelled religious buildings, and raises the cap for number of religions in a game from 7 to 16 (on a Huge map). The increased cap means that there will not just be a few faiths battling it out for supremacy, but also smaller ones doing their own thing in far corners of the world.
Tomatekh’s Historical Religions
You can combine Religion Expanded with Tomatekh’s Historical Religions, which adds tens of new religions and icons to the game – from strange sub-sects of Protestantism to Aboriginal Dreamtime beliefs. Every Civ in the game now has their preferred religions too, so AI will be drawn to the religions their civs are historically associated with.
![]() Rule with Faith
Rule with Faith (RwF) is the work of JFD, who sees it as a continuation of his Rise to Power mod for Civ 5. That mod aimed to bring greater political and religious depth to the game, and RwF does the same, adding a new religious policy slot, 16 new policies and three new governments. It’s compatible with both Religion Expanded and Tomatekh’s Historical Religions.
Civ 6 tweaksSmoother Difficulty
Making a challenging AI is tricky in strategy games, perhaps more so than in any other genre. Designers usually have to resort to giving the AI artificial bumps to resource production, and even free units, to give a savvy player a run for their money. Unfortunately, the way Civ 6 does this can mean certain death for the player before there’s anything they can physically do to stop it, as the AI swamps you with its five free Warriors (we’re not kidding – to see how much cheese drips from the AI on Deity difficulty, see our article on Civ 6 difficulties).
Fortunately, here’s RushSecond smoother difficulty with a solution. This mod removes most of the AI’s extra starting units, and instead dials up its resource generation bonuses. The result should be a smoother challenge on higher difficulties, with the AI keeping pace with you throughout the game despite its technical ineptitude, yet unable to stuff you in the first two dozen turns through an unfair unit advantage.
AI+
The biggest criticism players have of Civilization 6 is the AI, which has unfortunately taken a few steps back towards the stone age since Civ V (which wasn’t exactly space-age itself).
With Firaxis doing little to fix things on this front, modders have taken the AI burden on themselves. AI+ is the best of the lot, making the AI better at balancing their empire’s development with military size, as well as an improving their ability in wartime, as they’ll now send troops to the front lines more aggressively and be bolder in invading your cities in the late game.
Along with the more sweeping changes, there are small bits of fine-tuning like improved settler behaviour, increased reluctance to agree unfavourable peace terms, and tougher city-states that won’t so readily fall into the hands of expansionist civs.
PhotoKinetik Westeros
For those of you who didn’t take to Civ 6’s vibrant aesthetic, here’s [email protected]!n with a reshade mod. Inspired by the Game of Thrones opening sequence, it mutes Civ 6’s colours to give a cooler, more mature washed-out look, as you see above. Safari for windows 10 32 bit.
You can download PhotoKinetik Westeros here. Note that it has some more complicated installation instructions than most other mods on this list as it relies on ReShade, a separate post-processing application, to achieve its effects.
Quick Start
And so, like intrepid explorers circumnavigating the globe, we’re going to end our journey at the start. The start of the game, that is. If you’re tired of Civ 6’s multiple boot screens perennially reminding you who made the game and which GPU manufacturer it’s in bed with, you can skip it all with Quick Start. Now, if we could just find a way replicate this mod for every game in existence…
These are just a few of the thousands of Civ 6 mods available, which you can peruse yourself at Civ Fanatics, Steam Workshop and Nexus Mods. There are more outlandish ones out there – Game of Thrones and Lord of the Rings spring to mind – but they missed the cut because they felt feature-thin and unfinished at the time of writing. The fact is that for now, the modding community is limited by not having access to the DLL source code. When that came out for Civ 4 and 5 (some two years after each game’s launch), the modding scenes really took off, as did big overhaul projects like A New Dawn and Vox Populi.
If that’s anything to go by, we should expect to see the DLL code for Civ 6 released soon-ish, and only then will we see the game’s modding potential unleashed. The best, we hope, is yet to come.
Editor's note: Final review code for Civilization 6 was only supplied to Eurogamer late yesterday afternoon, and we'll be working to get a full review up on the site early next week. In the meantime, here are impressions culled from a near-final build supplied earlier by 2K.
There's always been something magical to me about the first 200 turns of a game of Civilization 5. I've seen some people claim victory in that time, though I am no such power player. Instead, it's the unhurried, exploratory forays in to the unknown that provide a joy of discovery that has remained undiminished across several games and countless hours of play time. It's an excitement borne from potential and of grand plans; of making choices and standing at forks in the road.
Later, as the mid-game looms, that excitement of discovery returns once more with the unearthing of the Archaeology tech and the unveiling of sites of antiquity; more goodies to seek out and gambles to take. There's a lot that happens in between, of course, but those two points at opposite ends of that 200-turn scale bookend my most played period of the game and represent catalysts for much that I have loved about it over the past six years.
With a clear idea of how it scratches a very particular itch, it's been fascinating for me to compare the first 200 turns of Civilization 5 with those of Civilization 6. The joy of discovery is alive and well in Civ 6. Some of that joy is derived from the simple fact that it is a new game to get to grips with and some is delivered by the thematic grounding in the Age of Exploration. To illustrate the point, let's consider the opening few turns of my own, admittedly woefully unoptimised, play style in Civ 5 versus what's been happening in Civ 6.
I'm one for founding my first city wherever my settler starts the game but in Civ 6 it's not just a case of checking that there's a decent mix of food and production and making do with that. Access to fresh water is essential due to the growth of your population being dependent on housing. Starting next to a river provides a decent bonus to housing in your capital, but coastal waters will do in a pinch. Immediately, then, I'm having to decide whether to try to better my starting position or plump for where I am.
The early game build-order is a subject of much debate, but scouts and basic troops are a safe bet in both Civ 5 and 6. These are the troops that make those exciting early discoveries, pushing out into the dark to uncover ruins, barbarian outposts and future city locations. That's still the case here in Civ 6 but upon stumbling across a barbarian scout with my warrior, I make what will later be revealed as a costly error and let him run free. The addition of scouts, it turns out, is indicative of the fact that barbarians now actively search the environment for fledgling civilizations before racing back to report their find to the nearest outpost only to bring reinforcements down on your undefended city.
Civ 6 Overhaul Mods
Lesson learned I move on to my next build item, but where I would then usually create a worker to have them begin the laborious task of converting grassland into arable farmland, here that's unnecessary. The builders that have replaced workers complete improvements instantly but can only be used three times, which renders redundant the need to micromanage them (I've never been one to automate my workers in Civ 5). As both games progress past a score of turns I'm selecting my first social policy in Civ 5 and meanwhile over in 6, I have a functioning government with two bonuses selected from a pool of four.
This proliferation of choice continues as the turns tick by. By turn 50 I have three cities in the earlier game and only two in the latter, but one of them has a brand new Holy Site district built atop a hill next to two mountains. It looks quite lovely and, better yet, is enjoying adjacency bonuses for its canny placement, which is generating additional faith points. I'm alive with religious fervour and greedily eyeing up where my next district might be placed. Eschewing the science-generating Campus I head straight for the bright lights of the Entertainment Complex, bequeathed by the Games and Recreation civic. Enthralled, I accidentally place it in a foolish location, where its bonuses are squandered. Undeterred, I make a physical note on a piece of paper with an actual pencil regarding district placement and move on; 'I'll look out for that next time', I resolve.
As the turn ticker registers 125, I'm well and truly settled into the groove of my usual Civ 5 activities, the Tradition Social Policy tree has been completed to complement my humble island setting. I've slaughtered enough barbarians and chucked enough money at the local city-state that they're granting me a cultural bonus. Still, things are going a little flat and I'm looking toward how many turns might be left until Archaeology can be researched to reinvigorate my sense of discovery and exploration going forward. Meanwhile, back in Civ 6 the number of choices surrounding district buildings, wonders, government policies and city-state manipulation have grown once more and I feel like I'm keeping multiple plates spinning trying to keep track of it all.
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By turn 200, I'm just starting to savour the creation of archaeologists to bring back the mystery and goodies to my game in Civ 5. Civ 6, in which I have already done so much, is only just getting started. It's a tad unfair, perhaps, to compare a game that has given me several hundred hours of fulfilling play over the last six years, with one that is hot off the press and has directly benefitted from the millions of hours players have poured into its predecessor. Still, that is the nature of these things, and it says much for how feature-rich Civ 6 is that its early game can stand up to such direct comparison to that of a game that has benefited from two weighty expansions.
The key, for my own personal games at least, is that first 200 turns of Civ 6 are filled with decisions that have knock-on effects on meaningfully interconnected systems. I'm engaged, perhaps even a little bewildered by all of the choices I've had to make and yet, despite making many mistakes along the way to turn 200, I am smiling to myself at the possibility of it all. I have a head full of ideas for the next time I play those same turns again, along with a page full of pencil scribbled notes that contains a personalised flowchart, for future reference. It's possible that there is no going back for me. Unlike Civilization: Beyond Earth, a game I flirted with but ultimately retreated from, Civilization 6 has its hooks into me and it's Civ 5 that must be given up for good. To test this theory, I decide to push on and have just one more turn.
Towards the end of Breaking Bad, sidekick Jesse asks teacher-turned-kingpin Walter White what business he’s in: meth or money. The answer: “I’m in the empire business.” Now, after 25 years, six full games and countless spinoffs of his flagship series, Civilization, the venerable forefather of strategy gaming, Sid Meier, may be able to relate. (We’ll not labour the parallels between Meier and big-time drug pushers, but not for nothing is the expression “one more turn” linked to his chemically addictive PC classic.)
For players who know the series – and certainly those who played the last outing – the principles are unchanged in the latest edition, Civilization VI. For those who don’t, the empire business is the name of the game. Turn by turn, you’ll lead your chosen people from a single small settlement in 4,000BC until the influence of your cities outreaches the computer-controlled rival factions. There are several ways to win and near-infinite paths to victory – will you build armies of conquest, become the tourist capital of the world or its religious centre, or will you be the first to escape the conflicts of home and colonise new planets? As before, you can choose from a variety of historical nations and leaders, 20 at launch with more planned for future DLCs, each with their own advantages and play styles.
When Civilization V rolled out in 2010, it came with the series’ biggest shakeup. At the time, the decision to divide the gameplay area into hexagonal tiles (instead of squares) and to permit only one military unit to occupy each at a time (instead of powerful stacks) was cause of much anxiety for players used to the series' most mature and nuanced fourth iteration. This time, the hexes stay, as does the one-unit-per-tile rule, but there’s plenty that’s new, and the differences, although less fundamental, are still engagingly radical.
Most notably, the way cities are built and developed demands a layer of strategy previously absent. Instead of building in the city centre (whether your barracks, market, library, temple, colosseum – the list is long), “districts” are now placed on the surrounding tiles. You’ll have to take account of terrain and think hundreds of years ahead to the ways you want your cities to develop. Also all-new is the way you’ll build a road network and deploy workers to cultivate the local landscape. The “worker” unit had been around since the first Civ – and always a source of tedium in the late-game – but is now gone, with roads built automatically as you direct traders between cities, and other improvements completed by “builders” who disappear after a finite number of uses. Finally, the iconic Civ tech tree is now effectively doubled by the inclusion of a “civics” tree. As well as unlocking laws and policies that tune the way you govern your empire, the culture-fuelled civics tree also opens a separate range of units, districts and world wonders to those revealed by exploring the tech tree.
Together with the new, more colourful graphics, these are bold changes that move the series in imaginative new directions. It’s a land-grab by Maier’s studio, Firaxis, against the near-impenetrably complex grand strategy games – such as Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis IV and, most recently, Stellaris – made by Swedish developer Paradox. At the time of writing, GQ has sunk some 25 hours into a pre-release build of Civ VI, and anticipates an order of magnitude more will be required before a complete picture of the game’s inner workings comes into focus.
However – and, sadly, it’s a biggie – for all the twisting, maze-like avenues of strategy to explore and employ, the AI opponents are too incompetent for you to need them. We saw enemy units mustering for an attack that might have been threatening but never materialised, and we stomped enemy cities while defenders wasted their turns on fruitless manoeuvres. Only one difficulty level was available on the build we played, but there are indications that the AI will be no smarter on more challenging settings. It’s a problem that’s been rooted in the series since inception, and exacerbated by the changes made in Civ V. Disappointingly, the correlation between the game’s intriguing complexities and its own inability to make use of them is still apparent.
As an “emperor-sim”, Civ is still the benchmark and on that front this sixth edition brings a lot of colourful and exciting changes: if you play to “paint the map” with perfectly crafted cities, this looks like a series leader. And there’s plenty of gamers who play to build and not compete (fans of the Paradox catalogue are a case in point). But – with apologies to another famous empire builder – if you want an experience where smart strategies are rewarded, you might look on these works and despair.
Civilization VI is out on 21 October for PC and Mac.
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