Civilization VI Review

Civ 6 is an amazing game. Why?

Firaxis Games have added a LOT of things that were not in Civ 5, and added a bunch of new game mechanics that drastically improve the game.

First I’m going to go over a few staples of Civ which have remained the same:

Tiles are still hexagonal (good)
Luxury resources still work the same
Science and culture are still present
Gandhi is still an asshole

Now onto the more interesting stuff:

They changed the unexplored map to look like an actual cartography style map. Really cool look.

Explored areas that you no longer have sight in are also marked in the same style. To the right of my capital you can see some dyes and deer that I have discovered but aren’t farming at the moment. Also that boat is enormous but is purely visual.

A nice change to the early game is that ruins no longer exist – instead there are tribal villages. The general idea is the same, except they include a new Civ 6 mechanic that I think is great: Research boosts. Instead of unlocking a technology for free, which could be quite broken early game, techs are boosted depending on certain things you do.

When look in the research panel, underneath the technology, you normally are given information on how to boost the tech. One of the early game ones to boost the archery tech, for example, is killing an enemy with a slinger.

You aren’t always told about the bonuses for your actions, however. Feel free to attack stuff or build stuff or whatever, and you could be pleasantly surprised. Sometimes you gain bonuses unintentionally.

The way culture and government works has also been changed (and improved). You can swap in and swap out different bonuses at different times. So if you feel the need for certain economic bonuses but only for a short time, you can swap them out when you no longer need them. Because of this versatility, culture is a powerful tool when used correctly. As you progress, you gain access to more powerful governments (like COMMUNISM) which allow more policies at once.

Units promotion has been slightly improved too – you can now see the skill ‘tree’, preventing you from wasting promotions without knowing what skills your unit will eventually have. This isn’t a massive deal, but it is still a nice improvement.

City states are also more interesting to interact with – you now get MUCH more powerful bonuses from interacting with them. You can choose to send envoys to city states. They provide different bonuses. Some city states are religious, some are mercantile, some are industrial, some are militant etc. and the bonuses relate to each of these.

Finally, we get to talk about the best thing in Civ 6. Districts.

Districts are a specialised tile improvement that are produced by the city (not by workers). Each of the main resources has a specialty district that can provide enormous bonuses to that particular resource. For example, a campus is one of the early game districts available. It is a district dedicated to science, and it is here that your other science buildings will go later. Campuses get bonuses depending on if there are mountains nearby, so I chose a mountainous location for this campus.

The bonuses that districts provide are indeed powerful, but if you come to rely on them, you’d better protect them. An enemy nation can swoop in like a magpie and pillage them. Builders can’t repair them, so you need to repair them via city production. This is of course detrimental, it will delay your city’s production of anything else while repairing.

30 turns! What in tarnation! So protect that shit, man.

Okay, and cities have changed a bit too. You now have housing, which limits growth – it makes sense, if there isn’t enough housing, your growth gets stunted. Different tile improvements and buildings can be built to increase housing.

Imagine you are Genghis Khan for a second. Imagine you are conquering cities and want to hear the lamentations of their women etc. But you can’t. Annexing this city fucks up your empire due to happiness. If you were in the Civ 5 world, you’d be screwed.

In Civ 6, happiness is no more. Instead, you have amenities. It is kind of similar, except it is a local thing, not a global one. So one unhappy city doesn’t mess with that sweet sweet national growth.

Onto multiplayer: