Sid Meier's Civilization VI Review

There aren’t many franchises that can keep me as consistently happy as Civilization. Sid Meier’s Civilization III was my first turn-based strategy game, and it blew my young mind away. Every main series release since has sucked away many, many hours of my life. With each new release, I once again take part in the age-old tradition of sitting in my pyjamas eating chips and drinking copious amounts of soft drink, eyes fixated on my computer screen as I rule over a single fledgling city and grow it into the most powerful nation in the world.

Civilization VI carries on the formula of taking a group of settlers from the dawn of time into the future. Victory comes by the way of war, science, diplomacy, religion, or score. The many interlocking systems blend together mostly seamlessly, but we've seen most of it before. The big new addition is the ‘unstacking’ of cities

In past games, cities occupied only one hex, but here they grow to cover multiple tiles, giving them the feel of real metropolises. Districts, wonders, and improvements can’t be built on the same tile, meaning that you really have to plan placement. Districts house different building types, such as a campus being the centre for science, and an encampment being the centre for military. It makes it all feel like more of a board game than ever before with adjacency and terrain bonuses.

It looks like the unstacked combat of Civ V and Beyond Earth is here to stay, something I’m a big fan of. It’s largely the same as the last game, with the exception of the new support units. Medics, anti-tank guns, siege towers, and more can be attached to your units, giving them special abilities like faster healing or better strength against cities. Near the mid-game the ability to group units of the same type together is unlocked à la Civilization Revolution, making them stronger. It’s largely the same system as V with just a few improvements making the tactical combat a little bit deeper. I’ve seen countless empires rise and fall by my hand over the years, and Civilization VI makes putting my enemies to the sword as fun as ever.

The civic tree unlocks different government types and cards seem to replace the Policy Tree. Cards can give you things like ‘faster Industrial Era Wonder construction’, or ‘+2 gold from trade routes’. The system brings an interesting layer of customization to your government that’s deeper than it ever has been in the series.

The tech tree, along with its new sibling, the civic tree, now adapts to how you play the game. By completing certain tasks like constructing a mine or controlling a certain number of archers, you receive bonuses to research, called Eureka moments. It’s really cool that warmongering people have an easier time discovering military-focussed techs than peace lovers. The tech tree is much smaller than it was in Civ V, but since a lot of items have been moved to the civic tree, when the two are taken together it’s about a third larger than the previous game’s.

Firaxis has packed this game with mechanics that are usually the stuff of expansion packs. Trade routes, tourism, and archeology have returned from Civ V, as well as the religion system, though that does feel a little weak. Espionage returns as it was in Civilization II and Civ Rev. You produce spies as you do any other unit and guide them to enemy cities to conduct missions. These mechanics don’t make or break the game, but their inclusion makes Civ VI feel fuller than any of the other vanilla versions of past games.

Your opponents are stronger than it has ever been. They can effectively use different units in pitched battles and during a siege, though they still have issues with amphibious invasions. Democracy is more transparent now with every leader having two agendas in any given playthrough. Each leader has a preset mission, such as Teddy Roosevelt striving to keep the peace on his home continent, but is also assigned a random one to ensure they don’t act too predictably. It’s super easy to find out why another civ feels the way they do about you in just a couple of clicks.

The soundtrack by Grammy-winning composer Christopher Tin is absolutely stunning. I daresay he has outdone his previous theme, Baba Yetu, from Civ IV. Almost every time I’ve booted up the game, I’ve sat through the intro just to listen to the music again. Every civilization has a unique theme that evolves and grows with you as the ages go by, starting with simple tunes of few instruments and becoming big orchestral pieces by the time you reach the Industrial Era. The changing music throughout the centuries helps build the sense of progression that comes with the growth of your empire.

The realistic style of the last game has been dropped in favour of something between that and the cartoony aesthetic of the console installment Civilization Revolution. I’m personally a huge fan of it, though some people will likely wish they had continued down Civ V’s path towards a more realistic look. The world is so vibrant and beautiful, and everything from U-boats to Pyramids oozes personality. Running the game shouldn’t be a problem for most people, as on the lowest settings I was able to run it on my five-year-old laptop.

While some players have complained that there is a lack of innovation in the series, I beg to differ. I’ve played every Civilization since the third game, (even Revolutions 2) and even though there hasn’t been huge changes since Civ V’s unstacked armies, every release has a number of incremental updates that improve on the formula without losing what makes it so addictive and hard to stop from playing for one more turn.