Civilization VI: Rise and Fall shows off overview of new features

The upcoming expansion for Civilization VI [Official Site] will be introducing quite a few interesting changes to the game. You can see how exactly you’ll be spending just one more turn in this overview video.

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Rise and Fall seeks to change up the classic civ formula by mostly adding what are, essentially, internal government mechanics. Players will have to manage their empires more carefully, as cities can now break off from your nation if their loyalty drops low enough. Likewise, able stewardship will be needed to avoid dark ages whenever you finish up a previous game era. There’s a host of challenges to conquer and potential boons you can get from navigating the new systems well.

I hope these systems lead to interesting, meaningful choices, as previous attempts to model internal difficulties in Civilization titles were rather simplistic. Vassals and colonies in Civ 4 were outright boring and the independence revolts of earlier titles (in particular corruption in Civ 3) didn't feel very engaging. They were more like abitrary ways to halt expansion and punish the player for playing wide empires. It’s my hope that the new governors system will allow for specialization and growth without being a micromanagement nightmare. Given the updates and changes since Civ 6’s release, I think there’s a good chance that Firaxis will get it right.

There are also a few other changes coming in the expansion. Aside from the internal mechanics and era goals, the emergencies and alliances mechanics may do wonders in giving diplomacy actual relevance. It was one of the weakest areas of the original game and the AI is generally rubbish at reacting to events beyond spamming denunciations. I hope that alongside these changes we'll also get reworks of other AI systems since, after playing a while, it can be frustrating to see the AI be so incompetent when expanding or declaring war.

Finally, there will be a few of the usual stuff found in expansions as well: new civs, new wonders, improvements, buildings and units. Georgia and Cree make their series debut as a playable civs but others like Mongolia and Korea will be returning also.

All in all, there’ll be more of everything for people to enjoy and play around with.

Civilization VI: Rise and Fall is set to be released February 8th, but there’s still no word whether or not it’ll be a simultaneous release on Linux. We’ll let you know as soon as we know, hopefully we won’t have to wait too long.