Civilization 6 has a release date of Oct. 21, but plenty of folks have already had their hands on a 60-turn demo with more information to come next week at E3 2016. So what do we know about Civ 6 so far?
War
Cities have no natural defenses unless a wall is erected
Your city does not get a ranged strike until a wall is built
Encampments also get a ranged strike, as well as walls (once city walls are built)
Barbarians don’t pillage developed lands as assiduously as in Civilization V
Barbarians send out scouts to check you out
Units of the same type can be combined to form corps/armies
Support units can be merged with settlers to form escorts
Non-Military Units
Workers are now called Builders
It takes builders one turn to develop a piece of land
You can’t direct them to auto-develop land
Builders last for a limited amount of tasks and then die
Auto-explore will be available
Trade routes are the only way to build roads between cities during early turns
Military engineers in the mid-game let you build your own roads
Scouts have dogs and that’s great
Geography
Geographic locations offer bonuses to important buildings
Building is tied to the landscape: you may not be able to construct certain buildings because you lack space or the right resources
Hand-drawn map art style covers undiscovered and fog-of-war territory
Districts: small sections contained within a city dedicated to the production of certain resources, with adjacency and resource bonuses
Research
As you discover, build and win victories in battle, you pick up research bonuses towards future tech, making research more opportunistic
The research bonus is 50%
Tech Tree for Science is still a thing
There is no tech trading
Culture
Civics is a parallel tree for social technologies that unlocks color-coded cards
Collect cards for boosts, placed in a limited number of slots depending on government type
Different forms of government have different locked-in bonuses and different distribution of customizable slots
Unlocking a new set of cards through research lets you swap out cards for free
You must pay gold to swap out cards at will
Card unlocks are not randomized
Great People have specific bonuses
Happiness is city-specific not empire-wide, based on each city’s supply of happiness-generators
One Great Person per category is available at a time, and when enough points in that person’s category are earned, you can recruit them or hold onto those points until someone else takes them and reveals the next Great Person in that category
You can still name your own religion
Special Wonder scenes show you the Wonders being built
Wonders have their own hexes
Both espionage and religion are part of the game at launch
Diplomacy
You can invite a newly encountered civ to your capital, which uncovers your home city map area for them and gives you positive diplomatic points
You must be invited to another civ’s capital to uncover it on your map
You can improve diplomacy by: sending delegations (costs gold), espionage, embassies, or gifts
Diplomacy has five levels: you go from seeing basic info about war and wonders to seeing a leader’s hidden random agenda, their victory condition of choice, military options they’re considering and details they’re making with other factions
City-States have goals that earn you increasing bonuses
Three completed goals for a City-State make you an ally for a larger bonus that goes to only one civ
City-States provide completely unique bonuses
Envoys: a type of emissary that can be sent to City-States to further your agenda, they earn resources over time. The more Envoys sent, the greater the influence over that City-State
With enough influence you become Suzerain of the City-State, getting their unique bonuses and guaranteeing allegiance during both peace and war
Suzerains can pay gold to levy the City-State’s military units
Is there anything we missed? What tweak, change or upgrade has got you most excited? Feel free to let us know in the comments section below.
