Civilization VI:
Cities are the foundation of the Civilization series. Civilization uses a hex map, building a city in a single tile, and then improving the area surrounding to increase food, production, and commerce. Civilization VI introduces an additional option. Instead of constructing buildings inside the city tile, and improving the surrounding tiles, the player can transform neighboring tiles into districts. After being a district is established the player constructs related buildings in the tile. While the player can spend gold to instantly create units or building, the initial foundations of each district can't be purchased. It must be built in the usual manner, the passing of time. The major district types are Religious, Scientific, Culture, Commerce, Industry, Entertainment, Wonders, and Military. Great People of the appropriate type are generated by districts. The Great Person mechanic has been revamped. In previous games, each Great Person of the same type functioned similarly. In Civ VI each Great Person of a type, like Great Scientist, features a completely unique ability.
Each city can only support one district of each type, and is limited in its total number of districts by its size. Districts produce more of their resource based on an adjacency bonus. This promotes careful city to city design, by placing the right district in the best spot to maximize its output. Unfortunately this interesting idea is made unnecessarily difficult by the visual representations of the map. If zoomed out, the representations of each district are not distinct enough to differentiate the improvements placed across the map. Districts, like the Industrial Zone, need to be placed next to mines, or other topographical features. It can be difficult to see these. The visual clutter and vagueness further impedes the collection of strategic and luxury resources by builders. The game's visual design makes it difficult to tell if a resources is already being harvested, especially when there is so much happening in a nation. But while the visuals are cluttered and vague, I don't have any problem with the cartoon-ish look some have criticized. And the music, which is normally an afterthought, is to be commended for its ability to be non-obtrusive, but featuring a host of well known and well performed songs.
Civilization has always included
a mechanic for government. Each game the feature changes
dramatically. Civ II and III included the
classic government types (Republic, Monarchy, Democracy) for the
player to pick and choose between. Civilization IV was
the first to allow the player to mix and match different aspects of
political policies to create their own unique style of government.
Civ V tried to mix classic government types with a pick
your own style, but it leaned more to the former. In Civ VI
the player gains policies on the culture tree. Culture is earned and
spent like science to unlock policies and government types. There
are ten classic government types, and four policy categories;
military, economic, diplomatic, and wildcard. Each government type
is differentiated by the type and number of policy slots. For
example, Democracy (one of the three late game governments), includes
one military slot, three economic slots, two diplomatic slots, and
two wild card slots.
The starting government, Chiefdom, has only one military slot, and one diplomatic slot. Every time the player unlocks a new spot on the culture tree they can cancel old policies and implement new ones. This allows the player to change policies every five to fifteen turns. The constant discovery increases the player's flexibility. One interesting change to both the old tech tree and the new culture tree is the introduction of Eureka moments (inspirations for policy). These boosts occur when the player completes a specific objective, and they reduce the cost of researching a technology or policy by 50%. For example, the technology for Currency is boosted if the player constructs a trade route, while the policy of Exploration is boosted if the player constructs two Caravels (a small fast sailing ship of the 15th -17th centuries). This allows for civilizations, at least in the early game, to develop differently based on the terrain and the player's circumstance. Occasionally picking something which isn't boosted isn't a bad idea, but nations that don't strategize their way around the tech and policy trees will leave only statues in the sand.
The starting government, Chiefdom, has only one military slot, and one diplomatic slot. Every time the player unlocks a new spot on the culture tree they can cancel old policies and implement new ones. This allows the player to change policies every five to fifteen turns. The constant discovery increases the player's flexibility. One interesting change to both the old tech tree and the new culture tree is the introduction of Eureka moments (inspirations for policy). These boosts occur when the player completes a specific objective, and they reduce the cost of researching a technology or policy by 50%. For example, the technology for Currency is boosted if the player constructs a trade route, while the policy of Exploration is boosted if the player constructs two Caravels (a small fast sailing ship of the 15th -17th centuries). This allows for civilizations, at least in the early game, to develop differently based on the terrain and the player's circumstance. Occasionally picking something which isn't boosted isn't a bad idea, but nations that don't strategize their way around the tech and policy trees will leave only statues in the sand.
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