Civilization 6

Introduction

A classic of the TBS (Turn-Based Strategy) genre where you take on the job of a historic ruler to conquer the world. The goal is to become the dominant power on the planet through a mix of exploration, diplomacy, military conquest, and technological advancement.

On the path to victory, you will have to manage resource allocation, build cities, and wage war against Gandhi. It really is a rich and diverse TBS that tries to capture all the aspects of a civlization’s progression.

Player Mechanics1

Game Mechanics

Government Policies: Specific unlocks and civilizations in the game give governor tiles that can be used to recruit a Governor to your city. Dynamically affects the game state due to how it sets or enhances the game-plan of a civilization.

Civic and Tech Trees: Allows players to “invest” turns into unlocking specific technologies on the tree. Each of these technologies and civics is very dependent on the type of nation, civilization, ruler, and such. Tech trees add yet another layer of dynamism in deciding what is the best path for the game-plan.

Eureka: Boost the tech tree when the player has met certain requirements, like making six farms or killing a barbarian. These boosts are more of a micro mechanic that can connect to the larger game-plan.

Resources (Faith, Gold, Culture, Science): Counters that are “incremented” and can be spent to further the game state. Gold is especially important in the early game as it can be used to maximize the feedback loop of city growth. All of these resources end up as a way to win the game: “science, war (gold), culture, and religion”—which all can lead to victory.

City-states: Separate cities around the map that grant the player’s nation some benefits when you complete their nations or send envoys. Also, again, it dynamically impacts the game state as some of the bonuses can cause drastic growth via boosts to production or gold production.

Battle: Units can attack other units or cities. Necessary for WAR. There is a whole set of terrain bonuses, military buffs, ranged/melee units, and a lot of intricacies/idiosyncrasies.

Great People: Units that can be recruited with “Great People Points” that are awarded through all of the different things above. Again, this adds dynamism because these units are usually so strong that you should go for them even if they are suboptimal in the short term.

Districts: Buildings that grant specific bonuses and have bonuses based on the tiles around them. It’s one of the more confusing portions of the game plan. At least I have not figured it out because you need to eventually build all of them to meet specific pieces of the plan. In other words, you can’t just build one for your win condition and expect it to work.

Wonders: Buildings that grant very strong and specific bonuses but cost a lot of turns to produce. There can only be one being built, and if it is, you basically wasted all your turns doing so, which results in this being high risk, high reward. Another point is that you should usually just focus on growing before you begin production.

Amenities: Luxury resources that require builders to spend a charge to harvest. These provide +1 amenitie, which increases the happiness of a city, thereby increasing the overall resource production of the city. Amenities scale throughout the game, requiring more amenities as your population grows.

Themes and Player Experience

Achievement: I put achievement instead of winning because, in Civ, the absolute joy is seeing how you get from 1 settler and 1 warrior to this super advanced death-bot-producing nation. It isn’t just seeing the victory screen because if that were the case, I wouldn’t have been playing Civ at all2.

An example I have from CPL (Civilizations Player League) is that most of the multiplayer ranked matches don’t actually end in a win screen for a specific player. Instead, it is played until they get to a game state where everyone is satisfied, and then the score gets tallied.

Competition: The warmongering path of beating everyone around you. I put this underachievement because competition is the more negative framing of interaction in Civ, but really, most FFA multiplayer lobbies are going for the achievement.

You can play the game in a “have to beat everyone mindset,” and it is an incentive. However, the “stronger” way of playing and actually achieving competition is seeing how you can mutually benefit others through trade and geopolitical agreements.

Immersion: If you want to experience what it was like for Teddy Roosevelt to build America starting from ancient times, then look no further because you can do that here in Civ. Besides the ability to play leaders, the game itself has many options to achieve “realism,” like environmental effects and the different historically accurate routes to victory, such as nuking the world as Gandhi.

Social Interaction: Some enjoy queuing up a Civ game by themselves against AI and playing it through. I am not one of them. Whenever I play Civ, it is usually in a lobby with other people or when I catch up with my friends on Discord. Given that case, I don’t necessarily play to win but play for whichever win condition I think will be the most fun for everyone. That win condition basically involves playing towards what my ruler is designed towards and committing hard, which also makes it easier to talk while doing so.

Conclusion

Turn-based Games are complex. Before my first couple of games and tutorials, I was not thinking about how to pump out settlers in the early games. But alas, I am now correctly scouting for the city-state and doing the trade-off calculation for my culture tempo in relation to my game plan. I am even placing down the markers to plan where my districts should be placed so they have the maximum local tile bonuses. It is a dark, dark path to enjoying the game.

Besides the game itself, it actually made me reflect a lot on the nature of games and simulation. My major, besides Computer Science, is Global Development Studies, which talks about economic and political systems through case studies. Civ, then, is interesting as a simulation. The ability to set the board and give agency to players in furthering the state can be an interesting way to study systems.

Good game, should play 10/10.

If you want to play the game: https://civilization.2k.com/


  1. It was kind of awkward thinking of specifically player mechanics because for Turn-based Games you are just interacting w/ the main game mechanics. There isn’t a single “body” to control, rather a system. ↩

  2. Honestly, I have not completed 80% of my games. ↩