Note: All stock game expansions released as of the publication of this review were factored in for the technical and moral scores, based on the PC version.


By the time a game hits its sixth game in a series, it usually has a firm idea of what it has done well and starts to experiment with the formula to keep it fresh. By that standard Civilization VI, while keeping the much-refined gameplay from its predecessor, introduces some new takes on its own gameplay to provide new ways to keep its civilization-building interesting, and for the most part, does so in a satisfying way.

Sid Meier's Civilization VI is the latest in its series as a 4X genre title (an acronym for eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate), a subgenre of the simulation genre typically involving the simulation of cultures and leadership of the same. Taking control of a real-world civilization, whether current or defunct, the player must help it prosper and flourish. These civilization choices can range from the United States, various Indian tribes such as the Cree, states like Eurasian Georgia, ancient cultures like Qin Empire China, the Ethiopians, and so on.

Like in all Civilization games, it takes place in a turn-based game format, where you and other players (AI or human) must try to make it to the win conditions decided before the start of the game with their chosen civilization. All players must build cities, wage war, conduct trade, explore, and otherwise do whatever is necessary to make their civilization prosper until the game tallies up the score or other conditions to decide the winner. While it can be played in a single-player, there is an online mode, both local and global online play is supported. In either event, the same basic mechanics apply.

The big changes to the stock Civilization formula are the district system. To prevent the player from gaming the reduced cost of building a few large cities over several smaller ones like in prior games (though Civilization V did start this trend by limiting some to certain terrain), this game forces the player to build specialized districts in each city, each of which can hold only so many buildings of any type, including World Wonders. The "Rise and Fall" expansion adds several features to diversify civilization development, especially Golden Ages and Dark Ages, which can have varying effects on your game progress. "Gathering Storm" introduces the concept of climate change, especially the danger of occasional disasters causing damage to cities and surrounding land due to topological and geographic circumstances like floods, volcanic eruptions, and global warming, adding a further long-term strategic element to civilization development. Like in Civilization V, you can choose to enable or disable the new expansion rules for either Rise and Fall, Gathering Storm, or both.

Graphically, while retaining many of the more realistic colors and textures from Civilization V, especially for the playable maps, some of the more cartoonish aspects of Civilization IV are reintroduced. The world leader animated meeting screens now resemble a mix of animated intros like Civilization V with the cartoony look of Civilization IV. I favored the more realistic style of Civilization V, where all world leaders were drawn and animated as realistically as possible, but I do admit the more cartoonish look has its own charms.

The sound and music of Civilization VI follows in Civilization V's footsteps, meaning the sounds and music use a variety of instruments, with the music for each civilization being inspired by the musical styles of their place of origin. Again, world leaders are voiced, either in their native tongue or the closest modern equivalent for the defunct civilizations that have no modern counterpart.

The game is controlled primarily by a mouse and keyboard. It can be played on some tablet devices, but I do not have one, so I was not able to test this. The controls are quite responsive and easy to learn, so I can say at least the default controls work well. There is no controller support, though it can be played on the Steam Deck's controller settings. Admittedly, it still does work better with a real mouse even then.

The stability for this game is quite good, at least for stock content and official expansions. It runs natively on Windows, macOS, and Linux. It is marked as Playable for Steam Deck, with some features possibly needing manual invoking of the keyboard or the addition of mouse control for easier access to the interface (a USB-C hub like the official Steam Dock is more than acceptable for the latter). Also, some text may be too small to read, though with some tweaking of the resolution settings this problem can be alleviated. Modded content that is not officially supported may affect stability, and online functionality may also have an effect, particularly on the Steam Deck, so this needs to be bore in mind.

Morally, Civilization VI has some concerning content, albeit much of it is optional.

Violence is limited to bloodless and goreless, turn-based RPG style "give orders and watch it happen" combat between animated figures. Remains disappear immediately in defeat. Games can be customized before enforcing a permanent state of peace to avoid combat if the player so desires.

The language is pretty clean. The worst that can be heard is some religious quotations with d*mn or h*ll in them, nigh all of them from appropriate religious sources in their proper contexts. Sexual content is also restricted mainly to certain art displays from the Renaissance Era when unlocking certain cultural wonders, like "The Birth of Venus" by Botticelli, which contain artistic nudity that can be found in textbooks and is not illegal for display in public areas like museums. The animated scenes speaking to world leaders are generally clean, with clothing appropriate to their position that is period accurate, and the cartoonish art style for these sequences lends against sexualized depictions.

Religion in the Civilization games is portrayed more for its historical and sociological aspects than involving any explicit display of practices, so all religions are effectively generic gameplay modifiers for cultural and other bonuses, and can even (at least by the player) be assigned custom names and symbols to avoid referencing real-world faiths. They do have a system for selecting Pantheon beliefs, essentially proto-religion beliefs that historically formed before the creation of organized faiths, and these do reference some pagan practices. Worth noting this is historically accurate, it is even referenced in the early parts of the Bible as having existed. The religion mechanic can be disabled or simply can be ignored by the player, should they so choose as well. Worth noting even with this disabled, some world leaders will still give generic comments if it is period accurate for them to religious concepts. For example, the Viking leader will reference the einherjar of Wodanism and Salah al-Din (historically a Kurdish Muslim leader most known for his role in the Crusades) will often end good relations with the player wishing the blessings of Allah (which is essentially the Islamic name for God) on you, but that's all. Finally, some game modifiers are entirely optional, like a zombie apocalypse mode where all players must fend off the undead every so often or a secret societies mode with different ones referencing pseudo-occultist practices that can change up the gameplay. They keep vague the nature of the zombies (sci-fi or magic, it's not clear) and the societies that can aid and oppose the player, and these features remain entirely optional.

Morally and ethically, like all Civilization games, the player must assume the role of leader of their civilization and help it grow and prosper. This can be accomplished while practicing honorable diplomatic relations and resorting to war strictly in self-defense, or the player can be deceitful in diplomatic situations and wage wars of conquest. Both extremes or anything in between are entirely up to the player.

Overall, I found Civilization VI not as simple to get into as Civilization V in some ways, but it has its own charms and added subsystems that make it an interesting entry into the series well worth the money for fans of the series and 4X games in general. Like the other games in the series, it also has value as an educational game. It's technically sound and runs well provided the requirements are met or exceeded, and I highly recommend buying it when on sale with as much content bundled as possible.