Sid Meier's Civilization VI News

What if: strategy games like Civilization 6 had proper co-op?

Strategy games used to be on the frontline of multiplayer PC gaming. Way back in 1995, CivNet laid the foundations for multiplayer in Civilization, which remain mostly unchanged even to this day, while the original Command & Conquer came with two copies of the game to facilitate LAN play. These series have always let you form alliances, but what if they let you have multiple players controlling the exact same team.

Just picture it: a married couple squabbling over childrens' claims in Crusader Kings 3; players controlling different states or regions within a single empire in Civilization; or splitting players into agricultural, construction, and military duties in Age of Empires. This kind of untethered, unguided co-op play would force players to constantly communicate and self-manage - a bit like Overcooked, but instead of juggling tomatoes and dirty dishes you're dealing with entire empires.

The game that's recently introduced me to the joys - and indeed the frustrations - of same-team multiplayer is Rimworld, or more specifically Zetrith's multiplayer mod for it. The premise is simple: every player has equal control over the colony, and you just see the faded mouse cursors of other players moving around the screen. Crucially, there's nothing in the UI to indicate what other players are doing, which means you'll need to talk constantly to stay in sync and not tread on each other's toes.

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A Civilization 6 fan has ranked leaders based on how friendly they are

It's a hard truth, but not all Civilization 6 civs and leaders are created equal. You have your obvious top-tier choices in Korea for science victories, or Shaka - leader of the Zulu - for domination victories. If you're playing multiplayer, then civs such as Japan, Maya, and Rome are considered some of the best the 4X game has to offer.

There are plenty of different criteria you could use to create a ranking list - and that's even before we acknowledge the impact of personal bias - but Civ 6 fan GimikkuPappeto from the Civ subreddit has decided to rank them based on how friendly they are during games. Only two are ranked top tier in the 'eternal friends' category: Gilgamesh, who leads the Sumerians, and Poundmaker, leader of the Cree civilisation in Civ 6.

Brazil's Pedro II and Australia's John Curtin are the two bottom-tier civ 6 leaders, in the 'eternal archnemesis' category. The remaining 50 leaders are split between five other tier ranks, with a small majority placed in positive tiers versus negative ones. While this tier list does include alternative leader options, it doesn't include the alternate personas for Teddy Roosevelt and Catherine de Medici.

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Six things Civilization fans need to know about Humankind

It took a bit longer than expected, but Humankind is finally here. Amplitude and Sega's new 4X game wants Civilization's crown, and they're making a serious attempt at ousting Firaxis from its throne - which you can read about in our Humankind review.

Having made a historical strategy game designed to challenge Firaxis's titan, Amplitude naturally wants to try and attract Civilization fans. There are a lot of similarities between Civ and Humankind, but also plenty of key differences as well that may confuse, upset, or otherwise give pause for thought if you've just wrapped up a game of Civ VI and have decided to take Humankind for a spin.

We're not going to get into the deep dark niche corners of, say, how Humankind approaches linking cities up by rail, or that 'worker' units aren't really a thing. And we definitely don't want to talk about sea crossings right now. But we have compiled a list of six key differences every Civilization fan should know about Humankind. Try not to be alarmed by all the tooltips.

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Civilization fans vote on their least favourite victory type

As of Civilization VI there are now six different ways to win a match in the popular strategy game; domination is the classic, but you also have score, science, culture, diplomatic, and religious victories. Everyone has their favourite victory type, and most Civ 6 civs will lean into one or two of these playstyles, but what about player's least favourites?

Civilization fans on the r/civ subreddit have been voting on their least favoured victory condition. At the time of writing (with the poll at over 4,000 total votes), the religious victory currently stands as the one everyone dislikes the most with over 1,000 votes. Diplomatic and score essentially tie for second place, domination is third, and then culture and science bring up the rear.

While the poll's original poster - user gmxsnip3r - dislikes domination the most, user Playerjjjj gives a more in-depth reasoning as to why they voted religious: "It's just. so. damn. tedious. Unless you choose missionary zeal as one of your beliefs your inevitable swarm of apostles will be an absolute nightmare to corral," they explain. "The only somewhat interesting thing you can do with religion is manipulating diplomatic visibility to gain combat bonuses."

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From Civilization to Stellaris, how strategy games struggle against player power

It's safe to say that the endgame is the hardest part to get right in strategy games, as it's an area full of design contradictions. As Civilization VI's lead designer Ed Beach points out, "you want to reward players who are making smart decisions during their course of play," but at the same time, Civilization (and plenty of other 4X games) suffer a common complaint: those smart decisions usually result in the player 'snowballing', and becoming so strong that they're able to defeat almost any AI opponent.

There are other issues as well. Sometimes, if an AI faction is left in isolation to snowball themselves, they can become too powerful for the player to deal with once encountered. More often than not, though, human ingenuity and the inherently exploitable nature of strategy games means that challenging the player into the endgame, in a fair and meaningful way, is the true final boss for designers in this genre.

The Civilization series has tried to solve this problem through asymmetric victory conditions. In Civilization VI, most civs are able to flex into a second victory type in case they get muscled out of plan A. "To that end," Beach explains, "you see that as you come to the end of our technology and culture trees, the options present in the Future Era are very carefully designed to power you towards a specific victory."

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