Sid Meier's Civilization VI News

This Civ 6 modder has made games last much, much longer

If 'one more turn' is good, then hundreds more turns is better, right? Well, if you're left wishing your Civilization VI games lasted longer, Civ Reimagined 6.9 is the Civ 6 mod for you. It extends the vanilla game's playtime by expanding on each historical era, and it packs loads of new tech and mechanical tweaks into the 4X game to make sure you can settle in for the long haul each time you fire up a new game.

Civ Reimagined incorporates a few pre-existing mods, including elements of Steel and Thunder and Warfare Expanded - so you'll need to install those mods in order to run this one. Modder wbwillis has reworked the entire Civ 6 tech tree in order to better incorporate that new units added by KrumStrashni and Kizkiyahu in the Warfare expanded mod series. This mod adds 120 new techs, 50 new buildings, 45 new civics, and 65 new policy cards.

Wbwillis explains that the new policy cards, for example, are designed to make for tougher decisions. Instead of only providing benefits to your nation, each one also includes downsides as well. Civ Reimagined also adds penalties for growth that prevent nations from steamrolling - as you expand, maintenance costs will increase and you'll run into negative bonuses for moving into new eras.

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Prolific Civ 6 modder Sukritact has filled the oceans with life

Ahh, the sea. Yup, there it is, that's definitely the sea. Lots of water in the sea, isn't there? There's one major problem with the ocean in granddaddy 4X game Civilization VI, though - it's a bit dull. One of Civilization's most popular modders has decided its oceans needed a bit of a glow-up, and his latest mod does just that.

Sukritact's Oceans mod adds enough new resources and features to the strategy game that it could be considered a whole new game mode. Install it, and you'll find brand new coastal luxuries, which are different for each continent on the map. The oceans contain teeming kelp forests, which can speed up growth but will slow down your ships.

You'll also be able to exploit new resources, including seals, squid, and coral, straight from the ocean. Caviar, a new luxury resource, adds +3 gold and will spawn (literally!) in lakes. New bonus resource squid provide +1 food, +1 gold, and will spawn on coastlines, in kelp, or reefs.

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Civilization 6's AI has been going mad for science thanks to a few lines of code

Civilization 6 players have been noticing something odd with AI civs ever since the big April balance patch, which capped off the year-long New Frontier season pass of micro-expansions and free updates. For the past few months, the AI has been going gaga over science, to the exclusion of all other concerns.

I mean, who needs wealth, public health, or even a functioning military when you can just science your way out of a problem, right? One enterprising member of the community on CivFanatics decided to go investigate, and discovered that a few lines of code had been changed in the Victories.xml file. You can also read a summary on this thread over on r/civ, which goes into more detail as to why some players feel this is a problem.

Two of the code changes are to do with favoured districts, but the ring-leader of this mad science rush is a line that essentially increases the internal value of science yields by 150%. This means that all AI civs will prioritise science generation over other concerns pretty much from the start of the game, and this bias remains in place until the end.

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This Civilization VI mod simplifies trade with "quick deals"

Sooner or later in any game of Civilization VI, you're going to run into issues that have to do with having too much or too little of something. That's where trade comes in, but that means calling all the 4X game's rival leaders up and finding out what kinds of prices they're willing to offer you. With the Quick Deals mod, you can look at all available trade options in a single panel and select the ones that are most advantageous with a single click.

Quick Deals by user wltk puts all your potential trade deals in a single menu panel, which is an elegant way to save time and effort on the part of the player. You'll see new buttons on the main screen that take you to the panel, and they even have notification badges that pop up to let you know about any new potential deals that have popped up.

Pull up the Quick Deals menu, and you'll see options for sale and purchase. The sale screen lists the resources and great works you have available to sell, as well as the leaders who are willing to make offers on those goods. The purchase screen shows you what leaders are offering as well as their minimum price. You simply click 'accept deal' to establish the trade agreement.

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This Civilization fan played their first Deity game in 20 years - and won

Different strategy games approach the concept of 'difficulty' in different ways, but most, like 4X game Civilization VI, use the tried and tested method of different settings. As we highlighted in a recent exploration of Civilization's AI, the highest difficulty setting - Deity - comes with some major stat buffs for computer opponents, as well as boosted starting conditions.

It means you really have to play your cards right from the off, and in terms of a challenge it can put off even the most hardy of fans. Reddit user Open_Communication16 has been playing Civilization games since 1993 (they played the original Civilization game on the SNES, of all things), and only recently tried out Deity difficulty, and won, if this screengrab is anything to go by.

They described their winning strategy as, "Pick a neighbouring civ and take their cities, this is better than settling your own cities. Use horsemen and archers before walls are up. I sent all luxury bonuses to the other civs as gifts so they wouldn't denounce or attack me. Eventually they liked me enough to become friends and eventually allies."

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