Sid Meier's Civilization VI News

Civ 6 New Frontier Pass review - the good, the bad, and the tile yields

Like many fans of 4X game Civilization VI, I was a little conflicted when I heard that Firaxis was going down the season pass route for the latest run of Civ 6 DLC. Both Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm are solid expansions and it was clear that Civilization VI was finally hitting its own golden age like Civilization V did before it.

But the allure of new content - including new civs and new special game modes - was too good to pass up, and I purchased the New Frontier Pass the moment it was available because I felt that Civilization VI could only get better. Now that the dust has settled and we get to look back through the the New Frontier Pass, was it worth it?

How many golden ages shone brighter, how many dark ages stifled excitement? Most importantly, was it worth paying the equivalent of a full expansion for (barring minor additions) six new game modes, eight new civilizations, and nine new leaders?

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Civ 6 players can't agree on what they want from the upcoming balance patch

Civilization VI is awaiting one final free update as part of the New Frontier Pass. The April balance patch is going to be huge, tweaking up to two-thirds of all 50 civilisations currently in the strategy game and has been described as the "biggest community event ever". But what do players actually want from this patch?

Lots of things, it turns out. Just looking at Civ 6 civs alone, there is limited consensus as to who exactly needs tweaking, and ideas for non-civ related fixes are wide-ranging. For the purposes of this discussion we've been reading through various threads across key community hubs, specifically CivFantatics.com and the r/Civ subreddit.

This CivFanatics forum thread has been running since the balance patch was first announced back in late January, but there have been other discussions since. There are a few Reddit threads that have also sparked discussions about the April patch. Most notably, this thread where a user offers up a tier list highlights the lack of consensus amongst the community, as comments debate the merits of the proposed list.

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Civ 6's Portugal can generate a disgusting amount of gold, it seems

At its core, Civilization VI is a game about numbers. A unit's battle strength versus another unit, how many cities you have, the potential tile yields of any given hex. We like numbers, especially high numbers, and if this past year has proven anything, it's that Civ 6 likes them too.

Last week saw the release of the final premium add-on in the strategy game's New Frontier Pass - a year-long experiment that involves an alternating schedule of paid micro-expansions, and free updates. Among other things, the final pack introduced the 50th new civilisation into Civ 6 - Portugal. Led by Joao III, Portugal is a civilisation themed around maritime trade and exploration. In short, they like money. Lots of money.

Ridiculous Civ 6 tile yields is something we've looked at before, but now we're here to tell you about ungodly amounts of gold generation. Some of it does come from tiles, but Portugal is also able to create more international trade routes than any other civ, and get bonus gold from those routes. If you start adding in various multipliers from pre-existing systems, and even the recently added 'corporations and monopolies' game mode, things start to get out of hand.

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Can Civ 6's New Frontier Pass replace traditional expansions?

Recently, we were lucky enough to talk to two leading figures on Firaxis' Civilization VI development team - lead designer Anton Strenger and associate producer Kevin Schultz. You may have read how the recent New Frontier Pass season of micro-expansions has led to some of the highest player engagement since launch.

Or perhaps you read about the duo teasing how big April's free content patch will be, considering it's going to rebalance around two-thirds of all 50 of Civ 6's civilisations. Regardless, we generally got the impression that the pair were quite satisfied with how the New Frontier Pass had been received, and about how it worked as a method of delivering new content for the game as it matured.

It's a method that has its advantages and disadvantages, however, and after talking to Strenger it became apparent that doing regular season passes probably couldn't replace the need for a more traditional expansion. "I think it depends what you're going for," he said. "One of the advantages that I would put in the column of expansions is that you have more time to embed systems at a deeper level that touch all sorts of different elements of the game."

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Sid Meier's Civilization VI has finished the New Frontier Pass with a Portugal DLC

The sixth and final DLC pack is out as part of the New Frontier Pass with a Portugal DLC for Sid Meier’s Civilization VI.

Read the full article here: https://www.gamingonlinux.com/2021/03/sid-meiers-civilization-vi-has-finished-the-new-frontier-pass-with-a-portugal-dlc