Civilization 6 is the ultimate digital board game. More than ever in the series, the board the world is the soul of every opportunity and challenge. As usual for Civ, I build empires, compete for a set of victory conditions, and fend off warmongering leaders like that scoundrel Peter the Great. But I m also playing for, with, and against the board. Forests and deserts and resource-rich tundras each influence the flow of my civilization, granting us boons and burdening us with lasting weaknesses. Bands of barbarians put my farms in crisis, but also open up opportunities to speed the development of my military techs. The glorious, challenging dynamics that emerge from Civ 6 s redesigned maps left me with no question that the storied series has crowned a new king.

While Civ 6 is probably the most transformative step forward for the series, its changes shouldn t trip up longtime players too much. There s definitely a learning curve to overcome, but much of what you need to be to be victorious isn t necessary when you start exploring. You still settle cities, develop tiles, train military units, wage turn-based warfare, and conduct diplomacy. It mirrored my memories of past Civs closely enough that hints from the in-game adviser were all I needed to course-correct when something I hadn t seen before came my way.

But there are so many of these new features that it could feel overwhelming at times. The depth and variety of systems resembles a Civ game that s already had two or three expansions added on top from the new Districts that perform specific tasks and spread my cities out into an often messy but somehow pleasing sprawl, to a whole separate 'tech' tree for civic and cultural progress that ties into a sort of collectible card game for mixing policy bonuses to build a unique government. The feature richness averts the common problem with strategy games on day one where I feel I m being sold a platform on which a great game will eventually be built. But I also worry that Firaxis may have sailed a bit beyond the calm waters of accessibility for more casual strategy fans, and any expansions that add major features or new systems could heighten the barrier to newcomers.

Hexistential realities

What binds everything together, though, is the map. I have reservations about the art style I preferred the pseudo-realism of Civ 5, and some of the Civ 6 military units in particular look goofy enough to have fallen out of a freemium mobile game. But the map itself, and its cities, iron mines, and festival squares, is more alive than ever. I was delighted, for example, to discover that I really never needed to pull up an overlay to see which tiles were being worked, because the models and animations do that job for me at a glance.

Unworked fields lie barren, and I could tell how many citizen slots in my commercial district were taken up by the level of bustle occupying its streets. It s a pretty brilliant way of keeping you engrossed and focused on what matters. The tech trees and the leader interaction screen are the only parts of the UI that hide my soaring cities from my view. The latter of the two involves fully animated, 3D representations of everyone from Montezuma to that jerk Peter the Great who thinks his mustache and his science bonus from tundra tiles are so cool, even though they re not and I ve had bombers in range of his second largest city since the Atomic Age, ready to wipe that stupid grin off his face. They re all very well voice-acted, with the return of native language dialogue from Civ 5.

Spending a lot of time staring at hills, valleys, and potential pyramid locations isn t just enjoyable and informative, however. It s critical to getting the most out of the game. Terrain and tile types have always been a factor in Civ, but they re at the heart of nearly everything in Civ 6. With districts and wonders each taking up a whole tile, and being the most powerful tools I had to catapult myself toward victory, city planning became a huge focus of my every move. When I unlocked the ability to build a Holy Site, I had to ask myself if I wanted to nestle it in the middle of all those forested hills to gain bonus faith from the adjacent, natural splendor. If I did, I d miss out on the chance to clear out all the trees later on, plop down an industrial district surrounded with mines, and enjoy a huge boost to my production.

If you build it… (it might be wrong) 

There was never a time that I felt I could fill every tile around me with the most obviously correct district or improvement and call it a day. The need for foresight is unending. There are always sacrifices to make, like when I fell behind in culture because my only eligible tile for a theater square was the one I d been saving to build a rocket launch site to clench a science victory. It s a fantastic, richly realized way of forcing difficult decisions at every bend in the river and making sure no two cities you build will ever look or feel the same. It feels like a revelation for someone who s been playing 4X games since before I could see over a car dashboard. The constant planning and trade-offs seem like how this series was always supposed to work, and they inject a layer of variety that made the pull of Just one more turn even stronger than ever.

There s a level of trial and error in this that caused me some legitimate frustration in my first few races to the space age. When everything is fresh and new, you might not realize that you re plopping down a university campus in a place you should have waited to build a neighborhood several centuries later. One late game civic (the cultural equivalent of a tech) unlocks the ability to build National Parks, granting a massive boost to culture but unless you ve been planning where it s going to go from 4000 BC, chances are you ve already destroyed all of the pristine nature required to set one up.

I longed for some kind of city planning utility, where I could mock up where everything was going to go once I d unlocked all the districts and improvements, especially considering some of them get adjacency bonuses for being next to each other as opposed to specific terrain features. If you like to play efficiently, just be aware that you re going to be slapping yourself that you dumped out such a haphazard monument to mediocrity until you have a few campaigns under your belt and understand where to leave or create an ideal space for something important and have the patience to do so.

Worlds of inspiration

The other way the map has become a much more important part of Civ 6 is in how it ties into the tech and civics tree. Every technology and civic has an associated mini objective that will trigger a Eureka moment and pay off half the cost immediately. Founding a city next to an ocean tile sped up my progress toward Sailing. Building three industrial districts with factories jumped me ahead in my quest to embrace communism (Viva la Economic Policy Slots!) These are often tied to having room for specific districts, access to specific resources, or contact with other civilizations. Where I spawned on each map had a significant effect on which techs I could get quickly, and thus which ones I tended to go for first. It also really helps alleviate the feeling of spending several turns waiting for a building or a unit to finish, since I could always be pursuing a Eureka objective for a tech I had my eye on.

It s not all a reinvented wheel, though. The Civ staples of war and diplomacy have returned recognizable, but honed to the sharpest edge we ve ever seen on them. I particularly enjoyed the way AI leaders are now given agendas (one public, and one that must be uncovered through espionage, building a positive relationship, or observing context) that overtly tell you what they like and don t like, and make it theoretically possible to stay on everyone s good side through the whole game if you re willing to jump through a lot of hoops. Frederick Barbarossa of Germany, for instance, wants to kill all city states and hates anyone who so much as lets them borrow a cup of sugar. If you re going for a very pacifist run, you can let that agenda guide your gameplay (ignoring city-states and the benefits courting them can provide), and chances are you won t have pretzel-scented warriors knocking down your door.

In the event that hostilities do break out, Civ 6 has split the difference between 5 s one unit per tile and 4 s Clash of the Doomstacks to reach a happy middle. Support units like medics and Great Generals can attach to and occupy the same tile as a regular combat unit like a pikeman. In the mid and late game, you also gain the ability to combine two combat units into a Corps, and later you can add a third to make an Army, which is are more powerful versions of that unit that only take up a single tile. This adds some new layers and tactics to a model of warfare that could get predictable and repetitive in Civ 5.

Civ's score breathes life into all these conflicts and conferences. Christopher Tin s new main theme, 'Sogno di Volare,' is just as sweeping, catchy, and beautiful as 'Baba Yetu.' I predict it will join his previous Civ effort in the pantheon of the greatest pieces of music written for a videogame, though I suspect it won t spawn as many memes if only because it s more difficult to imitate its soaring, Italian cathedral choir chorus without sounding like an asthmatic screech owl. The real magic happens past the menu screen, however, where each and every civ has a main theme that grows more complex and epic as you progress through the ages. England, for example, begins with a simple, inspirational, and somewhat haunting flute rendition of the medieval folk ballad Scarborough Fair. By the Modern Age, it has exploded into an orchestral and choral celebration of all things English that made me want to sail a ship of the line made of crumpets through the walls of a Spanish fort and unleash the redcoats to toss scalding tea into the faces of their enemies.

When I looked down upon everything I d built as my Mars colonists blasted off to barely snatch victory away from Peter and his doubtlessly mustachioed cronies, every tile struck me with a sense of history. The sprawl of the Dehli-Calcutta metroplex reflected moments from the windows of its skyscrapers. There was the little tentacle I d made by purchasing tiles to get access to coal. There was the 3000-year old farmland I d had to bulldoze to place an industrial-era wonder. And just beside where our first settler had spawned, at the foot of the soaring peaks that had protected us from marauding armies for generations, was the new growth forest I d planted on the site of a former lumber mill to have enough uninterrupted nature for a National Park. For each valley and steppe and oasis, I could tell you why I d developed it the way I did much more meaningfully than Because hills are a good place for mines. As the board shaped my empire, and I shaped it, the history of my civilization and my decisions accumulated and followed me right up to the threshold of the stars. And that, more than anything, is why I ll never need another Civ game in my life besides this one.

We've seen some pretty slimy pre-order incentives in recent years, and even the least offensive methods have basically become commonplace for big budget games. Deus Ex: Mankind Divided's now infamous "Augment your Pre-order" campaign was so egregious it had to be scrapped entirely. The new trend: Gears of War 4 offered exclusive skins and even access to the game four days early if you ponied up $40 more for the special edition, and Battlefield 1's "Early Enlister Edition" offers items skins and access to the game three days early for a $20 higher price tag.

So in a world where pre-order incentives can sometimes feel exploitative, tempting gamers to buy before we even know if the game is any good, Civilization 6's pre-order bonus stands out as a surprisingly decent compromise. The Aztecs a civ that's been in the base version of every game in the main series will be exclusive to those who pre-order Civ 6, but only for 90 days. Approximately three months after release, Montezuma and the Aztec people will become free DLC, essentially being incorporated into the base game at no cost.

Huh. So it's a pre-order exclusive, and sort of gated day-one DLC, but it will eventually be available to everyone. And not just available, but completely free. That seems OK? It's certainly not an appealing idea to pitch to those who are deadset against pre-ordering, but it's not nearly as offensive as the pre-order schemes we've seen before it, where the Aztecs would eventually become available to purchase. And it's certainly better than if pre-ordering was the only way to get them.

This seems like 2K and Firaxis attempting to have their cake and eat it too trying to incentive pre-orders while also placating those who would condemn any sort of exclusive content gated behind doing so. The only difference in content between pre-ordering or not is how much patience you have to only play the 19 other leaders Civ 6 has to offer for the next 90 days. But for people who've grown attached to the Aztec civ and were understandably expecting them in the base game, I get how this could be frustrating, too.

It's a hard balance to find. We almost always recommend against pre-ordering especially since games on Steam often drop to half price within seven months and it's very easy for day-one DLC, loot boxes, and other microtransactions to feel exploitative. But at the same time, publishers of big games are desperate to make up for their massive budgets, and game prices have stayed at $60 since 2005. We have to recognize that games are expensive to make while still calling out scuzzy pre-order incentives and microtransactions when we see them.

And if pre-order incentives must be a necessary evil, I hope to see more games handle them in a similar manner to Civ. Adding gated pre-order content is almost never a player-first decision it's a marketing tool used to boost pre-release sales but this is probably one of the least-bad ways you can do it. And while we've really enjoyed most of the changes in Civ 6 so far (especially its music) it's always prudent to patiently wait for reviews when it comes to spending your hard-earned cash on a game. Unfortunately, that patience also has to extend 90 days past launch for Aztec fans.

When you do start playing, be sure to check out our Civ 6 guide, and our breakdown for each of Civ 6's leaders and their unique stuff.

The Civilization 6 launch trailer is a good one. It's inspirational without being overbearing, efficiently covers the game's millennia-spanning breadth, features the new theme song, "Sogno di Volare," from Grammy-winning "Baba Yetu" composer Christopher Tin, and includes enough Sean Bean deaths to cover a solid decade's worth of Hollywood blockbusters.

He's not actually shown meeting an untimely end at any point during the trailer, but that trip off the edge of the cliff doesn't look like it's going to end well, and that machine-gun fire into the cockpit of his Spitfire is pretty ominous too. And then there's that photo and face at the end, as humankind indulges its drive to "push itself toward the horizon." Yet even though Sean may die, the spirit of Sean lives on. The whole thing kinda gets me right here, y'know?

Yup, that's a good trailer. The game seems to be shaping up pretty well too: We've got a breakdown of the five biggest changes from Civ 5 to Civ 6, info on all the Civ 6 leaders, and a few things you might want to know before you start playing. Civilization 6 preloading has begun on Steam, and it will unlock on October 21 at the times listed below.