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.

Although sort of teased by Civilization 6 lead designer Ed Beach a while back, it has now been officially confirmed that Firaxis' incoming 4X strategy game will allow multiple leaders to represent the same civilizations.

Which means players can take different civs in different directions manipulating each leader's strengths as they see fit. As an alternative to Pericles, Gorgo will also vouch for Greece, offering players a distinctly different playstyle to her compatriot.

"As with playing Greece under Pericles, you're going to want to focus on Greece's strong culture game," notes the following trailer. "Gorgo allows you to play more aggressively... [and] when you go to war, you're going to want to completely destroy your enemy's army in order to use her ability to its utmost."

Success will in turn hinge upon your understanding of when to pursue war and when to ascertain peace, yet it seems Gorgo is more inclined to chase the former, should this character spotlight be anything to go by:

As Gorgo, your capital city is Sparta as opposed to Pericles' Athens, while her unique ability is the culture boost-focused Thermopylae. With Your Shield or On It marks her leader agenda which in essence means she can't give up items during peace deals.

Civilization 6 is due next Friday, October 21 tell us which alternative leaders you'd like to see added in the comments below. In unrelated Civ 6 news, this interview with composer Christopher Tin is pretty interesting.

Going from Civ 4 to Civ 5 was probably the biggest step out of the comfy, immortal dictator shoes Sid Meier s flagship series had ever taken, but Civ 5 to Civ 6 is an even more significant transformation. So whether you re totally new to this world domination thing or a veteran of weathering Gandhi s aggressive nuclear policy along with battling the rest of Civ 6 s leaders it s wise to seek some understanding of the basics. There are some tricky concepts to come to terms with a couple layers under what Sean Bean will tell you in the tech pop-ups. And it s Sean Bean, so you never know when he might get impaled or immolated, leaving us to navigate the winds of time on our own.

City-plan ahead

There s really no way for a new player to visualize what an ideal city layout is going to look like in the modern era when your stone age tribe has just wandered out of the woods and decided that maybe houses would be a good idea for keeping the tigers away. Terrain and districts are massively important, and just about everything can gain some kind of adjacency bonus for being built next to certain other things.

Your first few campaigns almost have to be trial and error and that s okay! Just take note of what you ran out of room for, or how you screwed yourself out of some bonuses to your commercial hub by filling all the land next to that river with farms. Eventually, you should strive to be able to look at a newly-settled city and have an idea of where everything is going to go centuries down the road. Don t ever hesitate to leave some tiles blank, saving a spot for a late-game district or wonder that will pay back your patience manyfold.

Barbarians have gotten a lot smarter

You know that scene in Jurassic Park where they realize the velociraptors have figured out how to open doors? My first couple encounters with Civ 6 s barbarians were a bit like that. The first barbarian unit you see is probably going to be a scout. And guess what? He s coming to scope out your city and determine if it s weak enough to attack. Not only that, but when his friends do arrive, they re likely to have an intelligent unit composition and an understanding of the terrain similar to a human player.

City centers can t attack in Civ 6 until walls have been built, so your first couple dozen turns can really put you at the mercy of the barbarians. Don t wander off too far with your first warrior. I also recommend building at least one more warrior and a slinger very early on before you even make a second settler. It s worth it. On the bright side, barbarians are also now smart enough to retreat and lick their wounds if they know they ve been beaten. So you only really need to kill a little more than half of their raiding party to buy yourself a respite.

Spread your Traders around to build road networks

Since trade routes now automatically generate roads between cities (and this is, in fact, the main way of building roads), you re going to want to keep re-basing your traders every time their mission expires to add another link to your network until all the cities of your empire are connected. Roads are more important than ever due to the harsh terrain movement changes I discussed with Tom. They can easily be the difference between being able to reinforce a city that's under siege, and allowing it to fall to friggin Saladin and his friggin auto-heal overpowered stupid-face Mamluks.

Also, don t forget to protect your traders passing through the fog of war! I lost two of them to a barbarian scout with one health that I let live after the destruction of his village, thinking he wasn t worth chasing and wouldn t be a threat anymore. He apparently learned kung fu and took vengeance for his ancestors, costing me a lot of money, and I wasn t too happy about it.

Pay attention to AI agendas, but don’t let them ruin your fun

Civ 6 has made interacting with AI leaders better than ever with the introduction of agendas. You ll know from the second you meet one of them what you can be doing to keep them happy or tick them off. Establishing diplomatic ties with everybody is in your best interest, as it will allow you to reveal their hidden agenda (though you can often get a feel for this by observing which of your actions they comment on positively or negatively), and specific details about why they love/hate/don t even care about you.

On the other side of that coin, you shouldn t fall into the trap of letting the AI agendas ruin your fun. If Teddy or Pericles are getting uppity that you re courting that city-state you need for your culture victory, guess what? They can go shove it. You live on this board too, and you shouldn t let the AI leaders personalities bully you out of playing the way you want to. If it comes to war, then so be it. Just figure out who you re pretty sure you re not going to get along with and be prepared to kick them in the teeth when they come knocking. (It shouldn t be too difficult. Teddy has pretty big teeth.)

Read the tech and civics trees carefully

The tech tree, and especially the civics tree, can sometimes seem uninspiring from a cursory glance. "Oh, great, I can choose from two new Diplomacy cards or two new Economic cards that I m not going to use." But wait! Hover over each of those civics and you ll find that many of them unlock some sort of new ability. For example, the very early civic Military Tradition unlocks flanking and adjacency bonuses for your units that were standard in past Civ games. Later ones will unlock the ability to combine land units into Corps and Armies, and naval units into Fleets and Armadas.

Also pay attention to the fact that unlocking certain civics will make some earlier era policy cards obsolete. They will usually give you a card with the same general theme to replace it with, but you should plan accordingly if you ve been basing your entire strategy around the specific effects of a card.

The latest Civilization 6 trailer introduces Peter the Great, a man who needs no introduction oh alright then I know nothing about Peter the Great. However I now know, thanks to the nice trailer lady, that he gets territory bonuses for his beloved Russia in Civ 6, that he can deploy Cossacks as unique units (Cossacks can move after attacking, fancy that), and that he has a rather enviable moustache.

Peter's ability benefits trade routes with more advanced Civs, so he should help to get your society up to speed in record time. Click on the below video to see Peter in action, or check out our hands-on if you want a more, well, hands-on take on Firaxis' game.

Civ 6 is out on October 21, so there can't be too many of these trailers left.

There's a lot to talk about with Civilization 6, and the vast majority of it is good talk. After playing over 20 hours of a preview build this past week, I can't see myself wanting to go back to Civ 5 anytime soon. But out of all of the huge changes in Civ 6, the thing I found myself most excited about at the end of the day was its music.

Simply put, it's incredible. It caught my attention right away with the main menu theme. While it's no Baba Yetu from Civ 4, it was good enough that I decided to go digging in the the preview build's source folders to find the raw audio file which was surprisingly easy to do, as it looks like Firaxis is continuing its shining track record of being good to its modders. But when I finally found the file, I was surprised to see it labeled "American Industrial Theme" instead of "Main Menu" or something like that.

[Update: Turns out this song is probably placeholder in the preview build, not the final main theme of the game.]

This made me realize something I hadn't explicitly noticed while playing: every civ has its own unique theme, and that theme has four different variations depending on the era the civ is currently in. As you advance, each civ's music starts gathering more instruments and more layers, but keeps a core melody you can recognize the entire time. And this is for all 20 civs, which means Firaxis produced at least different 80 songs just for theme music.

So I dove back into the source files and went hunting for my favorites. In the video above, I take a deep dive look at the American theme music through all four of its variations, as well as some from France, Norway, and England. These are the raw audio files I'm using (converted to a playable format) so there's no background or ambient noise from the game to muck them up.

Additionally, we've uploaded the audio from the video directly to SoundCloud in case YouTube compresses the songs in any sort of unwanted way. This is fundamentally about the sound, so you are welcome to listen instead of watch right here or with the player below. Either way, grab a pair of good headphones and enjoy!

Before we start, let me put this big disclaimer out there: I'm testing preview code, which is incomplete and very likely not fully optimized. Things might change by the time Civilization 6 launches on October 21, though the things I'm about to test are probably not high on the priority list. So, can you run Civilization 6 on a laptop with integrated graphics? The minimum system requirements are pretty tame:

A 1GB discrete GPU from AMD's 5570 class or Nvidia's 450 class? Yeah, just about everything should be at least that fast these days. But what if you're using an older system how do those stack up against a three-year-old laptop? I've got some bad news for you. Even a rather anemic HD 5570 is going to be faster than Intel's HD Graphics 4400, by about 30 percent, though newer laptops with 5th and 6th gen Intel Core parts are probably close to the HD 5570. AMD's APUs should fare better, with the 2013/2014 chips delivering roughly HD 5570 performance.

I don't have all of those parts sitting around for testing, but what I do have is a modern quad-core i7-6700HQ notebook. Sure, it has a beefy graphics card as well, but I set Civ 6 to use the integrated graphics. Intel's HD Graphics 530 in this case is a moderately potent graphics solution, likely better in some ways than an HD 5570, and I wanted to see what it could do.

Let's start with image quality, because that's going to be key. I selected the Medium preset first, created a new game, and was promptly greeted by 15 fps. Nope, that ain't gonna cut it! This is the start of the game, with one settler and one warrior unit on the screen and a bunch of stuff hidden by fog of war. Dropping to the Low preset (which is really minimum quality everything is turned off) helped immensely, giving me a solid 30-35 fps. Here's what those two settings look like:

The drop in image quality is pretty noticeable, but shadows are the only real difference. Everything looks a bit flat without the extra shadowing, but if it means double the framerate and potentially opens the game up to non-gaming laptops, it's not a terrible price to pay. (If you're interested in the other image quality presets, the High and Ultra settings mostly increase the amount of geometry relative to Medium. The jump from Medium to High basically cuts performance in half yet again, give or take, but from High to Ultra is only about a 10 percent dip.)

So, 30-35 fps while zoomed out, but that's at 1920x1080 and only at the start of a new game. Fast forward to 575 BC when there's more going on and performance while zoomed out was noticeably slower around 20 fps but zooming in a bit could get me back above the 30 fps mark. Also, Civilization games aren't about twitch reflexes, so even 20 fps was manageable in a pinch.

In most games, performance for integrated graphics ends up limited by the number of pixels you render, so I figured dropping from 1920x1080 down to 1366x768 would provide another boost to performance. Only rendering half the pixels ought to help, but in this case it didn't seem to matter much I gained maybe 1-2 fps. It looks like the biggest bottleneck with Civ 6 on low-end graphics solutions (especially Intel) is going to be geometry throughput.

What will that mean for other Intel GPUs? None of them are officially supported by the game, and apparently with good reason. If HD 530 only hits 20-30 fps, and that's still relatively early in the game, I suspect the late game on larger maps will absolutely choke lesser graphics chips. I checked another laptop with Intel's HD Graphics 4600 (Haswell) and found framerates in the mid-teens, and on Ultrabooks it would be even lower. On the other hand, the same laptop using a GeForce GT 750M did OK, pushing 30-40 fps.

Update: There's another option for playing Civ6, and that's the strategic view. The problem is that you're left with icons for everything, so figuring out the units can be a bit difficult, but frame rates at least aren't a problem. Intel's HD Graphics 4600 was able to push 80+ fps in strategic view. That doesn't say much about the time between turns, though strategic mode also tends to speed up movement in my limited experience.

It's not the ideal experience, but if you really want to play Civilization 6 on your laptop's integrated graphics, it's possible. You can either stick with the Tiny map size, try not to zoom too far out, and bring a jug of patience, or you can play from the strategic view and forget about all the fancy graphics.

Over the last week, we've had unfettered access to a preview build of Civilization 6 that let us play games from beginning to end. We had 10 of the game's eventual 20 civs to choose from and were limited to Prince difficulty and certain map types and sizes, but we were able to experience the game itself otherwise unhampered. This gave us time to really dig into some of the big changes we've so far only seen briefly at preview events and in promo videos.

There are city districts, a culture-based "tech" tree, a religious victory, and more big changes that have a significant impact on the long-running series. Tom and T.J. have a logged a combined 50-plus hours in Civ 6 over the last week forsaking their responsibilities and families for the sweet taste of "one more turn..." to find if these changes were good, bad, or just different for the sake of different.

Cities have districts and need to be planned out more carefully 

Tom: There s a whole lot more to consider when picking a spot to found a city in Civ 6. Districts have adjacency bonuses and tile requirements that need to be considered well before you ever plan on building them. For example, if you don t have a flat hex adjacent to both your city center and a source of fresh water, you won t ever be able to build an Aqueduct in that city, plain and simple. It adds an extra layer of depth to city planning beyond just checking what resources are nearby, and is something you can really only learn through trial and error.

T.J.: Which can be a little frustrating on your first couple starts, but I like that it makes it far more difficult to drill down to an optimal city layout. And once you get a bit more experience, you realize that you might have to make some sacrifices early on, like not building a holy site to have room for an effective industrial core in the later eras. In fact, having the district that grants bonus production unlock so late is definitely a game-changer for civ veterans, as spam a lot of production buildings early used to be one of, if not the, dominant strategy for all empires.

Tom: Yeah, the need to specialize certain cities especially ones with limited housing, which caps your population is really exciting. My capital still tended to become a super city that could do everything, but eventually I just ran out of tiles to build on and had to look to my other cities to fill certain roles. You can only rush so many wonders before you literally run out of land to build them on! At first I didn t really get why Firaxis introduced districts, but it makes city planning a lot more challenging in the best possible way.

There are two ‘tech’ trees, and they are much more flexible

T.J.: I was kinda bewildered by how small Civ 6 s tech tree seemed at first, but then I realized a lot of stuff had been moved to the new civics tree. This creates some interesting cases where you can be ahead technologically but behind socially, or vice-versa, and helps make the science rush playstyle a bit less of a no-brainer.

Tom: As someone who usually goes for a cultural victory, I do love that those points are going to something beyond border expansion and civic bonuses in the early game, but it s a little strange to me that they decided the answer was another tree. I like that culture is used for substantial unlocks, but I still enjoyed that the civics trees in Civ 5 had their own flavor to them. But I suppose sharing a common form allowed both trees to benefit from the new tech boosting eureka moments, which are one of my absolute favorite new features. They let you adapt to what s actually happening in your game by directly rewarding you for it.

T.J.: It unlocks a totally new way to play the early game, if you so choose. Reading the tech and civics trees as mini quest logs and actively maximizing your progress through them can be a lot of fun if you re not going for early war, and in past Civs might have just been sitting around waiting for buildings to finish. I likewise miss the different civics trees with their own themes though a lot of that has been moved into the government types and policy cards, which are a bit more dynamic.

Religion has its own victory condition

T.J.: Religion was kind of an accessory added in the Gods & Kings expansion in Civ 5. It was a nice accessory, but it really played into other elements and victory conditions rather than being a game of its own. Civ 6 changes this by adding a victory condition for essentially converting the world to your religion, and introducing the somewhat hilarious theological combat , where competing missionaries can bombard each other with sky-born rays of truth and righteousness until one of them gives up and decides to go home. Something that never, ever happens in internet debates, but can happen in Civ 6.

Tom: I like that religion has a victory condition, but the whole system currently feels like one of those things that is waiting to be fixed in an expansion. I don t know about you, but I found the theological combat to be extremely one-dimensional and dull, especially when the AI decides to start massing religious units to storm your empire. It s almost exactly what was wrong with Civ 4 s unit stacking that Civ 5 tried to fix and Civ 6 has expanded upon. Civ 6 s actual combat has increased nuance through the new support units and combining units into Corps and Armies, while spreading and defending your religion is just spam a bunch of dudes and walk towards your opponent.

Each AI leader has unique agendas

T.J.: The reason I love this change is that it shows a recognition that singleplayer and multiplayer in a strategy game are different beasts. If you try to make AI leaders behave like a human opponent, it s just never going to work. Agendas give the AI leaders goals that are varied, interesting, comprehensible, and discoverable (in the case of the hidden ones). They re much more fun to play against because they re not trying to play like people. They re crafted to be interesting opponents to a human player.

Tom: I totally agree. It makes the sometimes obtuse behavior of each AI leader a lot clearer. You can specifically see what will make someone happy or mad, and then watch as they don t like you anyway because the AI is the meanest and I hate them. Seriously, does any leader on the same continent as me ever just want to be buds?

T.J.: I m also astonished how overlooked the introduction of cassus belli (needing a reason to go to war) has been in Civ 6. Going to war without justification greatly increases your warmonger penalty, so the AI leaders further act as a check on naked aggression that can be mitigated with civics that unlock religious, colonial, or territorial wars. Denouncing an opponent and waiting five turns waives this requirement, but gives them a decent heads up that war may be coming. It also decreases the incidence of surprise wars the AI declares against you in the early game.

Tom: I like that you can also finally make the same demands your AI opponents would make of you (don t settle near me, move your troops, etc.) to them, and then hold them to those demands. In general, AI leaders don t seem too much smarter than previous games at least on Prince difficulty but they are significantly more understandable in how they react to you and how you can influence them.

Movement is slower, but roads are easier to lay down.

Tom: As I explained in my preview video last month, unit movement doesn t round up anymore and scouts can no longer waltz through rough terrain. I m pretty torn on this change. I may just need to get used to it more, but the limited movement feels a lot more frustrating to deal with in the early game. Everything is (predictably) slower, and trying to move an army through a thick jungle can be downright infuriating.

T.J.: A lot of people have been seeing this as a general nerf to military units, but I like to view it rather as a buff to specialized units. If you have a unique unit that ignores certain terrain-based movement penalties, like Kongo s, that s a pretty huge deal now, and completely changes how you conduct war as or against that civ. It also gives more of a combat role to scouts who have earned the Alpine and Ranger promotions, whereas in Civ 5, they were mostly just used for exploration. In addition, the fact that roads auto-build along trade routes opens up some interesting choices. Do I want to trade with the civ I eventually plan to conquer and give them resources, in exchange for an easy highway to attack them with?

Tom: Sending a trade route to a nearby opponent before declaring war is the dirtiest tactic, and boy do I love it to death. I really like not having to use workers to lay down roads (especially considering workers are now expendable builders) and worry if the maintenance cost of my highways will one day sink my empire. And the movement change does make those roads more important to get down when you can, but I m just grumpy and impatient. I ll get it over it I suppose...