Battle royale is a pretty fluid and flexible game mode since the concept of a bunch of players fighting to be the last one standing can fit into just about any kind of multiplayer game. So maybe it's not all that shocking that yes, even Civilization 6 is getting a battle royale mode. And it's got nukes!

Civilzation 6: Red Death is out today, free for any current owners of Civ 6. Red Death supports up to 12 players per match, though there are a number of map sizes suitable for smaller groups, including two-player duels. You can also play against AI-controlled opponents.

You don't build civilizations in Civ 6's battle royale: it's far too late for that. Red Death takes place in the post-apocalypse where cities are ruins, the landscape is lifeless, the oceans are acid, and a radioactive storm—the Red Death—is slowly closing in from all sides. It's probably Gandhi's fault.

Rather than build a civ, you manage a post-apocalyptic faction comprised of mobile combat units protecting a civilian unit—and if that civilian unit dies or is captured, you're out of the match. You explore the map with your units, a turn at a time, hoping to gather additional units and level them up with XP. Meanwhile, the Red Death closes around you, forcing you into contact with other players and AI-controlled enemies and outposts in the ever-shrinking safe zone.

Six of us played a match of Red Death last week, and I've played a few more times against the AI. You can read all about it here.

Battle royale, of all things, is coming to Civilization 6 today. The new turn-based battle royale mode, Red Death, is set in a post-apocalyptic wasteland of poisoned oceans, ruined cities, and a shrinking circle of deadly radiation. Red Death supports up to 12 players per match (though you can play with as few as two), and you can play against other people, against AI opponents, or a mix of both. Red Death is free if you already own Civ 6.

Six of us played a long and fairly uneventful single match of Red Death together last week, the highlight of which was Tyler nuking the crap out of James. I also played a few additional rounds against AI opponents over the weekend. It's a strange mode for Civ, really, especially considering you don't build civilizations. You don't build anything at all, in fact. Here's how Red Death works—and here's what doesn't work that well.

Each player begins somewhere on the wasteland map with an infantry unit, a machine gun unit, and a civilian unit. It's the civilian unit that is most vulnerable and most important. Your civilian has no attack ability—they're just driving around in a junky-looking truck—and if they're killed or captured it's an instant game over for you, no matter how many other combat units you have at the time. The goal is to be the last player on the map with a civilian unit, at which point a spacecraft lands and takes your civilian off the ruined planet to the safety of an orbiting space station. It doesn't sound that much like Civ, huh?

Each player takes their movement turn simultaneously, though combat happens in a more traditional turn-based format. Creeping across the map takes time, a long time, with most units only moving a couple of hexes in a single turn. Even with six of us playing on a small map, we almost never ran into or even saw each other during our match, so it was all very slow and uneventful at the start of the round as we spread out, fought against a few AI raider units, and began the Civ version of looting for gear.

There are a few ways to increase your power. You'll come across ruined cities you can drive right into, you can attack and invade AI strongholds, or you can be the first player to reach an airdrop. Your reward might be an additional civilian unit, a helicopter, a tank, additional infantry or gunners, and so on. Sometimes you'll just find some additional XP you can use to promote your units, which opens up a very small skill tree to buff their abilities. If you have two matching combat units, you can link them together to form more powerful squadrons. Link another, and your squad becomes an army.

And sometimes you'll find a damn nuclear warhead you can launch to do heavy damage against an enemy—though even the nuke isn't fatal if the unit you're targeting is at full health. The nuke also leaves a sizable area of the map irradiated for several turns, sort of like Civ's version of PUBG's red zones.

You can link a combat unit to your civilian to act as an escort, which I would definitely recommend. If your civilian is alone, all it takes is an enemy unit to occupy the same hex to capture it and end your game (if it's your only civilian). Using a combat unit as an escort means that unit will have to be defeated before you civilian can be captured.

The closing circle of Red Death, at first, feels incredibly slow. Beginning on the very fringes of the map it can be ages before you even see the edges of the red circle. There's a timer telling you when it's going to begin closing, and you're shown the area it will close around as it advances a single hex per turn.

But once it's closed in a bit the Red Death becomes a major threat. If you're fleeing the circle and run into enemies or difficult terrain, or if you're trying to capture an airdrop and get caught in it, the Red Death can really make a mess of your units. If several players are still alive near the end of the match it can become a massive traffic jam. Trying to navigate, protect civilians, and battle other players or AI enemies in the tiny handful of remaining safe hexes is fun in the late-game, and about as much fun as Red Death gets (nuking someone is also fun). It just takes a long, slow, sluggish match to get to the good part.

There are eight different factions to choose from, which give you a few different buffs. Borderlords have greater combat strength when within a few hexes of the safe zone border. Wanderers have a movement bonus through tough terrain. Preppers gain more XP, allowing their units to level up more quickly. Mutants are hurt less by the Red Death and have a movement bonus while inside it, and Pirates don't take as much damage while traveling through the poisonous oceans. Probably the best factions are the Cultists, who have +3 sight, allowing them to peer deeper into the fog of war and spot other players before they see you, or the Mad Scientists, whose units heal twice as fast as other factions.

While the early game feels incredibly slow and not terribly interesting, I've had some fun with Red Death when it comes down to the final few factions crammed into a tiny safe zone near the end of the match. While Red Death definitely doesn't feel like a reason to buy Civ 6, I would recommend at least trying it if you already do own it, even if it's just some matches against the AI. If you're playing a large match, I'd also suggest choosing a smaller map than you think you need, or you might never even see each other until the end.

If there's something missing in the build we played, it's the option to allow players to spectate the remainder of the match once they've been knocked out. As the host of our match, I had to sit there staring at blank screen after I got knocked out early because I was afraid that if I quit to the menu, the match would end for everyone else. But there's a good amount of match customization available otherwise, from changing the turn timer to specifying map size and even map type and features. 

Have you ever played Civilization 6 and thought to yourself, this is great, but I really wish it looked a little... older? If the answer to that question is yes for some reason, Civ 6 art director Brian Busatti has come up with just the thing: A Civ 5 "Environment Skin" mod that's now available through the Steam Workshop. 

The mod "changes the visuals of the game to better match the colors and tones" of Civ 5, with changes to texture details, a more neutral color palette for buildings and units, and other changes. 

"I was challenged by the team to create an expansive mod using Mod Buddy, and this was the end result," Busatti wrote. "It's an example of how much you can change the visuals and I hope it provides inspiration to try your own modifications." 

The mod is compatible with all releases of Civilization 6, including the recent Gathering Storm, and will not cause any problems with saved games. Performance should also be unaffected. "The deciduous trees have a smaller vertex count, but they are more numerous. It should all balance out," Busatti explained in the comments. "I tried to keep it close to the specs of the original game so it would not slow anyone down. It's also why there are fewer trees if your graphics settings are lower." 

The response to the mod seems very positive so far, and while it might seem a little odd that so many people want their new game to look more like their old one, it fits the pattern. More than a year ago we dug into why Civilization 5, which came out in 2010, was still more popular than Civilization 6, which arrived in 2016, and that situation hasn't changed as much as you might expect since then: Civ 6 got a big concurrent player boost in February with the release of Gathering Storm but is quickly settling back to its pre-February numbers, according to Steam Charts, while Civ 5 just keeps chugging along.   

Thanks, PCGamesN.

The future is finally here. Our jetpacks only work in the water and our hoverboards are crap, but at least we can now save a game of Civilization 6 on PC and then continue it on the loo, bus or wherever else we don't normally find PCs, all thanks to the Switch and the new cross-platform cloud saves. 

Civ is one of the few games I haven't bought a second copy of on Switch. Into the Breach, Enter the Gungeon, Minit, Stardew Valley and more sit on both my PC and console, and I have no regrets. I don't even need the excuse of cross-platform cloud saves, which aren't yet standard, but it makes a second purchase even more tempting. 

There are caveats, however, as the Switch version doesn't yet have the expansions, so you'll be stuck with the base game. This does reduce its usefulness, unfortunately, and the expansions add so much that you really wouldn't want to give them up just for a bit of portability. The good news is that the expansions will eventually appear on the console. Well, it's good news if you have the willpower to take the occasional break. Unfortunately, I don't, so expect to find my corpse on the toilet, clutching my Switch. 

Sign up for a 2K account and you can use cross-platform cloud saves now.

Do you like strategy games? Then you might like the new Humble Strategy Bundle for 2019, which gets things rolling with Niche: A Genetics Survival Games, Ashes of the Singularity: Escalation (a standalone expansion, so you don't need the original to play) and Throne of Lies: The Online Game of Deceit, for $1. That's good stuff all around—but there's more. 

Beat the average price to add Dungeons 3, Offworld Trading Company, and the OTC: Jupiter's Forge expansion pack to the bundle, or pay $9 and get Stellaris and Plague Inc. Evolved. Things get really interesting at the top tier: For $15, they'll throw in Civilization 6, which normally goes for $60 all on its own.   

That's cheaper than Civilization 6 has ever been previously, according to Steam Database, and that's without taking the other games into account. If you haven't picked it up yet because you're waiting on a deal that's just too good to ignore, you might want to give this one a look. The Humble Strategy Bundle 2019 is available until March 26. 

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Look, Civilization 6 is a cool videogame and all, but it's no Footloose. It may span the breadth of human history, but it's not epic on the scale of a battle between a religious dad and a city boy who just wants to dance to rock 'n' roll. Civilization is tragically lacking in Kevin Bacon. But at least this new mod, "To Hell With The Devil: Religious units fight Rock Bands," is putting us on the right track.

Recent Civ 6 expansion Gathering Storm introduced rock bands as a type of unit. Rock bands pump up the local tourism, can go on tour, and even have a "religious rock" promotion that "Performs a concert that converts the majority religion of that city to the religion founded by the player." But because rock 'n' roll is obviously the devil's work, it seems only fair that religious units could fight back against music's corrupting influence. That's where the mod comes in.

Here's what it does:

"Allows Religious units (Apostles and Inquisitors) to fight against Rock Bands, by giving Rock Bands a religious strength level. Rock Bands have a religious strength of 125 -- stronger than an Apostle with no bonuses, but able to be overcome by fervent prayer, fasting, and proper use of wonders and policies. Rock Bands cannot initiate combat. The point of this mod is to give players an optional line of defence against rock bands."

That's right: fervent praying can now save your soul from the sinful sounds of rock. The mod's few commenters seem eager to see whether Civ's AI leaders will now use their missionaries to slaughter rock bands. Or, in the words of Steam user nut9931: "finally kill fucking rock star. very nice." This guy's seen Footloose.

Kidding, kidding. I love that the mod's creator felt it important to clarify that he's totally cool with rock. "Before you flood the comments below, I didn't choose the name because I think rock & roll is 'of the Devil' or something." The mod is named after a song by—wait for it—a Christian heavy metal band.

If, somehow, you've never played a Civ game, for the next couple of days you can try Civilization 6 for free on Steam. Maybe you've been holding out with Civ 5 until all the expansions launched (seriously, there are still thousands of you), or maybe you just haven't had the time. Either way, this is a good opportunity to pick up Firaxis's 2016 4X game and give it a go. The game is also discounted on Steam by 70 percent during that time. 

This, of course, coincides with the launch of Civ 6: Gathering Storm later this week. The latest expansion adds global warming as a factor once you reach the modern age, as well as a detailed world congress system that offers a different way to gain control throughout the game. 

Fraser liked the expansion to the tune of 81 percent. "Civilization 6: Gathering Storm bites off a lot, but it proves more than capable of juggling big concepts like climate change and global diplomacy. It turns them into coherent but still complex systems that you'll constantly be interacting with, even before you start noticing that the beaches are vanishing."

Gathering Storm launches on February 14th.

I started my journey through the history of civilisation adrift on the ocean. Gathering Storm’s Maori don’t begin a game of Civilization 6 like the other civs. Instead of my settler and warrior appearing right next to a prospective city site, they were in boats, floating in between the map’s chilly southern pole and the tip of the continent to the north. For maybe the first time in over 20 years, I wasn’t rushing to found my first city. 

The Maori civilisation is one of several joining the game in Gathering Storm, but it piqued my interest the most because it promised to break my routine. Not only does it start on and have a general affinity with the ocean, it benefits from not settling too early. Every turn waited pays dividends, but also comes with some big risks, not least that your entire civilisation could be undone if a barbarian chooses to attack your sole settler. 

I wasn’t bold enough to wait for more than a handful of turns, but it was enough time to find a nice spot near a natural wonder and several exploitable resources, giving me benefits that most other capitals would have missed. Having the extra time to find the perfect home is an even bigger boon given the new threats facing humanity in the expansion.

Volcanic eruptions, rivers bursting their banks, rising sea levels—there are quite a few ways for Mother Nature to enact her revenge. Initially, these threats are unpredictable and unstoppable, but you can avoid them with a bit of common sense. Don’t build underneath a volcano, don’t make your home on a flood plain and don’t get a beachfront property. Simple! Except it isn’t. All these places are actually good places to settle near, giving you access to more resources and more fertile soil. The risk might be worth it. At least that's certainly what I thought as I merrily built next to rumbling mountains filled with scorching lava. 

Climate change, arguably the headline attraction, doesn’t start affecting the game until the Industrial era, when civs can start to exploit natural fossil fuels, but that doesn’t mean bad weather and natural disasters can’t kick off at any time. Even when they weren’t affecting me, messages about droughts and storms reached my civilisation, like an ancient Weather Channel. I could even see storm clouds in the fog of war, or at least little drawings of them, so I knew where they were even if I didn’t have cities or troops there at the time. 

Fully settled, the Maori function like most of the other civs, though there remain quirks thanks to some unique abilities, like additional benefits from rainforest tiles and immediately starting with shipbuilding tech. I was, I confess, hoping for something more like Civilization 5’s Venice, which plays unlike any other civ and never grows beyond a single city, but there is still a hint of that asymmetry.  

With my scouts sent out, I filled my rolodex with other civs and, eventually, the World Congress was established. Like Rise and Fall, Gathering Storm adds more features to the World Congress and diplomacy, offering up more opportunities for civs to work together and compete. 

Japan was in trouble. One of its cities was near a volcano that had erupted, creating an emergency that was brought before the World Congress. Like other emergencies, it set tasks for participating civs and then doled out rewards depending on how much effort you've put in. In this case, Japan needed gold to repair the damage, which could be offered as a gift or via a project that could be undertaken in one of my cities. I sympathised with Japan, having dealt with my own volcanic eruption a few turns before, so I was extremely helpful. As a credit to humanity, I was rewarded appropriately: with a big stack of diplomatic favour.  

Diplomatic favour is a common reward in such emergencies, but can be earned in other ways and traded with fellow civs. It's a new resource that lets you boost influence when voting in the World Congress and can lead to a new diplomatic victory. It's pretty handy. Say some resolutions have been put before the world’s civs, so you go through them and the pick the ones you want to vote on. Maybe there’s a resolution where the targeted civ gets another trade route, and everyone trading with them gets extra gold. You can pick the civ—maybe you really need the extra route, so you pick yourself—and then you can start spending favour, essentially giving yourself more votes. 

On its own, diplomatic favour seems like a clear way to understand how much international influence a civ has, and it adds some welcome structure and competition to the diplomatic game. Importantly, that competition can also be won without being completely adversarial. If you want to be a force for good in the world, making friends and helping people, you can absolutely do that and still earn lots of favour. Ultimately, it’s all about uniting the world, which is probably going to be a lot easier to do if you’ve not made a long list of enemies. 

When applied to a game that already has lots of systems, however, it loses some of its elegance. There are a lot of currencies and resources to keep track of, and of course weather and climate change, and Civilization 6 is starting to feel very, very busy. These systems aren’t all introduced at once, though, which does give you some time to get to grips with each individually.   

By the time industrialisation began and the world slowly started to react, I was already starting to get pretty used to thinking about how I could increase my hoard of favour or how I could use nature to my advantage. And it’s a good thing, too, as modernity brings with it a whole host of complexities, crises and solutions new to Civilization 6.

Modern buildings and units need fuel and resources to build and maintain, but doing so has a negative impact on the entire world, contributing to rising CO2 emissions and affecting the global temperature. This is all trackable, thankfully, in surprising detail, and not just in the later eras. The chart isn’t very scintillating before then, however, as it pretty much stays the same for most of human history. 

Right now, I’m trying to create plans for the future, protecting my vulnerable Maori cities from rising sea levels and off-setting pollution by exploring greener paths, such as solar or geothermal energy. Maybe I'll even be able to do something about those pesky volcanoes. You don’t need to care about the planet—you can just keep burning through resources and accept the risks—but trying to curtail impending disasters and make the world a little bit better seems more appropriate for Civilization, which has always been a fairly optimistic series, despite the nukes and wars. 

Keep an eye out for my review closer to the February 14 release date. 

Civilization 6 will get eight new Civilizations and nine new Leaders in the upcoming Gathering Storm expansion, along with some big changes to its core systems and a major late-game challenge to deal with in the form of man-made climate change. A new trailer released today showcases how it will all come together, from early-game difficulties with the environment to randomized 21st-century Technology and Civics trees in the new "Future Era." 

Disasters aren't necessarily all bad. Volcanoes are inherently risky to build around for obvious reasons, but volcanic soil is extremely fertile; flooding rivers can wash away village improvements, but you may also see increased food yields when the floodwaters recede. Some of them, like grassland tornadoes, are bad news all around, while others will apparently have civ-specific benefits: Blizzards are tremendously destructive, but can also confer some "nice benefits" if you happen to be playing as Russia.

Strategic resources will be divided into Fuel, which will be of particular importance once you his the Industrial Era, and Material. Unpowered buildings in Industrial (and beyond) cities will produce less than half their normal yield, and military units lacking the requisite Fuel and Material will be weaker in the field. The flipside of that new feature is that using some fuel types will release carbon dioxide into the air, driving up global temperatures—climate change—and leading to "unique consequences including increased storms or flooding, and rising sea levels." 

Green technologies can help alleviate the impact of climate change (careful with those nukes, though), and if you can make it into the new Future Era you'll have the opportunity to make friends and influence people (and maybe save the world) through the World Congress, and advance through the randomized 21st-century Technology and Civics trees. 

Civilization 6: Gathering Storm comes out on February 14. If you haven't already met them yet, here's Corvinus, Laurier, Kristina, Suleiman, and Dido. 

Fraser said last week that the addition of Sweden to Civilization 6 in the Gathering Storm expansion will be just the thing for players who prefer cultural or diplomatic victories over the more traditional route of violent imperialism. If, on the other hand, violent imperialism is really your bag, then allow me to introduce Suleiman the Magnificent, head honcho of the Ottoman Empire. 

Suleiman's unique ability is Grand Vizier, which unlocks a new governor named Ibrahim. A potential "major player in diplomacy," Ibrahim has his own promotion tree, is the only governor who can be established in another civilization, and is available only to Suleiman. The unique Ottman building is the Grand Bazaar, which replaces the Bank in commercial hubs and adds extra amenities and strategic resources in cities where it's placed. 

The Janissary, a replacement for the Musketman, is Suleiman's unique unit: It's stronger and cheaper to build than a Musketman and starts with a free promotion, but consumes a population point from the city it's trained—unless it's raised in a conquered city. Make use of that knowledge as you see fit. The Ottomans also have access to the Barbary Corsair, a unique replacement for the Privateer that becomes available earlier in the game and does not incur a movement cost when conducting coastal raids. 

The unique Ottoman ability is Great Turkish Bombard, which enables them to construct siege units much more quickly than other civilizations and grants them additional combat strength. Conquered cities do not lose population, and will also gain amenity and loyalty bonuses while under Ottoman control. 

If war is your thing, then, it sounds like Suleiman could be your guy. Civilization 6: Gathering Storm is set to come out on February 14. It will also include Hungary, Canada, and catastrophic climate change.