Firaxis and 2K have announced the first full expansion pack for Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. It will be called Rise and Fall, will release on February 8, and will cost $29.99 or £24.99.
Here’s everything we know about Civ 6: Rise and Fall.
Civ VI’s lead designer Ed Beach discussed the team’s goals for the future of the game with us a few weeks ago. In line with those goals, Rise and Fall introduces several systems that will make the game more dynamic: cities can now declare independence from your empire if their loyalty falls too low, and attaining certain milestones may trigger other civs to band together against you in an ’emergency’ pact.
Here’s a quick summary of what’s coming:
- Great Ages:as you move between historic eras, you can trigger Golden Ages or Dark Ages (or neither) depending on how successful you’ve been in the preceding era. Each provides its own challenges or bonuses. Rise triumphantly from a Dark Age, and your next Golden Age will be an even stronger Heroic Age.
- Loyalty:cities now have individual Loyalty to your leadership.Let it fall too low, and face the consequences of low yields, revolts, and even the potential to lose your city if it declares its own independence. One civilisation’s loss can be your gain as you inspire Loyalty among cities throughout the map and further expand your borders.
- Governors:recruit and upgrade powerful ‘Governor’ characters with unique bonuses and promotion trees, then assign them to your cities to bolster their output and reinforce Loyalty.
- Enhanced alliances:alliances now have five forms (Research, Military, Economic, Cultural, and Religious), each of which provides its own bonuses, which will strengthen the longer the alliance endures.
- Emergencies:when a civilisation grows too powerful, others can join a pact against them. Emergencies have different triggers – launching a nuke is one example – and different objectives for those who opt in to the pact. Complete the objective successfully for various rewards – or penalties, if you fail.
- Timeline:review your civilisation’s history at any time with the new Timeline feature, a visual journey through the historic moments that you’ve encountered on your path so far.
- New leaders and civs:nine new leaders and eight new civilisations are introduced. Each brings unique bonuses and gameplay, as well as a total of eight unique units, two unique buildings, four unique improvements, and two unique districts.
- New global content:eight new world wonders, seven natural wonders, four new units, two new improvements, two new districts, fourteen new buildings, and three new resources have been added.
- Improved gameplay systems:the Government system has been enhanced with new policies, including Dark Age policies, new hidden leader Agendas, new Casus Belli, and other improvements to existing systems.
Civ has been out for a little over a year now. In that time we’ve seen a few patches and several DLC civs, but it’s also been assumed that a larger expansion is on its way. Now that it’s been announced, what do you think? Personally I’m sad to see the continued absence of the World Congress, but otherwise this looks pretty meaty, and does indeed take the series to places we’ve never seen before, as Beach promised.