An expansion for Sid Meier's Civilization VI
In Gathering Storm, the second expansion to Civilization VI, the world around you is more alive than ever before. Chart a path to victory for your people by developing new advanced technologies and engineering projects and negotiating with the global community in the World Congress on critical issues. The choices you make in the game will influence the world ecosystem and could impact the future of the entire planet. Natural disasters like floods, storms, and volcanoes can pillage or destroy your Improvements and Districts – but they may also refresh and enrich the lands after they pass. In addition to these new systems, Civilization VI: Gathering Storm introduces eight new civilizations and nine new leaders. Seven new world wonders can be constructed, as well as a variety of new units, districts, buildings, and improvements.
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Civilization is one of my all-time favorite games, and the leap from the fifth to the sixth game is epic. It offers new mechanics, tons of stuff to do and build and a fresh new look over the older games. There is some new and relaxing music, more factions and overall, it is a huge improvement over the previous game.
This expansion, Gathering Storm adds natural disasters, and a new mechanic to gather resources.
The disasters are cool but really frustrating at the same time. They add new challenge to the game and let you think about the placement of your new cities, the need to build damns and the constant repairing of destroyed tiles because of a tornado or sandstorm.
Instead of the need to own two or more resources to build a stronger unit, you can just have one tile and the resources will slowly increase. The more fields you own, the faster this process goes. I think this is a huge improvement over the old mechanic, in which many times, you only had one field of the resource you need close, and the first possible field is miles away from you.
Overall, Civilization VI: Gathering Storm is a nice expansion and worth the extra cost.
Even so, the new systems are well integrated with the existing ones. In particular, I think there’s something very interesting in navigating electrical power as infrastructure, linked with fuel resources, linked with global warming, flooding, and climate change.
As usual with Civ, this doesn’t come as straightforward commentary – it strikes me that the best position for the system is to burn through resources in the earlier eras, reaping the benefits of production, and then decommission polluting plants to secure diplomatic points for the climate accords. In that regard, this is a continuation of Civ’s usual status quo politics, in which exploitative modes of colonial history are presented as bonuses for the purposes of the game. At least this time, that comes with downsides in terms of flooding and more sudden natural disasters that players and computers alike must address.
The Willem Dafoe of Civilization VI.