Together with Rise & Fall, these are very solid expansions that change more of the whole game than I expected. They’re of a piece with other Firaxis DLC, in the X-Com tradition of “more is more.” As such, they’re more additive than anything else, which can be a bit of a drawback as it can extend long games to be even lengthier, adding several other menus to periodically navigate.

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.