Hitbox review: ‘Civilization VI’

By Zachary Christensen

Awards: The Game Awards Best Sim/Strategy game
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, Playstation 4, Xbox One, Android, Microsoft Windows, iOS, Linux, and MAC operating systems
Developers: Firaxis Games, Aspyr
Release Date: Oct. 26, 2016
Last Update: Dec. 2022

‍
“Civilization VI” is the latest edition of Sid Meier’s Civilization series. It is a turn based strategy game. The object of the game is to develop your empire and leave a legacy. This can be done in the game through one of six different methods: domination, science, culture, religion, diplomacy and score.

A domination victory requires you to conquer all original capitals of each nation. The science route requires researching and developing science related buildings and reaching science related milestones. A culture victory requires you to build great wonders, buildings, and government policies to attract tourists from other civilizations. Religious victories require you to establish a religion and it must be the dominant religion in each civilization. Diplomatic victories are achieved through world congress, events, wars, and wonders.

If none of the other victories are achieved by any civilization when time runs out in the game, then it will come down to whichever nation has acquired the highest score.

The game starts out by having you select which leader and civilization you want to control. Each leader and nation has its advantages and disadvantages, which push you to one style of play or another.

I was able to take control of Spain in my play through. Game setup is completely customizable, allowing you to select a number of settings, including difficulty, game speed and restricting the different avenues to win, just to name a few.

This is not my first Civilization game, however. I played “Civilization: Revolution,” a mobile version of the game available on the App Store and Google Play. “Civilization VI” gives quite a bit more freedom to create unique gameplay.

When the game starts you are placed on an unexplored map that has been randomly generated or created by you. Other civilizations, city-states, and barbarians are randomly placed throughout the map as well.

Much of the game requires you to explore the map, which will be in conjunction with researching technologies, forming governments, making allies, enemies, and establishing religion. It is not necessary to explore the entire map to win, but it is helpful to know where everything is. That way you know what is coming and what is at your disposal, depending on how you decide to win.
This is a game for those that are wanting to challenge themselves. The many routes to victory — in combination with the customizable gameplay — creates situations for you to overcome. Diplomatic relations, economic instability, war, hunger or natural disasters will befall you in your path to glory. This game is like playing the board games “Risk,” “Catan” and “Diplomacy,” all at the same time. To make things more difficult, you can play online or play as a group with friends locally through the pass and play option.

The main critique I would have for this game is that it is not straightforward in instructing you in your first game. It is not easy to really know what you are doing until you have played a few games all the way through since there is a lot to understand. There is not a perfect tutorial. I found that it was a little difficult to know where things were. I have played a previous edition before where it was easier to quickly understand the game mechanics.

Overall this is a great game and requires the mind to be engaged. Sometimes there is not too much going on, but what you do early on does affect what happens much later. So it is important to have a strategy from the start. I would recommend it to those wanting to start playing strategy games since this will not get old, and you can have fulfillment in seeing the progression of your empire from the stone age to the modern era.

‍