Platform: PC

Developer: Firaxis Games

Publisher: 2K

Release Date: October 14, 2017

Genre: Strategy

Nerd Rating: 6 out of 10

Reviewed by Kikopaff

Expansions are always an exciting time for videogames. New content, maps, skins – we love a good revamp and additional goodies to discover. Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Rise and Fall is no exception, and is the first expansion, offering new leaders, civilizations, systems and many more. Unfortunately, it lacks any meaningful addition to the genre of strategy, and instead, is painted with more inconsistencies thanks to a terrible AI and ideas that don’t seem to be as polished as they sound on the whiteboard.

As your civilization ebbs and flows and you reach milestone Historic Moments, you will move towards Dark Ages or Golden Ages, each providing specific challenges or bonuses based on your actions in the game. Historic Moments award Era Points which contribute to your overall Era Score. Your Era Score is tracked according to certain actions and achievements throughout your game. For example, clearing a barbarian outpost, circumnavigating the globe, constructing Wonders, or capturing cities all earn you a certain number of Era Points. It’s an unusual and often random way of earning points, but as a rule of thumb, you generally want to achieve “notable things” to increase your accumulation of points. My biggest gripe with this system is that your general Rise and Fall experience becomes predictable. You know that from the moment you settle your first city, there are a bunch of minute chores to complete if you want to jump into a Golden Age.

Each time the world progresses from one Era to the next, every civilization’s points are calculated to determine if you enter a Dark Age, Normal Age, Golden Age or Heroic Age. Dark, Normal, and Golden Ages will be your typical means of Era achievements, with a Heroic Age reserved for when you rise triumphantly from a Dark Age to a Golden Age. Each Age provides rewards in the form of Dedications or policy cards, even if you get stuck in a Dark Age. In fact, the Dark Age rewards offer some significant buffs to your bonuses, leaving me to wonder what the whole point of having this Age system is for. I could see some expert players even deliberately staying in a Dark Age just to reap these bad boys – in the end, I find the Age system can be ignored, and ultimately, doesn’t add any layer of complex strategy. If you enjoy micromanagement, this might be up your alley.

You can review your civilization’s history at any time with the new Timeline feature, a visual journey through the Historic Moments that you encountered on your path to victory. It offers a larger scope into the progress of your civilization and offers clear direction on what certain Historic Moments offer the most Era Points. Again, for the purposes of micromanagement and understanding what things earn you as much Era Points as possible, the Timeline feature adds no particular layer of strategy. The Timeline feature is a nice visual side-scroll with illustrations of every achievement, or civilization you’ve met. Besides that though, it’s a menu feature that often goes unnoticed.

They say the grass is always greener on the other side, and Rise and Fall tests your tenacity to keep your lawn the greenest of all. Cities now have individual Loyalty to your leadership. If you let it fall too low, you risk the consequences of low yields, revolts, and the potential to lose your city if it declares its own independence. Loyalty can be managed through the Loyalty Lenses screen, showing you the impact of other cities, and what kind of influence they’re imparting to your citizens. Anything from your science or culture output can greatly drive the direction of your Loyalty and its influence on others. If another civilization has settled near your cities, this can often result in a tense and subtle feud of which city is best. Tile distance also plays a role in the impact of your Loyalty as if you settle a city too far from any of your other cities, Loyalty becomes harder to maintain.

The Loyalty system sounds great on paper. I can imagine Firaxis developers bouncing off one another with “What if?!” moments, and gave birth to the Loyalty mechanic. But there are a few inconsistencies in the system, that often are due to the AI frustrations that still seem to have been transferred from the base game (more on that later). Because the AI is still inevitably stupid, many of my playthroughs involved a neighboring civ deliberately settling right near my city borders. They either want to have their cities revolt because of my strength in culture or think they can destroy mine with their lack of meaningful or strategic choices. It’s frustrating because it not only limits the strategy that you can place in a game, but there are many other tiles that the AI would’ve been better off settling in. They choke your ability to play wide by taking tiles that you needed in a really unfortunately dumb way. Rise and Fall encourages you to play wide, settling as many cities as you can, as the number of cities can greatly increase your faith and culture output, for example. Yet despite the push to play in a specific way, the AI leaders often build immediate barriers, just to make it a little more “fun”.

Recruiting Governors is a new feature added into Rise and Fall but also plays a big role in the Loyalty game. Seven different Governors are available to recruit, each with unique promotion trees and bonuses that customize your cities and reinforce Loyalty.  For example, Pingala is focused on the cultivation of Scientific and Cultural endeavors in his city. He is also quite skilled in the attraction of Great People to his city. He has unique promotion trees such as the Connoisseur promotion, which grants +20% Production toward Theater Square buildings in the city. Other governors are focused on religion bonuses, military strength, or your treasury getting thick with gold. Governors are the more useful mechanics that’s been added to Rise and Fall. It can greatly complement a particular victory you have in mind. But flip the coin, and Governors for the use of Loyalty pressure aren’t as meaningful, because like the Loyalty system, Governors can often be forgotten. You can do significantly well with or without an assigned Governor in your city, but because Governors are a required appointment in your playthrough, it’s a necessity.

Each Governor has a unique character design, which playfully offers imagination and charisma to the game. You can also reassign your Governors to different cities, in particular, a city that you recently captured. Captured cities require a set number of turns to gain full loyalty. Garrisoning units and assigning Governors to the captured city will increase its loyalty to you, and decrease the number of turns it’ll take to be under your leadership. If you’re in a pinch during your dominion, Governors can be a huge asset in securing the cities you conquer. But as I mentioned before, Rise and Fall significantly encourages players to play more peacefully, and this brings up my next point: Emergencies.

When a civilization grows too powerful, other civilizations can join a pact against the threatening civilization, and earn rewards, or penalties, when the Emergency ends. This can be a huge annoyance to anyone who is more inclined to play aggressively, aka domination. For example, in my playthrough as Macedon (fitting for Alexander’s historical obsessions) I conquered the city of Athens and immediately received an Ongoing Military Emergency alert. Apparently, Alexander is getting away with his unwanted power, and participants must attempt to stop him. On one side, this is extremely annoying for a victory type that’s literally conditioned to capture a civilization’s capital. There’s literally no other way to win a domination victory, guys. On the other side, this doesn’t really threaten your attempt despite the joined efforts of others. Because like I said before, and what seemingly feels like multiple times, the AI is REALLY stupid.

Watching the AI clumsily place their military units in random tiles, or not pursuing any aggressive revenge is a laughing stock. Much like the Age system, it makes me wonder what the point of having an Emergency mechanic is. If it’s meant to encourage a balanced experience, it’s sorely lacking in any fair play for the AI. If it’s supposed to make small achievements seem larger on a grander scale, it now just makes me remember when Alexander conquered the world and every other leader was incapable of stopping his might. If it’s meant to encourage a more cooperative experience with other players, you’ll be carrying the load because the AI will let you down. Again, it sounds great on paper to capture turn-by-turn moments into more memorable experiences, but none of these features that Rise and Fall attempts to entice players with will ever work if the AI remains so incompetent.

Which makes the Alliance system very interesting, in light of the many inconsistencies that AI leaders offer. An enhanced alliances system allows players to form different types of alliances and build bonuses over time. Alliances can range from Religious to Scientific to Economic – as long as you form an Alliance, you are guaranteed their absolute loyalty and the relevant bonuses related to the type of alliance you formed. For the most part, Alliances serve to benefit you. The bonuses are the primary reason for negotiating with your fellow leaders on the map. It’s also a safe guarantee that they won’t declare a surprise war on you, and are on your side should anyone else betray you.

Nine new leaders and eight new civilizations are introduced in Rise and Fall. They bring unique bonuses and gameplay, and are the staple additions to every Civilization expansion. As always, I’m impressed with the leader design and costumes that they’re lavished with. Fan favorite Mongolia returns, and much like its predecessor in Sid Meier’s Civilization V, Genghis Khan is just here to annihilate everyone, but with an extra touch – every trade route he sends immediately establishes a Trading Post, allowing him to gain more diplomatic visibility on other leaders. New additions such as the Mapuche, Cree, and Georgia, are welcomed as they offer new playstyles. An alternative leader for India is added, who focuses more on military might (which is funny, considering how comfortable Gandhi is with nuking everyone). Unfortunately, all nine new leaders can only be played with the Rise and Fall DLC, so if I wanted to scrap what Rise and Fall offers but play with the Zulus, a compromise must be made. Or you can surf the Steam Community for a mod. Sigh.

There seems to be more falling than rising in Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Rise and Fall. Many of the new mechanics that are introduced sound great on paper, but when executed with a poor AI system that’s obviously been overlooked by the developers, what you get is a broken experience filled with micromanagement over things that don’t really impact the game. The Age system is great for bonuses but makes every playthrough predictable and formulaic, no matter what civilization you play as. Loyalty and Governors can be easily ignored, and Emergencies put a wet towel on those who enjoy playing more aggressively. With another new expansion, Gathering Storm, on the horizon in less than a month, my biggest hope is that Firaxis addresses the AI stupidity. Rise and Fall has potential but needs more fixing if we ever want to see the rise.