Platform: PC

Developer: Firaxis Games

Publisher: 2K

Release Date: February 14, 2019

Genre: Strategy

Nerd Rating: 8 out of 10

Reviewed by Kikopaff

The early cradles of civilizations must now remain steadfast in the face of new challenges. Disaster strikes as mankind attempts to achieve glory, the consequences of our actions give birth to climate change, and leaders must now work together to help those in need. Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: Gathering Storm pushes the boundaries of its existing mechanics, and creates a refreshing, authentic strategy experience. Introducing new ideas, as well as former ones, unfolds a Civilization experience like no other. With many new and exciting mechanics to master, Gathering Storm might be one of the best expansions the series has ever launched yet.

The world is alive in Gathering Storm and erupts with new challenges to consider. Natural disasters are now part of the game, impacting your decisions, in particular, settlement locations. Settling on river tiles now comes with the risk of flooding, but can also yield more fertilized tiles in the aftermath. Volcanoes can erupt unpredictably, causing mayhem for your districts, or a population loss. Hot temperatures can cause intense droughts, and rising sea levels can sink your coastal cities to the bottom of the ocean if you’re not carefully managing it.

Despite how inconvenient these may sound, the disruptions allow Gathering Storm to feel authentic, and the risk or reward strategy enables players to have deeper control in their gameplay. Natural disasters don’t feel unfair because the game tells you from the get-go what the potential hazard can cause. There’s even an option to entirely remove natural disasters in your game, or you can increase the frequency of its happenings. Majority of my playthrough, I had the disaster setting on 3 out of 4; this felt more balanced, but also gave enough exposure to the disasters throughout the course of the game. My only jab with this mechanic is wishing that volcano eruptions looked a little more terrifying. The scaling issue remains in Civilization VI, and volcanoes don’t often look so gloomy when much of your districts and units appear far too large in size.

There are also added improvements in Gathering Storm that give you some control over the effects of the environment. Improvements like canals, dams, tunnels, and railroads can help minimize the danger of harming your tiles and districts. Playing as The Ottomans, I settled on floodplains tiles, meaning my city was susceptible to flooding. But producing a dam helped to minimize the risks and allowed me to play without any more anxiety.

Strategic resources play an additional role in Gathering Storm. Strategic resources have been divided into two types: Fuel and Material. Fuel resources are used to meet the Power needs of your cities, whereas Material resources are required to produce resource-dependent units. These resources are now consumed in power plants to generate electricity for your cities. Initially, you’ll be powering your most advanced buildings by burning carbon-based resources like Coal and Oil, but renewable energy sources also unlock as you progress to current-day technologies. Your choices about resource usage will directly affect the world’s temperature and can cause melting ice caps and rising sea levels.

And these rising sea levels are here to stay. Gathering Storm has also included climate change in its maps, and on paper, that sounds incredibly cool (but also not cool, because you know… it’s climate change). But as the game progresses, it seems the AI leaders don’t really pay much attention to it. In fact, its effects aren’t all that detrimental to the game. It would benefit from more desertification, larger and longer-lasting hurricanes, and more rising sea levels. Units that contribute CO2 also seem a little inconsistent. Having four inactive battleships sitting on your coast emits so much CO2, despite them not actually going to war with anyone seems unfair. Deleting units obviously would be a waste, so it’s just the way the climate change crumbles.

The World Congress and Diplomacy Victory makes its return to Gathering Storm but looks entirely different from its Brave New World days. Diplomatic Favor is the new currency to vote on Resolutions and Discussions. Earning Diplomatic Favor is achievable through Alliances, being Suzerain of city-states, competing in World Games, and more. Proposals are sent before the World Congress for a vote, but proposals are no longer initiated by you or other players. Instead, RNG rerolls resolutions each time the World Congress convenes. Resolutions ultimately affect all civilizations such as banning a Luxury Resource or gaining extra Amenities from each copy of the resource. But the voting system feels awfully rigid and sometimes unfair.

Firstly, because there is no allocated host of the World Congress, resolutions are often random. The resolutions don’t always feel relevant and can be nonsensical. The voting system itself also feels broken; you can end up voting against your own best interests because the votes are first tallied between A and B, decides a winner between the two, and only then starts tallying votes for specific targets. Due to the number of targets, this spreads the votes too thin. It tends to also feel like you’re wasting your Favor on resolutions you know are either not relevant or not worth voting for.

But resolutions are compulsory, which can oftentimes feel annoying. There isn’t even an option to vote no, forcing you to spend Favor on voting a thumbs up on something. There’s a fair argument that this mechanic still enables some form of control. You could target an enemy and deliberately vote for something that you know will affect their strategy. But if you’re playing the diplomacy game, you typically don’t want that, because grievances mean less Favor, and less Favor means no Diplomacy Victory.

The bulk of your Diplomacy also doesn’t really come from actual diplomacy with other leaders, but from exploiting existing mechanics in the game. For example, you could try to spam envoys across various city-states. Or use Settlers to forward settle useless cities just so you can promise a nearby leader not to do it again for 30 Favors. For the same reason, you can hope that your Spies get caught and offer a similar promise. You can also put the disaster setting on its highest setting, meaning there will be more natural disasters that lead to emergency aids. Thus, more opportunities to earn Favor by providing the most aid.

The World Congress also seems too slow. In the progress of earning Favor as quickly as you can muster, a Culture or Science victory may seem more worthwhile, especially if your culture or science output is ridiculously high. At the same time, the World Congress convenes a little too early in the game. A majority of my World Congress games, there’s about one or two unmet players also voting. It seems kinda strange to be convening with world leaders and two invisible AI sentients that apparently seem to know what’s the best for the world.

The previous Warmongering system has been replaced with a new representation of how other players view your warlike actions: Grievances. Now, when other players wrong you by Denouncement, Declaration of War, or capturing or razing one of your cities, you gain Grievances against them and may retaliate in kind with the world’s approval. No longer will you be Denounced for a fair, punitive city capture after an unjustified war.

This is a nice change requested by fans for a long time. It partially fixes the issue I’ve had with the AI in the base game and Rise and Fall. Now, it’s reasonably easier to predict the AI’s behavior based on grievances and your diplomacy with them. But it doesn’t fix the entire problem. Yes, the new Grievances system works as vengeance, but once you make a peace deal after rightfully defending yourself in the war, asking to cede cities automatically gives you more grievances. It’s made me realize that the cede cities system doesn’t actually do anything, and may just be a placeholder for something else in the near future.

You may also use Grievances to request Promises from other players. If the other player continues to go against your wishes that you indicate in this manner, they will continually generate Grievances that you can use to justify a war against them. But the world at large still pays attention to the overall Grievances that other players have against you. If you have grieved others more than they have grieved you, third-parties will notice, and it will impact their opinion of you. The Grievance system might hinder players who are more inclined to play aggressively, and you may accumulate some emergencies against you. But as long as you’re well defended, emergencies are no issue. If anything, you might just find that everyone still hates you.

As expected in a new Civilization VI expansion, nine new leaders from eight new civilizations are introduced. Each leader is creatively designed to exploit resources, bonuses, and strategy in unique ways. For example, Kupe leads the Maori from the seas – literally. You begin in the middle of the ocean and explore the seas until you discover a suitable settlement location. You’re given bonuses each turn you’re in the seas, so as not to give you a huge disadvantage. Maori also receives culture bombs for every fishing boat they improve, giving Kupe a nice opportunity to expand his land. Eleanor of Aquitaine leads England and France, the first leader in the Civilization franchise who can lead two separate civilizations. Suleiman of The Ottomans makes a triumphant return to the Civilization VI, and in Gathering Storm is the first civilization to own a unique governor, Ibrahim.

Playing as the military might of Hungary as you levy military units of various city-states feels incredibly powerful. Settling amidst mountains as the Inca allows your empire to grow with strength. Mali may have a nerf to production, but don’t underestimate their growing and lavish economy, with their ability to purchase pretty much anything. Dido makes her return and leads Phoenicia, with the awesome ability to change her capital city.

There are also some new gameplay systems introduced in Gathering Storm. A well-needed system is the introduction of the production queue. Now, you can easily create a queue of districts, units, and wonders to produce, without needing to constantly revisit your cities. It’s intuitive and easy to get into. The map has also improved, adding new labels of mountains, desert, volcanoes, and rivers. It makes immersion that much more realistic. Resources on the map have also scaled to a smaller size, which sometimes can be missed, especially when you’re zoomed out. There are also new reports to take advantage of. The resources report is a huge quality of life improvement; it now shows every civ’s resource bank and how many each leader has. It makes trading that much more efficient and you no longer have to enter each leader’s trade screen to manually check how many resources they have.

Gathering Storm is a great expansion. The quality of leader designs leaves me in anticipation for an upcoming DLC, and potentially, another expansion on the horizon. The roster of leaders alone makes Gathering Storm a more fun experience. Besides the addition of natural disasters and an improvement in the Grievances system, Gathering Storm has made Civilization VI feel more complete. The Diplomacy aspect of Gathering Storm needs some extra work and could use with some update patches down the track. Perhaps adding CO2 emissions with a penalty within the World Congress resolutions could actually start to make diplomacy feel more meaningful, and an intuitive way of tying in other existing mechanics. For an expansion that focuses so much on the environment and climate change, it’s a shame that resolutions aren’t implementing this enough. But despite these slight disappointments, Gathering Storm is one of the best expansions I’ve played. I’ll be back for one more turn.