Five times now over the past 25 years, Sid Meier and his teams of expert strategy game designers have created the Earth and populated it with competing nations. Each iteration of the notoriously addictive Sid Meier’s Civilization series has taken the same concept of reenacting variations on humanity’s history of conflict and technological development and built a similar, but distinctly different turn-based strategy game around it from the mind of a new lead designer.
Today, publisher 2K and developer Firaxis announced that the sixth iteration of the series will arrive in just six months on October 21, 2016; for Civilization 6, Lead Designer Ed Beach and his team are building on many of the concepts we saw in the hex-based Civilization V, but with some ambitious, fundamental changes to the way cities are built and scientific progress occurs that are aimed specifically at making sure playing this version never becomes routine.
First, the groundwork must be laid. Notably, this is the first Civ game since Civilization 4 in 2004 to launch with a completely new game engine – one Firaxis says it’s designed from the ground up with deep mod support in mind. Despite being rebuilt from the ground up, Beach promises that unlike most of its predecessors, Civilization 6 won’t be stripped down to its bare essentials in its initial release form. We can expect a set of features that’s comparable to what’s currently in Civilization V in its post-expansion state, including trade, religion, archeology, espionage, Great Works, Culture Victory, and more. “We have almost all of that in there,” he says.
Firaxis is also starting from a better place with the AI, which had some issues when we first played Civilization 5’s busier one-unit-per-tile combat. “We started with all the know-how and a lot of the lessons learned of what worked and what didn’t,” says Beach. “There’s a lot we learned about player expectation, for how an AI should behave and which moves the AI might have failed to make early on in Civ 5 that players were anticipating. You know like, players always like that if you could capture one of their civilians, they expect to see that happen.” In other words, this AI already knows the tricks Civ 5 had to learn over time.
Firaxis aims to fix one of its biggest issues with Civilization 5.
Armed with those tools, Firaxis aims to fix one of the biggest issues that came up in its internal post-mortem of Civilization 5: at least for certain portions, there was a repeatable “best” way to play. “A good example of that is the Social Policy tree,” explains Beach. “There are certain policies that were you know, ‘avoid this one, or only use it in rare circumstances.’ We didn’t like that.”
“We wanted to make people think on their feet,” he said, describing the mantra for his team at the Maryland-based development studio as they set out to reinvent this classic game yet again. “We want them to have to adjust to the map and play the map that is presented to them, which is going to make them have to rethink their strategies.”
Among many changes, Beach highlights two that he believes will make the biggest difference. The first is what he calls “Unstacking the cities,” a reference to the way Civilization 5 flattened out the “Stack of Doom” armies that ruled Civilization 1 through 4 and limited each tile to having just one military unit on it at a time. “All of the sudden the military side of the game got much more interesting,” he observes. “There’s all sort of tactical complexity that was unlocked by putting the units out on the map.” So for Civilization 6 Beach’s team has applied the same concept to cities, which in all previous games have always existed on a single tile, cramming every building into that space.
Instead, Firaxis has created the concept of 12 different types of color-coded Districts (five or six of which will be available from the beginning) that exist on their own tiles on the map, outside the city center and will house specific building types. “A science district, which we’ve called a campus, once constructed will allow you to put a library and a university and a research lab out on that tile. And now your city is sort of specialized toward being a really good science city,” says Beach.
The number of Districts a city can support is limited by its population.
Of course, the number of Districts a city can support is limited by its population, which will force you to choose which areas each city should specialize in early on, and provide yet another strong incentive to expand your empire early. And those choices will be heavily influenced by the terrain you start on, says Lead Producer Dennis Shirk. “Right out of the gate you’re going to get adjacency bonuses of science by putting a Campus next to mountains or jungle. If you put down a holy site you’re going to want it next to woods to get the bonus there. If you’re on the coast, obviously you’re going to want to build a harbor. But these take up tiles, so eventually you also have to think about feeding your people. You have to make sure you can still build farms and mines, and wonders take up whole tiles as well. You can’t have everything everywhere.”
“Every city is a handcrafted, hex-by-hex layout puzzle,” adds Beach, pointing out that you’ll have to go back and reevaluate your land use choices in the late game when new options become available.
Coastal cities will have a boost to naval research.
These changes obviously have a big impact not only on production, but on warfare and intelligence-gathering. “Scouting and approaching an enemy is a very very meaningful activity,” says Beach. “You can see if they have Wonders that they’ve started because they’ll be constructing in front of your eyes right there on the map. You can see if you have two or three cities on the border, which one might be his heavy industry city and which is where his science research is going on.” This allows you to make educated tactical decisions on what areas of the enemy you want to cripple first – take down unit production, halt scientific advancement to maintain a technological advantage, cripple food production, etc. On the other side, in the late game you’ll have to decide which districts to defend best against ground or bombing attacks.
Existing outside the city walls gives the Military Encampment tactical advantages.
To that end, there’s also a Military Encampment District that you can build to house military buildings, but it also can be fortified with walls and gain a ranged strike – doubling your city’s defensive power. Being outside the city walls gives it other tactical advantages as well, adds Shirk. “An enemy can’t just come in and siege your city, because you’ll be cranking out units at their back. It’s a nice side effect.”
Warfare is largely consistent with the hex-based battles we saw in Civilization 5, but with some important tweaks. In that post-mortem, Firaxis’ team found they loved the tactical nuance of one-unit-per-tile combat and didn't want to lose it, but they did want to reduce congestion as many military units tried to navigate terrain crowded. The first change implemented in Civilization 6 is the concept of support units, wherein something like a siege tower, battering ram, or anti-tank or anti-aircraft gun can stack with a typical military unit.
Second, the concept of grouping into formations. Calling it a long-requested feature, Shirk says you’ll be able to link two units (one military and one civilian) together and will be able to move them around together with a single movement command. “That’s really nice with civilian units, as you can escort settlers or builders or missionaries around the map.”
Pink districts house culture buildings, the blue ones house science.
Finally, to minimize late-game unit bloat, Firaxis has created Corps and Armies: two or three of the same unit type (a Rifleman, for instance) combined into a single, more powerful version of that same unit. A Rifleman Corps unit would be roughly 40% more powerful than an individual, which means they’re less potent than the two component Riflemen would be by themselves, but together they’re more survivable and potent in a single attack. Having the option to create Corps (unlocked in the Napoleonic era), and then later add a third unit to create an Army (unlocked around 100 years later), is designed to open up new tactics and reduce overcrowding on the map.
Super Science
Another major change is what Firaxis is calling Active Research. Where in all past Civilizations a landlocked empire could unlock the secrets of seafaring technology at the exact same pace as an island people, in Civ 6 we’ll see technological progress tied to your environment and the actions you’re taking in it. “In previous Civs research was up on the side, and it didn’t matter what was going on in the game world. You could kind of move through that tech tree however you felt like in a very independent manner. It was a very passive activity; you could click on the technology you wanted to work toward, and it might be two or three layers deep in that tree, so you wouldn’t have to make another decision for 25 or 30 turns. We wanted to break people out of that,” says Beach.
Garmin nuvi 255w software missing. Every technology on the tree will have an activity associated with it that will improve your research rate.
Now every technology on the tree will have an activity associated with it that will improve your research rate. Masonry, for instance, will be sped along by taking a builder unit and creating quarry terrain improvements to earn scientific credit. A nation with no stone to mine, however, will have to spend more time brute-forcing their way through that research. Meanwhile, coastal cities that build lots of boats and harbors will get similar boosts toward naval advancements. Fighting barbarians in the early game will increase your military technology research – and so on. Beach says he expects this system will appeal to both casual and hardcore players. “You can research it ahead of time and figure out what your path is, or some people just like to not worry too much about the boosts, but they notice they get nicely rewarded.”
Now that's a Wonder.
Finally, the diplomatic game has also been reworked. “In Civ 5, different civilizations felt very different when you were playing as them, but when they were AI opponents they felt very similar in that they had the same way they go about playing the game. You didn’t have to react as strongly as we would’ve liked to the fact that, wow, Ghengis is next to me, or one of these leaders who might have a crazy idea about what might be a nice thing to do in the Civilization world. We had Gandhi and a few other people that definitely have some quirks to them, but not as far as we wanted,” says Beach.
If you’re going to out-Wonder the Wonder-obsessed guy, you’re going to go to war with him.
So in order to imbue leaders with unique personalities in how they interact and negotiate with you, Firaxis has taken each of the leaders and looked at what they cared about in history to make them care about that in game. “We have a leader who’s obsessed with building Wonders. He’s good at it, but he’s pretty insistent that every game he needs to have more Wonders than every other single player in the game. If you suddenly are out-producing him in Wonders, he’s going to be irritable. You can pretty much guarantee that if you’re going to out-Wonder the Wonder-obsessed guy, you’re going to go to war with him.” Other examples of leader priorities include relationships with City-States (which also return), such as one leader who wants to have the most good relationships with them, and another who wants to conquer as many as possible. They probably won’t get along.
But that might be too simplistic, so on top of the historically accurate personality trait there’s a secret, random agenda trait that’s assigned to every AI opponent in each game. To fully understand their motivations you’ll have to uncover those through hints via the diplomatic and trade systems.
Wonders now have room to breathe and be impressive.
To help you with that, Shirk says we’ll have a much-improved diplomatic screen. “The Diplomacy system in Civ 5 was kind of existing in a box. You went in, there was no information, so you left (or you used one of those amazing mods). “But the new Diplomacy UI is beautiful - there’s a plethora of information so you can make informed decisions when you’re going through a trade or just need information on the fly.”
Firaxis played coy about the end-game tweaks they’re working on, but Beach did confirm there will be an entirely new victory condition, and one of the traditional victory conditions has been radically reworked to change the way you go about achieving it. “We’ve definitely looked at that and shaken it up.”
Civ 6 Corps Army
Regarding that promised mod support, Beach as assurances and some encouraging hints. “We’re going to talk about this in depth later, but what we have done is added a whole bunch of flexibility in terms of how game rules are built, and created, and linked to the different subsystems in our game. And that sort of fresh approach to things is going to make the modders be able to go nuts right out of the gate in terms of adding things.”
Expect much more on Civilization 6 on IGN this week, including a look at today’s trailer from the developers’ perspective and a chat about the new art style.
I have 2 field canon corps next to each other.
I just received notification I can now make a 3 unit corps.
Civ 6 How To Make Corpse
I can see no way to join them - or break one so I can try and add 1 to another corps. Are either of these things possible?
You cannot merge two Corps. To transform a Corps into an Army, you need to add in another single unit just the way you did to form the Corps in the first place.
2 units form a Corps.3 units form an Army.
EricEric
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The world is sheathed in grey past your capital city. Nearby you can spy copper, Gypsum, and rice. Around you are rivers that cut close to the capital city of Sparta, tundra to the south, and a desert that stretches into the darkness around you. It's impossible to say right now what, or who you will find in the fog of war that surrounds you. You'll need to juggle food, production, science, culture, and religion to bring your people from the dawn of civilization forward through the ages, and it won't be easy.
This is Civilization 6.
A whole new world
You really can't understate the lovely graphics, and dozens of small details that are liberally strewn through Civilization 6. From the mild humps of hills, to the new natural wonders that are hidden across the landscape, to each civilization's cities, and the resources that allow you to better build up your cities. The map is one of the biggest pieces of Civilization 6 because it's how you'll decide where to found new cities, and how to grow the cities you have already founded.
When you initially get started, you'll only to be able to see the land directly around you, everything else is shrouded within the fog of war. As you send units out to explore, you'll be able to uncover the world around you, and see which areas would be prime for expansion. As units move through the world, areas that you have visibility over will show up in full color that displays their landscape, and resources. You'll also find other civilizations, city states, small tribes that will give you boosts, and of course barbarians running amok.
When your visibility changes after movement, the areas you can no longer really see will fade to looking like an old time map. You'll still be able to pick out the landscape and resources, but you won't be able to see any unit movements in these areas. Each city will also grow as you play and no two cities will ever look identical. Depending on the civilization that builds them, and what buildings or districts you implement, each city will look a bit different.
All together the graphics in Civilization 6 draw you in. There is always something extra to notice. Even after more than 100 hours within the game I'm still surprised by the little things that you'll find and how everything plays in together to make the experience varied, and fantastic.
The more things change
Sid Meyer's Civilization 6 isn't so much an entirely new game, as it is the next generation of a game that has had players asking for one more turn for over a decade now. The big game mechanics are still around. You start at the beginning of time, and your job is to guide your civilization through the centuries until it becomes the mightiest civilization on Earth. Instead of talking about what has changed though, we're going to focus on what has changed, and whether it works in it's new iteration.
The first big change comes to cities. In the past, cities have been fairly static. Your borders would grow, but aside from improvements, there weren't any hexes that were taken up by growth of your cities. This time, you'll need to carefully plan out your city and how you want it to grow. That's because Civilization 6 adds districts. Each district will earn you points towards specific Great People, and will aid you in one of several categories.
You'll need these districts in order to properly grow your cities. However, every city is not going to have the room for every district that is available. You'll need to weigh which district is most important to your Civilization. These include industry, culture, science, faith, trading, and more. Some cities will get boosts from the world around you, depending on where districts are placed. Building a science district next to the mountains, or a Faith district next to a river, will give you immediate boosts.
Wonders are also a bit different. Instead of just appearing within the borders of your city, you'll now have to decide specifically where you want to place them. They'll now take up a full tile within your city, and remove any resources, food, or production that previously lived in there. By placing wonders next to the district that they play into, you can also earn yourself even more boosts. This means that the days of every building, and every wonder crammed into a single city are over.
Instead of having Govermental policies that choose once, and are then stuck with for the rest of your game, things are a bit more fluid in Civilization 6. Each time you research a new policy, you'll have the choice to switch all of your policies around. Policies come in four varieties. Military policies will help you to grow your military, and fortify defensive buildings. Economic policies will aid you in growth, happiness, gold and the like. Diplomatic policies affect how you interact with city states. Lastly you have policies that will help you to attract Great People of a specific type.
Each Goverment has it's own number of policies, but certain Civilizations. technologies, and Great People perks can add additional policies. By swapping out what you need, when you need it, you're able to personalize how you play through the game. By turn 150 you may well have over 30 policies that are available to be implemented, and that number just keeps growing as you research technologies and civics.
Different Governments will also give you different perks to aid you along your journey through time. You'll discover new forms of Government through the civics tree, and depending on which one you decide to run with you'll get an assortment of policy slots. It's also within the Goverment that you choose, that you get perks for your play style. These come in the form of things like extra combat strength if you're an Oligarchy, and additional trade route slots for Merchant Republic.
Research is also a bit different this go around. That's because instead of a single tree for you to research, there are a pair of them. You have your tech tree, which is fueled by science, and will let you uncover various technologies which will unlock units and buildings. The second tree is your Civics tree, and it's here that you can unlock policies, wonders and even more units. Your civics tree is fueled by your culture.
It takes a bit of practice to learn how to balance the two trees and use them in tandem. Once you get the hang of it though, you can easily navigate either without any issues. The big change to discovering new technologies and civics comes with the addition of boosts. Every single civic and technology has a specific action you can complete to boost the research. They vary, but especially in the early game, running for boosts can make things much, much, easier on you. Gunning for boosts to technologies you are actively researching can help to give you a running start and can deliver some early bonuses that can get your game started out right.
Diplomacy is the big place where not much has changed, and it's the one big part of the game that seems to fall short for me right now. When you initially meet another Civilization, you'll be able to to send them a trade delegation in order to open up Diplomatic relations. Not everyone will accept your delegation, especially if they automatically dislike you.
Each Civilization has their own agendas. At the beginning of the game you can only see one of their agendas, but as you move through time you'll be able to see their secondary agenda. These are what make up the personalities of opposing Civilizations, and playing into them can help you out. Especially if you don't want to go to war within the first 100 turns, which has happened with an alarming frequency as I've played through.
There just aren't many options for discussion with opposing Civilizations, which is a slight downer. It's worth mentioning that even in Civilization 6, Diplomacy was one of the more difficult aspects of the game. That's true here as well. You'll need to learn how to approach and deal with different civilizations depending on what kind of victory you are gunning for.
Speaking of war, there is a huge new addition in Civilization 6. One of the biggest frustrations with the series has been the inability to stack units, that is the ability to have 2 or more units on the same tile. Now, you'll be able to combine units onto a single tile to make them much nastier than they were initially. You can combine two or more units on to a single tile in two specific ways.
The first involves combining a support unit with a military unit. Support units are primarily used when attacking cities, and can give your melee units higher defenses when attacking cities. Various different support units will be unlocked as you progress through different time periods. From within the civics tree you can unlock Corps, and later Armies.
This allows you to combine two units of the same kind to create a corps, or three to create an army. A corps or army isn't quite as powerful as the individual units they combine to create. However their defense is much higher, which makes them ultimately much more survivable against a variety of enemies. While this still isn't the stacking some players have been craving, it does make a big difference, especially in the late game.
The last big change to Civilization 6 comes in the form of Great People. Unlike earlier games where they would more or less just appear depending on your buildings, you now have to specifically attract them to your Civilization. Different districts will give you points towards a Great Person of a particular type. Each different kind of Great Person will give you different perks to your civilization.
Not every Great Person is the same either, two Great Scientists may deliver two very different perks. There is actually a screen you can access to see all of the Great People currently up for grabs. This will show you which Great Person you are currently working towards, and what they can give you. You'll also be able to see how close you are to gaining that Great Person, and whether you're in direct competition with another Civilization to earn them.
In almost every aspect of play, Civilization 6 delivers a near flawless experience. There are still some bugs to be worked out, specifically in terms of start bias with certain Civilizations, or with the Diplomacy mechanic. For the time being there are also only 13 Civilizations to choose from. Part of the glory of Civilization though, comes through the expansions and additions that arrive later in the game's lifespan. Overall though, if you're a fan of 4X games, this is one that you absolutely cannot miss.
Conclusion
Civilization 6 is a beautiful, well rounded 4X game that will have you saying one more turn long before you shut down your PC.
Pros:
Addictive in a good way
Tons of moving parts to keep you occupied
new features enhance gameplay without taking away from the basics
Cons:
Diplomacy doesn't work as well as the rest of the game
Pretty big learning curve to adjust to everything
Certain Civilizations have a start bias problem
Civilization 6 Army
Civilization 6 delivers a nearly flawless 4X experience that gives you everything you already love about the Civilization series, while adding new and interesting facets. Pick a Civilization and take over the world, whether that means wiping out every other major Civilization on the planet, or by exerting y our control via science. There is tons to do, and we only barely scratched the surface here. It's available now for $59.99, and we've given it 4.5 stars.
This review was conducted using a copy of the game purchased by the reviewer
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Over the last week, we've had unfettered access to a preview build of Civilization 6 that let us play games from beginning to end. We had 10 of the game's eventual 20 civs to choose from and were limited to Prince difficulty and certain map types and sizes, but we were able to experience the game itself otherwise unhampered. This gave us time to really dig into some of the big changes we've so far only seen briefly at preview events and in promo videos.
There are city districts, a culture-based 'tech' tree, a religious victory, and more big changes that have a significant impact on the long-running series. Tom and T.J. have a logged a combined 50-plus hours in Civ 6 over the last week—forsaking their responsibilities and families for the sweet taste of 'one more turn..' to find if these changes were good, bad, or just different for the sake of different.
Cities have districts and need to be planned out more carefully
Tom: There’s a whole lot more to consider when picking a spot to found a city in Civ 6. Districts have adjacency bonuses and tile requirements that need to be considered well before you ever plan on building them. For example, if you don’t have a flat hex adjacent to both your city center and a source of fresh water, you won’t ever be able to build an Aqueduct in that city, plain and simple. It adds an extra layer of depth to city planning beyond just checking what resources are nearby, and is something you can really only learn through trial and error.
T.J.: Which can be a little frustrating on your first couple starts, but I like that it makes it far more difficult to drill down to an optimal city layout. And once you get a bit more experience, you realize that you might have to make some sacrifices early on, like not building a holy site to have room for an effective industrial core in the later eras. In fact, having the district that grants bonus production unlock so late is definitely a game-changer for civ veterans, as “spam a lot of production buildings early” used to be one of, if not the, dominant strategy for all empires.
Tom: Yeah, the need to specialize certain cities—especially ones with limited housing, which caps your population—is really exciting. My capital still tended to become a super city that could do everything, but eventually I just ran out of tiles to build on and had to look to my other cities to fill certain roles. You can only rush so many wonders before you literally run out of land to build them on! At first I didn’t really get why Firaxis introduced districts, but it makes city planning a lot more challenging in the best possible way.
There are two ‘tech’ trees, and they are much more flexible
T.J.: I was kinda bewildered by how small Civ 6’s tech tree seemed at first, but then I realized a lot of stuff had been moved to the new civics tree. This creates some interesting cases where you can be ahead technologically but behind socially, or vice-versa, and helps make the science rush playstyle a bit less of a no-brainer.
Tom: As someone who usually goes for a cultural victory, I do love that those points are going to something beyond border expansion and civic bonuses in the early game, but it’s a little strange to me that they decided the answer was “another tree.” I like that culture is used for substantial unlocks, but I still enjoyed that the civics trees in Civ 5 had their own flavor to them. But I suppose sharing a common form allowed both trees to benefit from the new tech boosting “eureka” moments, which are one of my absolute favorite new features. They let you adapt to what’s actually happening in your game by directly rewarding you for it.
T.J.: It unlocks a totally new way to play the early game, if you so choose. Reading the tech and civics trees as mini quest logs and actively maximizing your progress through them can be a lot of fun if you’re not going for early war, and in past Civs might have just been sitting around waiting for buildings to finish. I likewise miss the different civics trees with their own themes—though a lot of that has been moved into the government types and policy cards, which are a bit more dynamic.
Religion has its own victory condition
T.J.: Religion was kind of an accessory added in the Gods & Kings expansion in Civ 5. It was a nice accessory, but it really played into other elements and victory conditions rather than being a game of its own. Civ 6 changes this by adding a victory condition for essentially converting the world to your religion, and introducing the somewhat hilarious “theological combat”, where competing missionaries can bombard each other with sky-born rays of truth and righteousness until one of them gives up and decides to go home. Something that never, ever happens in internet debates, but can happen in Civ 6.
Tom: I like that religion has a victory condition, but the whole system currently feels like one of those things that is waiting to be “fixed” in an expansion. I don’t know about you, but I found the theological combat to be extremely one-dimensional and dull, especially when the AI decides to start massing religious units to storm your empire. It’s almost exactly what was wrong with Civ 4’s unit stacking that Civ 5 tried to fix and Civ 6 has expanded upon. Civ 6’s actual combat has increased nuance through the new support units and combining units into Corps and Armies, while spreading and defending your religion is just “spam a bunch of dudes and walk towards your opponent.”
Each AI leader has unique agendas
T.J.: The reason I love this change is that it shows a recognition that singleplayer and multiplayer in a strategy game are different beasts. If you try to make AI leaders behave like a human opponent, it’s just never going to work. Agendas give the AI leaders goals that are varied, interesting, comprehensible, and discoverable (in the case of the hidden ones). They’re much more fun to play against because they’re not trying to play like people. They’re crafted to be interesting opponents to a human player.
Tom: I totally agree. It makes the sometimes obtuse behavior of each AI leader a lot clearer. You can specifically see what will make someone happy or mad, and then watch as they don’t like you anyway because the AI is the meanest and I hate them. Seriously, does any leader on the same continent as me ever just want to be buds?
T.J.: I’m also astonished how overlooked the introduction of cassus belli (needing a reason to go to war) has been in Civ 6. Going to war without justification greatly increases your warmonger penalty, so the AI leaders further act as a check on naked aggression that can be mitigated with civics that unlock religious, colonial, or territorial wars. Denouncing an opponent and waiting five turns waives this requirement, but gives them a decent heads up that war may be coming. It also decreases the incidence of surprise wars the AI declares against you in the early game.
Tom: I like that you can also finally make the same demands your AI opponents would make of you (don’t settle near me, move your troops, etc.) to them, and then hold them to those demands. In general, AI leaders don’t seem too much smarter than previous games—at least on Prince difficulty—but they are significantly more understandable in how they react to you and how you can influence them.
Movement is slower, but roads are easier to lay down.
Tom: As I explained in my last month, unit movement doesn’t “round up” anymore and scouts can no longer waltz through rough terrain. I’m pretty torn on this change. I may just need to get used to it more, but the limited movement feels a lot more frustrating to deal with in the early game. Everything is (predictably) slower, and trying to move an army through a thick jungle can be downright infuriating.
T.J.: A lot of people have been seeing this as a general nerf to military units, but I like to view it rather as a buff to specialized units. If you have a unique unit that ignores certain terrain-based movement penalties, like Kongo’s, that’s a pretty huge deal now, and completely changes how you conduct war as or against that civ. It also gives more of a combat role to scouts who have earned the Alpine and Ranger promotions, whereas in Civ 5, they were mostly just used for exploration. In addition, the fact that roads auto-build along trade routes opens up some interesting choices. Do I want to trade with the civ I eventually plan to conquer and give them resources, in exchange for an easy highway to attack them with?
Tom: Sending a trade route to a nearby opponent before declaring war is the dirtiest tactic, and boy do I love it to death. I really like not having to use workers to lay down roads (especially considering workers are now expendable builders) and worry if the maintenance cost of my highways will one day sink my empire. And the movement change does make those roads more important to get down when you can, but I’m just grumpy and impatient. I’ll get it over it I suppose..