Civilization 6: Rise and Fall

“ Civ is a disease.” My gaming partner chuckles from the half-hearted joke, just as we marvel at how a mutual friend is still going at it. It was sometime between five and six on a weekend morning, and the only reason we were bidding goodbye was because...

Rise and Fall adds numerous new leaders, buildings, units, and wonders. It also tinkers with the nation-building strategy in some bigger ways thanks to the additions of loyalty and golden ages. In the end, Rise and Fall’s moment-to-moment action isn’t dramatically different from the base game, but the new bells and whistles provide a good excuse to return to Firaxis’ excellent strategy game.

Civilization 6 brought some big ideas when it released in 2016 with the introduction of Districts – city improvements that occupied their own tiles instead of sitting atop the city tile, a revolutionary concept for the series – completely changing how...

Rise and Fall is an expansion about strategy, storytelling and is an absolute dream for anybody a fan of long-termism. While it may not initially seem as large or expansive as other expansions in the series history, there's a pervasive nature of all the...

But then, inevitably, it swings back the other way, and you nick a city, or push back against that Emergency Alliance for a huge reward, or even just scrape your way into a regular Age to keep your head above the water, and you're back to feeling like a that mysterious, all-conquering deity once again. Rise and Fall is at times complicated and messy, a wilderness, that's the perfect compliment to too much Civilization.

I enjoy military campaigns in Civ games, but I’m convinced that developer Firaxis has made a good choice in Rise and Fall. This expansion is a recognition that the magic of this series is in giving players lots of choices — sometimes difficult choices — as we all strive to stamp our own personalities on what is, effectively, a simulation of personal political leadership.

Civilization 6: Rise and Fall’s ideas are all good, and most of them are good in practice, too. It makes the sequence of eras more meaningful and rewarding with Golden and Dark Ages and its Governors’ buffs can be developed into powerful, portable upgrades for your cities. On the other hand, the nuanced Loyalty system can grind a lot of traditional strategies to less satisfying a crawl, and Emergency pacts are usually a non-starter due to the other nations’ unreliable AI. On balance, that makes Rise and Fall a net positive, though it leaves me awaiting the expected second expansion for Civilization 6’s true golden age.

Civilization VI stands out as the deepest and richest base game in the series, with smart additions and changes that refine its already great strategy gameplay. With that, however, comes the challenge of adding new content to improve upon what's already...