Sid Meier’s Civilization VI

Lead designer Ed Beach wanted the map to matter as much as anything else. Even your route through the tech tree takes its cues from the land around your cities. The map generator had to be reworked. In early tests, archipelago maps were nearly unplayable, and testers kept restarting maps until the mountains landed somewhere useful.

The look borrows from the Age of Exploration, and the fog of war is cross-hatched like an old map. Every civilization has its own melody in four versions, and it changes with each new era.

Critics received it well, though one reviewer missed the diplomatic victory at launch. The Gathering Storm expansion brought it back. By 2023 it had sold more than 11 million copies, the best seller in the series at that point. Players leave 86% positive out of 277,478 reviews, critics give it 88 on Metacritic. By our Recommended Score it is #84 of 4,736 games.

Liked it? Try HUMANKIND, where you can switch to a new culture in every era, and Old World from the designer of Civilization IV, where your ruler ages and dies.