When I bought the Digital Deluxe edition of Sid Meier’s Civilization VI about two years ago, I soon found myself greatly enjoying everything new that it had to offer. I had spent quite a lot of time playing its predecessor, since Civilization V was my first experience with the Civilization series.

While I enjoyed learning everything new in Civ VI compared to its predecessor, however, I eventually reached a point at which I felt the game could use more content. From my understanding, it’s a relatively common consensus that Civilization games are significantly better after they receive an expansion or two.

I certainly don’t mean to say I grew bored with the base game or the downloadable content I could freely access as part of the Digital Deluxe edition of the game, though. I just felt that perhaps an expansion might be a breath of fresh air at the time. As if on cue, shortly after I began to wish for new Civ VI content, Firaxis released what I was hoping for: an expansion entitled Rise and Fall.

As most Civilization expansions do, Rise and Fall introduced several new mechanics, some of which were conspicuous by their absence in the base game. Of course, the expansion also brought with it several new playable Civs to try out, each with their own unique aspects. In fact, there’s so much new content to learn in Rise and Fall that I still haven’t had the chance to try everything the expansion added just yet.

As fate would have it, right around the time I finally managed to become accustomed to most of the content added in Rise and Fall, a new expansion entitled Gathering Storm was announced and slated for release on February 14th, 2019. This would mean I would have even more new content to experience, though I must admit that I initially considered that to be both a blessing and a curse.

I say that because, as I alluded to, I still haven’t familiarized myself with everything present in Rise and Fall; which would mean that becoming accustomed to even more content on top of that might prove overwhelming. On the other hand, the release of Gathering Storm would likely ensure that I didn’t experience another “content drought,” so to speak.

Throughout of this article, I’ll be discussing my first impressions of Gathering Storm over the course of my first few attempts to familiarize myself with its content. I feel I should clarify that, because I’m still relatively new to Gathering Storm, this article does not constitute my full review of the expansion.

My full review and my more in-depth thoughts on the expansion will come later, presumably when I’ve gotten more of a solid grasp on its new mechanics and whatnot. With all that out of the way, let the discussion begin.

A moment ago, I mentioned that Gathering Storm would likely prevent me from experiencing another so-called “content drought.” As it happens, the concept of droughts leads me perfectly into my first discussion point. Gathering Storm’s main mechanic centers around several different types of environmental effects. Among these effects are storms of various varieties, droughts, floods, volcanic eruptions, and climate change.

As you might imagine, these environmental effects occur randomly and depending on their intensity, can take catastrophic tolls on nearby Civs. For example, settling a city near a volcano is considered a “high-risk, high-reward” strategy. That’s because if a volcano erupts to any extent, the eruption can heavily damage nearby cities, the districts and population within those cities, and even kill nearby units.

As a trade-off, however, tiles affected by certain types of disasters typically become more fertile afterward. This increases the yields of these tiles, thereby causing them to provide more food, production, or anything along those lines.

In my experience, volcanic activity near my cities hasn’t quite been what I would call catastrophic. Sure, an eruption might render one or two of my nearby districts inoperable until I repair each building within them, or it might negatively affect my city’s population or military units.

While the repair and cleanup processes can prove to be quite annoying and time-consuming, I figure each instance of it could potentially have been much worse. Heck, I’ve had more of my territory negatively affected by the flooding of a minor river than by what the game refers to as a “mega-colossal volcanic eruption.”

This might sound a bit heartless on my part, but I don’t really mind the various types of natural disasters so long as three specific things are certain: my population counts will recover over time, I’m able to replace any lost military units, and I can repair any damaged districts.

If I can be sure of those things, and if the process of dealing with such a disaster might potentially cause tiles near my city to provide more resources afterward, I would say that’s basically a worthwhile trade-off. Then again, I’ve been playing with the “disaster intensity” slider set to 2 during my course of learning all the expansion’s content. Because of that, I would assume that disasters would prove more significant and challenging if I were to set that slider to a higher setting.

In addition to these environmental events, you’ll find that Gathering Storm also includes eight new playable Civilizations and nine new leaders. The most unique leader in this context is Eleanor of Aquitaine, who can serve as the leader of both England and France.

The new Civilizations I’ve found most interesting are Canada, led by Wilfrid Laurier, and Sweden, led by Kristina. The mere act of including Sweden in any given round of a Civ game will add some unique changes beginning in the Industrial Era, which leads me to my next discussion point.

Gathering Storm revives the concept of a Diplomatic Victory within Civ VI in the form of the World Congress. At this point, I’m admittedly unsure as to how the World Congress forms; in my experience, it doesn’t seem to require one Civ to meet all other Civs present in a given game before it forms. I seem to recall that being the case in Civ V. I could easily be mistaken about that, however.

Regardless of how it forms, as I alluded to, the World Congress is the avenue by which players pursue a Diplomatic Victory. The first session of the World Congress begins at the end of the in-game Classical Era. If the game is set to Standard speed, the World Congress will meet once every thirty turns unless a “special session” is called.

If the game is set to any speed other than Standard, the frequency of World Congress meetings will change based on the game’s designated speed.

During regular, non-special sessions, all players remaining in the game are required to participate in the World Congress. Players will vote on two resolutions which could potentially affect the rules of the game, depending on which version of a resolution passes.

For example, there exists a resolution whose first version halves the cost of acquiring military units via gold, faith, or production; alternatively, the second version of that proposal doubles the cost of acquiring units by one of these methods.

In order to vote for your preferred version of any resolution more than once, and thereby increase the likelihood of such a resolution passing, you’ll need certain amounts of a newly-introduced currency known as Diplomatic Favor. I readily admit that I had to research how to earn Diplomatic Favor because I’ve often found myself clueless as to how I ended up with so much or so little of it.

According to my research, there are three main ways to acquire Favor: the tier of your current government type, becoming Suzerain of at least one city-state, and forming official diplomatic alliances with other Civs. Of course, the more of these you can do simultaneously, the higher your per-turn “income” of Diplomatic Favor will be.

To elaborate on the first method, suppose your current government is a Merchant Republic. That’s considered a “tier 2” government. Thus, so long as you maintain a government type that is on that specific tier, you’ll earn two Diplomatic Favor points per turn. That number will increase to three points per turn if you later change government types to a “tier 3” government, such as Democracy.

Favor can also be traded between Civs in the same manner as gold or resources are commonly traded. Leaders who wish to trade with you may occasionally offer a portion of their Favor as an incentive for you to accept a deal they have proposed to you.

Beginning in the Modern Era, a third resolution will always be available for voting. Depending on which version of it passes, one player who was selected by the majority of other Civs will either be granted two Diplomatic Victory points or lose one such point. When one player accumulates enough points, they are awarded the Diplomatic Victory.

As I mentioned earlier, as long as a game of Civ includes Sweden, there will be some unique additions to the World Congress. Occasionally, a resolution will appear during a regular session of the World Congress which will determine whether or not a peaceful competition between all Civs in the game will be allowed to take place.

During these competitions, each Civ remaining in the game is expected (though not explicitly required) to participate by working toward some defined goal over the course of 30 turns after the resolution authorizing the competition is passed. These goals can be such things as consistently generating points toward a type of Great Person, for example.

Civs that put in enough work toward the goal and manage to maintain the highest “score” of all Civs participating in the event will receive a specific reward, such as a Diplomatic Victory point or 100 Great Person Points. Civs who find themselves in second and third place will also receive lesser rewards.

Sweden factors into these competitions because, as part of their unique ability, they add three of these competitions to the list. In these unique competitions, Civs work toward earning one of three Nobel Prizes: the Nobel Peace Prize, the Nobel Prize in Literature, or the Nobel Prize in Physics. This depends upon which of these competitions happen to appear as World Congress resolutions.

Personally, I’ve never been very interested in this whole “World Congress” thing, let alone the competitions that, to me, seem to exert a certain “peer pressure” to try and coax me into participating. With that said, I might pay more attention to the World Congress system in the future now that I’ve researched exactly how it’s supposed to work (and, more importantly, how it may work to my advantage).

To me, the process of attaining a Diplomatic Victory seems like more trouble than it’s worth. For one thing, you can’t really work toward achieving that victory type until very late into the game. That might effectively become a deterrent to anyone who wants to try their hand at the new victory type. Furthermore, you’d better hope you’ve saved up enough Diplomatic Favor when the time comes if you want to actually have a chance at earning any Diplomatic Victory points.

There’s one last concept present in Gathering Storm that I want to cover in this article and that involves climate change. No matter which Civ you’re playing as, if you’re not careful in regards to how you power your cities from the Industrial Era onward, the planet itself (and presumably at least a few other Civs) will essentially begin to turn against you.

For example, you can power your cities and the buildings within them by using fuels that are typically harder to acquire, such as coal and oil, after you research the technologies required to use them. Powering cities this way may not seem to have an impact at first, especially if a smaller number of Civs are doing it.

However, as Civs power more cities this way, levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere will rise. These levels are tracked on a global basis. The more these levels rise, the worse the climate changes will become.

There are nine in-game phases of climate change; players will truly begin to feel the effects of the changing climate by the time the fourth phase is reached. As you might imagine, things only get worse from that point.

There are two main ways to combat climate change; such as using more environmentally-friendly power sources like nuclear power plants and wind turbines, as well as pursuing climate accord resolutions within the World Congress.

I mentioned earlier that carbon dioxide levels are continuously tracked on a global basis. This means that every Civ produces at least some contribution to the carbon dioxide levels each turn. However, if one Civ in particular is causing significantly high amounts of pollution, that Civ may be targeted by other Civs; that is to say, enemy Civs who want to combat climate change may declare war on a Civ that has continually done the opposite.

There you have it, folks! I knew this article might run rather long since I would be discussing several aspects of a Civilization game. Regardless of its length, I hope this article has proven both informational and entertaining for you. Before I sign off, however, I’d like to pass along a side note.

If you find yourself wanting to learn more about Civilization VI and/or its expansions, I’ll be uploading an entire “beginner’s guide” series to Phenixx Gaming’s YouTube channel in the relatively near future. I’ll cover the base game, Rise and Fall, as well as Gathering Storm. The base game and both expansions will be covered in separate series so that I can cover them in as much detail as possible. Keep an eye out for that!

Phenixx Gaming is everywhere you are. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.