David’s Thoughts on Civ VI’s New Frontier Pass DLC 1

Folks, I’m sure it’s no secret by this point that I absolutely adore virtually everything about Sid Meier’s Civilization VI. That’s why I was so ecstatic when my good friend and colleague here at Phenixx Gaming, Alexx, was recently kind enough to gift me the new season pass for Civilization 6, which is officially entitled the New Frontier Pass. I’d like to speak for a while about this so-called New Frontier Pass, what it currently contains, and what it will eventually contain provided its announced update schedule proceeds as Firaxis has planned.

For the sake of those of you who might not know, the New Frontier Pass is the collective name for a series of bi-monthly DLC packs and additional free updates to the game. The pass will add new playable Civs, new leaders, new game modes, new infrastructure, new city-states, and quite a lot more, between now and its planned final update in March 2021. Since I got my hands on the season pass so early in its lifespan, there’s only one full piece of DLC available at the time of writing, that DLC is what I’ll be discussing today.

Among a host of other things I’ll discuss throughout this article, this DLC pack’s primary additions are two new playable Civs. Namely, these Civs are the Maya, led by Lady Six Sky, and Gran Colombia, led by Simón Bolívar. I thought I’d start this article off by discussing what Gran Colombia is capable of. This Civ’s passive ability (so long as Simón Bolívar is their leader) is called Campaña Admirable.

This ability gives Gran Colombia a specific unit known as a Comandante General at the start of every new in-game age. These are essentially just special Great Generals with unique passive bonuses while they remain active, as well as potentially quite powerful retire abilities. These units’ retire abilities also work quite well in conjunction with a certain part of Gran Colombia’s unique combat unit. I’ll explain why that is in just a moment.

As aforementioned, Gran Colombia receives one Comandante General at the start of every new age. Because of that, I think it’s worth noting that this ability does not depend at all upon whether you end up in a Dark Age, Normal Age, Golden Age, or Heroic Age at any point in the game. You’ll get a Comandante General as soon as a new age begins regardless of the current circumstances.

Gran Colombia’s unique ability is twofold: all units get +1 movement, and the act of promoting a unit does not automatically render that unit unable to take any further action. This would normally force the said unit to end its turn after receiving its promotion. Additionally, Gran Colombia’s unique unit is a replacement for the standard Cavalry and is known as the Llanero.

The Llanero has a lower maintenance cost than the Cavalry it replaces. It also gets +4 combat strength for each adjacent Llanero unit and it heals to full HP when it’s in range of a Comandante General that uses its retire ability. That’s the primary reason why I mentioned that Llaneros and Comandante General units work well in tandem with one another. It’s also worth bearing in mind that this isn’t even factoring in the standard combat bonuses provided by each Comandante General that operate similarly to such benefits from a normal Great General.

Finally, Gran Colombia has a unique builder improvement known as the Hacienda. When constructed, each Hacienda provides +2 Gold, +1 Production, and +1 Housing to the nearest city. Haciendas also provide +1 Food for every two adjacent Plantations or every individual adjacent plantation once you research the Replaceable Parts technology.

Additionally, Plantations and Haciendas receive +1 Production for every two adjacent Haciendas or every individual adjacent Hacienda once you research Rapid Deployment. While Haciendas can provide quite a few bonuses, it’s worth noting that they can only be built on specific tiles. Namely, Haciendas may only be constructed on Plains, Plains Hills, Grasslands, and Grassland Hills. I suggest keeping that in mind when choosing ideal locations upon which to settle your cities.

Personally, I think Gran Colombia’s most useful unique aspect is its passive ability that prevents the act of promoting a unit from automatically ending that unit’s turn. Not only does promoting a unit instantly heal said unit for 50 HP, which can turn the tides of a battle in your favor on its own, this passive bonus also obviously makes that unit stronger or more versatile based on the promotion you assigned to it.

Having the ability to strengthen and heal a unit, and then still move or attack with a newly-promoted unit in the same turn is quite nice, especially when you’ve got that unit supported by a Comandante General and the combat bonuses the Comandante provides.

Although Haciendas can potentially be quite beneficial, as I discussed a moment ago, I’d advise against building them en masse unless you’ve got a fair few Plantations in your territory so as to get the maximum bonuses provided by each Hacienda. If nothing else, at least constructing your first Hacienda will get you +4 Era Score, as is the case when you construct anything unique to one specific Civ for the first time. I know that extra Era Score has saved me from several Dark Ages while playing, especially as Gran Colombia in particular.

For what it’s worth, I think the Llanero is a great replacement for the standard Cavalry. I rarely build cavalry units anyway, aside from a few Knights when I’m about to go to war in the early stages of the mid-game or Tanks as the game goes on if I have enough oil to do so. Llanero’s lower maintenance cost and bonus combat strength based on how many of them you have near one another is exceptionally useful, especially when you’re in the heat of war and might be running low on gold per turn due to unit maintenance costs.

Additionally, if the need arises, you can always hold onto a Comandante General whose retire ability may not be quite as useful as you’d prefer and then use that ability to heal your Llaneros before re-entering battle. If you plan to do this though, I’d suggest making sure you have a backup Comandante to accompany your Llaneros and other units for the duration of whatever war you’re engaged in. Again, you want to maximize your units’ ability to benefit from each Comandante’s passive adjacency bonuses during fights.

At this point, I’d like to move on so that I may provide a monologue about the Maya. Led by Lady Six Sky, it seems to me that the Maya excel at two things: science generation and self-defense. I’ll explain why I say that in just a moment but first, I’d like to quickly run down the Maya’s unique aspects as I did for Gran Colombia.

Lady Six Sky’s leader-specific ability makes it so that non-capital cities within six tiles of your capital gain a bonus 10% to all their yields. Additionally, all units gain +5 Combat Strength when within six tiles of your capital. That, when combined with their unique combat unit, is the primary reason I think the Maya excel at self-defense.

The Maya’s second passive ability that isn’t specifically tied to having Lady Six Sky as their leader dictates that the act of settling near Coast tiles and freshwater does not provide extra housing. Instead, each Farm you construct provides +1 housing and +1 Gold. In addition, each city is granted +1 Amenity for each Luxury resource adjacent to its city center.

The Mayan unique unit is a replacement for the Archer and is known as the Hul’che. It has what the game calls a “strong ranged attack,” although I’m admittedly completely clueless as to what’s meant by that. Regardless, this unit also gains +5 Combat Strength when fighting a wounded opponent. Combine a few of these with the aforementioned bonus Combat Strength from being near your capital and I think any aggressive Civs will have quite a difficult time conquering you in the early game.

Finally, the Maya’s unique district is known as the Observatory. It replaces the standard Campus district and it’s cheaper to build than that which it replaces. Each Observatory you construct gains +2 bonus Science output for each adjacent Plantation and +1 bonus Science output for each adjacent Farm or district tile. Since I suspect you’ll likely wind up building quite a lot of farms anyway so that you can take advantage of the Maya’s aforementioned unique ability that focuses on them, it would be wise to construct your Observatories near as many of them and as many other districts as you can.

The ways to achieve bonus Science-per-turn generation from your Observatories are so easy to incorporate into your city planning that I’m sure you’ll get plenty of bonus Science from them in the long run. That’s especially true if you expand rapidly, focus primarily on population growth, and build an Observatory in each of your cities.

In fact, to give you an idea of just how easy it is to get ahead scientifically thanks to these unique districts, I was able to generate so much science via my Observatories that I actually fairly easily won my first game as the Maya via a Science victory, once I even slightly turned my attention toward striving for that particular win condition. That’s despite the changes to this victory type that were added in Gathering Storm which dictate that you aren’t declared victorious immediately after launching the last step required to achieve a Science victory.

There’s one last thing added in this DLC pack that I want to briefly mention before I sign off. More specifically, I’d like to discuss the new optional game mechanic known as “Apocalypse Mode.” Because of what it entails, I should mention that enabling Apocalypse Mode requires the Gathering Storm expansion. You’ll see why that is in just a moment.

When toggled on, Apocalypse Mode does three things in an effort to shake things up in your next game. Firstly, it adds new types of natural disasters, such as meteor strikes. Secondly, it intensifies the impact and duration of disasters that already exist, like droughts, blizzards, and floods, to name a few. Lastly, it increases the chances that all types of natural disasters will occur.

In addition to all of that, the act of toggling on Apocalypse Mode adds a new support unit specific to this new game mode known as the Soothsayer. This unit can use its unique ability to initiate a natural disaster in the tiles nearest to it when its ability is activated, provided it has enough remaining charges of its ability to do so.

I must confess that I haven’t actually experimented with Apocalypse Mode yet. That’s almost entirely because I’m both terrified of and quite annoyed by in-game natural disasters, even though I’ve never played a game of Gathering Storm with the disaster intensity slider set higher than 2. However, despite that, I suspect that based on the in-game wording of their unique ability, Soothsayers can be sent to cities owned by Civs you dislike and have their ability activated to really foul things up in that city.

That idea most assuredly sounds delightfully devilish to me. For example, if an enemy Civ insists upon converting your cities to their religion despite promising not to after you’ve confronted them about it, you can theoretically just use a Soothsayer to call down a meteor strike on or near their capital, then subsequently declare a Holy War on them while they’re still reeling from the effects of the natural disaster. If that doesn’t teach them that you’re being serious when you ask them to stop converting your cities to their religion, I don’t know what will.

I think there’s one more noteworthy thing about Apocalypse Mode. As you may know, if you’re familiar with the content added in Gathering Storm, climate change is a significant factor with which you’ll have to contend as you power your cities and utilize other means of releasing carbon dioxide into the in-game world’s atmosphere. With Apocalypse Mode enabled, if the stages of climate change happen to reach their final level, stage nine, the game automatically ends (presumably in a draw) because a stream of meteors begin to strike the planet and eradicate humanity in its entirety.

There you have it, folks! What I’ve said so far essentially constitutes my first impressions of the Maya and Gran Colombia DLC pack. In case you’re unaware, the next DLC pack that’s part of the New Frontier Pass is currently scheduled to be released sometime this month. This second DLC pack contains, among other things, Ethiopia as a playable Civ and the addition of what are called “Persona Packs” for two currently-playable leaders. The leaders in question are Catherine de Medici of France and American leader Theodore “Teddy” Roosevelt.

These “persona packs” reportedly affect such things as these leaders’ character models, agendas, and gameplay styles. If you bought the entire New Frontier Pass rather than just select pieces of its DLC, you’ll get these packs automatically once they’re released. Firaxis has reported that these packs will transform Catherine de Medici into “Magnificence Catherine,” who focuses heavily on culture and tourism generation, and turn President Roosevelt into “Rough-Rider Teddy,” who apparently “excels at keeping the peace on his home continent.”

These new mechanics are great and all, but since new character models will apparently be added for these leaders, I sincerely hope it also means we also get to see President Roosevelt dressed like a Rough Rider, ridiculous hat and all. I think that would be hilarious. If you decide to pick up the New Frontier Pass, I think it’s safe to say you’ll get quite a bit in exchange for your $39.99, even if most of the new content hasn’t been released yet.