When Civilization VI first launched, the game had a bit of a problem—despite its generally great reviews, including our own. As usual for a new Civ game, the freshly launched version had many fewer civilizations than Civ V did (years of DLC and expansions will help with that). That wasn’t itself a problem … but a full half of the game’s original eighteen civilizations were European. Major civilizations like the Mongols, Indonesians, and most shockingly of all the Persians were initially absent. It was a surprisingly non-diverse bunch, and Firaxis was rightly called out for it. Since then, the game dealt with much of the problem through DLC, and the diversity problem is now much less acute. Civ 6: Rise and Fall will make things even better. But what other civilizations should we still hope for in the forthcoming expansion pack?
What Civs Should We Hope For In Civilization 6: Rise and Fall?
Civ 6: Rise and Fall will launch on February 8, 2018, and as with every expansion it will include a number of new civilizations, and new leaders. The expansion pack will include nine leaders across eight civilizations. So far, we know we’re getting the following: the Dutch, led by Wilhelmina; Chandragupta, a new leader for the existing Indian civilization; Korea, led by Seondeok; and Mongolia, ruled by a certain Genghis Khan. That still leaves six civilizations yet to be announced.
Looking back at our list of the biggest civs the game was missing at initial release, many of the gaps have been filled. Persia and not one but two southeast Asian empires have joined the game, as has Nubia. Along the way, we’ve also gotten a few more European empires or European colonial nations that didn’t help round out the game’s diversity, but certainly are fun to play: Poland, the Vikings, Macedon and Australia. But there are still some notable absences.
By far the biggest is in the New World, which is home to just three civilizations: America, Brazil and the Aztecs. Note that two of these are colonial nations founded by Europeans; there’s only one native New World civilization, and even they weren’t originally in the base game (they were free, time-locked DLC). Civ 6 is the first Civilization game since Civ 2 that doesn’t include the Inca. Other Civ games have had the Maya, the Iroquois, the Shoshone, the Sioux, or a more generic Native American Empire. Civ 6 has literally no native New World representation besides the Aztecs, and this needs to be fixed in Rise and Fall.
The New World is the only egregious gap that’s still in Civ 6, but other areas are still a little sparse. Northern and Western Africa is still empty, and Carthage, Morocco, Mali, or Songhai would all be welcome additions that we’ve seen in past Civ games. Sub-Saharan Africa has Kongo, but could be fleshed out with the Zulu, Ethiopia, or even another colonial nation like South Africa.
The Middle East is also rather thin: right now, we’ve only got the Arabs, the Sumerians and the Persians. Other major regional civilizations, notably the Ottoman Turks and their predecessors the Byzantine Empire, are still missing.
To its credit, although Civ 6 has some big gaps, that’s in part because the game introduced new civilizations never before in the series —from modern nations like Australia to lost empires like the Scythians that non-history-buffs may never even have heard of. It’s a fair bet that one of the new civs in Rise and Fall will land in this category. Could we see a smaller Asian civilization like Tibet, Manchuria, the Philippines? What about something truly out there like Georgia or Armenia, Argentina, or the Timurids? There are a whole world of possibilities out there, and Rise and Fall likely won’t disappoint—and we have very little doubt the expansion’s yet unannounced civilizations will fill in at least some of the holes on this list. Who do you hope to see, either from this list or otherwise?
