Civilization VI is a turn-based strategy game that was developed by Firaxis and released in 2016. Like its predecessors, Civilization VI tasks the player with leading a civilization from the earliest stages of human development and turning it into a dominant world power. The game uses real-life civilizations and rulers to populate its expansive world. Post-launch expansions have added more leaders, civilizations, and features.
Civilization VI Premise
In Civilization VI, you choose from several real-life civilizations and guide your people into the future. Like similar strategy titles, the game relies on a 4X model: “eXplore, eXpand, eXploit, and eXterminate.” These core principles determine how you interact with your fellow world leaders and the environment around you. You can form alliances with other nations, set up trade agreements, or pursue a military strategy and conquer your rivals. The game has single-player and multiplayer options allowing you to compete with real people or AI-controlled world leaders.
Civilization VI Main Characters
The main characters of Civilization VI all take the form of playable world leaders based on real historical figures. Each leader accomplished great things during their real-life time in power, and each one uses a distinctive strategy in the game. Here are the playable leaders featured in the base game; you can find the rest on the Civilization wiki.
- Catherine de Medici: This queen regent of France and member of the infamous Medici family uses an extensive network of spies to achieve victory in Civilization VI.
- Cleopatra: This legendary Egyptian queen has good access to resources and benefits from a strong trading network above all else.
- Frederick Barbarossa: This Holy Roman Emperor and King of Germany benefits strongly from an overwhelming military presence.
- Gandhi: In real life, Mahatma Gandhi is renowned as the father of the Indian Independence Movement. In the Civilization franchise, meanwhile, he’s infamous for possessing a secret passion for weapons of mass destruction. When that hidden agenda does not surface, Gandhi takes after his real life counterpart in pursuing peaceful resolution to conflict.
- Gilgamesh: This ruler of Uruk starred in the Epic of Gilgamesh, widely considered the earliest known work of literature. He favors long-term alliances in Civilization VI, and is one of the most valuable allies in the game.
- Gorgo: This queen of Sparta has a flexible playstyle but benefits from taking a military approach.
- Harald Hardrada: This viking ruler of Norway uses his unique longship units to terrorize enemy coasts.
- Hojo Tokimune: This Japanese ruler is known for fostering the spread of Zen Buddhism. Consequently, he benefits from a religious playstyle. However, he also maintains a strong coastal military.
- Montezuma: This Aztec leader pushes an expansionist agenda as he seeks to claim territory for his people.
- Mvemba a Nzinga: The sixth ruler of the Kingdom of Kongo features an odd playstyle. He benefits from any religion that establishes itself in the region, but is unable to found one himself.
- Pedro II: This emperor of Brazil favors the recruitment of legendary historical figures, otherwise known as Great People, to secure victory.
- Pericles: Greek king Pericles favors the flexibility of the game’s civics system to set his nation up for a wide range of victories.
- Peter the Great: Tsar of Russia Peter the Great excels at expanding and absorbing broad swathes of terrain, which allows him to dominate the map.
- Philip II: This Spanish ruler leads a strong naval empire but is especially well situated for a religious victory.
- Qin Shi Huang: This Chinese emperor favors the construction of wonders above all else.
- Saladin: This famous Arabian Sultan favors both faith and science while developing his nation.
- Teddy Roosevelt: The 26th president of the United States favors a cultural victory, thus mirroring the real-life statesman’s commitment to nature conservation.
- Tomyris: Scythian warrior-queen Tomyris is a strong military threat who can strike quickly and decisively.
- Trajan: Roman emperor Trajan, like most emperors of Rome in real life, favors conquest. Likewise, claiming territory is one of his greatest strengths.
- Victoria: This Queen of England represents the nation’s expansionist goals and seeks to spread her territory across the world.
Civilization VI Video Games In The Series
The Civilization franchise has a long history stretching back to the ‘90s. Rather than boasting a storyline that develops over time, newer entries in the series mostly iterate on the gameplay, bringing in more rulers and refining elements of the 4X formula.
- Civilization (1991)
- Colonization (1994)
- CivNet (1995)
- Civilization II (1996)
- Alpha Centauri (1999)
- Civilization III (2001)
- Civilization IV (2005)
- CivCity: Rome (2006)
- Civilization Revolution (2008)
- Civilization V (2010)
- Civilization: Beyond Earth (2014)
- Civilization Revolution 2 (2014)
- Civilization VI (2016)
Civilization VI Cheat Codes
Unfortunately, there are no official cheat codes for Civilization VI. This leaves few ways to customize your gameplay experience outside of the features available in the game itself. However, it is possible to access the game’s debug menu on PC. Doing so will let you access some options that can come in handy if you’re having performance issues with the game. All you have to do to activate the debug menu is find where the game is stored on your computer and locate the AppOptions.txt file. Open the file in a text editor and change the EnableDebugMenu 0 option to EnableDebugMenu 1. Once you’ve saved the file, you can access the debug menu in-game by hitting the tilde (~) key.
The debug menu is unfortunately much more limited than the console commands you can find in games like The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It mostly features visual information on things like field of view and FPS. There is a time-of-day slider that can adjust the game’s visual effects to your liking. The following commands are the only ones known that will have a noticeable impact on your gameplay experience.
- Help All: Display all console commands.
- Reveal All: Removes fog of war from the whole map.
- Explore All: Set every location on the map to “explored.”
If you want cheats beyond these official console commands, you’ll have to download a third-party trainer that can grant free resources and military strength. These are notoriously risky and come with a chance of compromising your PC, so download them at your own risk.
Civilization VI Cheat Code FAQs
- Are there any cheats for Civilization 6 on PS4? Unfortunately, the debug menu and console commands are not available on PS4, or any of Civilization VI’s console ports. If you want to take advantage of this engine to gain early access to the game’s map, you will need to play the game on PC.
- How do you install mods on Civilization 6? There are several possible sources for mods in Civilization VI. If you are playing on Steam, you can take advantage of the game’s Steam Workshop page to browse mods and install them directly to your copy on PC. The game also has a sizable community on Nexus Mods, which is one of the most popular modding websites out there. Other third-party sources can be found elsewhere online, but as with the cheat trainers mentioned above, you should always take extreme caution when downloading files directly off the internet. Always make sure you trust a source before you download from it.