Civilization VI’s monthly free updates are mostly okay, but for October 2020, there’s a big new scenario heavily inspired by Sid Meier’s Pirates.
The new game mode, Pirates, is made for 1-4 players and has you play as one of four factions-Dread Pirate, Privateer, Swashbuckler and Hoarder. These factions, like a civ in a normal Civilization game, has unique abilities that favours different playstyles.
Alongside the four pirate factions, you’ll also be facing against the British, Spanish, French and Dutch navies in the new handcrafted tropical map. Or play a random-generated one should you choose.
From the dev diary video here, the folks at Firaxis still deeply care about the pirate sim, and even used Sid Meier’s tried-and-true method of early prototyping to develop this mode.
In addition, a bunch of game balance changes will arrive alongside this update. In particular, the Recruit Partisans espionage mission will be less annoying for those playing on defence. It will pillage neighborhoods- so until you get that fixed it won’t be able to get more barbarians spawn from there. And the barbarian units spawned are anti-cavalry units, weaker than what’s spawned before.
Balance changes for the DLC civs, like Gran Colombia, will also be introduced with this update.
The October 2020 game update for Civilization VI arrives on October 22.