The Civilization 6 expansion Gathering Storm added Natural Disasters to the base game, environmental effects that change the game tiles and the gameplay.
This makes the world around you more alive than ever before. World Congress lets your voice be heard among other world leaders. In this guide we will take a look at both these new aspects.
Environmental Effects
Natural disasters can occur at any time during gameplay. As the player you don’t have any control over these disaster, you can however adapt to the disasters. The disasters that can happen are the following, Floods, Droughts, Storms,Tornadoes, Blizzards, Sand Storms, Hurricanes and finally Volcanic eruptions.
Each time a disaster occurs in Civilization 6 they cause some sort of damage to the tiles in your civilization, the damage that happens to the tiles depends on the individual disasters severity level.
Most disasters are centred on to or connected to a specific land feature, such as a particular terrain type. Each disaster as it is occurring can last for more than one turn and during this time the amount of damage inflicted on a tile or group of tiles and yields from those tiles occur at the start of each turn. Most disasters are static even if they last for several turns they will only affect one area.
The rate of occurrence for Disasters can be controlled somewhat by the slider in the settings screen at the start of the game, the slider can be adjusted through 5 levels, from 0-4 and each subsequent level increases the general frequency as well as severity of disasters.
Floods
- Floods can occur on any tiles adjacent to a river. (Expect Tundra tiles)
- When a flood is happening it has a chance to Pillage or remove a tile improvement.
- A flood can pillage a building or District.
- A flood can damage Units or Fortifications.
- Reduce Population in the city centre.
- A city centre can lose Health and Defence if damaged by a Flood.
A more severe flood like the 1000 year flood affects a bigger area of tiles. You can build a Dam in your city to prevent flooding occurring but you can only build one Dam per city and it must be constructed along a river. A few Wonders such as the Great Bath can prevent damage from a flood. Once the flood subsides the tiles that where flooded will have improved Food and Production yield, of course this is once you have fixed any damage the tile has received.
Droughts
Droughts are prolonged periods of abnormally low rainfall leading to a shortage of water and are the most prolonged disasters in the game, though the damage power is much smaller than other environmental effects. Unlike Floods, Droughts do not offer any improvements to a tile once the drought has passed.
- Droughts occur on Grassland and Plains tiles that are without features such as trees, hills, rivers and coasts.
- Damage all food and farms or any improvement on a tile
- Reduces food effect of the tile by -1 for the full length of the Drought.
- Damage Plantations, Camps, Pastures.
- Remove a improvement entirely if the drought is severe.
There are a two different levels of droughts and these are,
- Major Drought: lasts for 5 turns.
- Extreme Drought: lasts for 10 turns.
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Storms
There are four different types of Storms in Civilization 6, each of the Storms only appear on a particular type of terrain tiles. All Storms take three turns however during those turns they move around the map appearing in a particular tiles on turn one and a different tiles for turn two and the same again for turn three. Storms also leave a path of devastation on the tiles between. This environmental effect is the most destructive and unpredictable of all the disasters and it’s destruction is the most wide spread.
Let’s have a look at each of the four types of Storms.
Tornados and Blizzards
Tornados
- Appear on Grassland and Plains terrain
- Less wide spread than other storms.
- Causes more damage than other storms.
- No beneficial effects on tiles.
- Movement Range from 1 tiles to 3 tiles.
Blizzards
- Appear on Snow or Tundra terrain.
- Freezes everything in its path
- Slight change of improved food output from tile after Blizzard.Movement
- Range from 7 tiles to19 tiles.
Hurricanes
Appear on Ocean tiles.
- Large storm may shrink before it hits land tiles.
- Islands are venerable to Hurricanes.
- Damage Naval units or destroy it completely.
- Slight change of improved food output from tile after Hurricane.
- Movement Range from 7 tiles to 19 tiles.
All storms will damage improvements, reduce city centre population, Pillage buildings and Districts and damage units that are on a tile.
Volcanoes
Volcanoes are found mostly found near continent borders. Volcanoes may cause devastating damage to surrounding tiles.
Volcanoes have 3 states, Dormant, Active and Eruption.
Once active they will begin to glow from within, billowing smoke from the top of the Volcanoes gives you a hint that it’s about to become active. An active Volcanoes will eventually erupt and damage tiles around it.
- Improvement can be damage or pillaged or even removed.
- Garrison and Fortifications may also suffer damage or be Pillaged.
- City centres may suffer from population loss.
- 2-3 tiles around the Volcanoes will be pillaged or have their improvements completely removed.
Each tiles affected by an eruption will have increased Food or Production Yield once repaired.
Geothermal Fissures
These are a non-removable terrain features which add +1 Science to the tile, building and Aqueduct or a Roman Bath grants +1 Amenity when placed adjacent to a Geothermal tile. A Hungarian Thermal Bath grants +2 Amenities and +3 Tourism when placed beside a Geothermal tile.
There are a few leaders in Civilization 6 who’s leader ability or bonuses include immunity to some of the disaster types.
Hojo Tokimune’s Divine Wind grants immunity to Japanese units from Hurricane damage and the Russian Civilizations Mother Russia grants their units immunity from Blizzards.
The Egyptians unique Civilization ability Iteru protects their units and their improvements and Distincts from damage by Flood.
Power
As the Era’s progress, civilizations will discover Power and Consumable resources. Using these to provide Power will of course produce C02. The more C02 produced will inevitably start to melt the polar ice and in turn will cause sea levels to rise and coastal tiles to be flooded or even submerged and become coastal water tiles.
Another result of rising C02 levels is more frequent Natural Disasters and more intense disasters and at higher levels of climate change desertification begins to occur, when this happens Storms and Floods will no longer leave a chance of increased fertility in the tiles.
Nuclear Accidents
Once you construct a Nuclear Power plant to provide your cities with power, it will run and provide power without causing to much global warming for a number of turns. However once the Power plant starts to age the chances that a Nuclear accident may happen are increased. By preforming regular maintenance on the Nuclear Power Plant as a Project this will protect your cities from a nuclear accident occurring.
Keeping a Builder on hand in your Cities is a quick way to fix some of the tiles damaged after the disasters has passed and others are fixed via the production queue.
World Congress
The World Congress is a new mechanic added to Civilization 6, basically it’s diplomacy between Civilizations where you get to vote on Resolutions that affect the world. The World Congress begins once the game reaches the Medieval Era.
There are two modes of the Congress, regular which happens every 30 turns and a special session which are requested by the player that has been affected by an emergency.
Diplomatic Favor is a currency used in the World Congress and is important for winning a Diplomatic Victory in Civilization 6. It’s used to buy extra votes during every session of the World Congress, the more diplomatic Favor a civilization has the more votes it will be able to use during a World Congress session when making Resolutions or any other decisions.
All world Leaders are required to gather together in the World Congress, your initial votes on the World Congress are free, however this is where having lots of diplomatic Favor points can work in your favour ( no pun intended ) as you can stack votes on top of your free vote to push a more favourable resolution through.
Earning Diplomatic Favor
Once you form a government you will start earning Diplomatic favor by 1 point per turn. The other ways to earn Diplomatic favor is to interact with the world leaders in a positive and beneficial way, you can also trade favor between leaders and by forming alliances.
Being Suzerain of city states and by preforming deeds of positivity in the game, such as liberating a city state and returning it to it former owner are also ways to earn Diplomatic Favour.
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