Civilization VI has a "color language" for distinguishing buildings and terrain.
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Civilization VI hands-on: Empire building is addictive and beautiful, but combat is messy

  • Posted byby Dean Takahashi
  • Updated
  • 8 min

It’s that time again. Sid Meier’s Civilization VI is endlessly addictive and fun, and it pains me to play it only for a relatively short time before moving on to other games.

It launches on October 21 on the PC, and like my colleague Jason Wilson, I’ve been playing it for a press preview. But I must move on to other games before I sleep. I’ve played approximately 30 hours across a couple of campaigns so far. And it’s given me a taste of how this Civilization is different from the others. I found that the building and exploration is fun, but the combat is still frustrating. Veteran Civ players will appreciate just how fast the game runs.

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Written by

Dean Takahashi

Dean Takahashi is editorial director for GamesBeat. He has been a tech journalist since 1988, and he has covered games as a beat since 1996. He was lead writer for GamesBeat at VentureBeat from 2008 to April 2025. Prior to that, he wrote for the San Jose Mercury News, the Red Herring, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times, and the Dallas Times-Herald. He is the author of two books, "Opening the Xbox" and "The Xbox 360 Uncloaked." He organizes the annual GamesBeat Next, GamesBeat Summit and GamesBeat Insider Series: Hollywood and Games conferences and is a frequent speaker at gaming and tech events. He lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.