Towards the end of Breaking Bad, sidekick Jesse asks teacher-turned-kingpin Walter White what business he’s in: meth or money. The answer: “I’m in the empire business.” Now, after 25 years, six full games and countless spinoffs of his flagship series, Civilization, the venerable forefather of strategy gaming, Sid Meier, may be able to relate. (We’ll not labour the parallels between Meier and big-time drug pushers, but not for nothing is the expression “one more turn” linked to his chemically addictive PC classic.)

For players who know the series – and certainly those who played the last outing – the principles are unchanged in the latest edition, Civilization VI. For those who don’t, the empire business is the name of the game. Turn by turn, you’ll lead your chosen people from a single small settlement in 4,000BC until the influence of your cities outreaches the computer-controlled rival factions. There are several ways to win and near-infinite paths to victory – will you build armies of conquest, become the tourist capital of the world or its religious centre, or will you be the first to escape the conflicts of home and colonise new planets? As before, you can choose from a variety of historical nations and leaders, 20 at launch with more planned for future DLCs, each with their own advantages and play styles.

When Civilization V rolled out in 2010, it came with the series’ biggest shakeup. At the time, the decision to divide the gameplay area into hexagonal tiles (instead of squares) and to permit only one military unit to occupy each at a time (instead of powerful stacks) was cause of much anxiety for players used to the series' most mature and nuanced fourth iteration. This time, the hexes stay, as does the one-unit-per-tile rule, but there’s plenty that’s new, and the differences, although less fundamental, are still engagingly radical.

Most notably, the way cities are built and developed demands a layer of strategy previously absent. Instead of building in the city centre (whether your barracks, market, library, temple, colosseum – the list is long), “districts” are now placed on the surrounding tiles. You’ll have to take account of terrain and think hundreds of years ahead to the ways you want your cities to develop. Also all-new is the way you’ll build a road network and deploy workers to cultivate the local landscape. The “worker” unit had been around since the first Civ – and always a source of tedium in the late-game – but is now gone, with roads built automatically as you direct traders between cities, and other improvements completed by “builders” who disappear after a finite number of uses. Finally, the iconic Civ tech tree is now effectively doubled by the inclusion of a “civics” tree. As well as unlocking laws and policies that tune the way you govern your empire, the culture-fuelled civics tree also opens a separate range of units, districts and world wonders to those revealed by exploring the tech tree.

Together with the new, more colourful graphics, these are bold changes that move the series in imaginative new directions. It’s a land-grab by Maier’s studio, Firaxis, against the near-impenetrably complex grand strategy games – such as Crusader Kings 2, Europa Universalis IV and, most recently, Stellaris – made by Swedish developer Paradox. At the time of writing, GQ has sunk some 25 hours into a pre-release build of Civ VI, and anticipates an order of magnitude more will be required before a complete picture of the game’s inner workings comes into focus.

However – and, sadly, it’s a biggie – for all the twisting, maze-like avenues of strategy to explore and employ, the AI opponents are too incompetent for you to need them. We saw enemy units mustering for an attack that might have been threatening but never materialised, and we stomped enemy cities while defenders wasted their turns on fruitless manoeuvres. Only one difficulty level was available on the build we played, but there are indications that the AI will be no smarter on more challenging settings. It’s a problem that’s been rooted in the series since inception, and exacerbated by the changes made in Civ V. Disappointingly, the correlation between the game’s intriguing complexities and its own inability to make use of them is still apparent.

As an “emperor-sim”, Civ is still the benchmark and on that front this sixth edition brings a lot of colourful and exciting changes: if you play to “paint the map” with perfectly crafted cities, this looks like a series leader. And there’s plenty of gamers who play to build and not compete (fans of the Paradox catalogue are a case in point). But – with apologies to another famous empire builder – if you want an experience where smart strategies are rewarded, you might look on these works and despair.

Civilization VI is out on 21 October for PC and Mac.

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