Civ: 6 Frontier Pass DLC Adds Portugal and Zombies

The Civ: 6 Frontier Pass is your commonly found DLC season pass in other AAA titles. The pass was first introduced in May 2020 and released updates in the form of new game modes, features, and new civilizations. As we are nearing the end of the Civ: 6 Frontier Pass. Firaxis Games have announced that the upcoming DLC addition will be available on March 25th.

Yesterday Firaxis Games announced the upcoming extras and updates to the game in their latest Civilization VI. Whilst Firaxis Games stated that this is the last DLC to be added to the Frontier Pass, players can expect to receive one final update in April. The video, aired on the official Sid Meier’s Civilization YouTube channel, revealed the following updates to the game:

• New Portugal Civilization
• A Babylonian and Portuguese Wonder
• New Wetlands map type and Marsh tile update
• New Zombie Defence game mode

Civ: 6 Portu-Ghoul and the Undead

The developer video was hosted by VFX Artist Todd Bilger, Rony Kahana (Associate Producer), and Anton Strenger (Lead Designer). The video begins with a short intro followed by the announcement of the highly anticipated new Portugal Civilization.

Anton Strenger revealed that the Portugal civilization boasts powerful navy units as well as powerful port cities. He explains that Portugal is “one of the truly global civilizations”. As a result of this, the Firaxis team implemented mechanics for the civilization that encourage and reward players for maritime war and exploration. Furthermore, Bilger announced that more footage of the civilization will be releasing in the next First Look video.

History buffs will know, or if you have played AC: Black Flag, that Portugal had the largest commercial and maritime empire in the world at the beginning of the 16th century. This is all thanks to their firm grip of exploration and powerful navy. It will be very interesting to see how this is translated into Civ: 6.

New Zombie Defense Mode

The next big update for the Civ: 6 Frontier Pass includes a blood-curdling new game mode: Zombie Defence. Firaxis Games has introduced a number of new mechanics, game modes in past Frontier updates. This has included secret societies and even separate Pirate scenarios. The Zombie Defence mode adds interesting new mechanics where fallen units have the chance to rise from the dead. The newly turned ghouls will then target and chase the nearest unit. Any unit that is captured will turn into zombies themselves.

Players will be able to build new defensive structures on both owned and neutral land to defend against the horde. Thankfully these structures cannot be pillaged by the zombies. Therefore it’ll likely be a good tactic to produce as many ranged units and walls as possible.

Interestingly the mode adds a new city project that allows players to temporarily control the undead. This allows the player to attack nearby opponents, or simply guide a horde away from your cities. Finally, the new game mode adds an espionage ability that allows players to release a zombie horde in opposing cities. That’s just pure evil.

New Wonders to Build and New Maps to Explore

The final updates in the Civ: 6 DLC add two new wonders. Etemenanki, belonging to the previously released Babylon civilization, and the other Torre De Belém belonging to the upcoming Portugal civilization.

• Torre De Belém – A coast tile wonder that must be built opposite to a harbor district. The Torre De Belém increases the international trade route gold by +2 for every luxury resource at the destination where the wonder was constructed. Cities not on your home continent receive the lowest production cost building. In addition, the wonder increases gold income by +5 as well as increasing the great admiral point by +1 a turn.
• Etemenanki – A wonder that must be built on floodplain or marsh tiles. Etemenanki increases science by +2 and increases production by +1 points for every marsh tile in your empire. Furthermore, players will receive +1 science and production for every floodplains tile in the wonders city. Finally, the wonder gives a bonus of +2 science every turn.

The Etemenanki wonder will benefit players greatly who try out the latest new map variant in Civ: 6. As the Wetlands map variant is flooded with rivers, marshes, and floodplain tiles. The variant also includes extra woods and rainforest tiles, giving a wet and humid new experience and scenario to build a civilization in.

Strenger describes the new marsh tile as both adding new defensive strategies and challenges. This is a result of marsh tiles penalizing movement for land units. However, the tile can be exploited by range units to great effect.