Everyone starts with one civilian, one infantry unit and one machine gun unit, and you grow your faction mainly to crush others. You won’t be creating any wonders of the world here. The storm shrinks the safe space every few turns, so you can never become too comfortable — especially when you lose if someone captures your last civilian. It should be much faster-paced, if not exactly in the spirit of Civilization games past.

This mode is free to anyone who already owns the core Civ VI. It’s not going to pull you into the game if you weren’t already enamored with turn-based strategy, but that’s not necessarily the point. This is more about enticing you to keep playing and, presumably, shell out on expansion packs to keep the gameplay fresh.