Modding is an essential part of the PC gaming culture. For decades now, talented PC gamers have been tweaking and adding to their favorite games, expanding the lifespan of some games for years. While mods can be made for just about any genre of PC game, some of the most popular tend to revolve around the strategy genre. For instance, Civilization 6 has a plethora of excellent mods at players' disposal.
More often than not, mods are designed to give players an experience they've never had in a game that they've played countless hours of. These mods can add brand-new factions, units, victory conditions, or buildings, and provide a smorgasbord of tweaks and changes that improve the user experience. Civilization 6 has plenty of excellent mods that accomplish this, and a few of the most beloved might end up influencing Firaxis' next entry, Civilization 7.
Which Civilization 6 Mods Could Inspire Civilization 7's Gameplay
One of the most deceptively complex and important aspects of a strategy game is its user interface, and though Civilization 6's UI is fine, it isn't entirely user-friendly. That's where Sukritact's "Simple UI Adjustments" mod comes in to save the day. Rather than overhaul the entire game's UI, this mod just makes a few select tweaks, all of which add up to a much more streamlined, yet still informative interface.
These tweaks include the ability to immediately see what tiles are being currently worked on by simply hovering over the city's banner, the ability to rename a city just by going into the city panel menu, and the ability to see a detailed breakdown of the city's food yield at a glance. If Firaxis wants Civilization 7 to appeal to newcomers as well as long-time fans, then it should definitely take inspiration from this mod to bring a more streamlined UI to the game.
Another integral aspect of Civilization 6 is its political and diplomatic features. Throughout a typical game of Civ 6, players are expected to wheel and deal with their fellow world leaders, trading gold, technology, great people, and other resources. In Civ 6, this process can get a little tedious, as players can only deal with one leader at a time. This means that if a player wants to find the best deal, they'll need to talk to one leader, back out, talk to another, and repeat. This is where wltk's "Quick Deals" mod rears its head. A simple but effective tweak, this mod shows all the leaders' respective deals at once, giving players an immediate overview of their opportunities. Civilization 7 would make a great improvement to the series by taking inspiration from this mod.
One of the more drastic Civilization 6 mods out there is the "Golden Age - Brave New World" mod, which makes some pretty major tweaks to how Civilization 6's core gameplay loop works. In the vanilla version of Civilization 6, players are often encouraged to expand across the map as fast as possible, leaving their cities with a relatively small population.
Civilization 6's Golden Age - Brave New World mod puts more of an emphasis on building up just a few gigantic cities, giving unique bonuses to players who focus on growing their population. This mod also overhauls Civilization 6's urban planning, giving bonuses to players who efficiently place districts in specific patterns. It might be interesting for Civilization 7 to borrow from this mod, and put more of an emphasis on building up just a handful of cities, and ensuring that they're as efficient as they can be.
Civilization 6 is currently available on Mobile, Nintendo Switch, PC, PS4, and Xbox One.
