There are loads of updates in Civ6 well worth exploring. Like the introduction of city districts, the separation of the tech and civics trees, and balances to win conditions.
As if that’s not reason enough, the modding community has been hard at work to give us a whole pool of new content to discover.
Just taking a look at the Steam Workshop for Civ 6, there are already 3,000+ mods available. That’s massive!
No need to waste time digging through that, as I’ve already compiled a list of what I think has to be the best mods for the game. Check ‘em out!
Whichever way you prefer to play, the Environment Skin: Sid Meier’s Civilization V gives you the option to alter Civ6’s appearance closer to that of Civ5.
Not only does it make changes to saturation and color tones, but there’s even added clutter and texture details to make everything look & feel more realistic.
On top of all of that, the mod was actually created by an art director at Firaxis. No need to worry about setting your expectations too high for this one.
Another little visual detail that the community improved on are the water textures.
Bodies of water in Civilization have always looked like they were just filled with a dark blue tint. Civ6 is no different. But this has been addressed by one of the community’s most well-known modders.
The Vibrant Waters mod by p0kiehl changes water textures for rivers, lakes, oases…well pretty much all bodies of water in the game.
It gives all in-game water much more texture and color, even making it feel like it glistens in the sunlight.
If you want to improve the water graphics of the game even more, look no further!
With Tsunami Waves, p0kiehl takes his Vibrant Waters mod even further. You can now see animations of giant ocean waves crashing against coasts and cliffs.
A seemingly minor upgrade, but gives the game a much more epic and immersive feel.
As with Vibrant Waves, the lightweight design of Tsunami Waves will appeal even to users of lower-end PC’s as it shouldn’t have a huge impact on performance.
Another staple on most Civilization mod lists: the R.E.D. Modpack by Gedemon.
Many fans who played through Civ5 have used this one, and haven’t turned back since. This was also one of the first mods most of those players were waiting for after the release of Civ6.
If you also dislike the unit scaling in the game, check this one out.
It basically makes units look smaller overall, but makes different units easier to differentiate based on size as well.
If you’re using other mods that affect units, no need to worry. There are multiple compatibility packs for the R.E.D. Modpack as well.
It shouldn’t be difficult to find one depending on what version of the game you’re playing, or which other mods you’re running alongside this one.
In city building/simulation games, finding the information that you’re looking for can get quite tedious. Especially with games at the scale of Civ6.
As you progress through and increase your civilization’s size, you naturally have to manage more and more aspects of your population.
There are already multiple UI mods to make things a bit easier. But the biggest would have to be CQUI.
CQUI is a complete UI overhaul focused on player convenience. Changing tons of menu screens, lists, even adding a few menus as well. All the changes made are geared towards making everything you need, just plain easier to find.
A great all-in-one fix in terms of UI improvement, especially because it already integrates most of the UI changes coming up in this list.
For those who find it too much, though, you may find that the next few entries suit you better.
If you’re not looking to overhaul the UI completely, or if you prefer not to have some of the updates from CQUI, this one might be exactly what you’re looking for.
Making simple quality of life changes to the UI, the mod takes a more simplistic approach. Instead of changing the UI entirely, Sukritact wanted to make use of what’s already there and make it better.
Not only is information easier to read, but there are a number of additional features too. Hovering over city banners, for example, will show tiles being worked on, next border growth, and city yields.
There are even some functionality features added. For example, you can now enter the Civilopedia menu with a quick right-click on buildings, districts, and wonders.
This next one has already been integrated into CQUI, but also available as standalone mods as well.
This makes for more options in terms of customization so you can get what you’re looking for. The Better Trade Screen mod makes several improvements to the game’s trading menus.
You can now sort routes based on yields, with a complex multilevel sorting feature that allows you to easily find exact trade routes too.
There are also additional filters for you to maximize, trade route trackers, and automations to make your life so much easier.
Here’s another quality of life mod that makes huge improvements to your report screen.
Additional tabs for policies and city-states make it much easier to micromanage. You’ll have a quick view of how active policies and city-states impact yields, along with sorting tools for each tab.
All of this makes it easier to navigate towards what you need.
There’s so much here that you didn’t even know you needed! But you won’t want to play without this once you’ve tried it.
More Lenses is another great addition to improve the overall ease-of-use of the game’s many menus.
Lenses are a quick & easy way of getting a macro view of what’s going on in your empire. More Lenses does exactly what it implies: adds more lenses for you to use.
You now have lenses specifically for builders, archaeologists, barbarians, resources, wonders, scouts, and naturalists.
I won’t go through each and every one. But I’m sure you’ll eventually find each of them useful down the line.
As examples though, the builder lense highlights all unimproved resources, hills, and removable features. And the resource lense, on the other hand, highlights resources on the map based on their category.
Here’s a common area for improvement with most city building games: camera movement.
There always comes a point where you want to zoom out a bit more to easily see what’s going on. The opposite may apply as well, where you’d prefer to get closer to the action or to find specific details within your empire.
Tactical Camera (also know as KinetiKam) makes this possible.
A simple fix that increases both zoom in and zoom out capabilities in Civ6.
What’s great about this version is that you can even manually set the max limit for zooming out.
A huge part of city builders is…well…building cities.
Building placement is especially important in games like Civilization, as certain effects have a specific area that it applies to.
This is made even more significant in Civ6 with the new addition of city districts, also having a specific area of effect.
That being said, you’d think there would be a simpler way to see the reach of wonder or city district’s effects. Unfortunately the only choice you have is to manually count each tile to determine how far apart your buildings can actually be.
Obviously, this can get tedious fairly quickly. Lucky for us the Radial Measuring Tool fixes that.
With this simple mod you now have a quick visual representation of effect distances. This is sure to save you loads of time when deciding where to build that shiny new wonder.
Taking a break from the utility mods, here’s a fun little mod that is absolutely useless in terms of gameplay.
All it does is adds a script that automatically checks your PC’s current time every minute. It then adjusts the time of day in-game to match that.
Don’t get me wrong, it might sound uninteresting at first. But it’s a pretty cool feature to have for some playthroughs.
Especially if you’re playing for hours on end, it gives the game a certain sense of realism as what you see on your screen somehow matches what’s outside your window.
If you’re just looking to have some fun with Civ6, this one’s pretty cool.
Going back to the more serious stuff, it’s easy to get lost in the multitude of tasks Civ6 gives you. I mean you’re building an empire here. That must mean you have tons of things to look after, right?
With so much going on at any given time, it’s easy to overlook certain things that could potentially have a big impact on the future of your civilization.
If policy change is one of those things, this is a mod for you.
All it does is remind you when changing policies would be possible before ending a turn. If you’ve already made changes to the policy cards, it will no longer prompt.
Simple enough. But could be very useful down the line.
Civ fans are constantly looking to add realism to the game, given the historical content.
Better Civilization Icons is a simple way to add more historical accuracy to the game. If you’re not satisfied with the civilization icons in the game, like modder janboruta was, this is worth installing.
He swapped out certain icons for more accurate ones, like the bull in the Spain icon.
He even changed some icons making them more aesthetically pleasing.
If you’re looking for more variation in terms of visuals, this is a cool one that does make a difference.
Another icon upgrade mod, but this time the changes are much more useful.
With the introduction of city districts in Civ6, Civilization fans have a new mechanic to dive into.
There’s not much consideration for the visual learners, however, as some districts (though unique to certain civilizations) share the same icons as basic districts.
This mod solves that. Changing the icons of all unique districts so they’re easier to distinguish.
To make it even more intuitive, the color schemes have been maintained so as to avoid mixing them up.
Now one other way to add variation to the game is with Mappa Mundi.
While there is an additional feature of the Gathering Storm expansion that adds labels for geographic landmarks on the map, there still wasn’t much variation because the options were limited.
Mappa Mundi improves on that by adding over 15,000 unique names to mountains, rivers, and volcanoes(among other natural landmarks).
Names are actually based on real-world locations, which completely enhances the realism of the game.
You’d be surprised at how exciting this mod can make rediscovering the lands.
Even dialogue gets an upgrade from the community with Immersive Dialogue by Cmdr Sheploo.
He wanted to make the dialogue more unique. Not only that, but he wanted to make it more realistic as well.
By replacing most of the non-spoken dialogue in the game, he was able to capture how certain leaders actually spoke for a more realistic experience.
Text dialogue in Civ6 may have been something you just breezed through in the past. But with Immersive Dialogue you’re going to want to read through everything.
Yet one more staple of most Civilization mods lists, PerfectWorld by p0kiehl is also available for Civ6.
PerfectWorld6 is a world generation tool that makes terrain much more realistic.
Climate is simulated based from geostrophic and monsoon weather patterns, and hydrology based on elevation and rainfall amount.
As with the previous version for Civ5, one of the standout features of this mod is that rivers and other bodies of water actually follow more realistic drainage paths based on elevation.
The changes in terrain will also make for a fresh experience too. It’s really a wonderful addition to the game, especially for veterans of the series.
Also known as YnAMP, this is probably the biggest map you can get for Civ6.
It is literally the largest option as it includes different picks of map sizes from Enormous, Giant, and Ludicrous. This is great for players who find the default maps too small.
Not only that, but this is packed with additional features as well. One of the more interesting is the accuracy change, which is reflected in what modder Gedemon calls “True Start Location” or TSL.
Civilizations are now assigned start locations that are historically accurate. Not only that, but resources only spawn in geographically accurate locations as well.
All of this combined make for what is probably the only Earth map you should be playing on.
With the introduction of religions in the Civ5 expansion God & Kings, Civ6 looks to build on that gameplay mechanic. Even adding a win condition for converting the world to your religion.
With that, a great way to add both new content and historical realism to the game is through Tomatekh’s Historical Religions.
The mod adds tons of historical, pre-modern, and indigenous religions for you to discover. Plus is assigns appropriate religions to leaders who previously did not have religious preference.
Civ6 already includes 31 historical wonders, but it’s always fun to have a little more. At least these two modders thought so, both known for creating some of the most interesting wonder mods for Civ6.
Starting off with three of the best mods from Sukritact, the first being the Great Blue Hole.
The Great Blue Hole is a giant marine sinkhole just off the coast of Belize. Discovering the Great Blue Hole in-game provides +3 Food, +2 Production, and +2 Gold bonuses.
On top of that, you get a +1 Culture bonus for fishing boats within 4 tiles of the wonder, regardless of ownership.
This time we’re taken to one of the most recognizable landmarks, not only in Asia but across the world.
With this mod you’ll be able to be able to discover the tallest mountain in Japan, Mount Fuji. Known the world over as it’s commonly depicted in mainstream media as a national symbol of the country.
Sukritact’s texture for Mount Fuji looks amazing as well, with its signature snow-covered peak surrounded by clouds.
Bonuses include +2 Great Person points for nearby districts, increasing to +4 if the district is on volcanic soil. The mod is somewhat realistic as well, as there is a possibility of eruption which will cause lower yields.
Last of Sukritact’s wonders is another landmark that is most likely familiar to most: The Grand Canyon.
Just as in the real world, you can look in awe at the geological marvel. The largest among the mentioned wonders from Sukritact, taking 3 tiles! This mod reflects the scale of the actual canyon in Arizona.
The Grand Canyon provides +1 Food and +1 Culture to nearby tiles. The wonder also evolves once you reach the Industrial Era, where cities gain +4 Tourism for each tile owned.
Another modder known for his wonder mods, Deliverator23 gives us tons of beautiful textures of historic landmarks that add a whole new sense of realism to the game.
Starting off is the iconic Tower Bridge from London. One of the most recognizable symbols of London, with its Victorian style towers and bridge spanning the River Thames.
The bridge in-game is completely passable to land units, but provides added benefits as with any other wonder. Bonuses include +8% Production in cities on Capital Continent, +8% Gold in cities not on Capital Continent, and gives +3 Coal per turn.
Now in addition to Big Ben, you can have Tower Bridge as well!
This time we’re taking a trip to one of Italy’s most famous tourist destinations: The Leaning Tower of Pisa.
The campanile of the city of Pisa known for the distinct leaning position can now be accessed in Civ6 as well.
The tower provides multiple benefits, mostly targeted at naval units and buildings.
Harbors receive +1.5 Gold from each adjacent district, while naval units trained in the city get a 25% combat experience bonus. Starting in the Modern Era, the tower also causes +100% Tourist pressure towards other civs.
Last wonder here from Deliverator23 is the famous Burj Khalifa from Dubai.
One of the more modern landmarks, the skyscraper was the tallest building in the world up until 2009.
Adding a modern touch to your Civ6 experience, the Burj Khalifa will be available once Plastics has been discovered.
And it makes sense then that the skyscraper provides +3 Oil, as well as gives +2 Culture for oil wells, oil rigs, and mines within a 9-tile radius.
Not only that, but it also gives a 15% Gold bonus in the city, and +1 Trade Route. On its own it produces +2 Gold and +4 Great Engineer points, making it a valuable wonder to have.
Now you may be on the opposite end of the spectrum here: tired of realism, looking for more of a break from reality in fact.
After all, that’s a common reason for gamers to dive into games yeah?
Well if you’re looking for some mindless fun, Keniisu’s North Pole Civilization is the mod for you.
If you haven’t guessed yet, the mod adds a playable civilization for the North Pole. Complete with unique abilities, units, buildings, and even its own agenda.
Playing as Santa really is fun at any time of the year.
6. To Hell With The Devil: Religious Units Fight Rock Bands
If you’re looking for more of a challenge without changing much in terms of gameplay, AI+ is a good place to start.
Some AI improvements include much better settling, building, and tile behavior.
The AI will also be more aggressive in terms of waging wars, be it against you or other civs on the map.
Leaders are also given much more realistic personality traits that reflect in their style of play. For example, wartime civs have an added focus on producing battle units, while religious civs are geared more towards faith by default.
The only total conversion mod on this list, Anno Domini is perfect for anyone looking for a completely fresh playthrough of Civ6.
Focusing on the Ancient and Classical Eras, the mod contains 30 civilizations each with updated tech and civic trees.
Most of the popular creators in the Civilization community have contributed, including Deliverator23, Gedemo, JFD, and p0kiehl. That by itself should be an indication of how much you can expect from this.
