Sorry I’m so late to the party.
Looks like an excellent update. Some additional thoughts.
New Units. The game really needed these three units. Thank you Firaxis for adding them, and fo making the, free to all. That’s really classy.
Trebuchet and Medieval and Industrial Melee were needed in terms of flavour. Very happy Firaxis went with Men at Arms over Swordsmen. Not a big thing but, again, classy. These units will also improve gameplay around mid-game Seige, buff some unique units and their Civs by allowing upgrading instead or hard building certain units (eg Red Coats and Berserkers), and probably make Strategic Resource and resource free AC and Ranged Units more important.
Civ Balance Changes. These look good overall. I was worried Spain would get GPPs, which would have messed up their design. Instead, the Spain changes are just perfect (...well, maybe the free builder is overkill given they have a UI geared around foreign continents, but ok...). It looks like some changes might make some Civs better but also a bit more bland by pruning away certain quirky abilities, eg Georgia, Khmer, but I think that’s ok in the scheme of things.
I don’t want to say this, but Canada and Mapuche still look awful. No, they’re not underpowered. I just thing their play style remains uninteresting and Canada’s design, in particular, just doesn’t feel very “Canada” - building on Tundra just isn’t particularly “Canadian” to me and Mounties are just too meme. But
Another Season Pass? I felt like Portugal might suggest we’re not getting more content like another Season Pass. Getting Corporations, Zombies and now Trebuchets feels a bit the same. But no Stealth Bombers, no XCOM or other future units, no ideologies, not really much more done with Governors, no a few other random things. And Kevin was very careful to say final update of this season pass. And, you know, there are still some popular Civs left like Austria, Italy and Morocco. I think more content is 50:50. Guess we’ll see what happens.
Final thought. Civ 6 is a great game. Really great. It was pretty solid in 2016. The expansions and season pass and dlc and free content and all the rest, all taken together, have made the game pretty awesome. Yeah, I hope there’s a few more things that come down the pipeline, but FXS deserve a lot of credit for how good the game is as it stands today. The Firaxis team also all seem like really great people, passionate about the game but also just good people, and that's something that adds a lot to the game and the community.
And speaking of community, I really enjoy the chat on this forum. There are some very clever people, and it’s wonderful that they share their thoughts and knowledge on this forum, all expressed in collegial and even (and often friendly) tones. Much of that is also the result of the very good mods, who also deserve credit for their thoughtful moderation on these forums. It’s delightful to find a little space on the internet where clever people can talk freely, remain open to both new players and old fans alike, and all of that discourse is on good terms, constructive, and without drama.
So, yeah. Just want to say thank you to Firaxis for a great game, for continuing to care for and support the game, and for just being good people; thank you to the awesome community on this forum; and thank you to the dedicated mods.