Has Civ6 started to get less interesting for you? Has it got repetitive playing as the same leader over and over? The Civilization6 Frontier Pass might be a worthy investment to make your experience better. In this article, I will be talking about the Ethiopia pack that adds a new Civ, a new game mode, and a new district. This is the second pack to get released in the Frontier Pass, and is worth $7.55 (in Australia at the time of this article being written).
The new leader, Menelik II rules Ethiopia and takes big advantage of faith and hills to catapult themself to victory. Their unique leader ability, Counsil of Ministers, gives Ethiopia both science and culture based on a percentage of their faith output in a city. Their units also gain extra combat strength when fighting on hills.
The Ethiopian Civilization ability is Aksumite Legacy. Menelik receives bonus faith from resources, and from trading with players that have lots of resources. Archaeologists can be brought with faith. The Ethiopian special unit is the Oromo Cavalry. It has higher combat strength than the Cavalry unit it replaces, and has a longer vision range, and ignores hill movement penalties.
Ethiopia also has a unique tile improvement, the Rock Hewn Church. This tile can only be built on hills or volcanic soil, and provides large amounts of faith on tiles. I personally think that Ethiopia will be a great choice for those who want to go for a religious victory because, their faith production possibilities are very high. They could also be a good culture civ as usually a religion assists in getting a culture victory. Plus, buying Archaeologists with faith means that you won’t have to invest gold or production into getting them, and they won’t be difficult to get at all.
The pack introduces a new game mode that I personally love: the Secret Societies game mode. This mode unlocks new governors unlocked by doing certain small tasks at the start of a game. Once unlocked, the four different governors provide different bonuses that are powerful for different victory types. You have the Owls of Minerva, who focus on government, envoys, and that sweet, sweet cash. There is the Sanguine Pact, who focus on high military power with their vampires and castles. Thirdly you have the Voidsingers, who provide massive amounts of faith and culture. Finally the Hermetic Order, with massive boosts to science production.
The last thing on the list is the Diplomatic Quarter district. This is a district available to all civs after researching mathematics, providing envoys, diplomatic favor and protection from enemy spies. It’s not a very interesting district that gets plopped down somewhere then forgotten about.
I love this pack so much. Secret Societies adds so much more strategy to the game. Honestly just this game mode alone was enough to make me get it. Ethiopia is a cool civ for culture and religious victories. The Diplo-Quarter was kind of a let down, but that isn’t enough to make this pack even close to bad. It’s such a fun pack. If you are looking for something to add a bit more spice to your game, maybe consider buying this pack. Now with this review done, you can get back to having one more turn.
