"Civilization 6," the latest installment in Firaxis' long-running 4X strategy franchise, comes up with new ways for you to win. One of the revamped non-violent win conditions is a religious victory, as well as a cultural victory, but you might be wondering; is it possible at all to win without waging any war?
Polygon's Colin Campbell decided to test this theory by playing a highly customized game of "Civilization 6." He decided that it's virtually impossible to beat the game this way without heavily modifying the title's rules and creating parameters that would suit his approach.
First, Campbell decided to remove barbarians and the Domination win condition in his game of "Civilization 6." The game constantly spawns barbarians, even well into the modern eras and dealing with them will require an active military. Removing the Domination win condition -- where you have to conquer all opposing capitals -- reduces the need for opposing AIs to constantly wage war. They'll only attack when they need to reduce your advantage in the other win conditions, but it does not completely eliminate war and fighting in the game.
Campbell also started the game on an archipelagic map, so that civilizations are forced to be as isolated as possible from one another. Despite playing a peaceful game of "Civilization 6," he still had to develop a rather strong military so as to ward away other civs that might be tempted to wage war on him.
Over the course of his peaceful "Civilization 6" game, Campbell found out that the game really wants you to fight, no matter how you want to play the game. He finds that this is a rather immature approach to an empire-building game, considering that there are players who want to avoid combat in their playstyle. PC Gamer still finds three things that "Civilization 6" can improve on, and if they do, this might provide a better non-combat path to victory.