The first new civ has been released for the upcoming Civilization VI, according to pcgamer. The Zulu’s Impi unit in Civilization V was hard enough, but it appears that they will be taking a back seat to Civilization VI‘s Scythia.
Scythian units deal bonus damage to wounded enemies and heal a bit after defeating an enemy unit. This could give them incredible staying power in long campaigns, but the thing that’s got me really scared is their other ability: every time Scythia builds light cavalry units or their unique unit, the Saka Horse Archer, they get two of that unit for the price of one. Not only that, but you don’t actually need any horse resource to construct the Saka Horse Archer.
That means that the ranged horse units will be able to kill you from afar and heal themselves when you die, making it seemingly impossible to kill since their health will be consistently rising. The movement of your horses will be key when playing the game. The player won’t have to worry about gathering the resources for the horses so they can bring out the horses quickly, which is important because the terrain in Civilization VI will be harder to traverse.
Also if you neighbor them and they are being controlled by an AI, they will get mad at you if you declare a surprise war on another civ, serving as a de facto police force that will kill you if you haven’t figured out a way to counter their superior horse archer ability.
Not to mention that their leader Queen Tomyris actually killed the Persian ruler in Civilization IV, Cyrus the Great. The real world Scythians were a powerful, nomadic group that occupied areas of the Caspian and Black Seas, which are in modern-day Kazakhstan, Russia and Ukraine.
Civilization VI is to be released October 21 for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS and Linux.