The invitation to EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EXterminate that comes with the game’s unfortunately spelled sixth iteration is hard to resist, harder still to play

I am feeling anxious about the world. We have had mayoral elections in my part of Canada in which one candidate was backed with more gold than Croesus, so it wasn’t even a contest. In the UK people have not got the Labour government they hoped they were voting for. And as someone who lives a few hours’ drive from the US border, I can only pray that Orange Hitler doesn’t get in again. Or maybe I pray that he does, lest our neighbours to the south end up in an election-denial-driven repeat of the civil war. So I thought I’d play a game where I get to direct the rise and fall of civilisation myself instead. As a treat.

Civilization 6 is what’s known as a 4X game. 4X stands for “EXplore, EXpand, EXploit and EXterminate”, a phrase that offends my pedantic spelling sensibilities. Unfortunately the four “exes” I spent a lot of time doing here was Exert, Expire, Exclaim and then Exit due to this game’s Execrable gamepad controls, which are as intuitive as a Heston Blumenthal recipe. I lost count of the times I moved the wrong unit, or had brain freeze trying to remember what button did what. I would have preferred a more common sense control system, mouse and keyboard support, or an interface that uses the power of thought, like that one Elon Musk pretends he has.