Now that I've covered all the civilizations which are new to the Civ franchise in the Gathering Storm expansion, I'm going to cover the other civs that my Patrons voted on. I'm going to start with Montezuma of the Aztecs. The Aztecs were included as DLC for the vanilla release of Civilization VI.

The Aztec Empire consisted of a "Triple Alliance" between the city states of Tenochtitlan, Texcoco, and Tlacopan in the Central Mexican Valley basin around Lake Texcoco, based largely around the cultivation of maize. They would subjugate other city states through military conquest, trade, or marriage, and then install governors to administer those client states without necessarily needing to maintain a military garrison. Client states would pay tribute directly to the Aztec emperor, who would limit their ability to communicate and trade directly with other client cities; thus, making each of the clients dependent on the empire for resources and luxury goods and reduce the likelihood of an uprising.

In the early 1500's, Spanish Conquistadors (lead by Hernán Cortéz) arrived in central Mexico and occupied the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, keeping Aztec Emperor Moctezuma Xocoyotzin a prisoner in his own palace. Since most of his history is depicted through the lens of the Spanish conquerors, information about Moctezuma's life and rule are limited and contradictory. He ruled the Aztec Empire at its territorial height after several successful military campaigns, and he imposed regressive policies that increased the rigidity of the Aztec caste system and severely limited the ability of commoners to work in royal palaces or ascend to nobility. Contrary to his typical depictions in the Civilization games as a blood-thirsty warmonger, contemporary Spanish writings suggest that Moctezuma may have been rather meek and was accommodating of the Spanish conquistadors, whom he invited to live in the palace as guests. Moctezuma would die during the Spanish occupation of Tenochtitlan, possibly having been stoned to death by his own citizens who were frustrated with his inability (or unwillingness) to repel the Spanish invaders.

DISCLAIMER:
Civilization VI is still a "living game". Strategies for the game (and for specific leaders and civs) may change as Firaxis applies balance patches, introduces new features, or expands the game through further DLC or expansion packs, or as the Civ community discovers new strategies or exploits. As such, the following strategy guide may change from time to time. I will try to keep it up-to-date, and will make notations whenever changes are made. I'll also post links in the official 2K forums and CivFanatics, where I'll also report any changes made. If possible and practical, I will try to retain the original content of the strategy for posterity.

I welcome any feedback or suggestions that readers wish to offer. Feel free to post on the linked forums, or by posting a comment at the bottom of the page.

This guide is up to date as of the release of the Gathering Storm expansion's "Red Death" update (ver. 1.0.0.341)

The Aztecs in Civilization VI are built to be highly aggressive, using the procurement of luxury resources to strengthen their armies and support their vast conquests.

Having dislocated my shoulder a few weeks ago, I haven't been doing much video gaming. I can do some PC gaming on my laptop using my trackball mouse and wireless keyboard (and plan on having a new Civilization VI strategy published real soon), and I also finally started playing Breath of the Wild on the Switch, since the Switch controller is much more comfortable to use with my arm in a sling. I haven't touched the PS4 since the dislocation. I've also been watching a lot more TV and movies.

One such television show has been Netflix's new The Witcher TV series, based on the novels that inspired the video game series of the same name. The Witcher III is a fantastic game that I've come to adore due to its exceptionally well-written and thoughtful quests. But I never played the first two games in the series, nor read the books. So I was looking forward to the TV show hopefully filling me in on more of the backstory and history of these characters and this world.

I just wish that I was having an easier time following along with what the heck is going on in this show, as its plotting and structure seems to be rather muddled.

I'm not even talking about the large, big-picture structure of the show. I followed along just fine with the show jumping back and forth between Ciri's escape from the Nilfgardian invasion of Cintra, and the travels of Geralt that happened in the 15 or so years leading up that invasion. It took me a few episodes to wrap my head around it, but I'm fine with it.

No, what's confusing me is the minute-to-minute plotting and character motivations. There have been numerous times during these eight episodes that I just kind of threw my hands up and asked aloud "what is going on here?". Why are these characters doing what they are doing? And why do so many conversations feel like they are made up of non sequiturs? There's going to be some light spoilers here, so if you haven't watched the show yet, you can maybe skip the next two or three paragraphs.

I found myself very confused as to why certain things were happening.

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Hi readers,

It has been brought to my attention that the "Contact page is not working properly, and I am not receiving emails sent through that page. I migrated the blog over to a new hosting server a couple years ago, so the problem may have begun then -- even though I tested it, and it worked at the time. I'm not sure. If you've tried using the "Contact" page to send me an email in the past year or two, I did not receive the message. I was not ignoring you, and I hope you do not take it personally.

I'm going to investigate this issue when I have the time and hopefully fix it soon. I apologize for the inconvenience.

In the meantime, if you need to get a hold of me, I recommend that you do one of the following:

• If the message is OK to be seen publicly, post it in the comments of this page.
• Otherwise, send me a PM at twitter.com/MegaBearsFan, or at youtube.com/user/MegaBearsFan/, or through my Patreon page. I will most likely see any messages sent to those accounts.

UPDATE I've tried testing the Contact page, and it seems to work sometimes. Some emails go through; others do not. I have yet to be able to determine why that is the case. Emails from actual readers have not been received, but I have a spam box loaded with advertisements and solicitations from French companies. I'll continue investigating as time permits, and will update my readers once I have the Contact page working reliably. In the meantime, I encourage you to continue posting comments, or use the contact methods listed above.

Well I'll be damned. This winter, I was pleasantly surprised by The Mandalorian seeming to pull the Star Wars franchise back from the brink of the abyss. And now I'm also pleasantly surprised to see that perhaps Star Trek might be pulled out from circling the toilet bowl as well. The first episode of CBS All Access' new Picard series was surprisingly "not bad".

Now, I do still have some serious reservations about the directions that I think the show might be going later in the season. And I'll get to that later. But first, I want to sit and bask in the delight of having just watched a new piece of Star Trek media that I didn't hate. After slogging through the first season of Discovery (I have yet to watch the second season), I was left with zero faith in CBS's ability to re-capture the spirit and soul of Star Trek.

Picard shows some good faith right from the start by opening with a clip of the Enterprise-D. Not some re-designed Franken-ship monstrosity like the "original" Enterprise in the 2009 Trek reboot, or as seen in Discovery. But the honest-to-goodness Galaxy-class Enterprise-D, pretty much exactly as we remember and love her -- and looking mighty gorgeous, might I add! We then zoom into Ten Forward, where Picard is playing a hand of poker with an unconvincingly digitally de-aged Brent Spiner reprising the role of Data. This scene pays homage to the beautiful final scene of the Next Generation finale "All Good Things...", and Picard laments that he's stalling going all-in against Data's hand because he "doesn't want the game to end".

Picard is a return (and continuation) of Star Trek as fans knew it almost 20 years ago.

We didn't want the game to end either...

The first few scenes of the episode then go on to show Picard giving brief (but impassioned) speeches about the decline of Starfleet ideals, the civil rights of sentient androids, and the moral imperative to provide aid and relief to the Romulan refugees whose home planet was destroyed by the [somehow unexpected?] supernova of the Romulan sun. And he's also trying to do some social justice for pit bull dogs, which (as my choice of pets should suggest) is something that I approve very strongly of. It's respectful and faithful (and reverent) to what came before. "Holy shit", I thought, "this is actually looking and feeling like the Star Trek that I know and love."

For a moment, I thought the soul of Star Trek is there, in those early scenes, even though it is shallow and lacks the idealism that has always underpinned Trek.

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This week, I came across a video from Fox Sports outlining some of the "innovative" new rules being employed in the XFL for its [second] inaugural season. The rules are intended to make the game more exciting and streamlined. Some of them sound like generally good ideas. Others seem like poorly thought-out attempts to make the offenses' jobs easier, at the expense of defense and special teams.

Overtime shootout sounds dumber than college overtime

I am not surprised that the XFL is experimenting with a new overtime design. I am, however, surprised that they managed to come up with an overtime that is somehow even more divorced from football than college's overtime rules. Now, I've made my distaste for college overtime clear in the past. In summary, college overtime changes the rules of the game such that the teams' relative strengths or weaknesses may shift dramatically, in such a way that the outcome of the game may not be representative of the game as a whole. For one thing, special teams is almost completely removed from the game.

The XFL is going even further. Overtime games will be decided by what is essentially a two-point conversion shoot-out. Basically, the teams will take turns trying two-point conversions until one team scores and the other doesn't.

Special teams stars like Devin Hester will be
completely irrelevant in XFL overtime.

So now, not only are kick and punt returns eliminated from the game in overtime, but the field goal kicker has to sit on the bench knowing that he can't contribute either. Does your team have an elite kicker? Too bad! He doesn't get to see the field. How about an explosive kick returner? He also has to sit on the bench and watch without being able to use his talents to help his team win the game.

Heck, unless your team specializes in converting short-yardage situations, your team is going to be handicapped. Have a trio of speedy receivers who stretch the field, and a QB with a rocket arm? Sorry, they only have about 12 yards to work with. Have a dominating pass rush that leaves rival QBs with little time to make a five or seven-step drop before being buried into the ground? Well, they probably won't have time to get to the QB, since the rules are basically mandating a three-step drop or less.

Put simply, this overtime is not football.

My other complaint with college rules has also been carried over to the XFL: games can't tie. The rapid nature of the shootout should hopefully mean that overtimes don't drag on for as long as college overtimes often do, and the scores won't be as wildly inflated. So those are improvements. But sometimes, a tie might be representative of a hard-fought game against two closely-matched opponents. But the XFL rules prohibit this.

No, I do not like these overtime rules at all.

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