India's Chandragupta will wage war in Civilization 6: Rise and Fall expansion

Civilization 6's first expansion, Rise and Fall, is coming in February, and Firaxis has gradually been teasing details about the nine new leaders that are coming to the game. We already know that Genghis Khan, Queen Seondeok of Korea and the Netherlands' Queen Wilhelmina will be joining the party, and now we know all about Chandragupta, the new leader of the Indians.

He will be an alternative leader to Gandhi, and the two couldn't be more different. Where Gandhi's civilisations are built on peace, Chandragupta's skill set encourages a more aggressive play-style. He commands an elephant-mounted army and his leader ability, Arthashastra, will let you declare a war of territorial expansion. During the first few turns of that war your units get bonuses to movement and combat, so you'll be able to overpower most foes early on.

That aggression fits with his back story: as Firaxis describes, he was a charismatic and clever man, mentored by the great Chanakya, a pioneer of economics in India. Chandragupta raised an army and overthrew the corrupt Nanda dynasty 3rd Century BCE. He established the Mauryan dynasty, and his empire eventually extended from Southern India all the way to modern-day Afghanistan.

Read more about the huge Rise and Fall expansion here. It's due out on February 8.

Samuel is a freelance journalist and editor who first wrote for PC Gamer nearly a decade ago. Since then he's had stints as a VR specialist, mouse reviewer, and previewer of promising indie games, and is now regularly writing about Fortnite. What he loves most is longer form, interview-led reporting, whether that's Ken Levine on the one phone call that saved his studio, Tim Schafer on a milkman joke that inspired Psychonauts' best level, or historians on what Anno 1800 gets wrong about colonialism. He's based in London.