Science was king in Civ 5. So what is king in Civ 6?

[Ornen]

We used to say science was king in civilization 5. So based on your first impressions, what's the most important mechanic / thing to have in Civ 6?

If you feel something should be on here that isn't, let me know. I intentionally didn't include military or wonders, since I feel those fall under production.

Comments strongly encouraged, the discussion is more important to me than the poll itself.

 

[grandad1982]

Production for me. I always felt it was king in 4 and 5 as well. When looking at the post game graphs it was always at the point that production started to grow faster and faster that I know the game was won.

 

[anandus]

Production. Even for a science victory you need to have massive production.

 

[Qoce]

Territory and population are a bit abstract for this poll. I don't think they should have been options. Population can be used to create all of the other resources, and generally the civ with the highest population will have the best of those other things. Additionally, many of the other resources are required to get a high population. For territory, it depends on what kind of territory you are talking about, is the land good or bad. And is it the territory itself that has value or the population of the cities on it? Ignoring those two options, it seems to me that production is king in civ VI, due to the importance of building districts.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

Production. Limited more than anything else, and the production costs for things ramp up into absurdity.

 

[Xger]

The only time I've seen production not be absolutely the choke is with cheesy early rushes. Since you cannot rush buy districts, or speed them anyway that I've found, production is king.

 

[AJ22PIZZA]

The only time I've seen production not be absolutely the choke is with cheesy early rushes. Since you cannot rush buy districts, or speed them anyway that I've found, production is king.

The Aztec unique ability is to use builder charges to speed up districts

 

[King Jason]

Production and it's not even a contest. Even in the realm of GP, finishing projects is far and away the best way to generate GPP. Yet another thing that requires production.

 

[stormtrooper412]

Definitely Production since stuff kind of takes forever to build. Use chopping carefully as it's worth A LOT more now

 

[MkLh]

Actually it feels better to build something cheap with 100% boost (like heavy chariots), disband them and then rush buy with cash what you really want. There are at least two advantages: 1. even the product poorest cities contribute positively, as chariots are cheap enough to come at reasonable time. Everything else takes forever. 2. you can direct your empire wide production to where you really need it, like producing units in recently captured cities.

 

[Xger]

The Aztec unique ability is to use builder charges to speed up districts

I was vaguely aware of that, but that means only one Civ might not rank production as top.

Actually it feels better to build something cheap with 100% boost (like heavy chariots), disband them and then rush buy with cash what you really want. There are at least two advantages: 1. even the product poorest cities contribute positively, as chariots are cheap enough to come at reasonable time. Everything else takes forever. 2. you can direct your empire wide production to where you really need it, like producing units in recently captured cities.

This only works to an extent. It doesn't assist in building districts, projects, or wonders. Units are not the constraint, in my experience.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

The only time I've seen production not be absolutely the choke is with cheesy early rushes. Since you cannot rush buy districts, or speed them anyway that I've found, production is king.

Well, you can chop forests and jungles to speed districts along. But there are limits on that.

 

[RedRover57]

Production has always been king...

 

[Japper007]

Production, but only because the tech-speed is all out of wack in relation to production right now, so you don't have to focus on science much at all. I've finished two Science Victories now and even with almost no Campuses I finished the tech tree and looped around Future Tech 5 times before my cities finished hard-building the SS parts.

 

[drubell]

Let's just say that I fully completed the tech tree about 100 turns before I had the production to finally finish my first science game.

Though, it should be noted that an industrial complex will boost the production of ANY city within 6 hexes of it, and they will stack. Had I known that in my first game, production might not have been so much of a problem.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

It really depends on your strategy. I think money has way more value now that you can use it to buy great people, and military upgrade costs aren't outrageous. Buying tiles is cheap, too, thanks to how often you can change civics.

The only problem with money is that you can't buy any of the wins. I just got done playing as Rome and dominated the game so much with money that I was able to buy an army in a moments notice to destroy everything that was sent my way.

Tbh, I think trade routes are the most powerful resource. Having 30 by turn 200 was just nuts.

 

[CrimsonEdge]

Production and it's not even a contest. Even in the realm of GP, finishing projects is far and away the best way to generate GPP. Yet another thing that requires production.

It really depends. In a science victory game I bought 3 science GP with gold (one was close to popping) in a row. I wanted Sagan so I could rush the last part.

I use most of my money on GP, actually.

 

[Ornen]

Territory and population are a bit abstract for this poll. I don't think they should have been options. Population can be used to create all of the other resources, and generally the civ with the highest population will have the best of those other things. Additionally, many of the other resources are required to get a high population. For territory, it depends on what kind of territory you are talking about, is the land good or bad. And is it the territory itself that has value or the population of the cities on it? Ignoring those two options, it seems to me that production is king in civ VI, due to the importance of building districts.

I don't think either of these are too abstract, and both have concrete mechanics that integrate them into the game.

Population is mechanically grounded by food, housing, and amenities. All else equal, is it more important to ramp up your production (or science or faith etc) or keep your cities growing by securing amenities and building adequate housing? That's not an abstract question.

Territory is the turf you're sitting on. Is it more important to secure more cities and tiles or to spend your food and production on other things? How important are specific plots of land? Worth securing vs other priorities like building traders or districts? This is especially relevant with districts, which completely remove the tile's base yield from the game. Especially mid-late game, you're definitely going to have to figure out how to balance development with workable tiles in your cities. That said, if you have more territory, that's less of an issue – and that's a big reason why you might build a settler before a campus or buy a couple key tiles before upgrading your units.

 

[GAGA Extrem]

To me Population is king, followed very closely by Production.

 

[Hans Tork]

I think it is production. Currently 200 science is enough for deity difficulty. Anything like 250 or 300 is overkill. However production is way too vital for space victory. The initial spaceport itself required me a lot of turns(more than 40 ) I believe. The later parts require 3000 hammers even though you can get a part for free with Carl Sagan scientist.