Oh, I see. Lol.
Well there isn't much more to say after your stunning rebuke of Civ VI.
Which Civs are easy mode?
- Thread starter Yzman
- Start date
Oh, I see. Lol.
Well there isn't much more to say after your stunning rebuke of Civ VI.
Aristos
Lightseeker
I bought the game to play SP.
Back to easy mode topic:
1.) Spain: honestly I started making this post three times already and it keeps turning into a novel, so I'll try to make it somewhat abridged. CAVEAT: start on a continent split, which they have a start bias towards, with the capital placed on a small, small "continent" bearing in mind the difference in civ terminology between "continent" and "landmass" BONUSES(3) trade routes, builder/districts, and missions. SUMMARY: with the capital starting on a small "continent" every other city (except perhaps the first expansion) will be able to take full advantage of all of these bonuses. With TRs, forget that if they're on the same continent they get 1H/2Fth/3G because as long as the 2nd (or 3rd) city is on a different continent, every TR will have an off-continent target and get the full 3prod/6faith/9gold. The basic strategy is to get as much prod as possible, with the incredibly strong tangential effects of continuing to sprinkle on in heavy increments FthPT and GPT purchasing power. Additionally, while the capital still probably makes HS first as Spain does well with a religion, you put a high emphasis on getting the government plaza (with ancestral hall, more on that later) and diplomatic quarter. Just with that, as soon as you plunk down a new city (on a different continent than the capital) send a TR to the capital for 3F/6P to get it from infancy to productive incredibly quickly. Then add in the 4 production districts and the trade route becomes 3F/10P, with more food from additional districts to come. Yeah, Spain does well with internal TRs, the usual downside to internal TRs is that you're sacrificing one of the most potent GPT sources in the game, but as all your TRs will make 9 GPT, that's more than covered. Not saying that Spain shouldn't use external TR, just that they have an option to get new cities started in hyperdrive. As if that wasn't enough to get new cities booming quickly, every city other than the capital gets +25% to building all districts; that's 10% more than the centerpiece bonus of Egypt and 5% more than the Nubian bonus (unless there's an adjacent pyramid, but how many cities have that?) and the TR hammers get that multiplier, and all while sprinkling in heavy doses of GPT and FthPT AND every new city will get a free builder (or two if you have the ancestral hall - remember earlier about gov and diplo quarter.) And finally there's the missions, which I'm surprised get the lukewarm reception that they do. (Again, with the continental caveat...) every one is +1F/+1P which makes them all some of the most useful tiles to work outside of resource tiles; 3F/1P and 2F/2P are great tiles for the city, and an extra hammer when there's hills. That's for the city, for the empire every one of them makes 4 FthPT, and when in conjunction with the TR makes Spain's FthPT have two very potent sources even before considering holy sites. And that +1 BPT doesn't seem like much, but on a tile that helps the city so much with food/production and the empire so much with faith, you can nickel and dime your way to quite potent science output. I like to forego holy site and campus adjacency altogether and try to have both districts surrounded by 6 missions - the 12 BPT you'll make from working those tiles is at least equal to, usually better than the campus adjacency, and the 48 FthPT is more than the HS adjacency. And once you hit the late game civic that adds 2 beakers to every mission... it's just game over at that point. And the early fleets/armadas and conquistadors are good bonuses that in the context of Spain, are just gravy. Everything just blends together so that, while many civs can get one or two, maybe three yields really high through their bonuses, Spain has good a.)food from mission tiles and increased reason to use internal TR, b.)production from trade routes, missions, and district bonuses, c.)gold - a bit more from trade routes, d.) science from missions and later A LOT from missions, and e.) faith - their strongest yield bonus, heavily from missions and a nice bonus from TRs as well. This argument is often countered by "yeah, well with the Khmer, all my holy sites are getting 10 hammers and faith" and I agree the Khmer are very strong (and digress that there's a ton more to speak of in this comparison, but again, look at the length of this post already) but I just feel that Spain has more bonuses from more sources affecting more yields and is easier to implement (again, when starting with your capital on a small continent and a split.) And yes, that was the abridged version!
2.) Mali - probably a controversial pick as they have one of the most crippling penalties which most heavily impacts the most crucial part of the game, the start. But once you get things rolling, the snowball accelerates a lot faster than most other civs. When I get them with a start position which is simultaneously the best start for their bonuses and the most difficult start for all civs, all-out desert,I always go for the Reeds/Marshes + Etemenanki combo - the extra production helps to compensate for their starting handicap and the beakers are not only a great source of science throughout the game, but help you reach that point in which your strengths start to make up for your weaknesses- Currency and the Seguba. I like to try to get one city that has every single tile (or as many as possible) desert, and send out all trade routes from that city. Even more potent with Great Zimbabwe and can be a next-level city with Petra. I'm not so sure about the trade off with mines, even though he can do great things with gold purchasing- lumber mills don't lose the production and later on their prerequisite terrain be planted. I do have to say that for a civ that has gold- and faith- purchasing power amplified at the expense of production, his gold-generating bonuses are on point but the faith-generating bonuses are a little lackluster. And you could argue that Portugal has stronger gold generating bonuses and with Mali's underwhelming faith generating bonuses that makes them simply better considering the production penalty... and I'd agree with you, Portugal is outright better. They're just more of an obvious choice for easy mode so I left them out.
And for the final two, I'll cover two of the possibly forgotten civs as NFP has turned nearly every facet of the game upside-down, but these two civs are easy mode for reasons before NFP, weren't really affected by it (eh...), and still hold true today:
3.) Nubia - map type doesn't really matter, maybe just an emphasis on having a close-by neighbor. The archer rush is always a great way to kick-start any game, and Nubia does it better than anyone. It's kind of laughable that the unique archer is "more expensive" than a standard archer because the cost is decreased due to one of Nubia's other bonuses, making them cheaper. So they're cheaper, faster, stronger, and gain promotions faster. They can archer rush better than anyone (yes, I hear you Byzantium fans) but it does create a bit of an urgency as the archer rush window pretty much ends when the targets have walls. But that's where Nubia's archers getting promotions faster can make a big difference - once they get incendiaries and the extra shot from expert marksmen, they may be able to keep moving forward. That's how they get things started, the district bonus helps to keep the momentum going. And some extra yields from mines is always welcome.
And the thing about a civ like Nubia, who can hit the ground running, take over a nearby neighbor or two for both more cities and more territory to make even more cities, and then has decent bonuses to improve all those cities faster, is that you can then win any way you want. Continue the aggression and win by Dom, get a campus in all of them and win space, get a theater in all of them and make local optimizations for culture, or focus on faith and win religious. Very versatile, pick-your-win. But a civ that does this even better than Nubia IMO is...
4.)...Persia - while Nubia is good at what they do, they don't have any combat bonuses aside from the stronger archer (and its promotions) Persia also has an early game unique unit who can attack with impunity, is a little more rugged so may survive a walled city siege, and the civ has a +10 combat bonus for a limited time after declaring in the only manner that they would declare as it's the easiest and the penalty for doing so is reduced. They also get a little bonus in getting the cities online as their yields aren't diminished from being occupied and a not-so-little bonus of retaining the city with the loyalty bonus. From an early game infrastructure standpoint, one extra TR early is double the number that you'll have for an extended period of time, and the bonus to domestic TR is eh... not unnoticeable, not sure if this gives them enough incentive to prioritize internal TR, but like Spain but to a lesser degree, having all cities send a TR to a city with gov and diplo districts and then the 4 TR hammer districts is a viable option and the downfall of not getting gold from your TR is somewhat mitigated by their bonus. The unique improvement is another way to supplement your GPT if you decide to go internal TR, but I wouldn't go spamming them like missions as described above or, for example, outback stations, as they don't help with food or, more importantly, production. At least not yet. So like Nubia, they can hit the ground running, and then have some infrastructure bonuses to help you get the V when you use your early snowballing to allow you to win in any way you want. But the difference is the late game option offered by the pairidaeza - if you've been planning for what you can do in the late game, which means less mines and more lumbermills, positioning of the pairidaeza, as well as possibly going with earth goddess (which is immensely helpful early as well), then you can just national park all over the place, funded in part by Earth Goddess, and have tons of seaside resorts, your late-game tourism can become so potent that you can divert to the tourism win if somehow things go sideways, and easily finish the deal if that's what was intended.
1.) Spain: honestly I started making this post three times already and it keeps turning into a novel, so I'll try to make it somewhat abridged. CAVEAT: start on a continent split, which they have a start bias towards, with the capital placed on a small, small "continent" bearing in mind the difference in civ terminology between "continent" and "landmass" BONUSES(3) trade routes, builder/districts, and missions. SUMMARY: with the capital starting on a small "continent" every other city (except perhaps the first expansion) will be able to take full advantage of all of these bonuses. With TRs, forget that if they're on the same continent they get 1H/2Fth/3G because as long as the 2nd (or 3rd) city is on a different continent, every TR will have an off-continent target and get the full 3prod/6faith/9gold. The basic strategy is to get as much prod as possible, with the incredibly strong tangential effects of continuing to sprinkle on in heavy increments FthPT and GPT purchasing power. Additionally, while the capital still probably makes HS first as Spain does well with a religion, you put a high emphasis on getting the government plaza (with ancestral hall, more on that later) and diplomatic quarter. Just with that, as soon as you plunk down a new city (on a different continent than the capital) send a TR to the capital for 3F/6P to get it from infancy to productive incredibly quickly. Then add in the 4 production districts and the trade route becomes 3F/10P, with more food from additional districts to come. Yeah, Spain does well with internal TRs, the usual downside to internal TRs is that you're sacrificing one of the most potent GPT sources in the game, but as all your TRs will make 9 GPT, that's more than covered. Not saying that Spain shouldn't use external TR, just that they have an option to get new cities started in hyperdrive. As if that wasn't enough to get new cities booming quickly, every city other than the capital gets +25% to building all districts; that's 10% more than the centerpiece bonus of Egypt and 5% more than the Nubian bonus (unless there's an adjacent pyramid, but how many cities have that?) and the TR hammers get that multiplier, and all while sprinkling in heavy doses of GPT and FthPT AND every new city will get a free builder (or two if you have the ancestral hall - remember earlier about gov and diplo quarter.) And finally there's the missions, which I'm surprised get the lukewarm reception that they do. (Again, with the continental caveat...) every one is +1F/+1P which makes them all some of the most useful tiles to work outside of resource tiles; 3F/1P and 2F/2P are great tiles for the city, and an extra hammer when there's hills. That's for the city, for the empire every one of them makes 4 FthPT, and when in conjunction with the TR makes Spain's FthPT have two very potent sources even before considering holy sites. And that +1 BPT doesn't seem like much, but on a tile that helps the city so much with food/production and the empire so much with faith, you can nickel and dime your way to quite potent science output. I like to forego holy site and campus adjacency altogether and try to have both districts surrounded by 6 missions - the 12 BPT you'll make from working those tiles is at least equal to, usually better than the campus adjacency, and the 48 FthPT is more than the HS adjacency. And once you hit the late game civic that adds 2 beakers to every mission... it's just game over at that point. And the early fleets/armadas and conquistadors are good bonuses that in the context of Spain, are just gravy. Everything just blends together so that, while many civs can get one or two, maybe three yields really high through their bonuses, Spain has good a.)food from mission tiles and increased reason to use internal TR, b.)production from trade routes, missions, and district bonuses, c.)gold - a bit more from trade routes, d.) science from missions and later A LOT from missions, and e.) faith - their strongest yield bonus, heavily from missions and a nice bonus from TRs as well. This argument is often countered by "yeah, well with the Khmer, all my holy sites are getting 10 hammers and faith" and I agree the Khmer are very strong (and digress that there's a ton more to speak of in this comparison, but again, look at the length of this post already) but I just feel that Spain has more bonuses from more sources affecting more yields and is easier to implement (again, when starting with your capital on a small continent and a split.) And yes, that was the abridged version!
2.) Mali - probably a controversial pick as they have one of the most crippling penalties which most heavily impacts the most crucial part of the game, the start. But once you get things rolling, the snowball accelerates a lot faster than most other civs. When I get them with a start position which is simultaneously the best start for their bonuses and the most difficult start for all civs, all-out desert,I always go for the Reeds/Marshes + Etemenanki combo - the extra production helps to compensate for their starting handicap and the beakers are not only a great source of science throughout the game, but help you reach that point in which your strengths start to make up for your weaknesses- Currency and the Seguba. I like to try to get one city that has every single tile (or as many as possible) desert, and send out all trade routes from that city. Even more potent with Great Zimbabwe and can be a next-level city with Petra. I'm not so sure about the trade off with mines, even though he can do great things with gold purchasing- lumber mills don't lose the production and later on their prerequisite terrain be planted. I do have to say that for a civ that has gold- and faith- purchasing power amplified at the expense of production, his gold-generating bonuses are on point but the faith-generating bonuses are a little lackluster. And you could argue that Portugal has stronger gold generating bonuses and with Mali's underwhelming faith generating bonuses that makes them simply better considering the production penalty... and I'd agree with you, Portugal is outright better. They're just more of an obvious choice for easy mode so I left them out.
And for the final two, I'll cover two of the possibly forgotten civs as NFP has turned nearly every facet of the game upside-down, but these two civs are easy mode for reasons before NFP, weren't really affected by it (eh...), and still hold true today:
3.) Nubia - map type doesn't really matter, maybe just an emphasis on having a close-by neighbor. The archer rush is always a great way to kick-start any game, and Nubia does it better than anyone. It's kind of laughable that the unique archer is "more expensive" than a standard archer because the cost is decreased due to one of Nubia's other bonuses, making them cheaper. So they're cheaper, faster, stronger, and gain promotions faster. They can archer rush better than anyone (yes, I hear you Byzantium fans) but it does create a bit of an urgency as the archer rush window pretty much ends when the targets have walls. But that's where Nubia's archers getting promotions faster can make a big difference - once they get incendiaries and the extra shot from expert marksmen, they may be able to keep moving forward. That's how they get things started, the district bonus helps to keep the momentum going. And some extra yields from mines is always welcome.
And the thing about a civ like Nubia, who can hit the ground running, take over a nearby neighbor or two for both more cities and more territory to make even more cities, and then has decent bonuses to improve all those cities faster, is that you can then win any way you want. Continue the aggression and win by Dom, get a campus in all of them and win space, get a theater in all of them and make local optimizations for culture, or focus on faith and win religious. Very versatile, pick-your-win. But a civ that does this even better than Nubia IMO is...
4.)...Persia - while Nubia is good at what they do, they don't have any combat bonuses aside from the stronger archer (and its promotions) Persia also has an early game unique unit who can attack with impunity, is a little more rugged so may survive a walled city siege, and the civ has a +10 combat bonus for a limited time after declaring in the only manner that they would declare as it's the easiest and the penalty for doing so is reduced. They also get a little bonus in getting the cities online as their yields aren't diminished from being occupied and a not-so-little bonus of retaining the city with the loyalty bonus. From an early game infrastructure standpoint, one extra TR early is double the number that you'll have for an extended period of time, and the bonus to domestic TR is eh... not unnoticeable, not sure if this gives them enough incentive to prioritize internal TR, but like Spain but to a lesser degree, having all cities send a TR to a city with gov and diplo districts and then the 4 TR hammer districts is a viable option and the downfall of not getting gold from your TR is somewhat mitigated by their bonus. The unique improvement is another way to supplement your GPT if you decide to go internal TR, but I wouldn't go spamming them like missions as described above or, for example, outback stations, as they don't help with food or, more importantly, production. At least not yet. So like Nubia, they can hit the ground running, and then have some infrastructure bonuses to help you get the V when you use your early snowballing to allow you to win in any way you want. But the difference is the late game option offered by the pairidaeza - if you've been planning for what you can do in the late game, which means less mines and more lumbermills, positioning of the pairidaeza, as well as possibly going with earth goddess (which is immensely helpful early as well), then you can just national park all over the place, funded in part by Earth Goddess, and have tons of seaside resorts, your late-game tourism can become so potent that you can divert to the tourism win if somehow things go sideways, and easily finish the deal if that's what was intended.
There's been a lot of good discussion in this thread about civs that can be easy mode via domination, so I'll focus on civs that can be easy mode playing peacefully:
- Russia - even with recent nerfs, the combo of cheap Lavra, bias/bonus in tundra, Dance of the Aurora, and Work Ethic means you can get an early religion, be swimming in faith, and have strong production out of even small cities. With a strong likelihood of a classical golden era, plus a likely amount of open space in or near tundra, you can expand peacefully pretty quickly in the first 100 turns, and be generating great works while doing it.
- Brazil - all dependent on getting to a pantheon while Sacred Path is available. Add that in and you can easily get +7 or above holy sites in most cities, which when added to Work Ethic and doubled with Scripture can give you insane early faith and production. Use that to expand anywhere with some rainforest and take advantage of high-adjacency campuses, theatre squares, and commercial hubs, and you can target science or culture easily (or just keep pumping faith and go religious). Plus the massive number of GPP they can generate. And if you decide you want to choose violence later on, the Minas Geraes will let you take any coastal or near-coastal city with ease.
- Australia - just a super strong all around civ, with a variety of bonuses. The adjacency bonus for high-appeal titles is great for any victory condition, though I think is particularly useful to get a couple very high adjacency holy sites to couple with Work Ethic (seeing a theme here in my thoughts about easy mode?). Even if not, though, the ability to get +7 or higher campuses in multiple cities can really put you at the top of science early. Their other bonuses also lend themselves to helping settle areas that might not be great otherwise - extra housing on the coast, ability to get prod/food from outback stations, and culture bombs from pastures all help with continued growth and expansion. Finally, if you're not aiming to play the war game, the +100% bonus production for being attacked lets you carry a small standing army and still defend yourself, or a slightly bigger/strategic one and take advantage of the bonus to build wonders, districts, etc. Late-game, if you feel like keeping the bonus up, it's not hard to find city-states at least who have been conquered and go liberating with your powerful diggers.
Kmart_Elvis
King
No one has mentioned Sumeria yet. They have a straightforward, simple, yet very powerful start: Which means you spam War Carts. No need for scouts, your war carts will explore. No need for infantry/archers, you have the most powerful unit from turn one. No need for settlers because you can just use your war carts to conquer your neighbor's cities. They're mobile, hit hard, and have zero maintenance so you can maintain your spam.
They don't last forever of course. You'll be able to swallow up one or two of your neighbors, but from there, you can go with any victory. You can upgrade them to keep the domination going, or you could use your big little empire to easily go for a scientific, cultural, or diplo victory since you have more cities than your closest rival.
They don't last forever of course. You'll be able to swallow up one or two of your neighbors, but from there, you can go with any victory. You can upgrade them to keep the domination going, or you could use your big little empire to easily go for a scientific, cultural, or diplo victory since you have more cities than your closest rival.
Camus
Chieftain
I'd place my bets on Portugal. Their trade routes will give you enough gold to buy a building or unit every 3-4 turns. And they are quite straightforward to use even if you ignore Naus.
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While I do agree that Brazil with sacred path is strong, getting sacred path can be very hard on your average playthrough.
Last time I attempted the same with Khmer, I gave up after rerolling about 30 times.
For this reason I dont rank Brazil as a truly OP civ, as an OP civ in my book has to be consistently OP.
Russia is in my opinion far more broken in this regard, as the setup for that snowball is nearly guaranteed, even if the potential is less than what Brazil can theoretically achieve.
Russia is a civ I'd pick if all I wanted was an easy, fast-snowballing game with little resistance.
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Fair enough - that's a good point about consistency (I'm an inveterate re-roller, so maybe it doesn't stand out as much as an issue to me).
I also agree that if I had to play one game for a sum of money without knowing the settings, I'd probably pick Russia (though would think long and hard about Ethiopia or Khmer, TBH).
Socrates99
Bottoms up!
They float under the radar all the time. I think it's because their uniques are pretty lackluster. It's the easy district adjs and cost reduction in HSs and TSs that make them strong.
Disgustipated
Deity
I just finished a game with Victoria. While not as rich as Portugal, her many trade routes really do add up. It was the first time I played her after her last civ redesign (of the many times this civ has been tweaked). Definitely not as strong as Portugal, but still a good game. And I didn't even do anything with all those free units, if you were to take advantage of those, you could do even better. I kind of feel sad that Mali can't really compete with civs like Portugal and even Victoria now they've been buffed, but Mali still has that malus. Though I admit I haven't played them in a long time, maybe they can compete.
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Have you tried Spain of late? Portugal’s trade routes let alone Victoria’s, fade in comparison.
Try GOTM 122 if you want to mix it up with a zombie Prince Dom Spanish. Worth the challenge
Fluphen Azine
What is Fluphen Azine?
I haven't played for months but this thread made me fire up a few games. I played some Standard/Standard/Deity/Pang Maps and some Continents Maps. I just played the standard game with no boxes checked. Level 2 Disaster. 6 games and they all had difficult land with either no production or flooding everywhere. One game had an easy Wonder for Culture but still just boxed in and the AI had 4 to 5 cities up by turn 25. Winning Yes but didn't seem like Easy Mode. Not rolling anyone. Play Nice and Kill later. Map Settings make a big difference IMO. Pike Barbs running all over in one game around turn 30. Impossible to cover all that Tundra that I was up against. Hardly any trees to chop. A couple games the AI had X-bows running around by turn 60.
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Deity level may be the most challenging but it can be a pain, it’s why I often play emperor just for a relaxing mess around game. It’s at about that level the OP civs really shine
Tuvok694
Worst Civ6 player ever.
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For me the only "easy mode" civ is Russia, because it is the only civ where I can mostly win on level immortal, at least when I pick voidsingers, dance of the aurora and work ethic. I do not play on deity because I know for sure I would never win there.
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If you can beat it on immortal I would definitely try deity in your case, it should be fully doable.
Tuvok694
Worst Civ6 player ever.
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Even if that was right: Always and exclusively playing Russia would be somehow boring. I spend so much time playing this game, and watch many youtube videos. I really should know how to beat this game, but I don't. But I'm close to finally accepting that I'm just too slow in the brain to make the right decisions in the game. It's a little like chess: Knowing the game rules is not enough, you have to be smart, plan ahead or you will never be a good player.
Much more likely is, that you are too fast. Playing too fast provokes stupid mistakes, forgetting about crucial things, failing to adept and just not thinking through the situation. As it is much more relaxing, I fall into that habt too and get smashed.
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I know the rules, write the guides but play way too fast, when I play slowly I am so much better, it is not the big mistakes but all the small mistakes compounded, especially early ones like buying a 2/2 piece of land for your second pop or even buying it 1 turn later than you could. But more than that, it is the things you just cannot be bothered messing with, like losing overflow.
Fluphen Azine
What is Fluphen Azine?
I dunno.
You have a lot of time to catch up.
I was playing Shaka in my last game on a Fractal Map.
Deity All Standard Gathering Storm with no boxes checked and level 2 disaster.
I had two neighbors right on top of me from the get go.
I DOFed one but Dido came for me around turn 20 or so.
No expansion spots except for some Tundra.
I took one of her cities and at turn 80 I have like 10 SPT and 20 CPT.
Way behind but I'll slowly start taking out cities and win around turn 300 or so.
But it is a major Slog.
Especially since both neighbors got walls up in all cities very early.
That's 7 games in a row that I have had 2 neighbors right on top of me.
Sometimes, it can make the game more difficult.
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