[NFP] A General Strategy for Ambiorix of Gaul

[megabearsfan]

I've posted a new strategy guide for Ambiorix of Gaul in the New Frontiers DLC pass. It's available at my personal blog at:
http://www.megabearsfan.net/post/2020/11/06/Civilization-VI-strategy-Ambiorix-of-Gaul.aspx

Here's a few tips from the guide:
Gaul is kind of the opposite of Maya. Instead of building a compact core of cities with overlapping radii, Gaul favors spreading itself out a bit more to make room for districts that cannot be built adjacent to the city center. Specialty districts cannot be built adjacent to the city center, but "engineering" districts can be. Aqueducts, Dams, Canals, and Neighborhoods can be built adjacent to the city center, but Government Plazas, Diplomatic Quarters, Aerodromes, Entertainment Complexes, Water Parks, Aerodromes, and Spaceports are considered speciality districts and cannot be built adjacent to the city center. Gaul doesn't get adjacency bonuses for other districts, but they do get a minor adjacency bonus from mines, and mines provide a culture bomb and extra culture yield. You can build mines to quickly expand your borders beyond the first ring around the city, and allow yourself room for districts. Look for the best terrain adjacency yields instead of trying to cluster districts together.

The culture bomb from mines is a bit stricter than other culture bombs. It does not steal tiles from other civilizations. It also only claims tiles that are within 3-tile radius of the city that currently owns the tile that is being mined. If multiple cities overlap that tile, make sure to check which city owns the tile so that you can get the most tiles annexed by the culture bomb.

Gaul has a military focus with its Gaesatae unit and combat bonuses for adjacent units. Even though your Oppidum unique district has a bombardment, do not neglect building early Encampments. You'll likely want the Great Generals, and Oppidums do not generate Great General points.

One more tip is to remember that the King of the Eburones combat bonus is not granted to mounted units. However, those mounted units can grant the bonus to adjacent melee, ranged, and anti-cav units. You can use the extra movement and ability to ignore zone of control to move mounted units around between attacks in order to grant adjacency bonuses to multiple units.

The guide in the link includes other tips, strategies, and observations about Ambiorix and Gaul. It also includes some brief tips for playing against Ambiorix of Gaul. So please check out the full guide. I'm always open to feedback. If you have other strategies, tips, or tricks with Gaul, please reply to this thread or leave a comment on the blog post.

Happy Civ-ing!

 

[Lily_Lancer]

I think Gaul is similar to Maya & Nubia, as they all goes for an ancient archer rush strategy.

 

[Casualty of war]

Gaesatae, such a goofy unit. Terrified of Archers, happy to fight Knights.

 

[ATEX]

Thanks for the guide. I think Gaul is interesting firstly because of chops. As you can grab so much land, chopping will be very good on a map with many hills. I think the new hills?/highland? map template should work quite well for Gaul.

 

[IsabelBraganca]

Gaul is very strong in early wars. Gaesatae is useful even if you are facing swordsmen and they cost no gold to keep. You can have a huge army without running out of gold.

 

[slavaskii]

I love Gaul so much, it's certainly difficult to use but it's perfect for people that are allergic to focusing on culture and building theatre squares. You can get to Political Philosophy incredibly early with Gaul, as your first exploratory/defense units will produce culture anyway and your subsequent army will only propel you further. Culture mines are also a sight to behold, and puts them on Trajan's level. Think about it: a monument's culture is helpful and all, but imagine being able to work tiles within a turn or two of establishing a city that give you culture for free!

Oppidum's are very interesting, though I do agree they're not exactly great as a UD. Their real ability is their placement on the tech tree - being able to churn out industrial zones is really great, and you're always going to be hitting Great Engineers even before the other civs begin to consider them.

I would say that Gaul is still a pretty balanced civ. The Gaesatae is quite expensive, and honestly I get more use out of an archer rush than one primarily fueled by the Gaesatae. They're extremely vulnerable to ranged units and are mainly useful for defense or harassing the enemy line. District placement can also be a huge, royal pain. I find myself getting pretty good placements with Gaul, but there are some times I just have no good place to put my first district (especially harbors). Oppidums pale in comparison to the Hansa (it seems that the devs wanted to avoid this at all costs), but they supplant their overall underwhelming yields with coming online far, far earlier.

 

[walkerjks]

On the flip-side of not needing theaters as much, Gaul is also a surprisingly good culture-victory civ. With the unit building culture bonus and ongoing culture from mines, you can get a reasonable jump-start on the other tools needed for cultural wins.