[GS] Achieving Maximum Efficiency

[Lokreah]

Hello! Been playing Civilization VI for quite some time now. I adore the game, I've read the threads, but I still have many, many questions. The forum seems relatively active for its experienced and seasoned players, so I figured, why not engage in a wonderful conversation?

I'm not exactly new to Civilization VI, or even the brand entirely. I seem to have ran into a bit of a plateau when it comes to correctly optimizing my gameplay (Immortal) I have a tendency of treating the games as emulations of sorts, with a special focus on T1-100. The early game is most important after all! If I don't meet a benchmark of some kind, I'll often times just restart the game entirely until I can nail down what goes where. So, without further adieu~

T1-30: What is your opening build? How do you salvage production poor starts? When do you build your Monuments?

So many questions, and they all have particular nuances!
My usual go-to is Scout, Slinger (partial), Settler, Monument
OR
Slinger, Slinger, Settler, Monument

I like to get the second city online very quickly. If I'm more mainland and there doesn't seem to be too many City-States (which help manage Barbarians), I'll go Slinger, Slinger, Settler ,but I will reroll if a Barbarian Scout spots me on T3-4, because at that point, it's just impossible to actually do anything and the game is ruined. This happens more often than you think.

Anyway, I've noted that some players choose to intentionally neglect Monuments. It can save production, but I must observe that my acquisition of policies is horrendously slow if I don't have x2 Monuments by 30-35 or so. Is that supposed to be the case, or...?


T30-60: Early Empire, or State Workforce? Do you start REXing (Rapid Expansion) upon acquisition of Ancestral Hall, or...? When do you build Districts? What do you do if your land is devoid of adjency bonuses?

More predicaments! To elaborate, I am personally opted to rush State Workforce - specifically for Pingala and the Government Plaza. The Government Plaza is extremely simple to build, usually 5 turns at the very most, and by around T40 you can have a double promoted Pingala, well on your way to achieve the standard T50-55 benchmark for Political Philosophy.

But the downside to this, is that expansion is neglected for quite some time. I'm dissuaded from expanding from the Capital, as the promotions scale with Population, but Settlers cost population.

I've read about rushing Early Empire and essentially expanding as fast as possible, but I find that my infrastructure and tile yields are severely lacking when I do this. Culture also lags behind, as well. Nobody has really clarified when you stop building Settlers either. In my experience, even with the Colonization policy, on average land, Settlers are still 8-12 turns and that just seems to really, really slow your game down, especially with the first satellite city still barely attempting to build a monument?

Thoughts on this?

On the topic of expansions, most yields, particularly science, comes from mountains. But quite a few of my games simply don't have mountains. Reefs are also rather uncommon, so getting any decent amount of science to power through the tree is quite difficult. Campuses, districts in general, are also quite expansive for the fledgling city to develop. When do you actually build these districts?

That's all for now. I don't want to get too ahead of myself, to be quite honest and I'd very much prefer to have an in-depth dialogue for all of these things.

 

[myclan]

I'm not a very experienced player but willing to share some ideas with you.
1. For low production start, just try to avoid it by moving you settler or buying tiles in the 2nd/3rd ring. Some 2F2P or 1F3P just ok. Extreme low production start is very rare.
2. I used to start with a scout hoping for some luck with tribal village, but the barbarian is just too annoying and I hate to give up my game. So now I always start with a slinger to protect myself and beeline Archery if needed.
3. My start is slinger-builder-settler-trader/monument. Usually I will need a builder to improve my food/production output, unless only hill covered with forest/jungle around. 2nd City is used to boost Early Empire and start a 2nd monument asap. State Workforce is not easy to boost, Craftmanship sometime also relies on luck. I need the Colonization policy for my 3rd city.

 

[Vargas1]

I'm also not a star player, and I tend to not play in a fully "optimized" way as some other posters do (i.e. I don't aim for T-175 wins), but a couple of general thoughts:

• For me, how I approach settlers very much depends on whether I anticipate getting a classical and/or medieval golden age, and if I anticipate having a reasonably high faith production. If you have an early golden age, and can get even 20-40 faith per turn in those eras, you can easily buy a half dozen settlers with faith and put your production elsewhere. On the other hand, if I have a slower starting and/or non-faith start to the game, I typically try to get two cities going early (first 30 turns), and then ideally another two at least by turns 80-100. I think a purely optimal strategy might suggest expanding even faster, but I find that four cities is generally enough to carve out a certain area as "your" territory, get rid of loyalty issues in that area, and let you start looking at expansion or consolidation depending on how you want to go.
• I tend to start with a scout in almost all circumstances, and use the scout and the warrior to look for CS for envoys, tribal villages, and places for future settlement. The thing with barbs is that if you haven't developed your land or built districts yet, it sort of doesn't matter if they come to bother you, since they may attack your city but won't actually capture it (at least I've never had barbs capture a city). The only concern is if you want to send out a settler and they're hovering around, but by the time I build a settler I can either circle my warrior back to clear a path or buy a slinger to push them away. The overall build order depends a bit on production/food in the capital, whether there are other civs nearby that I need to race for good positions (and/or build units to defend against), and whether there's something in particular I want to rush early (e.g. religion, early campus for Hypatia, early encampment for a classical rush, etc.).
• Some of the general district questions are really dependent on civ, map, and playstyle. If I'm playing as someone with an early unique district (Russia/Korea/others), I'll slap those down as soon as possible. I've had other games where I don't build a district until turn 50 or later, which can mean a slow start but can let me focus on expansion if I want to grab good land, or building an army if I want to do some warring. I will say that while getting high adjacencies is always preferable, I think it can be harmful to wait for the perfect setting to build districts. In most circumstances, the bulk of your yields will end upcoming from buildings anyway, not the districts themselves, so if you want science growth it's better to get a bunch of +1/+2 districts up with libraries than to hold on and wait for the perfect +5 spot. If you're expanding steadily, on most maps you will eventually be able to get at least a handful of high adjacency districts (remember that putting a district next to city center and government plaza alone will net you a +2, so for something like a campus all you need is a single mountain tile to get you to a +3).

 

[IsabelBraganca]

I usually play Immortal-Epic Speed.

• I usually start with scout-slinger-settler.
• If I'm playing religious, scout-settler-holy site-shrine. I might run one or two projects for extra GP points.
• If I plan a peaceful game, I try to settle in a way to block the AI but it might lead to an early rush. I try to befriend the AI.
• If I sense an early rush coming, I don't waste time. I build walls, try to see if I can become suzerain of a nearby city-state, build archers. I save money while building slingers and then upgrade them. Sometimes I declare war before and try to attack the AI or distract it to gain a few precious turns.
• If I plan an early war, I settle two or three cities before rushing the AI.
• I try to get as many early eurekas and inspirations as possible. This way I don't lag too far behind early on.

Once you started the construction of the district (put it in the first place in the queue), the cost doesn't change, even if you change the queue order in the same turn. Usually I don't want start building a campus or a commercial hub as soon as I settle the city, put I will pre-place the district if possible. Usually one district offers minor adjacency to another district. If I cannot find a good adjacency, I try to cluster the districts of two cities together. I plan the cluster using pins. You can mark on the map the locations your are planning for districts, cities, wonders and so on.

 

[japanesesamurai]

About the monument vs scout: if you’re not sure whether you’re on an island, or the type of map you’re playing and there’s no culture rich tile around your capital, starting with a monument into a slinger and then if you need it, purchase the scout (for 120) isn’t a bad idea. Especially combined with Amani who can potentially reveal other city states, tribal villages and wonders. A scout can be a useless built if you find yourself living on a small island all alone. I think getting to political philosophy as quickly as possible is your main objective. Sometimes I start by putting a few turns into a monument until I’m sure I need the scout

 

[Lokreah]

What's your personal benchmarks for cities, generally? I see T7 - 70 and T100 - 10, quite often. On Victoria's Chopping / Harvesting guide, I saw 6 cities at T50. I'm personally hoping the latter is a hypothetical, rather than a standard.

 

[KKirrin]

i play deity, and have lately been pretty heavily on the min/max end trying to improve my times.

the first two estimates (7 at 70 and 10 at 100) are great benchmarks for games you'll easily win, even on deity. for the more competitive speed wins, 10 cities likely won't be enough by t100 on higher settings in the current version of the game. I feel like the sweet spots there are more like 12-15 for culture and 20 for science, with double monumentality golden ages being close to required for the latter, otherwise you spend so much time hard building settlers that your infrastructure takes too long to come online.

there are some niche exceptions like kandy/reliquaries rushes or mag cath that can pull deity culture wins well below t100 but other than that you really need more cities. i also don't know much about fast science wins via warfare, but i think the science meta has shifted a bit away from conquering everything to more of a peaceful sim city race. could be wrong there, might be faster under perfect circumstances (diplo hits hurt a lot though).

to me, 6 cities at t50 would mean you're either warring (and maybe going warlords) or had a good reason to expand without/before ancestral (maybe two ais are boxing you in, or you're very low on culture but high on production, etc). I'm usually perfectly happy with 3-4 good cities at 50, more if im playing on lower settings/going rel settlements instead of earth goddess etc.

in the very fastest games like aiming for sub 170 science, i think it's less about the early benchmarks and more about setting yourself up for a power spike. your goal is to get ancestral hall up then rush pyramids/feudalism asap. that's sorta what defines your game, with the holy grail being something like poli phil in the early 30s (wildly unrealistic for most games) then ancestral hall around t40 with a monu golden age. first faith-bought settler heads to desert and chops pyramids, feudalism follows as the settler wave is moving toward some of the more distant sites you've picked out (but before they settle) giving you a massive wave of 6 charge builders then you're off and running. you also need either earth goddess or dance of the x, otherwise you won't be able to sustain the wave for very long. ideally it starts in the 40s-50s and continues via faith buys until at least 100, preferably 120+ if you can stomach it.

if you want to play fast science with fewer cities, kupe is a good way to go: he can pull sub180 science wins with far fewer cities by going monumentality into free inquiry to leverage harbor adjacency, and the massive amounts of gold/production/chops he has available in the late game make him a total blast to play. i don't really think he's competitive with the fastest civs, though.

anyway, most of that is just theory/only applies under ridiculously perfect circumstances. i do think though that if your goal is to get more efficient, one of the best things you can do is try to hit that spike as early as possible, even by finding a great map and just rerolling to see how quickly you can put it together.

-2c

 

[slavaskii]

i play deity, and have lately been pretty heavily on the min/max end trying to improve my times.

the first two estimates (7 at 70 and 10 at 100) are great benchmarks for games you'll easily win, even on deity. for the more competitive speed wins, 10 cities likely won't be enough by t100 on higher settings in the current version of the game. I feel like the sweet spots there are more like 12-15 for culture and 20 for science, with double monumentality golden ages being close to required for the latter, otherwise you spend so much time hard building settlers that your infrastructure takes too long to come online.

there are some niche exceptions like kandy/reliquaries rushes or mag cath that can pull deity culture wins well below t100 but other than that you really need more cities. i also don't know much about fast science wins via warfare, but i think the science meta has shifted a bit away from conquering everything to more of a peaceful sim city race. could be wrong there, might be faster under perfect circumstances (diplo hits hurt a lot though).

to me, 6 cities at t50 would mean you're either warring (and maybe going warlords) or had a good reason to expand without/before ancestral (maybe two ais are boxing you in, or you're very low on culture but high on production, etc). I'm usually perfectly happy with 3-4 good cities at 50, more if im playing on lower settings/going rel settlements instead of earth goddess etc.

in the very fastest games like aiming for sub 170 science, i think it's less about the early benchmarks and more about setting yourself up for a power spike. your goal is to get ancestral hall up then rush pyramids/feudalism asap. that's sorta what defines your game, with the holy grail being something like poli phil in the early 30s (wildly unrealistic for most games) then ancestral hall around t40 with a monu golden age. first faith-bought settler heads to desert and chops pyramids, feudalism follows as the settler wave is moving toward some of the more distant sites you've picked out (but before they settle) giving you a massive wave of 6 charge builders then you're off and running. you also need either earth goddess or dance of the x, otherwise you won't be able to sustain the wave for very long. ideally it starts in the 40s-50s and continues via faith buys until at least 100, preferably 120+ if you can stomach it.

if you want to play fast science with fewer cities, kupe is a good way to go: he can pull sub180 science wins with far fewer cities by going monumentality into free inquiry to leverage harbor adjacency, and the massive amounts of gold/production/chops he has available in the late game make him a total blast to play. i don't really think he's competitive with the fastest civs, though.

anyway, most of that is just theory/only applies under ridiculously perfect circumstances. i do think though that if your goal is to get more efficient, one of the best things you can do is try to hit that spike as early as possible, even by finding a great map and just rerolling to see how quickly you can put it together.

-2c

I definitely am a proponent of the peaceful science sim-city route, but I'm intrigued on your emphasis on religion (I haven't played for a while, so pardon if my questions have been hashed out before). Should the first district really be a holy site, and is it advisable to keep building these to get the settlers out quickly? From what I'm understanding, the 'settler wave' is very much driven by faith purchasing. I've always ignored faith entirely and chopped settlers in the capital, but perhaps the holy site is that important in order to ensure rapid expansion?

 

[KKirrin]

for the fastest games yeah, i think so, unless you're maybe on bm teddy or something, but it's more about the culture from choral music or getting work ethic/dance online than actual faith

earth goddess is really where the faith comes in. here's my readout from my last game for faith gen:

Spoiler :

the 80 something culture from choral doesn't sound like much in the scheme of things but it starts really early. earth goddess also peaked a lot higher earlier in the game before aluminum/uranium etc, ~380 or so iirc, and if I wasn't running some holy site projects would probably still represent >60% of my faith generation