any tips for playing tall?

[darkace77450]

I'm going to be playing tall, utilizing four or so high population cities to do all the lifting I need to win. I know this isn't optimal (far from it), but I'm going to stick with it because A) a self-imposed handicap might offset the bad play from the AI, B), I don't want to micromanage a bunch of cities, and C) I believe at some point down the road the devs will balance the wide vs tall dynamic.

So, given that I'm set in my determination to stick to the four-city approach, I'm wondering how best to go about it. Every city will obviously get an Industrial Zone and a Commercial Hub, and Entertainment Complexes are probably going to be necessities to help keep large-cities happy and growing. Outside of that, what districts should I be gunning for early?

Should I focus on just the districts that directly help my chosen victory path (Campuses for Science Victory, Theater Square for Cultural Victory, etc), building them in each city as soon as possible? Or should I take a more balanced approach, building a Campus in one city to boost Tech research, a Theater Square in another city to fuel Civic research, maybe a Holy Site in a third to grab a religion? Going tall also has me wondering if I should prioritize builders and farms before worrying about districts.

I know most people are playing with wide, sprawling empires, but if anyone has any insight they can offer on playing with a much smaller empire (or general advice that will be applicable to both styles of play), I'd be keen to hear what you think. Thanks.

 

[Halcyan2]

Maybe Kongo would work best.

You get the Mbanza unique neighborhood district, which provides yields and comes earlier than neighborhoods.

And though you lose out on the religion game, it also means you don't have to waste hammers or tiles on it.

Stacking relics/sculptures/artifacts in your capital is nice.

However, unless one of your cities doesn't start next to fresh water, I would recommend AGAINST building an Aqueduct. For river/lake cities, it ultimately only provides +2 housing. You are better off using a tile for a Neighborhood (or Mbanza) instead.

 

[jaegybomb]

Either Kongo for the housing or Germany for the districts.

 

[TheGreatSleepyOne]

I think you should have your 4 or so high population cities built compactly so that they get maximum overlap from factories/powerplants and Zoos/Stadiums. If you play as China, you can rush for the Colosseum. It would still behoove you to found more cities than you "core" still. Preferably found peripheral cities on the coast so that you can at least build a commercial hub and harbor to get more trade routes going to build you tall cities taller. You're empire should look something like 4 big metropolises with smaller coastal cities to provide trade route support. in addition, you might need to settle a city to serve as a military outpost or secure a strategic resource.

you won't be micromanaging a whole lot of cities and the smaller villages will only build commercial and harbor, then something else if/when they reach 7 population. You can go tall without going all-in.

As for leader/civ choice, anything that allows you to gain amenity or increase the housing limit will be of massive benefit. Strong candidates for this are Brasilia and Kongo.

 

[stormtrooper412]

I think Kongo might be the only civ to actually make it possible, if you can manage the housing cap optimally before you unlock Mbanzas, that's always a bottle neck in my games. Another problem would be finding a spot for your Mbanzas, since you'd most likely want to chop everything to speed up your early builds

Let us know if that works out in a test game, with screenshots and all

 

[Onii-chan]

I think Kongo might be the only civ to actually make it possible, if you can manage the housing cap optimally before you unlock Mbanzas, that's always a bottle neck in my games. Another problem would be finding a spot for your Mbanzas, since you'd most likely want to chop everything to speed up your early builds

You can plant woods later to build mbanzas on if need be, and Kongo is most definitely a cultural civ so they'll get there pretty quickly. As long as you have 1-2 woods/rainforests to use until then, you're good to go

In any case I actually played a Kongo game just yesterday with the goal of getting the 30 pop Kongo city achievement among other things so I can definitely say it works. I would say you need 3 or 4 really high pop cities within overlap reach of each other, but not as compact as possible. Don't put them just 3 hexes away from each other. If you do that then you won't have enough tiles to work for your massive cities. I'd rather say put them more like 5 tiles away in a square shape (with the cities in the corners) and make sure to put all the industrial zones between them. That way they'll still be in overlap range of each other but get more tiles to work for themselves

You should settle some more cities though solely for the sake of getting more great work slots if nothing else. Just 4 theater squares will not be enough for the massive amount of writers/artists/musicians that Kongo gets, even with the 5-slot palace, and you also want to be building archaeologists if possible due to the food/production bonus. However, these extra cities are just there for regular purposes, I.E: to get more districts. You don't have to try getting them as ultra tall as your main cities (though you should still build mbanzas in them of course)

So just taking this one game for example, I played on Immortal and only ever built like 2 campus and 1 commerce hub (though harbors in every city). Otherwise it was all theater squares and mbanzas (mostly just because it was an island map and I didn't have enough room due to the amount of water tiles, but on a more land-based map then obviously building more districts is recommended). As a result my culture output was almost five times higher than my science, which under normal circumstances wouldn't be particularly recommended but in this case you get a stupid amount of great works thanks to Kongo's GPP ability and my large cities were able to do theater square festival projects in like 2-3 turns each. I was pumping out tourism at an unbelievable rate and thus a pretty easy cultural victory eventually

 

[stormtrooper412]

I must be silly then, I haven't figured out how to plant woods. I even read somewhere they abandoned that feature during the development process.

edit: I likely didn't have the proper civic for it

 

[Lord Yanaek]

I've been considering "tall" game as well because the current paradigm is "as wide as possible" (up to ICS) and i like to test something different to see if it works but also as you said, because micromanaging tons of cities and their trade routes is a pain.
Like others, it think you shouldn't stop at only 4 cities thought, just have a tall core of 4 cities, but a couple small towns around to support them and/or grab some resources. Those wouldn't need to build very fast because they won't have a lot to build
I haven't reached very fast victories like some subT200 with tall cities, but neither have i managed those with wider games. The biggest challenge is to manage housing before neighborhoods to grow your cities enough, farms are going to be your main source of housing for a long time so you need enough space to put them.
Some things you probably want to do

• Space your core cities a bit (4-5 tiles) trying to get fresh water of course.
• Between those core cities will be your districts, especially Industrial and Entertainment but others might fit there to benefit from district adjacency.
• Outside will be your farms. You need a lot, more than you will work just for the housing so you need builders (build them instead of settlers/troops to capture cities). Feudalism is possibly even more important than usual.
• Even for non-culture game i would try to have one theater square with adjacency (possibly from all your other districts in the middle) and possibly work the specialist slot in order to speed Feudalism and Urbanization (Guilds if Kongo)
• Work out specialist slots, especially science and culture as you will lack raw population output (i usually forget this)
• Use the +Amenities and especially +Housing economic cards

Civilizations that could (in theory) go tall

• Kongo of course
• Germany (free districts) but Germany would be good for every strategy and the others
• Civilizations with a Unique District. Special mention to Russia for more land when you settle and an easy shot on Religion with a good Religious district that won't cost you another district (they can really benefit from Feed the World or even better Religious Community) and Brazil for easy Amenities and easier GP
  
• India thanks to the Housing fro the Stepwell
• Sumeria with science + culture from working Ziggurats rather than specialists
• Japan will benefit a lot from the compact placement of districts in the middle of your core cities and build some of them faster (thought not those you might want everywhere)
• Rome with the extra housing from the Bath

Things to keep in mind

• Grabbing Great People might be an issue with less districts to create points. Purple cards can help if you can slot them so the bonus cards wonders might be worth considering. If you can grab Oracle it will also help you a lot. Brazil also helps.
  
• Money might be an issue with a lot of buildings in every city and few trade routes. Get those Banks up and running without too much delay. If you can get Great Zimbabwe your money issues are history but keep a spy in counter-espionage on your Commercial Hub.

edit: I likely didn't have the proper civic for it

You need conservation so it doesn't come early.

 

[teks]

It must be Kongo, anyone else is going to sit with a housing bottleneck for far too long. The way the game works its still a disadvantage. You need cities to grab amenities and trade routes.

As Kongo rush to housing and rush to archeology. A themed museum = 12 food, 12 production, and 24 gold. Kongo can get there at the same time factories come up for others. This bonus is not getting the attention it deserves.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Agreed that Kongo is hands down the best tall civ but it would take some testing to know for sure how other civs could play. Rome gets +4 housing and +1 amenity from the Bath, so it acts like a super early average appeal Neighborhood that adds one amenity or alternatively a Mbanza that trades one housing for an amenity (but unfortunately without the food and gold bonus). Rome with the free monuments will also reach key civics faster to get the bonus housing cards. A roman city can be 9 housing before tile improvements are considered with just the Bath and +2 housing card.

However i think we first need to stop thinking of tall as 4 cities. It wasn't even true in Civ5 that the optimal tall game had to stop at 4, it was enough and easy with Tradition but 5 or 6 cities tradition gave some very good finish times for science victory. Cities is the minimum for your core. Going "tall" in civ6 means developing those core cities and not caring much of the support cities but you'll still want some support cities to grab resources, add a few trade routes and/or some factories overlap. Except maybe for Kongo.

 

[jaegybomb]

Building a bunch of smaller cities kind of ruins the appeal of the challenge imo. I'm really curious whether this is possible or what the fewest number people can win with is.

 

[Rathelm]

Good luck with this. I don't think tall will ever really be viable in this version of Civ. By removing global happiness and replacing it with the current resource system it really encourages more of a wider approach. Also since they removed most of the percent bonuses you lose a lot of stacking value. That's why tall was the only way to go in CiV because the game just benefited a few large cities so much. I mean the tradition tree was so good for making your capital a powerhouse. This game favors "more of a thing", more factories, more trade routes, etc. It's going to be tough to have a viable tall strategy.

 

[ShinigamiKenji]

Though Rome is more suited for wide play, I personally think they are suitable for your strategy (if you want a different Civ from Kongo and Germany). Baths give +4 Housing and +1 Amenity, a free Monument to help rushing the Civics tree for Urbanization, and free Roads to speed up Builders a little between your spaced cities.

Maybe Greece might help if you're aiming for a Cultural Victory, with an extra policy slot and Acropolis not tied to your population cap. The extra culture from Acropolis and their unique bonuses to culture might also help reaching Neighborhoods.

I wouldn't advise using Russia unless you're going for an early Religion (and consequently either a Religious Victory or the Religious Cultural Victory). Tundra does not make a good starting bias even with their bonuses, but getting Dance of the Aurora will offset this a little.

District-wise, just make sure you get the usual important ones (Commercial Hubs, Industrial Zones, Harbours, Holy SItes/Theatre/Campi). Apart from them, a couple of Entertainment Complexes for the amenities, and Aqueducts for every city (even with direct access to fresh water for the initial housing). I doubt you will be able to build much more until Heighborhoods, but in the end game you might be able to build all districts in a single city (I think that happens around 23 pop).

 

[TheMeInTeam]

C) I believe at some point down the road the devs will balance the wide vs tall dynamic.

It's balanced now. More land (a scarce resource that is difficult to acquire over time) should confer a large advantage, to provide incentive for conflict over scarce resource(s). Civ 5's implementation was cancerous and disincentivized bothering to win wars beyond avoiding pillaged tiles/lost cities.

Self imposed challenge is fine. You'll want to gouge housing ASAP to get more districts going. As for civs other than Kongo only India comes to mind.

 

[elitetroops]

It's balanced now. More land (a scarce resource that is difficult to acquire over time) should confer a large advantage, to provide incentive for conflict over scarce resource(s). Civ 5's implementation was cancerous and disincentivized bothering to win wars beyond avoiding pillaged tiles/lost cities.

I wouldn't say it's balanced. More land should indeed give an advantage, but it also needs to bring some kind of challenge. I like how it worked in Civ IV. More land was a great advantage, but acquiring all that land wasn't easy on the higher levels, nor was it easy to afford the upkeep once you had it. In VI it's way too easy to get a ton of early cities and there's no downside to having a massive empire. Because of this going as wide as possible as soon as possible is always the better option. In addition all victory conditions favor wide play. Winning with a wide empire is both easier and faster. I'd prefer that it would be more challenging, but faster if you manage to pull it off.

I think Russia could be a very decent choice for tall play. They don't always start in the tundra, just near it. The extra land means more farmland, which means more housing. In the one game I played as Russia, my cities were a lot larger than in other games thanks to this. A tall empire also needs a lot of tiles to work. Getting 8 extra tiles/city saves you a lot of gold.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

I wouldn't say it's balanced. More land should indeed give an advantage, but it also needs to bring some kind of challenge. I like how it worked in Civ IV. More land was a great advantage, but acquiring all that land wasn't easy on the higher levels, nor was it easy to afford the upkeep once you had it. In VI it's way too easy to get a ton of early cities and there's no downside to having a massive empire. Because of this going as wide as possible as soon as possible is always the better option. In addition all victory conditions favor wide play. Winning with a wide empire is both easier and faster. I'd prefer that it would be more challenging, but faster if you manage to pull it off.

I think Russia could be a very decent choice for tall play. They don't always start in the tundra, just near it. The extra land means more farmland, which means more housing. In the one game I played as Russia, my cities were a lot larger than in other games thanks to this. A tall empire also needs a lot of tiles to work. Getting 8 extra tiles/city saves you a lot of gold.

Ease of expansion is an issue unto itself, but a separate one.

The one you bring up that has design merit (poor AI is implementation) is a mechanic replacing the maintenance constraint. An easier design approach to that might just be to limit land more, such that getting huge empires w/o fighting or minimal fighting is unrealistic in practice. Picture an extreme example; cities must be at least six hexes apart instead of three. That might not be the way to go, but 10 cities in the BCs would be almost unheard of in standard formats that way, even if it would still be desirable/no downside if you could manage.

They could have been more ambitious with city spacing, scaling districts also on distance from city centers (but making their adjacency bonuses significant), and tuning units if they wanted. This would have large implications on other game systems.

Civ 5's system was pretty terrible, and porting 4's maintenance constraint w/o sliders is problematic. This isn't something neatly fixed with a little tuning. If they care about making expansion costly, it needs to see real design consideration.

 

[elitetroops]

Yes, I agree it's not something that could be easily implemented in the current system. It should have been taken into consideration when the basic mechanics were designed.

 

[Rathelm]

Ease of expansion is an issue unto itself, but a separate one.

The one you bring up that has design merit (poor AI is implementation) is a mechanic replacing the maintenance constraint. An easier design approach to that might just be to limit land more, such that getting huge empires w/o fighting or minimal fighting is unrealistic in practice. Picture an extreme example; cities must be at least six hexes apart instead of three. That might not be the way to go, but 10 cities in the BCs would be almost unheard of in standard formats that way, even if it would still be desirable/no downside if you could manage.

They could have been more ambitious with city spacing, scaling districts also on distance from city centers (but making their adjacency bonuses significant), and tuning units if they wanted. This would have large implications on other game systems.

Civ 5's system was pretty terrible, and porting 4's maintenance constraint w/o sliders is problematic. This isn't something neatly fixed with a little tuning. If they care about making expansion costly, it needs to see real design consideration.

You don't have to do that. Just add more civs on whatever map type you're using. Right now it's easy to expand quickly because there is so much free space. Add 2-4 more civs and it will be considerably more constrained.

 

[darkace77450]

Thanks for the feedback guys; it's much appreciated.

I wrapped up my first game last night. I decided to roll with India on King difficulty on a Small Continents map. I went with four cities since that's the number of cities affected by a single Luxury resource, but also because I wanted to limit the possibility of fighting early and often over land. I took the Commercial Hub + Industrial Zone + [Victory Path District] (I was playing for a Science Victory, so Campuses in this case) approach for my early infrastructure. In retrospect, this was a bad idea. My science output was more than adequate, but my cultural output was paltry. So while I tore through the tech tree very quickly, it took me forever to unlock Neighborhoods.

Unlocking Neighborhoods so late in the game obviously created a housing bottleneck. This problem was compounded by a lack of luxury resource variety in and near my territory, meaning amenities became a second bottleneck to growth. And because growth was slow, it took longer to get to the necessary population required to build Entertainment Complexes to offset the amenity problem. These are predictable pitfalls, but I fell into them anyway.

Another mistake I made was splitting the early game production between districts and tile improvements. I should have focused almost entirely on builders to construct as many farms as space would accommodate before worrying about Campuses at the very least, but possibly Industrial Zones too. Another thing I'd have done differently is forgo an early Campus in at least one of my cities for a Theater Square to speed up the process of unlocking better civics. I'm thinking a more balanced approach to the early district choices would have definitely served me better in the long run.

This being my first game of Civ6, I no doubt made plenty of rookie mistakes. These were exacerbated by my self-imposed limitations. I was still able to win, but it was a clunky and inefficient victory that undoubtedly due to the lower difficulty setting and poorly tuned AI. I'm going to try it again (probably with the same Civ and settings so I'll get a direct comparision) to see if I better tuning my early game towards growth before shifting to districts and a more balanced yield focus from my limited number of cities doesn't make for a smoother, quicker victory.

 

[Lord Yanaek]

Civ 5's system was pretty terrible

Civ5 system was rather good, only not perfectly balanced. Slight changes to numbers allowed for much more powerful wide games while leaving tall a viable option. I consider the current system terrible because there is no number to tweak to make tall peaceful viable and i think it should be, not necessarily at 4 cities, that was a bit extreme but there shouldn't be a single strategy that's always better, there should be multiple strategies and growing big cities has it's own challenges so it should be rewarded.

Just add more civs on whatever map type you're using. Right now it's easy to expand quickly because there is so much free space. Add 2-4 more civs and it will be considerably more constrained.

No it won't be, you'll just end up with more "pre-built" cities.