Citizen Management in Civ 6

[paulmclem]

Only been playing TBS games, and Civ in particular for a couple of months. That said I'm pushing 100 hrs and feel like I'm just about ready to move up to Prince - saving that for Civ 6 However, one thing I've yet to do, or really dig deeply into, is manually locking tiles i.e. taking tile control from the AI. So far I've only switched the AI controlled focus around as required. Now, I've watched a lot of Civ videos and almost without fail, they contain manual tile locking. Being almost brand new to this game/genre I'm not sure why this is so prevalent. Is Civ 5 just particularly bad at managing a cities tiles? Are these experienced players purely manipulating the game for every small advantage? Is this a key skill at any difficulty level?

Suppose this all boils down to my main question, it is expected that manual locking of tiles will still be key in Civ 6, or will the AI be smarter to the point where manual locking will at best get tiny advantages, only really benefiting higher difficulties?

PaulC.

 

[stealth_nsk]

Manual city tile control is absolute requirement on top 2 difficulty levels only. You can beat Emperor in Civ5 without manually allocating citizens.

The problem with manual allocation is correct setting of priorities. For example, if you set priority which differs from default or food, the automatic placement could starve population. You usually don't want this.

 

[ProMeTheus112]

It's just that in order to play well you need an idea of what you want to do (in the short/mid/long term), and the AI can't know or understand that so in order to play efficiently as well you must do it yourself.

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Its a glitch with civV

First the game checks food, if it enough it adds /auto assigns a new citizen.
Then it checks prod, etc. including the new citizen

So you want the new citizen to be autoassigned to a low food high production tile.(since it can't give you food
So you always want autoassign on production focus...and manually lock the good food tiles.

Its fairly easy to fix. Add New pop last.

 

[paulmclem]

It's just that in order to play well you need an idea of what you want to do

I get that. As such, if I want to focus on production, I select "Production Focus". However, many players, admittedly on high difficulty, don't seem to trust the AI management focuses. Just wondered why this was.

 

[rastak]

I get that. As such, if I want to focus on production, I select "Production Focus". However, many players, admittedly on high difficulty, don't seem to trust the AI management focuses. Just wondered why this was.

Many people really enjoy min-maxing and micro managing in games. They treat it as a puzzle of sorts. I don't fall into this catagory, although I do usually lock down my own tiles.

 

[paulmclem]

Many people really enjoy min-maxing

Can I ask what that means....I've heard it said a few times on YouTube vids

 

[dturtle1]

Min-Maxing is minimising your investment in your weaknesses and maximising your investment into Strengths to the cutting edge.

I normally lock my own tiles. It is all about yield. I hate when the A.I adds 2 food at the expense of a 5 Yield tile etc. I generally lock down High Yield tiles and leave new pop for food, which i can switch into production. You got to be diligent Tho . Pre build 4 Cottages in the rainforest ready for a University, forget to lock in the tiles....nOOOOO!!!. I also manually add Specialists and do manual Workers, yes it is a little too much micro-management

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Min-Maxing is minimising your investment in your weaknesses and maximising your investment into Strengths to the cutting edge.

I normally lock my own tiles. It is all about yield. I hate when the A.I adds 2 food at the expense of a 5 Yield tile etc. I generally lock down High Yield tiles and leave new pop for food, which i can switch into production. You got to be diligent Tho . Pre build 4 Cottages in the rainforest ready for a University, forget to lock in the tiles....nOOOOO!!!. I also manually add Specialists and do manual Workers, yes it is a little too much micro-management

That's the exact opposite of good strategy micro in civ5

 

[Acken]

Can I ask what that means....I've heard it said a few times on YouTube vids

It's basically a gaming culture word for "optimisation". Being the most efficient. It's popular mostly in games with a lot of numbers : RPG and Strategy games. It often involves theory crafting around those numbers and formulas.

In a game like WoW it would be getting that perfect gear and skillset to maximize your damage for example. Letting survival be handled by other classes.

In Civ it usually means doing stuff in order to get an extra edge in yields. Knowing the best policies, units etc.

 

[dturtle1]

That's the exact opposite of good strategy in civ5

Explain!!, you mean leaving new pop for food or locking in high yield tiles

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Explain!!, you mean leaving new pop for food or locking in high yield tiles

New pop shouldn't go to food, because it can't produce food when it is first made...but it can produce production/gold/science

So you want to focus on production, and then lock in high food tiles.

(also corrected strategy->micro in initial post)

 

[paulmclem]

In Civ it usually means doing stuff in order to get an extra edge in yields. Knowing the best policies, units etc.

Cheers, Acken. I always appreciate an answer which includes the word "stuff". Sometimes it really is just the best word to use

 

[dturtle1]

New pop shouldn't go to food, because it can't produce food when it is first made...but it can produce production/gold/science

So you want to focus on production, and then lock in high food tiles.

(also corrected strategy->micro in initial post)

Ahh really, so even though it working a food tile, that yield wont be added at the end of the turn? sounds weird. I always figured new pop was added at the beginning of the turn. On turn calc, it adds the yields. So what, i should wait a turn before locking in the new food tile then? assuming i want maximum Growth.

 

[paulmclem]

Honestly, losing out on one pops worth of food once is utterly negligible in Civ

Yep, I asked the question to find out whether manual tile locking had to be done to overcome duff AI. The AI may well be slightly duff but it sounds like at my level (Prince, nearly!) the gains from locking are marginal in the extreme. If this is not the case in Civ 6 then I will do it. Time will tell.

 

[paulmclem]

Can I just check, by "yield" do you mean an accumulative total of apples, hammers etc?

 

[Magil]

Can I just check, by "yield" do you mean an accumulative total of apples, hammers etc?

"Yield" refers to any output, such as food, production, culture, gold, etc.. A more specific example is a "tile yield", which refers to what yields a particular tile grants you. You might say the tile yield of a bare grassland tile is 2 food.

 

[Acken]

Yes, yields in civ are all the things collected by your empire every turn so production, food, science etc.

 

[Balkans]

Can I ask what that means....I've heard it said a few times on YouTube vids

Basically it's milking resources like there's no tomorrow.
When you go really deep in playing a game like civilization there is clear math behind why you want to do something the certain way.

 

[paulmclem]

When you go really deep in playing a game like civilization there is clear math behind why you want to do something the certain way.

I plan on going really deep in Civ 6. I up for some maths