Civ VI is easy? I don't know...

Yeah, used them, don't like them. Very terrain-dependent when used offensively, cost maintenance, require an extra technology that could also be your beeline towards horsemen.

Of course they're often needed to continue conquering higher level AIs after the initial push because of walls, and when my neighbor has settled in a big, open area I may make some exceptions, but other than that, bleh, get those weaklings out of my view!

 

I disagree with this because of how they work on the tree.

The unlock Eureka for Archery is "Kill a unit with a Slinger" which is often pretty straightforward. You can build Slingers right out the gate. Upgrade cost to an Archer is 30 gold. So, because you can build the unit ahead of time super cheap and upgrade it, its trivial to have a multi-Archer army by turn 25 which you can then use to raid the AI.

If the AI were smart enough to beeline Archery this wouldn't work very well. They go down because Warriors are sitting ducks.

I suppose Chariots have their advantages too. But I don't think I could have raided China with them so fast that I had time to build Stonehenge in his old city.

 

That slinger could have been a Warrior. By turn 25 I have usually already started poking away parts of the opponent's army, possibly grabbed one of their settlers or a worker and am on a beeline towards horsemen technology if I have 2 copies in my borders.

Then three fresh warriors can take a non-capital in 2 turns regardless of where it's positioned.

Again, I don't know what people like so much about early archers. They're really not required at that point and just delay your initial attack. They (or Horsemen) are needed to take a capital, and once walls kick in it's of course game-over for warrior-only raiding action, but in that early push they work extremely well.

Even defensively, fortified Warriors already do the job, poking away opposing armies with Archers is neat, but certainly not required. A waste of tech potential imho.

If the AI had Archers they'd become even easier targets for that sort of strategy imho, because an archer that isn't handled very well just dies without even really delaying the attack. An Archer in a city would be annoying, but again... a city falls in 2 turns, so...

 

I've actually found the opposite to be true from my games, although I've never founded a religion, so I dunno about that victory type. But culture and science seem to take forever to come, while you could just, huh, get all capitals much faster in the meantime. The fact that the AI still has a bunch of Warriors and even Slingers (!!!) long after turn 200 makes conquering them piece of cake, even when they get the Technophile agenda (makes them focus on science) and are ahead of you in tech, because they simply don't upgrade old units and don't build new ones.

The way diplomacy (doesn't) work also seems to make a great case for going to war against everyone. If they're going to hate you regardless, at least you may give them a good reason to do so. Diplomacy DOES seem kinda broken, though, as in my games most AIs generally hate everyone. It seems like going into any war past the Ancient era is a one-way ticket to Hatesvile... And good luck avoiding wars through the whole game.

 

Well my experience with diplomacy so far as been about getting denunced for the most ridiculous reasons (your science is low trololol) then Dowed early, taking some cities as is my due for that ridiculous AI (was boxed in anyway) and then getting denounced all game long for being a warmonger.

 

Yes, the agendas really weren't a good idea, were they?

Though mostly I get denounced without being told why - at least in my current game the Russians told me it's because I'm occupying their city (which I took after beating back an ill-advised early surprise war).

Back to the difficulty issue, after the game vs. Scythia I mentioned above I faced something I've never seen - massive, continual, coordinated attacks from barbarian camps, which I could never quite manage to clear before being pushed back. They brought battering rams and catapults to the party and at one point were in real danger of capturing my second city. The AI even made clever use of scout zones of control to block my spearman's escape route. I ended up set too far back and tried yet another start - this the one that earned Peter's ire. I just focused on expanding immediately and making sure to have enough units to deter attack (especially as Scythia is literally on my border - though Tomyris is still unfriendly, in the long run she seems a potential ally. She denounced the Russians and is at war with the Brazilians who, along with Pericles, just declared war on me).

 

Diplo modifiers are calculated by turn afaik. So if you go to war after the ancient era, prepare well and make the war last only a few turns if possible. After that give the civs you want to be allied with/liked by some small gifts and everyone is happy with you again. It's true that AIs hate others AIs, but as the player, you have to be either constantly warmongering or not even trying to be friends with the AIs. It's really not that hard. Well, except if you take cities from someone and not extinct him completely. In that case he will hate you of course. Or the religious victory, that's also going to get you many haters.

 

This is absolutely not the case on the harder difficulties (I've mainly been playing Immortal), you'll definitely be out-teched my at least a couple civs for most of the game.

Anyway after about 5 tries I got my first domination victory on immortal (small map though). Key is start attacking very early. Not only is the AI poor, but for some reason (possibly a bug?) the AI usually won't use city defenses. It also isn't likely (at least compared to other civ games) to have a ranged unit garrisoned. So it was very easy taking out the first two civs by just sticking four catapults right outside their walls and bombarding. Other civs were on a different continent so it was just a rush to cartography, and really just a small land invasion against each either directly at their capital or having to take out one other city first. Taking out one civ, all I had was an artillery army and an infantry army and a little naval support. The civ had several mechanized infantry units but it didn't really matter. With naval support and a range upgrade you can just sit there and bombard while the enemy civ just shuffles and does hit and run attacks.

 

I find some aspects of this game more difficult than Civ5. But I think part of the problem is I still don't know the best strategies. I'm playing no barbarians right now, and this game is more challenging than I anticipated.

Religion seems more challenging to me for sure. It's harder to found, and the early religion game is tough. It's very easy to lose it early on before you have access to apostles and inquisitors. Although I think in the future I won't even bother with religion. It's just not worth it.

I have realized one flaw in my playing is I haven't been prioritizing commercial districts. I also haven't been conquering my nearest AI neighbor like the posts above mentioned, or city-states. Perhaps I should do the early rush. But I often don't start near any AI civs. I'm reluctant to attack nearby city states because I want their bonuses, and I'm more likely to get suzerain of ones that are close to me.

 

No, quite the opposite infact. I apprechiate the fact the AI is giving me cities for free and planting them close to my capital to enable me to quickly take them over.

In all seriousness I believe the AI is either literally given a free settler on turn 10, no matter what game speed (I reported that in the bug forum, the fact it doesn't respect game speed, they always get a settler on turn 10, breaks slower settings in my opinion) or has so much 'free money' that they buy one by turn 10.
This can be helpful since it is often unguarded so you can snipe it on faster speeds like online or quick. On slower speed it takes too long for you to even have a 2nd scout.
Just build an army and kill the AI. Like civ5 and every civ game before it, killing off most of the AI is always the best tactic. Admittedly that is easier said than done on diety due to the massive gold advantage the AI pulls out of thin air.

Infinite city spam. In culture tree, beeline towards +50% settler speed and then knock those puppies out until the land is covered. Then kill everything on your continent. Think of civ6 as a war game, not an empire building game.

 

Yeah my problem is I still play it too much like Civ5. I had a similar problem at the beginning of Civ5 where I played it too much like Civ4. I still tend to found coastal cities (on rivers where possible) which I know isn't the best strat. But aesthetically it is important to me.

 

Agendas are leading to strange victory, at least
I win a king/giant map/epic speed/french game with culture against two AI (gandy/Saladin) ahead of me in science (80 turns), but as they have some religious agenda, they never start the space race. A third AI (german) had a conquest agenda, ahead of time (but less), and never take advantage of his military advance.
It was a strange game, without war. 2 civ dow me early in game, never really send me units so after loosing one or two units they asked for peace. Then everybody became my friend or ally and we had 600 turns of absolute peace. There was very few war between AI or CS.

 

I found the game boring and easy with it's current Civic's set up it's a guided journey through a weak story line. The separations of Civics that both forced focus and limited it was a key strategy in any victory type added a lot of depth to the previous versions game play. The different victory types required a decent knowledge of which civics to develop. The tree limits and guides you. The cards are okay at best they help make the game easy because you can just move them around to strengthen certain aspects where as before if you were playing multiple win types and one of the AI's or other players was rocketing ahead of you towards a win type you were weak on, you would have to weaken their society to slow them down because you couldn't just move a few cards and increase your strength in those area's. Now you can't march any faster then they do and you can just cruise your way to a win after a few plays.

Wonders don't have the meaning they used too. Wonder building was huge with huge benefits to building them and in many cases you would put yourself at risk to get them. Now wonders cost you a tile if you build early wonders in your high production city later wonders will be extremely hard to build plus the bonuses for taking the time and effort to build them is weak at best.

I've been playing since the first and while each new game had it's issues this doesn't feel like Civ to me because of the guided style play with the simpleton strategies and childish graphics. Each new game added aspects to the challenge of the game. This one is far less challenging.

 

Just train some archers....

 

I'm on Emperor in the early stages of a game, and the AI certainly out-techs me - a couple are in the medieval era while I'm in the mid-Classical. Nevertheless they're still using warriors, slingers and spears while I have archers and am about to replace my warriors with Ngao Mbeba. I'm also not sure if Greece had iron already or just didn't prioritise it, as I was able to expand onto an iron tile that had been adjacent to Mycenae since before I founded a city in the area. Certainly if they have neither iron nor horses (I kept Yaroslavl because it had horses) the war they just declared will go very badly for them.

AI upgrading and unit production certainly doesn't keep pace with their tech level. In my only full game so far the AI also teched slowly, and didn't use ranged units at all - that wasn't an issue as I didn't get in involved in meaningful wars.

Yes, I've observed both - indeed they'll rarely garrison at all. I took down Yaroslavl in my current game with a couple of archers, a spearman and two warriors; I conquered it by about turn 50 (while I was still researching engineering, as I recall), which is very early for me to go on the offensive in any Civ game. Russia seemed to have sent its full army against me and had no reserve to send in to defend its city once I destroyed it (probably I could have moved on the other two Russian cities and finished them, but I accepted a generous peace instead to get my hands on the Illiad and an income boost). In my full game, once a brief war with Gandhi ended he withdrew his army completely, including garrison units

 

The game I was referring to was on Emperor (which may not be all that high of a difficulty, I give), but Scythia WAS outteching me by two eras, as they had the Technophile agenda. They still sent an army of Horsemen and Spearmen against my Knights and Field Guns, though. What was weirder was that they HAD the tech to build AT Crews as they had one garrisoned in one of their cities. But they simply wouldn't build any more of those, and they don't even require Strategic resources. I guess the AI isn't valuing the combat strength of its units as it should, so it just thinks "more = better", even when it's just more garbage.

 

Deity is way too easy for Dom victory. Build up a big early army, forward settle on your nearest neighbor and take them out. Don't forget to bring a battering bring a ram with your melee! Then make peace and build up your infrastructure of commerce and industrial districts then work on the next neighbor, rinse and repeat.

Civs with good early units like Rome, Greece and Kongo have it even easier. In my Dom Deity victory with Kongo I did run into problems after I took the capitols of England and Egypt. Russia was way ahead of me in science and had strong cities so I had to build a lot more units after districts. It was a slugfest with them especially the damn mountain terrain forcing a slow march. But once I got field cannons/arty and starting marking corps then I finally was able to take their 80-90 strength cities out. Observation Ballons are incredibly OP since each adjacent one adds +1 to range so a 2 range arty can attack from 5 hexes away with 3 ballons around them. Also OP to surround an enemy city with apostles so that they can't bring in their units and reserves a spot for your melee units to surround the city.

A few screenshots from my Kongo dom victory



Showing Deity level


Still had time to build 4 wonders in capitol because I was bored.


You'll never have housing problems with Mbanza. I did have some mid and late game war weariness that really sucked and barbs were popping everywhere. Kind of sad that the barbs are a bigger threat than the AI

Poor England she built a bunch of crappy cities around London which was my first capitol taken. At one point I was surrounded by about two dozen crossbows and catapults lol. I stood guard with a couple of infantry and she eventually withdrew Should have just wiped her off the map but it was fun watching her complain about my warmongering every 10 turns or so.

 

Barbarians more of a threat than AI civs? Tell me about it.

 

I'd imagine the continents map type is a lot harder since you can't just march through every civ, but still nice win. Those are some pretty sick population counts too.

 

I ended my session last night on a cliffhanger: Greece moving on my newest city with catapults, a ram, slingers and assorted melee units. Went back to the game today, rushing my forces to the defence, researching Defensive Tactics, and upgrading my Warriors, ready for a tense fight.

The Greeks ... milled around my city for a bit, never attacking with either the ram or the catapults and just getting slowly picked off by my garrisoning archer. This turned into a full-blown retreat with the arrival of my spearman, ngao mbemba and chariot. I accepted another Great Work for peace (why do none of these people have sculptures or relics?) out of sheer disgust with the AI's performance. For comparison I found the Civ V combat AI cleverer and more challenging than many here and rarely play Civ as a wargame.

Civ VI seems an order of magnitude worse than Civ V as far as the AI is concerned, and that's just in military behaviour - the issues upgrading and with unit composition that Civ V eventually largely solved just exacerbate it. And again, this is a worse performance than the barbarians put up in the screenshot I posted.