I just played Civ 6 with all DLCs and Expansions - man oh man as a strong Civ series player and someone who plays RoN and Age series I wanted to give my thoughts here and see if people have similar feelings about the early game.
What is your opening?
The discussion behind this is I feel like the opening BO determines SOOO Much - Did you meet religious city states? If you meet two might as well do quests and get that holy district up. Did you meet a commercial city state? Then build that archer for a quest and a commercial hub for a trade route that DOUBLES ur turn 15 income.
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I try to maximize the situation and I feel like if I do a campus library and holy district and shrine I will be able to get a religion and generally keep up but I will miss out on early military conquest of neighbor or early suzerainship.
This game just feels like a lot of FOMO (fear of missing out) and just build orders are gone.
Like I have found that in the past building a library and Writing was super key but now with districts and district limits it makes prioritizing science tough.
The answer to this might be play wide - but realistically pumping out workers settlers and scouts means u have no districts. if you wait till govt plaza and govt buiilding - then u have no land.
Lack of land may push u to military but then it feels as iff either A - u need Science for war because its an upgrade race or mass tech relevant enough ranged troops. But making those troops makes the districts have a time cost.
I guess there was a mix of generic and district specific buildings. Like u can build a market in the city center but to get a Bank and stock exchange u need a commercial hub.
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I think, this whole post is a testimony to the success of the devs in making us to "play the map", as they said they wanted to do. No more predetermined BO, and I love it! Rather painful dilemmas every way you look and you must choose something and inevitably miss out on something else.
I don't have any set build order, because any build order may go out of the window after the first few turns.
The first look at the start location and those few revealed tiles with a warrior and perhaps after moving the settler will help me decide whether to start with a builder or a warrior, or maybe even a scout, and then it is 'playing the map' even more
Second build is open for a settler, builder, monument or another warrior.
And I think that starting with a slinger is the worst starting option you can pick. Slinger's weak, he will die easily if you're overwhelmed, so if you need military might, warrior is much better. The time for a few slingers and that eureka will come a bit later, when they have tougher guys to shield them.