How do I keep my interest alive?

[Disgustipated]

Civic cards can get a little complicated, and I'm not going to say my choices are ideal, I'm not a min-maxer like many here. I'm just going to say they will get you by on King level just fine.

Military: you should run the bonus against barbarians early if you are playing with barbs on, then conscription/levee en masse most of the game. Use Professional army to upgrade your units whenever possible, when done upgrading go back to conscription/levee en masse. If you have multiple spots the +1 amenity for garrisoned unit is nice, and if building walls or encampments consider those cards.

Economic: Many good choices here. +1 production per city is very useful early on. If you are a little short on cash consider +2 gold per trade route. If you have several cities on a different continent than your home continent the card that gives +25% gold on cities on other continents is well worth it. Run Meritocracy as soon as you have room for it. I made the mistake of undervalueing this card, but it's very useful, especially if you don't build many theater districts as I do. You don't have to run the builder cards all the time, try to time it so you can pump out a ton of builders in every city (unless they are low production cities that take too long) and run serfdom/public works to pump out a ton of builders than switch to something else. I like to run +100% on science buildings, though I usually have the tech lead at this point, and isn't necessary. But I like to have a good lead on the AI at King level. I usually don't have room for this card until democracy. If going for cultural victory there are 3 cards in particular you can use to help push that faster (though one card is useless if you haven't settled a great musician).
There are several other useful economic slots. I don't have time to go through them all. sometimes I run industrial complex adjacency cards, or adjacency cards for commercial/harbors, market economy is very useful once you get it if you are doing external trade routes. There really is no wrong path. Just paths that might be more useful to you at the time.

diplomatic: This one is fairly straight forward. Running +1 gold per envoy can turn into a lot of gold around the time this card shows up. by midgame it's well worth it to run this card. You can run +2 influence per turn most of the time, and run +1 envoy for city/states that don't have envoys only when you intend on spending envoys on city-states that are currently at 0 envoys. The spy card can be useful for training spies, but personally I don't use it all that often. Raj can be useful if you manage to get several suzerains. Arsenal of Democracy ain't bad either if people like you and you keep allied status with them.

wild card: I often have an economic card in this slot. If running classical republic sometimes I have to have conscription here until I can get enough trade routes going to support my military support costs. Run +2 for great prophet once you've got mysticism and have built a holy site and shrine to help push your prophet out. I wouldn't stress too much whats in these slots. When I first go into democracy I love +2 scientist/engineer/merchant.

 

[Ondolindë]

Just wanted to make clear a point. As I said, I want to get better: there's one particular aspect of the game that tells me that I'm doing something wrong, and it's Civic Cards. Basically, as soon as I start a game it's fine -- I can choose what I think I need at the moment. Then, more and less when I reach Middle Ages, I start to have so much of them I can't choose, so I end by choosing them semi-randomly. Probably I just need to focus on a specific civ at a time, trying to understand its strength and overcome its weaknesses; that's why the Game of the Months looks like a great way to go ahead.
Thank you all! And by the way...Best reply ever

What has helped me and made it fun as well, because I was in the same boat a while ago, is to choose a strategy and victory type (it could change easily, though) based on the landscape on the first few turns, especially as you explore and consider how your Civ can take advantage of all that. But I would spend time and lose myself at times in the Civilopedia just reading on stuff and how they are related. There is great stuff in there. Then I got into the habit of looking at the Tech Tree and Civics Tree to see the best route I could take (then again, it could change), and then I would actually not play, but research the policy cards in the game and with other sources like Civ Wikipedias, comments or watching videos to see how different people used them. As time goes by and you play, you get to know the policy cards well enough to use them better and to your advantage. This means, of course, that you need to let go of preferred or habitual ways of playing because they will not be aplicable every time. Believe me. I think this is one of the great things of Civ VI compared to previous ones: one must use what was given to you. Now, if you forget policy cards, CQUI is awesome. The latest version alerts you so you can go and check the new ones out.

Have fun playing. I got hyped again so I am going to start another game.

 

[Aedra]

If you want to get better, spam campuses, exploit adjancy bonuses, and build 2-3 warriors and non stop archers in the beginning of the game, take every city that's in your path. Bigger is better. Being bigger than the AI is how you get better than them. More cities means more science and culture and more production.

 

[gfeier]

I'm on a Mac so I still don't have the Fall update. I'm amusing myself right now by picking up Steam achievements. Makes for some interesting games.

 

[King Abbas]

if you haven't done so already, I strongly recommend trying the mods.. they can marginally improve the game specially the following mods:
1- cqui (ui mod, game is practically unplayable without it)
2- 8 ages of pace (tones down game tempo a bit giving you ample opportunity to better enjoy each era in the game)
3- moar units (fills in some blank spots in the unit progression tree)

about playing at king difficulty, i used to find king difficulty too hard for me at first but now i can win consistently at that level i can give you a few tips to improve your game,
1- expand expand expand: wide is currently better at everything, i tend to have a core group of cities consisting of about 4-5 cities where i do most of the heavy lifting,all the rest of my cities i consider mere outposts i usually only build them to secure resources and land, i will build 1 district at most in them in order to have them run the great persons projects indefinitely.
2- don't worry about the AI: it will always have a head start on you in the beginning of the game so don't despair if you notice that you are trailing in civics or techs you WILL catch up and surpass him soon.
3- war is inevitable: the AI will declare war on you sooner or later.. just fortify your position and let him come to die on your turf, after taking out the bulk of his army prepare to invade and take his cities.
thats all i can think of right now.. i actually think civ6 is the easiest civ yet, i had a harder time winning in the older games.