How do you typically open the game?

There are some opening moves floating around & I wondered how many people use which. Maybe you also want to give a comment why you think that opening is best.

Maybe you also have other openings that should be included in the poll.

 

I mostly use at least a warrior and a slinger to start. Builder once I'm safe from barbs.

 

Once I have my first Slinger out, and am scouting for city spots/barbs, I try to figure if I should buy tiles or a Trader for the 2nd city. Multiple barb camps or a nasty neighbor will often make that choice irrelevant, as an extra unit quickly seems vital.

 

I play Deity. You want opening units to steal settlers, which wasn't an option above

 

First build is almost always a slinger, second could be another unit, a builder, or a settler. I will build another unit if I find barbs with the starting warrior, a builder if there's three tiles I want to improve to get the Craftsmanship eureka, or a settler if neither of those two apply.

 

An option that says

Pure military on deity, a mix on emporer and build for eureka and growth on prince

 

I added an option "other".

 

Ty, for me it depends on level but also terrain and estimated chance of doing things. On deity it can be tough and after a city or 2 you can hit a brick wall so I'm starting to hedge my bets a push my science earlier rather than full military rush. Finding out if Inhave Iron sooner can be quite strategic.

 

I agree with this, especially if you spawn with a decent checkpoint. I started a game on a peninsula that wa surrounded by mountains except for one spot. Made the game easier to focus on science. Build an archer to control the checkpoint, got up campuses with the mountain

 

Play on Emperor:

Usually go scout>builder.

 

King or emperor. I like building 3 slingers right off the bat. They can scout, defend and you can get a whole bunch of eurekas of those units, then i'll go builder/settler, and then more military. I generally want to remove/damage my closest neighbour before building up sme infrastructure.

 

I play almost exclusively on diety and my opening build is usually 3-4 slingers then a warrior or 2. I rarely target a CS first unless it's a useless religious state, for most others I find the early bonuses more useful than the city itself. I like to try and take out a nearby civ as quickly as possible but at the very least I want to steal some settlers/workers. This strategy isn't as reliable as it once was due to updates but it definitely still works.

Of course start position also matters but this is my start in the majority of games.

 

I play on immortal. My opening is Slinger, followed up by either worker/settler/more slingers, depending on the specifics. Generally I will build 3/4 slingers that i upgrade to archers + 1 extra warrior and use that to attack my nearest neighbor and to acquire the various early eureka's that are available. I try to have 2 cities in place by the time I attack. Then I usually tech writing --> currency into beelining machinery for crossbows.

I find that after latest patch, you need to be a bit more methodical (e.g., not blindly storm into archers, take out AI units first before moving in on city and maneuvering in on cities in such a way t that 4-5 ranged units can shoot at it in one turn), but this build will still reliably yield a winning position.

 

I still find that AI cities are not that keen on shooting crossbows, anyone else find this?
I mean the bows are not cross... and the cross shape even seems to affect non religious opposition.

 

I have a question for you all re: mid-early game: do any of you build ancient city walls? I was just thinking that on my next game, after my initial expansion, I may toy around and try to pop them in before districts. I am wondering if this will save me from building extra military units to defend. Just wondering if anyone experimented with walls like that. I am a builder player, not military, hence my curiousity about building self-defending cities.

On a related note, after playing a hot seat MP game with my warmonger brother, I did notice that early attacks on AI neighbors significantly boosted his civ on all accounts, while turtling really slowed my own general development (I was the better player than he in Civ5, which is telling about Civ6's changes). I agree with all previous posters about prioritizing a strong early military for the first hundred turns to a) defend from barbars, b) explore and beat AI to CSs for envoys, and c) damage or wipe out neighbors (especially Germany, England, Japan, Aztecs, Scythia, and Kongo, who all seem to forward settle more aggressively than other AI civs).

 

Walls discourage AI attacks until they can get siege weapons, but not very much.
I do not think walls count toward military strength which is important in discouraging DOW
I tend to wall what cities face an opposition and not the others, they have a 1 gold maintenance.
They are fairly quick to build later if needed, I do not think their cost scales

 

I generally build walls on frontier cities, and only then when i'm expecting trouble and my military isn't what it should be. If i think the extra hit or defence points will make the difference, i'll put in the hammers, otherwise i think the hammers are better spent elsewhere. So, i only build them when i really need them.

 

If I can build them somewhere quickly and don't have anything better the engineering eureka can be a nice boost on your way to machinery.

 

I remember the pre-release discussion on this issue. Some folks were thinking monument first (like CIV V?) would be viable. But every CIV is its own fish. . . .

 

I appreciate the feedback. Today I lucked out on my new game when Valetta spawned near me, and I was able to use its bonus to faith buy ancient walls, amongst other things. That said, I want to play around a little more with my early game strategy to see other build possibilities.