I feel like this installment is missing the "civilization" part of Civilization

[spherejoint]

Every game thus far I've started ends up in two ways:

1. On turn 5, I meet a warrior from another Civ. This is on a Huge map with two Civs deleted from the roster. It turns out their capital is 10 tiles away. Huh?
2. On turn 20, I discover I'm ringed entirely by 5 city states which hog all of the good city sites. I have only one viable city site to expand to.

I just don't get a sense of excitement and wonder that I'm used to from Civs II-V of rushing to fill my empire with great cities. I just don't understand how you're supposed to build an actual civilization in this game.

 

[Returning Lurker]

On turn 20, I discover I'm ringed entirely by 5 city states which hog all of the good city sites...
... I just don't understand how you're supposed to build an actual civilization in this game.

Temujin, Andrew Jackson, Gaius Octavius Caesar, Oda Nobunaga, Qin Shi Huang, and Sargon of Akkad all have a couple ideas of how you could solve that problem.

 

[Zhahz]

RNG is RNG. The map gen has a lot of randomness to it. Just start a new map. You're not always going to start on top of someone else. But chances are there will be some AI kinda near you. The only way to really get a ton of open space is to do advanced setup and drop a few civs out. And as Returning Lurker indicated, for those that like to put the smack down, having a nearby AI is a convenience.

I usually don't always warmonger but the AIs in this installment seem to generally attack early - it's like they're programmed to do it whether it's a good idea or not - and taking their capital in retaliation is a fine way to get an extra city AND eliminate their future chances at aggression.

 

[spherejoint]

This is after starting many, many, many news maps, and dropping out multiple Civs as you suggested. I always start on top of someone else, and there is an infestation of city states.

I think "war, duh" is sort of a BS answer... is there only one way to play the game now? No peaceful building? No early game expansion? This sucks all the fun out of it for me.

 

[Ryika]

It's funny that on a Duel-Map you have enough space for usually around 8 Cities per Civ, but as map sizes go up the amount of Cities you can reasonably expect to settle before bumping into an opponent goes down more and more. For pseudo-peaceful empire building I would suggest playing a map-size bigger than the number of players you want to use, and then just remove a few Civs from the list.

 

[CaptainUnknown]

I have not run into the same issues as you, but historically war was the answer. The great civilizations of the past fought a lot over time. This game can be a bit harder to be peaceful since more cities is better than the 4ish you would have in Civ 5. I think it may be worth your time to try using the City States as barrier between opposing civs. Additionally, I know you may not want to , but I would try a few different styles of playing this game (instead of focusing on 100% peace). You may find your desire for great cities is filled differently with the new district system.

 

[Larsenex]

So i got a good map like you did and I removed a civ from the suggested number on a HUGE map. My next game will likely be Monte, and I will edit the INI file to have the distance from me (the player) to be at least 20 tiles rather than the default 9. I too like room to build!

Continents, High sea level, No Turn limit, 10 Civs (instead of the suggested 12,) I will also likely change the war monger penalties as suggested in some other threads so its <not so harsh>. I am fine with Apostle spam, Ill just make my own or war till they stop coming.

I would love to figure out a way to increase (just a bit) the amount of strategic resources on the maps. In my current game on Huge I found 2 and only 2 OIL and only one on the large landmass I am currently on..RNG..

 

[CaiusDrewart]

I do wish you could drop the number of city-states. I also feel like the default number is too many. I don't like them crowding up the map. I'm sure that your particular game was just bad luck, though.

Overall, I'm getting much more of a feeling of forging a great empire in Civ VI than I was in V. I love that expansion really pays off and makes my Civ stronger. Plus it's fun to look at the map and see all my districts and wonders sprawled across everywhere. I just wish the borders grew faster so they weren't so disconnected.

 

[Manifold]

Every game thus far I've started ends up in two ways:

1. On turn 5, I meet a warrior from another Civ. This is on a Huge map with two Civs deleted from the roster. It turns out their capital is 10 tiles away. Huh?
2. On turn 20, I discover I'm ringed entirely by 5 city states which hog all of the good city sites. I have only one viable city site to expand to.

I just don't get a sense of excitement and wonder that I'm used to from Civs II-V of rushing to fill my empire with great cities. I just don't understand how you're supposed to build an actual civilization in this game.

The cake is spread out at 4000 BC. At least 10000 BC the human were every where it was possible to live.

 

[contrasupra]

I have actually had the opposite situation where many of my starts have been extremely isolated. It really is just luck. :/ I usually do low sea level for more land, though. Standard map.

 

[Takfloyd]

I cranked up the number of AIs to max on a huge map and didn't feel like it was particularly crowded by other civs, if partially because the AI is so bad at expanding.

City states however are too abundant, but you can easily change the number of them via mods or just editing some simple files.

 

[Xyriach]

I think "war, duh" is sort of a BS answer... is there only one way to play the game now? No peaceful building? No early game expansion? This sucks all the fun out of it for me.

Erm, wasn't your original complain that this iteration of Civilisation is missing the Civilisation part? You may want to look at how early civilisations dealt with each other. From a certain perspective, smaller tribes fighting for early resources before becoming sufficiently large to operate trading empires, is both contextual and realistic.

Since the happiness penalties have been removed so you're not going to drive your empire into ruin by creating early cities, I tend to section off part of a continent by building several cities in a string acting as a border before spreading into it. I have on occasion forward settled away from my capital to do the same on a better part of the map, joining the empire up through "metallic persuasion" at a later point.

Very much agree with the point that city states need to get the mechanism to reduce their number back, or even just a switch to turn them off. They're basically obstacles and potentially would be better if they emerged, say, when the first civ enters the renaissance or something. They plop themselves in unoccupied land X number of tiles away from a city, on most maps that leaves them some options.

 

[Plus Ultra]

I honestly haven't experienced this problem yet. I've been able to build around 10 cities without oposition (no conquest wars) from the AI in my two completed games.

Mind you, I do forward settle my second or third city, sure.

 

[Martinus]

As a peaceful player I actually had to adjust my play style to Civ6 and gotta say warmongering seems much more enjoyble in Civ6 and the game has a number of incentives for an early war:

- until ancient walls are built, cities have no natural active defenses
- you can very quickly get archers and spearmen and quickly can train your troops on barbs - and they do not need upgrades for quite a while
- you get no warmonger penalties for an ancient era war
- the building choices early on are limited - so a builder like me does not get the same anxiety of losing out on development the way it happened in Civ5 when attempting to build an early army

 

[Teproc]

I find this thread strange because I've mostly experienced the opposite : it feels like there's a lot more room than there was in V, which is a good thing. I'm sometimes even frustrated that it takes me so long to meet the third city-state for political philosophy.

 

[Haggbart]

I've experienced having lots of room in my first games, but in my last game I was forward settled by three of the AI. So I had to go to war. And IMHO that variation is good. So far I've played very differently in my games, and I think that the game should force you to adapt. You could probably set the map to give you more space, but on a randomly generated map you should expect some randomness.

 

[Martinus]

I noticed that the game tends to spread civilizations unevenly. My favourite setting map is continents, tiny map (which creates two landmasses with 4 civs) - and I am yet to start with just one other civ on my continent - I am always either alone or with two other civs.

 

[faberGe]

This is after starting many, many, many news maps, and dropping out multiple Civs as you suggested. I always start on top of someone else, and there is an infestation of city states.

I think "war, duh" is sort of a BS answer... is there only one way to play the game now? No peaceful building? No early game expansion? This sucks all the fun out of it for me.

Quite unlucky, i have a few play on normal map, continents, standard settings, and was able to found 3 more cities before having to think about other civs.

 

[JosephC]

In the few games that I've had so far, I've often had to focus a bit more on military near the beginning of the game than I have in any civ game before. Civ VI mechanics really encourage you to wipe out at least one civ or a couple of city states.
- No Warmonger penalties in Ancient era.. War and Raze away.
- Early military units have no maintenance cost.. spam away.
- They seemingly purposefully crowd you with other civs/city states.

I guess what I'm getting at is, don't be afraid to make some room for yourself early on. With City states you just have to decide if their early bonuses are worth more to you than their space.

 

[Timally]

In the few games that I've had so far, I've often had to focus a bit more on military near the beginning of the game than I have in any civ game before. Civ VI mechanics really encourage you to wipe out at least one civ or a couple of city states.
- No Warmonger penalties in Ancient era.. War and Raze away.
- Early military units have no maintenance cost.. spam away.
- They seemingly purposefully crowd you with other civs/city states.

I guess what I'm getting at is, don't be afraid to make some room for yourself early on. With City states you just have to decide if their early bonuses are worth more to you than their space.

I think the war monger penalty encourages other civs to attack as early as possible. I've not had many declarations after the first couple eras. I usually play quite peacefully, so I'd assume they'd need a casus belli to attack after that.

I've had no problem with space. I started a game last night and ended up on a small continent with Russia, where after the capitals I thought there would be good spots for 4 other cities and ok spots for 3 more, not including our two city states. We ended up with 14 cities in total, only the couple of cities that were suffering badly were from civs that arrived later