I suck please help

I don't post to forums, be kind.

I am apparently an idiot.
On the lowest difficulty I literally cannot win a game.
I need help.
What are the common rookie mistakes?
What might I be doing wrong?

I will say this - I've been trying for a science victory with Gilgamesh to start. I cant get there.

ANY advice I can get would be helpful. I've looked everywhere, even the good YouTube guide.
Love the game. Want to win though.

HELP AND THANKS!

 

It would help to have some details on what you're doing so we can figure out what you're doing wrong. For starters, how many cities did you end up with? ( My guess is, not enough.)

Also, did you build a lot of ziggurats? That's what makes Gilgamesh a Science contender.

 

What DLC do you have? (I don't have any and play the "vanilla" game, if you have Rise and Fall or Gathering Storm it might be different) If you're going for a science victory, you need a science district eventually in every city, and that's your first district in your good cities. And you probably need more cities. And try to get 6 envoys to every scientific city state you can find. This is for any leader, not just Gilgamesh.

You also need tons of production for building spaceports and the space projects. There's a late-game economics policy that gives significant production from trade routes; I can't remember what it's called, maybe "e-Commerce". That can help tremendously.

 

First, I settle just fine. I get the mechanic there. It's the rest that throws me off. Like, after I found my first city apparently.

I get (metaphorically) stressed out about the balance between ziggurats and builders/improvements. Seems like I'm constantly getting alerts about underdeveloped cities (housing mostly) so I go whip a builder up and build more housing units/farm/etc...Then I find myself with nowhere to build with tile bonuses without disrupting my barn, or plantation, or whatever. I absolutely dread that alert sound. Not enough amenities, not enough housing...seems like I can't strike a balance.

Ended up with IDK, 7-8 cities? My frustration there is the gameplay element. I always settle near water, good inner tiles, etc...but the builds for the new cities take WAY longer - I always feel like I'm lagging behind, and they never really catch up.

Conservative militarily - I only play defense, and I'm okay with doing that.

It feels like if I'm not whipping through the tech tree I'm getting my ass kicked by the AI.

Developing envoys is a system I'm still trying to get a grip on, and I'm sure that would help.
Trade routes - I do about 3 usually.
I guess it's a combination of things.

I'm not a moron, but I appreciate the help. I'm only used to civ Rev on Xbone, which I know is TOTALLY different. This is way better, and I did buy the DLC, but aint gonna try it until I can actually win on the dumbest difficulty. :'(

Thanks! I hope that's more information to help. Appreciate you helping the noob.

 

7-8 cities is... ok, but more is always better. Each new city means more science, more districts. If you have a problem with a city being unproductive set up mines. If you do end up chopping a good rule of thumb is to make sure the tile under the chop will be good, unless you have a particularly worthy chop goal like a settler or a wonder. Good city locations generally have hills and/or good food tiles, preferably with a mountain or three nearby for good campus adjacencies. Another way to circumvent their early production woes is to build many cities early on so they have time to catch up.

When it comes down to city size, amenities, and housing, as long as it can grow to size 10, you generally don’t need to worry about cities getting larger than that except for the Urbanization Inspiration on the civic tree. As long as you make sure your cities are at least content and get in the habit of making housing at various housing thresholds and make improvements on luxury tiles as soon as possible, you should be good in that aspect.

Speaking of Inspirations and Eurekas, you can help speed up your game considerably by paying attention to them and accomplishing their goals before you finish researching them. Like for example the Astrology tech (find a natural wonder), Writing tech (find another Civ), Foreign Trade civic (find another continent), and the Political Philosophy civic (find 3 city states) all revolve around a common idea to start with a scout (or two).

 

To help new cities catching up you can also build builders in your better cities and send them together with the settler. Maybe save a trader for an internal traderoute from a new city. Also if you have lots of gold dont hesitate to spend it on core buildings like granaries or monuments. Make use of the policy cards. For example if you build military use the card that boosts production towards that type. Early on for warriors and slingers it is agoge. There is also a card that gives production for settlers. You can also boosts your districts with those cards as well. Watch out for well placed districts. A well placed industrial zone can provide lots of produtcion torwards 4-6 cities (when you unlock factories and later on power plants). Also take care of adjacencies to get the maximum value. Its a good idea to settle your cities close together so your districs can get those from each other. This will also give you more space for more cities.

 

how are you losing, exactly?

and if you want specific advice, you might want to post a screenshot or two, preferably one around T50 and another around T100. that way we can tell you exactly what's going on rather than throwing general stuff at you (all good stuff so far, though).

 

Ye need more info
You on discord?
I can coach on there multiplayer game

 

Well, I just tried it and I lost too, lol. Gilgemesh, continents map, quick pace. I was about 20 techs ahead of everybody, then suddenly the Kongo guy caught up with me (I don't know how) I was pretty close to a win (so was he) and I thought I would prevail, but then Japan won a culture victory. I didn't see that coming. I was in second place for culture because I know not to ignore that. I should have been watching to victory screen closer, and gone to war with Japan, since you can't steal great works anymore (you're supposed to be able, it just doesn't work and Fixaris doesn't seem interested in fixing it)

It was fun and I'm going to try again. I've been playing too much Civ 5 and not enough 6 lately.

 

A couple of tips:
1) wonders are quite often traps. There are a couple of better ones which are worth going for, but generally you should be building settlers, builders and campuses.
Without the dlc's the best ones imo are the pyramids and Colosseum.

2)At the enlightenment civic there's a card called rationalism. It will double the science you get from all your campus buildings. For a SV, you basically want this card in all game.

3)Early game, culture is more important than science. You want to hit key civics like political philosophy, feudalism, and exploration ASAP.

4) The cost of districts goes up when you research new techs/civics. If you place the districts however, their cost stays the same. You should place districts as early as possible then finish them later to keep their cost down.

 

Thanks. I thought they just went up the more districts you build. So place the district as soon as you know where you want it and have enough pop to build it, then go back to whatever else you were building. Finish the district when it makes sense.

@DGpenguinPhD Try playing as Japan. The double adjacency bonus is awesome. It's easy to get the first religion (take Divine Spark unless something else is obvious.) Then build a campus for your second district, next to the holy site and they will boost each other.

I just finished a game; got an accidental culture victory as I was building the last Mars project. For some reason I never could build Samurai, I think maybe I researched Gunpowder before Military Tactics.

 

I played another one as Japan yesterday. Got the science victory after I almost gave up on it; America was 12 techs ahead of me and I couldn't catch up with them. Turns out the only scientific CS in the game was in the middle of their continent and they were allies, but I didn't know that because I couldn't see the middle of that continent. I finally wised up and sent an apostle over there to scout around and found the problem. Also he found all the American inland cities. I put a spy in a small American city and stole a *bunch* of techs, and quickly sent 6 envoys to Seoul (I think it was Seoul) to get the extra science too. That caught me up a little. I also built lots of spies and took the Cryptography card and went to town destroying American (and German because they were ahead of me too but not as much) industrial zones and spaceports. I took the Communism ideology for the extra production, and I bought both Stephanie K and Carl Sagan scientist with faith because I had so much in the bank. Sagan was not really necessary because I was building space projects so fast. I won easily. Then I "just one more turn"d and declared war on Sumeria and killed them because Gilgamesh had been denouncing me the whole game. Oddly enough, he had not even researched Steel yet so his cities were weak and a few didn't even have walls.

I figured out that Samurai suck in Civ 6. (I'd heard that before but didn't believe it) They are okay to build for defense if you don't have any iron, but don't try to goto war in the medieval era without iron.

Now I need to try Russia with "Jesuit Education"