Opening build orders?

[salty mud]

I'm playing a game as Rome; currently at the end of the Medieval era but I feel as if I messed up my opening pretty bad. I'm new to Civ VI, playing on Prince mode, and it has taken me until the end of the Medieval era to half-destroy my neighbour. I keep running into obstacles; too small army, too little production and now not enough money.

Being new from Civ IV, I know my districts game isn't up to snuff. I'm not sure when or how I should place them. Is there a solid opening build guide to follow, or some general tips? I'm thinking of starting a new game with a different civ to get a stronger start going and see what happens from there.

 

[The Highwayman]

My advice for a beginner would be to use Rome actually, as you get a free monument in every new city you found. A monument is usually a good idea ASAP in your expands because early culture is so valuable to get you down the civics tree for the better policies and governments.

As a new player to Civ VI, I'd suggest you start with a scout followed by some early military, including a second warrior and a slinger. It will give you a cushion in the early game until you get a feel for things. Then start expanding by building settlers. Beeline Early Empire and slot the "Colonization" card to build them faster. Try and get 5-6 cities by turn 60 to start out. 10-12 by turn 100. Beeline Bronze Working to reveal iron. If you don't have any near your starting location send some settlers to iron locations and build a mine so you begin accumulating resources. Then go after Iron Working so you may upgrade your warriors to Legions.

Let your scout explore the map with the intent on never returning home. Your initials warriors and slingers should circle wide of your starting location picking off barbs and fending off pesky neighbors, while scouting your future expansions.

Eye a couple of early campus locations around mountains, geo thermal fissures, and/or reefs. That will get your science off to a decent start. Put your commercial hubs next to rivers and build the markets asap so you get the trade route capacity. Theater Squares should go next to wonders if possible, but if not just plop as many as you can down next to the government plaza and call it a day. Sell off all of your early luxuries to the AI for gold - you don't need amenities early. As Rome, you get 1 gpt for each internal trading post your traders pass through. Run international trade routes (including one to your future target) but start them on the opposite end of your empire so the trade routes pass through as many of your cities as possible to increase the per turn gold value of the route.

Save up ~600 gold to upgrade 4 warriors to Legions. You can build additional Legions for follow up units. But 4 is a good start along with archers and a battering ram to knock down walls. Remember the trade route you sent your neighbor? Now there's a road for your troops to travel over.

I'd suggest Gamer Grampz' guide on district placement. You can find him on Youtube. The Game Mechanic is on Twitch and Youtube and is very new player friendly. Sorry there's a lot of generalization to this, but there's not a definitive build order. Experience will teach you. Your districting will improve over time. But think of this: you need to expand early, build early defense/future offense, and proper district placement.

 

[salty mud]

My advice for a beginner would be to use Rome actually, as you get a free monument in every new city you found. A monument is usually a good idea ASAP in your expands because early culture is so valuable to get you down the civics tree for the better policies and governments.

As a new player to Civ VI, I'd suggest you start with a scout followed by some early military, including a second warrior and a slinger. It will give you a cushion in the early game until you get a feel for things. Then start expanding by building settlers. Beeline Early Empire and slot the "Colonization" card to build them faster. Try and get 5-6 cities by turn 60 to start out. 10-12 by turn 100. Beeline Bronze Working to reveal iron. If you don't have any near your starting location send some settlers to iron locations and build a mine so you begin accumulating resources. Then go after Iron Working so you may upgrade your warriors to Legions.

Let your scout explore the map with the intent on never returning home. Your initials warriors and slingers should circle wide of your starting location picking off barbs and fending off pesky neighbors, while scouting your future expansions.

Eye a couple of early campus locations around mountains, geo thermal fissures, and/or reefs. That will get your science off to a decent start. Put your commercial hubs next to rivers and build the markets asap so you get the trade route capacity. Theater Squares should go next to wonders if possible, but if not just plop as many as you can down next to the government plaza and call it a day. Sell off all of your early luxuries to the AI for gold - you don't need amenities early. As Rome, you get 1 gpt for each internal trading post your traders pass through. Run international trade routes (including one to your future target) but start them on the opposite end of your empire so the trade routes pass through as many of your cities as possible to increase the per turn gold value of the route.

Save up ~600 gold to upgrade 4 warriors to Legions. You can build additional Legions for follow up units. But 4 is a good start along with archers and a battering ram to knock down walls. Remember the trade route you sent your neighbor? Now there's a road for your troops to travel over.

I'd suggest Gamer Grampz' guide on district placement. You can find him on Youtube. The Game Mechanic is on Twitch and Youtube and is very new player friendly. Sorry there's a lot of generalization to this, but there's not a definitive build order. Experience will teach you. Your districting will improve over time. But think of this: you need to expand early, build early defense/future offense, and proper district placement.

Some great tips here, thanks. I'm planning to play another game with a different civ, probably Germany or Japan, as I understand they are beginner friendly and powerful if properly utilised. Sounds like I need to prioritise expansion more. Are your turn times referencing epic or normal speeds? I play on epic usually.

 

[Victoria]

VI does not have a single path but one of the keys to success is campus adjacency. The target is +3 and then there is a card that can double so a couple of campi can give a great early springboard.

you do need that expansion but as Rome a lot of your expansion can come from conquering. You do need some iron to get them and it you also can get a great general you will be unstoppable on prince. So go for bronze working and consider an encampment but it may be easier to get the +2 Great General (GG) points card which you can use when you get to political philosophy.

Rome is a great learning one because you monuments for free, use another civ and you may feel a lack of culture early. There is a decidedly average opening guide in the tips and tricks forum which is fairly sound in its advice.

 

[ViljamiK]

I play on Deity, where you normally must build much more military than I'm going to suggest here, but this can still work on Deity with peaceful neighbours, so you should be fine on Prince.

I suggest that you look the Civics tree inspirations as your early game road map, with an eye on getting all inspirations while beelining Political Philosophy. Sometimes this is not possible due to the map, don't worry too much about it then.

So, my suggestion for generic opening:
Scout - Slinger/Scout - Settler - (Worker/Slinger)

Foreign Trade needs you to find another continent? - That's what the scout is for.
Craftmanship requires you to improve three tiles? - Buy a worker in the capital or build it after the first settler. Research Mining and Animal Husbandry accordingly in order to be able to do this. This worker can also get you numerous eurekas: Horseback riding, Wheel, Masonry and/or Irrigation
State Workforce requires you to build a district? - time for your first district in your capital after the first settler! You have three options (Holy Site, Encampment, Campus), let's choose the most easy one, Campus. hopefully you met another civ and got the eureka for writing. You should by now have researched something like Pottery, Mining and Animal Husbandry and can finish Writing in time to build the campus. Hopefully you have at least +2 adjacency for it.
(Alternatively, build two warriors and/or Slinger and get the eureka for bronze working to build a fast encampment - you need to kill three barbarians)
Early Empire requires 6 pop in your empire - hopefully your two first cities have something like 4 and 2 pop now. Slot in Colonization policy card and start pumping out settlers.
Political philosophy requires for you to have met 3 city states - well that's what the scout is for.

Other inspirations provide good roadmap as well:
Military Tradition is clear a barbarian encampment, something that you should be aiming to do anyway
Mysticism requires you to have a pantheon, so slot in God King policy card asap to get one

After that chasing inspirations gets much more situational - you don't usually get a wonder for Drama and Poetry for example

The tech tree also has some good roadmap qualities and eurekas you should almost always try to get: Killing a barb with a slinger to get Archery eureka and building your first trader for currency

As for build order in your second and further cities - if not playing as Rome, and if you weren't first to meet any Culture city states, or you don't have any culture tiles - your Culture per turn is gonna be trash. So good default first build in new cities is monument. This helps significantly your borders expand (so you don't have to buy tiles) and gives you culture.

This is all getting quite complicated, but a small thing concerning governors: You could pick Magnus with the promotion that makes settlers pop-free and put him in the capital once you start constantly cranking out settlers with colonization card (you can also use his 100% bonus yields for chopping forests to get even more settlers, but this might be higher level stuff). Or you could get Pingala in capital if you have a lot of food to get great science and culture yields.

When it comes to military, I feel that three archers and two warriors should be enough on Prince to repel any AI aggression within the first 60 turns or so, if you wish to remain peaceful

 

[The Highwayman]

Some great tips here, thanks. I'm planning to play another game with a different civ, probably Germany or Japan, as I understand they are beginner friendly and powerful if properly utilised. Sounds like I need to prioritise expansion more. Are your turn times referencing epic or normal speeds? I play on epic usually.

You're welcome. Sorry I'm referencing standard speed. Japan is an S tier civ in my opinion, very fundamentally strong. Germany is good overall too.

 

[Bibor]

As a very generalized tip, your first 8 builds should be units. The higher the difficulty, the lower the number of civilian units in those 8.

on emperor, my diff, it would mean:
1-2 settlers
0-1 worker
3-4 warriors
1 scout
2-3 slingers

The actual order depends on the spawn.

after that, its usually a district, usually a campus.

 

[PenngwynXVII]

With Rome, you want to research mining>bronze work>iron work>masonry

Build warrior>settler>worker>encampment

Then, spam encampment proj until you get a general.

By this time you should have some iron, upgrade your warriors, and build a couple more swords, plus a battering ram.

4 sword + ram + general... Send to your nearest neighbor. Keep building swords in the meantime and have them follow.

Techwise from there, head to machinery so you can upgrade that ram into a tower asap.

This strategy (known as a "swordsman rush") works on deity even with Civs that don't have a swords replacement, as long as you have iron nearby. With Rome (which will def have iron and the swords have half iron cost) on a lower difficulty you will absolutely wipe the map with this.

 

[Casualty of war]

I like to do my scouting with something that can actually clear a Barb Camp, so my first build is whichever Warrior/Slinger will finish closest to when my capitol will hit 2 population. Then I almost always start on a Settler.

There's a lot of Eurekas, Inspirations, Gold, Era Score and unit experience to be found in those Barb Camps.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

With Rome (which will def have iron and the swords have half iron cost) on a lower difficulty you will absolutely wipe the map with this.

you wish. In my last 4 games as Rome I did not have Iron in my capital. Nor in my first 2 expands. Nor in my other expands. I pretty much had to conquer/settle iron specifically. I honestly don't get why they don't just give every Civ one iteration of horses and iron either in the cap or close to it, would make games much more fair.

England with their start bias I feel like always get Iron and Coal en masse.

 

[Fluphen Azine]

I just started a game as Poland.
Kind of an OP start.
I've been rolling more strong starts after the recent update on Standard Settings.
Probably just seems that way as this is too little sample size.
It seems if you find an early Relic with Poland things move faster.
I was going Warrior x 3 but I think I have to sneak in a builder with this culture.
I saved the turn 1 file if anyone is interested.
Obviously, results will vary depending on which way you scout, first meets and if you get a Relic early.

Deity
Poland
Pangaea
All Standard Settings Low Sea Level
Random AIs
Natural Disaster Level 2 (Not Apocalyptic Mode obviously)

Spoiler Turn 1 Start :