Random Civ's Theorycrafting

[dturtle1]

So i have been sitting here, wanting to play Civilisation 6, cruising through different resources of what we know of Civilisation 6 and i started thinking i would i like to play Civilisation 6. Yes, i am completely hyped for this game. Commence random musings of:

England

Continents maps are gonna be cool. Build a Core, 3-4 Cities, preference to Spread 1st and then back fill along the coast later to set up Commerce, Harbour Chains. You ideally want High Pop/Low Pop Pairs. 3 - 2 tile and 2-0. Prioritise a strong Balanced Core-biased gold.

While working towards Astronomy, feel free to Expand your Navy though not too much. Of course go for all relevant Naval Eureka's/Inspirations along the way. You want flip your early navy into Sea Dogs before you colonise. Use your GPT to fund Sea Dog raids, explosively building up your Navy. Ideally you try and Mass Colonise roughly at the same time and stuff as many Cities you can into the other continent. Build tight, prioritise Commerce district and Docks set with overlapping chains. Prioritise Gaping Holes in The culture coverage.

Use Your Instant Red Coat Army(along with a good solid support team if need be) and Upgraded Barbarian/City States/Other Civs Navy to carve out your own piece of Continental Paradise. Be choosy with the Cities that you keep, you can always Back-fill in later. You are trying to keep each city within 2 Tiles of the coast. 10 pop is pretty much functional, though you want as many High Pops that you can that overlap with smaller cities to make Commerce/Harbour Chains.

Eat the Continent if you can, feel free to leave and take advantage of all the City-States or the remains of the that Continents Civ's.(Land-locked, low Pop, Poor Cities Only ) Once you hit 30-60 Trade routes you should be fine. Use the largest Trade empire the world has ever seen to fund the greatest Archaelogical Expedition it has ever seen, digging through the wreckage of the Continent you just stole with your double archaeologist and British Musuems. Or you can always just use your obvious Gold Advantage to fund the destruction of your neighbours

I call it Moving Next Door and then Breaking and Entering with my Instant Industrial age Army. Not very original but seems pretty fun to play . Should scale pretty well too.

France

So we will roll Continents again. Prioritising a nice river. Prioritise finding Your Continent Borders. If you find Teddy, rapidly expand and Forward Settle on him. Make him Declare War if he wants, if not he will be a valuable ally if someone picks on you. Just make sure he is subservient In regards to any other Civ's use your own discretion but i would advise owning your whole continent.Destroy China, or anyone else that dislikes you building wonders/Great people. Your Core should be settled along your river. I would go for a very balanced Core. You need pretty much everything . If Your Early Game should be about dominating your Continent and building your infrastructure to support multi wonder spamming, preferably in multiple cities. You want a wonder Building Core and Border provinces. Border provinces are low pop defensive specialists, preferably at least with 1 or 2 Unit Builders, so good production. Your Core Will be High Pop, Balanced, Wonder Building Machines, You need to be ready to go by the Medieval Age.

Mark the places for your Chateau's. You could either go double Chateau either side of the river, Preferably next Luxuries with a single Wonder either side of the river or preferably zig-zag with River Wonders. Hanging Gardens and Big Ben spring to mind. Terracotta Army has great synergy as well. Firstly with your Great general Points which go with Garde Imperial and secondly your archaeologists dont require Open borders which will help if going tourism. 2 Wonders per Core City sounds pretty good, 3-4 if you go Zig-Zag. Honestly, it is going to get a bit crowded in here around those rivers Your Early Game should be about dominating your Continent and building your infrastructure to support multi wonder spamming, preferably in multiple cities. Your river tiles will be prioritised by chateau's(4 per City), Possibly Wonder, Commerce District and Luxuries. Really forward plan your "Wonder Garden Set up".

When playing MP or possibly even single Player opponents will want to invade you during your wonder building in the Medieval-Industrial Era. You can't let them!!. You will want nice defendable cities on your borders. These will be specialised defensive cities, only your core will be fully fleshed out Wonder Machines. Also, this is where your spies and Catherine's Flying Squadron come in. Get your second spy ASAP(research castles). Try to manipulate the other Civs on your Continent to fight amongst themselves, Bribe them...Denounce their enemies, share intrigue about them. Do whatever you have to do to make them worry about something else. The first layer of Defense is not being attacked. If that fails then keep the battlefields on your Non-Wonder Building Defensive cities. You should be able to fight a full scale War and keep pumping out wonders like it is no thing. If you Build the Terracotta Army you might be inclined to go mass Imperial Garde(preferably via Gold Upgrade). This UU also generated Great General Points as well as being strong on your own continent. In this case it would be wise to fully take advantage of this and and goad neighbours into attacking you before they are ready on your defensive City terrain. As a General Rule you want a Killzone at the edge of your Continent. Where you can draw in dangerous neighbours and kill them on your terms. If England rocks up with some Redcoats it might be better to try and keep the peace

Once you get through the Industrial Era you will know where you stand. I would prioritise if possible Science/Growth/Economy Wonders so if you the Culture victory might be a struggle you should be able switch into a Science Victory or Domination Victory(particularly if you went the Imperial Garde and are overflowing with Great General's). You could springboard out of the Industrial Era and just eat the rest of the Physical Continent(entire Landmass).

Playing as France i feel will be all about Timing. It really is about Grand Tour regardless of what Victory you are chasing. You have a discrete window where you need to make your move. On the tail end of the Grand Tour you have the Imperial Garde window. The Imperial Garde is interesting because it really encourages you to use it. Those Great general points i feel will be important, but you can't necessarily use the Imperial Garde to invade. Using your Espionage Strengths to Goad other Civs into attacking on your territory i feel is going to be a rewarding Strategy.

 

[Haig]

Yeah that England strategy looks logical, fun and actually somewhat historical.
Doing all the colonizing and naval building is bound to create some enemies too.. !

I've been drooling over Civ 6 too, and at the moment France intrigues me a lot. Here's a basic strategy:

Start building your own 4-6 city country, send scouts all over your continent(s) to immediately meet other civs and speculate which ones could be future threats or allies.

Don't go too crazy over wars yet as you need to have good infrastructure ready for wonderspamming. France's 'Grand Tour' ability gives production bonus to medieval, renaissance and industrial Wonders, so start building them a lot! (look out for wonder envious Quin Shi Huang!).
Around medieval era you get chateaus and they get adjacency bonuses from wonders, so logically put them next to the wonders. Try to build wonders in several cities.

Espionage(not much known of details yet): Send your spies to the courts of strongest empires to gather which ones could be a cultural or militaristic threat.

If a neighboring empire starts growing too strong, send your Garde Imperiale to add their cities to your empire. Also, if another civ has simply too many juicy artifacts and wonders, use them to capture those for you!

England and France actually both are some of my favorites at the moment, actually every civ First Look seems cool

 

[KrikkitTwo]

Yeah that England strategy looks logical, fun and actually somewhat historical.
Doing all the colonizing and naval building is bound to create some enemies too.. !

I've been drooling over Civ 6 too, and at the moment France intrigues me a lot. Here's a basic strategy:

Start building your own 4-6 city country, send scouts all over your continent(s) to immediately meet other civs and speculate which ones could be future threats or allies.

Don't go too crazy over wars yet as you need to have good infrastructure ready for wonderspamming. France's 'Grand Tour' ability gives production bonus to medieval, renaissance and industrial Wonders, so start building them a lot! (look out for wonder envious Quin Shi Huang!).
Around medieval era you get chateaus and they get adjacency bonuses from wonders, so logically put them next to the wonders. Try to build wonders in several cities.

Espionage(not much known of details yet): Send your spies to the courts of strongest empires to gather which ones could be a cultural or militaristic threat.

If a neighboring empire starts growing too strong, send your Garde Imperiale to add their cities to your empire. Also, if another civ has simply too many juicy artifacts and wonders, use them to capture those for you!

England and France actually both are some of my favorites at the moment, actually every civ First Look seems cool

I think France is VERY middle weighted...
so.

France
Spend Ancient exploring and peacefully expanding/improving cities with lots of space, and building up your population capacity... you want some Big productive cities to churn out Wonders.
(getting a religion might be nice, but don't rush it, you want a 'local' religion that boosts your pop...a Pantheon may be fine, you can kill the founder of your adopted religion later so they don't religious victory on you)

Classical keep "Buildering" but also get those Campuses/Theaters up so you can reach the Wonders in time. (also build districts that will be ready to allow you to build midgame Wonders
Don't bother with Wonders in the Ancient/classical those hammers are better used on builders/science /culture buildings..or defense)

Medieval-Renaissance, Cities should be building Wonders or building science/production districts/buildings (or other things to boost their wonder potential)...put in the chateaus for the Gold and Culture

(Use spies to manage relations and keep them peaceful until)

Renaissance-Industrial, Get the GI, clear your Home continent while finishing up your last Wonders.

Post Industrial...Probably aim for a cultural win (to use that tourism), but with a solid Wonderful continent at your back, you may be able to do anything.

 

[Joketa]

That's a good strategy for England, but continents are not continents in Civ VI. You can take advantage of the continental bonuses without it being an overseas landmass.

 

[Haig]

I think in this Civ the other empires in the game will have a bigger impact on strategies, what gets them friendly and what pisses them off.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

All England bonuses are about map control and building a large empire with many cities.

I don't see why you should stop at 3-4 cities, the more you expand earlier the less problem you will get in the late game, well you could build wonders or maybe go for a religion but how much use you get out of the free military units depend only on how many cities you found on different continents. The free units mean you can basically both build an empire and an army at the same time which make England amongst the stronger early expanders.

The main thing about the royal dockyard in my opinion is simply that it is a half priced harbor that do not use a district slot. Naturally you get some extra gold if you build it on different continents and extra ship movement but the main thing is that you can build alot of these harbours at a low cost which mean alot of trade routes for a low price which may make England one of the strongest economies if it found a large empire because each city can only have one harbour.

The museum bonus is also map control dependent, around this time you should have the redcoat which should work very well with this bonus. Use the redcoat to secure ancient sites and then send your archaeologist to collect the site. I do not know how powerful the bonus is but there seems to be some sort of theming bonus and if each great work provide an adjacency bonus to each other great work it could be a very strong bonus then you get access to it making England a extremely strong culture civ at that point if you have the control over the map.

The Redcoat looks to be very scary, a 65 strength unit with get a bonus then not being on its home continent which make it possible that this unit is actually stronger then the infantry which comes later.

The Seabegger have the ability to capture enemy ships turning them into your own ships making it a very powerful unit because of that ability.

 

[God of Kings]

That's a good strategy for England, but continents are not continents in Civ VI. You can take advantage of the continental bonuses without it being an overseas landmass.

Case in point:


Link to video.
Jump to the 24-minute mark

Madrid is right on the boundary between the continents, with Madrid being on a different continent from its newer cities.

 

[Acken]

Im never sure what people like so much about England. It looks pretty much bottom tier compared to the other ones.

Doesnt really mean it cant be fun though.

 

[trendy]

When the game's first released I'm looking forward to playing my first game as America.

I get it's probably not going to be a top tier civ, but I think its bonuses are pretty underrated right now.

Given production limitations (each settler costs more) I'm guessing we'll still see 4-5 naturally settled cities be the standard. But I expect given the lack of negatives for conquest this time around that conquest-assisted victories will be much more reasonable than what we see now. So after producing settlers crank out a small army for conquest. Take all the cities on your continent early with the op UA bonus. And cruise through the rest of the game peacefully with all your newly conquered stuff.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Im never sure what people like so much about England. It looks pretty much bottom tier compared to the other ones.

Maybe you have a to strong civilization V look on the bonuses

Anyway I never use or like ranking systems because they generally miss the whole picture and focus on specific stuff and strategies which often make you blind for other options.

I do not know how strong the museum bonus is, it may look weak but we do not know. If great works give an adjancency bonus to each other the museum bonus can be extreamly strong although it comes late.

Redcoat looks to be a fantastic unique unit if 65 strength + foregine contient bonus is true. It may very well be the most scary unique unit I have seen.

Free units is very good, actually everything that is free is very good. It plays very well with the royal dockyard who you need alot of cities to make the optimal use of.

On water heavy maps the Seabegger may be very scary comparable to stuff like the longship.

England is about building a large civilization with a huge amount of cities early on. Free units allow you to build both up your army as well as your empire, pretty comparable to having an early unique unit but unlike other early expanders England have a later unique unit so then it no longer can expand peacefully why not use your excellent unique unit to destroy the other civs. Each city near the coast can build a royal dockyard and that means trade routes which means gold and other stuff so you should have little trouble to support an army which can fight on all fronts.

As the game moves on you will get access to your museum bonus which will likely turn you into a cultural superpower if you are able to control the ancient sites but that should not be to hard with the redcoat. On the sea your excellent navy should be able to defeat even nations such as Norway which can be huge on water heavy map.

With such a large empire you should be able to outtech the other civs just simply by brute force and if needed you can use brute force to keep the other civs backwards by rasing their campuses and other districts, with naval control you will control with direction the war can travel so your cities should be relative safe. With a large trade empire you purchase many great people, especially once you can use democracy.

 

[isau]

I'll play. Here's some theory on the Aztecs. Keep in mind this is without playing the game at all and I will definitely be revising this once actually getting some feedback from gameplay decisions. The first thing I notice right away is how hard this is to do with Eurekas in the game.

Eurekas: I want to start by considering all the various Eurekas that are up for grabs. Here's a quick list of all of them available either from the start or 1 tech/policy node deep into the trees:

Science 1:
- Animal Husbandry - no eureka
- Pottery - no eureka
- Mining - no eureka
- Sailing - Found a city on the coast
- Astrology - Find a Natural Wonder
- Irrigation - Farm a Resource
- Writing - Meet another Civ
- Archery - Kill a Unit with a Slinger

Science 2:
- Masonry - Build a Quarry
- Bronze Working - Kill 3 Barbarians
- Wheel - Mine a resource
- Celestial Nav - Improve 2 sea resources
- Currency - Make a trade route
- Horseback Riding - Build a pasture

Culture 1
- Craftsmanship: Improve 3 tiles
- Foreign Trade: Discover a second continent

Culture 2
- Military Tradition: Clear a Barbarian outpost
- State Workforce: Build any District
- Early Empire: Get at least 6 Population
- Mysticism: Found a Pantheon

The order of unlocks matters. Generally, we should aim for whatever tech or policy node we're about to go for is already unlocked when we get to it. If it's not, possibly veer to a different node until the one we want is ready. Luckily for the Aztecs, there appears to be some synergy between many of the various Eurekas.

Two Eurekas stand out as being somewhat random: Astrology (meet a Natural Wonder) and Writing (meet a civ) are pure luck. However, both are likely to happen fairly early. Assuming Eagle Warriors are fairly mobile, we will hopefully be able to satisfy both of these Eurekas with just Eagle Warriors. However, I'm not sure. The fact is that timing matters--we may want a Scout early to find the civ/wonder before we start researching either of these techs. Particularly Astrology. We want Astrology good and early.

Astrology unlocks Holy Site Districts. We want this because building a District is another unlock (for State Workforce).


Build Order: Unlike most civs, possibly skip the Scout. Start immediately with Eagle Warriors. Use them as hybrid Scout/Warriors. Aim for at least 3 of them early, then Settler, then more Eagle Warriors. Possibly build 1 Slinger just for the Eureka of killing a unit with it (to get Archery). Note however that Archery is a dead-end tech that goes nowhere so it actually appears fine to just never unlock it, if we don't need it (hard to say without playing).

Upon meeting first civ, immediately declare war if it is feasible, especially if you can catch some of their units away from their home territory. You do not want to actually take their cities (probably). Or at least not too many of them. Keep them weak and to the extent possible, use them to feed a supply of Workers.

The reason for declaring so early is to avoid complications if the next civ you meet happens to be America or Scythia.

Currently unknown: Whether it will be worth attacking a city state en lieu of a major civ.


What Could Mess Us Up: A best case for the Aztecs seems to be to start close to an enemy civ. If they start far away, it may be difficult for them to walk Builders from the enemy civ to their area. If we can't find anyone to attack during the period of the game where Eagle Warriors are valuable, we're basically screwed out of one of our biggest advantages.

 

[Ornen]

I think France is VERY middle weighted...
so.

France
Spend Ancient exploring and peacefully expanding/improving cities with lots of space, and building up your population capacity... you want some Big productive cities to churn out Wonders.
(getting a religion might be nice, but don't rush it, you want a 'local' religion that boosts your pop...a Pantheon may be fine, you can kill the founder of your adopted religion later so they don't religious victory on you)

Classical keep "Buildering" but also get those Campuses/Theaters up so you can reach the Wonders in time. (also build districts that will be ready to allow you to build midgame Wonders
Don't bother with Wonders in the Ancient/classical those hammers are better used on builders/science /culture buildings..or defense)

Medieval-Renaissance, Cities should be building Wonders or building science/production districts/buildings (or other things to boost their wonder potential)...put in the chateaus for the Gold and Culture

(Use spies to manage relations and keep them peaceful until)

Renaissance-Industrial, Get the GI, clear your Home continent while finishing up your last Wonders.

Post Industrial...Probably aim for a cultural win (to use that tourism), but with a solid Wonderful continent at your back, you may be able to do anything.

What happens if you get caught up in a bunch of midgame wars? Forces you to spend a big chunk of production on units, not wonders... I know if I'm playing multi against France, that's when I'm looking to war her

 

[isau]

Following up my previous post, one of the most difficult decisions right now is on the Culture tree, which path to veer down on Turn 1. Both early Culture options appear to take a significant amount of time to work toward. The two options are:

Craftsmanship - Improve 3 tiles. Unlocks Ilkum and Agoge
Foreign Trade - Discover a second continent. Unlocks Trader Unit, Maritime Industries, and Caravanasaries

And we must also consider the unlocks both of these paths would bring us toward. I'll talk about these in a second.

For the Aztecs, unlike virtually everyone else, the Ilkum card (+30% production of Builders) is not particularly attractive. Unfortunately, Agoge *is* attractive. Agoge gives us +50% production of Melee units--and we want lots of those fast. So here I am actually kind of rethinking my last post. Perhaps it would be better to delay some of Eagle War production to after we unlock this card.

Foreign Trade has less that seems immediately necessary to the Aztecs, BUT down this path is a policy we want badly, Colonization (unlocks with Early Empire). This is the coveted +50% to building Settlers. The developers have really trolled us here though (in a great way). What unlocks Early Empire? Having 6 population. So... looks like we really want to grow our capital fast to get that unlock. And lucky for us, since we can grab Builders from our enemies, we should hopefully be great at this.

So in the end, for the Aztecs, I'm thinking the Policy tree order I will try first will be: Craftsmanship (to try to get Agoge fast as possible), aiming to get Builders yanking tiles into place while I'm working toward it get the Eureka. This will surely give time to trigger the Eureka for finding a second continent. Then, go with Foreign Trade. Then go with Early Empire.

Is any of this feasible? Well probably not. Eurekas and the randomness of maps make this really hard to find a good path, but in a good way.

 

[Acken]

Anyway I never use or like ranking systems because they generally miss the whole picture and focus on specific stuff and strategies which often make you blind for other options.

I don't know. Would you be able to argue that Morocco isn't trash tier

 

[Calouste]

Note however that Archery is a dead-end tech that goes nowhere so it actually appears fine to just never unlock it, if we don't need it (hard to say without playing).

Archery is not completely a dead-end tech. The Eureka for Machinery is owning 3 Archers.

 

[Haig]

Isau:
Remember that Aztecs get all kinds of bonuses from luxuries, so settling location is important to get as many different resources as possible.

 

[dturtle1]

Thanx for all the feedback all. Couple of things to Clarify.

England was picked at Random, I have no real comment on Civ's Tier level or anything like that. I just wanted to theorycraft it as if i was sitting at the menu, ready to play.

Most certainly if was sitting on a Continent Line or close by i would take advantage of that. The above theorycraft is assuming I am on the edge of the continent, trying to emulate England in real life at a very basic Level. By staying small at the start i am firstly not treading on my neighbours. Secondly i am saving my cities for the other Continent where all the boni lie. I dont see how expanding early on my own continent is particularly useful. If i lie near a continent line sure, but that is a different strategy.

The Power Move really is the Sea Dog powered "Instant" Navy combined with the Instant Redcoat Army. When I say Mass Colonise I am talking about 8-10 Settlers all settling Cities at the same time or within 2-3 turns of each other. City Location is not really important.(as long its coastal ) You want to have that explosive Army growth that is already at the front lines to quickly tear through whichever Civs are unlucky enough to be on the other Continent. You will want forward settle as much as possible and pump out Walls straight away to give you the extra ranged strength. You will probably need a core Army as well of ranged as well. but this all just details.

France sounds cool, Lets theorycraft France .... i'll edit the OP. I will try to keep it a similar style as the OP, As if i am sitting down ready to play.

 

[UnknownHuman]

I don't know. Would you be able to argue that Morocco isn't trash tier

Yes. Morocco is strong if well played, if you manage to be the centre of world trade you’ll be crazy rich and have a more than decent culture, then if you manage to have Petra + Kasbah on your capital you’ll have an excellent core which is as good as a city full of polders, and the Kasbah on your other cities will greatly help. Once you have the Berber cavalry you’ll be safe from land invasion. After that you can easily go for Diplomatic victory with your mountains of gold, Science victory since your cities will be huge near the end-game, or Cultural victory since you’ll probably have an excellent production for wonders, and a decent culture.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

On most maps you should have good access to atleast two continents which mean you first and second city can be settled on different continents. The only way I see your settling strategy to work if you play a new world map that have contients no civ have access to before ocean travel.

Another advantage of the England free unit bonus is that if it raze and then found "proper" english cities (to avoid conquered city penalties) it will also get a free military unit which can be worth several 100s production per unit.

 

[dturtle1]

On most maps you should have good access to atleast two continents which mean you first and second city can be settled on different continents. The only way I see your settling strategy to work if you play a new world map that have contients no civ have access to before ocean travel.

Another advantage of the England free unit bonus is that if it raze and then found "proper" english cities (to avoid conquered city penalties) it will also get a free military unit which can be worth several 100s production per unit.

Nah mate, it would work. You dont have to cheese the continent System just to make England work. Early Astronomy... no way the continent is going to be cultured out. Settle 10 Cities in the tundra if you have to but it wont come to that. Worse Comes to Worse make a damn Hole with your Navy and Core Army. Take 3 Spread Out Cities, Jam in 8 of yours... 8 Redcoats good to go to help roll up the rest of the Continent. They dont have to be amazing cities, 4 pop is enough for two trade routes which is the power of wide England.

I am not saying dont take advantage if thats what you roll,. However if you roll at the edge of your continent, with a friend(or enemy ) between you and the continent border this strategy will work, mark my words.