Tall v. Wide???

[Jakobus]

So what's the word on tall v. wide? In Civ V going tall stole the cake. In Civ VI it looks like it might not matter??? Growth is contingent on housing and amenities. So provide housing and settle on amenities, and it shouldn't matter how wide you go. Going tall might even be harder because it seems there's not a lot of options for housing. I've been watching LP's nonstop, but it's really hard to tell without getting the game and just diving in. What do you guys think?

 

[Stilgar08]

The LPs I watch and some of the articles I read state quite clearly that going wide is THE strategy right now. There are enough amenities (at least at prince difficulty) that they don't have a problem an dsince global happiness is gone (THANK YOU, ED!!!) there are basically not many restrictions... I'm sure the bar will rise to evade ICS, but for now wide is generally the better strategy. Which I welcome in general! Preventing snowballing being too easy will make or break this...

 

[ExemplarVoss]

So what's the word on tall v. wide? In Civ V going tall stole the cake. In Civ VI it looks like it might not matter??? Growth is contingent on housing and amenities. So provide housing and settle on amenities, and it shouldn't matter how wide you go. Going tall might even be harder because it seems there's not a lot of options for housing. I've been watching LP's nonstop, but it's really hard to tell without getting the game and just diving in. What do you guys think?

Not sure who you're watching, but watching Quill and Marbozir its wide by a mile (30+ techs ahead), which snowballs pretty quickly and modern era onwards is just queueing junk and ending turn. Some of the victories will be more difficult than others, but tourism, science and possibly domination look like something you can sleepwalk to.

 

[joncnunn]

In Civ VI, like Civ IV; tall vs wide is a false choice. You can, and should do both.

On a higher level than Prince, you should build more builders so you can stay ahead of the housing penalties via building farms ahead of when they are going to be worked just for the additional housing; but note that building a settler uses a pop point, and so does help when a city is near the housing capacity.

 

[Ryika]

"Tall" is pretty much impossible, as growth and yield generation don't go hand in hand for the most part, there's very low amounts of stacking, instead, cities just become more versatile as they grow. It's "go as wide as you can while growing your cities".

Which seems to work out fine, there's definitely enough internal development that is required and "empty" cities are weak enough that ICS shouldn't be much of an issue, so it looks like gameplay will be controlled, expansion.

 

[Acken]

Housing simply prevent tall for a good chunk of the game. There are also no direct bonuses to small empires or helping tall play.

As a result, tall is not a viable strategy.

 

[spfun]

Tall is dead but it won't stop me from going Tall for my early games, i will try to make it work.

 

[bite]

I know you should go tall in Civ5, but I can't help but go wide and that will probably happen here as well

 

[qadams]

I know you should go tall in Civ5, but I can't help but go wide and that will probably happen here as well

Same with me. I loved going wide in Civ 3 and Civ 4, tried to as well as I could in Civ 5, and I'm sure I will enjoy it in Civ 6.

 

[Martinus]

I love that people who never played the game declare "tall" dead. We will have to wait and see.

My personal observation is that while the game no longer penalises the warmonger for conquering and holding many cities (and all youtubers LPs I have seen seem to favour very aggressive games - much more aggressive than what I would usually do) if you want to play a peaceful builder game tall seems to have an edge on wide because of the increasing settler and district costs.

 

[Martinus]

Not sure who you're watching, but watching Quill and Marbozir its wide by a mile (30+ techs ahead), which snowballs pretty quickly and modern era onwards is just queueing junk and ending turn. Some of the victories will be more difficult than others, but tourism, science and possibly domination look like something you can sleepwalk to.

In CiV on Prince against the AI I could win with pretty much any strategy. That does not really tell you much about which strategy is better.

For instance against good AI or human players I can see how going wide can be a big weakness as you become much more vulnerable to pillaging raids and cant defend your empire just as well.

 

[Promethian]

Pillaging is going to be interesting as well. Pillaging districts gives some kind of bonus based on the district. Also I saw a screenshot showing ships getting some currency from pillaging coastal tiles.

 

[Martinus]

Pillaging is going to be interesting as well. Pillaging districts gives some kind of bonus based on the district. Also I saw a screenshot showing ships getting some currency from pillaging coastal tiles.

It may have been the Vikings though as their ships can pillage coastal tiles as if they were land units.

 

[joncnunn]

"Tall" is pretty much impossible, as growth and yield generation don't go hand in hand for the most part, there's very low amounts of stacking, instead, cities just become more versatile as they grow. It's "go as wide as you can while growing your cities".

Which seems to work out fine, there's definitely enough internal development that is required and "empty" cities are weak enough that ICS shouldn't be much of an issue, so it looks like gameplay will be controlled, expansion.

On the videos I've seen so far, it actually would have been easy to at that same time have larger population in each city and have more total cities; simply by NOT building ancient wonders and instead using those hammers for the core items of Archer - Settler pairs, Builders, Granaries, and Monuments.

 

[Jordanius of Belta]

Judging from the LPs, it's a lot easier to play Wide in Civ 6 due to the lack of global happiness that could hinder you from expanding too much. The early Housing cap almost pushes you to branch out and get a new city, too. Plus you want as much territory as possible to house those districts + Any Wonders +Tile improvements for production or strategic resources.

 

[Furycrab]

They eliminated the biggest detriment to going wide which is the stacking culture and science penalties. My initial impression is that as long as the map/land allows it, you should try to get bigger, but that they still put mechanics in place that either make it harder to hold the extra land or at least slower to develop it.

It's not like you expand and get super cities for free though. Rising district costs likely mean you'll want to specialize your cities, and while you don't get a science penalty for having a bigger empire, eventually it becomes difficult for a new city to have the districts you would want to get science or culture buildings.

However it feels more like a soft cap to going wide. You won't hit this point where settling a new city on good land is actually bad like you did in 5. Some planning and strategy can be done to "share" districts that hold buildings with AOE effects. If your economy allows it, you can always buy stuff that you currently need.

The idea of tall builds is probably dead, but I could see how a specific beeline might want you to stop expanding to get the right inspiration/eureka triggers from infrastructure.

 

[gunnergoz]

I'm guessing from watching the press release vids that wide will work well but probably with many smaller cities surrounding a few large cities interspersed as specialists in science, industry or entertainment.

 

[rreebb]

I really, really hated having to justify going beyond Tradition+4cities (to my inner minmaxer). With the large late-game bonuses from "6-tile radius" buildings, you can actually create a densely populated, industrious heartland and more expansive outposts with natural park (and military buffer) potential.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Civilization V is pretty much the odd game in the civ series. In all other games land is power you always want to become larger. In civilization III (which civilization VI seems to be the most similar to) the early game is a land grab and after the peaceful settle phase is over it is more or less all about war. Tech don't matter all that much in civilization III as the difference between units are not that large and low tech units are cheap to produce the only thing that really matter are how much land you have.

Civilization IV is also land is power but they tried to dealy the expansion phase a bit but it basically play out in the same way as civilization III although a big thing in cvilization IV is to capitalize on a key military tech.

Civilization V is the only game there you may actually be hurt by expanding.

 

[ExemplarVoss]

In CiV on Prince against the AI I could win with pretty much any strategy. That does not really tell you much about which strategy is better.

For instance against good AI or human players I can see how going wide can be a big weakness as you become much more vulnerable to pillaging raids and cant defend your empire just as well.

Prince isn't the factor here, nor will good AI ever be a concern. It purely the math. It's just the larger numbers (which, when built right, overrun the cost increases), the Area of Effect production and amenity boosts and filling in so you don't have to defend against barbarian spam, which wide defends against much better than tall (more vision, and fewer places they can spawn)