What am I doing wrong in first game?

planetfall

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Again, new to civ6 and gameplay is not as expected. I like many things about the vanilla game, but, but, but annoyed by gameplay.

My first game is a settler level and space/domination victory selected.

I expected since it was at the lowest level the game would be very easy. Here are the issues I run into:

-- crossbow is too strong on defense
-- I don't usually war monger, and yet it's impossible to keep up with the sci/turn of other civs
-- happiness has been reworked and can't just have many resources
-- city growth is extremely slow
-- too many build options before can start throwing out reasonable strength military with more power than other civs
-- city boundaries grow too slow so no place to put things like airports, harbors, etc

I find it more frustrating than fun. Is it just a huge learning curve, or does the game really have major play issues?
 
I like Civ 6 a lot but like many other fans here, I have a lot of issues with fundamental aspects of the game. For instance, I think the concept of Loyalty was half-baked and is not nearly as impactful as it could be; I think policy cards and Governors are a big downgrade from the permanent and impactful choices we had in the Civ 5 policy tree; I think with districts, Improvements make zero sense in the game anymore.

I've read a few posts from you with your feedback. Your issues, like icons being too small for you or city borders growing too slow, are issues I have never heard anyone else complain about. Compared to the fundamental stuff most people here complain about, those issues seem like small potatoes. I think you are going through new player frustrations of not understanding the game and finding small things to nitpick, but I am confident that the more you play the game and understand it, the less you will find any of these issues to be problematic.

My point is I think you'll quickly outgrow caring about these issues you've posted about (or realizing you interpreted them incorrectly) and you'll come to really love the game, or you'll like it but develop your own opinions about its core aspects.
 
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Welcome to Civ6!

Vanilla game is quite different from the expansion and small DLC experience. Mostly only simpler with less options.
From your issues I can only guess you are struggling with growing your empire in size. There was a large discussion about how Civ6 leaned away from the tall gameplay of Civ5, as there is no incentive to stop at, say, 6 cities.
You are right, that settler difficulty is rather easy, there is little interaction with other civs. It allows you to focus on building your own empire, as well playing vanilla doesnt discourage forward settling in any way than diplomacy.

For city growth, make sure you settle in good locations, having good yields on your tiles is important, and actually working those tiles too. The citizens sometimes work questionably. Also be aware of the housing mechanic. A city past its housing limit wont grow like, at all. But this can be remedied with good placement, improvements and later districts. For city boundaries, make sure you get monument in every city, as those 2 culture are worth a lot. Buying tiles isnt a crime either. If you need a tile for yields or district placement, dont shy away. "Happiness" is now quite different mechanic, but there are several tools to keep it up - settling for luxuries, trading for luxuries, policy cards, districts. Of course there are much more options in expansions, that make most players here satisfied. Build options are enabled rather quickly, sure, but you dont need to build everything in each city. If you are struggling with production, mines are your main source of it, especially since they get better as game progresses.

As for science per turn, the AI has been cranked up to focus on science too much, but the developers cut that back recently, though I cannot confirm if its the case with base game. Warmongering is somewhat discouraged (it almost breaks reasonable diplomacy), but it was common strategy to take out your first neighbor, or conquer city states, if you already built the military. Keeping up in military is mostly a deterrent, but AI usually doesnt distinguish between units and counts raw strength instead. But there is a difference in having three warriors or one knight, even though the former have 12 more strength. Also, concentration of force is usually AI weakness. In any case, you cannot wage war with singular units. Taking a city requires several melee units, two catapults if there are walls already. And I confirm, having a garrisoned crossbowman in a city makes it a lot harder to take. That is a power spike that is present in a game and should indicate you should retreat with any weak units.
 
Again, new to civ6 and gameplay is not as expected. I like many things about the vanilla game, but, but, but annoyed by gameplay.

My first game is a settler level and space/domination victory selected.

I expected since it was at the lowest level the game would be very easy. Here are the issues I run into:

-- crossbow is too strong on defense
-- I don't usually war monger, and yet it's impossible to keep up with the sci/turn of other civs
-- happiness has been reworked and can't just have many resources
-- city growth is extremely slow
-- too many build options before can start throwing out reasonable strength military with more power than other civs
-- city boundaries grow too slow so no place to put things like airports, harbors, etc

I find it more frustrating than fun. Is it just a huge learning curve, or does the game really have major play issues?
I play at Prince difficulty, with leaving all the victory conditions enabled.

Yes, production in the early game (turn number < 50) is very slow. If I haven't settled near a river, the food rate means my city doesn't grow very fast either. Compared with the "food per turn" in Civ3 or Civ4, it feels slow. In Civ6, it's important to develop some infrastructure in your first city before beginning to expand; it's also important to begin sending out settlers to claim good city sites before the AI players do.

One of the key instincts which I had to develop, differently in each Civ game, is "am I behind? Am I keeping up?" Score is often not a good indicator. Even science/turn is not a great indicator. In each of my first 3-4 games, I started out behind in techs but grew larger, outpacing them later.

One needs to build a small cadre of military, such as 2-3 slingers, 1-2 warriors, to fend off the barbarians. If I'm careful, I can keep these units around and upgrade them into archers and men-at-arms. Intersperse these builds with the infrastructure builds; maybe prioritize them before some buildings. Definitely prioritize them before completing your first districts. You don't need to start wars, but you do need a base military.

Placing / planning your districts is a whole mini-game within the game. Civ6 includes "map tacks", like push pins to stick into the map to remind you what you plan to put on a hex 100 turns from now, when you finally research flight. If you decide that you *need* a riverside hex to place an aqueduct or dam, you can buy it with gold, like you could in Civ5. That option wasn't available in Civ3 or Civ4.
 
Thank you all for your insight. I think my core issue was expectation. I expected civ6 to be just like civ5 with 2 EP's and rework of tiles from squares to hex and rework of the corruption model. There are more changes than that and it seems like changes are more extensive than from civ3 to civ4.

The science issue was resolved at this level but only by maximizing sci and even so it took until turn 200 to have a regular lead in per/turn but still behind in techs researched. That is fine, but to get the science, I had to give up tuning amendities and military. I am playing without barbs or huts as I want to see the base game dynamics before throwing barbs, huts and aggressive AI civs into the mix by going higher.

I'll get a screen shot later. All my cities are by water. Most just coast line as rivers are fewer. I haven't figured out how far apart to place cities as I'm not sure how far they expand from center. Is it just 2 tiles, like other versions, or perhaps more? Influence extends up to 9 tiles which is a big change.

One early city frustation is I wanted a line of 3 cites, one on each coast and the other in the middle. Nope, could not settle there. But later in game, Sumerians settled exactly where I wanted my middle city. I'm guessing that is because water flow changed later in game, but that's just a guess.

There are indeed many new learning opportunities. I went back to vanilla because GS and R&F added too many new changes. I don't like the GS EP but once I feel comfortable with vanilla, I expect to try R&F as different era behavior sounds like an interesting twist. GS is just way too political and unscientific for me to buy into.

So the key remaining question at this point is: what is the best way to learn the gameplay? Rather than RTFM, I tend to jump in, try something and then look up threads or pedia entries to see what went wrong and look for promising ideas on how to improve play.

Is there a better way to learn how to play the game at an advanced level?????
 
So the key remaining question at this point is: what is the best way to learn the gameplay? Rather than RTFM, I tend to jump in, try something and then look up threads or pedia entries to see what went wrong and look for promising ideas on how to improve play.

Is there a better way to learn how to play the game at an advanced level?????
The bolded phrase above is my preferred approach; I don't think you're doing anything wrong, and I think your Civ 5 experience should carry you most of the way. However, you're right - it is a very different game from Civ 5 in many regards. But it's only a matter of time before you join the rest of us in complaining about the AI ;)

YouTube videos or written guides are a good way to learn how to play at a Deity level. I'm not sure of specific players to watch--hopefully someone else can chime in there.
 
So here's the map, lagash is the city placed where I wanted to place it. Since you requested it.
 

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You couldn't place a city there? If it was greyed out it would mean no access to water. Only when it's red does it mean you can't settle. I can't think of any good explanation not to be able to settle that tile.

Your position isn't terribly great, which would explain your difficulty with science. I think you got unlucky with map generation in this case. Usually you'll have more mountains, which are important for Campus adjacency.
 
You could have placed Campuses in these two spots. I can't quite tell if the spots you chose are better.
civ6.png


Keep in mind that after revealing a strategic resource, you can no longer place a district there. But you can place a district before unlocking the tech that reveals a strategic resource. If after revealing a strategic resource there's already a district on the tile, you'll accumulate that strategic resource as if you had placed an improvement on it.

Check the Civilopedia for the terrain types in which each strategic can spawn. For instance, if you find a good spot for a campus, but it is flat grassland, it would be wise to delay Husbandry until you have placed the campus (you don't actually need to finish construction). Then you can research Husbandry, and if Horses do appear on the tile, you'll get the Horses as well. If you research Husbandry before placing the campus, and Horses appear on the tile, you'll later not be able to place a Campus there.

Similar scenario, but it's Hills rather than flat grassland. In that case, delay Bronze Working, which reveals Iron. Same reason as above.

Any time you're approaching such techs, check your map and make sure the places where they are likely to spawn won't ruin your potential district placement.
 
Interesting. I didn't choose top one as niter resource is there and the lower one has coal as resource. I assumed putting campus there would remove access to the resource.

Stepping back, I thinking I need to rethink my learning process and no longer strive for playing a full game, but just play up partway to see how can improve. Maybe to turn 200 at most. I can't redo this game, well guess I could from turn XYZ, as habit of saving game every 10 turns as bad experiences with previous versions crashing and losing a ton of work. I'm far enough along to see I have a major major issue in this game: gold availability as well as unhappy cities. Or maybe just play to turn 100. In this game I had 6 cities by then and it took til turn 170 to have first city on other land mass.

Any suggestions which plan would be better? Play same map several times to turn 100 and see differences, or go to turn 170 to make sure can make it to another land?
 
Interesting. I didn't choose top one as niter resource is there and the lower one has coal as resource. I assumed putting campus there would remove access to the resource.
Like I said, you won't be able to place districts there once they actually appear on the map. But the Niter was only revealed once you researched Military Engineering, and the Coal once you revealed Industrialization, so there would have been plenty of time to build campuses there (assuming those were early cities, which I think at least Cologne was).

...as bad experiences with previous versions crashing and losing a ton of work.
I also save regularly (more than once every 10 turns), for the same reasons. But in case you haven't noticed, if you ever need to just go back to a previous turn, when you go to the "load game" screen there's an option to access saved games in the cloud. That's where the autosaves are kept. I think it autosaves every turn, and keeps autosaves for the last few turns (or something like that, can't quite recall now). I sometimes mis-click or forget to do something important in a turn, and accessing an autosave is obviously better in this situation than going back up to a manual save.
Any suggestions which plan would be better? Play same map several times to turn 100 and see differences, or go to turn 170 to make sure can make it to another land?
I don't know. I think just watching playthroughs on youtube might be helpful. Some of them are too quick, others are more careful with talking and explaining what they're doing.

I've gone through this video quickly just now, it looks useful. It's only 2 years old:

Probably a good idea to set playback speed to 1.25x or 1.5x.
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One quick tip: given the option, always settle Plains Hills adjacent to river over any other resourceless tile. A city automatically sets yields on a tile to a minimum of 2 Food and 1 Production. Plains Hills grant 1 Food / 2 Production, so settling there will grant you 2 Food / 2 Production in the city centre. I no longer remember how it used to work in Civ 5.

Settling resources is often very useful. If you settle luxuries, you'll have immediate access to the luxury, even if you didn't research the appropriate tech. Same with strategic resources (though you gain the strategic only after researching the appropriate tech). You can also settle bonus resources. It may look like they disappear, but if you use the "search" button above the minimap, and search for that resource, it will still highlight the tile you settled.

On the other hand, if you settle features, like Woods or Marsh, the feature will disappear, and you won't gain the feature food/prod bonus.

Edit: changed video. I think Potato McWhiskey's video is more useful.
 
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I'll get a screen shot later. All my cities are by water. Most just coast line as rivers are fewer. I haven't figured out how far apart to place cities as I'm not sure how far they expand from center. Is it just 2 tiles, like other versions, or perhaps more? Influence extends up to 9 tiles which is a big change.

One early city frustation is I wanted a line of 3 cites, one on each coast and the other in the middle. Nope, could not settle there. But later in game, Sumerians settled exactly where I wanted my middle city. I'm guessing that is because water flow changed later in game, but that's just a guess.

There are indeed many new learning opportunities. I went back to vanilla because GS and R&F added too many new changes. I don't like the GS EP but once I feel comfortable with vanilla, I expect to try R&F as different era behavior sounds like an interesting twist. GS is just way too political and unscientific for me to buy into.
All your cities are coastal, that is not terrible, but you might want an aqueduct in those, if possible. When you have a Settler active, the game switches to settler lens, showing the bonus housing values from rivers and coast (shades of green), spots without any bonus housing (grey) and unsettleable spots (in red). The minimal distance between cities is generally 3 tiles: city - tile - tile - tile - city. I guess you could have settled in Lagash, you just didnt know.
Cities can work tiles up to three tiles away, but can grow borders in five tiles (at least) with culture.

Judging from your screenshot, you are overdoing military. The amount you have on screen could easily take out Gilgamesh, yet you are hardbuilding more, even very slowly (34, 45 turns), and losing a lot of gold per turn on maintenance. It is always better to build army earlier and upgrade with gold than build late.
Another note is lack of builders, there are many unimproved tiles, which would give immense value to the cities. The amount of builder units needed is much higher than in previous games.

Vanilla Civ6, RF and GS expansions are quite different to play. I think you will learn three different games that way, rather than expanding upon vanilla game.

One detail to the mentioned above - horses are visible from start in vanilla and RF game. The revealing is only valid with GS.
 
Thank you. Just upgraded all military as was planning to take over another civ, before that it was low. Alas, not enough gold production with heavy gold loss/turn. Not sustainable, so aborted game.
 
Just a quick update. Thank you for your suggestions, I have now reached comfort and game does not seem impossible, more like normal new EP learning curve.
 
Thank you. Just upgraded all military as was planning to take over another civ, before that it was low. Alas, not enough gold production with heavy gold loss/turn. Not sustainable, so aborted game.
You don't need a lot of military units. Numbers don't matter much since the map is always crowded and difficult to maneuver. Any units that cannot engage at the same time are only useful to rotate those in front line for healing. Also AI lacks commitment and once you capture their cities they won't immediately attempt to take it back, but withdraw and plan next moves, so your priority shouldn't be to defeat them, but to capture their cities.

Unlike brainless AI, you don't need to build up the strength or have a large standing army, but only to build a proper set of units for planned invasions (siege, heavy cav, ranged etc), and keep some gold or faith to purchase units for emergency. What's much more important are information (watch your neighbors' movement), the ability to move units fast (to concentrate force) and to mass produce or purchase them when needed. A large standing army that moves 2 steps a turn and block each other is just a waste of gold and reduce your other capabilities.

If you can wait until railroad is available, or use mods (city road, builders build road) for builders to build roads, it'd make moving troops a lot easier. I'd ask alliance or open-border from the target first, send in my builders or engineers to pave all the roads for their cities (you can build roads in neutral or enemy land), and then declare war - all civilians out safe instantly, then military units move in, and builders/engineers follow behind to cover any uncovered roads - river bridges, hills and woods are highest priority.

Or wait until you have bombers or use navy. 1 bomber of yours is worth 100 of AI's tanks.
 
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