What type of game setup do you usually do?

[Jimdigriz]

Huge / Marathon / Continents (one or the other), maybe Archipelago sometimes / no special modes / disaster level 1. Oh and I reduce the amount of Civ's to give everyone more space - those maps just aren't Huge enough for me. Ill take the City States down a bit too.

 

[Abaxial]

Standard size map using Got Lakes? with one AI civ deleted. Usually Secret Societies or Heroes.

 

[VGhost]

I keep most things standard. Sometimes will take out culture, relgion, and/or diplomatic victory types. Almost always play fractal map. Difficulty/size depends how I'm feeling.

 

[Horizons]

Shuffle map. Nothing worse than cherry picking a map type and playing the same thing over and over again. Random leader. Standard size and speed. Can't begin to imagine the tedium of Epic speed (in Civ5 it meant everything took 20 or more turns to produce and you spent a lot of time shuffling a very small number of units around the map. In Civ6, the prevalence of the one-shot-kill from cities and camps would mean you have even less units to shuffle around).

No game 'modes' enabled because the game is buggy and annoying and imbalanced enough as it is.

 

[9gkj548hkm20vk79dj689bnj4]

random leader
normal map size,
normal speed (500 turns is plenty for me),
maybe 9-10 players including me, encourages early wars
prince (whatever the normal difficulty is)
"fractal" map type but I'm never too impressed by the land given to me because it looks no different than "continents" most of the time.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

King
Continents
Normal speed
Standard size
Leader Pool with Gaul, Babylon, Maori and Russia excluded
I actually have mine stored as a config because I am doing a series on YT.

Edit: Tech & Civic shuffle and Corporations & Monopolies mode

 

[iammaxhailme]

About 75% of my games are the following:

- Emperor Difficulty
- I choose my civ but not the AIs
- Small size (6 civs, increase CS's to 12)
- quick speed
- Seven Seas or Continents & Islands
- Legendary Start on
- Usually no modes, but occaisonally I will use Monopolies and/or Heroes and/or Societies. Used to use them more but the AI are so incompetent it makes the game too easy

I do other things sometimes but honestly this late in civ 6's life, I mostly just do the same template of things over and over because I'm only playing civ to have something to do with my hands that doesn't require too much attention while I watch movies or TV. When the game was new and fresh I did a lot more different things

 

[Melkus]

Surprised to see that standard and slower paces are still so dominant. I never went with anything faster than normal in previous editions, but this game feels just not suited to so many turns.

My go-to settings - I've managed to address my main frustrations (pacing, high predictability, unchallenging late game).

- Quick speed, Fractal with low seas or Seven Seas, hot and wet climate (less snow, more trees), add a civ or two, reduce city states (if using barb clans)

- Modes:
Tech shuffle is mandatory (I just enjoy the bit of chaos it adds, and AIs don't skip governments anymore),
Barb Clans are fine
other modes are sloppily executed fluff, unfortunately (ranging from enjoyable and broken to plain silly)

- Science / Culture slowed down a bit with the brillant and very flexible Take your time Ultimate (no need to go overboard - usually set it on 125% and low scaling) Mitigates the drawbacks of quick speed (armies obsolete when reaching the border).The balance of yield types is off since Gathering Storm, anyway.

- ARS Improved movement - makes limited stacking possible and gives more freedom of movement (no, it's not ideal because the game is not designed for stacking - i.e. it's too easy to hide your vulnerable units - but it's still more fun). CIV7 has to introduce more stacking options.
Most importantly, it makes the tactically inept AI a bit more dangerous. (You will still outsmart them, of course, but with Late Game AI and stacking, AI armies can actually be overwhelming if you're not careful. )
Also, I play quick speed, so units have to go faster to scale.

- Late Game AI and Real Strategy

Late Game improves AI scaling - slower starts, but an avalanche of creative bonuses in later eras - anything higher than Emperor is pretty brutal and can lead to insane unit carpets (even with stacking). Try it if you want to see a seemingly smooth-running game come apart. Even with Emperor this provides a very different experience where you can take a lead early, but still have to watch your back and can't afford to fool around.
Real Strategy makes the AI a bit more efficient, but I especially like the greater variance between different personalities.

- Hammurabi replaced with a modded, eureka-free alternative.

I may use some rulechanging mods for fun like Sukritact's Oceans, Silk & Spice: Trade Route Rework, but these don't change the dynamics of a game much.

Also, I think Historical Spawn Dates is a brillant and underrated mod to play around with (not for every game though, doesn't make sense to use with Late Game AI, and you need to invest some time to learn the options - but it's worth it).

 

[Krajzen]

Recently I came to prefer Pangea over Continents in games like this, because
a) A single huge continent with all civs is imo more reflective of real world history, where the crushing majority of civilizations and an important stuff has happened on one "continent" of Asia - Europe - Africa, than one some alien world of three symmetrical land masses
b) A game world with a lot of civilizations being entagled in interactiona with each other on the same land mass, is way more interesting than a game world with them being compartmentalized into small sets of 3 - 4
c) Those games AIs always fail to do colonialism anyway, so there is no exciting rivalry here
d) Those games always struggle with naval gameplay in general

 

[Nettronic]

I always use Enormous Continents+Islands maps with 25+ Civs or more. I find small maps with just a few civs to be boring and very easy. More Civs means more geopolitical dynamics and trade. It makes things interesting. But it also means alot longer games. My games usually take weeks at a time even if I put in marathon hours. It makes the game very challenging, because there's always some opponent who is running away with Culture or Science somewhere in a far continent across the map. I like to set up my games with alot of civs and City states, and then I rush my settlers to claim as much land as possible. I find I'm never really done settling, because I'm always exploring new land on the map. Under these conditions, I've found that Diplomatic victory tends to be the victory type that happens the easiest for me because there are so many city states and civs I can be friendly with. There's always a ton of other Civs asking for humanitarian aid from a natural disaster, and that's easy diplomatic victory points. As for game modes, I like the Heroes and Legends, and the corperations. I've tried the barbarian one once, but I didn't like how barb camps become cities. I've also done Secret Societies, but I hated seeing hordes of Cultists and Vampires running around. I like my Civ games to feel somewhat realistic to history, rather than fiction/fantasy-ish.

I just wish I could figure out a way to stop the coast from getting flooded and submerged! I thought I found a setting to make sure it didn't happen, but that setting didn't work. When you play with that many civs, there's always a hand full that burn coal early and often, which causes the sea levels to rise very fast before any one can even get close to building the Coastal Barrier walls.

What size maps and how many civs do you play? How long does your games usually take? What victory types come easiest for your play style?

I usually shuffle civ and maps but I like them big.

I don't like shuffling maps, for the reasons already pointed out in this thread, but selecting one to boost your civ seems like cheating. However if I get a water civ and pangea, I am rerolling LOL

When I played with my son on a intranet game, I did play with some of the barb modes and/or monopolies and have thrown in secret societies once in a while (I have 5 of 5 dlcs on epic games). He is a min/max player, where as I tend to play the hand that is dealt, probably because of the length of time it takes to play my games and the lack of follow through on ideas.

On Desktop I play epic/marathon games. On laptop which I am currently demoted to because of house renos, standard size and speed. My limited time frame to play, tends to make games last weeks at least. IT makes it hard to stay focused on what you were planning Which is why I fall into a "play the hand you are dealt"

Dom victory is arguably easiest. Especially if you pick certain civs. I had Tomyris last game. By the time walls were up in enemy civs I had already conquered capitals on 3 of them. I prolonged the end game just to keep it fun and tried to eliminate ALL cities owned by enemy civs saving capitals for last. I ended up with 82 cities. pumping out 2500 science and culture per turn. Had to stop and reload to avoid a religious victory. I was popping out a couple apostles every turn by the end game and converting cities before I conquered them instead of after. (Inquistors are cheaper than apostles)

IA diplo victory is the next easiest. Done this twice on my laptop and once was an accident.

Science victory, usually if I am going for this I try to be within a few moves of another type of victory as well. Cultural or diplo.

Cultural (tourism) Slow game and if you can, get Cristo Redentor and the wonder that lets you pick apostle promotions use religion to push your culture even after enlightenment. Finish off with rock bands and broadcast centers. I guess stay at war to avoid this victory if going for something else. My last game I was making 2700 Culture per turn by the end and was amazed I had not won that way by accident. If I ever made peace with a culture I made war again with another culture the same turn.

Score. This one can be easy or not. It definitely leans towards DOM (empire appears to be scaled heavily), I finished the Tomyris game in the 4500 point range. But I had captured 74 cities . I do not like those victories so avoid this one. But I do use the score to see where I am amongst other civs during the game.

 

[Leucarum]

Usually continents/islands or pangaea

Usually Barbarian clans and secret societies

Usually Either Emperor or Deity depending on whether I want to play relaxed and goof around, or have a challenge

Excluded leader pool Jayavaraman and Pedro (Their music makes my ears bleed), Hammurabi (for not liking the out of control barbarians he generates), Peter (I don't really want Russia in my games at the moment).

Usually disaster level 0 - not a fan of the huge randomness.

 

[Tech Osen]

Emperor
Huge map, small continents.
High sea level
Secret societies and corporations.
Random civ unless there are new leaders that still need to go into the Hall of Fame.

 

[Papa Mike]

Standard size, Small Continents or Continents and Islands, Epic speed, Immortal level.
Secret Societies and Corporations.

Struggling to move to Deity.

 

[LMT]

Emperor (The most fun for me. It's not too challenging as I can usually--though not always--win however I want with a little bit of focus.)
Fractal, splintered fractal, small continents, or archipelago (especially if playing Kupe!)
Standard size
Standard speed
Max amount of city/states
Sea level high
Every other setting standard/random (though sometimes I like new for age of the Earth)
Tech/Civic shuffle (A must for me! I think this should be the default setting for Civ 7.)
Sometimes barb clans, but definitely no other game modes

I'll admit, I'm addicted to Kupe, though Frealanor is really fun as well. Whenever there's a new leader available, I play on them, but will almost always play Kupe when I've won with everyone already.

 

[queenpea]

No matter the size of the map, I always max out the civ and city state count to force everyone into small, tall, and tight empires.

 

[Horizons]

Think I'm done playing on Emperor. The AI cheats so flamboyantly and puts its BS in your face so much it just feels like I'm being punished from turn 1 till the end of the game. This ain't no fun no more.

 

[Ordnael]

Playing on a Nintendo Switch, so no mods
Scaling back from Immortal to Emperor...this way I can win without reloads

Got addicted to naval warfare, but I won last game on a continents map (so boring...) Although it's easy to get all strategic resources with bigger land masses!

Need to rethink if I need to keep going for 10+ pop cities and be more liberal about settling on coast without access to fresh water.

Always monopolies, secret societies and heroes on! If culture industry bug got fixed would like to try dramatic ages again.

Never plan what type o VC I'll get so i end up scrambling for a CV!

I like getting more mileage for my bows so I play epic. Huge maps!

 

[Vandlys]

I always use Enormous Continents+Islands maps with 25+ Civs or more. I find small maps with just a few civs to be boring and very easy. More Civs means more geopolitical dynamics and trade. It makes things interesting. But it also means alot longer games. My games usually take weeks at a time even if I put in marathon hours. It makes the game very challenging, because there's always some opponent who is running away with Culture or Science somewhere in a far continent across the map. I like to set up my games with alot of civs and City states, and then I rush my settlers to claim as much land as possible. I find I'm never really done settling, because I'm always exploring new land on the map. Under these conditions, I've found that Diplomatic victory tends to be the victory type that happens the easiest for me because there are so many city states and civs I can be friendly with. There's always a ton of other Civs asking for humanitarian aid from a natural disaster, and that's easy diplomatic victory points. As for game modes, I like the Heroes and Legends, and the corperations. I've tried the barbarian one once, but I didn't like how barb camps become cities. I've also done Secret Societies, but I hated seeing hordes of Cultists and Vampires running around. I like my Civ games to feel somewhat realistic to history, rather than fiction/fantasy-ish.

I just wish I could figure out a way to stop the coast from getting flooded and submerged! I thought I found a setting to make sure it didn't happen, but that setting didn't work. When you play with that many civs, there's always a hand full that burn coal early and often, which causes the sea levels to rise very fast before any one can even get close to building the Coastal Barrier walls.

What size maps and how many civs do you play? How long does your games usually take? What victory types come easiest for your play style?

I'm probably a minority here, but I love tall over wide just for the sake of click-fatigue. I don't feel Civ has that many interesting dynamics going on when building very wide, so I use mods to have more civs and city states on a map. I often play duel with 6 civs and the same number of city states.
Sometimes I like to go for TSL huge but I often grow tired of it because it takes so long just clicking through things. I find that even on Deity it's barely any course correction unless someone attacks.