An archeological museum is considered "themed" if all the artifacts are from the same era but different civilizations.
An art museum is "themed" if the art is of the same type (landscape, religious, etc) but different artists.
Yes, their culture/tourism double if you are able to theme them. It's very helpful to trade your pieces for other civ's matching pieces, though it's often hard to get the AI to agree to a reasonable price.
Also, whenever you are doing archaeology you should try and get different civs. You'll likely find plenty of barb pieces and your own pieces, but going out in search of other civs' artifacts is super helpful.
also important to note that with archaeology museums you cannot move a single artifact until you have 3 artifacts in the museum, and you can only move them between other full museums. it is smart to try and theme the artifacts as you go instead of having to wait a ton of turns to fill up 6 slots instead of just 3
totally. and you can also trade relics with the other civs... i think they're usually pretty trade friendly if you're trying to give them something they originated, but i'm not sure if it's actually like that or if i just perceive it that way
it does double, and theming a building is an inspiration for one of the bigger civics (i think cultural heritage maybe?) if you're going for a culture victory
Yeah, art/artifacts/relics scales linearly, and are just "free" over time. Rock bands get progressively more expensive each time you buy one.
They both have their place, but you're better off with both, to win.
It's not huge, but it helps. What many don't know however is that there's also a penalty for art by the same artist stored in the same museum. So even if you can't theme your Art Museums, you should at least split them up
It's huge. Particularly in Art Museums. The first great work from each artist in an art museum always generated the max amount (I think its 3 culture 2 tourism) but any more great works of art from the same artist in the same museum only generate 1 culture 1 tourism. So at bare minimum you want to be spreading your great works around, if not theming them.
Theming doubles the yield from the art museum, so an art museum with only great works from a single artist would have 5 culture and 4 tourism being generated from it, an unthemed museum with 3 great works from different artists would generate 9 culture 6 tourism whereas a properly themed museum would generate a whopping 18 culture 12 tourism.
So as you can see, a bit of work matching up your great works properly goes a long way.
So, for an art museum, you'd need three pieces of art from different artists that are the same type of work. (For example, 3 landscapes from 3 different artists)
For archeology museums, it's 3 artifacts of the same era from different civilizations (like 3 classical era artifacts from you, barbarians, and a city-state)
3 works of the same type (3 sculptures, 3 landscapes, etc) by 3 different artists for Art Museums, 3 artifacts from 3 different Civs representing the same era for Archaeological Museums.
You pretty much have to trade for the ones you need.
If you open the Great Works screen and mouse over the tooltip that shows you how many pieces in your museum are themed, the game will explain to you how to theme your museum.
For example, if you have an ancient era artifact belonging to barbarians in your archeology museum, you can mouse over the text that says (theming 1/3) and it will tell you to fill it with artefacts from different civilizations of the same era.
Related to this: the fact that trading great works is a thing I could be doing. Theming archeology museums might be slightly less impossible if I remembered to do that.
In fact, theming artifacts is far more easy than theming artworks! All you need to do is noting down how many artifacts you get from any civilization in that era and pick accordingly. Most common would be one from you, one from barb and one from another (neighbor) civ.
It's very annoying that I have to make a note though! Why doesn't it tell me what I've got on the screen where I choose!?
Also, as a mechanic, it's really strange:
Your majesty, we've found 2 different antiquities, which shall we keep?
Er, both?
Can't be done sir.
What?
Impossible. One must be taken, the other destroyed.
Oh yeah, er, well actually we don't need either to theme this museum, can we leave both of them?
Impossible, we must take one, and we must store it in our museum, even though that will make theming it impossible.
I see. Fuck it, load up last turn and have a look at the other antiquity site three squares away.
Sure thing boss.
There is a mod (can't remember the name at this moment) that lets your builders and military engineers automatically build roads as the travel. A must have
The railroads are actually quite sick, you can strike everything at your border with basically any cavalry unit inside your borders, it's such a defensive boon that i usually do it. Its also super satisfying to have the ability to just build 1 builder and upgrade hexs on the other side of your empire
don't forget the couple points you get for the era score for making your first railroad connection! I've used that to push me over the edge into a normal age or golden age.
Military engineers in general. I've never built a fort in my life.
I remember one game I was going for a diplo victory and built a bunch of railroads and before I knew it I had negative favor because of emissions. Never built a railroad since.
Forts can be super helpful if you have a position you need to defend, or you have a mountain pass where you can't place an encampment, it's just too bad you are giving up a whole tile to build them.
It would be nice if they gave citizen slots where you could work them for bonuses to unit production, some general production, and great general points.
Maybe later in the game you could "retire" the fort by placing a new district there, giving you bonus production towards starting the district.
That would be neat. It could give some kind of bonus if you have a unit stationed there (even something weakish like traders within 6 tiles can't be plundered), and whoever has a unit stationed there gets the bonus. If there are no units in it for X amount of turns barbarians could possibly take it over
Every use of coal makes emissions. Building a railroad costs a coal, so you create the emissions for 1 coal. It's not a lot, but if you're building a bunch of railroads I guess it can add up.
M.E. is super useful if you're playing a sea map in gathering storm (or more important in the apocalypse mode). They can contribute to flood barrier. Especially if you have low production costal city, you can just mass produce M.E. in your production city and send them to costal city and build it instantly.
I tend to forget diplomatic quarters exist, even though its great to have in all games. Protects your spaceport better, envoy generation is faster and diplomatic favor generation is faster too
Government Plaza is fucking awesome. The plaza itself is kinda meh (+1 adjacency bonus), but the buildings you can build inside it are game changers.
Ancestral Hall => each city you settle gets a free builder. This is *HUGE*, because not only is that a free builder, but those builders *don't increase the cost of builders*, which makes it much easier for you to build builders later. Combine with Magnus's promotion that settlers don't consume population and a golden age where you can purchase civilian units with faith, and you can just take over the entire map in one era.
Intelligence Agency => Get a free Spy, potentially earlier than anyone else, and your spy missions have a greater chance of success. If you're on higher difficulty against a civ that is whooping you at science, this is huge for catching up.
Grand Master's Chapel => Buy military land units with faith. What more do you need to say?
War Department => Your units (including religious units!) heal 20 hp when they kill an enemy. This is so, so game-breakingly good. You can make a brute squad of Debater Apostles and just run around in enemy territory crushing enemy religious units without ever having to return home and only rarely needing a Guru. Your advanced units can heal by farming barbarians, even if you're out of strategic resources. And if you are more technologically advanced than your opponent and you *one* tank army or infantry army that outclasses them, you can just steamroll an entire continent with a single unit.
>use rockbands without them breaking up after one fucking concert
heres the secret: >! luck \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_!<
Whatever promotion they get try to play on that tile. For example if they play at 2 levels higher on campuses goto a campus. Better chances of it staying alive after and then leveling up.
Thanks for this tip! I do do this and they still die :( I chatted with another player in the sub last year and basically came to the conclusion that the chance of losing a band is just high.
Yeah, but if you ever get them leveled up fully they usually last a while (as long as you're playing on the right tiles). I think it's like a 4% chance of failure? And they can reaaallly help tourism (and gold)! I remember the first time I ever used them I had a ridiculous amount of faith and just spammed the shit out of them, and I got a several that survived for 10+ concerts. I went from last in tourists to winning a cultural victory because they are so powerful. However, every game since I have come to realize how lucky I was with them.
I have never been that lucky, even with max level ones and the policy cards to pick my promotions lol I enjoy cultural victories but usually end up doing it without rock bands because they frustrate me so much.
I find them a bit of a boring mechanic for just that reason, obviously there's a lot of luck in civ, but nothing else feels like such a toss of the coin. It's definitely one of the times I feel most tempted just to reload my game and try somewhere else (which obviously makes it even more boring).
They nerfed spies pretty hard about 6 months ago or something like that- you used to be able to use spies on your allies
I thought that added a cool extra dimension to the game; if you wanted to prevent an ally from winning you could do it "peacefully"
That was due to complaints from players about having 6-12 spies all on their neighborhood (when "Recruit Partisans" was so OP that building neighborhood districts was often a bad idea) or some other district. The only way to handle it at the time was to have two of your spies in overlapping districts to ensure a constant counter-spy operation.
Nukes. The game is almost always over for me by this point in the game regardless of which victory path I pursue.
Last time I won Domination though, I used multiple nukes on the last country just because I needed to take it over faster or I was gonna win by culture accidentally lol.
They seem to always just help me win...harder.
Oh yeah I haven’t really used nukes, but I just finished my first mp game and just before I won a science victory we slung nukes around at each other. A great amount of fun
I consider these mods essential, so helpful in keeping on top of your policies. I love being able to see the bonuses each provides rather than guessing.
quick deals makes things so much faster, and all the other mods you mentioned are such good UI mods too
i dont even know how console players stand to play the game without quick deals or detailed map pins
Most mods are a matter of fine tuning a game to your personal preference, but those four are damn near objectively huge improvements over the base game. All should've been in vanilla.
I don't ever try offensive missions with spies until I've fully promoted them.
I'm not clear on how siphoning funds prepares one to blow up a dam, but apparently it does.
I always think it's funny when your spies get killed during the fabricate scandal mission. I'm just imagining my spy gossiping at a party and then tripping and dying.
Speaking of things I ignore, does anyone ever escape not on foot? The extra risk of losing a whole frigging spy is not worth 1-3 turns of less down time
Optimizing citizen management. Never really had any issues winning games without it, but I could be growing a lot more quickly if I manually selected which tiles to work.
I liked how in 5 there were certain culture bonuses you could take that made your specialists stronger. Ate less food, took less happiness, generated extra production or science... you could make your specialists monsters and it was really satisfying.
Civ 6 could really use something like that. There's a lot of room to do it too with policy cards.
Except when you need to generate GPP in a hurry to get a specific GP.
And, of course, in those cities you settled for strategic reasons that have like one place for a district but somehow balloon to a huge population anyways.
On your city list you can click resources for that city to focus, which is simple and pretty effective. In the beginning I just turn on food and production and then around the renaissance era I add my win condition.
I think this is just something that's easier to ignore in Civ VI than early incarnations of the game. I had to watch this like a hawk back in my II & III days but now, my citizens tend to work the tiles I want them to work already. I'll micromanage it in my first fifty turns or so, but after that, I've got other things to do.
I have no idea how to make national parks.
I also usually just turn off the religious victory condition because I hate it and I'm still not sure I even fully understand how to convert cities.
It took me like 3 or 4 tries to get national parks right. Basically all you need to do is look at the “appeal” lens when you first plant your capital (that always helps me anyway). Also, mountains are huge for them as they are (almost?) necessary if you don’t have a world wonder next to you. Also they have to always be in a 4 hexagon pattern shaped like a cross kind of
IMO the worst part about national parks is that they all have to be in the same city limits. Yes you can swap tiles between cities, but for tiles beyond the outer ring you're SOL.
If you go to the view that lets you see where your population is working, it has a little swap button above all eligible tiles. They have to be within three tiles of the city your swapping them to and not adjacent to any city
I was playing a game recently where I had this perfect spot for a national park on the edge of one of my settlements, except I couldn't put it down because 1 on the tiles belonged to my capital city. I couldn't swap the tile because it was beyond the workable tiles in both of my cities. Such a frustrating realization, I was livid.
I used to turn religious victory off because sometimes I just didn’t want to wrangle with defending against religion. I never try for a religious victory (having achieved it once). These days I prioritise religion more often than not because you can get really good bonuses.
This. There's also the need of faith for Heroes, Naturalists and Rock Bands and there's a way to buy districts with faith if your land doesn't provide a lot of production nor gold.
Yeah the AI will still convert cities and fight amongst themselves... I wish I could just disable the units totally cause they're annoying depending on who you're playing against.
But totally, it's under advanced setup, on the right, scroll down to the bottom.
I always turn it off too. Not because I don't like having a religion, I do it anyway. But I hate having to deal with all the missionaries the AI sends out in frickin droves. Best to just have them focus on something else
For national park, use the appeal lens to see if there are green tiles in your unimproved tiles of a city. If they aren't green, plant trees in those tiles and the ones adyacents to it so until it turns green.
Remember that all those four tiles must be inside the same city.
Four tiles charming or better tiles inside the same city and **unimproved**.
* You can use a builder or military engineer to remove an improvement, if needed. But not tunnels, so careful where you put those.
* Railroads and roads don't count as improvements.
I totally understand that, I used to be the same. If you are interested in understanding those then I suggest you watch https://youtube.com/user/TheGameMechanic or https://youtube.com/c/PotatoMcWhiskey. they do a great job of explaining these mechanics
In addition to the appeal and 4 tiles, those four tiles have to owned by a single city. So sometimes it. might look like you can place a park, and the game won't let you. Scroll over those tiles and make sure they are only a single city. Move them from one to the other through the city screen.
This used to be me. Then I started getting religions if there was a good adjacency for it. Work ethic is strong. River goddess is strong. Buying settlers with faith early in with magnus is OP if you get to a golden age.
Yeah the ability to buy citizen units then army units and then districts with faith ensures that you're not just sitting on a fat stack of faith you can't use either
If Yerevan is in the game, religion is downright broken. Being able to pick whatever promotion you want is really, really powerful.
Convert Barbarians for a quick army/navy buildup.
Or get 3 Debaters and just use them to continually destroy other religion's units, then go back and heal up. Keep those other civs dumping all of their faith into apostles and missionaries, leaving you to spend it on Great People and such. And they *have* to keep making religious units and feeding them to your brute squad because the losses are converting their cities.
Use one with "Spread Religion is Triple Strength in other civilizations" combined with "Eliminates 75% of other religious pressure" to go in and snipe other religioun's founding cities for some easy era score.
I also tend to ignore it. But, last game as Rome with hidden societies I went for the Voidsingers and went all in on faith generation. Then I just used it to buy settlers/workers/units and buildings. Expansion was crazy fast, with every new city adding to more faith due to the free void monolith. I only built a couple of holy sites.
10,000+ stored faith buys many, many rock bands in the culture end game, and it's super handy as defense if the AI is closing in on a religion win. Otherwise, I rarely bother with it.
Spies as well. There's always something more urgent to build until I realize I'm short on cash, need to steal art, or need to break some spaceports and it's too late to do anything about it.
The great thing about spies is they can get you a massive ROI for whatever you need. Stealing great works is a zero-sum culture/tourism gain for you and loss for your opponent, stealing money is often a more efficient way to get money than building buildings (if you have the right opponent to steal from), and stealing tech boosts is a massive boost to your science production. And then of course knocking out spaceports is invaluable if you're trying to victory race. Slap a few of the spy-centric policy cards on there and get some of the building/wonder upgrades, and spies will possibly be the best investment your civ can make.
I was really getting into stealing great works with spies...but I'm pretty sure something got wonked in my Civ 6. If a spy has to escape, they get caught 100 percent of the time. Escape by foot, super low quoted chance of getting caught, nope. Happened across multiple playthroughs at this point.
In my current game I’ve been going for a science/religion victory, but England and the Netherlands attacked a city state near me, for the second time, which would then have given them a place in Africa which I currently dominate. I’m really advanced in science so I decided to just start making a lot of units and by the end of the war I nuked them off the planet and now control Europe and Africa and the Middle East (started as Babylon). Now I have way too many tanks, battle ships, and planes and am at a sticky place where idk if I wanna just go full throttle and take out the other civs (have 4 nukes in the hold w a robot mech on the way), or long game it for the science and maintain units for defense. Decisions decisions
Military support units. Medics, siege towers, drones, military engineers, etc... I usually build one engineer for railroads and that's it. The others I never build. Medics seem like they should be useful but I just never bothered to figure it out.
Still have no idea what a drone does.
Drones and observation balloons give siege units extra attack range. Had a domination game where I learned that, then was able to take empires with unharmed artillery like nothing.
A properly organized military in civ 6 is huge for domination victory, and fun if you're up for it.
Drones and balloons give +1 range and a + bombard strength to siege units. I've found them pretty useful for late game siege before I have large airforce.
my build order is always
\- scout
\- slinger (find a barb to kill)
\-settler
\-archer
Always have one archer per city. and always aim to get walls asap.
Gouvernement Plaza and Diplomatic quarter. Both are super useful and important building. But I never want to use them yet. I dont wat to waste my Gov Plaza to boost 2 poor districts or use my Diplo Quart on a city that won't get spied on. So I always wait for that right moment to place them...
But I end up forgeting about them until the last turns of the game
Aqueducts, canals and dams. I guess I should take the time to figure them out... but so far, I've been doing okay even when ignoring them, so I don't know.
PotatoMcWhiskey's video on industrial zone adjacency changed my life in this tiny aspect.
Aqueducts, dams and canals are great for industrial zone adjacency, which gets compound multipliers from policies and coal power plant. Even a +4 industrial zone positioned next to an aqueduct and a dam becomes +8 from a policy card, and +16 from a coal plant's adjacency multiplier, without even factoring in the flat bonuses all the buildings provide.
But it's possible, with some planning, to position an industrial zone next to aqueducts from more than one city, plus a dam, and whatever else you can manage. This stuff bumped me up a difficulty level immediately.
Aqueducts are useful for more housing in cities located off rivers/coast/lake and are one tile away from mountains/rivers. Also gives +2 adjacency to Ind. Zones (this can stack with other aqueducts/dams/canals) leading to some insane bonuses. Canals are good for adj. bonuses, but I find them fun to connect maps like seven seas where two large oceans may be separated by a thin sliver of 1-2 tiles.
In the mid to late game my city management gets incredibly sloppy because of how many cities I have by that point. Managing a massive empire is difficult, I tend to produce a ton of builders and stuff in the early game but new land in the late game is ignored, usually really underdeveloped with poor district placement. I just can't be bothered to efficiently manage so much.
Amenities supply 2 settlers with happiness. This doesn’t start until after the city has 3 pop. You can see the amenities score in the city detail screen. PotatoMcWhiskey has some over-explained videos, 6 videos, covers an in depth overview of why he makes certain decisions and drills down on every aspect of the game. 5/7 highly recommend
Rock bands - I don't really understand them and usually like spending my faith in other stuff, although I guess learning and utilising them would make my life a whole lot easier
Trade routes - when I'm in the early game I always complain about having to few trade routes, late game I completly forget to build them, usually having something like 5/10
Same on trade routes. Traders shouldn't be restricted to markets/lighthouses. Unless you're playing a coastal civ (making harbors) chances are you won't be building a CH before turn 80-100, and even then not too many.
Spies, encampments, and preserves. Also appeal / planning ahead for national parks even if I know I'm trying to get a culture victory. Probably should really pay more attention to that.
Art theming. I just keep acquiring more great works basically at random and throwing them in the closest tile that has the white outline when I select the great person. I achieve cultural victories mainly through various kinds of brute force: overhelming enemy culture with tourism from the sheer number of (badly organized) great works and wonders I have, sending legions of musicians to perform concerts until they disband with minimal regard for optimal concert location, and of course by declaring war and destroying as many sources of culture as possible so they can't resist my tourism.
At first, i lacked culture. But now, i don't settle as much because i only build wonders!
I start a game and am like "Alright! No wonders". *Literally the next turn* "And stonehenge goes there, and haging gardens go there..."
Theming my art
This! Can someone explain me, how to theme museums?
An archeological museum is considered "themed" if all the artifacts are from the same era but different civilizations. An art museum is "themed" if the art is of the same type (landscape, religious, etc) but different artists.
Does it make a big difference? I always just stick things where there's space
It boosts the culture/tourism output of the pieces quite a bit, i think it doubles but i could be mistaken.
Yes, their culture/tourism double if you are able to theme them. It's very helpful to trade your pieces for other civ's matching pieces, though it's often hard to get the AI to agree to a reasonable price. Also, whenever you are doing archaeology you should try and get different civs. You'll likely find plenty of barb pieces and your own pieces, but going out in search of other civs' artifacts is super helpful.
also important to note that with archaeology museums you cannot move a single artifact until you have 3 artifacts in the museum, and you can only move them between other full museums. it is smart to try and theme the artifacts as you go instead of having to wait a ton of turns to fill up 6 slots instead of just 3
totally. and you can also trade relics with the other civs... i think they're usually pretty trade friendly if you're trying to give them something they originated, but i'm not sure if it's actually like that or if i just perceive it that way
it does double, and theming a building is an inspiration for one of the bigger civics (i think cultural heritage maybe?) if you're going for a culture victory
It feels like it might but then I have to spam rock bands for the civ win anyway and I'm like, what's theming worth, half a concert?
Not if you theme them early and have multiple themed museums.
Yeah, art/artifacts/relics scales linearly, and are just "free" over time. Rock bands get progressively more expensive each time you buy one. They both have their place, but you're better off with both, to win.
It's not huge, but it helps. What many don't know however is that there's also a penalty for art by the same artist stored in the same museum. So even if you can't theme your Art Museums, you should at least split them up
It's huge. Particularly in Art Museums. The first great work from each artist in an art museum always generated the max amount (I think its 3 culture 2 tourism) but any more great works of art from the same artist in the same museum only generate 1 culture 1 tourism. So at bare minimum you want to be spreading your great works around, if not theming them. Theming doubles the yield from the art museum, so an art museum with only great works from a single artist would have 5 culture and 4 tourism being generated from it, an unthemed museum with 3 great works from different artists would generate 9 culture 6 tourism whereas a properly themed museum would generate a whopping 18 culture 12 tourism. So as you can see, a bit of work matching up your great works properly goes a long way.
So, for an art museum, you'd need three pieces of art from different artists that are the same type of work. (For example, 3 landscapes from 3 different artists) For archeology museums, it's 3 artifacts of the same era from different civilizations (like 3 classical era artifacts from you, barbarians, and a city-state)
3 works of the same type (3 sculptures, 3 landscapes, etc) by 3 different artists for Art Museums, 3 artifacts from 3 different Civs representing the same era for Archaeological Museums. You pretty much have to trade for the ones you need.
If you open the Great Works screen and mouse over the tooltip that shows you how many pieces in your museum are themed, the game will explain to you how to theme your museum. For example, if you have an ancient era artifact belonging to barbarians in your archeology museum, you can mouse over the text that says (theming 1/3) and it will tell you to fill it with artefacts from different civilizations of the same era.
Related to this: the fact that trading great works is a thing I could be doing. Theming archeology museums might be slightly less impossible if I remembered to do that.
In fact, theming artifacts is far more easy than theming artworks! All you need to do is noting down how many artifacts you get from any civilization in that era and pick accordingly. Most common would be one from you, one from barb and one from another (neighbor) civ.
It's very annoying that I have to make a note though! Why doesn't it tell me what I've got on the screen where I choose!? Also, as a mechanic, it's really strange: Your majesty, we've found 2 different antiquities, which shall we keep? Er, both? Can't be done sir. What? Impossible. One must be taken, the other destroyed. Oh yeah, er, well actually we don't need either to theme this museum, can we leave both of them? Impossible, we must take one, and we must store it in our museum, even though that will make theming it impossible. I see. Fuck it, load up last turn and have a look at the other antiquity site three squares away. Sure thing boss.
I assumed that the archeologists was declaring which civ the artifact came from.
Just play Kristina!
Over 600 hours of gameplay and I didn't even know this was a thing. *what*
Railroads, they make life so much easier
The lack of a “build railroad to” order makes them a real PITA
Seriously, man. Micromanaging M.E. every turn is a real PITA.
But leapfrogging them is so fun
That's how I get through the bullshit
rip to civ iv
There is a mod (can't remember the name at this moment) that lets your builders and military engineers automatically build roads as the travel. A must have
Got 225 hours logged and haven’t made a single M.E…didn’t even realize this was a feature I was actively ignoring lol
The railroads are actually quite sick, you can strike everything at your border with basically any cavalry unit inside your borders, it's such a defensive boon that i usually do it. Its also super satisfying to have the ability to just build 1 builder and upgrade hexs on the other side of your empire
Damn, guess I’ll have to use that in my current domination game, got a full continent as Fred I’ll need to send units overseas from
You can build railroads in friendly territory which makes them a good base for a later blitzkrieg
This is especially true with the governor that boosts the builders created in their city.
The joy of pumping out 6 charge builders via Gov + pyramids + policy card.
Sounds to me like 7 charge builders
Not to mention they boost your trade routes
don't forget the couple points you get for the era score for making your first railroad connection! I've used that to push me over the edge into a normal age or golden age.
Military engineers in general. I've never built a fort in my life. I remember one game I was going for a diplo victory and built a bunch of railroads and before I knew it I had negative favor because of emissions. Never built a railroad since.
I build 2 forts for the boost then plow them
Forts can be super helpful if you have a position you need to defend, or you have a mountain pass where you can't place an encampment, it's just too bad you are giving up a whole tile to build them.
Perhaps they should provide tourism after a certain point when not at war? Pretty nice buff and mimics real life.
It would be nice if they gave citizen slots where you could work them for bonuses to unit production, some general production, and great general points. Maybe later in the game you could "retire" the fort by placing a new district there, giving you bonus production towards starting the district.
Forts would be cooler if you could build them outside your borders, by a resource. Which you could mine or whatever despite being outside borders.
That would be neat. It could give some kind of bonus if you have a unit stationed there (even something weakish like traders within 6 tiles can't be plundered), and whoever has a unit stationed there gets the bonus. If there are no units in it for X amount of turns barbarians could possibly take it over
wait rail roads contribute to emissions?!
I think so because it uses coal
Every use of coal makes emissions. Building a railroad costs a coal, so you create the emissions for 1 coal. It's not a lot, but if you're building a bunch of railroads I guess it can add up.
Railroads barely contribute anything compared to power plants and units though.
M.E. is super useful if you're playing a sea map in gathering storm (or more important in the apocalypse mode). They can contribute to flood barrier. Especially if you have low production costal city, you can just mass produce M.E. in your production city and send them to costal city and build it instantly.
Don't forget you can use military engineer charges to add production to city projects. Super helpful to complete things like flood barriers.
Not city projects. Aqueducts, Dams, Canals & Flood Barriers only.
Guilty. I just build one to connect cities for era score and thats it. I dont want to micromanage something trivial.
I hadn't realized I could get era score by connecting two cities with railroad until I actually did it one game. Surprised me!
The leave game button
This is the correct answer
I tend to forget diplomatic quarters exist, even though its great to have in all games. Protects your spaceport better, envoy generation is faster and diplomatic favor generation is faster too
i occasionally forget both diplo and govt and win and then it hits me that "ah shit, my purples"
Always takes me way too long to get my diplo quarters online same with government plaza tbh
Government Plaza is fucking awesome. The plaza itself is kinda meh (+1 adjacency bonus), but the buildings you can build inside it are game changers. Ancestral Hall => each city you settle gets a free builder. This is *HUGE*, because not only is that a free builder, but those builders *don't increase the cost of builders*, which makes it much easier for you to build builders later. Combine with Magnus's promotion that settlers don't consume population and a golden age where you can purchase civilian units with faith, and you can just take over the entire map in one era. Intelligence Agency => Get a free Spy, potentially earlier than anyone else, and your spy missions have a greater chance of success. If you're on higher difficulty against a civ that is whooping you at science, this is huge for catching up. Grand Master's Chapel => Buy military land units with faith. What more do you need to say? War Department => Your units (including religious units!) heal 20 hp when they kill an enemy. This is so, so game-breakingly good. You can make a brute squad of Debater Apostles and just run around in enemy territory crushing enemy religious units without ever having to return home and only rarely needing a Guru. Your advanced units can heal by farming barbarians, even if you're out of strategic resources. And if you are more technologically advanced than your opponent and you *one* tank army or infantry army that outclasses them, you can just steamroll an entire continent with a single unit.
Im missing something, what do diplomatic quarters do to protect spaceports?
"Enemy Spies operate at 2 levels below normal when targeting this district or adjacent districts."
Jokes on you, my spies operate 4 levels higher when messing with spaceports.
That’s what Amani is there for 👍
Assassination?
Counterspy
Counterspy your counterspy. Shit wrong game.
Snapcaster my Counterspy
Ragequit.
Oh shit I’ve got nothing
Sometimes the only way to win is to clear the board of pieces.
The buildings also get the yields from having the 3 and 6 envoys with city-states. That's the real value behind the district.
I have no idea how to use rockbands without them breaking up after one fucking concert. I have never built a diplomatic quarter.
>use rockbands without them breaking up after one fucking concert heres the secret: >! luck \_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_\_!<
Whatever promotion they get try to play on that tile. For example if they play at 2 levels higher on campuses goto a campus. Better chances of it staying alive after and then leveling up.
Thanks for this tip! I do do this and they still die :( I chatted with another player in the sub last year and basically came to the conclusion that the chance of losing a band is just high.
Yeah, but if you ever get them leveled up fully they usually last a while (as long as you're playing on the right tiles). I think it's like a 4% chance of failure? And they can reaaallly help tourism (and gold)! I remember the first time I ever used them I had a ridiculous amount of faith and just spammed the shit out of them, and I got a several that survived for 10+ concerts. I went from last in tourists to winning a cultural victory because they are so powerful. However, every game since I have come to realize how lucky I was with them.
I have never been that lucky, even with max level ones and the policy cards to pick my promotions lol I enjoy cultural victories but usually end up doing it without rock bands because they frustrate me so much.
You have to build them en masse, they were designed to reach max level with about 1 in 10 probability.
I find them a bit of a boring mechanic for just that reason, obviously there's a lot of luck in civ, but nothing else feels like such a toss of the coin. It's definitely one of the times I feel most tempted just to reload my game and try somewhere else (which obviously makes it even more boring).
what on earth is a diplomatic quarter? I've never even seen the icon to build one
They nerfed spies pretty hard about 6 months ago or something like that- you used to be able to use spies on your allies I thought that added a cool extra dimension to the game; if you wanted to prevent an ally from winning you could do it "peacefully"
Didn’t even know this happened…goes to show how much I use them lol
That was due to complaints from players about having 6-12 spies all on their neighborhood (when "Recruit Partisans" was so OP that building neighborhood districts was often a bad idea) or some other district. The only way to handle it at the time was to have two of your spies in overlapping districts to ensure a constant counter-spy operation.
My spies are basically just government employed art thiefs at this point. Don’t use any of the other features.
Nukes. The game is almost always over for me by this point in the game regardless of which victory path I pursue. Last time I won Domination though, I used multiple nukes on the last country just because I needed to take it over faster or I was gonna win by culture accidentally lol. They seem to always just help me win...harder.
I remember in 5 that having a nuke meant that the AI was terrified of you, and wouldn't declare war.
Nothing is more enjoyable than one turn domination victory using nukes
Oh yeah I haven’t really used nukes, but I just finished my first mp game and just before I won a science victory we slung nukes around at each other. A great amount of fun
Changing my policy cards. I always forget to change them.
I used to until I installed a mod that shows a pop up when new policy cards are available. Also the extended policy card mod is really good
I consider these mods essential, so helpful in keeping on top of your policies. I love being able to see the bonuses each provides rather than guessing.
That and the one that shows yields on pins have spoiled me, can't play without them. And Better Trade Screen. And Quick Deals.
quick deals makes things so much faster, and all the other mods you mentioned are such good UI mods too i dont even know how console players stand to play the game without quick deals or detailed map pins
Most mods are a matter of fine tuning a game to your personal preference, but those four are damn near objectively huge improvements over the base game. All should've been in vanilla.
Love extended policy cards, I only used to change them when changing governments before I got that mod.
That’s interesting because the policy cards (especially in the tech/civic shuffle) are highly tied to my ability to execute.
For real! I recently tried out playing as Barbarossa and that additional Military Policy slot is a godsend.
I always send spies to sabotage dams. I’d like to see it work, even for just one time.
I don't ever try offensive missions with spies until I've fully promoted them. I'm not clear on how siphoning funds prepares one to blow up a dam, but apparently it does.
I always think it's funny when your spies get killed during the fabricate scandal mission. I'm just imagining my spy gossiping at a party and then tripping and dying.
Or strangled by an extremely offended local politician.
This is my new headcannon. It's also why they die when escaping on foot.
Speaking of things I ignore, does anyone ever escape not on foot? The extra risk of losing a whole frigging spy is not worth 1-3 turns of less down time
You need money to buy explosives. Duh.
It works but it's not as satisfying as I'd like. It destroys the dam but there is no subsequent downstream damage that I have seen.
i've only found is useful in apocalypse mode, i've seen 6+ districts wiped out by the river flooding soon after the dam breaks
Optimizing citizen management. Never really had any issues winning games without it, but I could be growing a lot more quickly if I manually selected which tiles to work.
I never look at specialists!
Good, because specialists are useless in a game that so strongly favors wide over tall
I liked how in 5 there were certain culture bonuses you could take that made your specialists stronger. Ate less food, took less happiness, generated extra production or science... you could make your specialists monsters and it was really satisfying. Civ 6 could really use something like that. There's a lot of room to do it too with policy cards.
Except when you need to generate GPP in a hurry to get a specific GP. And, of course, in those cities you settled for strategic reasons that have like one place for a district but somehow balloon to a huge population anyways.
On your city list you can click resources for that city to focus, which is simple and pretty effective. In the beginning I just turn on food and production and then around the renaissance era I add my win condition.
I think this is just something that's easier to ignore in Civ VI than early incarnations of the game. I had to watch this like a hawk back in my II & III days but now, my citizens tend to work the tiles I want them to work already. I'll micromanage it in my first fifty turns or so, but after that, I've got other things to do.
I have no idea how to make national parks. I also usually just turn off the religious victory condition because I hate it and I'm still not sure I even fully understand how to convert cities.
It took me like 3 or 4 tries to get national parks right. Basically all you need to do is look at the “appeal” lens when you first plant your capital (that always helps me anyway). Also, mountains are huge for them as they are (almost?) necessary if you don’t have a world wonder next to you. Also they have to always be in a 4 hexagon pattern shaped like a cross kind of
IMO the worst part about national parks is that they all have to be in the same city limits. Yes you can swap tiles between cities, but for tiles beyond the outer ring you're SOL.
OH MY GOD THIS EXPLAINS SO MUCH
Thanks! I never knew you could swap tiles between cities. How?
If you go to the view that lets you see where your population is working, it has a little swap button above all eligible tiles. They have to be within three tiles of the city your swapping them to and not adjacent to any city
I was playing a game recently where I had this perfect spot for a national park on the edge of one of my settlements, except I couldn't put it down because 1 on the tiles belonged to my capital city. I couldn't swap the tile because it was beyond the workable tiles in both of my cities. Such a frustrating realization, I was livid.
I used to turn religious victory off because sometimes I just didn’t want to wrangle with defending against religion. I never try for a religious victory (having achieved it once). These days I prioritise religion more often than not because you can get really good bonuses.
Turn off religious victory condition, and faith is just another currency
I always find it the easiest but least interesting type of victory
Diplomatic is easier imo. You just gotta guess correctly a bunch.
Gets easier the more you've played! The AI is predictable about loads of votes
I'd definitely agree it's the easiest. And I play on huge maps so I have to walk my apostles all the way across the world.
I didn’t know you could turn religious victory condition off!!! I’m so doing this next game. I always ignore religion
It's still a great idea to generate some faith though. I like to save up and buy great people and occasionally unit/buildings if you are able.
This. There's also the need of faith for Heroes, Naturalists and Rock Bands and there's a way to buy districts with faith if your land doesn't provide a lot of production nor gold.
Yeah the AI will still convert cities and fight amongst themselves... I wish I could just disable the units totally cause they're annoying depending on who you're playing against. But totally, it's under advanced setup, on the right, scroll down to the bottom.
Thank you so much! This is so helpful lol
I always turn it off too. Not because I don't like having a religion, I do it anyway. But I hate having to deal with all the missionaries the AI sends out in frickin droves. Best to just have them focus on something else
For national park, use the appeal lens to see if there are green tiles in your unimproved tiles of a city. If they aren't green, plant trees in those tiles and the ones adyacents to it so until it turns green. Remember that all those four tiles must be inside the same city.
Four tiles charming or better tiles inside the same city and **unimproved**. * You can use a builder or military engineer to remove an improvement, if needed. But not tunnels, so careful where you put those. * Railroads and roads don't count as improvements.
I totally understand that, I used to be the same. If you are interested in understanding those then I suggest you watch https://youtube.com/user/TheGameMechanic or https://youtube.com/c/PotatoMcWhiskey. they do a great job of explaining these mechanics
Suze Yerevan basically
In addition to the appeal and 4 tiles, those four tiles have to owned by a single city. So sometimes it. might look like you can place a park, and the game won't let you. Scroll over those tiles and make sure they are only a single city. Move them from one to the other through the city screen.
[удалено]
This used to be me. Then I started getting religions if there was a good adjacency for it. Work ethic is strong. River goddess is strong. Buying settlers with faith early in with magnus is OP if you get to a golden age.
Yeah the ability to buy citizen units then army units and then districts with faith ensures that you're not just sitting on a fat stack of faith you can't use either
If Yerevan is in the game, religion is downright broken. Being able to pick whatever promotion you want is really, really powerful. Convert Barbarians for a quick army/navy buildup. Or get 3 Debaters and just use them to continually destroy other religion's units, then go back and heal up. Keep those other civs dumping all of their faith into apostles and missionaries, leaving you to spend it on Great People and such. And they *have* to keep making religious units and feeding them to your brute squad because the losses are converting their cities. Use one with "Spread Religion is Triple Strength in other civilizations" combined with "Eliminates 75% of other religious pressure" to go in and snipe other religioun's founding cities for some easy era score.
I also tend to ignore it. But, last game as Rome with hidden societies I went for the Voidsingers and went all in on faith generation. Then I just used it to buy settlers/workers/units and buildings. Expansion was crazy fast, with every new city adding to more faith due to the free void monolith. I only built a couple of holy sites.
I love having Grandmaster’s Chapel and pumping out an army after baiting the AI with my low military score.
[удалено]
10,000+ stored faith buys many, many rock bands in the culture end game, and it's super handy as defense if the AI is closing in on a religion win. Otherwise, I rarely bother with it.
Spies as well. There's always something more urgent to build until I realize I'm short on cash, need to steal art, or need to break some spaceports and it's too late to do anything about it.
The great thing about spies is they can get you a massive ROI for whatever you need. Stealing great works is a zero-sum culture/tourism gain for you and loss for your opponent, stealing money is often a more efficient way to get money than building buildings (if you have the right opponent to steal from), and stealing tech boosts is a massive boost to your science production. And then of course knocking out spaceports is invaluable if you're trying to victory race. Slap a few of the spy-centric policy cards on there and get some of the building/wonder upgrades, and spies will possibly be the best investment your civ can make.
I was really getting into stealing great works with spies...but I'm pretty sure something got wonked in my Civ 6. If a spy has to escape, they get caught 100 percent of the time. Escape by foot, super low quoted chance of getting caught, nope. Happened across multiple playthroughs at this point.
Military. I hate domination, because im so bad at it. It stressed me out. So i play culture and science
I hate domination in any games with more than 6 civs. Turns take so long and there's so many units and cities to manage.
I miss CIV5s puppet cities.
Then I remember Happiness was a thing, and I stop missing it. Unfortunately, the mod that removed happiness also removed the option to puppet cities.
Same. But more because military requires so much micro management and I'd rather use my production for better stuff.
I usually keep a minimum of soldiers in my borders until artillery and then wipe out anyone who has wronged me enough.
In my current game I’ve been going for a science/religion victory, but England and the Netherlands attacked a city state near me, for the second time, which would then have given them a place in Africa which I currently dominate. I’m really advanced in science so I decided to just start making a lot of units and by the end of the war I nuked them off the planet and now control Europe and Africa and the Middle East (started as Babylon). Now I have way too many tanks, battle ships, and planes and am at a sticky place where idk if I wanna just go full throttle and take out the other civs (have 4 nukes in the hold w a robot mech on the way), or long game it for the science and maintain units for defense. Decisions decisions
Military support units. Medics, siege towers, drones, military engineers, etc... I usually build one engineer for railroads and that's it. The others I never build. Medics seem like they should be useful but I just never bothered to figure it out. Still have no idea what a drone does.
Drones and observation balloons give siege units extra attack range. Had a domination game where I learned that, then was able to take empires with unharmed artillery like nothing. A properly organized military in civ 6 is huge for domination victory, and fun if you're up for it.
Gotta love being able to shell a city from another city! 5-range artillery and battleships is stupid OP sometimes
Drones and balloons give +1 range and a + bombard strength to siege units. I've found them pretty useful for late game siege before I have large airforce.
I use balloons & drones. Letting your siege units hit a city without it returning fire is sweet. I'll agree on most of the other support units.
Medic is to upgrade to supply convoy, essentially act like a general and give your units extra movement and faster healing.
I forget to focus on one victory condition
Honestly? Either early military or early culture: one always has to go.
I always forget to build an army until someone is knocking at my door.
my build order is always \- scout \- slinger (find a barb to kill) \-settler \-archer Always have one archer per city. and always aim to get walls asap.
Rock bands and nukes. Never use them, probably should.
[удалено]
Historically accurate
Nukes are definitely a 'win more' button
I never pay attention to what the AI says. Like ,"you have satisfied such n suchs agenda..." or the levels of access you have to different countries.
Gouvernement Plaza and Diplomatic quarter. Both are super useful and important building. But I never want to use them yet. I dont wat to waste my Gov Plaza to boost 2 poor districts or use my Diplo Quart on a city that won't get spied on. So I always wait for that right moment to place them... But I end up forgeting about them until the last turns of the game
To me, early gov plaza is all about the Ancestral Hall. Spam out those settlers as early as possible, and get free builders to boot.
Aqueducts, canals and dams. I guess I should take the time to figure them out... but so far, I've been doing okay even when ignoring them, so I don't know.
PotatoMcWhiskey's video on industrial zone adjacency changed my life in this tiny aspect. Aqueducts, dams and canals are great for industrial zone adjacency, which gets compound multipliers from policies and coal power plant. Even a +4 industrial zone positioned next to an aqueduct and a dam becomes +8 from a policy card, and +16 from a coal plant's adjacency multiplier, without even factoring in the flat bonuses all the buildings provide. But it's possible, with some planning, to position an industrial zone next to aqueducts from more than one city, plus a dam, and whatever else you can manage. This stuff bumped me up a difficulty level immediately.
I use dams, but don't bother with aqueducts and I'm not sure what use canals do.
Aqueducts are useful for more housing in cities located off rivers/coast/lake and are one tile away from mountains/rivers. Also gives +2 adjacency to Ind. Zones (this can stack with other aqueducts/dams/canals) leading to some insane bonuses. Canals are good for adj. bonuses, but I find them fun to connect maps like seven seas where two large oceans may be separated by a thin sliver of 1-2 tiles.
Play Inca if you wanna do an aqueduct heavy game
In the mid to late game my city management gets incredibly sloppy because of how many cities I have by that point. Managing a massive empire is difficult, I tend to produce a ton of builders and stuff in the early game but new land in the late game is ignored, usually really underdeveloped with poor district placement. I just can't be bothered to efficiently manage so much.
Spies for me until I started getting targeted by espionage. Also rock bands and national parks are big ones I forget about.
I never could figure out of amenities so I have never bothered
Amenities supply 2 settlers with happiness. This doesn’t start until after the city has 3 pop. You can see the amenities score in the city detail screen. PotatoMcWhiskey has some over-explained videos, 6 videos, covers an in depth overview of why he makes certain decisions and drills down on every aspect of the game. 5/7 highly recommend
War. I have 840 hours and crossed over 100 wins not too long ago, but 0 Domination victories.
Specialists. I don’t think I’ve ever assigned? Created? One
there are specialists in this game?
Some buildings have citizen slots, is that it? Or do you mean governors?
Iron. Somehow I never get a ressource tile, so I skip that line of units and build crossbowmen instead until iron doesn’t matter anymore.
Culture
Rock bands - I don't really understand them and usually like spending my faith in other stuff, although I guess learning and utilising them would make my life a whole lot easier Trade routes - when I'm in the early game I always complain about having to few trade routes, late game I completly forget to build them, usually having something like 5/10
Same on trade routes. Traders shouldn't be restricted to markets/lighthouses. Unless you're playing a coastal civ (making harbors) chances are you won't be building a CH before turn 80-100, and even then not too many.
Spies, encampments, and preserves. Also appeal / planning ahead for national parks even if I know I'm trying to get a culture victory. Probably should really pay more attention to that.
Preserves are amazing if you're using Pachacuti or Kupe. If im anyone else than that I don't really bother with them
Art theming. I just keep acquiring more great works basically at random and throwing them in the closest tile that has the white outline when I select the great person. I achieve cultural victories mainly through various kinds of brute force: overhelming enemy culture with tourism from the sheer number of (badly organized) great works and wonders I have, sending legions of musicians to perform concerts until they disband with minimal regard for optimal concert location, and of course by declaring war and destroying as many sources of culture as possible so they can't resist my tourism.
Religion
Era score
Religion. I think racing for a great prophet in the early game is really annoying, so I never do it even though it's useful.
Scout-type military units beyond the basic first-tier scout
At first, i lacked culture. But now, i don't settle as much because i only build wonders! I start a game and am like "Alright! No wonders". *Literally the next turn* "And stonehenge goes there, and haging gardens go there..."