Civilization VI

Did Civ 5 get fixed?

The Vox Populi mod did a lot for the game, including AI improvements.

I like how this time they said “final free update of the season!”

I haven’t played in a long time and am starting up again with both expansions and I ran into an icon I can’t figure out (this is on Console and there isn’t a tooltip for it — although there might be on PC). Looking at the list for each civilization status shown below there’s Gold, Culture, Science, a Sword (presumably representing total unit strength), followed by some sort of gold star in a circle, then Diplomatic Favor, and Faith.

What does the Circle containing the Gold Star (showing 190 value for Australia, 145 for India, 137 for France, and 83 for the Zulus) represent?

image

Looking up the star icon, it seems to indicate the Capital of your empire in Civ VI. As to what that number represents, I’m guessing it’s some kind of indicator of strength of your Capital city?

I’m pretty sure that is the score of the player, just in case you get to the point of a score victory mattering.

The values represent World Ranking. Click on the top icon in the right margin for a breakdown for each nation and where they rank in each category.

The new True Start Location huge world map is wonderful but you have to modify the available civilizations before you start a game. Mentally divide the world into sections; Africa, Asia Pacific, Americas and Europe/Mediterranean.

If you leave the game to it’s own devices, because European and Mediterranean civs are overrepresented in the pool of civs, that region will become a terrible starting location for those civs.

So make a pool of civs for the game to choose from if you don’t want to hand pick each civ for your game. Make sure you evenly represent the regions in your pool. It’s not foolproof but now you have an excellent change of a well-rounded game.

I notice the latest balance update has nerfed Sinbad.

Is he now Sinworse?

Well played.

Yep, you were right. Per @Mysterio’s suggestion I clicked on the World Ranking. Most of the categories aren’t very useful this early on (675BC) but there is a Score category and it matches those numbers exactly.

I’m a bit shocked I’m listed first, as I thought I had a pretty poor start because of my starting position.

I’m pushed against the sea surrounded by an impenetrable mountain range and don’t have any room to maneuver. My capital is on a river surrounded by hills and mountains with a volcano, to my south the route is still pinned to by the mountain range and there’s a City State limiting expansion. The north and the west is ocean, the east is a plain without water followed by a desert and then India (which has 5 cities), the south east there’s a city state and then the same mountain range.

The capital itself is doing pretty well (particularly with Australia’s bonus for coastal cities and breathtaking locations). I don’t know if those people living on the breathtaking slopes of the volcano are going to regret their living choices, but that bonus combined with mountain bonuses is giving my science and religious districts a heck of an output.

I’ve only got two cities and I’m not quite sure where to go from here. I’m thinking of putting a city in the tundra north of Brisbane (there’s a location which gets access to a fishing resource, two salt resources and an iron ore deposit. I figure long term there might be other resources up there like oil. But I assume that city won’t grow at all. I could try to build something in that desert, but in addition to being in the desert, I think it would run into loyalty problems being much closer to India’s capital than mine.

Is it possible to put another city next to Zanzibar, or is there not enough space between Zanzibar and the ocean.

Other options are take over Bologna, which will give me access to that open land south of it — I think it’s Suzerained by Ghandi though. Or fight Ghandi himself directly — he seems to have a similar size military to me, his tech output suggests he’s probably at a lower tech than I am, but his population is huge compared to mine and he has over twice as many cities as I do.

Any suggestions?

The best thing to do is make that city state…

Oh I like this …
Yes, there is certainly room for a city by Zanzibar.
Yes you should certainly try for the tundra city. Actually I think you might be able to get two cities up there.
A desert city in between the two sheep resources and the fish would work as well.
The jungle south of Zanzibar looks promising, although that’s a stretch.
I don’t think there is room between your cities to drop another one.

Both Zanzibar and Bologna are decent cities to keep around.

Growth comes from food. Food comes from the targeted use of the builder unit.
Production is often more valuable than food. Good production again comes from the targeted use of the builder unit.
I like every city to have a campus and either a trade or harbor for the caravan and then one other district depending on what I need and what bonuses you can give other cities.

Don’t know the size of the map, but 6 cities can win on a lot of maps. My guess is that since you’re already ahead by score with fairly low science and culture ratings that you’re playing on an easier level and…to my eye, you’ve already won. Hope that’s right.

Yeah, I’ve concluded I suck at Civ6 so I’m playing on Prince.

I usually play Civ on King or Emperor and actually beat Civ5 on Deity (back at release when the AI was particularly bad, I picked a map I knew it would be especially bad at — archipelago IIRC — since I figured it was my best chance at ever winning a Civ game at that high of a level). But in this case, I’m playing Civ6 on Prince since I don’t understand a lot of the mechanics. In addition to not understanding all the mechanics and just not knowing the Tech or Civics trees, there seems to be a lot of stuff about placing districts in the optimal location for proper placement of items like power plants that won’t be unlocked for another thousand years. I’m hoping after I play a bunch of games I’ll get a better feel for which districts need to go where for future tech developments.

Settings for this game are Prince difficulty, Standard map size, Continents. There seem to be 8 players (including me) which seems like a lot. But I do have the highest score still at 234, Gandhi is at 197, Catherine is at 183, and then everyone else is below that.

Since my last post, I’ve just got the new Arctic city up. I’m building a few more units before following @Timemaster_Tim’s advice and attacking Bologna (the city just South of me). And both Gandhi and Catherine De Medici seems to be founding city after city. I’m still on top score wise, but they do seem to be catching up.

Seems like taking Zanzibar is the next step. But it looks like expansion south of there is going to be limited by blue.

So I think you’ll have to choose going big on conquest, or else expanding across the water. Me, I’d build a ship to explore, then take Zanzibar while the ship is exploring. (I see now you are playing on continents, so that keeps the odds low you will find a good island, but you might find some fairly empty coast.)

So is it always better to take over City States rather than just maintaining positive relations with them? Currently I’m Suzerain over Zanzibar.

The Vikings just showed up across the water, but I need to invest in something that can actually cross the oceans — I’ve been neglecting that whole line in the tech tree.

India is really pushing in on me on the other side. I did push a city out into the desert to snag some Niter, but the city was surrounded on three sides by India — started with Loyalty problems, but that seems to have stabilized now that I’ve put a Governor there.

I think I need to take on India soon as he seems to be snowballing, but I’m pretty sure I’m much higher in tech.

I don’t really understand the whole Civ6 conquest/grievance system. In the old days (Civ1-Civ5) I’d just take him completely apart. Is that still the case here, or does that trigger some sort of massive warmonger problem? What’s my best bet, take a few cities out, then declare piece? Do I try to take out his capital as most likely to cripple him, or do I grab the cities on the peripheral that are best attached to my empire?

How are the other civs likely to react to my attack? I’m currently best friends with Catherine — although she’s getting to be as big of a threat as Gandhi. Is that maintainable throughout the game, or is she likely to turn on me at some point?

Here’s the latest map (West side of the map, not shown, is basically unchanged that yellow outline just on the left edge is City State Zanzibar’s). You can see poor Sydney trying to grab the Niter. It wouldn’t let me settle right next to it — I guess not enough water right in the desert? Normally I’d just buy it, but I seem to be having a cash problem now, I guess I have too many military units, even though I feel like my military is pitiful — two men at arms, one knight, one warrior that got cut-off by other player’s territory expansions that I’m trying to get back home. Canberra is building a commercial district, so hopefully that will help a bit.

Conquering city states is on a case by case basis. Does being the suzerain give you a good bonus? Do you want the regular bonus for 1/3/6 envoys? Is the city state occupying geography that you want to occupy? You need to evaluate these an come to a decision based on how you weigh each.

In your case with Zanzibar, you are already suzerain. Zanzibar’s suzerainity bonus is top-notch. The luxury goods provided by Zanzibar are not available any other way, and provide heaps of amenity which help with keeping your citizens happy as you expand/grow your empire. I would totally hold on to being the suzerain. I told you to take out Bologna primarily because is occupies space that you could better use to take on India. If you want to try to be suzerain of Bologna, it’s bonus is also pretty good providing extra great people points.

As for warmongering/grievances it depends on whether you are are playing the base game or with Gathering Storm as diplomacy underwent a big change with the GS expansion. With the GS grievance system, if for example India has done bad things to (that is racked up grievances from you), you may be able to beat them up and most other civs will just look the other way because you war to “justified”.

More details on grievances here:

The only restriction on where you can settle is that you must be four hexes away from all other city centres. Madurai is too close to the square NE of the nitre, Bologna is too close to the square NW.
That said, settling anywhere with no water is usually a really bad idea in the early game as you will have no housing and be under constant growth penalties.

The settler map mode is really useful for picking out where there’s water available. It’s also handy in the exploration phase as it will tell you about cities in the fog (hexes that are unavailable for settling when you can’t see a reason for that are generally within 3 hexes of a city).