There’s a joke that I’ve heard about the 4x genre. It goes a little something like this. “I bought Europa Universalis IV last week and I’ve already put over 50 hours into it”. “Ah, so you’ve finally made it past the tutorial”? It says here to “cue laughter”, whatever that means. The Civilization series has always been a light entry into the genre, but this joke rings just as true when I think about my experience in both Civ VI and with previous entries. I’ve put around 65 hours into Civilization VI in preparation for this video. My idea was that I could play 3 full games of Civilization VI and hopefully that would be enough footage and familiarity with its systems to write a critique on it. Ha! Now that’s funny.
If you’re a seasoned player of Civ VI, you’ll understand why. If you’ve never played a Civilization or 4x game before, allow me to try and explain. A game like Civilization VI is mechanics stacked on mechanics sitting beside more mechanics. Yes the game is turn based, with its hexagonal tiles resembling a board game, and in theory that takes the pressure off, but each turn can essentially win or lose you the game. There are multiple win conditions each Civ leader is more attuned towards, and yet to neglect one aspect of your civilization to focus on pursuing such a victory condition can end in disaster. Now I do have to say that by my own admission at this point in my Civ VI journey I know next to nothing. I put about 100 hours into Civ V and by the time I stopped playing I only felt marginally capable. So if it takes so long to become knowledgable, you might be asking what I’m going to be talking about and what benefit if any this video holds.
I like to think of myself as a decent game critic. If I can’t find insight and points of interest in a game after playing it for over 50 hours, I should just go hang up my critic suspenders. We all get a pair you know. What this video covers is the knowledge I’ve accumulated from playing 3 full games of Civ VI, a smattering of my understanding from the games I’ve played afterwards, and my thoughts as to why it’s so difficult to learn all the connected systems needed to actually have fun with the game. I’ll start by laying out how I approached playing Civ VI (what options, leaders, and difficulties I played with), and take you through my 3 games and what I learned playing them, before moving onto the core of the video, which is why the early game is so important, why it’s so difficult to get right for a new player, and how mastering the early game can let players engage with what Civ VI is really all about. Let’s get started.
Hatching a Plan
One would think that a good place to start with any complicated game is the tutorial. Civ VI’s tutorial is better than a lot of other 4x titles (I’m looking at you Paradox), but what it doesn’t impart is just how inter-connected every decision is from the first turn of the game, and how it all snowballs. After the basics of the tutorial, I decided to start a new game to learn on the fly. I clicked the play now button, which picks a random leader and throws the player into a small continents map (2 landmasses populated by 3 civilizations each) with standard turn speed on prince, the standard difficulty. I quickly realised that this meant I was playing the game with all the additional mechanics of the two expansions. Luckily in the ‘create game’ tab, you can choose to play the base game, which is what I decided to do in order to not complicate matters. I had a feeling learning the base game would be complicated enough, and boy was I right. If you’d like me to make a video on the expansions in the future, let me know in the comments. My first 3 attempts at game 1 were disasters mostly due to expanding too early, and not knowing how to protect against barbarians. It was after the third restart that I formed a idea of how I was going to tackle the game.
I needed an advantage, and so I made two decisions. The first was that I was going to lower the game down to its easiest difficulty. I would play 3 full games, each game moving the difficulty up by one, so that by the time I was done with the third game, I’d be back at standard difficulty, and would hopefully have the knowledge and skill needed to tackle the game on its default setting. The second decision was searching online for leaders that were more geared towards beginners. I think it’s beneficial to at least summerise my three games as it will describe a lot of the issues I was having, which will make my insights in the following sections make more sense. I’ll also be explaining some of the mechanics as I understand them at this point in time, if I think they’re relevant to being able to follow my story. If you haven’t played Civ VI it should help to explain just how complex the game can be, and if you feel like trying Civ VI yourself, hopefully you can learn from my many, many mistakes. If you already know how the game works or aren’t interested in my tale, feel free to skip ahead.
Game 1: Romeing Around
For my first game, I picked Trajan of Rome. He’s recommended as an easy civ to play for a couple reasons. Firstly each city settled gets a free building. At the start it’s a monument which increases culture production, allowing the player to research civics on the culture tree as well as expand the borders of each city. Secondly each city settled or captured near the capital gets a free road which makes it easier for units to travel to the borders of the empire, making for easier conquest. Each city also gets a free trading post which boosts trade routes. Trade routes are a great way to gain extra resources from the cities in your empire, or if trading with a city-state or another civ, to gain some favour alongside said resources. Each civ has a unique unit and building alongside their other bonuses. Rome’s is a powerful early military unit called the Legion which is stronger than its contemporaries, and can build forts, or repair pillaged tiles. Rome’s building is the Bath, which replaces the aqueduct, granting more housing, but to be honest, I’m still kind of fuzzy on how population and housing works. On a basic level, excess food in your city grows the population which allows more tiles to be worked for better yields, and these people need somewhere to live so adequate housing needs to be built, otherwise there are penalties. As you can see,Trajan is a powerful leader, and knowing what I know now, my first game should have been a slam dunk. Should have been.
Not really knowing what I was doing, or what kind of victory I should be working towards, all I did was follow the recommendations of the advisor. What to build, what to research, where to settle, all through the game. What resulted was a very boring game of Civilization. Rome is geared towards domination victories, but I didn’t want to experiment with the war mechanics yet. I built these strong units and kept them garrisoned in my cities, mostly keeping my neighbours at bay due to the strength of my forces. In the midgame, Japan was mad with me, so waged a war. I easily defeated his units and when he wanted peace, I agreed. I really should have retaliated and taken a city or two. Speaking of cities, I didn’t settle too many. I was in a Civ V way of thinking. In the previous installment players could build an empire either tall or wide. Tall is a small number of cities (even just one) that are heavily built up. They’re powerhouses. Wide play is throwing down a lot of small cities all over the map, each one giving small bonuses, often focusing on different things. Civ V was more geared towards tall play, and Civ VI is completely the opposite.
I don’t want to say tall play is impossible, but from my 2nd game onward I learned how important it is to build new cities quickly and often. For one, you want to grab the resources around your starting area before another civ moves in and takes them, and that’s doubly important as you make your way through the eras of the tech tree and new strategic resources appear on the map. The greater your stretch of civilization, the greater the chance you will have access to these new resources, and won’t have to wage war or barter with another civ or city-state to gain access to new technology. Cause that’s what I had to do, finding a civ who would sell me iron so I could upgrade my units. I even settled a city on a tiny island just to have access to Niter so I could continue said upgrading.
So while this game was boring (largely because I was playing without a goal), I was learning how Civ VI worked. For example, when Japan declared war on me, so did my neighbouring city-state. Sending envoys to city-states results in bonuses, but whichever civ has the most envoys in any city-state is its suzerain. You gain additional bonuses, you can levy their military for yourself, and they will declare war on anyone the suzerain is in conflict with. I played around with spies, mostly as a counter-measure as Japan kept sabotaging my industrial zones. I kept building up my science and culture, experimenting with the mechanics as they unveiled themselves, and since I was rolling in dough through so many commercial hubs, I thought I was a lock to at least win a score victory when turn 500 rolled around. I was not. My first full game of Civilization ended in a loss, but I was going to take what I learned right into game two.
Game 2: You Gotta Have Faith
Seeing I had such trouble with him in my first game, it’s kind of funny that I chose Hojo Tokimune of Japan for my second game. Japan was recommended to me as another beginner friendly civ. Their main ability allows easier adjacency bonuses for city districts. Districts are one of the big changes from Civ V to Civ VI. Since I stopped recording footage, I’ve played a couple more games, and I think I’m starting to get a handle on how districts work. Instead of just putting down buildings on tiles that will help production, science, faith, or defense, for every 3 citizens in a city you can place a new district that houses all the buildings that improve specific yields, only sacrificing a single tile. Some districts have adjacency bonuses that improve yields. For instance, the Campus which is the science district will give 1 additional science for every mountain and every 2 rainforest tiles it’s placed next to. For these districts that give bonuses, they will also gain a bonus if placed next to 2 other districts. You want to plan out your district placement in a tight clump to take advantage of these bonuses, often considering the best placements when you first settle your city. Of course at this point in my play, I had no idea how districts really worked so just popped them down wherever I could get the best bonus.
But back to Japan. Instead of getting the adjacency bonus for putting a district next to 2 others, it gets it from being just next to 1, so if you build your districts the way you do with other leaders, you could double your adjacency bonus. Adding to this is Hojo’s Divine Wind ability. 3 particular districts, Encampments, Theatre Squares, and Holy Sites are built in half the time. This gives a nice boost to players wanting to win via domination, culture, or faith. It also gives a damage buff to any units that are fighting on a coastal tile. As for the unique unit and building, Japan has the Samurai, which is a more powerful version of the swordsman. The real benefit to this unit however is it does maximum damage when injured. Units only do maximum damage at full health, so this gives Japan a huge advantage in the medieval era. The unique building is the Electronics Factory, which gives culture as well as production, and will increase production for any city within 6 tiles.
In my Rome game, I founded a religion, but it wasn’t until the game was almost over that I figured out that religious units are bought with faith in cities that have a Holy Site. I decided that I wanted to experiment with how religion works, and without meaning to, choosing Japan as the civ to make this experiment with was fortuitous. Not only because Holy Sites can be built more quickly due to Divine Wind, but the adjacency bonus helped boost faith production. I ended up winning a religious victory in the end, and I want to explain a bit about how that works, alongside other observations from this game.
What helped me experiment was that I wasn’t near any other civilization. I was kind of on a peninsula. Way to the north was Sumeria, but I never built close enough to them to have a problem, and there were city states buffering me from the mainland which Sumeria shared with Spain and Persia. After my first game I realised that it was important to build a lot of cities, so as I was continuing to build my empire, any time the advisor recommended building a settler, I would do that, and send them off to found a new city. I founded my religion early (Buddhism to be themetically appropriate), and started using faith to send my apostles and missionaries across the globe to spread the good word.
Religion spreads via religious pressure. If one of your cities practises a religion, that religion will start to exert pressure on that city’s close neighbours. If you have a trade route with other civs or city-states, your religion will travel along that route and start to exert pressure on that city. What missionaries and apostles do is travel like any other unit, and then use charges to explode a huge amount of faith on the city they’re standing next to. Now if another civ has religious units as well, you can trigger a faith war. Defeating a religious foe will drastically lower their faith in the surrounding cities as well as boost yours. That was what won me the game in the end, when I defeated Germany’s last apostle in holy combat. I had wasted so many turns trying to attack the gaggle of Gurus Germany had around its lands. Gurus are a unit that can heal your Missionaries and Apostles but can’t attack other units directly.
As I was finishing up my faith war against the rest of the world, I decided to strike back against Persia who declared war on me a lot earlier in the game, but never encroached upon my territory. I built up some units, combining two of the same type to create corps, and then three to create armies. Back when Civ V was new, one of my favourite changes to the game was the idea that only one unit could occupy each tile. The previous games allowed multiple units of the same type to be stacked on top of each other creating the potential for ridiculous armies. I never liked it because I never knew when to stop stacking. The idea of planning the types of troops and their configuration on the board appealed to me greatly. That’s why when I heard that Civ VI was going to bring back stacking I was annoyed. I didn’t want to go back to the way things used to be.
And thanks to corps and armies, I don’t have to. Not only are these two technologies a fair way down the tech tree, the hard cap of two units, and then three works quite well. The reason I think so is that earlier in the game, aside from support and siege units, it’s a reasonable strategy to have 2 - 3 of each unit type. Not only because of the power and manuverability, but because of a mechanic I’ve only learned about recently, which is if you surround a city with enough units, the city will be under siege and no longer heals damage each turn. It makes it far easier to take and damage cities if you have more units, and you can always sub out a damaged unit with a fresh attacker. Combining units into corps and armies means you need far less units to take a city, and if I knew about the siege mechanic during my Japan game, I might have been able to utilize it, having a melee army, a ranged army, and a siege army.
I took over all the cities on the west side of Persia, razing to the ground the cities I didn’t see value in, leading to every other civ in the game denouncing me as a warmonger. It turns out even though Persia declared war on me, according to the way the game handles war penalties, while I had a right to defend my borders, I did not have a right to invade their lands and take over their cities. Warmonger penalties and war weariness are mechanics that I’m still feeling out the more I play. If you don’t have a good reason to go to war with another Civ, the penalties will be more extreme, and other civs look down on you if you raze cities to the ground, take over another’s capital, and especially if you wipe a civilization from the game.
It turns out that these penalties are much harsher as you make your way through the tech and civics tree. While you uncover more Cassus Belli, which are excuses for going to war that limit these negative penalities, the rest of the world looks upon you more harshly as everyone becomes more civilized. Fair enough. I mean war is terrible, and as we move towards the future, we tend to think less of countries that wage war on others, no matter what Cassus Belli they might have. I guess the trick is either to declare your wars during the early game where the penalties are minimal, or decide that you’re going to undertake a domination victory, not caring if the rest of the world calls you a warmonger. That was the plan for my third and final game, and things did not exactly go to… plan.
Game 3: A Cultured Domination
I decided instead of trying another beginner civ, for my final recorded game I would let the computer choose for me. I ended up as Gorgo, Queen of Sparta, who was one of the civs that was recommended for beginners. Whaddaya know. Greece gains an additional wildcard policy slot. Depending on the government chosen (which are all researched in the civics tree), a player has access to policy cards under the categories of military, economic, diplomatic, and wildcard (the only section for cards that boost the accumulation of great people, which have great bonuses, and can be attracted to your civilization through great people points. Great). These policy cards are earned through each civic tech, and each grants boons and bonuses that can help at specific parts of the game depending on what the player is trying to accomplish. I’m sure you can see how important having an additional slot to place any policy card can be.
It’s Gorgo’s unique ability that formed my strategy for this final game. Upon the death of any enemy whether it be barbarian, city-state, or civilization, the player receives a culture bonus equal to 50% of the unit’s melee strength. So by going around and killing things, I gain culture. My thought was that I’ll split the difference and pursue both a culture and a domination victory, whichever came first. Domination is achieved once you conquer the capitals of all other civs in the game. You don’t have to wipe them off the map. In fact, if you’re worried about the warmonger penalties I discussed before, it’s best to conquer their capital, leaving one city on the outskirts to allow them to wallow in obscurity for the rest of the game. I shared a continent with Brazil and Sumeria. I conquered them fairly early and it was funny to see them denounce me and make empty threats for the rest of my turns.
What aided me in these early wars was Greece’s unique unit, the Hoplite. It’s an anti-cavalry unit so not something I would usually build or take into battle as I usually take down horsemen with my ranged units, but the bonus was too good to pass up. If a Hoplite is standing next to another Hoplite, its strength is increased. I still don’t know when it’s a good idea to keep a unique unit with its bonuses around for an extra era, and when it should be upgraded to a stronger era’s unit as soon as possible. That seems like something that a player becomes familiar with the more they know about the game. It depends on circumstance, which is a topic I’ll be discussing a little later.
So while this conquest was boosting my culture, I learned that the cultural victory is all about tourism. By building wonders and housing works of art in the mid to late game, tourists will flock to your cities. There is religious tourism as well, where people will want to visit the birthplace of their faith, and visit your collection of religious relics, but seeing I spent the last game playing around with faith, I elected not to found a religion this game, which definitely would have made my culture victory a lot easier to obtain. Greece’s unique building helps with this. It’s the Acropolis which replaces the Theatre Square. It’s cheaper to build, gives more culture, and adds an additional adjacency bonus, as well as granting an extra envoy when built. The only downside is it has to be built on a hill, but Greece has a higher bias than other civs to have their game start with hills around, and I never had an issue placing down an Acropolis.
Now here’s an issue I did have. Pursuing a domination victory on a small continents map hits a snag because of the two continents. The Hoplites are an early era unit, so while I conquered Brazil and Sumeria pretty quickly, laying dominion over my own continent, I had no cities on the coast, so I needed to build harbours to build ships in order to discover the rest of the world, as well as research the science to build said ships, and allow my units to embark into deeper waters. This wasn’t until after turn 150. Actually I had a similar issue happen even before I declared my first war. Once again I started the game sort of left to my own devices. My passage to the mainland was blocked by a city-state. A city-state Brazil was Suzerain of. I had to wait until I researched the ability for units to embark onto the water to be able to pass by. I could have conquered said city-state, but even when writing this, with more games under my belt, I like to leave city-states alone. Even if I don’t like their bonuses.
And my resolve for leaving city-states alone was tested once more. I had built a bunch of airstrips and had fighters and bombers at my disposal. If your game reaches the modern era, these units are what you use to wreak havoc. The only problem is they have to be close to a base of operations to refuel, so I couldn’t wage war with them across the sea. You can research an aircraft carrier, but even with all my conquered Brazillian and Sumerian cities, I had no access to oil, which is needed to build it. One of my neighouring city states had access to oil. I could have conquered it, and taken the oil for myself, but again, I didn’t want to attack a city-state cause I was still worried about warmonger penalties at this point in time. I was Suzerain of the city-state though, so I would have access to their oil… if they ever improved the damn tile. I sent one of my builders in to build an oil well, allowing the construction of a couple of aircraft carriers which allowed me to wage war on Nubia and Khmer from the coastline, as my other units marched through their land, taking their capitals.
All the meanwhile I was rolling in culture. I was cultured as f*ck. The amount of great artists, writers, and musicians I attracted was staggering. I didn’t even have the buildings to house all their work. I uncovered artifacts with archeologists, and built wonders. As some of the civs I conquered had built holy sites, I even had access to some relics. No other civ could compare to my artistic output, and yet, tourism was barely trickling in. At this point I thought that I might complete my domination victory first. It was close. I had just finished taking over Khmer’s cities, and was positioning my naval units outside St. Petersburg, as Russia was the final civ I had to conquer. Then on turn 289, victory sneak attacked me. The game was over. I had won a culture victory, and so ended my time with Civilization VI.
Crossing the Rubicon…of Fun!
But that was not the end of my time with Civilization VI. After I stopped recording I kept playing. In the evenings, on the weekends, and even in the mornings sometimes when I couldn’t help myself. Somewhere in the middle of my Japan game I crossed a rubicon. Where beforehand I was struggling to find the fun in Civ VI, and was dreading each new play session, now I can’t get enough. Civ VI is quickly becoming one of my favourite games in years, and I haven’t even touched the expansions yet. No joke, if you’d like me to make a video on the expansions, let me know so I can queue that up as quick as possible. Otherwise, I’ll start to explore them in my own time. Since that 3rd game with Greece I’ve also watched a lot of Civ VI on YouTube. Strategy videos, tips and tricks, and Let’s Plays of the game on the highest difficulty. Many of the additional mechanics I spoke of during my journey through the first 3 games have been informed and enhanced not only by these videos, but all the Civ VI I’ve played since.
So what caused this shift in my feelings towards the game? What changed in the middle of the Japan game that carried me not only through the Greece playthrough, but dozens of hours afterwards? I think it’s knowledge. Somewhere in the middle of that Japan game, I started to finally understand the multitude of systems the game was working with, that understanding brought joy with it, and I became interested in experimenting and exploring how these systems work. Since then, each new game, each new failed start, each new video watched, and each new decision made, increases the knowledge I have of how to play Civ VI, and it’s continued to be an enjoyable process.
The reason I spent all this time outlining my 3 games, and discussing aspects of Civ VI as I went through them is to give everyone an idea of just how much there is to learn about the game, and yet to also show that the game is accommodating to players who only grasp the basics of these mechanics. Game 1 failed because I didn’t have a goal in mind, and in games 2 and 3 I fumbled my way towards a faith victory, and then a domination and culture victory. Without a heavy dose of a helping hand, playing the way I did would not result in any level of success, but as I wasn’t receiving much resistance from the other civilizations (as well as starting games 2 and 3 far enough away from a civ who might declare war on me for the sake of territory), I was able to flourish. Not with complete understanding, but flourish nonetheless. And that success combined with pursuing a goal and gaining further understanding of how the game works, was a snowball rolling downhill that has turned into the avalanche of my new found obsession. So let me finish this off by imparting some wisdom about the most important lesson I’ve learned through all this, and how it links to how I found my enjoyment.
Why I Love the Early Game
The most important thing I’ve learned in my short time with Civ VI is that if you don’t feel confident about your civilization’s progress by turn 50, you should restart the game. The early game is that snowball metaphor I made at the end of the last section. If you feel confident on turn 50, the other civs will not be able to touch you, at least on Prince difficulty. Watching a lot of Civ VI videos and reading forum and Reddit posts, some of the hottest debate among the community has to do with the early game. Do you found a city on the tile your settler is sitting on in turn 1, or do you move it to a more advantageous position, sacrificing a turn or two of production to start off? What should your early build order be? Should you build a scout for ease of movement, or for a little more production, and one less movement per turn, should you build a slinger or warrior, who could deal with barbarian threats they come across? Do you beeline the monument so your city’s borders will grow as quick as possible, starting off your journey on the culture tech tree? You can also choose to build a settler once you hit a population of 2 to quickly found a new city, or a builder to improve your surrounding tiles to increase food, production, gold, or access to nearby resources. I haven’t even touched on growing your city’s population to have access to more surrounding yields, and how you can manually assign them to certain tiles. Just one more mechanic to keep track of and slowly learn all the nuances of through each new game.
And this idea also explains a feeling I’ve had since at least Civilization V, but I think it was there when I was playing the original Civilization back in the 90s. Sometimes you just need that final piece of the puzzle to articulate something that’s been gnawing at the edges of your brain for years. The early game was always my favourite part of any Civ game. Each new start always held such potential. Once the midgame took off, I was either focused on my goal or just making each decision as it came up, and by the late game I was just going through the motions of achieving a victory condition. I always felt somewhat bored or unfulfilled compared to the thrill of starting a new game with a new civ and seeing how everything played out. The first 50 - 100 turns just hold so much potential that Civ has always lost a bit of its spark once the dust settles and the shape of the game makes itself known.
This is likely a larger issue with what I find exciting about games. I’ve said in other videos that before I started my channel, it was rare of me to finish a videogame. Somewhere along the way the gameplay wore out its welcome, or the story wasn’t strong enough to push me through. Heck until a couple years back a huge part of this channel was my impressions videos, where I played a game for a short amount of time and made a review based on that small first impression. I approach each new videogame with that impressions mindset, seeing if it sparks that feeling of potential and wonder that should hopefully push me through to the credits. Is it any wonder that the early game of Civ VI hits me the same? Well there is a significant difference. While I will often drop a game that has lost its spark to try another game, I have kept playing new games of Civ VI over and over again. Not only that, but I have pushed through to victory conditions on multiple occasions now. So why is that? I think it has to do with the very specific power fantasy that Civ VI and perhaps the rest of the 4x genre taps into.
The Civ VI Power Fantasy
In a new game of Civ VI, based off the leader you’ve chosen, you should have a victory condition that you want to strive for. An element of the first 50 turns is seeing if that’s feasible. Depending on your starting location, the resources at your disposal, and who your neighbours are (be they other civs or a host of barbarian encampments), these first turns may be smooth sailing, or absolute chaos. Now instead of having a plan from the outset, It’s recommended to formulate a plan based on these circumstances. To roll with the punches instead of trying to force your will on the game for a specific outcome. Most civs have at least 2 victory conditions that they’re decent in pursuing, and really any civ can achieve almost any victory condition even without a complete understanding of the game. At least on lower difficulties. As of this writing, I’ve completed two games on Prince difficulty. I don’t know if I want to keep moving up or if I’m happy to continue playing on the default setting. It was touched on before, but this ability to roll with the punches is linked to a deeper knowledge of the game’s systems. There seems to be a consensus that the AI doesn’t make good decisions and is not really a threat even on the highest difficulties, but those opinions come from people who are winning games on those higher difficulties. I would say they have the knowledge of Civ VI to be able to adapt on the fly no matter the circumstance, but in a way they’re still experiencing the same power fantasy that I am, having now started to feel comfortable on the default difficulty. The ability to shape your future, and control your own fate.
The reason I’m able to enjoy this power fantasy is due to the allowances the game gives me when I don’t have a perfect working knowledge of its systems. Maybe on Deity difficulty you have to have that to succeed, or maybe by the time one gets there, they just have so much Civ under their belt that the decisions come naturally. Either way Civ VI excels in starting the player off in a unique situation, and then allowing them to shape the course of the game to their own will. The story of my rise through the first 3 difficulties has run in parallel to my continual understanding of the game’s systems, and I have no doubt that if I were to tackle King difficulty, and even try and work my way to Deity, I would still be walking that path of knowledge acquisition. Even if I stay on Prince or decide to move back down, each game will add to that knowledge base, which in turn will make it more likely that those first 50 turns will leave me in a favourable position to shoot towards my preferred victory condition, which will lead to more knowledge and then an easier game and… hmm, maybe this is how the jump to the next difficulty occurs organically.
Conclusion
What I do know is that I’ll be playing Civ VI for a while. Every new thing I learn through pursuing a victory condition or even a failed first 50 turns, is knowledge that I can’t wait to refine and apply to a new attempt. The game is aiding me in this pursuit, because at least on the lower difficulties Civ VI allows success without a comprehensive understanding of its systems. Just as the first 50 turns is an indicator of success in the late game, so are all the more nuanced decisions that can be taken advantage of by those with the knowledge to do so. Citizen placement, what tiles to improve with a builder and when, ideal placement of districts, ideal placements of new cities, what to research, what policy cards to play, and the list goes on and on. Greater understanding of the game’s systems will allow a smoother game, resulting in easier and quicker victories, and I have no doubt this knowledge is required to win on the higher difficulties. Civilization VI contains multitudes. It took me at least two full games to understand that finding the fun means enjoying the journey of acquiring the knowledge needed to bend the game to my will, rather than just reaching a win condition like in other games. I am still a long ways from a comprehensive understanding of Civilization VI’s systems (if I ever get there) but since that revelation, I’ve been enjoying playing and learning about Civ VI through each new turn, and each new game created. Thanks for watching.
