Civilization VI – The beginner’s guide
Civilization VI is without a doubt one of the greatest strategy games of 2016, but lots of people find it quite difficult to learn. There are indeed a few basics to understand, which we are going to explain right here, right now.
Let’s talk about resources
At the heart of every strategy game are resources : they allow you to create units, build and are at the root of every victory. However in Civilization VI resources are divided into three distinct categories, each having specific characteristics.
Bonus resources
Each tile may improve your dawning empire’s statistics, whether it be through gold, food, etc. In order to take advantage from them, you need to recruit a builder via the production menu associated to one of your cities and then order to him to go to the tile of your choice for him to build a city improvement – the game will suggest a few interesting tiles and the best improvements for them. Still, in the beginning you should exploit bonus resources over the other types, they will give you advantages (food, production, gold) depending on their nature. For example, you can see bananas, milk bottles, rice, wheat icons in the map above. Bonus resources are more frequently than not the most present in a game of Civilization VI because they allow your civilization to develop faster.
Bonus resources may also be harvested by your builder if you need an immediate and significant boost. The tile bonus will disappear but, in exchange, you get to benefit from many turns of exploitations of said tile straight away. This may prove useful if you find yourself in a desperate or urgent situation but bear in mind that harvesting should be avoided as much as possible in order not to end up resourceless.
Strategic resources
Some units require strategic resources to be trained. Without them, there is no way for you to enlist those. In the map above, you can see an anvil icon which means an iron deposit is available there. It will be impossible for you to train swordsmen – who use iron broadswords – until you get your hands on some iron. The same goes for horses and knights as well as niter and soldiers handling rifles. These are three examples but there are many more you will discover while making your way through the ages. Indeed, at the start of a game, almost no strategic resource is available to you for the simple reason that your technology is not sufficiently advanced to discover them. Needless to say, at the age of « club diplomacy », humanity had no idea what niter could be.
Luxury resources
This category includes everything that gives a boost to your activity. This notion comes with Civilization VI and is equivalent to the well-being of citizens in the previous games in the series. As a matter of fact, you may very well be willing to become the uncontested master of the world, but your subjects/citizens (delete as appropriate) need to enjoy themselves, otherwise they will revolt, generating barbarian troops on your territory, and they will happily destroy your improvements and attack your units. Obviously if you already are at war, that could put you in a quite tricky situation. Some buildings and a district help you develop amenities (name of this characteristic) and luxury ressources are truly powerful, especially at the beginning of a game – wine, incense, mercury… – since each one shares its benefits with four cities. So when you start a game, make sure to quickly build four cities in order to take full advantage of your luxury resource(s).
Domination is not the only way
Domination victory
If you are the kind of person that hit first and talk after, this victory is without a doubt your vocation. Create military units by the thousands, use technology to gain access to evolved troops faster than everyone else and give your adversaries a good hiding. You win at the very moment when you become the last player with his starting capital. This means you have to take your opponents’ capitals but beware : what truly matters is that you keep control of your starting capital. If you have taken control of almost every capital in the game but the last enemy conquers yours, you immediately lose, even if you own all the other capitals – the fact of the matter is that you will have lost yours.
Religious victory
The religion you created must be the dominant one in every other civilization. No need for this to be the case in each city, your religion simply needs to have a greater influence than every other religion for each player. Develop your religious buildings and send missionaries around the world : your opponents will see your influence grow helplessly since they will need to start a war or to send their own missionaries to counter you.
Culture victory
You are a tourist and you are most ok with it. Welcome tourists and above all attract them by hiring artists, building cultural structures, developing trade route, etc.
Science victory
This might be the most complicated victory to explain, but can be achieved just like the others. Each player uses technology but you aim at conquering space. Launch a satellite in space, then a send a man on the moon. Once this is done, keep on funding research in order to become the first civilization to colonize Mars. Discover robotics, nuclear fission and nanotechnology and launch three modules : mars reactor, mars habitation, mars hydroponics. When all of these three modules are launched, you get to win the game.
Time or score victory
In almost every game you will play, one of the four previous victories will occur. Still, it could be that in 2050 (or any year programmed by the game master) no one will have won over the others, in which case the game will stop and each civilization’s score will be calculated – taking into account almost everything : technologies discovered, cities, population, culture, etc. The highest score wins !
