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Sid Meier’s Civilization VI – Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Tips and Tricks for Beginners

1. Keep moving at all times. If you don’t understand what’s around you then you can’t possibly begin to make intelligent decisions about how to act in unison with, and react to, the world around you. You start each game with a warrior unit, which you should use to uncover the map while you wait for your first scout to be trained.

As soon as your first city is founded it’s getting that scout into play that should be top of your agenda, so make sure to select one as your first construction choice. Once ready it makes sense to keep your scout exploring forever­ – or at least keep them going until they die at the hand of a barbarian or enemy. Start with getting to know the area around your city first so that you can be sure you’re taking advantage of your nearby natural resources, and then set off to navigate the globe.

2. City-states can be valuable allies. Early on, the first non-barbarians you are likely to encounter are AI-driven city-states. You can be the neighborhood bully and take them by force. Or, if you are looking for a peaceful relationship, you can build trade routes, send emissaries, and foster a relationship.

Every envoy you send contributes to city-state specific bonuses. This helps you target which are most important to your victory condition.

More importantly, if you’ve got the most influence, you can temporarily command the city-state’s military forces. If you find yourself in a bind, this can be a good way to discourage enemies from stepping over your border.

3. Build More Cities. You might feel like you can rule the world with just one mega-city, right? You would not have to deal with handling multiple cities especially during times such as bankruptcy or war, you wouldn’t have to spend time putting resources into the new cities, etc etc. However, it is advised to build at least two more cities besides the Capital that you start out with. The reason for this is handling multiple cities is not very difficult. If you keep your cities close together and not too spread out, you can almost have a string of cities that feel like a single, large city. As for the resources, new cities don’t take up that many resources and they also allow you to trade between your own cities once you have multiples, giving back resources that you would have spent on creating the cities. If you are going for a Domination Victory, they allow you to spread your ruling territory and also give your Capital an extra layer of defense during times of war. There’s very little downsides to building cities and many upsides to doing so.

4. Make food production an early priority. Your civilisation needs food to stay healthy and encourage growth, so making the provision of it the focus of your early research and building efforts make sense. Plus, if you can establish a strong food production foundation early on then you’ll reap the rewards down the line when your population grows and sustenance needs greatly increase.

Animal Husbandry and Pottery are good early research options as they allow you to harvest both plants and animals for food and neither take too many turns to research. Additionally, they unlock the ability to build the granary and pastures – both essential for large scale food production. Which of the two you choose to unlock first will depend on the available resources around your first city.

5. Be very careful about going to war. Advising caution in war sounds obvious, but it’s simply too important an issue to pass over. Before you even think about attacking another civilisation you should make sure you’re educated in who is allied with whom, what kind of military each party has, who is leading the rich list and exactly what your long-term strategy of success is built upon. If you’re seeking to play a warlike game from the outset then it can pay to focus on military research early in your campaign and attack others early before they’ve had the chance to develop their technology and form alliances. If you’re thinking about war having spent the previous 200 turns focused solely on science and culture then do not, under any circumstances, start a conflict until you’ve spent many, many subsequent turns building a military.

Enable Console
Start by head to the following file location:

C:\Users\[USER NAME]\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier’s Civilization VI

Now, make a backup of the AppOptions.txt file. Open that file and scroll down to the [Debug] section of the file. Look for a line containing the following text:

EnableDebugMenu 0

Change the 0 in that text so that it reads 1, and start playing the game like usual. Then press ~ (TILDE, THE KEY ABOVE TAB) to access the debug console.

Easy Deity Win (Exploit)
You can win the game on Deity difficulty and score some easy achievements by taking the following steps:

  1. Choose your civilization.
  2. Create a custom game with only “Score Victory” checked, and change the turn limit to 1.
  3. Load the game and choose the Found City option.
  4. End your turn as soon as the option becomes available.

You win the match, just like that, and you will unlock numerous achievements. This works on any difficulty setting.

Reveal the Entire Map
Use a text editor to edit the “Config.ini” file in your Steam Apps folder or the “\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier’s Civilization 6\” directory.

  1. Find the “DebugPanel = 0” line and change it to “DebugPanel = 1”
  2. Save and close the “Config.ini” file.
  3. While playing the game, press ~ to display the debug panel.
  4. Select “Reveal All” to reveal the entire map.
  5. There are also other debug options you can enable.

Now you can easily access Debug Console in Civilization VI in-game. In order to activate it you just need to PRESS TILDE “~”. It will open a Debug Window, from there select “Reveal All” option.

Trading Glitch
When trading with the AI, you can use two major glitchs:

1: Give any strategic or luxury resources and as much gold per turn as possible, then click the option whatwill you give me for this?, the AI will break and will offer insane amounts of goldand gold per turn just for the resource.

2: Ask for whatever you want from the AI (cities included) and start putting gold (not gold per turn, only normal gold) untilthey accept the deal, then reduce until you’re as close as possible to the required amount, Ex: 25890 Gold of 26000 required, and click on the option make this trade equitable, this will break the AI and will ask an amount of gold per turn proportional to how close you were to the real price. (I bought 5 cities for 3 gold per turn and a jeans in emperor difficulty). This glitch can also be used in multiplayer matches that include AI, but will surely get patched soon.

Early Domination
If you want to enjoy Civilization 6’s battle systems, it’ll be best to pick up the Aztecs, Scythia, or the Spartan Greece. Aztecs allow your own territories to have more tile improvements as their Eagle Warriors convert slain units into Builder units. Meanwhile, Scythia’s units have bonuses against targeting wounded enemy units. Lastly, the Spartan Greece units generate Culture per enemy unit killed. Waging war in the earlier eras yields fewer Warmonger penalties, so feel free tosiege other Civilizations or City States if you need something from them. If you manage to take every Capital or wipe out every leader in the match, your Civilization will attain the laborious and difficult Domination Victory.

Camera keys
With Civilization VI now out in the wild, one of the biggest gripes is the camera control not being mapped to WASD. The good news is that camera keys can be changedwith some simple file editing. To change the camera control keys do the following: ..\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier’s Civilization Vi\Base\Assets\UI

Open the “WorldInput.lua” file in a text editor such as Notepad or Notepad++
Find the DefaultKeyDownHandler section
Find the line if( uiKey == Keys.VK_UP ) and then make the changes as follows
if( uiKey == Keys.VK_UP or uiKey ===Keys.W)
if( uiKey == Keys.VK_RIGHT or uiKey ===Keys.A)
if( uiKey == Keys.VK_DOWN or uiKey ===Keys.S)
if( uiKey == Keys.VK_LEFT or uiKey ===Keys.D)

Next you need to add the same entries above to the DefaultKeyUpHandler section. Note that you will also need to rebind the default Attack and Great Works default keys to something else so your new camera keys do not conflict.

Rename Cities

1) Go to the Civilization VI installation folder –
C:\Program Files\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier’s Civilization VI.

2) Go to Base > Assets > Text > install language –
..\Steam\steamapps\common\Sid Meier’s Civilization VI\Base\Assets\Text\en_US.

3) Then open the file named “CityNames_Text.xml” with any text editor, then search for the city/civilization that you want to rename. Change the name there and save. Once you are all done reload the game and you will find your city name changed.

Disable Unit Auto Cycle

  1. Go to ..\Users\\Documents\My Games\Sid Meier’s Civilization VI
  2. Then open “UserOptions.txt”
  3. After that go to “line 60” then change “AutoUnitCycle 1” to “AutoUnitCycle 0”
  4. Save the file “UserOptions.txt”
  5. Once you are all done then save (Ctrl + S)

Now you are all set to enjoy the Civilization VI game without Unit Auto Cycle.

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