The Complete Beginners Guide to Civilization VI

Civilisation 6, despite turning 8 years old this October, is still the most recent entry in the legendary series and brings together more world leaders than ever in the world of Turn-Based Strategy. It also boasts the deepest and most complicated gameplay of any other entry and is pretty intimidating to pick up, especially if you’re new to the series.

So today I’m going to aim to clear things up and tell you everything you need to know to get started in Civilization 6. We’re going to go through everything from setting up your game to how to go about each of the many victory conditions.

Chapters will be in the description if you want to jump around to a specific area. Now, it’s going to take quite a while to get through everything, so let’s get started.

There are mechanics that are exclusive to certain DLCs and I will mark these areas as follows.
Rise & Fall *
Gathering Storm **

Lastly this is a rewrite of this video guide.

Rather than jumping straight in using the Play Now option, we’re going to instead go to ‘create game’. This will let us fiddle with settings so we know exactly what we’re getting into.

So, top to bottom, first up, we have ruleset. This will determine which expansion features your game will include, and I’ll go into detail about them later. No matter what DLC you own, I’d suggest starting with the Standard Rules. This is the simplest option and lets you get to grips with the basics of the game before adding even more layers of complexity later on. I wouldn’t say you need to win or even complete this first campaign, just play until you have a firm grasp of what’s going on, which should only take you a couple of hours, since the vast majority is repeating the same actions to guide your civ in a specific direction.

For this guide, I’m going to be going with the Gathering Storm option. This includes every new mechanic from both expansions, so this is what you could call the most complete experience. Don’t worry, since I’ll be sure to let you know which mechanics are standard, Rise and Fall and Gathering Storm once we get to them using the aforementioned key.

The next choice is perhaps the most important decision you’ll make for every game, and that’s what Civilization to play as. If you have the full DLC collection, there’s an intimidatingly large list to choose from, each with its own set of bonuses, specialities, and unique buildings and units.

While each civ does have a speciality and victory goal they are most often best suited for, any civ can go for any victory condition, no problem, so try not to get too worried about your choice. It helps to know what goals you’re looking to accomplish in-game, but if it’s your first time and you want someone neutral, I recommend Trajan from Rome.

His effects will be useful no matter what, since your cities will always benefit from free buildings when founded. Extra trading posts and automatically building roads are both very useful with low interaction from you. Legions are a nice early to mid-game unit that will no doubt come in useful during the more turbulent early stages of the game, and the Roman Baths are a nice little district that is cheap and useful in almost every city.

By all means, look through the list and pick one you like better, but for me, this is as middle of the road as you can get and sets you up nicely for a very profitable game.

After this, you can choose game difficulty, and if you’re new to the series or even genre, then take no shame in dropping the difficulty a little bit. Games are meant to be fun to play, and getting destroyed because you’re still learning is not the way to do it.

Game speed dictates how long the game will last before someone likely claims victory. On standard, I found about 400-ish turns or a swift 5 or so hours was the case, so if you want a quick game to blast through and learn as much as you can, then feel free to turn this up faster, which I would wholeheartedly support. All you’re missing out on is longer wait times to unlock stuff and fewer opportunities for dragged-out wars.

Map type lets you choose the layout of the map you spawn into, and there’s a whole range of options to pick from. You have the standard continents, which is a group of large land masses separated by oceans, normally allowing a few Civs per continent and giving the mid-game a surge of trade and diplomacy as you discover potential allies and enemies. You have earth, which is like the earth, the same for East Asia and Europe. You even have otherworldly shapes like snowflakes and fractals. This doesn’t have a massive effect on your game, but still, I would stick to the continents early on since it tends to have the best tempo of discovery and expansion.

Lastly, map size. This not only dictates the size of the map you’re playing on but also how many other players there are. Because of this, I would advise you to stick with Small or Tiny for your first few games, just so you have more of a chance of doing what you want to do without too many other Civs coming to stop or, at the very least, interrupt you.

There’s a collection of bonus game modes, which are more challenge modes than anything else, so we’ll ignore them for the purposes of this guide.

** And lastly, with my rules, I have disaster intensity. Since the full expansions have natural disasters, this dictates their frequency and intensity, so if you’re not too fond of them, then turn them down, or if you want a challenge, jack it up.

You can also go through this process from the advanced settings tab, but I would only use this once you know what’s going on in-game. From here, you can craft just the game you want from selecting what other leaders you’re up against to what era to start the game in. Avoid this for now, and by the time you’re ready to use it, you should know what all of this means anyway.

So with that, we’re ready to load into our game and get started building up our Civ.

But not before taking some time to learn the UI. Incredibly exciting, I know, but this stuff is going to be on your screen for the entire game, so it’s best to get to grips with everything first before diving into how to play and having to explain it later. And don’t worry if you don’t see all of these when you first load in; some are DLC, which you’ll know via the key, and some are unlocked later in the game.

So starting in the top left, we have our resources, and I’ll just briefly mention what these are used for since gaining them is a little more complicated and varied.

Science is used to progress your research projects and essentially progress your Civ through the ages.

Culture does the same, but for the Civics tree, which dictates the government of your Civ and what policies it enacts.

Faith allows you to found and spread a pantheon and eventually religion to spread to your and other civilisations' cities for all kinds of bonuses depending on what you choose.

Gold is your standard currency and is used for a wide range of things, such as buying tiles for Cities, units, buildings and trading with other Civs.

** Diplomatic Favour is used in the World Congress, which begins a little way into the game, and I’ll cover it in more detail later.

Envoys are used to interact with City States and are generated by earning Influence points.

Then you have all your strategic resources, which only appear as you earn them. These are used for special projects like advanced units and buildings, and are in limited supply, making them very valuable and big decisions to spend.

Below the resources, we have a selection of tabs.

The Tech and Civics tree just shows you the entire trees of both if you wanted to plan your path in advance, rather than just choosing from the list each time.

The Government tab is where you can view your current Government type and policies, as well as change them when available.

Religion is where you can view and, when available, customise your chosen religion.

Great People is a whole mechanic in itself, but from here you can see your progress towards each type, the cost to recruit instantly, the effects each one will bring and also any you’ve previously recruited.

Great Works is where you can view all Great Works in your Civ and organise where they’re kept between your cities.

** The World Climate gives you a breakdown of how the world is faring with regards to climate change, the likelihood of natural disasters and rising sea levels. You can also view each known Civ's CO2 output, as well as a history of Climate Events.

* Governors is where you can view each of your Governor options and their skills, as well as appoint them to a new role.

* And the History timeline shows you a complete history of your Civ and its significant events.

Below this, you have the world tracker, which can be disabled if you like, but can display the current science & civics progress as well as a list of all units in your Civ.

Over on the top right, we have the portraits of you and all other known Civ leaders. These can be clicked on to initiate diplomacy.

The World Rankings show you how each Civ is doing for each of the Victory Types. This is a useful tool to regularly check in on to see how you’re progressing towards your chosen goal.

City States allows you to view all known city states, how many envoys they have assigned and assign more, as well as any quests they have for you.

Trade Route Overview shows you all of your Trade Routes, as well as those going to your cities, and their production for your Civ.

* Era progress shows you your Era score, each known Civ's current age, progress towards your next Era and any bonuses during the current Era.

Lastly, you have the list of reports, which shows all kinds of information about yourself and other Civs, depending on your knowledge and is only really for the stats nerds out there, rather than something you have to worry about in every game.

Just above this, you have the pause menu and help pages, which are actually super useful and borderline being plagiarised by me for most of this guide. Just kidding, I’m writing this all myself, please don’t drop an HBomb on me.

In the bottom left, you have the mini map, which actually scales based on how much of the world map you’ve uncovered, which I think is pretty tight.

You can view the game through several lenses that are each useful for their own mechanics and really help when planning what you want to do.

Map options let you toggle all kinds of displays on the map, such as resource and yield icons, which, it just so happens, I’d suggest turning on to make things clearer. The rest are names of natural landmarks, which can be nice to make the world feel alive, but are not overly necessary.

Map Tacks lets you place custom markers on the map if you want to remember a good future city location or a natural wonder. Not super necessary, but nice if you like that sort of thing.

Map search lets you highlight almost anything that can spawn in the world, such as certain resources or resource types, Barbarian outposts and just about anything else. Useful if you’re looking for certain resources and are struggling to search normally.

Strategy view is an alternate view which changes the game to look more like a board game, which is cute and a very practical way to play, especially on lower-end machines, but personally, I prefer the proper world map.

Lastly, you can expand the map to full screen to see it in more detail.

Finally, in the bottom right, we have the end turn button, which will become obscured if you have more to do, such as setting production or science before ending your turn.

And above this, we have the events log, which shows all moderately important things that happened to give you a breakdown of what’s going on.

If you have something selected, like a city or unit, this also appears here, but I’ll cover that for each individual selection.

Ok, now we can get into some gameplay.

So you’ve listened to Sean Bean and loaded in before he could even be killed off. You’re in for a treat now. Almost every civ will start out with exactly the same setup of a warrior and a settler. The warrior is a combat unit, which I’ll come back to in a moment, but the settler is much more important. This is how you found your very first city.

More often than not, the spot they spawn is a pretty good option, but it can’t hurt to make sure there’s nowhere better within a turn's journey before you set up shop. 9 times out of 10, just hit Found City as soon as you load in, but once you have some experience under your belt and know that a resource just a turn away is going to help you attain your goals that much sooner, feel free to do it. Just make sure no Barbarians are close enough to swoop in and steal your settler, otherwise you’ll be a very sad gamer.

Now that your city is set up, you can set it to work on its first production. These are separated into 4 groups, but to begin with, only 2 will normally be available. Districts and Buildings are, of course, things you can build in the city to increase its production of resources. Districts take up a tile slot, whereas buildings are built inside those districts.

Wonders are unique buildings that only one can exist in the world. I’d only set out to build wonders that will actually benefit you, rather than trying to get them all, as you can be beaten to the punch if someone finishes building first. You will get some of this production back, as well as a bit of gold, but still, it doesn’t feel great to have wasted all that time and see no real returns.

Units are, of course, the little dudes who run around the map doing stuff for you like battling, scouting, building tile improvement and founding new cities.

And lastly, projects are repeatable productions which grant your civ resource-based rewards like science or gold instead of building anything. Think of these as a way to convert excess production into resources you need rather than something to try and tick off in an otherwise complete city.

Going back to your first city, I would recommend you build a scout as your first production. This will help you uncover the nearby map, which is a great use of early time while science unlocks something more useful to build.

Speaking of which, you'll also want to select your first science project, and while almost all the early options are good choices, I’d take a look at nearby resources you can make use of and base my decision on that. So if you have lots of animals nearby, then Animal Husbandry is a good choice, but if you have Copper or Stone, then maybe consider mining. Any of these 3 options is a great pick since they take the least time and aren’t affected by Eurekas.

Eurekas are these little objectives beneath science and culture projects (although if we’re being pedantic, the culture ones are called inspirations despite functioning exactly the same), and when the action is completed, the project gains a boost towards completion, normally cutting the time taken significantly. It can be well worth seeking these objectives out manually to speed up your progress, but a lot of the time you’ll unlock them just by playing normally, so don’t build your Civ up around them.

The last thing to do before hitting end turn is to give your warrior some orders. You’ll want to use them to explore the nearby area, scouting for Barbarians, NPCs which will attack you but can be defeated for gold and XP for units. Don’t send them too far, as that’s proper scout work, but getting a few tiles border uncovered from your City is a good use of their time.

This will be most of your gameplay early on, whilst you establish your first city, so don’t be worried if you’re just moving a single unit and hitting end turn, you’re not missing anything, it’s just that not much is happening just yet.

Once the Scout is ready, they can join in the exploration by travelling a little further afield, a lot faster. Scouts also gain XP from uncovering the map and are very weak in combat, so keeping them on the move and away from enemies is the way to go.

On your travels, you’re likely to come across several different things.

Tribal Villages are dotted around the map, and when you occupy the same tile, your civ will receive a bonus that can come in the form of XP, gold and even free units, making these always worth grabbing.

Barbarians, as mentioned earlier, are hostile NPCs that terrorise the map early on and set up outposts throughout the world. Taking these outposts down awards you with lots of XP and gold, as well as stopping any Barbarian attacks coming from that camp to pillage your lands, so they are always worth doing if you can safely do so. I emphasise the safely part because losing a unit this early can be devastating, as you don’t have the spare gold or production to quickly make a new one and will put yourself behind if you spend too much time replacing them.

Oh, and if you want to know how combat works, just select your combat unit and move it onto the tile occupied by the enemy or outpost. If they’re melee, they’ll trade damage, and if they’re ranged, they’ll just deal damage. Either way, once the enemy runs out of health, you can take them out for good and, if it’s an outpost, claim the rewards. I’ll cover the more advanced mechanics of combat later, but for now, that’s all you need to know. As long as the combat is some sort of victory, it’s normally worth it, so go right ahead. And of course, Fortify until healed to get a unit back to full health and ready for more.

You may also find Natural Wonders, which are notable naturally occurring features like Eyhafjallajokul or Mount Roraima. These vary from wonder to wonder, but all will grant bonuses to surrounding tiles, such as increased resources and even special abilities for cities and units. If they’re close to home, they can be worth settling near to gain access to these bonuses, just don’t send a settler halfway across the world just because you found a wonder. Chances are, somewhere closer will perform just as well in the same amount of time and be much easier to manage.

You’ll also likely come across City States. These are single settlement minor Civs which can be interacted with in a number of ways depending on the type. You can see the type by hovering over their icon and their possible bonuses in the bonuses earned section. These bonuses are gained through assigning Envoys to them, with increasing rewards the more Envoys are assigned.

If you have the most envoys of any Civ, you’ll become their Suzerain. This will earn you further rewards in the form of ** diplomatic favour, aid in Wars, friendly territory, vision, resources, use of their military and more, with unique bonuses depending on the specific City. Completing quests for these City States earns you free Envoys, so they are worth doing if you can for literally free value. While you don’t have to interact with City States, it’s always useful to get as many free bonuses as you can, so even if you don’t plan to fight for the Suzerain status, assigning any envoys you have available is always worth doing.

You can also just declare war on City States, but I’ll cover this in more detail later.

Finally, you’ll also eventually discover other Civs, and upon first meeting, you’ll be able to choose whether to reveal your Cities to each other or simply say hello and move on with your day. This mildly dictates initial relations between your two Civs, so it is worth considering when you meet each leader.

You’ll also be able to send and receive delegations. These mildly improve relations and increase diplomatic visibility. This is just a fancy way of saying you’ll know a tiny bit more about these Civs and what they’re doing, as well as planning. Not overly useful immediately, but worth doing for the small price tag.

Upon completing your first Civics project, you’ll be able to set your first government policies. These are split into 5 categories, and the first three are pretty self-explanatory. Wildcards are also just that, policies that don’t fit into any other category and give more obscure bonuses, such as great person points. *Dark policies are only available during a dark age and normally offer high bonuses at the cost of making something else worse.

You also have to place policies into the slots that are open with Wild cards, allowing anything from any category. To start with, you have 1 military and 1 economy, and I almost always choose God King and Discipline. God King gets you some faith income, which you can use to set up your pantheon and get into the religion game early. And Discipline helps you when fighting against barbarians, which you almost always are early on. If you’re not, then survey is much better for faster scout XP gains.

You’ll get to choose new policies every time a Civics project is completed, so don’t sweat about putting something in like you’re locked in for life. Even if you get no value whatsoever, it’ll only be there for 10 turns or so. Just choose what you need right now and in the next 10 turns, and you can’t go wrong. If you really need to change civics this instant for some reason, you can pay a small amount of gold to do so, but unless you’re really min-maxing, this will hardly ever be needed.

As for future Civics projects, just like science, it all depends on your goals for the game and right now. With civics, you’re mainly looking at what Policies or features each project gains you, so the first choice is between builders and Wonder building, or trade and early game diplomacy. It all depends on what you’re aiming to achieve, so I don’t really feel like I can tell you what to build. I know that seems like a cop out, but just set yourself a main goal, and it’ll become clear which is the right path for you.

And while I’m at it, the same can be said for science. There’s not really a right or wrong way to progress through the tree, so it all depends on what you want to work towards. If you’re going to focus on pure science, then Writing is a great choice; for religion, then Astrology is where it’s at. As long as you keep progressing, then you’re doing it right.

And if you’re really stuck with either of these, the game has these little icons recommending generally good choices for you. It’s not fool proof since it can’t know your long-term goals, but if you’re finding your feet in your first few games, this can be very useful, especially later on, once the different kinds of recommendations appear for military, science and all the other focuses.

The final bit of early game gameplay is choosing when and where to expand to. When is normally once you’ve built the foundations of your first city, so some basic buildings as well as a unit or two.

The second choice, where, is a little more complicated. I’d aim for somewhere fairly nearby to your capital that has access to new resources and can sustain itself well enough. All of this means you’ll be able to manage both easily and keep them safe, gain more resources for your Civ and not have to send resources from your capital to this new city to get it moving. You want this new city to push your Civ forward, not slow it down.

** If you’re playing with all the expansions, you’ll also need to make sure you’re not settling in risky terrain such as floodplains, volcanic areas or low coastlines. These can and will come online at some point in the game and no doubt make your life a whole lot harder if you don’t plan accordingly. These areas aren’t to be totally avoided since post-disasters, they actually have better yield than most normal tiles, but it’s something to be aware of.

Later on, you’ll be able to mitigate risk with special buildings and districts, so it’s really not the end of the world, just try not to get too mad if that river floods 2 turns after you settle.

Also, to be safe, you can escort Civilian units with combat units. If hostile combat units walk onto the same tile as Civilian units, they can instantly capture them, and when it’s early, losing that settler can be devastating.

After this, the game is much the same, but slowly, more complex mechanics start to come into play, giving the game this snowball effect where you have to keep moving faster and more efficiently to stay on top.

But now you’ve got the absolute basics down, we can get into the many, many, many mechanics the game throws at you as you progress forward.

The first mechanic you’ll come to, DLC or not, is almost always building up and managing your cities. It’s something you’ll continue to do for pretty much the entire game, so getting to grips with it early is essential for success in game. Selecting a city brings up its UI in the bottom right of the screen. Here we can see a condensed set of details about how much of each resource the city is producing. The only ones that I haven’t yet explained are Food and Production.

Food is how you grow your population in cities, with 2 food required per citizen. You gain this from buildings and tiles surrounding your cities, which you can see more easily with Yield enabled. See why I said to turn it on.

Production is used to produce everything inside cities, like new buildings, units and anything else you can create. It’s also gained from tiles surrounding cities as well as certain buildings.

You can click on any of the circles next to these resources to prioritise or halt their production, normally changing all the others in the process. 99% of the time, you can ignore this, but if you need to rush growth or build a wonder, go right ahead.

Below this, we have the health of the city displayed by this green bar. I’ll come back to this during the combat section, but during sieges, if this reaches zero, the city can be taken by a hostile melee unit.

* You can also see the loyalty of the City. This ties in with the Governor's mechanic from Rise and Fall, so I’ll save that explanation for later.

The number of religious citizens.

The number of spare Amenities. These are more or less a happiness level for your cities with plenty of spares, granting bonuses to all resource yields and population growth, and a large deficit resulting in reductions to growth, resource yield and eventually rebel units appearing in your territory if things get too severe. Always try to keep at least a couple of spares to keep things running smoothly. They are gained from Luxury resources, which can be gathered in your own territory or traded from others, as well as certain buildings and wonders.

You have the amount of housing and how much of it is being used. This is fairly simple; you need to at least meet the current housing needs for growth to continue. If you have 2 or more spare housing growth proceeds at the regular rate, all the way to total stoppage of growth at negative 5 housing. Simply keep building more housing as you go to maintain steady growth. This is done via buildings and districts, and there’s no shortage of options, no matter how you’re building up cities, so don’t worry about it too much. As long as you stay on top of it, you should be just fine.

Lastly, we have the current population level and how many turns until your next increase. Citizens don’t just consume all your resources and give you nothing in return. Each one produces a variety of resources based on your policies, religion, and more, as well as increasing the number of tiles worked within city borders, effectively increasing resource yield even further. In a sentence, a higher population is almost always better, so try to keep it moving upwards and stocked with as many amenities as possible at all times.

To the right of all this, we have the current production being worked on in the city and how many turns it has until it’s completed.

If you want a lot and I mean a lot more detail about cities, you can click the city details button, which will bring up this menu on the left, which goes into a lot more depth about everything I’ve just talked about. This is another thing that’s not used 99% of the time, but is there if you’re wondering why growth is so slow or where your amenities are coming from.

The next button lets you buy tiles for your cities to expand their borders at the cost of gold. This is useful for grabbing some resources you need and don’t want to wait for, especially if you have plenty of gold lying around.

The next one lets you manage citizens, and all this really means is to decide which tiles they’re currently working and collecting resources from. If you want to really focus what your city is producing, then this is the place to do it.

Next, you can buy buildings and units to create them instantly at the cost of gold. Again useful if you have the gold to spare and want to speed things along. Especially useful for newer cities to get them caught up fast.

You can also buy certain units with faith, and this varies based on your religion, but most of the time its religious units used to spread the word as it were. Another thing I’ll come back to later.

Finally, you can change your city's production. Simply selecting something will start spending your production on that thing, and progress is saved if you get halfway through and decide to swap to something else.

The queue button at the top lets you queue up several items to be produced in a row if you want to follow a set plan, and multi-queue lets you see all your cities and queue up projects for them.

That’s pretty much everything about cities, but one last thing you should know about that’s also related is builders. These can be bought or produced from cities and then used to build tile improvements. These vary depending on the tile, what terrain it is, and if it contains any resources, but the bottom line is they’ll improve that tile's output when worked, making them much more valuable. You’ll still need to work them with citizens, but this will ensure a little more bang for your buck, so it is always worth doing if you have the resources to spare.

As for what to actually build in cities, as usual, it really depends on your Civ and goals, but generally it’s going to boil down to this. You want to make sure your cities are stable and growing, which means making sure they have enough food, amenities and housing. Once this is done, you can then shift your focus to your main goal, whatever that may be.

For science, you’ll want to build the campus district and buildings inside it, for culture, the theatre square and buildings, etc.

Districts are something that seems confusing, especially if you’re coming from Civ V like I was, but it’s actually really simple. These take up a tile and remove its resources, meaning anything it earns for your city is gone. However, inside of these districts, you can build buildings that enhance your Civ in a massive number of ways, most of the time, better than the tile ever could. So if you want to focus on getting your money up but can’t see any economy buildings, build the Commercial Hub first, then you’ll find what you need.

Is this more complicated than Civ V? Yes. Is it also better, more interactive, and actually makes a lot more sense, yeah I think so. If you’ve never played a Civ game before, then you won’t have this hang up like I did, but still it’s worth knowing.

Wonders also take up tiles and remove all their yield and come with their own set of effects unique to each one. These are fairly large undertakings that also carry some risk, as mentioned earlier. If someone beats you to completion, you’ll get some gold and production back, but still, try to get on the ones you want early and in your most productive city to complete them as fast as possible.

Some last notes for city building, don’t be afraid to spend gold to get units or buildings done quickly, it’s costly, sure, but saves you a lot of time and in dire situations can keep your game from spiralling, so it's well worth the cost. In the later game, you can sometimes run out of things to build, so don’t be afraid to use projects. These are a way of converting that extra production you don’t need into other resources such as science, culture and faith. If you’re running low on anything, chances are you can use a project to help things along.

** Late game, you’ll unlock power from a variety of sources, such as coal. Almost all late-game buildings unlocked after you unlock the ability to power anything will require power to function at full capacity and are less productive when unpowered. As you progress through the science tree, you’ll unlock new ways to produce power like Nuclear fuel and Wind Farms, so be sure to maintain a high stockpile of everything you can find to meet this demand. It’s worth noting that not every city needs its own power plant. One plant can make as much power as all cities within 6 tiles need, but it will obviously consume more resources per turn based on the demand. It’s something you’ll want to start paying close attention to once unlocked to make sure you’re being as productive as possible.

** You should also be aware that high levels of CO2, created when burning fuels, will exacerbate climate change and, in turn, raise sea levels and increase the chance of extreme weather events. Finding cleaner ways to make power fast will be key to making sure the world doesn't get pushed too far and devour your cities in the rising tide. You’ll have to use diplomacy to encourage or enforce stricter climate regulations once you can, to force other Civs to do the same.

** This mechanic looks really complicated, but it really just boils down to high CO2 production being bad and making the map worse for everyone, so try to keep it low and bring it back down when it gets too high.

Trading is one of those things that seems really complicated with all these arrows, but it’s actually so insanely easy. Once unlocked, you’ll need to create or buy a trader, and once selected, you’ll be able to do a couple of things.

You can set their home city, which affects the length of their routes as well as which city will benefit from the increased yield. And of course, they can be set on trade routes. These can run from any of your cities to any city or city-state you’re not at war with. Depending on a range of factors, the gains can change, but all are displayed before you start the route so you can pick the best option for you.

When selecting a route, weigh up the gains to your civ and home city selected, as well as the risk of the route. If Barbarians or other hostile combat units move onto the same tile as this unit, it will be instantly killed and lose any resources it might have gained.

Traders also build roads along their route, which speed up the movement of all units using them, making them useful for easier movement throughout the map as well as just their resource output.

The duration of a trade route depends on your game speed, with a minimum of 21 turns on standard, and it can only end when the trader returns to its home city. So if it takes 8 turns to make one round trip, then the trade route will last 24 turns.

The resources shown are gained per turn, so trading can be a great way to boost your Civ and cities' income substantially.

Early on, a good use of them is setting their home to be smaller cities, and trading with your capital, often gaining food and production to speed along the growth of a new settlement. Later in the game, foreign trade tends to be the most valuable, so adjust as needed at the time.

Upon completing State Workforce or Early Empire, your Civ will be able to recruit their first Governor. There are seven to choose from in-game, and each of them comes with its own skills, bonuses they bring to your Cities and Civ and promotions unlocked later on. Having a read through each one makes it clear what the specialisations are, so I won’t explain that, but just know it’s very self-explanatory.

So once you have a slot unlocked, you can choose your first one, and it all depends on what your focus is for the game. I went with Liang the Surveyor, as she has a strong focus on production and building up cities quickly, which I find useful for my run. She and all the others have a set of skills, and some affect your entire Civ while some only affect the city you assign them to, so make sure you’re sending them somewhere that can make use of the effects well.

As well as any effects they bring, they’ll also increase the loyalty of their city by a set amount per turn. This is technically a separate mechanic, but it works hand in hand with Governors, so I’ll explain it here.

This is basically a measure of how devoted the city is to your Civ and works similarly to Control in something like Total War. When it drops below 75, the yield and growth are penalised by 25%. Below 25, this penalty increases to 50% for yield and 75% for growth. If loyalty reaches 0, the city will revolt and become a free city belonging to no Civilization.

Loyalty is increased by having Governors working in your cities, experiencing Golden Ages, having high levels of Amenities, secure borders without being too close to other Civs or using Cultural Alliances to prevent any negativity, and Citizens following your religion.

These Free Cities can be brought back into your Civ either through Force or by increasing loyalty pressure, causing them to come running back home. This is done by having extremely high levels of Loyalty in surrounding cities. Just be aware that other Civs can also exert pressure, so they can, in theory, steal your city if you don’t get to them first.

Intentionally causing other Civs cities to revolt and then exerting pressure is a great way to take their cities without having to make a single attack, but just remember that they still won’t exactly take kindly to this.

Every time you complete a Civic with the Governor Title option, you’ll get to either recruit a new Governor or upgrade one you already have. Depending on your current situation, this changes what you should do, but I’d generally suggest that if you’re not struggling with Loyalty in a city with no Governor, then upgrading is the way to go, otherwise get someone posted to maintain control.

As you move through the Eras of the game, which are really just milestones, all active Civs progress scientifically and culturally. Upon entering a new era, you’ll enter a Dark Normal or Golden Age based on your Era score for that Era.

Era score is gained through historic moments for your Civ, such as certain scientific discoveries, destroying Barbarian Outposts, discovering Natural Wonders and more. You can easily view these in the History Timeline if you want a breakdown in your own game.

If you only achieve a dark age, the loyalty of your Citizens gets cut in half, making keeping control of cities a little more challenging. You’ll also gain access to those Dark policy cards to help you right the ship, so while this is no doubt a bad age to be in, it does have some unique opportunities, including much lower thresholds for Normal and Golden ages in the next Era.

Achieving a normal age is just that, normal. Nothing really changes, and you get no real bonuses but also no penalties, so it balances out.

If you achieve a golden age, the loyalty of your citizens will be nearly unshakable and exert extra pressure on surrounding cities to turn to your Civ. However, getting a golden age increases the threshold of following Normal and Golden Ages, making it hard to maintain for long periods of time.

If you manage to go from Dark to Golden, you’ll actually enter a Heroic age, which grants the same loyalty bonuses as a regular golden age, as well as some serious bonuses I’ll come to in a moment. Needless to say, it’ll give you a massive boost to help you get back in the game post Dark Age.

When a new Era begins, you’ll get to make a dedication for this era, essentially giving your Civ a focus for that period. These will vary as the game goes on, but generally they’re ways to earn more Era score for performing various actions such as activating Eurekas and Inspirations, Building Districts or converting cities to your religion. It’s another one of those things that’s really easy to pick if you have a goal, so set yourself one. I can’t say it many more times before the words turn to nothing.

Depending on what age you’re entering, these dedications can gain increasingly powerful effects. Golden ages add on special bonuses to each option, and Heroic ages add three times these same bonuses to help you get back in the game.

Over the course of the game, you’ll be able to progress towards recruiting Great People to your Civ. These are notable people from history and come in many flavours, each with its own unique set of abilities. While they can vary from person to person, they always fit in with their theme, like a general being useful in combat or military construction, or a scientist progressing your research.

They normally need to be moved to a specific district or area of the map to be used; as long as you safely get them there, they are guaranteed bonuses for your Civ. Earning points is done by building and districts of the associated type, as well as projects. Certain policies can also aid in production, and Great People can also be bought with Gold or Faith, with the cost reflecting how many more points are needed for recruitment.

Great people are quite a simple mechanic, so just claim them when you can and use them as quickly and safely as possible for free extra value. If there are no great people left of a certain type, those points are instead converted into the relevant currency, such as faith for Prophets.

Speaking of which, prophets work a little differently than the rest of the Great People since they’re how you go about starting a religion.

If you manage to earn one of the limited Prophets available each game (the exact number being half the number of player Civs plus 1), you’ll be able to send them to a Holy Site of Stonehenge and found your Religion.

This is provided you have already founded a Pantheon, which requires 25 Faith, and if you somehow managed to miss this before getting a prophet, I salute you. A pantheon is pretty much a basic buff for your Civ, so it's worth grabbing as soon as you can since there’s basically no downside.

You also get to customise your religion by choosing a symbol and name, as well as beliefs, which are really just bonuses gained when it is the dominant religion in a city. These have a lot of variety and, again, it comes down to the focus you want to pursue, so make sure you have that goal set so you know what’s best for you.

Once selected, you found your religion, instantly the City in which it’s founded becomes a holy city, and half of the population immediately converts, giving you your first few followers. You can gain more through religious pressure, which is essentially proximity. This takes a very long time but is totally passive, AKA free, which is pretty nice. Trade routes also exert pressure at both ends, but this is, again, pretty minor.

The main way to spread is through religious units. Initially, this will only be missionaries who are created with a limited number of spreads, which rapidly increase the level of religion in the city they’re standing outside of. This can be done to any non-hostile city, just be aware that other Civs don’t often take too kindly to this, especially if they have a religion of their own you’re overwriting.

Later in the game, you unlock Apostles, Gurus and more, and these can take part in what’s known as Theological Combat. It’s pretty much the same as regular combat in the sense that you send your units to attack enemies and try to wipe them out. If a unit is wiped out, the religious pressure of that dead unit will drop, essentially reducing the concentration of religion in that area, whilst simultaneously increasing the pressure of the victor's religion.

This is far more effective than simply spreading religion with missionaries, which apostles can also do, since reducing hostile religious pressure and increasing your own, more effectively converts cities to your religion.

If a religious unit takes damage, you can heal them up at Holy sites in your Civ, so make sure you don’t send them to die, as it can do a whole lot of harm.

Apostles can also perform a couple of extra actions to aid your religion. They can launch an Inquisition, which unlocks the recruitment of inquisitors for your Civ. These are another unit useful in cleansing lands of foreign religions.

They can Evangelise Beliefs, which adds an additional belief, AKA a modifier to your religion, making its effects even stronger.

And they can be immediately promoted, gaining them various new abilities for religious combat, regular spreading and more.

All of this makes them the most common fighters in Theological wars. Speaking of this, the combat requires no formal declaration of war and is almost consequence-free. The only downside is that Civs might not take kindly to you trying to spread your religion to them, no matter how you do it, so be cautious, especially if you’re trying to remain friends.

Once you’ve met another leader, you can engage in diplomacy pretty much immediately, but most of the time it’s not something I prioritise until a little later when I’m feeling more in control of my Civ. However, whenever you’re ready, you simply click on the other leader's portrait in the top right and are taken to the diplomacy screen.

From here, you can view a massive amount of information about each known civ and your relationship with them. The default overview will give you a brief breakdown of how much gossip info you have, your level of access, their type of government, relationship with your Civ, Agendas (which are just that Civ's focus in-game and what they respect in others), any agreements and their relationships with others. However, if you want more details, the different tabs along the top will tell you a whole lot more.

Gossip is essentially rumours of what they’re up to, such as what they’re planning to build in their cities, how their government is developing and generally what they’re up to. You gain more detailed gossip by sending them a delegation, so it’s well worth doing for the small gold cost.

The Access Level shows you what sort of information you can view about the Civ at your current Access Level, as well as what the next tiers' rewards and how to get there.

Relationship shows how the Civ feels about you and breaks down what's affecting it, as well as suggesting actions to change it either way, thanks, Advisor.

Alliance shows you any alliances you have with the Civ as well as any available to you. The longer you’re in an alliance, the more alliance points you earn and eventually the higher the level of the alliance becomes, granting higher-tier rewards for both parties. I’ll come back to this in more detail shortly since it’s better explained in practice.

Finally, the Grievances log shows any Grievances you have against each other. These are transgressions such as settling too close to each other's cities, spreading religion in their land against their wishes and more. These are how you justify wars and help dictate how each Civ feels about interacting with you. High levels of Grievances will make them less likely to be friendly and enter into pacts with you, and more likely to consider war and other unfavourable actions.

Aside from all this information, you can also perform several actions from this screen. Declaring a friendship improves your relationship and lays the groundwork for future alliances. This also locks you out of formal wars, so use this sparingly if you’re planning to attack everyone you meet.

Establishing Resident Embassy increases friendliness, gains you a level of access and reveals the Civ's capital at the cost of a small amount of gold.

Denouncing formally states your dislike for that Civ. After 5 turns, you can use this denunciation to declare a formal war to avoid the drastic penalties of a surprise war. This will give them a Grievance against you, allowing them to declare a justified war against you, so just be careful who you denounce and be really sure you’re ready to start some ♥♥♥♥.

Declaring a Surprise war instantly launches your two Civs into a war. This causes a massive Grievance not only with the target but also other Civs, as they’ll see you as an untrustworthy Warmonger, so avoid doing this unless you have absolutely no choice.

Make Deal takes you to the Deal Builder, where you can add resources, agreements and cities to each side to make a trade deal with the other Civ. This is mostly used to gain access to resources you’re unable to produce yourself, or sell excess in exchange for gold or diplomatic favour. Basically, get rid of something you can afford to lose to gain something you need. If you’re struggling to make deals work, just select what you want from the other civ or what you want to get rid of, and click on the What would it take " or What would you give me, buttons to automatically balance the deal so the Civ accepts. This will ensure the deal passes pretty much every time, so it helps speed things along.

Make Demand is basically the same, but instead of offering them something in return, you simply demand something of theirs. This can work if you’re much more powerful than the other Civ, but it will harm your relationship, so it should only really be used if you don’t need to keep them friendly or are desperate for something.

Ask for Promise allows you to ask Civs to do certain things, like avoid settling too close to your cities at the cost of Diplomatic favour. They can break these promises, but you’d gain a Grievance and Casus Belli against them, so they’re very much encouraged not to.

Upon reaching a high level of friendship, you’ll be able to propose an alliance. For the base game, this is one and done and grants open borders, vision over each other's troops and the opportunity for further alliances to share resources and support each other in wars.

* With the Rise and Fall DLC, you gain the option to instead create one of 5 alliances. Each of these comes with its own bonuses, like increased resources of that type or buffs to actions relating to it. For example, the Research Alliance increases science income from trade routes between your cities, and eventually allows you to share Eurekas and boost each other's research speed.

Each of these alliances can be upgraded over time by earning alliance points, which is done passively as well as by setting up trade routes between your 2 Civs. Once the points threshold is crossed, they automatically upgrade to the next level, so once you’ve got them set up, you don’t really need to do much else other than make sure they are renewed. All alliances only last a certain number of turns, so if you want to keep going, you’ll need to renew them each time they run out. As long as you don’t tick off your buddies, this should be no problem, and you’ll be reaping the rewards in no time.

Lastly, Casus Belli or the Reason for War, allows you to declare non-surprise wars, which have significantly fewer penalties. There is a range of options from Formal Wars, as we touched on earlier, to Protectorate Wars, where you declare war to protect an allied City State. Each option comes with its own amount of Grievances generated and penalties from other Civs. No matter how you do it, declaring War will almost always cause most other Civs to be a little more wary of you, and this is known as the Warmonger's Penalty.

This is a fairly complex mechanic with a lot of numbers affecting everything that, to be blunt, you really don’t need to know about unless you’re min-maxing. But to boil it down to its most basic explanation, the more war-mongering actions you perform, such as declaring war, conquering, keeping or razing cities and wiping out Civs entirely, the higher this penalty will be, and the less Civs will be inclined to like you without some encouragement or preexisting relationship. This decays naturally over time, but can also be sped up by returning conquered cities to their original owners, either by gifting them through deals or liberating them back to a third party.

So the bottom line is be cautious of declaring and aggressively participating in too many wars, as it can quickly tank your relationships with everyone and, unless that’s what you’re going for, that’s generally not the best idea.

Wars also affect your own Civ through War Weariness. This is essentially reducing the productivity and happiness of your populace because they’re so tired of the stress of war. This is represented through a reduction in Amenities across all cities, meaning it becomes that much harder to stay in control and progress.

Wars can also be declared on city-states, as mentioned a very long time ago at this point. This is a little different, but also functionally the same. If you take their one city, you wipe them out, so it's a lot simpler to finish them off. However, all the penalties I just mentioned can still come to bite you, sometimes even worse than normal, as Suzerains of those City States can rush to their defence, and all Civs with envoys placed there won’t take kindly to you attacking their ally. In short, City States can be the target of wars, but most of the time it’s not super worth it, so only go for it if you’re absolutely sure.

I suppose since I’ve talked all about War, I should probably also mention combat since the two go hand in hand.

I briefly touched on combat during the early game, and to be honest, war isn’t all that different to fighting Barbarians. When fighting other enemy units outside of cities, it’s exactly the same. Melee units trade blows with whatever they’re targeting, ranged just sling damage from a distance but can’t really defend themselves in melee, and when a unit runs out of HP, it's gone.

There’s a little more to this as you unlock units like Artillery, Siege Engines and Cavalry, but the principles are mainly the same. Artillery is best used against cities, dealing full damage to walls and city HP, but reduced amounts to standard units.

Siege Towers allow nearby melee units to ignore city walls and directly attack the city hp giving them a huge advantage against heavy defences. Oh, and walls are just buildings that increase this extra layer of health that cities have, making them harder to take down than with just health, and eventually allowing cities to attack nearby units.

Cavalry are mounted units that have increased movement compared to regular melee troops, whilst still maintaining serious damage, but are ineffective against city defences and anti-cavalry units, which are normally some derivation of spearmen.

There are way too many units to explain them all individually, but they’ll all fall into one of the categories laid out just now, and it’ll be pretty clear from reading their short or extended description what they are and, therefore, what they’re good at. Most Civs also have a unique unit that only they can use, and it’s normally just an upgraded version of something everybody else can use, giving them a window of advantage at some point during the game. So if you want to war at any point, the point when you have your unique unit is often a pretty good time to try, since you’ll have access to something that no one else possibly could.

Anyway, back to combat. Attacking ground units is all the same, but cities are a little different. As mentioned, they can have fortification HP from walls, which adds a second layer of health to chip through first before you start damaging the city. Once the city's HP is reduced to 0 and a melee unit steps onto the city tile, you will capture the city and be given the option to keep or raze it. Either option will cause grievances, but keeping does leave the door open for returning that city later during peace talks to negate this a little bit.

One last thing to note is that once units have gained enough XP either through combat or otherwise, they’ll gain the ability to be promoted. This allows them to select skills from their tree to improve their abilities in several ways, normally offensively or defensively. It’s not crazy, but it helps your units stay competitive and heals them considerably, so it can be a good way to keep them in fighting form when far from home.

That’s everything about combat, but what about winning actual wars. Well, there are many ways to win since it all really depends on what your goals are. If you wanted to take a single city that you needed, that’s a win; if you wanted to wipe them out, that’s kinda the ultimate win, and so on and so forth. In any case but wiping them out, you’ll need to reach a peace agreement eventually; this is where you can ensure your efforts were worth it by creating a deal very heavily in your favour. But this only works if you’re beating them, so make sure you find yourself on a strong footing when entering peace talks; otherwise, it’ll be you getting fleeced in exchange for not being wiped from the game. As mentioned earlier, Civs can return cities to their original owners to reduce Grievances, and once the deal is balanced to everyone's liking, it will be accepted, and the war will end, preventing any further combat.

That’s really about all there is to it. The actual fighting of a war is the simplest part; it’s all the penalties and Grievances you have to worry about, since fighting offensively, no matter what, tends to make the rest of the AI world dislike you. Still, if you’re looking for that domination victory, it doesn’t really matter who likes you if they’ll all eventually be bending the knee.

This is unlocked upon entering the Medieval Age and allows all Civs to vote on a selection of options that can affect how the entire game plays. These can vary wildly over the course of the game, from Trade embargoes to Deforestation policies.

Generally, they’ll make something better or worse for either everyone or a selected leader. Voting on these options costs Diplomatic favour, and once voting is completed, they’ll be counted, and resolutions will pass with the effects being activated immediately.

If the thing you voted for passed just as you specified, you gain diplomatic victory points as well as any bonuses from your vote. If the outcome passed but for a different target, then 50% of the Diplomatic Favour spent will be refunded. And if what you voted for lost completely, you will be fully refunded for your Favour.

It seems backwards, but it’s just to stop anyone running away with the game and keep players who lost in with more favour to use next time.

It’s a fairly straightforward mechanic that just asks you to vote on things every few turns. It gets more complex later on and can actually grant a diplomatic victory in the endgame, but I’ll come back to this later in the " How to win section.

* Special sessions may be called by players negatively affected by certain conditions, such as mass religious conversion or liberation of a conquered city. If you vote to pass the resolution, you’ll have to complete the objectives specified to receive rewards, otherwise the source of the emergency will instead be rewarded, normally making them far more powerful. Don’t sweat these too much if you really can’t participate, as it’s not the end of the world, but if you’re able to without massively derailing your own plans, then go right ahead.

There are up to six options to go for when looking to win a game of Civ. The simplest option is the score victory, which tallies up everything each player has achieved, and whoever's total adds up to the most by the time you reach the turn limit wins. This is more of a failsafe, as this requires none of the other options to have been achieved first, which is extremely unlikely.

Science Victory is achieved by completing a series of increasingly time-consuming and expensive projects in your cities to set up a colony in space. This requires almost all of the science tree to be completed, as well as having very high production in your cities to create everything in time. Whoever launches their colony first takes the win, so be aware of others racing towards this.

Culture requires you to have more Tourists visiting your Civ than they are visiting cities within their own Civ. Tourism is generated through Great Works, certain trade routes, governments and more. Essentially, everything that generates culture and makes cities attractive pulls in more tourists. This can be a hard one to gauge how you’re doing since it’s not really a linear scale like science, and can vary wildly depending on the conditions of the game. If you’re focusing on this one, I would prioritise making space to contain great works, earning great people points to get the people to make those works, and keeping on friendly terms with everyone since they’re not likely to go tour around a country they’re sworn enemies with now, are they?

Domination is the simplest condition, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the easiest to achieve. All you have to do is capture the capital city of all original Civs. Now you don’t have to wipe everyone out, but still, this will require a lot of hard fighting since Capitals are normally the biggest and most defended cities a Civ will have. Simple, yes, but still a massive challenge, not even taking into account all the penalties of this much warring.

The Religious Victory requires you to have your religion be the predominant religion for every Civ in the game, meaning the majority of everyone's cities must follow your religion. This will require a massive amount of faith, spreading and Theological combat, so be prepared to spam buy faith units and micro them for the entire game.

* And finally, the Diplomatic Victory. This requires you to consistently get your proposals passed at Congress, earning victory points each time. Later on, an option will open up to literally just give the winner of the votes more points, so pouring your resources into this tends to be the way to go to get ahead. Upon reaching the required amount of points, you’ll win the game as long as no one else beats you to it.

And that’s all your options. When I talked about setting a goal for yourself at the start of the video and about a billion times throughout it, this is what I meant. You should choose which of these you’re going to aim for before you even decide which Civ to play as. Certain Civs will be more suited for certain victory types, so it helps to have that goal in mind.

When building cities, units and relationships, it’s good to know what you’re aiming for as it helps drive your decisions. You can technically aim for more than one of these goals at once and decide later, but just be wary not to split your focus so much that you end up achieving neither.

And with that, I believe we’ve covered everything you need to know to get started in Civilisation VI. Let me know if you have any questions or feel I missed something in the comments below.