I’ve been playing Sid Meier’s Civilization since 1991 when I bought a boxed copy at the mall to play on what I recall was a 486-66 though I don’t remember the exact PC.  It came on floppies and I think I bought it at Electronics Boutique but I forget.  I still have my copy of Rome on 640K a Day.

Civilization went through some up-and-down years.  The first four versions were rock solid but then they got into the Call To Power Years, and on mobile there was the Civilization Revolutions disaster.  Finally someone decided to do bring Civilization into the modern age: full Steam experience, expansions, and a first-class-citizen mobile version.

Civilization VI is Civilization done right, and and it’s been a mammoth success.   With two full expansions, many cultural expansions, and two full subscription runs with more add-ons, the game is phenomenal.  The devs continue to innovate on the underlying engine and I’ve been amazed how unique and different not only the cultures (Mayans, French, etc.) are, but also how much scenarios and options in the game are radically varied.

I play on iPad, so no mods.  The first expansion, Rise and Fall is my favorite, as Gathering Storm has a bit too many random disasters for my taste.

My Strategy

I always build a massive economy, which I find to be a very virtuous cycle. I relies on three main operations.

First, go gonzo for religion. Your mission is to get Tithe for your religion. Over the game this will build into an enormous income stream for you. It’s 1GP for every 4 followers in the game. Your worst rival could be feeding tons of money into your coffers if you convert his city. Try to get that first apostle ASAP so you can lock down Tithe.

Second, get the steward and promote him to Surplus Logistics. Pick a city and every city should build a trade route to that city. Even early on this will be +4 Food for every city in your game, which is a wonderful igniter to growth and makes marginal cities very viable. Most of my games have a trade route from every single city to Magnus’s city. My policy is to add commercial zones/markets/traders as soon as possible, and then as trade routes expire, they are reassigned to the newest cities so everyone gets a growth burst.

And finally, the Owls of Minerva. That is pretty obvious. If you can get Big Ben en route, that is great, but really once you get to 20-30K gold, the income from Master Plan piles up quickly and you will top out at the max 1,000gp pretty easily (or is that max only in GS?)

Why have a massive economy?

• To support a massive military.
• To suddenly fill your cities with jet bombers and modern tank armies in a single turn. Handy for either defense or offense.
• To accelerate growth by buying district buildings. Particularly the first level ones (markets, libraries, etc.) are cheap one you’re hauling in 1-2K GP per turn. Instead of waiting to get a Great Person to “instantly builds a workshop and factory” you can be your own Great Person.
• To redistribute food efficiently through Suplus Logistics. Later the Collectivization civic will give you a +4 Food for all trade routes (!), so you’ll get +8 Food in every city.
• Later when you need to build a wonder or something, you can move all traders to a city and concentrade production, etc. Or if you need cash, switch to trade routes with foreign cities.

I have beaten the game on Deity. Mostly now I play a few rungs down more for fun, or down at Warlord/Prince if I just want to try a new civ or plan.