Want to start off a game of Civilization VI well and get an advantage over the other players? On this page, we'll give you 11 tips on what to do when first starting out to help you win at the game! There is also a page for what not to do when first starting out Civilization VI, and you can find that here. For more tips and tricks, on how to advance your civilizatation to be the most dominating in the world, be sure to check here for more.
Decide How You're Going to Win[edit]
There are multiple ways to win in Civilzation VI and if you aren't aware of what you'll need to be doing in order to win the game, you might only realize halfway through that you've been doing things all wrong! A single game can take many hours to complete and you don't want to have to restart and lose all of your progress just because you failed to prepare, right? There are five main types of victories in the game: Domination, Science, Culture, Religious, and Score Victories. Each one of them will be described in-depth below.
Domination Victory can be achieved by having control of all original capitals in the game. However, only the last player holding onto their capital will win, meaning if you have one last capital to go and their army takes your own capital, they would win the game.
Science Victory can be achieved by three steps: Launching a satellite, landing a human on the Moon, and establishing a colony on Mars. Launching a satellite requires researching the Rocketry Tech, building a Spaceport, and completing the Earth Satellite project. Landing a human on the Moon requires researching the Satellites technology and completing the Moon Landing project. Establishing a colony on Mars requires researching the Robotics, Nuclear Fission, and Nanotechnology techs and completing each respective module project. Once all three module projects are built, you will have won the game.
Culture Victory can be achieved by having a total number of tourists that exceeds the domestic tourists of every other civilization in the game. You can acheive these tourists by having multiple trade routes, shared/conflicting late game Governments, open borders, Great Works, Relics, Holy Sites, National Parks, Artifacts, and wonders.
Religious Victory can be acheived by converting every single other civilization to your Religion, which can simply be acheived by having the majority of their cities following your Religion. This can usually be acheived by having a high number of Apostles and Missionaries.
Score Victory is a special victory that can be obtained after the year 2050 or whichever turn the player sets. It is determined by a civilzation's score, a score that accumulates over the course of the game from your number of civis, number of population, number of cities, number of technologies, number of future technologies, number of wonders, military accomplishments, number of Great People, and number of Beliefs.
Pick the Right Character[edit]
As you now know, there are many different types of ways to win in Civilization VI. Now, when you play the game, you will have to play as a leader of your civilization. These leaders give you unique bonuses, units, and buildings that allow your civilization to thrive in a certain way. Some leaders will be more suited towards winning at a certain victory than others. For example, take Frederick Barbarossa: He has the following additional effects, units, and buildings while playing as him:
Free Imperial Cities: Each city can build one more district than usual (exceeding the normal limit based on Population).
Holy Roman Emperor: Additional Military policy slot. +7 Combat Strength when attacking city-states.
U-Boat: German unique Modern era naval unit that replaces the Submarine. Cheaper to produce, +1 Sight, and +10 Combat Strength when fighting on Ocean Tiles. Able to reveal other stealthed units.
Hansa: District unique to Germany for industrial activity. Replaces the Industrial Zone district.
As you can see, Frederick Barbarossa is very suited towards military activity and many districts, given his unique effects and unit type. This means that Frederick will be much better at attempting a Domination Victory compared to someone like Pericles, who is much more suited to a Culture Victory.
Build More Cities[edit]
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.
Get Amenity as Soon as Possible[edit]
Be sure to also keep up your Food and Housing amounts as well so that you aren't gaining too many people or too little, but you'll still need ways to entertain your cities so focus on getting more Amenity quickly. For example, focus on researching towards the Games and Recreation technology for an easy way to deal with low Amenity. Another way to have Amenities is to have Luxury Resources such as Ivory or Tobacco inside of your cities. Be warned, however, as war weariness and bankruptcy will lower the Amenities in each city.
Trade![edit]
Trading is extremely important in Civilization VI due to the fact that it will grant all your cities free resources, like Food or Gold. You will usually have a limit on how many trade routes you can have at any given moment in your civilization, but making the most out of all of them will result in heavy resource production which can be very important to winning the game. As a tip, you can even trade between your own cities and still gain resources, meaning if you have two cities right next to each other you can just continuously trade between the two for easy resources.
Another thing that should be noted in relation to trading is that you can actually trade and bargain with other Civilizations. By clicking on their character icon n the top right, you will be sent to the diplomatic menu where you can do several things such as denounce, declare war, and other options. If you choose to trade with them, you can offer them open borders in exchange for whatever they feel is good, usually a small amount of gold per turn or open borders on their end. This is good for manuevering units around other civilizations as they will get upset at you otherwise.
Not only can you trade gold and border status, but you can even trade Great Works, although they will cost high amounts of gold or luxuries. This is very useful later on as you will have tons of gold by that point and most civilizations will have Great Works to buy from. They don't always sell their Great Works, in which case you can use Spies to steal them from the civilizations! However, trading is always the easiest path with how much gold you are left with later on in the game, so always try that before attempting to steal it. These tips should really help out anyone trying to go for a Culture Victory.
Always Get Tribal Villages[edit]
Tribal villages can be found very early on in the game while exploring the world in Civilization VI. They look like you would expect them to, small little villages that will look somewhat lively but also blend in with the background a little bit. When you find one (by which I mean one of them enters the vision range of one of your units or cities), you'll be notified of the discovery of a new tribal village. It is important to always pick these up as soon as you find one because they will grant gifts to the first (and ONLY the first) civilization that lands on the village tile. This gift can include survivors like Builders or Traders, technology and/or technology boosts, military units, Faith, Gold, Relics, or civic boosts. They are essentially free resources but only can be redeemed once, so if you find one be sure to immediately head there!
Build Military Units Early On[edit]
While playing through the game early on, you will find that much of the land is inhabited by Barbarians. These units will always be aggressive towards the player, so having a small army is extremely useful for defending your cities, scouting out nearby unexplored territory, and overtaking Barbarian camps. You don't have to focus entirely on creating an army of Warriors and Archers, but having several units of each is recommended early on in order to deal with the Barbarians. Not only that, but it's always possible that you could get on the bad side of another civilization and in the off chance that they declare war upon you, an army would be suited to defending yourself.
Upgrade Older Military Units into Newer Ones[edit]
Whenever you advance into the next era, such as into the Classical Era from the Ancient Era, you will eventually be able to pick up more advanced units. For example, each civilization starts off with the Warrior unit as the basic melee military unit. However, once they advance to the Classical Era and research the Iron Working technology, they will be able to unlock and build Swordsman. These units are stronger and move faster than the Ancient Warrior units that you had used before. However, that doesn't mean you will have to discard your Warrior units and start creating Swordsman units (although you can do the latter part anyways), instead you can simply click on the Warrior unit and pay a small gold fee to upgrade them into the Swordsman class. This will not only save you time (which can be crucial, especially later on in the game), but can also save you gold in the long run.
Denounce Enemy Civilizations Before Starting a War[edit]
If you don't, you will recieve the full penalty for declaring war against another civilization rather than just a small portion of it. You can denounce a civilization in the Diplomacy window, afterwards which will contain the option to formally declare war against them.
Always Be Sure to Obtain (or Buy) Great People[edit]
Great People can heavily increase your chances of winning by allowing the player to get many different bonuses through their special effects and utility. There are many different types and the player will usually want to focus on obtaining the type that most benefits the type of victory they would like (see Tip #1!). For example, for a Domination Victory you will want Great Admirals and Generals, while for a Culture Victory you would want Great Writers, Musicians, and Artists. You can earn Great People by earning points through districts and buildings towards their associated Great Person type, so if you want to get a Great Scientist quickly it would be best to have your Campus and Research Lab built as soon as possible! One last thing to note is that there are more ways to obtain Great People than just through Great People points, you can actually buy Great People using Gold or Faith while in the Great People menu! It's not very likely you'll have the Gold or Faith for them, but if you ever have a surplus of either and can afford the Great Person, it's recommended that you pick them up.
Create Builders![edit]
Builders are extremely useful in Civilization VI. They can be used to strip forests for an increase in production (speeding up your current project), can build and remove areas on tiles such as mines on top of stone resources, they can build camps for extra housing, they can build farms for food per turn, and so much more. Don't hestitate to pick some of these bad boys up early on, as they can be incredibly useful for getting resources.
Comments
In Civ 6, keeping your civilization strong and growing requires hundreds of decisions, and one of the most basic is whether or not you want to play 'tall' or 'wide.' Tall means having fewer but more powerful cities, and wide means having more but less-powerful cities.
Players on the Civilization 6subreddit /r/civ have been debating the question of tall vs. wide for over a week, and which choice you make seems to depend mostly on science and war.
Civilization city spamming: The relationship between population and science has changed in Civ 6
According to redditor garmeth06, citizens in Civ 6 produce fewer science resources than citizens in Civ 5, so where going wide in Civ 5 made sense as the highest population provided the most science, in Civ 6 buildings, districts and special persons are more important in determining science resource production.
Therefore, playing tall in Civ 6 Psp cso converter. might make the most sense if you're going for a scientific victory, garmeth06 argues. You can focus on spending production on the buildings that grant you more science, versus spending the same production on entirely new cities.
Tall vs. wide: The more cities you own in Civ 6, the more deadly wars can become
You don't need to play Civ to know that the more an empire expands its borders and has more territory to defend, the more troops that empire needs to protect those borders. This becomes a slippery relationship to maintain, and it's something to consider before going wide in Civ 6.
Not only do you have to worry about the upkeep costs for your soldiers, you also have to worry about how rapidly you can deploy them between cities that are spread out from one another, which affects how quickly you can deploy reinforcements.
You also need to worry about how expanding borders can anger nearby civs and potentially lead to war. If you play a tall strategy, you eliminate many of these concerns.
Tall vs. wide: If you want flexibility in Civ 6, play wide with lots of cities
Redditor superfeds in the comment thread brings up an interesting counterpoint. Playing tall might be good if you are going for a scientific victory, but that's a very specific strategy that assumes a peaceful game.
'Tall is situational and may lean towards [a] science victory,' superfeds writes. 'However I think going wide gives you more options and flexibility. With the multiplayer aspect of this game looking more popular and stable than 5, I doubt any totally pacifist strategy will be 'standard.'
Another commenter, Shiesu, says that playing wide could actually be better for a science victory if buildings are what generate the majority of your science.
'As you said yourself, population doesn't really matter that much,' writes Shiesu. 'Flat bonuses from buildings do. With 8 cities operational, I am [literally] making almost double the science you're making off of 4. And double the culture. And double the military. Probably not quite double the gold, and certainly not a lot more tourism. But still.'
I know in many (possibly all?) previous Civilization games, cities could only grow to a certain size, and usually you wanted to place your cities far enough apart that they'd all be able to grow without overlapping.
How far apart should I place my cities in Civilization 6 to make sure they don't overlap?
If you want exactly zero overlap and maximum space utilization - place them within 6 empty spaces of each other (each city has workable surrounding area of 3 tiles away from City Center). It is though reasonable quite often to space them 4-5 tiles away from each other as cities don't usually grow that big.
See this answer to a related Civ V question for visual aid.
With the new housing mechanic cities just can't grow that big that fast. Also border expansion is way slower than in civ5. Unless you invest tons of money into tiles there is no chance you will ever work the outmost tiles before industrial era or so. Thus I recommend against spacing out too far. Make sure you cover the important ressouces within two tiles of your city centers, that should be a priority early on. Spacing might be a problem, though, late game when you want to build lots of districts and wonders.
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Civ VI Loyalty Guide (GS) Last updated 5th Feb 2019 - GS is not out yet and there are bound to be additional changes found. Loyalty Basics Loyalty occurs at the city level only. Loyalty based on your population both within a city and nearby account for a large amount of your loyalty and loyalty pressure from other civilizations is also based primarily on population and how they are affected by golden and dark ages. To counter external loyalty pressure, you gain additional loyalty factors within your city that exert no pressure. A city is fully loyal to your country at 100% loyalty or 100 loyalty points. Both mean the same thing. When a city has 0 loyalty it will rebel and turn into a free city which can in turn change loyalty to your or another civilization. When a city changes loyalty this is called here city ‘flipping’. A new city starts at 100% loyalty and a captured city starts at 50% loyalty. Finding Loyalty Information There are various useful screens in the game to gain loyalty information You can move your mouse over the Civ icon on any civ’s city to get a view of the general loyalty state of the city Clicking on a cities Civilization icon brings up a small loyalty bar showing the cities loyalty %. The example left shows clicking on a free cities fist icon bringing up a bar show green for about 60% and Red with the polish icon at the end. This means the city is 60% loyal to the free city and if it will rebel it will change to be a Polish city. This Loyalty bar can be shown for all cities by using the loyalty lens This loyalty bar can be expanded by clicking on the civ icon on the bar. We will discuss the white sections of this screen in the loyalty sections chapter. The lower part showing civs is discussed in the Free Cities chapter. You can get a summary of your all your cities loyalty in the City Status report When you select one of your settlers, you may see numbers on the map indicating you will have some loyalty issues settling where there are negative numbers. This is discussed in the Population pressure section. Numbers shown reflect the status at the beginning of your turn and are just raw pressure numbers. When you select a city, from the city toolbar you can select the city details pane. The loyalty section of the city details pane shows the most detailed loyalty information available. Unfortunately, it will still list some effects as “other” and these are discussed in the Other section of the Loyalty Sections chapter. Loyalty Sections
In the loyalty detail of a city we see loyalty broken into sections. Different loyalty influences affect different sections as summarized in this chapter. The key point to remember is that the only thing that influences other cities is population pressure (an and Amani promotion) All other effect are only applied to the local city. Population Pressure
Population pressure is based on the population of all cities within 9 tiles of a city. Any of your cities count as loyalty to you. Any other cities pressures are added up against you. The two numbers are compared as a ratio and an outcome of pressure is resolved as a number between +20 and -20 loyalty pressure. A pressure is counted as population -10% for every tile distant from the city. This is then multiplied by 0.5 for a dark age and 1.5 for a golden age. So an enemy city of 5 population 5 tiles away in a golden age would give 3.75 loyalty pressure (5*50%*1.5=3.75). If your city had 4 population in a dark age that would be 2 loyalty pressure. The two pressures are then calculated as a ratio which is a little under 2:1 in favour of the enemy. The ratios roughly equate to the following 3:1 +20 Loyalty per turn 2.5:1 +15 Loyalty per turn 2:1 +10 Loyalty per turn 1.5:1 +5 Loyalty per turn 1:1 0 loyalty 1:1.5 -5 loyalty per turn 1:2 -10 loyalty per turn 1:2.5 -15 loyalty per turn 1:3 -20 loyalty per turn In the normal game there is more cities adding to each side of this equation. All your own cities vs all other cities not including free cities or city states. The average reduction from foreign cities due to distance is 2/3 so if there is 9 pop of foreign pressure it will roughly equate to 3 for ratio comparisons. The precise pressure formula has been identified as follows Domestic Pressure = Domestic Age Factor * Sum of [ each Domestic Population * (10 - Distance Away) ] Foreign Pressure = Sum of [ each Foreign Population * (10 - Distance Away) * Foreign Age Factor ] Loyalty Pressure = 10 * (Domestic - Foreign) / ( min[Domestic, Foreign] + 0.5 ) Where
The specific city in question exerts its own domestic pressure where its distance away is zero.
City-States / Free Cities do not contribute to Foreign Pressure, but exert their own Domestic Pressure.
Bread and Circuses doubles the population count for a city.
The 0.5 I have found to be a divide by zero fix, and corrects some of the rounding problems seen in previous threads.
Loyalty pressure is capped at +- 20, so technically is: min[20, max[-20, loyalty pressure]]
Civ 6 City Distance Table
Capital City Pressure The Capital, as a separate item, emulates a city (domestic or foreign) with an identical population and tile placement to the city which is the capital only the age factor is always 1.0, either domestically or foreign. Bread and Circuses does not double the effect of capital, only of the underlying city. Governors The Governors section hold governor modifications for the city. Placing any governor in a city will immediately provide +8 loyalty to the city. Using the Praetorium diplomacy card increases this by +2. Victor's +4 loyalty to friendly cities will only take affect once Victor has spent 3 turns joining a city and Ibrahim's loyalty immunity only takes affect after 5 turns. Card modification due to governors are not included here but under the Other section. All loyalty here only affects the local city. Amenities (happiness) Amenities affect loyalty also. When a city is happy (+1 amenities) then the city gains +3 loyalty per turn. When the city is ecstatic (+3 amenities) then the city gains +6 loyalty per turn. When a city is displeased (-1 to -2 amenities) then the city has -3 loyalty per turn and when unhappy or worse (-3 or worse amenities) then the city has -6 loyalty per turn. Garrison during war and Occupation A city captured during war is not yours and so is -5 loyalty for being occupied. This goes even if the city is not ceded to you. If during war you garrison a captured city that provides +5 loyalty therefore counteracting the occupation negative. Other Other affects are all other loyalty effects not mentioned in this section. They will be mentioned in their own sections. City States and Free Cities City States and Free Cities have their own sections to discuss them in more details All Free Cities gain +10 loyalty per turn shown in their own section All City States gain +20 loyalty per turn shown in their own section While a city is a free city but is getting higher pressure from other civ's it collects these pressure points over turns. At the time the free city will flip it will flip to the civ that has historically had the most pressure while the city has been free. Governors All governors assigned to a city provide +8 loyalty to that city and only to that city. Like all other loyalty effects, while it may show immediately the effect is only calculated at the end of a turn. Only direct loyalty abilities are discussed here. Amani Emissary promotion - Provides other cities within 9 tiles not owned by you +2 loyalty toward your civilization. This loyalty only comes into effect once Amani is established. +2 may seem like a small amount but has the same effect as a 4 population city 5 tiles away. This value is displayed in the governor section of the loyalty display. Victor Garrison Commander Promotion - Your other cities within 9 tiles gain +4 Loyalty per turn towards your civilization. Ibrahim When Ibrahim is established in a foreign Capital, none of the owner's cities exert Loyalty pressure on your cities. Religion If you have not founded a religion this is not really an issue. If you have founded your own religion a city you own gains +3 loyalty for following that religion. A city following another religion has -3 loyalty for this. Cards The key things about cards is you can get +4 loyalty from them until quite late in the game. Only +2 if they do not have a governor. Limitanei (Early Empire) military card - +2 loyalty for a garrisoned unit Praetorium (Recorded History) Diplomatic card - governors provide an additional +2 loyalty to the city they are in. Colonial Offices (Exploration) Economic card - +3 loyalty to off continent cities Police State (ideology) Diplomatic card – All cities suffer -2 loyalty (spy levels reduced by 2 in your lands) Martial Law (Totalitarianism) Military card - +2 Loyalty for cities with a garrison (-25% WW also) – replaces Limitanei Communications Office (Social Media) Diplomatic card - +1 loyalty per turn to the city they are in per promotion they have – Replaces Praetorium Capital City Your capital city provides additional population pressure roughly equivalent to an additional population. Government Buildings Government Plaza The Government Plaza provides +8 local loyalty to the city it has been built in. If an enemy just has their capital left, Sacking the plaza may be all you need to flip it rather than suffering other penalties for taking it. Audience Chamber If you build the audience chamber, every city in your civilization without a governor will have -2 local loyalty applied. Wonders Colosseum Provides +2 loyalty to every city within 6 tiles However the Amenity benefits of Colosseum typically will give +3 loyalty to cities. Statue of Liberty The Statue of Liberty guarantees that every city within 6 tiles always has 100% loyalty to your civilization With high chopping ability you can settle a city next to the opponent, chop in the statue and get 2 settlers that will settle near that city to provide a powerful fast loyalty attack with cities that cannot switch, especially chopping in population and ED for bread and circuses.
Equally, capturing a city with the Statue and you have no loyalty issues for 6 tiles. Starvation When the city lacks food for its population -4 local loyalty is applied to the city This value is displayed in the Other section of the loyalty display. Alliances Cultural Alliance A level 1 cultural alliance stops both party’s cities loyalty pressure on each other’s cities. This can allow you to forward settle them. Emergencies Note: These still need review for validity in GS Nuclear Emergency Target city of the emergency gains +20 loyalty to avoid free city status Failure to successfully resolve the nuclear emergency means all your cities permanently suffer a loyalty reduction Military Emergency Target city of the emergency gains +20 loyalty to avoid free city status Backstab Emergency Target city of the emergency gains +20 loyalty to avoid free city status Civilization Bonuses Isibongo (Zulu) Cities with a garrisoned unit gain +3 loyalty per turn. This is increased to +5 loyalty for a corps or army. Swift Hawk (Mapuche) If a Mapuche unit destroys an enemy unit within the enemies land, the enemy city gains -5 loyalty Radio Oranje (Netherlands) Trade routes to your own country gain +1 loyalty per turn in the source city Royal Navy Dockyard (England) Provides +4 loyalty on foreign continents. Great Turkish Bombard (Ottomans) Cities not founded by you gain +4 Loyalty Open Air Museum (Sweden) +2 loyalty to this city Grand Vizier Ibrahim Promotion (Ottomans) When Ibrahim is established in a foreign Capital, none of the owner's cities exert Loyalty pressure on your cities. Mediterranean Colonies (Phoenicia) Coastal cities founded by them and located on the same continent as their Capital6 Capital always have maximum Loyalty Buildings
Monument A monument provides +1 loyalty to a city and if the city is at 100% loyalty provides an additional culture point. Espionage Foment Unrest An 8 turn mission that causes -20 loyalty when successful. Not that efficient as you can only have one spy performing that task in a city at a time. It should be used in combination with other tactics Neutralize Governor An 8 turn mission that neutralizes a governor for what seems like a random number of turns between 6 & 10 although duration may be reliant on spy level. I will update after testing more. Fabricate Scandal A 16 turn mission that removes all enemy Amani’s from a City State. Free Cities Once a city flips it first flips to be a free city. In this state it gains +10 loyalty as a free city. If this is enough to survive as a free city it will do so but often it is not enough as population pressure alone may be +20 City States City States gain an additional +20 loyalty and so are very hard to flip. This is made worse by envoys as each envoy sent to a CS counts as +2 loyalty visible in the Other section of the loyalty panel. You are better off taking the city and letting it flip to free after you have taken it as long as it is not too close to your cities. Preslav If you are suzerain of Preslav each gains +2 loyalty for each encampment building built there. Effects of low Loyalty A city at 75% or below loyalty grows at 75% of normal and has -25% to all yields. A city at 50% or below loyalty grows at 25% of normal and has -50% to all yields A city at 25% or below loyalty does not grow or produce anything. This area of pop growth is often forgotten. Capturing a free city will be at 50% loyalty. The very small population growth means making farms and improving land has little effect until you are over 75%. Rock Bands You can also run an Indie Rock band concert in a city for a one off loyalty reduction of 50. World Congress Resolutions A Migration Treaty can force the target Civ to gain+20% population growth and -5 loyalty or -20% population growth and +5 loyalty. Occupied city An occupied city is when you are still at war with the cities owner (the one you just captured it from, not from a previous war) An occupied city will be at -5 loyalty which can be counteracted by having a garrisoned military unit. Do not forget that an occupied city has no population growth (apart from chopping)
Liberating a City When you liberate a city it becomes immune to your loyalty pressure. General Strategies Coping with Loyalty Size and number of cities matter but typically more so when they are small. Smaller cities allow the pressure ratio against you to get higher, reaching 3:1 is -20 which is very hard to deal with but even 2:1 (-10) is more than just a governor. Growing a city is now more important than it was, especially with close neighbours at the start. It is quite possible to get a capital city losing loyalty if there is low population growth at the start. Equally capturing cities in high foreign pressure areas is also a problem. First a foremost think of population growth, even if it means chopping in more population. A close second it how many cities you have close by, every little bit helps, even taking a settler on campaign with you to slow down the revolt of the first captured city can be useful. An easy rule of thumb is a city 5 tiles away has half the pressure of local population so it can be fairly fast to estimate rough pressure. Once you get to governors they can be used to counter bad loyalty but it can mean they are not where you want them. Cards can also help but every loyalty card you slot is a slot less for more useful cards. Limitanei is a good early example of a card taking a very valuable space. Keep a strong eye on what civs are in golden and dark ages. This helps cope with pressure a lot and if you are about to go into a dark age you will get more significant Making Enemy cities flip Sacking their lands will make a city starve for -4 loyalty and possibly even get -3 or -6 loyalty from unhappiness. This alone is not enough in many cases, you need to reduce their population pressure from other cities, attacking when they are in a dark age helps or remove other cities You can settle new cities or quickly grow your cities population with chopping in food to add pressure. Being in a golden age adds pressure as does running a Bread and Circus project which needs and Entertainment Complex. Running a foment unrest espionage mission can also help as can Neutralizing the governor. You can also run an Indie Rock band concert in a city for a one off loyalty reduction of 50. Finally, you can use Amani’s Emissary promotion to add another -2 loyalty to their city. If all of this does not help then you may not be able to flip them or you may have to remove some of their other cities to make them flip. Alternatively, as long as you do not mind the warmongering you can take their city which will then flip to a free city. Take that again and you avoid the -18-diplomacy penalty with them. Flipping a CS A CS naturally has +20 which counteracts your +20 pressure max. This is roughly 3 times as much pop in a 9 tile radius than the CS has. The CS then can have happiness for +3/6 (they can slot cards) but the CS does not have a governor. So if you do not want to capture the CS outright, pillage their lands which will give then starvation, unhappiness and pop loss.. you do not even need Armani but she can speed things up by a turn. Pillaging and pop pressure together will do it in roughly 10 turns. Flip and pillage Strategy This gamey strategy occurs when you take a city and it is going to flip in a few turns. You can use a builder or two to repair all the valuable land before it flips. When it flips you get experience for killing the new units and you can pillage the lands for great rewards (especially if you slot the raid card). You can then capture the city, repair it's improvements and let it flip again for the same benefits. Two such cities with 4 mines each can gain you roughly 100 science per turn. It gets boring fast and it is not really in the spirit of the game but there is nothing wrong with doing it once. Forward Settling Someone Correctly. If I was to forward settle now (and I do) you need to be very aware of how many large pop cities will affect you but just be generally aware that to successfully do it some things are key. External cities will -20 you at max so that's 5 turns till free city. You need to reduce that -20 as much as possible. 1. Buy a monument on Turn 1 for +1 2. Slot the +2 loyalty card for +2 (you can get more but realistically +2) 3. Send in the governor for +8 (if later you can probably afford the extra +2 from Amani but lets not consider here) 4. be Happy for +3 .. this is the turning point You are now 1 pop suffering -20 counteracted with +14 so you have 17 turns to fix things 5. For goodness sake do not starve because that is -6 and is your death knell 6. Buy a builder at T1, you should not have settled somewhere where you cannot chop in at least 2 pop.. the more pop the better (within the limits of point 5). Your pop is on average twice as powerful as the enemies.. and also be aware it is not just the enemies cities affecting you, CS also do.. add up all their pop, any city within 9 tiles that is not your then divide that by 6 (2 for distance then 3 for max ratio) and the number at the end of it you need to be higher than within 17 turns.. the higher the better. 7. You can use other things like buying entertainment with Reyna or chopping it in and running Bread and Circus (no buildings needed) but this is normally excessive. 8. Last but not least.. be aware if they are in a golden and you are not.. and also be aware how long it is until an era change occurs. These make a massive difference to the sums above. Key rule of thumb is be happy Governor + ecstatic = -6 (Amani + 2 loyalty cards = 0!) Governor + happy = -9 Governor + unhappy = -18 Selling Cities The ability to sell cities should just be removed from the game as now with loyalty benefits you can sell a city then watch it flip back 5 turns later. Agreed a civ will pay very little for it but the tactic has benefits. Terrain Terrain appears to have an influence value but not sure if that means loyalty Mountains have 3 influence Desert, tundra, coast and snow have 2 influence The rest have 1 influence. Super Loyal Civs Phoenician cities on the same continent as it's capital always have full loyalty and Phoenicia can move its capital around so be careful. The Ottoman Governor Ibrahim stops your cities creating pressure on theirs if he is in one of your cities. many thanks to @man_in_finance for finishing the thread @Trav'ling Canuck and @Lily_Lancer for helping start this thread. @AriochIV for his fantastic web site http://well-of-souls.com/civ/civ6_gatheringstorm.html