Sid Meier’s Civilization VI: What to do in the first 50 turns

Now this Sid Meier’s Civilization VI available with Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass and the Cloud, many of you may be diving into this epic turn-based strategy game for the first time, while others may be returning after a while from their addictive days. Anyway, we thought we’d help out with some beginner tips to help build your civilizations during your first 50 turns or so.

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Some basic initial tips

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• Ocean view: it is useful to place your city near waterways or the coast. This opens up more opportunities (trade, food, etc.) for your civilization when you start out. For example, founding a city on a coast gives you an immediate bonus to sailing research, which can come in handy later when you hit the waves.
• Robots are your friends: Use auto-research on your warriors/scouts early so you can focus on developing your core strategy. Their wayfinding ability is quite good and can give you an early insight into future desirable city-state locations and barbarian camps (more on that later).
• Set it and forget it: Use the queue system early on and often in both research and unit creation. It also allows you to think about the rest of your layout and research while the turns roll by quickly (and it will go faster than you think!). Ideally, your first units should be a combination of scout, warrior, slinger/archer, and builder in any order you choose.

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Choose a path to victory and work towards it

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There are five victory conditions (Science, Culture, Religion, Dominion and Score – Diplomacy is available in A storm is gathering DLC) and each civilization leader has a core strength that you must lean on, not abandon. For example, Cleopatra (Egypt) gives you gold and food bonuses for trade routes, so try to set them up early to help your civilization grow to take advantage of this.

Much of this information and strategy can be mapped out for you early on from the in-game tech tree. This will also give you a rough estimate of how many turns it will take to unlock some of these skills. You can even add numerous technologies to the build queue to “set and forget” while you work on other aspects of your plan for world domination. Or, to make it even easier, if you have a win condition in mind, just scroll to the right and select the tech you want, and the game will map the perfect tech to unlock it, automatically add it to your queue, and you’ll be on your way.

Seeing as how we’re trying to hit 50 spins today, we recommend you unlock the ‘Core 3’ as soon as possible, which are Pottery, Livestock and Mining. All this in less than 30 moves should be unlocked, which opens up several other paths for you to start progressing and making tiles available for resource mining. They are key to your success early in the game as they are included in almost everything.

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Explore early, look for neighbors, discover resources

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Knowledge is the key to success, and that comes when the “fog of war” on the world map is revealed Civilization VI. Sending scouts out into the world can lead to resource locations, other civilizations, villages, and those pesky barbarian camps (more on those in a minute). Scouts can also come across national wonders that can give astrology a boost.

And while the scout is the obvious unit to use here, warriors can also be used as an early alternative. Your chances of another civilization invading your newly founded settlement are relatively low early in the game, and sending them out as “cheap scouts” can be advantageous in the early round before you can create a custom scout (which takes about 5 turns). When you do place your scout, you should move your warrior closer to home, as barbarians can seriously disrupt your early expansion plans. Speaking of…

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Clear out the barbarians as soon as possible

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Despite your best laid plans, it can all quickly come crashing down with a couple of unwanted raids from the local barbarian population. It is advised not to ignore this thorn in your side and try to counter their raids by creating some warriors and slingers/archers to seek out their camps and destroy them completely.

Before that happens, you should start planning this offensive. Your warriors can gain XP by taking out barbarian scouts who are relatively weak. If you can level them up, these one-on-one battles will be more in your favor. Personally, we’ve found that a good mix of 2 units of slinger/archer with 1 unit of warrior is the best approach in the early game. Once you can upgrade slingers to archers (by researching Archery after livestock), their line of sight will allow you to start picking off barbarian raiders much further, allowing you to weaken them so your warriors can clean up.

Taking care of these barbarian camps is key to your success early on so you can start building the perfect units to carry out your expansion plans, like Raider-free Settlers, Builders, and Traders.

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Builders

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By about turn 30, you should be close to unlocking Pottery, Animal Husbandry, and Mining, which will allow you to take advantage of resources near your starting location (located on adjacent tiles). Builders will be your key unit in this next early game as you want to get your local economy up and running as soon as possible, which can then open up trade and feed into your expansion plans.

Builders can only be used three times before they expire, but they have the ability to instantly create improvements—no need to wait for your farm to take shape. So, if you’re starting out with a very versatile area, it might make sense to queue two of them at this point in the game if you can afford it. They can also be used to restore damaged titles (for free!) that may be attacked by barbarians or other hostile civilizations.

Another unique thing about Builders in Civilization VI is that they can also mine resources to bring a lump sum to the parent city if you urgently need resources such as food. Later, when you unlock the bronze job, you’ll also be able to use the Builder to remove land features to help with later expansions, like placing campuses. Just remember that you don’t shoot what you plan to build later. For example, a wonder like Stonehenge needs to be built next to a stone.

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We hope these beginner tips help you in your quest to dominate the Civilization VI. As you’ll no doubt learn (or be introduced to), there are dozens and dozens of different ways to approach the game and much more in-depth strategies to consider as you get deeper into the game around 100-200 turns. , we hope you enjoy playing Sid Meier’s Civilization VI today with Xbox Game Pass, PC Game Pass and Cloud. Happy submission!