Civilization VI: Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Do the Tutorial

Just like the past entries in the series, Civilization VI is a pretty complex game, and newcomers could find themselves getting lost pretty quickly when trying to get accustomed to the mechanics, intricate systems and skill trees. Thankfully, Civilization VI does come with a helpful tutorial level, which you can access from the main menu of the game. You’re given access to two leaders, and the tutorial will walk you through the basic mechanics you need to know to survive in the game.

It won’t cover all your bases for the different victories and strategies for managing relations with other civilizations, but the tutorial will at least give you an idea of what to expect in the game. Once you’ve completed the tutorial, feel free to jump into single-player mode, where you’ll finally get to put all the knowledge you picked up earlier to the test.

Know Which Victory You’re Aiming For

Before jumping headfirst into Civilization VI, try to decide on what kind of victory you’re going for. This will allow you to plan your turns more wisely, and also prevent you from wasting time on developing certain buildings or training units that won’t help you much later on.

Civilization VI allows you to check out the technology and civics trees in the top left corner of the screen, so you can take a look at all of the policies and research areas you might want to look into in order to plan the most efficient route to your desired victory.

Depending on which victory you want to achieve, you should also take a look at all of the abilities for each available leader, and decide which one will best suit your interests.

Visit Tribal Villages and Explore the Map

Early on in the game, you should definitely send your Scout units out to explore as much of the map as possible. While it is dangerous to send units out alone, considering that you could get ambushed by barbarians, you never know what you might find while exploring. Tribal villages, for instance, are fairly common in the game, and visiting these will usually reward you with gifts like extra units to command.

If you’re lucky, you might also stumble upon a Natural Wonder that will give you a Eureka Moment. Eureka Moments will boost your research and development for one turn, which is extremely helpful, particularly if you need something built as quickly as possible. You can also spend gold on building and development, but why waste your money when you can just explore the map for perks?

Keep Your Population High, But Manage Happiness Levels

Keeping your population high will increase the productivity of your civilization, meaning you can research and develop units and other facilities quicker. However, you also need to make sure that you keep your people happy, or they’ll start bumming around, pulling down your efficiency. To keep them happy, you can build luxury buildings and entertainment facilities to keep them occupied, or use your Builders to scavenge some luxury resources like coffee.

Be aware that founding new cities will contribute to your civilization’s unhappiness as well, so always keep the people in mind before you spend more resources and gold on expansion.

Use Your Builders Wisely

Speaking of Builders, it’s important to plan out their activities whenever you create a Builder unit as well. In Civilization VI, Builders can only perform three activities before their workforce is completely expended and they disappear from your map. After that, you’ll have to develop another Builder unit if you want to continue improving your tiles.

Basically, just make sure not to waste your Builders on tile improvements that you don’t need. This becomes especially crucial during the mid game when you have access to more improvement options, and have to prioritize the types of resources you want to mine from your tiles.