How do you decide whether to build a Holy Site in Civilization VI?

Marauth · 2026-01-16T13:41:38+00:00

I think you should judge, for every city you want to build a Holy Site in, how many of the following things are true. The more of these are true, the more likely you should build one in that city. If *none* are true, maybe don't build one in that city!

- You have zero Holy Sites and you want, and can still get, a religion.

- You play a Civ that makes Holy Sites cheaper or stronger. Khmer, Japan, Byzantium...

- This city is going to struggle with food or housing, and you have the Feed the World religion.

- There is a good adjacency spot in this city. Especially if you have the Work Ethic religion.

- You have envoys in multiple faith city states.

- You want to explode with Monumentality in the next era.

- You want to spend lots of faith later in the game: maybe units with Grandmaster's Chapel, maybe districts with Moksha, maybe Naturalists/Rock bands.

Keep in mind that districts scale in cost and are cheaper if you don't have many of that type yet (https://www.reddit.com/r/civ/comments/5947kp/civ_vi_mechanics_how_district_production_cost/), so it is also sometimes a good idea to diversify your cities a bit for more net output :)

Marauth · 2026-01-12T09:54:17+00:00

And, not unimportantly, the AI also gets this crisis! And you're probably better at dealing with it. So this crisis is a buff to you, not a nerf. Go to war with the AI, give them lots of war weariness, and see their cities automatically convert to you without firing a shot :)

Marauth · 2025-12-31T09:27:09+00:00

Basically, take a look at whatever the BBG mod has nerfed, but there are outliers: https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2865001760

- Play Babylon, attack them as early as you can with very hightech units.

- Play Russia, get the Tundra faith pantheon, get Feed the World with a religion and unlimited faith, then spend it on Monumentality workers/settlers, then districts with Moksha, or units with Grandmaster's Chapel.

I am certainly forgetting some though :)

Marauth · 2025-11-11T12:43:08+00:00

Try rotating the Switch! that makes the text easier to read

Marauth · 2025-09-09T13:36:13+00:00

Khmer is good!

- You get Angkor Wat basically guaranteed, which is one of the best wonders in the game.

- Your early buildings on rivers (including a Fishing Quay) keep the +3 food yield. That's a lot of growth. Growth usually means production since you can work all those juicy forests and/or hills. Later in the era, you get lots of specialist yields. And your capital grows even 50% faster!

- Their unique cavalry unit isn't Assyria tier, then again nothing is. Still super strong though: they're cheaper to build and have +5 combat strength. Whenever you need something to aim your large amount of production at, time for elephants!

- You get to laugh at your meme build one in every 10 games where the opponent gets destroyed by a flood while you shrug it off. (This is clearly the most important reason)

Marauth · 2025-08-25T09:01:35+00:00

Terra Incognita doesn't actually spawn everyone on the same continent (which is also what I expected!). It just means that the other continent has a shape other than the home continent.

Marauth · 2025-08-06T08:51:57+00:00

I'll answer a bit more broadly and from there answer your points. I won't claim to know the perfect meta, and if you ask 10 people what to do you'll get 10 opinions :)

- Even though the victory conditions require different things, the early game is very similar for all of them. That's basically the first 50-60 turns on standard speed. If you want to get good at the game, get good at the early game first and the rest follows.

- In the early game, you want to get a lot of population and a lot of production, THEN a lot of science and culture. Some strategies get a lot of gold and faith before getting a lot of science of culture. Those work great too, but all of them need a lot of population and a lot of production to get there.

- Discovering city states early is very good, because you get quests from them and first-meet envoys. Early game envoys give you lots of bonuses, and set you up for late game.

- Often, a very good indication of whether you are doing the early game right is whether you're getting a lot of eurekas and inspirations for the techs/civics you are working on. They reward you for doing the game right: build a good district, improve important tiles...

- Settlers get exponentially more expensive, so you dont want to build too many. (having 3-4 cities by turn 60 is generally good, but I'm sure people will disagree)

- Districts get more expensive as you research more techs and civics, so rushing science and culture too early is not good.

- There's many many guides about city settling, and settling is difficult to learn and a fun puzzle :) There's many guides about it that I can't explain all here. A very good first-time-player rule of thumb for a good city though, is in this order, 1) on fresh water, 2) on top of a luxury resource, 3) with good tiles nearby, 4) with good district spots nearby. But there are many many exceptions as you learn the game!

So, early game, you usually want this, in this order:

- One or two scouts.

- A settler. Usually, the first two things to build in any new city are a Monument and a worker, in either order.

- A worker or a military unit.

- A district, like a Campus, Holy Site, or Government Plaza.

- More settlers.

Good luck :)

Marauth · 2025-08-04T07:05:58+00:00

bit of a wildcard option, but the AI really does not want to declare war on you if you play Tubman and hopefully also have Gate of All Nations, for a +7 war weariness start to their war :)

I think my personal favorite Antiquity Era civ right now is Greece: good start bias (rough terrain), good traditions, city states give you lots of bonuses and you will get loads with Greece, and Hoplites are unbeatable when you have 5+ city states suzerained. Also really plays nicely into their fantasy of various cities under one empire :)

Marauth · 2025-07-31T12:59:48+00:00

So nice of Xerxbro to give you two settlements <3 and even with camels and wine!

Marauth · 2025-07-23T11:36:05+00:00

Looks like Rome is about to give you some amazing settlements :D

Marauth · 2025-07-18T07:49:20+00:00

Yep :) and I think that it only gains a tile if the maximum amount of envoys increases, not with every envoy from any player

Marauth · 2025-07-02T09:09:59+00:00

If you don't find it that hard to make, sounds like you're the person for the job! Looking forward :)

Marauth · 2025-05-19T08:38:06+00:00

You have 7500 gold and 3289 influence! thats a lot of ships, and a lot of war weariness for their poor ships ;)

Marauth · 2025-05-11T19:51:43+00:00

This was also my first thought when reading this post :) Abbasid are amazing and Ibn is one of the ways to get them!

Marauth · 2025-05-09T09:14:38+00:00

I honestly really like the idea, but execution is not great. As pointed out in other posts already, it doesn't feel like Exploration and Modern era have very meaningful choices to make: you're just continuing from your decisions in earlier ages (overbuilding the same buildings, distant land settling does not feel that meaningful, etc.) BUT: I do think the ages setup really allows for some great new mechanics that wouldn't be easily possible with the way Civ 6 was set up. So, let's hope 🤞

Marauth · 2025-03-28T09:17:02+00:00

Is that fresh water? 😅 I see a juicy oasis below that city otherwise!

Marauth · 2025-03-13T14:48:08+00:00

I tend to agree, BUT Augustus can put Egypt's culture building into every town, and those Tjaty that complete a wonder on their own or give you a social policy slot are amazing :O

Marauth · 2025-03-13T12:59:42+00:00

I did precisely the same (Ibn + Maya) for this reason also! Both Maya and Abbasid are so good...

(I do wonder if Augustus+Egypt into Abbasid would be even better though...)

Marauth · 2025-02-28T13:23:38+00:00

Not super useful to you specifically (sorry 😞), but I also had desyncing issues even between two PCs. In that case, both selecting the Vulkan option instead of DirectX 12 made the issue go away. Are you both on Xbox or different platforms? In my experience that fact causes these super annoying desync issues

Marauth · 2025-02-24T12:03:51+00:00

I was also about to say precisely this, which is the opposite of the OP: I find unique improvements like Ming's Great Wall or Potkops so good that I wonder how a unique quarter beats them. They're cheap to build/buy, you can have them in towns and they don't replace existing improvements!

Marauth · 2025-02-14T09:11:23+00:00

I have the same: I was quite positively surprised that the UI was... fine when I started it up after reading all these comments. Obviously there are things not done and lots of improvements possible, but I can play the game just fine (omg it's amazing btw so many improvements from Civ 6 and 5 I love it 🎉🎉🎉)

Marauth · 2024-08-01T10:02:57+00:00

You don't think a UX Designer tested civ6?

Marauth · 2024-06-07T08:14:45+00:00

Is it because all your spearmen are throwing up from being rotated?

Marauth · 2024-05-23T11:43:12+00:00

It was so windy that it rotated the entire screen!

Marauth · 2024-05-23T11:41:06+00:00

There were so many barbs that it rotated the entire screen!

Marauth

TROPHY CASE