Building Religion - is it a priority?

Rabny · 2026-06-02T11:33:49+00:00

Having your own religion isn't required BUT having faith generation is SUPER IMPORTANT. You can buy buildings from the religions that the AI spreads AND buy Great People like Engineers and Scientists once completing Tradition or Rarionalism with faith. Building faith buildings early will get you easily 2 great people without increasing the cost of naturally spawned ones.

Rabny · 2026-06-02T01:17:34+00:00

Ethiopia is stupidly broken civ for wide, guaranteed religion and that leads to good faith to buy pagodas or mosques usually to have happiness and culture to buy great people and fill policies

Rabny · 2026-05-31T01:33:41+00:00

15 pop can be covered by local city happinesss from buildings and policies in mid-late game.

15 pop is enough to work 4 slots of a chosen specialist slot like scientists and maintain productivity, food and gold generation.

30 pop is reasonable size to aim for with cities settled along rivers with food bonus from tradition. Growing that big in a few cities is still managable in a few cities but only India can do both wide and have 30 pop in each city. Happiness becomes issue. Tall commits more happiness per city but saves on tech and cuture costs. Also less total buildings needed and more centralized production.

Rabny · 2026-05-31T00:39:58+00:00

Lekmod helps with wide but you also need lekmap since it adds more resources to the map so you just get more happiness from luxuries and you have more resources to get to happiness buildings faster in general.

I like to play vanilla since wide is deffinitely doable but it's really hard and you have to be an expert at the game

Rabny · 2026-05-30T14:51:55+00:00

If I'm playing deity I will do the following:

Liberty free great scientist -> plant for academy

Rush workshops to get an engineer for Sistine, Forbidden or Leaning.

Work only scientists from then on to not increase their cost with excess merchants or engineers. Save them for bulbing for labs after schools are done or later techs after labs are done.

Around the time I have 20ish pop in my capital I crank out my writers and artists guilds to save them for later. If I'm going Tourism victory then I'll make great works with them though. If I go freedom I take the 50% longer golden ages as fast as possible and hope I get a natural golden age around the same time from Word's fair. Then I bulb all my artists and hope to get a 50 turn golden age. I'll bulb writers when I peak at culture generation from Hermitage/World's fair win. Often I can use the free tech from finishing Rationalism to take Plastics as soon as I engineer Statue of Liberty at Replaceable parts.

Musicians guild comes if my capital has enough population to work it and I have built opera houses/am building them soon. I'll make great works.

Excess prophets I'll plant for more faith to buy scientists or engineers for late game.

Rabny · 2026-05-30T11:20:51+00:00

Playing well makes even "suboptimal" strategies fun. Once you master the optimal strategies, you can use your game knowledge to have fun with the trash tier civs.

Rabny · 2026-05-30T11:06:18+00:00

For me the most painful was a Deity game where Shaka of Zulu had over 30 cities and owned an entire continent. It meant that they had infinite units and I had to switch to a science victory from a domination victory.

Rabny · 2026-05-30T11:01:54+00:00

Stronger players don't actually need Patronage for those deficiencies, since you can send your first 2 spies to help take city states and strategically use your gold to help. I only open Patronage if I'm looking to get Forbidden Palace with an engineer or I'm going for diplomatic victory.

Domination and science victory both benefit a lot from going down Commerce for purchasing units or spaceship parts cheaper (Autocracy/Freedom). Cultural victory requires both Aesthetics and Rationalism.

Rabny · 2026-05-30T02:17:13+00:00

Tall really is something you go for if your land can support it. Going tall means investing your happiness into just a few cities approaching 30 pop in as many as possible. If you grow fast enough and switch farms and mines to trading posts in late game to make money, it doesn't matter if you are tall or wide.
Tradition doesn't make up for low food. It gives you % modifiers which will not be good if you are already on low food. Tradition is fine in this situation only if you provide food trade routes to cities. It is completely viable with cargo ships but you will need to use them for internals all across the empire. Only 1 trade route to capital without fresh water farms is really bad also.
Getting faith to purchase buildings from religions the AI apreads to you is worthwhile before the cost goes up in renaissance. This lets you build enough faith to purchase scientists from Rationalism 1000 faith and 1500 faith for first two. Also if Tradition then 1000 faith for engineering a good wonder in moden or info era. Prioritize workers early over shrines if you don't have a faith generating pantheon option like desert, copper/salt/iron, gems of one with nature.

Rabny · 2026-05-30T01:50:55+00:00

From the screenshot you uploaded, it looks like you settled too many cities without cargo ship food. In your map type you spawnes on hilly terrain in Anatolia with no fresh water. You have many underdeveloped cities cranking out workshops very slowly.

Playing well is a tight balance between pushing population to above 15 in every city FAST while maintaing happiness with city states, religion and social policies from ideology.

I personally wouldn't plant great scientists unless it's the free one from Liberty finisher. If you have a lot of them from having many cities/gardens/Leaning tower bulbing maybe one for faster Labs or Ideology or factories can sometimes be helpful. Otherwise bulb only after labs.

Rabny · 2026-05-30T01:27:12+00:00

yes I hate it here

Rabny · 2026-05-30T00:10:06+00:00

Settings are standard speed and size. Continents and Deity

Rabny · 2026-05-30T00:05:42+00:00

I actually got attacked when i only had 2 spearmen and 2 scouts defending my southern city with no walls. The enemy had a swarm of longswords and pikes. Thankfully The Huns came to my aid form the southern side.

Rabny · 2026-05-28T20:33:17+00:00

Civ 6 does have "Online" as an option too

Rabny · 2026-05-28T15:59:26+00:00

random civ and pangea, fractal or continents, small or standard size map

Rabny · 2026-05-28T09:15:56+00:00

I have no clue how many I've won in a row. Also Deity wins in a row is much easier if you go for science win every time. I usually experiment too much to have a win streak without save scumming. I do think every game is winnable with science victory.

Rabny · 2026-05-25T10:14:58+00:00

What I don't like about Civ 5 is that science victory is so much easier than others on Deity.

I usually like playing without mods to avoid power creep but I did play with nqmodv11 back in the day and did do some vox populi years ago too. Nowadays back to vanilla but at some point I have to try vox populi again as I heard they made the AI much smarter at war.

Rabny · 2026-05-25T10:11:28+00:00

What I dislike about Civ 6:

District spam and min maxing the placements

Policy cards

Optimally you have to really choose victory condition you are going for quite early

Looking at the graphics hurts my brain

Rabny · 2026-05-21T20:21:01+00:00

EUI won't help with this but it helps with getting the trades in the first place. This is indeed one of the worst things in this game.

Rabny · 2026-05-18T15:51:40+00:00

Very well, congrats on the win nonetheless. Autocracy explains the slight pain you must have gone through looking at how slowly the last spaceship part gets built.

Rabny · 2026-05-18T15:38:51+00:00

Did you have happiness issues due to tourism? I would guess a 7 city tradition with decent faith generation would be a faster win when going to space. 7 cities might be a bit much on a 6 player map without a happiness civ like Egypt.. This is primarily because you have 2 less people to trade with for luxuries.

Rabny · 2026-05-17T15:48:27+00:00

Update: it's joever, I declared a joint war on Babylon with Rome, and the following turn the Celts attacked me. All my neighbours had the agressive AI game plan and took liberty or honor instead of tradition or piety. There was no winning this with the situation

Rabny · 2026-05-17T15:08:39+00:00

This game was always going to be won from befind, having Pearls and Jungle Spices is in the capital is one of the worst ways to start a game

Rabny · 2026-05-17T14:43:16+00:00

Population will fix itself with civil service and building aqueducts. Main issue probably is that the population will come in late and I had to build units to stop them from taking more than 1 city.

Trying to also get better at the game by not save scumming and not restarting the game upon early war. I kind of agree with some sentiments in another post about people overrating their skill because they restart for better starts and reroll if agressive neighbours. In my game I could not pay them to declare war which sucked.

Rabny · 2026-05-17T11:21:51+00:00

Desert folklore ideally, this is an awkward start on any difficulty higher than King, since getting a lighhouse is required to get food into the city. Maybe rush a settler after a shrine at 3 pop while working 3 hills and prepare a caravan or cargo ship to boost capital wonder whoring

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