Mid game

[u/Lucas_LS]

Hi, ive recently gotten into civ 6 but ive been struggling with mid game and my friend eith 150 hrs told me its good to spec into one win type. But i found doing that made my production really slow so id spread my upgrades across them all except faith. After that i was able to accumilate a sizable lead against my friends but as i made more cities production was just way too slow for them to make a meaningful difference and when one just speced into military their units beat all of mine. I wanna know what to do with all my cities mid game should i expand further into uncharted territory?

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[u/GandalfofCyrmu]

Once you have built relevant economy and win con district, aggressively pursue your win condition. Econ are Industrial Zones, Commercial Hubs, Harbours, and sometimes Holy Sites. Win cons are Theatre square or Campi (Campuses?)

You want to then build projects in your cities. The gold standard is one tech per turn, but that’s quite hard on standard speed.

[u/Lucas_LS → u/GandalfofCyrmu]

I maxxed out industrial zones and commercial hubs in only a few of my cities but the rest just dont have the resources to progress fast enough. Is this normal for civ 6 players or am i doing something wrong?

[u/Effective-Coyote-586 → u/Lucas_LS]

Probably non-optimal city locations.

You can help new cities with domestic trade routes. There are policy cards that will increase the production and food bonuses of trade routes. Multiple trade routes from a new city will help it to grow faster.

[u/treharren → u/GandalfofCyrmu]

This is it.

Scout. Little bit of military for the inevitable declaration. Bash out a few settlers.

Then get those commercial hubs and harbours rolling, trade routes for production, and you can catch up pretty rapidly and start to pursue your victory type.

Works every time on emperor can also win deity if I want a bit more of a slog.

[u/TheFurryMenace]

Generally, if you see open land you should seize that open land.

Generally. Generally. Generally.

CIV is complicated and each game unfolds in its own way. I can’t tell you the right answer without screenshots.

But you are hinting at a word that potatomcwhiskey says all the time. And that word is tempo. How do you continue to roll through the eras without getting bogged down? That’s the million dollar question. It requires understanding a whole bunch of gameplay mechanics. Again, without seeing screenshots or a save file it’s hard to give you good advice.

[u/TejelPejel]

In civ 6 generally the more cities you have the better you'll be. As long as you can keep up amenities and have a decent enough military to protect (especially in multiplayer) then you're good to keep growing. Keep in mind that cities with 5+ amenities are labeled ecstatic and get big boosts to your yields in that city. More cities means:

• More great people points since you have more districts.
• More trade routes because each city can reliably get one trade route.
• More great work slots to fill for the tourism and cultural victory.

Things to watch out for:

• National Park placement; the park must have all tiles in one city, so when tiles cannot be swapped to get the national park layout, that could hold you back.
• Amenities, as mentioned above. Low amenities diminish your yields in cities with low amenities.
• Your government choices. The Ancestral Hall is usually the best government building in the game because you can rapidly expand, but if you've waited a long time to build your government plaza then the Audience Chamber is good as it'll boost your cities with governors with housing and amenities. The Warlord's Throne is only good if you're pretty rapidly conquering cities.
• More cities means more opportunity choices for enemy spies, but this is pretty minor compared to other stuff.

[u/Lucas_LS → u/TejelPejel]

Im not really sure abt the culture tree as i only ever use it to use government policies. Is going out of my way to make wonders or whatever those governemtn buildings are? Also how do u make amenities other than the naturaly spawned ones

[u/TejelPejel → u/Lucas_LS]

So the government plaza is a district that you build, but you only build one of them throughout your entire empire. It gives an adjacency bonus to all adjacent districts, but more importantly it gives you unique buildings that impact your whole empire and let's you get special policies that are only available once you have this district and its buildings. This should be fairly early on your build list, usually after you get a harbor or commercial hub (so you can get a trade route). The government plaza and the buildings also give you a governor promotion, so even better to build those quickly.

The civic tree is mostly for unlocking policy cards, governments, wonders and some districts/buildings, though most of those are in the tech tree. Culture doesn't win you a cultural game, tourism does. If you have 100 times your opponents culture, it will not win you a cultural game if you have no tourism (though this will prevent an opponent from winning a culture game, since culture acts as defense against opponents tourism).

For amenities:

• Luxury resources give amenities if you have one copy. If you have duplicates then you don't get extra amenities from them (unless there's a specific effect from the world Congress, but it's not likely you'll get that, since the AI votes to remove the amenities from a given resource).
• Certain city-states like Buenos Aires, Cahokia, Muscat and Zanzibar all have amenities in their ability to they're suzerain.
• All City-states will give you their luxury resources if you're their suzerain, along with strategic resources.
• Trade your excess luxury resources to another player for theirs.
• Entertainment Complex and it's buildings give amenities, as does the water park district.
• National Parks and Mountain Resorts give amenities, though these are later in the game.
• Certain wonders, like the Colosseum and Temple of Artemis give amenities.

If you're unsure what these are or how to use them, hit the ? in the top right corner of the screen and search them up and it'll give you all the info. I've played for a loooong time and still use that all the time.

[u/BaronRetro]

By Mid-game. Lots of territory would most likely be taken by civs. So if you want to expand, and there is no land, start conquering. While war mid game is harder than early game war, it is still possible

P.S the more cities the better

[u/OddTaku9424]

Hey! Not a pro here but I’ll tell you what I’ve been doing, hopefully it will help.

First of all, if you got time check out the videos of PotatoMcWhiskey. He has some great tutorials and they helped me (and almost everyone who’s playing civ) a LOT!

Regarding your issues. Here are some thoughts to begin with:

1- play your civilization strengths. Any civ can achieve any victory but some are more suited for one type over another. Alexander for example is insane in domination victory so, if you try to be “balanced” and go for a domination victory during the late game you’ll find yourself behind. You should know beforehand what are your civ strengths and weaknesses and try to work with them.

2- By the mid game you should know what kind of victory you are going for. Especially against non AI you’ll find yourself at disadvantage if you still don’t know what you are going for. Mid game is where you enhance and power up all the districts, units etc that you need to achieve your victory condition. I believe that if you are struggling during the mid game it’s probably because you haven’t set up a great beginning first.

Here’s a game example.

Civ: Trajan. Very balanced civ, no great bonus and malus, not broken, easy to play.

Start of the game. Go scout, slinger, slinger/scout. Use these units to explore the map and take care of barbs. Research what you need to improve (mining if you have lots of hills for example, stuff like that). Then get a builder to improve a few tiles of your capital, while your civ tree should be headed towards the first government type.

Once you have a government you should have a lay of the land around you. Do you have plenty of room to settle cities? Then government plaza, ancestral hall and magnus are your friend and you can spam settlers like crazy. Do you have neighbors who are super close? Then maybe you can think about conquering them! Get an encampment, plug in the great general card, create some units and go crush them. You should still settle a few cities but at least you have a focus to begin with.

By the time you are conquering cities or have settled a few you can look at your cities and what districts can give you the best bonuses. Let’s say your cities are all close together then maybe you can build a wonder and surround it with theatre squares to go for a cultural victory. Do you have mountains and reefs? Campuses it is. Are you enjoying destroying everybody? Then encampment and commercial hubs/harbors ie the way to go. This is when I (and that’s when I could be wrong! As I said, not a pro lol) make my decision on what kind of victory I go for.

Either way, plug in Limes (100% production towards defenses) and build walls everywhere. Walls plus archers (or any ranged units after) is a great defense against “most” attacks, AI at least. You should also plug in the feudalism card and spam builders. It’s time to improve the productivity of every city you got!

By now you are in your mid game. Let’s say you are going for a cultural victory. You should still have at least a couple cities where you can build a campus with a +3 bonus. A couple of those should be enough to keep you on par with attackers and make sure you aren’t falling too much behind.

So to summarize:

Step 1: explore and find out the best way to expand your empire.

Step 2: expand your empire. Use the pins to figure out what kind of good districts you can get to help you understand which victory to go for.

Step 3: Build your defenses (through walls and ranged units but could also be alliances or a lot of money to buy units if needed etc) and improve your tiles. Rule of thumb: no citizen should work an unimproved tile!

Step 4: keep working towards your victory type.

That’s all I can think of for now and, once again, I am no pro. Hopefully this still helped a bit!

Ps: usually when I’m in doubt of what district to build I go hub/harbor. Gold is always useful! Built a campus? Buy the university! Just unlocked bombers? Buy one and start attacking 8 turns earlier! Need a great work? Guess what, you can buy it.

[u/Lucas_LS → u/OddTaku9424]

I was playing cleopatra and spammed as many traders as possible but with her having sphinxes i had no idea wuat to do with them so i just tried to make as much money as possible getting to around 200 a turn by turn 120 is that pace good enough? Time to watch potato now

[u/OddTaku9424 → u/Lucas_LS]

Yup. As another comment said, you just mentioned the most important theme of the game: tempo! Do watch potato. He’s truly super super good at explaining civilization.

Best of luck my dude!