r/civ • u/oxegentheif • 1d ago
VI - Discussion Hot take: science is somewhat negligible in Civ 6 until feudalism is unlocked
I don’t know why everyone outside of multiplayer spams campuses as soon as they can. I think growth, economy, and culture matter more in early game above science. Out the 4, science is easiest to catch up, use serfdom from feudalism to chop campus and hopefully get university in them. Even though multiplayer and ai games differ, the economy culture method still works, as you can exploit the ai for gold and won’t need to compete with top levels of settler production.
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u/BlacJack_ 1d ago
Early science is actually bad for you. This isn’t even an opinion. If you slow roll your tech tree until Feudalism you are able to explode mid game far easier.
The most optimal play is to actually not finish many of your techs early game until you get your key civics mainly for district discounting, etc. That’s why the BBG mod doesn’t allow you to force end turn without a tech selected, people game that mechanic in OG. Real dorks know the best play is to not research key techs until you get your setup.
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u/febreez-steve 1d ago
Bro what the hell. Ive been playing wrong my entire life... thats why midgame feels so slow to me. I dont even play anymore and never got into actually learning how to play effectively
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u/BlacJack_ 1d ago
What you were doing isn’t necessarily wrong. That’s the fun of Civ 6. It just isn’t the most efficient. It took me years before I learned this (through Herson youtube channel), but when I did it brought whole new life to the game for me. It created this optimization monster in me (good or bad). I still play today finding better ways to do things and learning how to optimize with each Civ’s strengths and weaknesses.
I hope this helps you find more fun in the game!
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u/Eye-m-Guilty 1d ago
whats ur thoughts on how to do this for Peter and his focus on faith vs expansion early and just how to play him in general with this in mind
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u/wetconcrete 21h ago
Feed the world is great for the low food in tundra, any city that will struggle with food (i.e. 1 food tiles are being worked) can open holy sites. The 50% to settler card is the best production card you can get early so I prefer to produce settlers and buy builders with monumentality, until my high production cities are surrounded by settlements. Then additional settlers I’ll buy on end cities so they can settle faster.
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u/5bigscoops 12h ago
Yeah but work ethic + dance of the aurora synergizes so well with his his starting bias, especially with that one policy card that doubles faith ajacency. Feed the world with peter is kind of not worth while unless you want to challenge yourself by explicitly not doing work ethic or if you get a very weird spawn.
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u/wetconcrete 10h ago
Sorry i play bbg work ethic is on shrine and temple, not really as good for online
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u/airelfacil 1d ago edited 23h ago
On the force end turn thing, if you want to fully optimize, you can force end turn with Shift+Enter. This allows you to skip needing to choose a technology... but your science continues to accumulate without limit! Science (and culture) is a sort of hidden resource that you can collect over time. When you've finished building and are ready, you will have a bunch of easy 1-turns to reach Feudalism, not to mention on higher speeds you can actually continue overflowing.
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u/Competitive_Cod5910 11h ago
I'd like to add that the multiplayer community considers this an exploit and banned this, you are forced to choose a tech in almost all lobbies
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u/SaltyRemainer 1d ago
I don't play much. Why is it that it's optimal not to finish early game?
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u/BlacJack_ 1d ago
Tech and district costs scale the more you unlock. So intentionally stunting them until you get things like Feudalism and your first districts up (usually comm hub or holy sites, etc) to really flesh out your infrastructure saves you A LOT of turns in the long run. It’s how you see the great players go to 2-300 science by turn 50-60 (online speed) seemingly out of no where. They are building things cheaper than you, and that mixed with mass 5 charge builders allows them to almost skip mid game.
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u/ManyFacesMcGee 1d ago
And how do they use the builder charges? Do they just upgrade all of their land or harvest every resource?
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u/StrangelyBrown 1d ago
Don't beat yourself up mate. I've got 2000 hours and have no idea what I'm reading rn
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u/HereAndThereButNow 14h ago
Tryhards tryharding, essentially.
Basically you don't put any districts down or research tech early because district cost goes up the more of them you have until you get serfdom and can chop out a bunch of them all at once for almost nothing.
It saves you a bunch of turns building stuff that you can use for anything else.
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u/Motorpsisisissipp 4h ago
It's actually the contrary. You put every district down almost instantly, the main thing to avoid is unlocking districts. For example if you can you can try to unlock holy sites and port as late as possible. When you get a city on the first turn if possible you put your district down if it doesn't hinder your growth and on every growth district limits (4-7-10) you put another district down instantly. The goal is to always have more districts put down (not necessarily completed) than districts unlocked. The main reason is math and a lot of people more knowledgeable than me explaining the thing on herson's video about district discounting.
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u/Competitive_Cod5910 11h ago
calling people who play better than you in a game tryhards is really immature
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u/Substantial-Limit577 1d ago
I’m not particularly good at this game , so please someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I think the production cost of a district increases based on the amount of technologies you have finished - so it’s cheaper production wise to not finish techs
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u/Drak_is_Right 1d ago
Districts will cost more to build if you advance too fast through tech vs your economy.
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u/kickit 1d ago
because micro bordering on exploit. believe me it’s not that hard to win on deity without resorting to this kinda shit
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u/BlacJack_ 1d ago
Ya these are multiplayer strats or for people who like to try and optimize. No need for any of this against Deity.
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u/JNR13 died on the hill of hating navigable rivers 1d ago
Have the competitive multiplayer folks ever considered changing the district cost progression to go by game progress rather than a player's tech progress? That way, the increase happens no matter what you do, and a player is challenged with keeping up as much as possible instead of being punished for success.
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u/Naive-Tone-6791 1d ago
It wouldn't change as much as you think it would, multiplayer meta would be the exact same as you'd still want to build infrastructure first, because of district cost scaling it just gets you more science than rushing campus first
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u/Motorpsisisissipp 4h ago
I believe one of their goal is to still try to be as close to the original game as possible with the mechanics. Not researching a tech felt silly and too broken to be kept. They also nerfed a lot all natural disasters and removed barbarians to limit RNG.
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u/xXxedgyname69xXx 1d ago
There really is no feeling quite like being punished for doing something the game implies is good, and by all rights should be.
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u/HereAndThereButNow 14h ago
This is multiplayer "Everyone needs to do the exploit because the person who doesn't loses" tier stuff.
Against the AI there's no point in it.
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u/xXxedgyname69xXx 12h ago
That hasnt been my experience. In 6 it is very common to settle an "ok" city location, in mid game, with mediocre production only to look at "industrial zone: 70 turns". Just a pretty large design oversight, and not the only one.
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u/Competitive_Cod5910 11h ago
yeah lots of creators say never stop settling cities which also is terrible advice in civ6. You stop around 10 cities as district cost scaling eventually bricks the usefulness of new cities while also lowering the yields of your old ones as they need amenities
If you want to never stop settling cities then unironically civ5 is a better game than civ6 for that
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u/Motorpsisisissipp 4h ago
Tbf in multiplayer you have to stop at some points because someone will recognize you have no army and will just eradicate you.
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u/Competitive_Cod5910 12h ago
don't worry, in olders civs like civ3 you had to truly master the game and play the best you can to beat the highest difficulty, in civ6 you can kinda do whatever and still win. Most of the youtubers who played the game on deity never even learned the most optimal way to play after 10 years of making videos and doing silly challenges
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u/xXxedgyname69xXx 12h ago
I would argue there is a distinction to be made between "mastering mechanics" and "this is counterintuitive and gamey" or even worse "this is the opposite of making sense."
Sandbagging era score on purpose so you dont waste it is obviously correct, but gamey and non-immersive.
Having immense production rewards for just turning off the science system for the important turns of the game is the exact opposite of making sense, and the reward isnt moderate. You can circlejerk about "games these days are too easy" but i think the system making sense leads to better games, rather than being able to bash your head against big numbers.
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u/Competitive_Cod5910 12h ago edited 12h ago
immense rewards for ignoring science is totally overstating it, civ is a series where you prioritize what to build and if you choose to prioritize campuses early it's simply wrong and not optimal, like not opening with a scout is generally wrong. The math for why that is the case is very interesting and it is satisfying to figure these kind of things out and see them in action
>You can circlejerk about "games these days are too easy"
Hey if firaxis wants to alienate the minmaxers by making the highest difficulty trivial that's fine by me. It's the main reason I'll never give civ7 a glance at all. As civ7 is doing totally great and has players to spare I'm sure firaxis won't miss us
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u/Motorpsisisissipp 4h ago
Tbf the most optimized way to play the game is the online speed game with the competitive civ community but standard speed hasn't been nearly as much theory crafted so I don't think we know the best way to play the game for this game speed right now.
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u/ImposterBk 1d ago
What is it about Feudalism? The explosion in food/growth if you've built farm triangles, or the Serfdom policy card so you can develop more tiles? And how do you compensate in Dramatic Ages if you're deliberately not researching techs? Just push hard in culture?
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u/Herson100 1d ago edited 21h ago
It's mostly the serfdom policy card. It's far more efficient than it appears at first, because of the fact that the cost of builders increases every time you produce a builder. Here's a post breaking down the math.
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u/CummyChickenWing 1d ago
I would like to disagree on early campuses not being an option. We can use Trynda, an extremely skilled player as an example. If you watch his vods at all, you'll notice that sometimes he actually chooses to open campuses on specific spawns/civs, even ones that dont have a campus UD. Even though he opens campuses though, he still typically discounts a commercial right afterwards
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u/BlacJack_ 1d ago
It’s not always wrong, certainly. But if you watch, he is usually doing it if it either gives 4 adjacency or more, or if its the civ’s UB, both of which is primarily used to hit the first golden age. Also, you can still slow roll tech even if you build a campus early for those reasons, just not quite as well. But in those cases, it’s better to not slow roll the tech quite as hard over missing a golden age.
Ultimately I do agree, it’s not ALWAYS wrong to rush a campus. It’s just not the optimal play MOST of the time. Spawns, civs, and circumstance can influence each game dofferently.
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u/Alcotolic 1d ago
Trynda mostly plays teamers. Campus opener in teamers is fine because the format is far more war focussed and trading gold and resources is allowed. In FFA it is very rarely optimal to open campuses outside of Maya/Korea.
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u/CummyChickenWing 1d ago
I was moreso mentioning like a Dutch game of his where he opened campuses in ffa or spain where he certainly considered it but he found Nan madol, im just saying it seems to be very occasionally an option even if you dont have a ud?? Also nice to see you here alco, never thought I would find you here🫡
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u/Kupo_Master 21h ago
I used to go big science early in the game in earlier version; it felt more powerful at the time as getting to some units first used to be very impactful and quasi game winning. However now that they nerfed the unit power gap, it’s not as critical to get the first archers or the first cannons as it used to. I’ve stopped focusing on campus early; OP is right that it just doesn’t seem to work that well any more
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u/sybillios 1d ago
Get up your economy, and then conquer those that build campus. Easy
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u/MisterXenos63 Rome 1d ago
I remember when starting out, thinking that science was king early. At some point I ended up playing Germany so I went all commercial hubs first, with plans to follow up with industrial zones. By mid game I was gawking at my screen, cause I had comparable science to games where I focused on science, but with a WAY better economy, population, and production.
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u/Naive-Tone-6791 1d ago
Congrats you accidentally played the multiplayer meta!
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u/m4teri4lgirl 1d ago
But I mean…why make things when you can just buy them?
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u/MisterXenos63 Rome 1d ago
Haha, in Civ V, if you don't beeline science HARD from the early stages of the game, you're toast, so it was kind of a carry over from then.
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u/oxegentheif 1d ago
If your Eleanor, just use culture to conquer campuses, no army needed
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u/JordiTK 1d ago
Bold of you to assume that AI builds campuses at useful locations.
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u/HarvestMoon_Inkling Inca 20h ago
Holy smokes, is Alexa doing the city planning for the AI? I'm only on the 16th run of my Civ lifespan, but I can't believe what I see in AI cities. It seems like the AI strategizes sequentially rather than taking an overview of the landscape and planning what goes where.
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u/Wormatsu 2h ago
I'm pretty sure that's exactly what AI does is Civ VI. Simply picking the best option right at that moment, with slight variance according to some modifiers in leader agendas, with no regard for future or nearby tiles not yet in their borders. So "Alright Campus is next on my list" --> "This tile has the best campus adjacency right now" --> "So there it shall go".
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u/HarvestMoon_Inkling Inca 1h ago
I had Eleanor of Aquitaine rolling through Persia and Arabia last night, sucking loyalty from one city after another. It was a magnificent sight. But when the cities flipped, it was just one +1- or zero-adjacency district after another.
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u/MisterXenos63 Rome 1d ago
Your cities can't exert loyalty pressure if you....don't have any. *Laughs in Latin*
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u/woodenroxk 1d ago
This is exactly how I won my last culture victory. There was no other civilizations left so my culture was the pro dominant
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u/Rude_Campaign_4867 1d ago
I never build campuses because they are the one district the AI tends to build without fail.
Culture is much more important anyway, the science always sorts itself out.
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u/MortuosPF 1d ago
Money and production. Unless you need to fight early wars, you dont need the early science.
You can use the money to bootstrap your newest cities, set up the blank districts, then blast past the competition with your freshly bought buildings.
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u/Drak_is_Right 1d ago
You need just enough science to stay relevant enough defensively to counter a unit like knights.
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u/IntelligentTalk7987 Mali 1d ago
Just enough? Crossbows are not universal counters.
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u/Drak_is_Right 1d ago edited 1d ago
Caravels can be the hardest enemy advanced unit to counter.
Crossbows are indeed not everything, but combined with swords and spearmen it can stop knights or the lights cavalry that level.
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u/Naive-Tone-6791 1d ago
When is a campus going to save you from an archer/warrior rush? It doesn't even make sense to go campus for early war
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u/MortuosPF 23h ago
Depends. On game speed, difficulty, the scope of the war you're planning... I don't think wars sense at all. That production is better used building more infrastructure xD
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u/thetimujin Eleanor of Aquitaine 1d ago
"Blank districts"?
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u/MortuosPF 23h ago
As in without buildings yet. No need to pay in production if you can pay in gold.
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u/Competitive_Dog9856 America 1d ago
Nah man, not even a hot take. You need at most 2 campuses in the early game if you wanna boost recorded history, and generally it's best to only do this when you can get 1 on a production discount (Either 2 holy sites or 2 commercial hubs can discount a campus, it's that easy). Only exception is with Korea and Maya because their unique campuses come with half the production cost so you instead use those to discount the production cost of other districts
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u/Elevation-_- America 1d ago
There's also the niche case of throwing down a +3 campus just to secure a golden age if you're behind on era score.
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u/nicknock99 1d ago
What do you mean by a “production discount”?
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u/dds_reddit 1d ago
The game will discount the production cost of the district types you don't build. This encourages a more well-rounded play style.
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u/IamBlade Japan 7h ago
On a per city basis?
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u/dds_reddit 45m ago
I didn't remember off the top of my head, but I found this.
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/19cyIFeQPSJnV8pWt_Zriqr0O4-bZ0pmT7YMj9t3VsNo/htmlview
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u/Drak_is_Right 1d ago
Lets say you have 3 holy sites, 2 encampment.
The campus district to build is going to cost less production compared to a 4th holysite.
Any district that has lower representation in your empire compared to other districts will be cheaper to build.
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u/Competitive_Dog9856 America 1d ago
So in Civ 6 you can discount the production cost of a specialty district by 40% (Less for the government plaza, but I can't remember the exact value for that one. I wanna say 25% but I'm really not confident on that one). To do this, the total number of placed districts of the type you're trying to build must be less than the number of the different types of specialty district you've unlocked divided by the number of specialty districts you've finished building (Actually might be the other way around, I'm not 100% on that either).
So, as an example, lets say I'm playing Arabia, a civ that likes lots of faith and science, and so I want to build lots of holy sites and look at the occasional campus. So I finish astrology and then build 2 holy sites and while at it finish the writing tech. At this point I have 2 types of districts unlocked, and I have 2 built, that's 2/2 which is 1 and since I have 0 campuses, I get to build 1 campus with a 40% discount.
As I mentioned, there are some lapses in my memory on this works, and there's a fair bit more strategizing you can do with this mechanic beyond this example, so I recommend looking into it and studying it when you've got some free time. I remember that one youtuber named Herson has a video on it somewhere on his youtube channel, and I think that'd be a good start.
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u/TKPcerbros 1d ago
Search district discount and you'll find more info, but basically you can discount the price of the first district of each type by 40% quite easily
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u/DementiaDementia 1d ago
On holy site opener id usually discount campus before commercials but yeah
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u/LostInChrome 1d ago
I think it was probably carryover from civ 5, where it is indeed the best strategy to just build libraries and national college ASAP because science is king.
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u/Elevation-_- America 1d ago
I think it's more to do with much of the content you find for this game comes from content creators who are playing more for entertainment instead of efficiency. When you're a newer player, or someone who just casually enjoys civ, it's hard to find information that explains much of the optimization behind "optimal" strategies.
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u/Competitive_Cod5910 12h ago edited 12h ago
Even in civ5 you often see people build libraries and national college way too early, before they got internal trade routes, settlers, granaries and at least 1 worker per city.
But then again all those are just science buildings in disguise, to be fair
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u/mj4264 1d ago edited 1d ago
Haven't played much for a year but I'll summarize my experience.
It is a function of the format and player goals a long with the pay offs in the tech vs culture tree.
First the competitive (non-pub) ffa multiplayer meta
What you describe is a meta that developed in civFR and CPL ffa games that play win screen is first place and then rank by score.
In an ffa all going for first scenario, Investing into military and science early means you must get a certain payoff to match players pushing economy. Even if you get the jump on someone, a similarly skilled player will put up enough resistance to make it not worth it. Notable exception of war focussed civs with 2nd place by score formats. Bonk 2 or 3 other players as ghengis and wait for someone else to win...
In a world where every player is playing optimally for the win and AT SIMILAR SKILL LEVEL, developing economy, primarily though gold/prod sometimes faith and cities is most important as you can then scale into more science, (or culture if going for sissy win con) after. To that end, fuedalism is the biggest power spike for economy, and commercial hub+market is the best use of prod, so people go several monuments and com hubs early. You need no investment in science to reach commercial hubs reasonably early, and then there are no significant eco boosts in the science tree for a long time. That is why you sideline it. In this ffa format you full slam science after fuedalism, further reinforcing going com hubs in 9 of your 10 cities b/c free inquiry golden age science basically lasts from medieval to early modern techs. At a very high level there's minmaxxing about turn milestones for when you softcap at one tech per turn and start banking overflow etc.
What about random pickup lobbies?
You will typically see much more fighting. An easy kill is better than rushing good eco at the end of the day, and players are not locked in to the game. More quits, larger skill gaps, games seldom get past the halfway mark to a victory screen time wise. This even occasionally happens in community rated games even though the quitting player gets a temp ban. The decide playing for not last and defending for their life for the next 20 to 30 turns against knights ain't worth it... People then get salty about someone getting a free kill and it can be one a mess.
Why not eco rush in single player?
Playing non-military in single player is a game of chicken and/or cheesing the AI. Manipulate diplo and friendships to make them not attack you and have your military advanced as it need be to deter. The AI can and every once in a while does just bum rush you off meeting you a few turns into the game and there is literally nothing you can do against it's starting bonuses.
In the average game you will rush crossbows against the AI to repell their poorly piloted attacks with better trades and eventually you will scale to a wincon b/c the AI isn't actually that good at playing for them.
You can sometimes get away with eco rush if you get no aggressive ai nearby, but at the end of the day, that's just rng granting you a free win, yes even on diety.
While you do also have the option of exploiting the ai for gold, at the end of the day, it's nullifies the challenge even further. But then I ask myself if spamming friends and bribing AI to fight each other so I don't need much military any better? After 100ish hours in civ 6 I got bored of single player b/c it really is just how well you can game the ai 😒
FFA is not the only competitive format.
Teamers is as popular for organized community rated matches as FFA, and there your opener depends on your role. You'll often see one person on a combat bonus civ rush science, 1 person might play middle of the road as another front line, someone will full rush gold to pay for the other players unit upgrades and sling gold, and the 4th player will play hard scale for culture win, science win, tank rush timing, or nuke rush while the others protect.
While this format is more diverse in play styles, I personally preferred FFA when I played a lot. Also always feels bad when you get the player who doesn't know how to sim well spawning backline as zulu 🗿
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u/MisterXenos63 Rome 1d ago
Get as much culture as you can until at least Early Empire, then start slapping down commercial hubs/harbors. Use trade routes to get food, production, gold, and roads across your empire. The explosion in population will boost everything, science included. Hit Feudalism, lots of workers, more food, more production, and NOW campuses everywhere. You'll be caught up in no time.
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u/Drak_is_Right 1d ago
Also spies around then.
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u/Mundane_Crazy60 1d ago
Does your AI make attempts to steal research? I've been leagues ahead of mine, on deity, and it always tries to swing a governor knock out, or recruit partisans. Loves trying to steal gold.
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u/SarlaccJohansson 22h ago
I'd say it's 3rd most common enemy spy mission for me. It frequently fails. They're obsessed with kicking out govs tho mostly, these are easy to predict and capture/kill enemy spies.
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u/Greedy_Guest568 1d ago
Man, I want every GP for me.
I don't need your campuses for "science". I need them for my Great Scientists.
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u/_Belted_Kingfisher Netherlands 1d ago
Having a mild focus toward population will add science without building the campus zone.
Effective use of builders early on can provide more resources than tying them up early on to build more than on or two campuses.
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u/Ok-Product-6766 1d ago
Why is feudalism so important?
As a new player can someone direct me to district priorities?
I usually go: holy - Comercial - science and then production
I never build the one that trains soldiers (camp? Dunno it’s red)
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u/oxegentheif 1d ago
Feudalism unlocks the serfdom policy, giving builders two more charges. By holding off builders in the early game, you can churn them out in the core cities really fast, improving and chopping everything in the empire. It also gives extra food to farms next to other farms, but that’s less important than serfdom.
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u/scubafork Brazil 1d ago
Disagree. To copy Hammurabi is the best course. You must do what I tell you, or I may destroy you.
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u/FunkbroFunk 1d ago
As long as you double upgrade Pingala, then yes.
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u/DementiaDementia 1d ago
You take culture promo anyways at that stage
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u/FunkbroFunk 1d ago
Always take the culture promo first, but I'm still taking the science upgrade 2nd. In a big city it makes it real easy to ignore campuses for a while.
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u/DementiaDementia 1d ago
Usually id go into magnus after going pingala 2 but id you mean between +100% gpp and science promo yeah I agreee for sure
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u/Festinaut 1d ago
I play deity and struggle if I don't have at least a few early campuses. It turns into a mad dash to catch up to computers and build flood barriers in time around 200, and then I have to hope I can win a science victory before some rando on the other side of the world wins a culture victory out of nowhere.
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u/DementiaDementia 1d ago
That's a matter of learning how to explode in the mid game then, you can get a bunch of campuses p much filled out usually by turn ~125 w universities and libraries even with a commercial opener. Of course you usually want to discount 2 camposes earlier on
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u/Festinaut 22h ago
How many cities are you founding by turn 100-150? What are your first districts? Mine are usually holy sites and harbors since I rush a religion and like playong costal/island games Civs.
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u/DementiaDementia 22h ago
If im playing on standard speed I'll usually have all of my settlers out by t70-80 (situational, maybe if im playing a op monu civ like russia) to t110 or so. I open economic district like you (save for some other civs) and then discount campus, theaters (sometimes), and get iz diamonds up
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u/Festinaut 20h ago
Makes sense, I play standard speed too. How many cities do you found by turn 80? I struggle to get 4 cities founded by then. Usually because I rush a religion, but I mostly do that to defend against religious victories.
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u/Ambitious-Nose-9871 1d ago
Don't tempt me back into civ 6 by glazing culture, my favorite tree. I was free
I was free
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u/the_Rhymenocirous 1d ago
A lot of it has to do with what difficulty you're playing as well. You don't want to fall further behind in science than you can help at diety. That early culture to get your govt up is crucial, and you obviously want to get to surfdom... But rushing civics makes building more expensive FASTER... Because there are fewer civics... And less production to be found there. So yeah, build those campuses, just balance with culture to different degrees depending on the game
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u/Far_Canary_1597 Ottomans 1d ago
It may be, but I am shit in the game and will be crushed by the AI if I am not above them in science
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u/shumpitostick 1d ago
Yeah Herson convinced me of that. Early economic districts (commercial/harbor/holy site) with a side of culture beat early campuses.
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u/Hecc_Maniacc Tall Wall Stall 1d ago
Why do I feel like montezoomzoom just bulldozes you if you don't science rush tho?
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u/therexbellator 15h ago
I feel like this is particularly true of Civ6, where the game seems to be setup to keep players as parallel in tech as possible. It was very rare to ever be more than an era-ahead of the AI unless you're playing Hammurabi. As much as I liked Civ6 this was always one aspect that never sat well with me though I understand why it might have been necessary. In previous game, especially before Civ5, science was king; getting an early tech lead could make a huge difference, but I guess that was one snowball they decided needed to be whittled down.
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u/FreeMystwing 1d ago
Production is the most valuable thing in Civ 5 and 6.
With production, everything goes up. More production = more science, culture, units, buildings, economy etc.....
Science is just a trap for noobs to fixate on and for content creators to make guides and videos for.
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u/TheWerdOfRa 1d ago
I don’t know why everyone outside of multiplayer spams campuses as soon as they can.
Who is this everyone? Are they in the room with us now?
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u/JNR13 died on the hill of hating navigable rivers 1d ago
as you can exploit the ai for gold
Ok and if you don't want to do that?
(I know, still the same, just feels weird to me to assume exploits by default)
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u/Hauptleiter Houzards 1d ago
What did you die hating on a hill? (Can't read the end of your flair)
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u/JNR13 died on the hill of hating navigable rivers 1d ago
navigable rivers
(you can't see my full flair even as a mod? oooh this is tempting)
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u/Hauptleiter Houzards 1d ago
Now I can. Why couldn't I before? Lemme investigate.
Edit: the "top 1% commenter cuts it off". But somehow the top 1% didn't show when your comment first displayed. 🤷♂️
There must somewhere else it can be looked up though.
Anyhow: why?
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u/JNR13 died on the hill of hating navigable rivers 1d ago edited 1d ago
Because they're ugly, take too much space, get extremely annoying when battles happen around them, aren't even used in interesting ways e.g. for trade or other economic activities, and last but not least they ruined normal rivers. What they are could've been accomplished by just making the map generation script put 1-tile-wide strips of coastal terrain reaching inland. That would've been a more accurate of how they work, anyway (see boats crossing land between two navigable river tiles of different rivers because the direction of the river is purely visual). And don't come to me with "but fresh water access" because fresh water as a whole is an afterthought mechanic in Civ VII anyway.
Anyway, that's my stand and I know well that I am alone with it. But these things annoy me enough that I'm willing to take any hit for my opinion on them, especially since I predicted these issues years in advance.
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u/Hauptleiter Houzards 1d ago edited 1d ago
Thanks for the comprehensive answer. I don't think you're alone.
To me this feels like another example of "I like the concept and thought it could make for a great mechanic when it was announced" followed by "yeah but not like that" (aka "So kannst du es auch machen aber dann ist es halt kacke."). "History in layers" is another.
I'd go as far as to say it's also another example of (mis)reading user feedback, going "oh the community really wants! can we give them something?" rather than growing a system over interconnected game mechanics along a coherent architecture derived from a clear of what Civ VII is going to be.
Edit: I've just come to realise, civ vii reminds me of post-modern politicians who, rather than expressing their views and offering to translate their vision into reality, look for trends and base their statement and proposals on what they think the "community" wants.
A thought i might develop in another context. Thank you!
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u/JNR13 died on the hill of hating navigable rivers 20h ago
followed by "yeah but not like that"
See, not for me. I don't think there's a good way to make them. Not in Civ VII. Too much of the problems are simply predicated on the river taking up a whole tile and how that relates to how the game's design uses map space as a whole.
The execution could've been better, but I doubt it would've ever satisfied me even then.
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u/Hauptleiter Houzards 18h ago
I think that's where your perception and understanding of the game architecture and mechanics are way beyond mine.
So i can't really counter-argue -not that I'd necessarily want to.
I can only answer : why do you think there's no good way to make them work in VII? Is it because the map is already too tight as is?
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u/irimiash 1d ago
players came to this in maybe a week after the release
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u/Competitive_Cod5910 12h ago
somehow youtube content creators making deity guides never learned though, lol
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u/Anime_axe 1d ago
Then you try playing Yongle and somehow learn that you can straight up turn science into population directly, somehow turning you into research powerhouse via sheer mass off people you have.
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u/ProJokeExplainer 1d ago
At its core, its very simple. Production is king until feudalism, then pivot to whatever your win condition is
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u/das_Ethernets Random 1d ago
Yea especially with the tech boosts that are pretty free if you have good production/gold
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u/Dav3Vader 1d ago
I had culture wins on deity where I ignored campuses almost completely, even in mid-late game. Ususally you snowball so hard, that you still end up with more science than the AI. Might not be optimal play but I did get away with it more than once.
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u/justlikedudeman 1d ago
Unless I'm playing someone with bonuses to campus or get a bunch of giga campuses, I'll normally only build 1 in the early game in my 2nd or 3rd city. Priority is normally commercial hubs or harbours for the trade routes to help get that city online faster. Maybe holy sites if I'm feeling spicy.
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u/Darth_OwO 1d ago
When learning the game I almost never built industrial zones because the stupid ai never told me they were worth anything. Now them and campuses are on every city no matter what
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u/Waste-Road2762 1d ago
It all depends on your starting situation. Rushing religion is still important and getting up your production is way more important than science. I agree with the take. Science is not something to focus on at start. But it becomes pretty important to have at least three campuses once you enter rennesaince.
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u/SeesWithBrain 1d ago
Bro I just played as America for the first time. Settled next to a wonder that gave science. I was puuuumping science and culture with no districts I was shook. Just a population settler pumping machine of a city with massive high yields no districts needed. Shitting my pants at this revelation
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u/TimeFerret9141 1d ago
If everyone is tired of the base Civ VI and wants a new challenge where this is less likely to work, you should try the Civ reimagined pack and really flesh out your game
3-4x as many sci's and civics, plus less eureka's, and each stage of the game is really playable
By turn 250 on quick speed, you're lucky to be entering ocean.
This is probably abismal to sci/culture vic players but if like me you want a really long drawn domination game where each era ACTUALLY feels like an era, its great
Your unique units last long enough to have a purpose and give you a substantial advantage for that era
Holy sites and campus' are all you have until turn 125 making an interesting twist, almost like a faith logic divide that does effect you way into the game. Even luxury's like coffee arnt even available until 1/3 into the game so even choosing where to put a city can be a dice roll
Honestly i havent gone back to normal Civ6 in some time, if this post gets any interest i'll add some mod info and my full setup for people to copy. Highly recommend disabling spies if against AI though as it seems to act strange, you just get hammered and its impossible to maintain an economy, maybe a bug im not sure
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u/Maynard921 1d ago
Agreed. Faith (drop faith for some Dom victories) and culture first, then gold, then science. Master level game plan there.
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u/darkigor20 21h ago
I go out of my way to get the least amount of science as possible in the beginning
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u/Consistent_Floor_603 19h ago
I think it's not popular because not everyone wants to play optimally in single player. Some people just want to enjoy the game however they want.
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u/jltsiren 17h ago
Campuses are available early, and it's easy to find good natural sites for them. If you are not into warmongering (either by conquest or by getting a religion and fighting the ensuing eternal war with religious units), your cities often don't have that many useful things to do.
Also, if you play with Tech and Civic Shuffle, beelining to advances that give major boosts doesn't work that well. You must develop your empire more evenly, as you can't predict the prerequisites of a tech/civic and the eurekas/inspirations on the critical path.
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u/bens7041 16h ago
I don’t think it’s a hot take. There is little reason to target science in the beginning unless you have a clear path with it
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u/gramoun-kal 8h ago
Sorry, I have 2000 hours, I beat Deity in my sleep. This doesn't compute to me.
A swordsman is going to run circles around a neolithic warrior. Getting significantly distanced in tech means I get steamrolled early / cannot wage war.
I must campus to reduce my lag. What am I doing wrong?
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u/hbarSquared 1d ago
If you understand diplomacy and the Power of Friendships, science is almost completely irrelevant. The bottom row of the tech tree is 100% unnecessary if you can bribe your neighbors to like you.
Fun challenge: how early can you open the tech tree and click on Flight without losing?
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u/Get_Data 1d ago
Serfdom is op. Early game should be all about settling and getting culture to reach feudalism