Civilization VI: Strategic Units Placement for Early Game Success

In Civilization VI, the strategic placement and use of units at the beginning of a match can significantly influence the game's outcome. This article will explore the considerations for sending out scouts versus focusing on settlers, builders, or archers, and provide a detailed early-game strategy.

Exploring the Options: Scouts vs Settlers/Builders/Archers

In Civilization VI, the decision of whether to send out multiple scouts, focus on settlers and builders, or build military units like archers often depends on your civilization's strengths, your starting location, and your overall game plan.

Sending Multiple Scouts

Exploration

Scouts are invaluable for early exploration. Sending out multiple scouts can help you uncover the map faster, find city-state neighbors, and locate resources, ruins, and good settlement spots. This approach is particularly useful in scenarios where quick exploration is crucial.

Barbarians and Ruins

Scouts can also assist in uncovering and clearing barbarian camps and tribal villages, which often offer early boosts such as gold, units, or technologies. Additionally, they can help in identifying potential threats from barbarians, allowing you to plan your early defense strategy effectively.

Better Positioning

Knowing the terrain and resources around you is vital for deciding the optimal locations for your first and subsequent cities. Scouts provide crucial information that can help you make more informed decisions about where to establish your settlements.

Focusing on Settlers/Builders/Archers

Settlers

If you have a strong location, such as one near resources or good terrain, prioritizing a settler might be more beneficial. Early expansion is crucial for securing valuable land. Settlers can help you grow your territory quickly while establishing your civilization.

Builders

If you start with useful resources nearby, building a builder early can help improve your tiles, yielding more food and production right away. This can give you an early economic advantage and help you establish a solid foundation for your civilization.

Military Units

If you are near aggressive neighbors or barbarians, building archers or other military units might be necessary for defense and securing your territory. Proper defense is essential in the early game to avoid losing valuable resources and tiles to enemy raids.

Balanced Approach

A balanced strategy might involve sending out 1-2 scouts while also producing a settler or builder. This way, you can gather information while still expanding your civilization effectively. For example, if you see a barbarian scout, you might want to send your own scout to track it down and eliminate it, preventing it from reporting back to its outpost and causing trouble for your fledgling civilization.

Conclusion

Ultimately, the decision should be based on your civilization's strengths, your starting location, and your preferred playstyle. If exploration is key to your strategy, consider sending out multiple scouts. If you need to secure territory quickly, focus on settlers or military units.

Early Game Strategy

When starting a new game of Civilization VI, there are several strategic considerations that can help you set the stage for success in the early game. Here is a detailed early-game strategy to follow:

Key Considerations

If your settler starts next to a river, there is very little reason to move anywhere before founding that city. Access to fresh water is the single most important factor early on, as it provides a housing boost and allows your city to grow more quickly. Ideally, you are looking for a nice mix of nearby terrain. Mountains are particularly beneficial as they provide adjacency bonuses for the Holy Site and Campus districts, as well as a good natural defense against raiders.

Building Initial Units

City established, your first few build choices should be a scout, a slinger, and a monument. This gives you options for exploration and a boost to your Civic research. For now, refrain from creating builders, as their ability to instantly create improvements is not necessary, given that their role in previous Civ games was more significant. With your population growing, you can make better use of tile improvements in a few turns.

Securing the Land

Creating tile improvements without a few basic troops to defend your land is inviting a raiding party. With your scout, slinger, and starting warrior, you can push out in different directions to assess where barbarian outposts may be. If you see a barbarian scout, do not dismiss it as harmless; hunt it down and kill it to prevent it from reporting back to its outpost and causing trouble.

Capitalizing on Trade

Depending on the map size, all of this exploration should lead to you encountering another civilization or at least a city-state. Early research of the Foreign Trade civic can enable you to capitalize on a lucrative trade opportunity. Be sure to keep track of the trader's route, as they create a road and it needs to be kept clear of barbarian threats.

Selecting Government Policies

Choose the Government Policies that make the most sense for your current circumstances. Urban Planning is always useful, providing extra production. If you're expecting to run into a few barbarians, selecting Discipline can boost your attack strength against them, helping you quash the threat before it becomes a menace.

Building a Steady Foundation

With the first dozen or so turns under your belt, you can look to create a builder to put to work on the growing population of your first city and a settler soon after. Take your time to establish where to build your next city, making use of the varied terrain but ensuring you leave space for districts and wonders. By turn 60-70, three cities is a reasonable aim. Overall, take time to look at how best to leverage the bonuses conferred by your leader and civ, how they might be best boosted by Civic and Tech research, and what you can do to boost the research that you are most keen on pursuing.