I’ve never played a Civ game, or a real strategy game for that matter.
I really like the concept of Civ so bought Civ 6 and played the tutorial yesterday, I’m pretty hooked.
What are some pointers for a beginner? I know there’s too many paths to go down, so I’m looking for broad answers to help me get my Civ set up in the early game at the moment.
Well, in terms of general pointers, I have a couple. Aside from these, Computer God Autism's remarks for Civ V about playing to the strengths of your particular civilization and not worrying too much about everything going perfectly from the start are applicable.
First is that your cities will always get resources (work) the tile that they're founded on regardless of where citizens are placed, so founding a city on a tile with extra yields is a good idea. Settling on a Geothermal Fissure is also a good choice since you normally can't build any improvements on them until MUCH later in the game, and your city will also always get the amenity bonus from an aqueduct if it can build it since it would always be adjacent to it. Always prioritize settling on Fresh Water early on, though.
You'll also want to make a scout or two so you can check the surroundings of your starting location once you have that first city. On top of being able to find nice places to put down a second city, it'll also help you earn era score to possibly get an early Golden Age bonus or avoid a Dark Age by helping you discover natural wonders, other civs, or city states. Try to use them to grab any tribal villages they find for additional random bonuses as well that might help you early on.
Trying to prevent a Barbarian Scout from discovering your city by getting too close to it (causing the ! to appear above its head) is important if you don't want to deal with extra barbarians attacking your city regularly. If it happens, then try to kill it before it gets back to the encampment, or destroy the encampment entirely as soon as possible so you don't have to worry about them stifling your growth by raiding and pillaging your stuff.
A good early defense if shit hits the fan is to keep a slinger in your city's tile since they can't be directly attacked by units while in there. Upgrade them to archers as soon as possible and you can attack enemies one tile away safely. Get masonry to build city walls and that adds to the city's defense
and allows you to bombard an enemy with the city each turn as well.
In terms of Governors, I usually go for Pingala the Educator first because of his science and/or culture bonuses giving a pretty decent boost early on to the development of civics or technologies. Even later down the line he tends to be left to handle my capital. I've seen other players use Magnus the Steward to build cities faster by focusing on technologies that allow the clearing of terrain features and chopping things down due to him increasing the resources gained from doing so, though, if that's more your preference. Though you'll want to be moving him around to your newest city to maximize that effect.
Finally, Civ 6 particularly favors playing wide over tall in most situations. The more cities you get up and running at the start of the game, the more territory you'll own and the more of... pretty much everything you can do. Amenities might be a bit of a problem early on, but your cities shouldn't be punished too hard by them as long as you aren't going out of your way to directly settle next to other civs and far away from your other cities. Most civs prefer you settle your cities close together and expand outward, anyway.
