As someone who just got this game for Christmas, I was not expecting useful tip videos like yours to still be coming out, neither was I expecting them to be so funny
"If you don't plan your cities and districts, you're screwed." Unless you're Australia. All you need is a city and a sea side to have a 5+ science district. If there's a mountain nearby, your population will open their third eye.
So you say when playing Australia, you put those mistake/rules upside down (pun intended)? I wonder if that's intended from the devs. They do often implement fun stereotypes.
Came here to say this. Australia is my favorite faction to play because of the flexibility that their additional housing from coastal cities provides and the flexibility that building districts on tiles with high appeal also provides. It means you can be more diverse with your city planning and you aren't locked into making these quadrant style cities that all depend on each other for adjacency bonuses. With the exception of industrial zones of course.
Great point about production over food, but you should have mentioned early game is the exception, since you need some more food and the initial population is very important. Mid and late game you can just get 1 farm triangle for the big cities and 1 divided by multiple cities for the smaller ones
you only need enough food to keep up your production pumping out settlers early game. Bur you're right, still need food. Especially if you have multiple high yield tiles around your capital. You want to exploit those with many pops. But if you have to choose between food and production, I'd say production always.
@@alex2005z That is correct, if you can have decent production tiles later. But if I have to choose between more food overall or more production overall within second ring, I'd choose the latter if I'm not Germany. Because in Civ 6 production is most important resource generally and always better to have more. Food, on the other hand, and like alcohol, should be taken with a limit. Over consumption will lead to amenity problems. And if you hit your housing limit, extra food will go waste, while extra production is always welcome. But I agree with you, having high food tile to work initially, is usually better than working high production less food tiles. having 2 pop working while all other nations only have half your workforce is really nice.
nice guide, although if i had to be honest, i have a few criticism for each of your point : 1. prod is indead very important, but early game, you need enough food to at least get your 4 pop quickly in your cities. so settling near at least one good food tile 3/0 or 4/0 (4/1 if you re lucky), or even settling on one idealy is important. you need to at least work 2/2 tiles but if you only work tiles with 1 food, that city is gonna take a veeeery long time to be useful. 2. yeah you got that one, no one care about loyaulty 3. Planning is indeed very important. howerver, perhaps planning every single district up to when your cities will get 16 pop (assuming it ever does) is a bit excessiv. Moreover your needs may evolve throughout the game and you ll change some of it. So unless you play a civ that rely consequently on district adjacency, (germany, dutch, america's preserv...) perhaps that s overkill. Also, just think about that moment when a few horses and iron will spawn right in the middle of your beautiful planning.... might be awkward. 4. the fact that you re making this argument while playing dido inland is quite ironic. harbor being the best ditrict in the game generally compensate the weakness of coastal settle. Yes having a river is much better for a settle on the coast, but it isn't mandatory at all. you have both the fishing ship and the lighthouse that provide all the food and housing you miss from the land, while the shipyard provide a lot of prod. 5. settling min distance is indeed a very good idea and i do it most of the time. however, just remember to look at the tile under your city because if going min distance makes you put a city in the desert... perhaps consider going a little further. more generally, it s always better to settle a better city (better tiles) than being as close as possible
5 should depend on your Environment, difficulty and space you got since every City has a 3 rows for districts and wonders. Also maybe the game settings as in winning conditions etc are a reason to go for larger cities than a bunch of smaller ones. What I mean by that if you either play untill one Nation captured everyone else or you got alot of space on your continent, Island make large cities and make those absolute beasts. And of course they should be close to each other and not like 20 tiles off but 6 tiles distance from Center to Center seem healthy to me.
3. Agreed, planning too far ahead ruins the fun. It puts the game on rails. You want some aspect of emergent and organic gameplay, you shouldn't strap yourself down to a strict path.
For my first city i set myself up in front of some mountains, thinking it would be good defense for now. Which it could've been, if i was paying attention. Literally set up my city right under a volcano. Which blew up like 3 times within 30 turns (had the mod on that increased the occurrences of catastrophic events.)
I don't like to be that guy but I analysed your starting location on this video and I believe that settling your capital one tile to the west would be much better for your start in that game. I think that because: 1. By settling in place you deleted down the forest and missed spot of 3prod/1food and free chop later. 2. You missed free era score from settling near floodplains. 3. Tyre would be closer to the Wheat which is like free Irrigation boost. 4 and most important. You could settle really good city to the east of your capital on the tile with Dyes. It have a lot of production, fresh water, late but still easy access to truffles and is overall really good city to settle. It cannot be done since Tyre is too close and settling it more to the east is not as huge as exactly on the Dyes. If I missed something and it's actually better to settle in the spot you settled in, please tell me I want to know if it's good analysis or not. Thank you. Also I hope I'm not annoying with this comment heh. Anyway, it's a good video to learn more about civ6, keep up great work man! :D
You mean east? That would've cost him a turn waste. I'd go for NW tile which is between truffle and current city. You'd get 2 high yield tiles right out of the gate, work truffle very early, you may switch gear towards Dance+Ethics northward, and you'll get another production city in the east. For the second west city, I'd go for a tile west of Dye. He'd get 2 4-yield tiles to work immediately, settled on a plain hill, have immediate access to both nice production and food tiles, 2 yummy tea tiles will be in range and he'll have a free bridge when sending trade between those cities. Yes he won't get free access to the dye but truffle will be enough before getting irrigation. You can buy that wheat tile with gold you get from truffle. Man, 7 yield tile without improvement? That's something you don't miss to grab for starting years.
Nah . Either option is okay and neither is game breaking . I’d prob settle in place also. Work the 2-2 base and very quickly grow to truffles and work that with your 2 population. Stronger early start. Where your option is more of the long term better option. All depends on if you want early game strong tempo… Atleast that’s how I view it 🤷🏼♂️. Nothing like being 3 months late
9:22 while you’re not wrong about coastal production, getting Auckland is honestly amazing since it’s +1 production on coastal tiles until until industrial era when it becomes a +2 throughout your entire empire. Throw Mausoleum in your capital and a fishing boat pantheon and you can have a fantastic coastal capital. And Mohenjo Darò also with all cities on the coast also can have fresh water benefits
#6 not building Entertainment Complex. Yeah, you don't need them in every city, but you can make at least one to give happiness to your other cities (six tiles away, just like workshop). #7 building every district in every city - it's redundant, because one industrial complex can give bonus to all other cities within six tiles (of district) so you're kinda wasting turns and 'hammers" because only ONE bonus will apply (usually highest). However, be aware that some civ benefit from having lots of districts, such as Japan and Germany for example.
Coastal cities are great if you're playing Domination in a map with a lot of water and you need a place for your boats to heal or you want to create a canal through a skinny stretch of a long island.
Planning is all good and great, I love it. Until you get iron(niter, coal, w/e) right in the middle of your nicely planned district haven before you were able to lock all of them. One of my biggest issues with civ6 is that you can't build districts on damn strategic resources after they're revealed. Also, I've had successfully settled -20 loyalty cities (not in dark age ofc), it's tricky but with all the policies all you need to do is to add 1-2 trade routes for the food gain and buy granary+watermill if possible so that it gets new pop almost instantly. Even 1 extra citizen gives a lot more resistance to pressure, and after getting to 3+ it's mostly safe from revolting (unless dark age, naturally).
@@tarikay93 Well, isn't it sad and pathetic (on the part of devs) that players gotta rely on mods to fix probably the most obvious and glaring issue with the core mechanic of the game?
I have to say these are really good points. As someone who’s played civilization since the original on the super Nintendo, I’ve really had a hard time grasping the newer versions beyond Civ 4. I appreciate this video, and now I am inspired to take this up again with the new information you’ve provided
I was never a regular player of these types of games, but when I came to Civ 6 from FreeCiv, which is an open source game based on Civ 2. There, growth is king, so the fact that Civ 6 is less about growth (though pretty sure early growth is really important, not something the video seems to account for) is surprising to me
I've been playing Civ6 on Xbox gamepass for the last couple of weeks. Accidentally won my first Spain marathon Prince on large small continents map through a cultural victory while I finished preparations for the last 3 capitals in domination. Just started another Spain game, marathon King on huge small continents. Coming up on turn 200 with 5 cities after just defeating Brazil and annexing two of their 3 cities. Your videos are extremely helpful. I was already making the mistake of trying to focus on food, which in hindsight was a big mistake in my last playthrough. Literally every city in that run required me to juggle between housing, amenities, and then finally units. I'm going to focus on production moving forward.
The real issue with food in civ 6 is that growth slows dramatically as your pop increases. Unlike earlier games, most cities never actually hit their food cap, so doubling the food does not double your pop. If it did, the game would be very different and I think both your first and last tip would be very different. With the right policies, wonders, civics and planning you can get the amenities and housing to support huge cities spaced farther apart. But in practice you get more pop per land and more districts per pop by building smaller cities closer together. The somewhat sad (IMHO) thing about this is it encourages people to pick a victory type early and specialize their districts. If the growth mechanics made larger cities with more diverse districts viable, then it would reward strategies like racing down the civics tree to win a science victory, or keeping several victory options open until the late game.
While a lot of this is reasonable it sounds a little more absolute than it probably should be. Production potential is certainly important but if your food is too low it becomes very hard to realize that potential. Frequently if I have something like spices and grassland with woods and a rice in marsh and several high production tiles I will lock the first two citizens in on the 4 food, 1 production and 5 food tiles to grow the population very quickly. Even though the production is low to start if you limit them to building only items your policies or the world congress do half (or more) of the work on it's not so bad (think city center as the AI always votes for that) and it gets more of those high production tiles working faster. By the end of the game that city will have ultimately put out more production by getting more citizens to work faster than it would have if you focus on the production tiles first. Basically this is a roundabout way of saying you need both food and production to found a good city. You can also potentially chop things out of the city and replant woods with lumber mills later if needed. Coastal cities may or may not have low production and it depends how late you settle them. If you've discovered oil they might be very productive. Is Auckland in the game? Can you become Suzerain of it? Is it in danger of being conquered? Did you scout well enough to know you are going to be on or near a lot of coast so you can take God of the Sea pantheon? These are good guidelines but the actual decisions are highly context dependent.
Sometimes the hardest eurekas are the building farms ones. It's like well I needed more production and chops. When am I gonna build farms. Maybe at feudalism lol
@@alex2005z yeah, feudalism gives you that farm triangle thing, which is great in cities struggling to get their pop up to get more districts, but +1 food on 1/1 or 2 food tile just isn't great. Bottom line: people don't wanna work sub 4 yield tiles, so improving something to only 3 total just isn't worth it. I farm bonus resources that get to 4+ yield after, but often there isn't enough to meet those eurekas.
@@alex2005z truth. I think the feudalism boost is the one that requires 5 farms, right? But farms suck until then and you make a good point, are also harder to justify building till then. Like you wanna set up farm triangles before to get the boost and then the buff, but it's hard to till after.
I enjoyed and liked, however, this video showed me that so much worrying about everything is boring. I mean, aw man. I'll keep on playing on King, build cities in a way that seems sensible to me and enjoying (plus usually winning) the game. Many thanks though and keep it up.
its kind of funny, my sister and my father both play a TON of this game, and have 1k+ hours of playtime, but they don't do any of these things. I play the game less than both of them, but whenever I play them in multiplayer, I obliterate them on higher levels than they are. My sister is the main culprit. Every mistake that was in this video is a mistake she makes. In a recent game we had together, she had tons of coastal cities like 10+ tiles apart from each other, with tons of farms and little production. She apparently didn't know that the pin tool existed in the game, and has 0 city planning. Whenever I try to give her tips she scoffs and says her way of doing things is perfectly fine. She was going for a culture victory. I won on turn 193 with a culture victory. I had 260 science, 750 culture, and 600 tourism. She had 123 science, 148 culture, and ? tourism. Its very clear that it might be beneficial for her to maybe try these tips out.
Number 2 is great but if all your cards are on loyalty mid game you better be going all in on war food is important 3 farms and a granary and 7 mines or lumber yards is better not have 6 pop with 3 mines
Planning is boring (with markers and so on, yet i do it in my mind ofc). I'm ok winning on deity with timer without planning. There is actually no time for planning if you have timer... it is ticking too fast. I barely finish all actions sometimes.
I'm a production guy but i had some real fuckrd up cities stuck on 6-8 population due to no freaking food available at all and only hill and mountain tiles nearby. It was stuck as a shity place until i unlocked farms on hills, then it became my strongest city from there forward
@@TheCivLifeR I tend to spread out just to block off the AI and lock down territory. Probably stupid but I like to get clear defined borders using natural chokepoints etc and then let my empire fill in.
In regards to tip #5...could your industrial zone get adjacency bonuses from districts or mines in a city that's yours that's right beside it? I hope I said that right lol
I got this on my iPad, not sure it’s as intricate graphics or even an editing mode… but of course my memory is horrible so I may have forgotten or literally didn’t notice it 😂 Either way it’s awesome watching these vids, channels like this and games like these. Growing up all my friends wanted Mortal Kombat or Metal Gear Solid (and will admit that was a fav of mine also in the PS1 days lol) but none liked when I played Civ 2 or Sim City 🤭
Uhhhg... close city spam. On this I disagree. Your capital, should not share a single tile. It needs em all. Ya gotta put those wonders somewhere. Then any cities I settle around my capital, also get lots of room. After that, I'll be capturing cities, and the AI loves to settle close, so My inner core will be large powerful cities, surrounded by the smaller spam cities, which I honestly hate. I really hate those close cities that cant build anything or do anything... they all spend the rest of the game just struggling to keep up, whilst my core is so advanced. When you have that super powerful capital, it gets obscene how fast it can crank wonders, even early game. As long as you got sprall from early game conquest that is. Ya still need the sprall, but that capital NEEDs to be massive.
Honestly, unless the strategy you're playing requires a wonder, or you're using a Civ that benefits greatly for them, you shouldn't waste any space/production on wonders. Most wonders end up being a drain on your resources for minimal rewards. Of course that changes depending on certain map situations. But for the most part, its better to let the AI make the wonder and then you take their city later if you need it
Production is king… but kinda need food to work all those production tiles. You can have all the mines in the world , but if you don’t have the pop to work them what’s the point… I get what he means tho. There’s nothing wrong with long term booking and building a huge city tho. Just be smart about it and do that in peace times
In early game, Faith > Culture > Food > Science = Production. As time goes on, the value of food drastically goes down and production goes up. By late game production is on the top with culture and science imo. Faith becomes somewhat useless after you got the pantheon, but at the first 25 turns it's beyond anything else. Food is so important because you need it to reach 2 population so you can start building settlers sooner. Also in early game more population = more worked tiles = more overall production, so having some starting food will benefit your overall production in the long run. Yes reaching 10+ population is not as rewarding but the first 4 population and arguably 7 is a must-have. Personally I think 8 is the sweetspot. It costs as much amenity as 7 which allows you to build 3 special districts, but also have 1 more worked tile.
Whether faith becomes useless depends on victory type. It's the only yield that matters for religion. Like, you need 4 pop in a late game city for religion, 1 to work a farm and 3 to work the holy site. It also comes back hard late game for culture after a mid game slump. You can't have too much faith to buy naturalists, cultists (if they're enabled) and rock bands. Also, it's definitely relevant for longer than just a pantheon, because monumentality is one of the most busted things in the game. High early game faith strats spamming out settlers with monumentality and abusing the free builders from ancestral hall are really strong.
In Khmer, you only need to respect your work ethics in tundra lands. regardless of tile quality, you'll be swimming in food and production along with faith. With Urban Complexity : Worship and Districts in wood mods, I reach to future era in 10th century AD and my science was over 2000 and culture was over 9000 per turn. Well, I colonized a sixth of a huge world which was covered in snow. Even without mods, that was a very strong combo, especially if you get rivers on tundra.
I tried map tacks, but without knowing what adjacency patterns and knot recognizing each of the icons it is very hard to use. I spend forever clicking through the build to see the +# symbols and then not knowing if a bonus resource should be gutted to make space for something. There is a chasm of info needed to make use of the mod
I think I deleted my last message about water tiles but Low production to get Harbours and you are right and I usually regret building city’s Relying On mostly water what’s the point really water units are the worst in the game by far and like you said no protection even after you get the harbour that’s really only for more gold and food nothing in the game is worse for you than a 15 population water city
and here I always thought the magic number was "5 Spaces Away" so you at least were able to throw up things like neighborhoods etc. how does japan and the Maori factor into these tips? they're HUNGRY to be Coastal-Only.
Played my first game blind I thought I was doing good i had just discovered gun power, had a sizeable force of calvary and saw a notification saying Germany was dropping nukes
Also late game you have access to ways of dramatically being able to increase how many pops a city can hold so prioritizing food overproduction is a gigantic mistake.
still when I place the district marker on the map, i.e. in the game, it doesn't show me the + values. How is that possible? How can I fix it so that it shows me the plus values of the districts like in your video?
I play on ps4 so I never play with any mods and always on deity and most times on quick speed so by turn 50 you are even further behind in everything I don’t build really any farms now but granary’s in most city’s not right away let the city grow first and I let the city go to 11 population and basically stop growth but I do need to plan out citys more I do always have a plan try from and get plus 3 in every District if you can’t get plus two I don’t build it but I win 95% of the time before turn 275 but that’s on quick but it’s also harder because you don’t catch up like you do on standard speed if the AI has 60 science at turn 50 and you have 20 science it’s like 90 science for them and you got 29 try it makes you need to catch up fast on standard speed just get more than 10 cities by 120 and you will win 90% of the time by turn 280
At the end of the day just do whatever works and is most fun for you. If you want a slightly less than optimal coastal city for rp reasons and/or greater naval supremacy then go for it. Personally I usually play on water heavy maps where coastal cities are invaluable anyway
Me happily on my way to a military victory, turn 250, settler difficulty duel vs ghandi. Making 100 more culture than ghandi. Randomly lose to culture on turn 230 even though i have literally every wonder
The hive City selling method is actually a universal tactic in the civ series, 5 being the sole exception. Essentially, always build settlers from every city, followed by workers. The more cities, the more net gross you take in. Then follow-up with a state religion that takes gold and either provides amenities or production, and you've made a machine. I prefer pogodas over meeting houses, as the bonus faith allows your theocratic crusade machine to wipe almost everyone by the mid game. Do this, and you'll win 9 out of 10 games while weaker players go for the other, beta strategy to win the game. That being said, I miss spies and nuclear suitcases hiding in caravan stacks so much.
That is good tactic if you do not have to many opponents. I like to play against 15 maybe even 20+ civs on huge maps. Usually there is enough space for 5 cities. Then we clash and warfare is unavoidable. What settings do you play?
@@zombek666 I normally play with about 20 civs on Emperor difficulty and with Barbarian Tribes mode on. Typically, I end up doing a early religon rush, followed by a wave of either swordsmen or horsemen, Barbarian horsemen if desperate and try to claim as many cities as possible. Then transition into a temporary peace, spreading more cities to every possible tile, and using garrisoned troops to maintain loyalty. I don't bother spreading my religon until the late middle ages, and will typically rely on scripture doctrine in order to organically spread it, while focusing my city states exclusively on economic or religon city states. Typically, the best way to accomplish this is to wipe out my 3 closest neighboring civs and then use the peace time diplomacy score to get the others to be only annoyed at me. Raze the cities that are not effective at that time, but hold the ones that are needed to keep up the supply lines of troops to the front defended. Better to build them from scratch then suffer the loyalty rebellion mechanic. Then after the conquest, enter a period of reconstruction and mass settlers using the Colonization tree. If you are playing as China (One of the better civs for this, due to thier worker charges and build wonder ability), wait out the era of Crossbowmen until you can make the earliest gunpowder infantry. Use Cash to upgrade standing army, and then use a mixture of religous purchases of troops to renforce the front, while sending apostles to convert them. At that point, stop focusing on minmaxing cities and begin steamrolling as many AI's at a time. You should have three to four seprate army clusters of units to sack and pillage. Oh, and another tip, Use Battering rams and thier upgraded form. Never upgrade to medics. This will stop you from dealing chip damage to walls, and let you seize faster. Using this strategy, I have never once made it to the future era *laughs*. One of these days, I'll go for a science victory or cultral to see what it's like, but religous and domination is too busted.
Ah, good sir. I see you are an advocate of Military and Spence games. But as a business man, it shan‘t matter where I place a city, for it needs only one, or two, district(s), and the rest basically comes for free. I know my strategy isn‘t good and incredibly stupid, but it‘s super fun. For why should I need to produce? When I can just buy!
i'll take cities on the coast all day long. harbor plus liang spawn fishing boats is a food, prod & cash monster. if you get Halicarnassus wonder and befriend Mohenjo-Daro Nan Madol Cardiff and Auckland you are invincible
Production, coin and science. If you have high production, you can produce what you need pretty quickly, and with high monetary wealth you can buy whatever you need and instantly add more science and production or military units if you’re attacked. I lean more towards production in the first 50 turns and then slowly shift more towards money because once I have a fat income, I can buy all of the less important stuff while my cities produce science buildings and WONDERS which can give you significant advantages. If you want to establish a religion, do so as soon as you can get a great person because depending on how many players there are, they’ll take all of the great persons before you can get to that point and you’ll be screwed on that front. I always have a type of artillery (or ranged early in the game) garrisoned in every city because you can get policies which increase loyalty because of it. And it just gives cities that extra defense. Planes are great later on. Try to be a suzerain of all cities especially the ones around you or on your continent. And you want as many trade routes as possible. It’s a good idea to get rid of all of the barbarians or pay them to attack neighboring cities and rendering them [barbarians] allied city states. Otherwise they’ll constantly plunder your trade routes. Settling directly on the coast is a bad idea like you said but settling on a river that’s just a few tiles away from the ocean is good so you can eventually build a harbor and take over the seas. Also gets you more trade. Develop as many effective spies as you can because you can use them to take cultures apart from within and also steal tech and art (or coin) without going to war or upsetting them (assuming they don’t get caught). It’s slow and annoying to do but worth it. Foment enough unrest for your neighboring player’s cities to revolt and break away to make it easier to take territory. I personally hate sharing a continent with someone else so I try to get rid of them ASAP. But you can make it work with an alliance if you choose.
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No, you're jokes are lame. Trying so hard to be funny that it's all forced and terrible.
Wait... Pistons.... You a Michigander?
As someone who just got this game for Christmas, I was not expecting useful tip videos like yours to still be coming out, neither was I expecting them to be so funny
Same, bought it at xmas and at first I wss wondering why Im so far behind CPUs lol
Replay value is unmatched
2"003 Detroit Pistons defense treatment"
"If you don't plan your cities and districts, you're screwed."
Unless you're Australia. All you need is a city and a sea side to have a 5+ science district. If there's a mountain nearby, your population will open their third eye.
Not to mention the powerful outbacks
@Jon In SLO Babylon moment
So you say when playing Australia, you put those mistake/rules upside down (pun intended)? I wonder if that's intended from the devs. They do often implement fun stereotypes.
Came here to say this. Australia is my favorite faction to play because of the flexibility that their additional housing from coastal cities provides and the flexibility that building districts on tiles with high appeal also provides. It means you can be more diverse with your city planning and you aren't locked into making these quadrant style cities that all depend on each other for adjacency bonuses. With the exception of industrial zones of course.
Great point about production over food, but you should have mentioned early game is the exception, since you need some more food and the initial population is very important. Mid and late game you can just get 1 farm triangle for the big cities and 1 divided by multiple cities for the smaller ones
you only need enough food to keep up your production pumping out settlers early game. Bur you're right, still need food. Especially if you have multiple high yield tiles around your capital. You want to exploit those with many pops. But if you have to choose between food and production, I'd say production always.
@@NgarKua for the first tile I would choose a 4-2 tile over a 2-4 tile any day. (Food first production after)
@@alex2005z That is correct, if you can have decent production tiles later. But if I have to choose between more food overall or more production overall within second ring, I'd choose the latter if I'm not Germany. Because in Civ 6 production is most important resource generally and always better to have more. Food, on the other hand, and like alcohol, should be taken with a limit. Over consumption will lead to amenity problems. And if you hit your housing limit, extra food will go waste, while extra production is always welcome. But I agree with you, having high food tile to work initially, is usually better than working high production less food tiles. having 2 pop working while all other nations only have half your workforce is really nice.
So weird coming from civ 5 where the whole game was all about making your cities fat and plump.
@@Tofuey thats what having dedicated districts does
nice guide, although if i had to be honest, i have a few criticism for each of your point :
1. prod is indead very important, but early game, you need enough food to at least get your 4 pop quickly in your cities. so settling near at least one good food tile 3/0 or 4/0 (4/1 if you re lucky), or even settling on one idealy is important. you need to at least work 2/2 tiles but if you only work tiles with 1 food, that city is gonna take a veeeery long time to be useful.
2. yeah you got that one, no one care about loyaulty
3. Planning is indeed very important. howerver, perhaps planning every single district up to when your cities will get 16 pop (assuming it ever does) is a bit excessiv. Moreover your needs may evolve throughout the game and you ll change some of it. So unless you play a civ that rely consequently on district adjacency, (germany, dutch, america's preserv...) perhaps that s overkill. Also, just think about that moment when a few horses and iron will spawn right in the middle of your beautiful planning.... might be awkward.
4. the fact that you re making this argument while playing dido inland is quite ironic. harbor being the best ditrict in the game generally compensate the weakness of coastal settle. Yes having a river is much better for a settle on the coast, but it isn't mandatory at all. you have both the fishing ship and the lighthouse that provide all the food and housing you miss from the land, while the shipyard provide a lot of prod.
5. settling min distance is indeed a very good idea and i do it most of the time. however, just remember to look at the tile under your city because if going min distance makes you put a city in the desert... perhaps consider going a little further. more generally, it s always better to settle a better city (better tiles) than being as close as possible
5 should depend on your Environment, difficulty and space you got since every City has a 3 rows for districts and wonders. Also maybe the game settings as in winning conditions etc are a reason to go for larger cities than a bunch of smaller ones. What I mean by that if you either play untill one Nation captured everyone else or you got alot of space on your continent, Island make large cities and make those absolute beasts. And of course they should be close to each other and not like 20 tiles off but 6 tiles distance from Center to Center seem healthy to me.
plan smart, nitre can just spawn on ur +5 campus spot at any moment, so u should make more flexible plans or
3. Agreed, planning too far ahead ruins the fun. It puts the game on rails. You want some aspect of emergent and organic gameplay, you shouldn't strap yourself down to a strict path.
2 years late, but as a new player having another perspective helps immensely! o7
this guy really sat there for 2 and a half minutes talking about starving and sending his population to the mines
Except the nice ones, they go to lumbermills and get to see some daylight 😂
For my first city i set myself up in front of some mountains, thinking it would be good defense for now. Which it could've been, if i was paying attention. Literally set up my city right under a volcano. Which blew up like 3 times within 30 turns (had the mod on that increased the occurrences of catastrophic events.)
Play manor lords.this is complete shit
I don't like to be that guy but I analysed your starting location on this video and I believe that settling your capital one tile to the west would be much better for your start in that game. I think that because:
1. By settling in place you deleted down the forest and missed spot of 3prod/1food and free chop later.
2. You missed free era score from settling near floodplains.
3. Tyre would be closer to the Wheat which is like free Irrigation boost.
4 and most important. You could settle really good city to the east of your capital on the tile with Dyes. It have a lot of production, fresh water, late but still easy access to truffles and is overall really good city to settle. It cannot be done since Tyre is too close and settling it more to the east is not as huge as exactly on the Dyes.
If I missed something and it's actually better to settle in the spot you settled in, please tell me I want to know if it's good analysis or not. Thank you. Also I hope I'm not annoying with this comment heh.
Anyway, it's a good video to learn more about civ6, keep up great work man! :D
You mean east? That would've cost him a turn waste. I'd go for NW tile which is between truffle and current city. You'd get 2 high yield tiles right out of the gate, work truffle very early, you may switch gear towards Dance+Ethics northward, and you'll get another production city in the east. For the second west city, I'd go for a tile west of Dye. He'd get 2 4-yield tiles to work immediately, settled on a plain hill, have immediate access to both nice production and food tiles, 2 yummy tea tiles will be in range and he'll have a free bridge when sending trade between those cities. Yes he won't get free access to the dye but truffle will be enough before getting irrigation. You can buy that wheat tile with gold you get from truffle. Man, 7 yield tile without improvement? That's something you don't miss to grab for starting years.
Nah . Either option is okay and neither is game breaking . I’d prob settle in place also. Work the 2-2 base and very quickly grow to truffles and work that with your 2 population. Stronger early start. Where your option is more of the long term better option. All depends on if you want early game strong tempo…
Atleast that’s how I view it 🤷🏼♂️.
Nothing like being 3 months late
9:22 while you’re not wrong about coastal production, getting Auckland is honestly amazing since it’s +1 production on coastal tiles until until industrial era when it becomes a +2 throughout your entire empire. Throw Mausoleum in your capital and a fishing boat pantheon and you can have a fantastic coastal capital. And Mohenjo Darò also with all cities on the coast also can have fresh water benefits
U mean taking the city state Auckland?
@@1977Futre getting suzerainty
@@1977Futre Doing that would make that hyper strategy fail. You have to make the city-state your vassal by sending envoys.
#6 not building Entertainment Complex. Yeah, you don't need them in every city, but you can make at least one to give happiness to your other cities (six tiles away, just like workshop).
#7 building every district in every city - it's redundant, because one industrial complex can give bonus to all other cities within six tiles (of district) so you're kinda wasting turns and 'hammers" because only ONE bonus will apply (usually highest). However, be aware that some civ benefit from having lots of districts, such as Japan and Germany for example.
If you’re trying to get engineers than multiple industrial complexes are essential
Coastal cities are great if you're playing Domination in a map with a lot of water and you need a place for your boats to heal or you want to create a canal through a skinny stretch of a long island.
Planning is all good and great, I love it. Until you get iron(niter, coal, w/e) right in the middle of your nicely planned district haven before you were able to lock all of them. One of my biggest issues with civ6 is that you can't build districts on damn strategic resources after they're revealed.
Also, I've had successfully settled -20 loyalty cities (not in dark age ofc), it's tricky but with all the policies all you need to do is to add 1-2 trade routes for the food gain and buy granary+watermill if possible so that it gets new pop almost instantly. Even 1 extra citizen gives a lot more resistance to pressure, and after getting to 3+ it's mostly safe from revolting (unless dark age, naturally).
There is a mod that allows you to harvest strategic resources.
@@tarikay93 Well, isn't it sad and pathetic (on the part of devs) that players gotta rely on mods to fix probably the most obvious and glaring issue with the core mechanic of the game?
@@Tallorian Yes :)
I have to say these are really good points. As someone who’s played civilization since the original on the super Nintendo, I’ve really had a hard time grasping the newer versions beyond Civ 4. I appreciate this video, and now I am inspired to take this up again with the new information you’ve provided
I was never a regular player of these types of games, but when I came to Civ 6 from FreeCiv, which is an open source game based on Civ 2. There, growth is king, so the fact that Civ 6 is less about growth (though pretty sure early growth is really important, not something the video seems to account for) is surprising to me
@@wandregisel6385 yes, at this point, it’s become a totally different game
I've been playing Civ6 on Xbox gamepass for the last couple of weeks. Accidentally won my first Spain marathon Prince on large small continents map through a cultural victory while I finished preparations for the last 3 capitals in domination.
Just started another Spain game, marathon King on huge small continents. Coming up on turn 200 with 5 cities after just defeating Brazil and annexing two of their 3 cities.
Your videos are extremely helpful. I was already making the mistake of trying to focus on food, which in hindsight was a big mistake in my last playthrough. Literally every city in that run required me to juggle between housing, amenities, and then finally units.
I'm going to focus on production moving forward.
As someone who played since Civ I on SNES it’s been so hard to break old habits!
The real issue with food in civ 6 is that growth slows dramatically as your pop increases. Unlike earlier games, most cities never actually hit their food cap, so doubling the food does not double your pop. If it did, the game would be very different and I think both your first and last tip would be very different.
With the right policies, wonders, civics and planning you can get the amenities and housing to support huge cities spaced farther apart. But in practice you get more pop per land and more districts per pop by building smaller cities closer together.
The somewhat sad (IMHO) thing about this is it encourages people to pick a victory type early and specialize their districts. If the growth mechanics made larger cities with more diverse districts viable, then it would reward strategies like racing down the civics tree to win a science victory, or keeping several victory options open until the late game.
While a lot of this is reasonable it sounds a little more absolute than it probably should be. Production potential is certainly important but if your food is too low it becomes very hard to realize that potential. Frequently if I have something like spices and grassland with woods and a rice in marsh and several high production tiles I will lock the first two citizens in on the 4 food, 1 production and 5 food tiles to grow the population very quickly. Even though the production is low to start if you limit them to building only items your policies or the world congress do half (or more) of the work on it's not so bad (think city center as the AI always votes for that) and it gets more of those high production tiles working faster. By the end of the game that city will have ultimately put out more production by getting more citizens to work faster than it would have if you focus on the production tiles first. Basically this is a roundabout way of saying you need both food and production to found a good city.
You can also potentially chop things out of the city and replant woods with lumber mills later if needed. Coastal cities may or may not have low production and it depends how late you settle them. If you've discovered oil they might be very productive. Is Auckland in the game? Can you become Suzerain of it? Is it in danger of being conquered? Did you scout well enough to know you are going to be on or near a lot of coast so you can take God of the Sea pantheon? These are good guidelines but the actual decisions are highly context dependent.
The point of coastal cities is for generating gold, and they do that really well.
ye but building them up is a real pain
@@TheCivLifeR just dont. Who said those people need living conditions?
@@alex2005z hmm meaning bro?
@@poundstone1000 dont build them up
The English and vikings spawn near the coast. Its there play style
Always appreciate the Civ tips and good humor! Big fan of the channel, here for the ride!
Glad you like them!
Sometimes the hardest eurekas are the building farms ones. It's like well I needed more production and chops. When am I gonna build farms. Maybe at feudalism lol
Yeah especially when you get the builder card then
@@alex2005z yeah, feudalism gives you that farm triangle thing, which is great in cities struggling to get their pop up to get more districts, but +1 food on 1/1 or 2 food tile just isn't great. Bottom line: people don't wanna work sub 4 yield tiles, so improving something to only 3 total just isn't worth it. I farm bonus resources that get to 4+ yield after, but often there isn't enough to meet those eurekas.
@@DavidSmith-mt7tb I meant that you get the extra builder charge card in feudalism, so improving before that feels like a bit of a waste
@@alex2005z truth. I think the feudalism boost is the one that requires 5 farms, right? But farms suck until then and you make a good point, are also harder to justify building till then. Like you wanna set up farm triangles before to get the boost and then the buff, but it's hard to till after.
@@DavidSmith-mt7tb if the card came earlier you could time it so that you would get the bonus right after building them, but thats how it is
I enjoyed and liked, however, this video showed me that so much worrying about everything is boring. I mean, aw man. I'll keep on playing on King, build cities in a way that seems sensible to me and enjoying (plus usually winning) the game. Many thanks though and keep it up.
The best quote ever said of Alexander the great "he is looking at my city like a full course chicken dinner" 😂😂
New video idea for you, “best map and setting for each leader”
Video about Settling mistakes > immediately settles under volcano with no initial 2 food tiles XD
spicy air never hurt anyone
@@TheCivLifeR tell that to the folks of Pompei
Guys if your girl:
Has long hair
Has a sexy body
Is rich from jewelry
And is easy to be friends with
Thats not your girl, thats Gilgabro.
its kind of funny, my sister and my father both play a TON of this game, and have 1k+ hours of playtime, but they don't do any of these things. I play the game less than both of them, but whenever I play them in multiplayer, I obliterate them on higher levels than they are. My sister is the main culprit. Every mistake that was in this video is a mistake she makes. In a recent game we had together, she had tons of coastal cities like 10+ tiles apart from each other, with tons of farms and little production. She apparently didn't know that the pin tool existed in the game, and has 0 city planning. Whenever I try to give her tips she scoffs and says her way of doing things is perfectly fine. She was going for a culture victory. I won on turn 193 with a culture victory. I had 260 science, 750 culture, and 600 tourism. She had 123 science, 148 culture, and ? tourism. Its very clear that it might be beneficial for her to maybe try these tips out.
Let people enjoy stuff however they want omg
Number 2 is great but if all your cards are on loyalty mid game you better be going all in on war food is important 3 farms and a granary and 7 mines or lumber yards is better not have 6 pop with 3 mines
I’ve been a Civ fan since the first one on SNES when I was very young lol… Keep rocking!
You’re absolutely hilarious. Instant subscribe
I love these vids. The game is meant to be fun. No rules needed
"You can always get granaries or water mills." And I just came from video where you said to never build those...
Planning is boring (with markers and so on, yet i do it in my mind ofc). I'm ok winning on deity with timer without planning. There is actually no time for planning if you have timer... it is ticking too fast. I barely finish all actions sometimes.
Holy shite, that Queen Victoria line was heavy.
Another great video, thanks. Love the 03 Pistons D comment too!
I'm a production guy but i had some real fuckrd up cities stuck on 6-8 population due to no freaking food available at all and only hill and mountain tiles nearby.
It was stuck as a shity place until i unlocked farms on hills, then it became my strongest city from there forward
I know I need to work on placing cities closer together.
never underestimate district power
@@TheCivLifeR I tend to spread out just to block off the AI and lock down territory. Probably stupid but I like to get clear defined borders using natural chokepoints etc and then let my empire fill in.
Ah, just picked up the game and have definitely been making the first mistake. "But we have so much food, why do we suck?!"
In regards to tip #5...could your industrial zone get adjacency bonuses from districts or mines in a city that's yours that's right beside it? I hope I said that right lol
Yep it's possible
Yes
Not just your city - ANY city.
@@duraluminiumalloy9248 true even city states
Your funny I love your metaphors
Been playing for 2 weeks and was trying to keep them fully apart...and getting wrecked :P Will try overlap next game!
Keep em as close as possible you wont regret it.
@@razzaus1570 what do you recommend? 1 tile or 2?
When he said build the city in the city limits does that mean inside your borders?
I got this on my iPad, not sure it’s as intricate graphics or even an editing mode… but of course my memory is horrible so I may have forgotten or literally didn’t notice it 😂
Either way it’s awesome watching these vids, channels like this and games like these. Growing up all my friends wanted Mortal Kombat or Metal Gear Solid (and will admit that was a fav of mine also in the PS1 days lol) but none liked when I played Civ 2 or Sim City 🤭
If you play on earth would you argue Panama canal is a good spot? It makes traversing oceans so much easier. But sometimes a bad spot for production.
1: "food over production is bad as you get no bonuses from high population"
Khmer: *exists*
Sorry if this was already asked, but what mods are you using?
Uhhhg... close city spam. On this I disagree.
Your capital, should not share a single tile. It needs em all. Ya gotta put those wonders somewhere. Then any cities I settle around my capital, also get lots of room. After that, I'll be capturing cities, and the AI loves to settle close, so My inner core will be large powerful cities, surrounded by the smaller spam cities, which I honestly hate. I really hate those close cities that cant build anything or do anything... they all spend the rest of the game just struggling to keep up, whilst my core is so advanced.
When you have that super powerful capital, it gets obscene how fast it can crank wonders, even early game. As long as you got sprall from early game conquest that is. Ya still need the sprall, but that capital NEEDs to be massive.
Honestly, unless the strategy you're playing requires a wonder, or you're using a Civ that benefits greatly for them, you shouldn't waste any space/production on wonders. Most wonders end up being a drain on your resources for minimal rewards. Of course that changes depending on certain map situations. But for the most part, its better to let the AI make the wonder and then you take their city later if you need it
Damn, I was always putting my cities like 6 tiles away so they would have their own 3 tiles distance each.... this is why i constantly get shit on lol
Great tips and information and your humor rounds out all your vids, well done big daddy montezuma
I am so triggered by the notification pop ups that I automatically tapped on the x at 1:10
Im new to this game but enjoy it Im always learning from others
Thanks, this video helped me
I settle near wheat then crush it with commercial buildings and wonders in the midgame
Bad first spot your down 😂, yes that’s so fucking true. That’s why my friends and I start many times a new round.
Riverbends count as a coast apparently. I settled on a riverbend and it gave me the coastal eureka
I saw the video only to know if the miniature was clickbait...it was
Production is king… but kinda need food to work all those production tiles. You can have all the mines in the world , but if you don’t have the pop to work them what’s the point… I get what he means tho. There’s nothing wrong with long term booking and building a huge city tho. Just be smart about it and do that in peace times
Video: Do not value food over production
Game: Throws me into a map of six tundra hill tiles with no plains in sight
what mod is that for the map tiles?
Your commentary is amazing !
Glad you think so!
5:05 Which governor diplomatic loyalty policy thing?
And then which garrisoned loyalty policy card?
As an Irishman, I appreciate the dig at the Famine Queen!
Humor is on point my guy
:D
In early game, Faith > Culture > Food > Science = Production. As time goes on, the value of food drastically goes down and production goes up. By late game production is on the top with culture and science imo. Faith becomes somewhat useless after you got the pantheon, but at the first 25 turns it's beyond anything else.
Food is so important because you need it to reach 2 population so you can start building settlers sooner. Also in early game more population = more worked tiles = more overall production, so having some starting food will benefit your overall production in the long run. Yes reaching 10+ population is not as rewarding but the first 4 population and arguably 7 is a must-have.
Personally I think 8 is the sweetspot. It costs as much amenity as 7 which allows you to build 3 special districts, but also have 1 more worked tile.
sums up everything pretty nicely although depending on the game faith might be important for longer
@@TheCivLifeR yeah, for faith focused civs some extra faiths are always neat.
Whether faith becomes useless depends on victory type. It's the only yield that matters for religion. Like, you need 4 pop in a late game city for religion, 1 to work a farm and 3 to work the holy site.
It also comes back hard late game for culture after a mid game slump. You can't have too much faith to buy naturalists, cultists (if they're enabled) and rock bands.
Also, it's definitely relevant for longer than just a pantheon, because monumentality is one of the most busted things in the game. High early game faith strats spamming out settlers with monumentality and abusing the free builders from ancestral hall are really strong.
I hate having cities crammed just 3 tiles away from each other LOL ... it sucks hard
Write that down. *Write that down!!*
lol spongebob
That down
Bro spent half the video talking about food and sounds like he vapes jewlews or puff bars.
In Khmer, you only need to respect your work ethics in tundra lands. regardless of tile quality, you'll be swimming in food and production along with faith. With Urban Complexity : Worship and Districts in wood mods, I reach to future era in 10th century AD and my science was over 2000 and culture was over 9000 per turn.
Well, I colonized a sixth of a huge world which was covered in snow. Even without mods, that was a very strong combo, especially if you get rivers on tundra.
Dude funny as hell ctfu... Might subscribe to this guy... I got the game on xbox
The scramble for Africa 💀💀💀I’m fuckin weak
The WHOLE production over food argument is perfect😂😂😂 thanks for being a psycho when playing civ like me🫡
I tried map tacks, but without knowing what adjacency patterns and knot recognizing each of the icons it is very hard to use. I spend forever clicking through the build to see the +# symbols and then not knowing if a bonus resource should be gutted to make space for something. There is a chasm of info needed to make use of the mod
is it still worth building an aqueduct on a river when you are already getting fresh water? is the +2 housing worth it?
Only if you can get some crazy adjacency bonus with industrial zone
Number 5 is interesting I also do it mid distance but sounds ok to me
mid is fine tbh as long as you close everything off later
I think I deleted my last message about water tiles but Low production to get Harbours and you are right and I usually regret building city’s Relying On mostly water what’s the point really water units are the worst in the game by far and like you said no protection even after you get the harbour that’s really only for more gold and food nothing in the game is worse for you than a 15 population water city
I honestly thought where you settled destroyed whatever was on the tile
It depends on what it is is, On resources, it automatically gives you their yields. But woods and rainforest get removed completely
Yeah, I never make that 1st mistake anymore, It's all about production baby
so as extension, I don't make mistake #4 much either
and here I always thought the magic number was "5 Spaces Away" so you at least were able to throw up things like neighborhoods etc.
how does japan and the Maori factor into these tips? they're HUNGRY to be Coastal-Only.
Tip of the day
Stay close and tight like Ben and Rasheed Wallace
Great Video. What mod are you using that shows you the adjacency bonuses from map pins?
Detailed Map Tacks
@@saxongroove5898 Thank you very much. Very helpful !
What If I want to stop at medieval ? I dont like tanks, they are boring etc, is there mod to stop in moment before Guns etc?
Maptags mod doesn't understand Canal placement.... which is unfortunate because I don't do either.
Played my first game blind I thought I was doing good i had just discovered gun power, had a sizeable force of calvary and saw a notification saying Germany was dropping nukes
I never build mines or lumbermills. Food ftw. Settle alwas 7 tiles away for maximum covrage.
Also late game you have access to ways of dramatically being able to increase how many pops a city can hold so prioritizing food overproduction is a gigantic mistake.
thats true
Late game you demolish the farm and build your spaceport or Big Ben there.
@@cmarkn when you get 10 or 15 pop demolishing the farm does nothing
@@ethanwmonster9075 it gives you an empty hex to build something else on.
coastal cities gain a lot housing and food with a harbor
what mods are you using?
You sir are an absolute tyrant lol. Love the content
lol appreciate it
still when I place the district marker on the map, i.e. in the game, it doesn't show me the + values. How is that possible? How can I fix it so that it shows me the plus values of the districts like in your video?
I play on ps4 so I never play with any mods and always on deity and most times on quick speed so by turn 50 you are even further behind in everything I don’t build really any farms now but granary’s in most city’s not right away let the city grow first and I let the city go to 11 population and basically stop growth but I do need to plan out citys more I do always have a plan try from and get plus 3 in every District if you can’t get plus two I don’t build it but I win 95% of the time before turn 275 but that’s on quick but it’s also harder because you don’t catch up like you do on standard speed if the AI has 60 science at turn 50 and you have 20 science it’s like 90 science for them and you got 29 try it makes you need to catch up fast on standard speed just get more than 10 cities by 120 and you will win 90% of the time by turn 280
Wait! How can I build a navy without a coastal city? Naval warfare is One of the main reasons I play civ games.
I think it’s always good to have at least 2 coastal cities if possible for that exact reason
At the end of the day just do whatever works and is most fun for you. If you want a slightly less than optimal coastal city for rp reasons and/or greater naval supremacy then go for it. Personally I usually play on water heavy maps where coastal cities are invaluable anyway
You trolled me with the thumbnail dude
The easiest way to learn the lesson of production over food is to play true start location earth map as Egypt or Arabia. Dead sea no production.
But the 2 fishy tiles! It depends on the civ as well. Indonesia better get to the coast.
Me happily on my way to a military victory, turn 250, settler difficulty duel vs ghandi. Making 100 more culture than ghandi. Randomly lose to culture on turn 230 even though i have literally every wonder
The hive City selling method is actually a universal tactic in the civ series, 5 being the sole exception.
Essentially, always build settlers from every city, followed by workers. The more cities, the more net gross you take in. Then follow-up with a state religion that takes gold and either provides amenities or production, and you've made a machine. I prefer pogodas over meeting houses, as the bonus faith allows your theocratic crusade machine to wipe almost everyone by the mid game.
Do this, and you'll win 9 out of 10 games while weaker players go for the other, beta strategy to win the game.
That being said, I miss spies and nuclear suitcases hiding in caravan stacks so much.
That is good tactic if you do not have to many opponents. I like to play against 15 maybe even 20+ civs on huge maps.
Usually there is enough space for 5 cities. Then we clash and warfare is unavoidable.
What settings do you play?
@@zombek666 I normally play with about 20 civs on Emperor difficulty and with Barbarian Tribes mode on.
Typically, I end up doing a early religon rush, followed by a wave of either swordsmen or horsemen, Barbarian horsemen if desperate and try to claim as many cities as possible. Then transition into a temporary peace, spreading more cities to every possible tile, and using garrisoned troops to maintain loyalty.
I don't bother spreading my religon until the late middle ages, and will typically rely on scripture doctrine in order to organically spread it, while focusing my city states exclusively on economic or religon city states.
Typically, the best way to accomplish this is to wipe out my 3 closest neighboring civs and then use the peace time diplomacy score to get the others to be only annoyed at me. Raze the cities that are not effective at that time, but hold the ones that are needed to keep up the supply lines of troops to the front defended. Better to build them from scratch then suffer the loyalty rebellion mechanic.
Then after the conquest, enter a period of reconstruction and mass settlers using the Colonization tree. If you are playing as China (One of the better civs for this, due to thier worker charges and build wonder ability), wait out the era of Crossbowmen until you can make the earliest gunpowder infantry. Use Cash to upgrade standing army, and then use a mixture of religous purchases of troops to renforce the front, while sending apostles to convert them.
At that point, stop focusing on minmaxing cities and begin steamrolling as many AI's at a time. You should have three to four seprate army clusters of units to sack and pillage.
Oh, and another tip, Use Battering rams and thier upgraded form. Never upgrade to medics. This will stop you from dealing chip damage to walls, and let you seize faster.
Using this strategy, I have never once made it to the future era *laughs*. One of these days, I'll go for a science victory or cultral to see what it's like, but religous and domination is too busted.
@@zombek666 that’s exactly what I do. And to make it even more fun I turn off the turn limit
Ah, good sir. I see you are an advocate of Military and Spence games. But as a business man, it shan‘t matter where I place a city, for it needs only one, or two, district(s), and the rest basically comes for free.
I know my strategy isn‘t good and incredibly stupid, but it‘s super fun. For why should I need to produce? When I can just buy!
With that start as Phoenician you shouldn't even settle, hit restart button and be more happy.
i'll take cities on the coast all day long. harbor plus liang spawn fishing boats is a food, prod & cash monster. if you get Halicarnassus wonder and befriend Mohenjo-Daro Nan Madol Cardiff and Auckland you are invincible
I have a problem where I focus on the river and not any luxuries etc I could build around it
nah i'll still grow 30+ pop cities thank you very much. Big number good
If I was given a start like that as Phoenicia, I would restart.
Production, coin and science.
If you have high production, you can produce what you need pretty quickly, and with high monetary wealth you can buy whatever you need and instantly add more science and production or military units if you’re attacked. I lean more towards production in the first 50 turns and then slowly shift more towards money because once I have a fat income, I can buy all of the less important stuff while my cities produce science buildings and WONDERS which can give you significant advantages.
If you want to establish a religion, do so as soon as you can get a great person because depending on how many players there are, they’ll take all of the great persons before you can get to that point and you’ll be screwed on that front.
I always have a type of artillery (or ranged early in the game) garrisoned in every city because you can get policies which increase loyalty because of it. And it just gives cities that extra defense. Planes are great later on.
Try to be a suzerain of all cities especially the ones around you or on your continent. And you want as many trade routes as possible. It’s a good idea to get rid of all of the barbarians or pay them to attack neighboring cities and rendering them [barbarians] allied city states. Otherwise they’ll constantly plunder your trade routes.
Settling directly on the coast is a bad idea like you said but settling on a river that’s just a few tiles away from the ocean is good so you can eventually build a harbor and take over the seas. Also gets you more trade.
Develop as many effective spies as you can because you can use them to take cultures apart from within and also steal tech and art (or coin) without going to war or upsetting them (assuming they don’t get caught). It’s slow and annoying to do but worth it. Foment enough unrest for your neighboring player’s cities to revolt and break away to make it easier to take territory. I personally hate sharing a continent with someone else so I try to get rid of them ASAP. But you can make it work with an alliance if you choose.