When to Builder? That and other advice needed

[LostAngel1000]

So played a lot of Civ 5 and got decent enough at it single player which is what I am now trying with Civ 6... But the small but vast changes are really making me have a rough rough start to the game. With the biggest being for me now "When to Builder?" Its the charge system I think that does it for me making it really hard to know "Okay spend the turns now to build one in city x" cause 3 uses and then wham they gone and I am needing more sooner then later.

I could usely beat Prince on Civ 5 with out a ton of trouble unless something truily crazy happened, so far I struggle to get what feels like a good foothold while trying to and at least feel like "even if I lose this I'll be in second get a decent score" to play threw see how things progress and really get a feel for past the mid game where things seem to go crazy. Maybe its being on a small map but Im litereally doing what most experinced players to Civ do which is start on Play now and learn from there.

[The Doctor]

Civ is too situational to give you an exact time when yoiu should build your first builder. If you're really new to all this and finding the game tough, I'd advise holding off on the first builder until your city is craving amenities to keep it happy and you've got 4 or more citizens in your city.

Using the 'production manager' on the UI to tell your city what you want it to focus on, food, building, etc will keep you growing for a while without you having to build farms, mines etc.

Once you've got a couple of new units, slingers or warriors, and you feel safe from barbarians, then might be a good time to build a builder because you'll be able to protect your improvements. If you don't have the military, barbarians will just plunder them and you won't be able to fix them until you build another builder.

Hope that helps.

[leandrombraz]

Civ VI values planning, it wants you to think ahead all the time. One of the things you need to plan is policies. There's policies that are permanent, you want to keep it all the time, like conscription (Unit maintenance reduced by 1 Gold per turn per unit) and policies that you should see as temporary, swap in, do what you need to do as efficiently as possible and swap out, like Ilkum (+30% Production towards Builders), so you don't waste a slot with a policy that give you nothing when you're not doing a specific action (making builders). You should plan "when to builders" around that.

If you need builders, synchronize all cities to make builders at the same time, around the time you're about to finish researching a Civic. Swap the Ilkum policy in, set your cities to make builders, synchronize your civic research to end when the last builder is finished, swap Ilkum out.

You should try to research the Feudaulism Civic ASAP, it give you two things that are important, the Serfdom policy (Newly trained Builders gain 2 extra build actions), which replaces Ilkum, and Farms adjacency bonus (Farm improvements now gain +1 Food for each adjacent Farm improvement when 3 Farm improvements are adjacent to each other). Since Serfdom replaces Ilkum and it doesn't give you a production boost towards builders, when you're getting near feudalism you should produce builders in all your cities using Ilkum but stop when you're one turn of finishing it, switch production to something else and leave the almost finished builder there into you research Feudalism, then swap Serfdom in and change production to the almost finished builders, giving you builders that are both cheaper and have more actions, then swap Serfdom out so you can use the slot for a permanent policy.

You need to keep doing that through the whole game, mostly after you research Feudalism, so you always produce builders that have 5 actions. Need builders? Plan and synchronize to make several builders at the same time and always use policies

[LostAngel1000]

Yeh maybe I am just getting frustrated to soon, then again when things like some one plopping a city next to you who you've declared friends with and then being BOMBED so they steal your land AND your 1 turn away from completion wonder..... Yeh....

IDK only got it the other day for my birthday and been grinding at it so maybe its just the learning curve as well as the changes being JUST enough to screw up how things use to work.

[Starwars]

I think that first builder is always a tricky thing to consider when you're gonna build it. In Civ VI I usually like to pop out a few slingers right away(depending on how the terrain around my first city looks and how easy it will be to defend from barbarians or aggressive civs).

Then there is the consideration of what resources you have around your city.
Depending on what you research first and your starting location, you may not have the ability to improve a lot of tiles (or the tiles you want to improve first anyways). Some resources require a tech that comes slightly later before you can improve them.

Of course, you probably want to get the eureka for when you improve 3 tiles, so you still want to get the builder out there fairly early on (unless you may get the eureka from a goodie hut!).

There are a lot of things to consider at the start of the game. If I'm not going for a religion, I think I'll usually (again, this varies a lot) get two or three slingers, a settler and then a builder after that maybe. Sometimes I'll just flat out gold purchase it depending on what's going on.

As you play more you'll start to get the hang of the eurekas especially. That will help with how you want to plan out building improvements (because you get eurekas from building a farm on a resource for example, another for building a pasture, another for a quarry etc etc).

[UncleGoodie]

Originally posted by LostAngel1000:

Yeh maybe I am just getting frustrated to soon, then again when things like some one plopping a city next to you who you've declared friends with and then being BOMBED so they steal your land AND your 1 turn away from completion wonder..... Yeh....

IDK only got it the other day for my birthday and been grinding at it so maybe its just the learning curve as well as the changes being JUST enough to screw up how things use to work.

"
A good diplomatic strategy is: Fight the neighbor and alliance with the off reaches. I never declare friends with my neighbor unless I feel no threat at all.
I tend to build the first worker after the slinger or just buy it. Because you can use the charge to improve the luxury and sell to other civs. One charge = 150 golds in return. And you don't even need any luxury for amenity before the first 90 turns.

[LostAngel1000]

It was one the islander guys who I felt wasn't a threat... and maybe he wasn't miltarily but his holy shrines being area grab bombs wasn't at all in my head at the time since well, I am new to this Civ game.

My thing with buying Builders is the prices on everything else seem to rise as well, besides each builder costing more and more. Making buying a Builder seem as risky as building a Builder if done at a bad time, again though this is just me not figuring out the learning curve yet.

[terry]

There is a mod that gives you(and the ai civs) a free builder at the start of the game. Being that it gives the AI civs a builder also, you wont get ahead of the ai by using it but if you get a lucky spawn point you can get a couple tech boosts with it pretty quick. If you dont get a very good starting spot, you can always just sit in your city and wait until you need it for something. Either way, it saves you from having to worry about that first builder.

[travisdead1]

Create a builder after you have 2 archers and a warrior. You'll be alright for food for a little while, so improve the luxory or both if you have 2 luxuries. And make the last charge for food. But wait until you have 3 fighting units to protect your improvements and the builder and the settler that you should build right after the builder. Never send a civilian outside of your city without having a fighting unit chained to it.

And irrelevant aside...I LOVE what they did with builders. I always thought it was just freakin' STUPID that it would take 20 years to build a farm. It takes a couple of weeks in real life. About 5 days to make a quarry or a sawmill. If you have the desire and the equipment, it takes no time.

And in all the other games you'd set it to build and turns would go by...each turn 20 years or so. Just annoyed me. I like the instant build. Only 3 charges to start with but you can get more from Policies and wonders you build. Pyramids i think? Anyway, I like it better this way. Instant whatever.

[krabdr]

This question depends on what level you play on, but in general build two slingers before you build a builder. You'll want the slingers to kill barbarians. If you can shepherd them along, they'll make nice level 2 archers when you go to war with your nearest neighbor.

Early in the game save your coin for purchasing a builder or a trader. You'll want your slingers/archers to protect the non-combatant units, too.

The ilkum - feudalism hack is a good one, but I don't usually plan that far ahead.

[Sir Slasher]

i build alot of units at the start so i buy a builder with gold if needed