The right setup for playing tall

[Melee Only]

Hey guys, what setup do you recommend for playing tall? I don't like to micromanage cities but that seems to be the best way to win.

What I've tried is reducing map size and adding players, but that still leads to having 10 cities in order to stand a chance. Are there maybe some good gameplay overhaul mods that make the tall playstyle viable?

[Exemplar]

7-10 cities can still be considered playing "tall". 25 or more with few over 15 pop is an example of "wide".

[ayrtep]

For civ 6 I consider the difference between wide and tall is how you space your cities.

There is no reason to not build city anywhere there is space, but how many tiles do you leave between city centres?

If you want to reduce land area, try archipelago and high water. And of course playing Lady Six Sky.

[Exemplar]

Originally posted by ayrtep:

There is no reason to not build city anywhere there is space...

at some point I'm calibrating how many turns "out" i anticipate a victory condition, and generally some short period before this line makes any amount of resource investment toward a new city inefficient.

Originally posted by ayrtep:

but how many tiles do you leave between city centres?

i agree this speaks to the point, but this is a small reason of a number of reasons in the way cities are optimally spaced. i used to do that thing in civ 1 and 2 wherein you carpet cities x spaces apart. in 5 and 6 you're looking for a handful of really good tiles especially for your first 3-5 cities, and you're not necessarily going to find this in a nice pattern on any given map. some amount is defensibility or how much you are willing to provoke a neighbor, and there is the place i think you're pointing, as a "footprint".

tall v wide is about infrastructure, and you don't realize it much before emperor level because the game lets you make everything in every town. when you're challenged to make priorities, do you build 3 more stock exchange or do you build 3 more cities? that is the question, i feel.

[dande48]

I'd recommend settling your cities next to fresh water and coast. The coast brings in plenty of food. Try using the map "Small Continents" or "Archipelago".

Here are some great tall civs I'd recommend:
-Maya - Huge production bonus to all of your cities within 6 tiles of the capital. Free builder when the cities are founded. Combat bonus when within 6 tiles of your capital.
-Korea - Each governor level will increase a city's output by 3%.
-Australia - extra housing on coast, extra district yields, and their outback station.

Amenities and Housing are the most limiting factors when growing tall. Since you can't get the variety of luxuries, Amenities can be a challenge. If you can keep your amenities high (3+ more than is required), you get +10 production and +20 pop growth. If it gets too low, your production can be decreased up to 60%, and your pop growth down 30%.

A governor's plaza has a building "Audience Chamber", which gives +2 Amenities and +4 housing. There's a policy which will give you +1 Amenity and +2 housing for governors as well.

Rushing religion is pretty important. "Feed the World" and Gurdwara will give all your holy sights +8 food and +5 housing. I'm a fan of the "Divine Spark" pantheon belief, which will help a tall civ keep up with the Great Person points of wider civs.

The wonders I'd focus on are:
-Oracle: for the extra Great People.
-Hanging gardens: +15% growth, +2 housing.
-Temple of Artemis: +4 Food, +3 housing
-Angkor Wat: +1 pop and +1 housing in all citiies
-Colosseum: +2 Amenities in all cities within 6 tiles.

[ayrtep]

I disagree with Korea.

Seondeok is all about building as many Seowon as possible, and of course each Seowon has to be attached to a city. So you want to play Korea wide, with as close as you can to one city per hill. With a few tall cities for wonders and building hwacha.

[CyberDown]

Ive noticed a real lack of the turtle defense, tall build, nations in this game. I usually gravitate towards this as i start to stop caring about my cities when i need to spam them all over. Really enjoy a more intimate game where each city means something to me, and this game, as many others do, seem to piroritize stuffing a city in any and all available tiles.

Or maybe this is one of those $5-$10 DLC nations?

[RubrumCustode]

Building tall is usually the inverse of building wide. Instead of relying on adjacency bonuses of multiple districts keeping your yields high, tall cities depend on using specialists and late game government cards.

Unfortunately, Civ 6 has left specialists by the wayside for their shiny, new districts and their bonuses, but specialists are still potent enough to give you +10 or more yields from a single district.

Usually when you build Tall, you want a balance of production and food. Get enough population to work your tiles so you can turn some of that population into specialists.

Victoria and the Khmer are really good for Tall games. Victoria is good for the more aggressive player (Luatro is really good, but more complicated), The Khmer are really good for turtle players (the bonuses to food, amenities, and housing from Aquaducts and Holy Sites are insane).

[blkbutterfly]

Try Zombie Defence mode or Dramatic Ages mode if you like to play tall.

O/w this game is not for you. Civ V was a much better game for playing tall. (In fact that was superior I think in many ways). In Civ VI you will fail playing tall. It's all about going wide. Super wide!

[Literally Me]

Originally posted by ayrtep:

I disagree with Korea.

Seondeok is all about building as many Seowon as possible, and of course each Seowon has to be attached to a city. So you want to play Korea wide, with as close as you can to one city per hill. With a few tall cities for wonders and building hwacha.

idk man, first time I tried seondeok I got a pretty easy W with 4 cities. (on deity) She was the only civ that could play tall reliably a couple years ago.

[metronome]

Originally posted by blkbutterfly:

Try Zombie Defence mode or Dramatic Ages mode if you like to play tall.

O/w this game is not for you. Civ V was a much better game for playing tall. (In fact that was superior I think in many ways). In Civ VI you will fail playing tall. It's all about going wide. Super wide!

Super duper agree. I like to play wide, but civ6 lets you play wide with very few penalties early game for just cranking out settlers to snatch up all the useful tiles. Even if you avoid the tiny diplomatic penalty for settling near a neighbor civ and just expand where nobody else is, you'll amass great quantities of food, production and resources. That's all you need to beat everyone else in the game to most of the victory conditions.
Maybe there are mods that introduce serious scaling penalties like earlier versions of civ?

[grognardgary]

I've never experienced real problems playing wide in any civ. going back to test of time.

[Ripz]

civ 6 is notorious for ♥♥♥♥♥♥ up tall play unfortunately.

easily fixable with mods though, just look up "tall" in the workshop. i use a ton of mods including a few to make tall play viable. the first that come to mind are gold deflation, city maintenance, unit limit, increased settler cost, key loyalties (and loyalty deflation), and of course one city mode if you really wanna take it to the extreme.

also to reduce micromanagement furthure theres mods for automated builders, no district adjacencies, no wonders, no districts, etc.