Why settle cities in abundance?

[Blue]

Hello, I am trying to understand the importance of early settling. To me it feels like settlers take so long in the early game that I neglect doing it often because I think 1 scout then builders are the optimal play (I tend to play without barbarians 90% of the time in Civ 6, and never in my 1000+ hours of Civ 5). Just an FYI, I also play on Prince difficulty but I never strive to go much beyond that right now. On a crowded map like Pangaea, I find it difficult to get beyond 2 cities before I'm squished.

So I suppose my real question is - in my specific circumstance - should I always go for settlers at 2 population in my capital since there are no barbarians? I believe your knowledge would help me out immensely, I can only find YouTube guides for Deity tutorials with barbs on, and I think without the barbarians it shifts strategies. Thanks for reading.

[grognardgary]

Your first three builds shoud be troops slinger, warrior, slnger. Then a settler, Playing without barbs sacrifices xp for your troops and gold, and other things as well for specific leaders. Even without barbs you should have troops on hand aggressive leaders will come kill you if they see weakness. Ideally you want some thing that yields three food and production although two two is good around your first city.

Oh and in answer to your first question posited because you will lose other wise and in short order. In six you simply can't produce enough science and culture in two cities to stay relevant let alone alive.

[Stormwinds]

Cities are everything. More cities means more districts as well as more production in general, so the earlier you build cities, the more advantage they provide.

[Blue]

Originally posted by grognardgary:

Your first three builds shoud be troops slinger, warrior, slnger. Then a settler, Playing without barbs sacrifices xp for your troops and gold, and other things as well for specific leaders. Even without barbs you should have troops on hand aggressive leaders will come kill you if they see weakness. Ideally you want some thing that yields three food and production although two two is good around your first city.

Oh and in answer to your first question posited because you will lose other wise and in short order. In six you simply can't produce enough science and culture in two cities to stay relevant let alone alive.

Slinger, warrior, slinger, settler. Got it. I understand the 2 food and production thing, it's been drilled into my head, yet I had no idea there were 3 food 3 production tiles you could get right off the bat. Thanks for the tip!

Also the cities are everything advice from Stormwinds, I appreciate that advice.

[Exemplar]

yeh, you don't need to setttle multiple cities, you can also capture them, but you should have some number (4-6) before 1 AD. If you do not try to have cities, the AI will simply outpace you regardless of difficulty level.

like, prince level, if you're gilgamesh and you just build donkey carts you will conquer every city around until someone builds a wall.

aztec is pretty brutal with just eagle warriors build if everyone else has only 1 city, so king or below.

[Evrach]

Cities are everything in this game. Your production. Your culture. Your science. Having 3 cities the sooner possible is always a good thing to snowball correctly. I almost always go for scout -> scout -> settler -> settler.

[Exemplar]

with some variation, mine is usually like warrior, builder, settler, district, district building, settler, and somewhere in there buy a warrior

[Cryten]

Also districts cost more the later you start building them, meaning that the earlier you settle the better your able to exploit the map. Population gets capped by technology fast, because housing puts massive negatives on new population. Population ='s production and bonuses like science. More cities ='s more population. You can only improve housing so much with builders (especially since you will need to waste good tiles on farms).

[Blue]

Now I understand why settling early is super important. Thanks everybody for the delicious feedback. I think this game mechanic makes a lot of sense too if you were to compare it to the real world even though it's just a game. I've really been getting hooked on the game lately, and again, I appreciate the intel.

[Maya-Neko]

Originally posted by TyRogue:

Originally posted by grognardgary:

Your first three builds shoud be troops slinger, warrior, slnger. Then a settler, Playing without barbs sacrifices xp for your troops and gold, and other things as well for specific leaders. Even without barbs you should have troops on hand aggressive leaders will come kill you if they see weakness. Ideally you want some thing that yields three food and production although two two is good around your first city.

Oh and in answer to your first question posited because you will lose other wise and in short order. In six you simply can't produce enough science and culture in two cities to stay relevant let alone alive.

Slinger, warrior, slinger, settler. Got it. I understand the 2 food and production thing, it's been drilled into my head, yet I had no idea there were 3 food 3 production tiles you could get right off the bat. Thanks for the tip!

Also the cities are everything advice from Stormwinds, I appreciate that advice.

Don't just follow someone elses building order blindly though. You can adapt it to your playstyle and especially the circumstances. Sometimes your city is covered by mountains or water, in which case you might already be able to defend your city effectively with 2-3 units, other times you might find yourself in a position with 2-3 barbarian camps in multiple directions or maybe a scout detects your city, in which case more units might be more important.

In the end the most important thing to get here: Have as many units as necessary, but as less as possible, because if nobody comes after you, then your units aren't helping you in getting bigger in any way.

And generally keep in mind, that if you see that you've plenty of space, that Magnus is a valid option as your first gouvernor, as one of his first unlockable abilities is to not consume a pop when building a settler. If you then beeline the gouvernment plaza and building the ancestral hall, then you also get a free builder in your newly founded cities on top of that. That's like dozens, if not hundreds of turns you can save on production time, depending on how many cities you're are able to settle.

[colostmy4]

since I play with the mod that allows buying barbarian units, I don't bother building military units early in game except for scouts. As soon as I can I'll purchase a barbarian unit. In fact, in the early and mid game, I rarely build military units at all, but I play on prince level and that strategy may differ for higher levels.

[bwhitejr]

Originally posted by TyRogue:

Hello, I am trying to understand the importance of early settling. To me it feels like settlers take so long in the early game that I neglect doing it often because I think 1 scout then builders are the optimal play (I tend to play without barbarians 90% of the time in Civ 6, and never in my 1000+ hours of Civ 5). Just an FYI, I also play on Prince difficulty but I never strive to go much beyond that right now. On a crowded map like Pangaea, I find it difficult to get beyond 2 cities before I'm squished.

So I suppose my real question is - in my specific circumstance - should I always go for settlers at 2 population in my capital since there are no barbarians? I believe your knowledge would help me out immensely, I can only find YouTube guides for Deity tutorials with barbs on, and I think without the barbarians it shifts strategies. Thanks for reading.

You're talking about building tall, and it's a harder playstyle in 6 than 5. You can also settle later, no problem, like getting navel tech researched and sending settlers to other continents.
Also, try some other maps than pangea, or limit how many other civs are in the game. I go for 8 civs, the map is less crowded that way.
I try to get at least 3-4 cities early on, because resources matter. For science, faith, strategic, and for trade. Then when I'm stable, I throw in the cheaper settler card, and spam settlers out of a city with Magnus, so population isn't depleted.
Barbs are your choice - I have them, because once you learn to deal with them, they can be trivial, with once in a while a bad spawn happens and they wreck you - but they're great for leveling military units early on.
But play how you want, but I feel not settling a couple cities early on is gimping yourself - the other civs start with 3 cities, and they can get too far ahead in culture and science than you, very quickly - and grab territory you won't get. You're also leaving internal trade and a lot of districts on the table early on. Internal trade is too useful to not have the cities for it early on.

[bwhitejr]

Originally posted by grognardgary:

Your first three builds shoud be troops slinger, warrior, slnger. Then a settler, Playing without barbs sacrifices xp for your troops and gold, and other things as well for specific leaders. Even without barbs you should have troops on hand aggressive leaders will come kill you if they see weakness. Ideally you want some thing that yields three food and production although two two is good around your first city.

Oh and in answer to your first question posited because you will lose other wise and in short order. In six you simply can't produce enough science and culture in two cities to stay relevant let alone alive.

Personal preference. I go warrior, explorer (knowledge is power)(and more goody huts), then it's situational, if I have coastal cities, then slingers. One settler as soon as they're available. If I have a couple city states nearby beating up barbs, then I can go for an early builder. 4 military units right off is expensive, too. But it's all personal choice. If it works for you, it works.

[bwhitejr]

Originally posted by TyRogue:

Now I understand why settling early is super important. Thanks everybody for the delicious feedback. I think this game mechanic makes a lot of sense too if you were to compare it to the real world even though it's just a game. I've really been getting hooked on the game lately, and again, I appreciate the intel.

Check out Potato McWhiskey's streams on YouTube, he's one of the big Civ 6 players still streaming, and his "everything explained" streams are a wealth of knowledge. He's been wrong about some things, like caring about amenities early on, and has admitted it, and he favors spamming explorers right off the bat - but if you want to learn more, he's a fantastic resource.

[Hamish]

not only should you settle early, you should settle well and "block off" NPC Civs from gaining land as much as possible. It is also worth declaring war on a neighbour to nick his settlers early game for effectively a free city (the warmongering/ grievance score will dissipate late game). You might want to consider killing your neighbouring Civs early to expand over an entire continent which puts you miles ahead in everything!

[Hamish]

Also something that is important early on IMO is to consider what Science and Civic Boosts you can get as this saves time getting new tech (and even some civs like china get extra to their boost in GS, Babylonia even gets 100% for science with a boost)