Inland Sea: Civ VI Map Guide

A strategy guide for the Inland Sea map

Overview

Inland Sea as its name suggests is a land map consisting of an inland sea, the only large body of water. The poles are tundra. The equator is grassland with some desert, depending on your map settings.

With vast expanses of land to settle the map leans towards passive victories, such as Religion, Culture, Space or Diplomatic.

Given the variety of terrain and vast open spaces to expand onto I propose different strategies for specific civs.

Russia

Russia's bonus to production & faith on tundra make it ideally suited to this map. Settle the tundra polar region, making sure you settle locations with access to plenty of fresh water (i.e rivers and/or lakes) and sources of food (wheat, rice, sheep, cattle, fish, salt, spice, citrus, sugar, wine, fur, horse & niter).

Russia's trait Mother Russia grants it 8 extra tiles of land when settling, so you can settle geographically strategic or secure spots and still get access to essential resources within the reach of the city.

This strategy lends itself well to the achievement Trans-Siberian Railroad. Make sure you daisy chain trade routes in your rapidly expanding empire to create roads from St. Petersberg.

Set map to "cold".

Kongo

If you choose the "wet" map setting more rainforest will generate in the equatorial region of Inland Sea. Perfect for the Kongo. (A "cold" setting will produce more contigious rainforest. i.e. one devoid of desert).

Kongo's strategy is simple. Conquer and/or settle the rainforest regions of the equator. If you play against Brazil, chances are Pedro will spawn in locations favourable to you as well so you may want to eliminate them from the game early.

Kongo cannot pursue a religious victory so you'll be aiming for a Cultural or Science victory.

Brazil

Very similar to the Kongo strategy except that you most certainly want to use your carnival district to go wide and settle both equatorial rainforests either side of the inland sea.

My preference would be to not play against Kongo. However, should you amass a fleet and should the Kongo have spawned on the other side of the map you may try to take them out late game, after Nationalism , which would grant you your unique battleship replacement, allowing you to wrest control of the sea.

Either way, you may want to forward settle the Kongo if you intend to take them out. It will give you a Casus Belli to minimize warmonger penalties.

China

Inland Sea is an ideal map for China to turtle. Ideally you should have a start location near stone. Rush build Stonehenge and Mahabodhi Temple with your builders. These are the only two ancient/classical wonders that gift you units of value. A prophet and two apostles. Use them to found and enhance your religion. Then you are free to follow the passive Religious victory.

Canada

See Russia.

Canada can play similar to Russia with the added bonus of being able to farm tundra, which can provide valuable food and housing.

You want to prioritise settling and improving strategic resources in tundra which you may trade with allies for gold.

With Canada you can play the diplomatic game minimising your grievances for a Diplomatic Victory.

Others

The AI usually avoid tundra and even rainforest and will try to settle the lush grassland of the inland sea. Brazil, Kongo and Russia are lucky in that the areas they prefer to settle are unlikely to be overly contested and so are free to pursue passive victories. However, should you find yourself spawning on grassland be sure you will have to defend your territory.

Try Rome, Norway, Spain, Sweden & India.

[blkbutterfly]

@MeniliteZ Thx

Maybe religious victory isn't passive. Religion is passive in Civ V and HUMANKIND though.

[MeniliteZ]

Great guide! I'm about to try an inland sea map, and this'll be helpful!

Question though: Why do you classify Religious victory as passive? Whenever I try I have theological combat all over the place.

[nohn]

twerk twerk i am twerking :O)

[EdenStarGazer]

Thanks, and I did enjoy the guide.

[blkbutterfly]

@EdenStarGazer Thanks!

Re: CS IDK Soz

[EdenStarGazer]

A very insightful guide, and well written. Thanks for sharing these strats. Even as an experienced player, I feel like I learned a lot about how the ai works with terrain from this. As an offtopic of sorts, do you have any idea how the city-states are spawning? I have not noticed yet whether certain civs tend to spawn certain CS's. But, I imagine there is some such pattern.

[blkbutterfly]

You're welcome!

[The Black FL33T]

Nice short and sweet guide blkbutterfly74 - thank you!