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Sid Meier's Civilization VI Game Guide

Build your own civilization! The Sid Meier's Civilization VI guide contains a complete set of information explaining all the rules of gameplay in Civ 6 and Gathering Storm. It recommends the best strategies and describes the characteristics of each of the nations.

Last update: 07 June 2024

This unofficial guide for Civilization VI is a complete compendium of knowledge and a handbook which explains all the rules of gameplay. The advice provided here will help less experienced players to get started with this game and become successful in the multiplayer mode. Veterans of the series will find a detailed description of the new mechanics that creators introduced in the sixth installment of the series.

Civilization VI: Guide content
Civilization VI: Tips and Tricks
Civilization VI: Technology tree
Civilization VI: The World
Civilization VI: Economy
Civilization VI: City-States
Civilization VI: Infrastructure
Civilization VI: All nations
Civilization 6: Game lenght
Civilization 6: System requirements

Civilization VI: Guide content

The guide explains the basic issues such as the interface, new game settings, game mechanics, system requirements and controls. What's more, you will find a chapter with tipsa and tricks, which will encompass all the key advice regarding every element of the game.

An important part of the guide is a detailed description of each of the nations available in the game with an emphasis on their unique characteristics, strengths and recommended style of gameplay. An integral part of the guide are illustrations: they help you to follow the content easily and underline the most important elements of the game.

In other chapters you will find a detailed description and advice on key mechanisms of the gameplay, such as scientific and ideological research, wonders of nature, terrain types, gathering resources, the occurrence of city-states in the game, encountering barbarians, or types of buidings-infrastructure in various city districts.

Civilization VI: Tips and Tricks

You don't have a time limit when playing your turn. Thus, you can think through and plan your next moves. End your turn only when you're sure that you've performed all the possible activities.
Consider choosing a lower difficulty level when completing the game for the first time. This will allow you to get acquainted with the gameplay basics especially, if it's the first Civilization game you've played either in your life or in a very long time.
Read the information on the hexagons (world map tiles) before doing anything there, e.g. before you move a unit or start erecting a building there. A given hexagon might help you with some specified actions (e.g distance attacks by your units), as well as make other ones more difficult (like moving units).
Choose the locations for your new cities well. It is important to have access to food and water in order to develop production for the city to be included into existing trade routes and be defendable.
One field / hexagon cannot be occupied by more than one unit. This is worth remembering when moving and deploying units around your metropolises.
Do not ignore diplomacy. Try maintaining amicable relations with other civilizations even if you plan to invade them in the near future. You can also rely on agenda to learn about other leaders' plans.

More tips for beginners can be also found in the General Tips.

Civilization VI: Technology tree

In Civilization VI, you can develop new technologies from the tree. This topic is thoroughly described in the Tech tree section of our guide:

Civilization VI: The World

Barbarians- You can learn how to avoid them, as well as what are the types of barbarians, and how to efficiently deal with them.

Native Villages - You can learn about the tribal villages you might encounter and about their significance in the game.
Terrain - We prepared the area types that might by covered by the hexagons (map tiles). You will learn how a given area type affects e.g. moving and recruiting units.
Natural wonders - We've prepared the list of the main Natural Wonders with the information on each one and the bonuses they provide.

Civilization VI: Economy

When playing Civilization VI, you are bound to deal with different types of resources. The Economy section lists the most important ones:

Base game resources - This page includes tables with the strategy, luxury, and bonus resources.
Strategy resources - You can acquire them if you have the Gathering Storm expansion installed.
Improvements

Civilization VI: City-States

Civilization VI: Infrastructure

The Infrastructure section of this guide describes the most important district types you'll find in the cities you develop. Additionally, we've prepared a building list for each district with information on their unique features and usefulness.

Civilization VI: All nations

Gathering Storm

Civilization 6: Game lenght

A single playthrough at the normal difficulty level with default settings should take 10 to 20 hours. This might be misleading, though, as the game encourages you to complete scenarios multiple times in order to "test" other nations, learn from mistakes, and fight for a different type of victory.

You can find more information in a separate section titled Game length.

Civilization 6: System requirements

The minimum system requirements are not very high:

OS: Windows 7 SP1, Windows 8.1, Windows 10 - 64- bit
CPU: Core i3 2.5 GHz / Phenom II 2.6 GHz
RAM: 4 GB
GPU: GTX 450 / HD 5570
HDD: 12 GB
GPU memory: 1 GB

One should note, though, that weaker hardware might result in the game slowing down on large and complex maps. They might be even more frequent in the later stages of a playthrough, when each nation on the map gets a chance to grow significantly. More information can be found in the System requirements section of this guide.