Certain civilisations can specifically exploit the inhospitable tiles. The desert, for instance, provides little in the way of production or food, but you’ll need at least one desert tile if you want to build wonders like the Pyramids or Petra. The map biome can determine the types of resources you’ll find and even inhospitable areas, however, can be worth expanding into. Using a Builder unit, you can build improvements on a tile to enhance its basic yield, as well exploiting any luxury or strategic resources found there.

They often generate gold or modify gold yields, but they can affect other basic resources as well depending on which one you’re exploiting.Ī citizen can ‘work’ a tile to generate resources, and there’s a special map mode you can toggle to see what a tile’s yield is. Luxury resources are more about placating your citizens. Strategic resources are typically needed as an additional cost to build certain units, but they can also have effects on basic resource yields as well if exploited properly.Ī settlement in Civilization 6, next to a forest, mountains and coastline in the distance On top of that, there are also ‘luxury’ and ‘strategic’ resources.

There is also faith, which can be safely ignored but if you want to engage in the religious game then you’ll need to generate it. Food is important for city growth, production determines how quickly you can build things, gold is for upkeep and for rushing projects, and culture is how you earn civics and project your civilisations soft-power on the rest of the world. There are several types of resources in the game – food, production, science, gold, and culture are your basic resources. The longer it takes you to found your capital the bigger your disadvantage will be compared to other civs who planted roots on turn one. You only really want to be moving one or two turns’ distance away though. If you know what you’re doing and are able to read the terrain properly, it can behoove you to move to a different location and found a city elsewhere instead. Different civs will require slightly different things in terms of their unique buffs and abilities, but generally speaking you’ll want a balanced start for your capital.

You generally want to be close to some kind of water source (doesn’t have to be the sea), along with a good mix of farmland and hills for production-generating mines. Generally speaking, the location your Settler starts on will be one of the most, if not the most optimum places to start a city. This is largely influenced by the map type you choose, but also which Civ 6 civilisation you pick as various civs have affinities with different types of terrain, even resources. When you start a game of Civilization VI, your first Settler will already be in a good spot for your capital city.

Civilization vi beginners guide