Civilization VI: A Beginner's Guide to Your First 100 Turns

Your First 10 Turns

Your opening moves matter more than almost anything else you'll do. The goal is simple: settle fast, see the map, and get a second city moving as early as possible.

• Settle immediately unless you can see a clearly better spot (a river, a resource, or a coastline) within a tile or two. Every turn you spend wandering is a turn your capital isn't producing anything.
• Build a Scout first, or very early. Scouts move faster over rough terrain and reveal Tribal Villages, which hand out free gold, envoys, or early technologies.
• Queue a Settler next. A second city as early as possible compounds every turn afterward — a slow start to expansion is very hard to recover from.
• Start researching Pottery or Mining early for the Granary or early production infrastructure, and get your first government civic underway right away.

City Placement Basics

Where you settle shapes your whole game. A few rules of thumb cover most situations:

• Rivers are excellent. They give housing without needing an Aqueduct, and later unlock Commercial Hub adjacency bonuses.
• Coastal cities unlock Harbors, several Wonders, and naval units — strong if you plan to explore or fight by sea.
• Hills near your city center boost production and defense, and are excellent tiles for a Campus or Holy Site district later.
• Never settle directly on top of a resource — settle adjacent to it instead, so you can actually improve and work the tile.

Understanding Districts

Districts are the single biggest thing new players underuse. Each one takes up a city tile and unlocks a category of buildings, but most districts also get an adjacency bonus from nearby terrain — meaning where you place them matters as much as whether you build them.

• Campus (Science) — bonus from mountains, rainforest, and other Campuses.
• Commercial Hub (Gold) — bonus from rivers, and from being near your City Center.
• Holy Site (Faith) — bonus from mountains, natural wonders, and other Holy Sites.
• Theater Square (Culture) — bonus from Wonders and other Theater Squares.

A simple habit: before you found a city, glance at the surrounding terrain and mentally reserve a tile or two for districts you plan to build, instead of deciding after the fact and settling for a weak adjacency bonus.

Research & Civics: Use Your Boosts

Civilization VI has two parallel trees — the Tech Tree (unlocks units, buildings, and districts) and the Civic Tree (unlocks governments, policy cards, and diplomatic options). Both trees have Eurekas (tech) and Inspirations (civics) — one-time triggers, usually tied to something you'd do anyway, like building a certain improvement or meeting a new civilization — that cut the research cost of that item substantially.

Get in the habit of checking which boosts are close to triggering and lean into them. Over a full game, this adds up to dozens of turns saved.

Government & Policy Cards

Unlock your first real government (Autocracy, Classical Republic, or Oligarchy) as soon as the Civic Tree allows it — staying in Chiefdom too long slows you down. From there, treat policy cards like a loadout: swap them to match what you're doing right now, whether that's a wide expansion push, a wonder-building phase, or a war.

The Victory Types, Briefly

Civilization VI has six ways to win: Science, Culture, Domination, Religious, Diplomatic, and Score (if no one else wins by the end of the game). You don't need to commit to one on turn one, but knowing the shape of each helps you recognize which one your current game is drifting toward.

We cover each path in full in our dedicated victory guides — Science Victory, Culture Victory, Domination Victory, and Religious Victory — once you're ready to go deeper than the basics.

Common Beginner Mistakes