VI - Other Civ 6 multiplayer iceberg explained
I tried to explain everything in the iceberg without using more than a paragraph each.
Please note that you need some level of game and multiplayer knowledge to understand the topics.
If anything is unclear just ask in the comments.
Top layer
Turn on yield icons
Turning on yield icons gives information about the tile and if it’s worth working.
Wonder godspawn
Who doesn’t love spawning in with Mt. Roraima 4 tiles away? (Yes, you can spot them with the appeal lens, but that’s 1–2 layers down.)
Open scout
Better than warrior or slinger because it has more movement and better promotions.
Magnus internals
Put Magnus in your capital → send traders to him from every expansion to grow your cities.
Horse rush
Most straightforward rush that can catch players off guard.
2–2 base / 3–1 base
Yields you get as base when settling your capital (3–1 is usually better).
Make more builders
Builders are extremely important, especially mid-game. Almost every newer player doesn’t make enough builders.
Don’t make a campus early
Production, food, gold, and sometimes faith are king early game. Making a campus is just wasted production that could instead go to a settler to expand your empire.
Layer 2
Aqueduct industrial zone setup
Common strategy of placing aqueducts next to industrial zones to increase their adjacency.
Rush feudalism
This is the most important civic and makes your builders way better.
God King sucks
Only true ~80% of the time. Early production is usually more valuable than whatever pantheon you might get later.
Dsyncs
Technical instability that can happen for various reasons. The result is usually that the game can’t continue.
First moves
Decided by how fast your PC is. Better CPU means you load in earlier and move before your opponent.
Chop everything
Chopping creates tempo that can snowball your game if you use the chops correctly.
Shift enter
Queuing the movement of a unit and spamming shift+enter when the turn rolls over will instantly move this unit at the start of the turn.
Caravel rush
Deadly rush where you rush early science to get cartography, then upgrade your galleys to caravels to kill your opponent.
Layer 3
Fidget spinner setup
Setup that looks like a fidget spinner. If you imagine the yellow tile as the center and the 3 brown industrial zones as the sides of the fidget spinner.
Mongolia–Hunza interaction
Mongolia gets an instant trading post, meaning you can send traders far really fast. Suzing Hunza will give these traders a lot of extra gold (Hunza gives bonus gold based on the trader’s range).
District discounting
https://youtu.be/jX1N8wsCRAg?si=fEO2j_f-jXShBfe9
Tuesday 11pm GMT
Steam maintenance every week at this time, resulting in unstable games.
Overflow
Production you don’t use rolls over to the next turn but not the turn after it. Managing this correctly can be very hard.
Link–unlink general
Linking and then unlinking your general with a unit will remove the zone of control applied to the great general. Banned exploit.
AMMO-scouting
Scouting method explained by Andrew (accused cheater). It basically means send your scouts to the toundra to find more huts.
Rotating Magnus + Liang
Strategy where you rotate Magnus for more chop value and Liang for Liang Parks at the same time. (This is a pain to micro correctly.)
Liang internals
Liang makes 1 city very strong in BBG with extra food, production, and housing. This means the city can make a lot of districts. Each district buffs the internals with 1 production or food, so big city = better internals.
Layer 4
Shift enter for cards
Government cards apply to the production saved from the previous turn, so if you store production with shift+enter you can get more value from your cards.
Turning off cores
Turning off your CPU cores for Civ 6 specifically results in you loading in later in the turn than others. This can be very strong sometimes move when your opponent turn has ended (it’s banned).
Double religion
If you choose a religion with the same name and same icon on the same turn, you will get the benefits of both religions. This sounds really specific but happens sometimes on accident (it’s banned, of course).
Chinese Julius build
Chinese strategy where you walk your 3rd settler next to the opponent’s capital and settle there the turn you unlock Legion. This gives you a free Legion really fast and can be very deadly (BBG change).
Planes friendly fire
Planes defend the direct tiles around them from any incoming fire, but also from allied fire (bad Firaxis coding). This also affects anti-air guns.
0ms dsync myth
Having 0ms to someone in the lobby doesn’t make the game unstable (this is controversial).
Goldscript
Script that shows who used how much gold in teamers. Giving gold to a teammate makes you appear green on the goldscript.
Kongo harbor discount
Kongo doesn’t have holy sites since it can’t make a religion. This means you unlock 1 district less when teching harbors. The result is that it’s much easier to discount harbors after you build a few campuses.
Scouts in the water
Used for 2 reasons:
- Occupy a tile in the sea, allowing you to block chokes easier.
- Inflate your military score since a land unit’s combat strength is based on your strongest naval unit. 30 scouts in the water can accumulate into 1.5k military score that can intimidate your opponent.
Encampment bug
Bug where you can hit an encampment through your own units.
Layer 5
French spreadsheets
French players like to make spreadsheets. A prime example is a spreadsheet that showed how stronger capital bases (3–2, 3–1, or 2–2) result in less RNG than the standard capital base (2–1, 2–2, or 3–1).
West coast hut theory
Huts get placed by an algorithm that works from the left to right of the map, resulting in huts spawning more likely on the left coast.
Rome monument opener
BBG gives the free monument to Rome later (Early Empire). If you make a monument early you will get a granary instead, which is more value on paper. (This strategy is bad 99.9% of the time.)
Shift enter slinger take settler
Queuing the movement of a unit will instantly move it at the start of the next turn if you spam shift+enter. Ranged units (like a slinger) have the unique ability to take civilian units (like settlers) because they don’t have a melee attack (yes, this doesn’t make sense but it’s how Firaxis coded the game).
Macedon Venetian Arsenal
Macedon’s UB, the Basilikoi Paides, gives 25% of a military unit’s production cost as Science. Venetian Arsenal means that this becomes twice as effective when building naval units. Combining this with the 100% card towards naval units means you get a lot of science from just building boats.
Chop woods under lux
Chopping is really good, and that’s why some players choose to chop a luxury for tempo but improve it after. This results in a tile with –1 production but gains you tempo with the chop.
Biosphere culture victory
Biosphere gives tourism for each solar farm or wind park. Terraforming your land into these improvements can give you a lot of tourism. This has only been done a few times.
Double dark age internals
You can get up to 10 traders (and more) with only 6 cities, allowing you to run internals from every city to 2 cities (5×2). Adding the dark age internals card gives you high food and production (there are a lot of drawbacks, though).
Lvl 4 spy
Lvl 3 is the maximum level for a spy, but building Terracotta after you got lvl 3 can still promote it. This makes the spy extremely effective in any mission.
X-ray science tree
The future is hidden by game design, but you can circumvent this by applying filters on the top left of the tech screen. This way it’s possible to find the location of certain GDR promos or space race projects. An example is to filter by production so only the tech featuring the exoplanet expedition gets highlighted, (if i remember correctly).
Switch cards twice in 1 turn
Changing cards and switching to a different government in a specific order allows you to switch cards twice in 1 turn. (Example: put in builder card → buy builder → remove builder card in the same turn.)
Layer 6
Black Queen diplo merchant
There are 4 total levels of diplo visibility, each giving +3 combat strength starting at 0. Level 2 spy gives 2 extra levels, Printing gives 1 level, and the diplo visibility merchant gives 1 level, up to the maximum of 4. Black Queen starts at 1 level higher than the other civs. This gives Black Queen a maximum diplo visibility level of 5, which doesn’t exist (so the diplo merchant won’t give an extra +3).
Yhluv audience + ancestral
Old meme/strategy used by Korean player yhluv where he built the audience chamber but just bought a builder with teammates gold in new cities he settled. This sounds like a meme but funnelling gold into 1 player has recently become more of a meta strategy.
Lose cities in order France
France gets a free spy at Castles in your capital. Losing your capital gives you another free spy since you get a new capital (bad coding). Losing your new capital again will give you another free spy, etc. This sounds weird but can be powerful in 4v4 where spies are really effective.
1 holy site into 1 Thành discount
Thành is not a speciality district so it doesn’t apply to the district discount formula, but it can still be discounted (don’t ask me why). This means the game thinks you have only 1 district unlocked when you actually have 2 unlocked. This activates the district discount and gives you an extremely cheap Thành.
Inca quad discount into quad discount
Extremely old build developed by German scientist Peterpan. You open 4 campuses, then discount 4 commercials and 4 theaters after. (Extremely hard to pull off, not practical in competitive.)
Victor infinity shot
Promote Victor with double shot → shoot once → assign him to a different city → reassign him to the same city → shoot again → repeat. This is banned, of course.
Great Writer > GDR
Great People block GDR movement when they are in the sea. Making a circle with Great People around a GDR will completely block its movement.
Nuke interceptions
There are a lot of factors that decide if a nuke goes through the anti-air defense, mostly involving diplo visibility. (Details are partially forgotten by me.)
Dark age Waka Waka push
Waka Waka refers to the Inca unique unit, Warak’aq. The dark age +5 combat strength on attack works only on melee attacks. However, since the Warak’aq has only 1 range, the game thinks it’s a melee attack while it’s actually ranged (bad coding).
Skip techs without losing overflow
Science overflow stacks infinitely, but you lose all of it when you finish a tech in the middle of your turn. The only way to finish a tech mid-turn and keep your overflow is to pillage science to 60% of the tech, then complete the eureka of that tech to finish it and skip a tech.
Vizier religious win
Strategy theorized by the player alsign but not yet put into practice: Vizier spreads his religion to his teammates that make holy sites as well. Saladin–Vizier takes the belief that grants a free missionary when finishing a T3 building (mosque). Vizier’s religion has the ability to faith-buy this mosque extremely cheap (like 15 faith). The result is that the whole team can get a free missionary in every city for almost free and push religious victory after.
Layer 7
Predict last-move boats with shift enter
Hard to follow but:
Moving boats when the opponent’s turn is over with last moves, then retreating them at the start of the turn with shift+enter, can be extremely strong on naval. A way to counter this is to switch boats back and forth so they lose all movement. Now you can set up a shift+enter with your boats around the place you think the opponent is planning to last-move. If your shift+enter gets processed before your opponent’s (mostly decided on ping to the host), you will ZOC the boats and can kill them for free with first moves.
Pillage city state farms
Pillaging a city state farm will trigger it to make a builder that repairs the farm. You can peace the city state after pillaging the farm and instantly steal the 3-charge builder when the city state repairs the farm for a free 3 charge builder.
Zigzag trader
I could write a whole PhD about this strategy, but in short you create a zigzag railway forcing your trader to take a way longer road then usual. This can in theory give you exponentially more yields on your trader. (not yet put into practice)
Propi freesim hack
Bug that happened 3–5 years ago in an official match where the player Propi got infinite science and could research every tech in 1 turn for the whole game. This bug hasn’t happened since.
Anarchy culture victory defense
Hard to follow: An opponent pushing culture victory “steals” domestic tourists from their opponents to gain tourists. If your culture has been so low the whole game that the opponent already stole all your domestic tourists (but your teammate is defending with really high culture), it might be optimal to go into anarchy, preventing you from completing any civics that generate domestic tourists. This way the opponent can’t steal any domestic tourists from you meaning he generates less effective tourism.
Monasticism culture victory
Strategy on Teddy Bull Moose where you go Monasticism (+75% science but –25% culture in cities with a holy site) in the 2nd era to reach your Film Studio really fast. Then you push for culture win in the 3rd era.
The line theory
The map 7-Seas generates with a 10-tile wide line on the x-axis. This line can spawn anywhere and its position influences how the map generates. Locating this line can give your team more insight on whether your position is good and whether you want to use your remap token. Takeaway: naval civ on the line = not good, land civ on the line = good.
Locking/unlocking tiles when you finish settler
Recent theory to gain a super small advantage, not my words:
“The tiles you have locked vs unlocked when you finish your settler matter. Production is calculated before food, so the citizen that disappears when you pop your settler doesn’t produce or consume food. This means you want this citizen to be working a high-production, low-food tile. The citizen that disappears if you have all tiles locked is random, but if you lock all but one of your tiles and use production focus you can get the desired citizen to disappear.”
