On Towards the Stars: Your First Ten Turns
In a game about exponential growth, the opening moves are the most important. Part of a larger Civ 6 strategy guide.
[This post is part of a larger strategy guide for Civilization 6]
The first ~10 turns of virtually every civ game play out about the same. This is a guide to get you off and running, with some advice about basic strategic and tactical decisions.
TLDR
Settle on a river with high yields nearby;
Research horses;
Build scout-scout-settler-settler;
Explore (using the 4 hotkey/settler view to find nearby settlements);
Buy a military unit;
Find and destroy nearby barb camps;
Get boosts
Turn One
Civopedia
At the top right, there's a question-mark button that will take you to a built in civ encyclopedia. This is a fantastic resource, I use it constantly, and I highly recommend checking there whenever you have a question about what something does or how a system works.
Settling
Decide where you want to settle. There's an entire section on settling cities in this guide, but for the first turn you don't have a ton of information and you generally want to put your capital down at latest by turn 3.
You should pretty much always pick a direction and move your warrior somewhere to try and see what else is around. But don't overthink too much.
In terms of importance:
Settle next to freshwater (river/lake/oasis — anything that is highlighted dark green when you click on your settler)
Settle on a luxury resource if there is one around
Maximize the amount of yield in the tiles immediate adjacent to where you settle
I probably settle on the first turn 70-80% of the time, which means most of the time my city settle spot is within one tile of where I started.
First Thing to Build
Basically always a scout. Getting early information and exploring is so incredibly important, and you are rewarded significantly for it.
Rarely, if you know you are on a very small island and can see most/all of it with just your warrior/settler, build a builder (if you have even one nearby resource that can be improved) or a monument (if you have no nearby improvable resources) instead.
First Tech
You have five options. Let's quickly go through each, and when you might want to pick it.
Animal Husbandry. This is probably the one I choose most frequently (95% of games?) for one simple reason: it reveals horses. Horses will give any tile that they appear on an additional production, which is immediately valuable without having to do anything else. There are almost always horses in the first city area, which means this is pretty likely that you'll bump your production by a huge amount for free. Because horses are a strategic resource, they also can't be removed; knowing where horses are will help you plan your first city more accurately. There needs to be a very good reason to not pick animal husbandry immediately.
Animal Husbandry also leads into Archery, which is a must-have tech if you are either going to war or defending from war early on. The added flexibility of being able to roll into Archery whenever you might need is a huge plus for Animal Husbandry.
Sailing. If I'm playing an island map and my starting area doesn't have a lot of land (i.e. it is less likely that there will be any horses nearby), or I have a civ with a galley-replacement as their unique unit (Norway, Phonecia), or I have a civ that has some bonus to being in or around the water early (Maori, though they are unique for a lot of reasons!), and I've already settled on the coast, I might go for Sailing first. I'd basically only do this though if I expected to declare a naval war on a nearby city state or civ, and I needed to pump out galleys as soon as possible.
Astrology. If I'm playing a civ that needs a religion (Spain, Poland, Byzantium, India, conditionally a few others that generate a lot of faith like Russia, Norway, Mali, Indonesia, Khmer), and there aren't a lot of AI in the game, and I've found a natural wonder nearby, I'll go for Astrology first. See the section on 'getting a religion' first, though.
Mining/Pottery. I basically never choose either of these first. If I had to pick, I'd probably go with Pottery first because it's very easy to get the tech boost for Writing, and irrigation is often useful to get access to a bunch of luxuries. But in the early game, you just don't need either of the things that these techs give you.
Turns 2 - 5
Exploring
Exploring is a key part of civ, and basically all of the early game. You are massively rewarded for exploring far and wide:
You get era score and a eureka (writing) for meeting new civs;
You get era score and a eureka (astrology) for finding natural wonders;
You get envoys for being the first person to find a city state;
You get era score and a random boost for finding goodie huts;
You get a lot of valuable information about where to settle or where threats might be;
Any area that you explore remains partially visible for the entire rest of the game, allowing you to see buildings that appear at that tile.
So you should explore. Build at least two scouts if you're playing a Pangea game, at least one for an islands or continents map.
In the earliest turns of the game, you should be looking for other settlements with your warrior. Follow rivers to find other likely settlement spots, or move onto hills to get more vision.
Every turn, go into the settler view (hotkey 4) and look for red tiles. Tiles that are red indicate that you cannot settle there. You cannot settle on mountains or water tiles (obviously). You also cannot settle within 3 tiles of another settlement. If you see a plains tile marked red in the settler view, you know that there is another settlement a few tiles away. You should also be looking for barbarian camps (barbs). There is always at least one barb camp near every civ. Dealing with an early barb attack can really set you back (you spend a lot more time making units than other productive things) and you get era score, coin, and some eurekas for clearing a barb camp out.
Generally, I'll move my warrior in a spiral around my settlement, while I'll send scouts farther afield.
Turns 5 - 15
Early Build Order
For most games (60% or so), I go scout-scout-settler-settler. I've already spoken of the importance of exploring (thus the two scouts). The early settlers are key for expanding. More settlers means more production happening in parallel which means more ramping, which is almost always the right thing to do this early in the game.
I will sometimes go scout-scout-settler-warrior. Even more rarely, I will go scout directly into warrior. In these cases, I want to either attack someone who is close to me, or defend against someone who I think might attack me early. This is almost always done in parallel with a push for archery. If I am playing or am near another civ that has an early warrior or archer replacement (Aztec, Gaul, Nubia) or that has a useful/immediately active combat bonus (America, Germany), I am more likely to go with a military opening.
First purchase
Somewhere between turns 12 and 15, you'll probably have enough money to make your first purchase. For me, that purchase is either:
A military unit. This is the more common option, because I'll either be dealing with barbarians or warding off an attacker. Most of the time I'll go with slingers — killing a unit with a slinger gives a eureka for archery, and ranged units are super powerful in the early game.
A tile. Generally, there is a tile somewhere nearby that has higher yields than the ones you have nearby.
A builder in all other cases. Improving tiles is good!
First Policy Cards
Code of Laws (the first civic) gives you two military cards and two economic cards, of which you can choose one of each.
Generally, I'll put in +10 vs Barbarians as my military card, and +1 Faith/Coin as my Economic card.
I usually have code of laws finish around the same time my starting warrior has found a barb camp, so the combat bonus is obviously useful;
Getting a pantheon as early as possible is critical (in part because each pantheon is only available once), and you need at least 16 Faith to do so.
Rarely, if I'm generating faith some other way (e.g. I have a luxury resource, I found a religious city state and have an envoy there, I'm playing Indonesia) and I'm already close to a pantheon, I might put in +1 Production. Once I have a pantheon, I always switch to the +1 Production card.
Fighting Barbs
Barbs are annoying. If you have a camp within 10 tiles of your city you probably need to fight them off. Generally, you can clear a barbarian camp with a single warrior.
Attack the fortified spearman with your warrior twice.
Fortify for a few turns to heal, until your warrior is at 70% health or so.
Attack again. You should get a promotion for your warrior.
Promote your warrior.
Attack again to win.
This should pretty consistently clear the camp before the barbarians spawn any more units.
Early Boosts and Further Techs/Civics
It's generally pretty straightforward to get most, if not all, of the early tech/civic boosts. Many will happen automatically if you explore (e.g. finding another continent to boost foreign trade, or meeitng another civ to boost writing).
It's worth going out of your way to get these boosts, especially if you have city state quests that align with one of the boost conditions.
Building a builder is a great way to get additional boosts, and is almost always worth doing after picking up two settlers.
Building a farm on rice/wheat/corn will boost Irrigation;
Building a quarry on stone or marble will boost Masonry;
Building two sea improvements will boost Celestial Navigation;
Building a pasture on horses/sheep/cows will boost Horseback Riding;
Building a mine on copper/mercury/diamonds will boost the Wheel
And of course, three improvements of any kind boosts Craftsmanship.
If you are a few turns away from finishing a tech or a civic, and you haven't yet gotten the boost for it, it's worth switching OFF that tech/civic onto a different one. When you eventually get the boost, the tech/civic will automatically complete, which saves you a ton of time and resources. For example, I might start working on the Foreign Trade Civic. If I'm 3-4 turns away from completing it, but I haven't yet found another continent, I'll switch to building Craftsmanship. Eventually my scouts will find another continent, so I know I'll eventually get the rest of Foreign Trade for free.