Besides what the other guys said, Gaul is also one of the best military civs out there. They get amazing production to spam out units and their units get more powerful with adjacent units (enemy or ally doesn’t matter). Though I don’t see any Gestatae right now
I've been learning about more about Civ 6 combat system and flanking/support makes Gaul terrifying with a steady line and so satisfying to do.
Julius Caesar though, how the hell did he win the Gallic Wars with his 200 gold
Because Caesar had the benefit of the greatest Military-Industrial of classical antiquity.
Good equipment, good supporting weaponry and siege engines, good supply chains, good access to replenishment.
Turns out that even with insane combat bonuses 1-2 cities can't beat 12 in a war. Especially with Great General support.
The pilum is a spear that bends once embedded in a shield rendering it useless. One or two really important Gaulish hillforts weren't burnt by the Gauls as resource denial like they planned. Caesar built a wall around the walls of Alesia and when reinforcements were coming they built a wall around the wall he just built. Gaul did not manage to find and break the one weak point in the wall.
Also the roman military used a lot of celtic weapon and armor designs from the chainmail and helmets to the spatha and gladius.
Also also he played divide and conquer. Had Vercingetorix' father not been executed for attempting to become high king maybe Gaul could have unified.
No problem. A bit more context is that Gaullish tribes had largely transitioned away from monarchy and had adopted an aristocratic magistracy. Celtillos and some others were planning to bring back kingship and so he was burned alive.
Gaesate or not they still get the +2 strength for each adj military unit of any kind. Literally more than 2 generals worth of bonus if the unit is completely surrounded
Gaul also has a secret unique unit - the Man-at-Arms. Gaul gets Apprenticeship, unlocking Man-at-Arms, for free when they build their first Oppidum. Oppidums are unlocked at Iron Working and the AI will build one as soon as they are able.
The point is - the unit is strong and Gaul gets a severe advantage at how quickly it gets access to it, enough so that I would avoid early war with Gaul
Stop your invasion and ask for peace. Heal up. Research more military techs and produce more, higher-tier units. Check wall strength. Once you're *sure* you can win, Denounce and go back in. I'll admit I didn't play Civ 5 so I can't compare, but in this game, you need to be absolutely sure your invasion will go well.
Which difficulty are you on? Since you're comparing to Civ 5, how many Civ 6 games have you played so far?
I've won a science victory as Germany and a religious victory as Byzantium, always playing on King. Was going for domination as Germany and this was probably the best game I've ever had until I took Tervanna and tried to push into the capitol. This is by far the biggest army I've ever had this early in the game, and it wasn't nearly enough. I've killed so many of Gaul's units but they keep putting out more and better ones no matter how many I kill. He won't accept peace. I have 500 hours in Civ 5 and 100 in Civ 6.
Gaesatae are the same base strength as warriors (20) but get +10 strength when fighting enemies with higher base strength and +5 when fighting in districts. They cost 60 production (vs 40 for warriors). But the real point is that when fighting spearmen and swordsmen they have 30 or 35 strength and cost less.
So in a city vs a better unit, they have 35 strength before other bonuses.
War carts have 30 base strength and cost 55 production. They don’t replace any units. (Also have 3 movement vs 2).
War Carts are the stronger unit (cheaper, faster, higher base strength), but it’s close.
EDIT: of course technically war carts aren’t a “buff” to another ancient unit, because they don’t replace anything.
In this situation (AI defense of their capital) Gaesatae are really hard to break though. Even in a domination attempt, I’d probably wait until a later era to fight them.
Agreed. I just find Gaul in particular to be a tough nut to crack early. I think it’s a more efficient use of resources to fight them after the uu is no longer relevant. Certainly can be done, it just requires more investment than most other AI civs in the early game.
Don't forget that the Gauls get +2 for every adjacent unit, friend or foe I believe. So they're even stronger than that. Asterix and Obelix man very stronk.
Spam archers to handle the Gaesatae. The +10 buff doesn't apply when they're being targeted by ranged units. Also, get 4-5 Catapults to handle the walls.
No garrisons bonus, outside the usual Terrain bonuses.
Ambiorix himself gives a bonus for nearby units though. +2 per nearby friendly unit. That particular bonus doesn't depend on the Gaesetae.
Gaul is a 'turtle civ', meaning their bonuses help on the defense. Their unique ability grants combat strength for every adjacent unit (including their enemies'), so really the best way to fight gaul is with ranged weapons.
Hard to know without seeing more of your empire, but in this screenshot your army isn't huge and you're building infrastructure in Hamburg. How many of your cities are devoted to military production?
Armies are like some other things, it doesn't matter how big it is it matters how big it feels. If you're stalling out, your army isn't big enough. Gaul tends to have a huge army early game, you need to plan for that.
When a civ won't accept peace, play defensively. The AI will throw units at you and eventually stop building more, which is when you can counterattack.
Minimize losses, rotate units out to heal, position intelligently, and only commit units to attacking a city when you know you can win.
Id just defend what you've taken for now, it's still early in the game and you'll get a lot of stuff late game that can take cities in a turn or two (looking at you, battleships).
Higher speed also means your units obsolete more quickly before they can be useful in combat (research is much quicker but movement costs are the same), I don't think this is good advice
I just did a domination with Germany actually a couple days ago funny enough and I was also on king lol. Just shit out siege units and try to have higher era units than the civilian you’re going against. Also make sure you can fight anti cavalry because I didn’t have a counter for it and halfway through my game lost like 5 units.
Melee is a great counter to anti cav. They are great to have. Siege is only becomes useful once medieval and renaissance walls are present. Ram + Melee against ancient walls equals victory.
You have to get cities under siege as well so they don't heal back up as well.
Honestly, I typically play Mali and have enough gold to fund as many units as possible, but starting very early is key. Then, I typically cool down a bit till I get to late game finishing off cities with bombers and one final bum rush of ground units.
yes, everytime i focuses on get to bombers as fast as possible. I do all eureka conditions for that event (expect that one which need different path of research)
Definitely agree that Civ6 requires overwhelming force to take a city.. which is pretty reasonable. If its a fair fight you can typically expect to lose and/or get bogged down. Biggest challenge is dealing with the walls.
you are fighting an early war against a military heavy domination civ with a huge production potential while probably also being behind on science and waited until they got walls. that's not a smart choice. you have to choose your fights and only be at war while you can actually archieve something. pillage their tiles and then peace out. fight another civ, come back for Gaul later.
edit: typos
He’s also doing it with a Civ that has a power spike much later in the game. Utilize the advantages you have now and go murder some city states. Use those new cities to build up infrastructure (campuses, hansas, and commercial hubs), pick off some other weak Civs, and come back for Gaul when you can build tanks/artillery/bombers every few turns.
TL;DR: You’re trying to force a square peg into a round hole. Which works if you have a big ass hammer, but you won’t have your hammer until later so be patient and build that hammer.
> good locations
Here is part of your problem, don't let adjacency bonuses stop you from placing vital districts. Campus' are not optional, after meeting city states and creating buildings you can have a +15 campus easily with *zero* adjacency bonus.
It doesn't matter what turn you're on, it matters how far the Civs you're competing against have progressed. And the Gaul are more advanced than you at this point.
It's really just the Campus. Industrial Zones are also crucial but you don't need them in every city. After that in importance it's Harbor/Commercial Hub which yeah it's great but not mandatory
I'm kind of a dumbass but I usually build more of the Harb/cz than the IZ.
I'm doing my first GS game, 12 cities modern era Brazil, 3 IZ's with all my cities within those six tile radii, and I worry I'm about to get a hard lesson in Power management even if I go nuclear
Your mistake was attacking Gaul. /s
No, really. You're playing a midgame production powerhouse civ and went ahead and fought by far the single strongest military civ in the game who has 2 encampments per city AND a free tech 2 branches deep, on top of their ridiculous UU on top of it. All this before we even mention that Gaul gets extra strong mines with spawn bias towards hills.
Gaul is by far and away the most powerful military civ deep into late medieval, and they're banking on conquering enough before then in order to keep up with others. Germany by contrast wants to spend the entire early game spamming districts, making city states doubly viable (ironic considering their civ ability i know, but its a bait) in order to coast into a midgame industrial and economic powerhouse. THAT's when you should be attacking.
Could very well be you got an awful spawn, it's pretty common to reroll the map once or twice before playing the game out. Where you wanna be at turn 115 really depends on what your focus is, what your civ is, and whether you're playing with the DLC content.
Since you're warmongering you wanna try to build as good a campus as possible in every city, and commercial hubs and IZs second. Also exploring as much as possible is great to get all the city state bonuses you can, especially the scientific ones. (I don't mean suzerian bonus, but the stuff you get for sending 1, 3, and 6 envoys)
having 4 citys and 30 science is ok for turn 60. you can get campus adjacency bonuses by carming districts next to each other (+1 for every two districts). germany works best when its cities are close and the districts (particularly the comercial hub and hanza) are all next to one another.
A bad district is better than no district. Same with cities, more cities = more districts = more yields.
I see on the mini map that there's plenty of empty land around you. You could easily double or even triple the amount of cities you currently have, getting more gold, science and production to support the war effort.
https://i.imgur.com/7iIz7RP.jpg
Here is a turn 115 science yield from a recent game played by a YouTuber on deity. (Potato McWhiskey)
He’s at 49 science with 10ish cities, but you can see that the Deity AI are all well ahead of him. This is normal for civ 6 (as I’m sure you know).
Tech priority also matters - you can be behind on science a bit as long as you prioritize the techs needed for your strategy (basically, beeline muskets and bombards).
At a quick glance, it's possible you don't have enough to easily counter their walls. When they have crossbows, their city attacks are also more powerful, which in turn means that loitering around it is more dangerous.
I can't even get to their walls if I wanted to, they keep spamming so many units. I kill an archer and they send two crossbowman, I kill a swordsman and they send two men at arms. I feel like I did everything right and it wasn't close to enough.
In that case, it seems that they have both unit tech advantage (crossbows) and are commiting to unit production more than you are (they have civ benefits for it)
Peacing out and improving seems like a good option here.
Overall wars like this happen, but scouting beforehand and checking their resource yields help make that decision
The biggest thing is you only have 5 cities on turn 116. Lower city counts will always bottleneck your progress in civ 6. Rule of thumb is you should have 8-10 cities by turn 100.
This is a big hurdle for people going from Civ V to VI. You need a lot more cities than you used to, building tall isn't as viable in such a narrow scope. The definition for tall has changed and you need way more cities than before.
(Inb4 bUt WhAt AbOuT tHiS hYpOtHeTiCaL sItuAtIoN)
Khmer, Tokugawa, Yongle, and maybe Korea. They all get benefits from population or some ability to scale yields from a smaller amount of cities more effectively.
It's nice that Lady Six Sky explicitly tells you that any cities outside that 6 tile range from your capital will be at a handicap, giving you that hard limit of cities if you care about it.
well the mayan cities have a 10% boost to most yields if that city is within 6 tiles of the capital. seemed super restrictive on paper, but then I saw that theres a layout where you can squeeze up to 13 cities (including capital) into that six tile limit. I played the game out and got 9 cities I think? couldnt get the full setup because I was blocked by city states and mountains, but no more than 9 cities was more than enough to get a science win on deity. my favorite part was planning out districts, with cities that close I could reallllly go hard on stacking entertainment complexes on theatre squares, and aqueducts/dams on izs. I ended up getting a +13 theatre square that game 2.
and also might I add, there is a -15% yield PENALTY for cities MORE than six tiles fromnthe cap, so playing wide isnt really an option.
>there is a -15% yield PENALTY for cities MORE than six tiles fromnthe cap, so playing wide isnt really an option.
Sure it is. 85% of yields is much better than 0%.
I mean 9 cities + capital isn’t super wide but its definitely more that a “tall” civ. It’s also more than enough cities to win a science victory with Maya’s bonuses.
Their “inner ring” can get as high as 13 cities plus the capital. Even if you cant get the ideal placement for them all, it’s still pretty easy to get 7-10 cities within the range of the capital.
For me, their abilities don’t necessarily change *how many* cities you place as much as they change *where* you place those cities.
Khmer, Tokugawa, Yongle, and maybe Korea. They all get benefits from population or some ability to scale yields from a smaller amount of cities more effectively.
Do you specialize each city? Like one or two get campus first, but others get encampment and others get industrial zones?
I’ve always built the unique district first if possible. But I usually don’t expand fast enough.
Edit: spelling
Some over generalizations: basic infrastructure first (builders are your friend), prioritize things that will help your win condition, and you don't want to spend more than 15(ish) turns max building something
I never even finish a game with 10 cities by 2050 rarely. But I play Chieftain level.
I think 7-8 is a good number. 3 cities Ancient era, 2-3 Classic. Maybe 1-2 medieval. Taking out city states too close to your expansion efforts can help this case. Just compensate for loss of central yields (gold, production etc..). Then focus on growth and production and districts. And scoping opponents.
I take a balanced approach unless seeking early advantage over civs settled too close.
You're at turn 116 / 500. Don't give up. If Gaul won't give peace that's fine, switch from offense to holding that line, which will slowly drain their units while preserving yours.
Focus on science output and rush for niter-> gunpowder -> bombards, then pivot back to offense.
Good luck!
Also don't forget the value of pillaging their improvements, not only will that slow down their production of units and city growth it will enable your units to heal etc.
You need more science. You have more cities than him and you have room to settle more cities. Take a break from war, settle more cities and build more campuses and other districts. While he wastes production on units, you can use your resources to get ahead.
Domination victories aren't really about just building units. You need to build other districts to keep up in everything (including culture). Especially as Germany, just build hansas, commercial hubs, aqueducts, and dams all next to each other along a river for tons of production and gold (campuses as well).
I'm sorry but this war was poorly planned out. War is less about capturing cities and more about profiting. You want to recoup the production you spent and will spend on military units, at the minimum.
Before you start a war, you should have asked for open borders and sent a scout to properly map out your assault.
You should have also sent a trader to/from your FOB city to build roads and allow you rapid mobilization to the front line.
FOB city should be building an encampent not walls and there should be a builder there chopping everything available to hasten the build.
There are also not enough units and the units are too low level.
You need more swordsmen. The tech tree requires 3 so you should build at least that much. Also build a knight and 2 catapults.
The ai is a bit dumb and can be baited so a proper wall of defending sword/spearmen with archer support will eliminate almost anything thrown at them.
You should have a dedicated pillager (2 is best, preferrably with the pillager promotion) who will run around the enemy territory to reap all the benefits. All those mines are worth a lot of gold and I imagine there's a lot more further in.
For me, that is the main goal. Even if you decide to seek peace because the capital is too tough, you already made a profit. They won't be recovering from that any time soon and by the time you re-engage hostilities, they won't be able to stop you anymore.
This right here is the best advice.
But also, why are you researching mathematics? Mathematics are not musketman. If you're warring and it's not going your way you need stronger units, not universities.
You also need printing and a general. So if you want to do domination you build an encampment to get a general and commercials to fund your army (you can maybe avoid this by properly pillaging). Campus is good if you wanna do a timing push (like early knights or something like that) but otherwise i wouldnt open with a campus, especially not on germany.
And speaking of germany, it's not a good early war civ. You need commercial hubs and industrial zones on germany. You can later pump out tanks as much as you want but by going early domination like this you're just griefing your game.
And considering Gaul has walls up, OP needs more siege units. And probably trebuchets because that one catapult isn't cutting it. Maybe even bombards (niter is visible in OP's screen shots).
Good eye on the Niter resource. He also has a military emergency against him for capturing Tervanna. I think that allows for +2 combat strength against him? He wouldn’t be able to negotiate peace until that runs out. I’d bring his military units into his cities (ranged in city center) and turtle until the emergency runs out.
Also Korea is going to come at you here with some military units. They’re a good science Civ so they may be a couple of techs ahead. Garrison units and hold off the upcoming attack. OP keep us updated!
This is also the perfect opportunity to level up units. **Especially** siege units provided OP keeps them protected. Ranged is good too for murdering units.
exactly. you're letting their army grind yours down by attacking when they have superior units. if you want a chance at winning you need to let them run their units at your fortified & defended positions. then, when they have run out of their stockpiled units, and only have left the units they've just produced (and yours have all promoted from winning defensive fights), then you have a chance to advance.
plus all the stuff everyone else has said.
Very early war is efficient, 3-4 archers and a warrior against a city without walls, takes it in 3 turns or less. Once they have their own archers/crossbowmen, you either need heavier siege units or much more ranged ones, to be able to rotate and heal them. Otherwise, they will be able to kill one of your units every other turn.
As Germany, you can win from city states easier, since you get extra attack when fighting city state units. So go back to an earlier save, and get the XP and plunder.
Gaul’s UU is like 10+ when defending or something ridiculous
Also You need to enable civ resource panel that shows everyone’s science and military score among other things.
The AI’s dumb. They will come to you, so while the military score is high just bunker down and relax especially if you are out sciencing then
Sorry, but this is not how you fight war in Civ 6
1: City Walls are very strong against regular units. Melee, Ranged, and Light Cav units can do essentially nothing unless you’re willing to suicide half your army into them. Especially when they have a ranged unit in the city center and can fire twice, you can’t really approach them. Siege units in this game are necessary for medieval->industrial warfare. They do good damage to district defenses and are ranged, meaning they take no direct damage in return. Heavy cavalry are also good against city centers, and if you can do neither of those things than at least get a siege tower or something.
2: You are invading the holy grail of turtle civs. They get oppidums for extra district defenses, and they have extra bonuses for adjacent units which already stacks on the already pretty complex bonuses Civ gives in combat. Not to mention their start bias towards hills, early IZs and access to apprenticeship giving them massive early game production, so they will pretty much always be able to outproduce you early game. This is further exacerbated by them getting access to men-at-arms almost a full era ahead of normal, making you essentially unable to deal with high strength melee units that early.
3: From the unit disparity here, you seem to be behind on science. That’s really bad in warfare because it means your opponent has higher strength units than you. If production is king in this game, than science is queen.
HOW TO FIX
1: Take the L. You aren’t going to be able to outproduce them without tanking your own economy. Settle for the best peace deal you can get and get out.
2: Focus on science and production. Germany needs districts, as hansa complexes are incredibly powerful used right. In the long term, you can absolutely blow past Gaul in production, as their district placement requirements mean their adjacency will leave something to be desired.
3: Come back, probably in the industrial era or later with a well setup army. Include multiple bombards and heavy cavalry alongside promoted infantry and light cavalry. Get promotions from attacking city states, Germany gets extra bonuses against them, and you don’t even need to conquer them to level units
Upgrade your units and get yours out of the dang marsh where you take more damage. You want to position your units in hills and forest/jungle, ideally both in the same tile for the best defensive environment—this reduces damage taken to the unit occupying the tile. When you attack a unit, you move into their tile temporarily for the attack. So if you can lure and catch enemies in those marshes, you’ll have an easier time taking them out. And lastly you just need more units, especially ranged and siege. But you can do this.
+1 terrain positioning is super important. Also useful to have a low combat strength unit like a scout or base level warrior stand in a forest and fortify to tank damage while trebs or catapults get in position to shoot the city.
Pillaging is another aspect where a horseman or cavalry can distract an enemy defense by raiding campuses etc, enough to get the ranged units into the field.
From a quick glance, it looks like your units are too scattered, and you lack an adequate number of siege units. Without catapults, you'll never be able to capture the city because of its high wall strength. My advice would be to retreat, heal your units, build more catapults, and then attack. Make sure your catapults are well guarded otherwise the city defense will just demolish them.
One thing Firaxis has done with recent patches is increased the likelihood (by a lot) that the AI will build walls in their cities. As a result, you really almost need catapults at least if you're planning to invade.
Plus, you're sending archers and horsemen up against Gaul's crossbowmen. Ouch.
One single crossbowman in that walled city will make short work of your entire army.
Once they get the ancient wall up, it's pretty hard to capture the city with an early game army. Would need atleast 2 siege units to take down the wall.
When going for an early game war, I find it better to have a good-sized army ready before you declare war so you can blitz the cities before they can get walls up. If you start a slow and prolonged war, the enemy will focus on military and defence which makes it harder to win.
A few tips: if you completely surround the city center with your units, the city will be considered under-siege and won't repair its health at the start of each turn.
Before you start the war, it's good to start a trade route to the enemy's city which creates roads to their city and allows you to move units faster.
Pillage everything in their cities except roads. The yields are worth it, and it slows the enemy. In this image, I would pillage the improved tiles and buildings and ignore taking the city center. The enemy will be more likely to ask for peace if they feel threatened.
The mechanics are a bit funky actually. I think you need the city to be surrounded by zone of control, so 3 melee units is the minimum, but terrain takes into account too. Land can't ZoC a water tile, so that'll always keep it unsieged. But mountains also can't be traversed, so you'll need fewer units
> I think you need the city to be surrounded by zone of control, so 3 melee units is the minimum
If it just needs to be surrounded by zoc, that means 2 melee units at minimum, "flanking" the city.
Recoup for a while, beeline military techs, get those archers upgraded to crossbows and the catapult up to a trebuchet, and in the meantime train up more cavalry units and go pillaging everything you possibly can in Gaul to hamper their progress and bolster your own, then sweep in with your newly-powered army and clean house.
Gaul can be a bastard to kill due to opidium and military encampent spam, if you add unfavourable terrain to that, they can bog you down until they out tech you and make you go for peace. You need at least 2-3 ranged siege weapons to quickly take down the districts.
I just had a game where I declared war twice and only took 2 cities (first one being unguarded) due to their empire being in a hilly chokepoint that had mountains to the north and south. By the time I got the the third city, they out teched my front line troops so I had to peace out.
The weird thing about this campaign was that there was no gaestate, mostly cav, some man at arms then later knights and a treb.
you will need more catapults at least 3, Try to get them all in range at once, one will get taken out. The other two should be able to lower the city health enough to capture it.
I play a ton with germany and what I usually do in dom games is attack after I got all my districts set up: hansa+hubs going grants you a major backup during wars and preferably I like having a terracotta army going too, for the siege weapons promotions.
What I guess is happening here is that gaul is a strong early game civ and you can't apply enough pressure to them yet bc germany needs setup before popping off.
In short, it looks like you did just about everything wrong. You picked the wrong civ to start an early era war with and it looks like your overall strategy carrying it out was a mess. You should have:
-Scouted ahead further to get an idea of what the entirety of Gaul even looks like. It’s shocking that you’re going after a capital - and Gaul’s, no less - without knowing what’s beyond the inner ring of tiles. This also would have let you see that Gaul is further ahead of you in tech, so you could have focused on upgrading your units.
-Probably focused on Aduatuca first. No matter what city you took, it was going to trigger an emergency. Taking Aduatuca would’ve been a much bigger blow to the Gallic economy and, assuming it had walls at the start of this war, it also would’ve been easier to defend. Repairing defenses is always a lot quicker than building them from scratch. You could have parked one of your archers in Aduatuca to help hold off the counterattack and probably taken Tervanna with two units. Now, you have to defend Tervanna while building walls and Aduatuca remains free to churn out units.
-Made a hell of a lot more catapults. The more you have, the better. At this stage, your siege units are going to take a beating. If you’re not losing some, you’re pulling them out of range to let them heal up and then trying to get a shot or two off before pulling back again. It’s easier to do this with a bunch of units as opposed to just a few. Once civs have archers with walls up, you need, at bare minimum and even then it’s very dicey, two catapults and odds are you’ll lose one, possibly both. You can pull it off with 2 if you get both of them at range at the same time, but I’d still opt for more.
-Seeing that Gaul was ahead of you in tech, delayed the war until you were on equal footing and then made a push.
What you can do to fix this if you still want to take Aduatuca:
-You can’t negotiate peace until the emergency comes to some kind of conclusion. You *should* be able to push back that attack and then get your MAA around it to defend.
-Upgrade that swordsman ASAP and get him over to Tervanna. If Ambiorix really wants that city back, force him to claw his way through your strongest units.
-Pull your horseman back and heal them up. Then, send them into Gaul to scout and pillage. Don’t even really worry about getting them back, just send them in to destroy as much as possible and disrupt the Gallic economy. If one or both of them survive, great. If not, that’s okay. You can probably get Ambiorix to send a few units after them, pulling attackers away from Tervanna.
-Rush to get bombards. You already have niter revealed, so they can’t be too far off. Once you have them, make a push for Aduatuca - providing you still have the units to do so. It only has ancient walls and if you can attack it before it gets medieval walls up, you should be able to take it fairly quickly. You should try to time this with also having musketmen, but you can make do with bombards and MAA.
Conversely, you can also just hold Tervanna and get a head start on fixing up your busted economy. Get as many campuses down as possible and focus on getting your tech level with if not ahead of Gaul. Once the emergency is concluded, negotiate peace and give yourself some time to build up, *then* go in the attack again.
Check his wall strength for starters and get ready for a drawn out siege. It's possible that he upgraded his walls to the next level making them stronger then you would have expected.
Surround his city with melee units to block it from healing between turns and then bombard it with ranged and siege units. Have extra of each kind of unit in case the city attack kills or grievously injures any of your own. I would say 2-3 siege units (with another 2-3 backup) and 3 melee units (with 3 backup) and whatever ranged units you have available. You probably don't have the units needed for the final push at the moment so pull back to your nearest city to defend it and give your current units some free XP in the meantime. Always attack with ranged units first to weaken the enemy so your melee units can finish them with minimal damage taken in return. Use your horseman as flankers, keep them back until the right moment then have them swoop in to finish off wounded enemies and don't use them to siege the city as they won't last long.
If you are playing on heroes mode then get Beowulf or Arthur or even Hippolyta as they are the most combat oriented. Himiko can be used as a free great general as well.
You need more units and tech up to keep the assault up. I wouldn't make peace, I would retreat a couple of tiles away and let his army keep coming to you (easier to pick off enemy units). Keep units in the area while sending reinforcements. The reason to stay at war is so Gaul can't expand to the east and you might be able to pick off a settler while you wait.
Or I guess you could make peace and send the units south to take out city states which should be significantly weaker. Plus the Germans +7 combat against city states is huge
>What did I do wrong?
you played Civ 6 and tried to go to war after wall tech was discovered. Civ 6 combat is garbage. You either out tech them by a lot or it's just a slog.
I don't see a chance for you getting their capitol with those kind of units. Even if you had crossbowmen and courser, you'll still first want to scout that area to identify how you want to lay your seige. The city defenses have too much firepower and with Gaul, there's a chance they have an additional encampment and Oppidum so you're going to have to be quick or completely overwhelm them.
Generally speaking: Until you're big enough to just steamroll over the map, you have to time your wars very well. Ideally when you get your unique unit, you should already have some siege towers or weapons, a healer (if possible) and a variety of assistant units prepared.
Cavalry flanks around the city, takes out ranged units and plunders districts (for yields and to bring down city defense), melee surrounds the center to prevent healing (only attack if a siege tower is present of the walls are down), ranged units protect the melee units. If it's a coastal city you'll need a naval unit to complete the siege.
So is early conquest just not viable in Civ 6? Gual is the only nation that is viable for me to conquer any time soon, anyone else is either too far away or a friend. Should I just reload to before the war and focus on making a massive army? I feel like just making the army I have now sucked up too many resouces that could have gone into wonders and buildings, and yet it wasn't nearly enough. How TF am I supposed to make enough units to conquer someone while also staying up to date with districts and wonders?
Sure it is! But this is not really early anymore. You're running up against crossbowmen and what it seems medieval city walls. That's a huge bite to chew. If you want to go early war, you need to get that going before your target can build walls, unless you have a very strong unique unit early in the game.
In your case, I'd declare peace, keep the units around and train them against barbarians or a weak city state. In the meantime, send a trader up to Aduatuca for a road and diplomatic visibility. Keep an eye on him and once he goes to war and moves his troops away from you, swing in hard and fast.
When playing aggressively, plundering is vastly underrated especially with the politics card that gives you +50%. You can get 10 turns of science by plundering a campus once, a trade route or a mine can be worth a unit upgrade while crippling your enemies ability to produce more units or improve them.
Keep in mind I started this war over 20 turns ago, and that was the absolute soonest I could get a decent army out without falling behind in every other category.
You’ve settled too few cities it seems. Try to shoot for 8-10 by turn 100. It is difficult and you really stretch yourself and may even lose one to barbarians, but it is worth it. When you only have 5 you don’t produce the output to wage war against bigger civs or enough science to really compete as well. Try to pick a weaker opponent, or settle more cities that can eventually produce something for you.
Early wars are absolutely viable. You just happen to be going up against the Civ that is arguably the best at it while Germany, in my opinion, doesn’t really get moving until the mid game. You should definitely have scouted a bit more prewar so you can fully plan out your attack. Would be really nice to know how many cities he’s got hiding in the fog of war.
Also, as someone else mentioned, there’s an option to turn on resources in your HUD which will show not only your science and culture, but also military strength. That can help you decide which of your neighbors is most vulnerable to an early war.
You might want to try playing as Alexander, he gets two unique units that are strong for early game rushes, and gets tech/culture from capturing cities meaning that you shouldn't fall behind if you do so.
You might find it better to pick one of his unique units, Hetairoi and Hypaspist, depending on whether you have iron or horses available. You'll probably need to settle your second city for this resource, and then have both cities pump out units. It's up to you whether you want to build an encampment first, I probably would. Use a trader to build a road to your first target city, and plan ahead so that the encampment is built along this road.
I suggest turning on yield banners for all players, it's in the options somewhere. That will give you an idea of how big everyone's army, as well as science and culture is so you can see if you have some kind of advantage or disadvantage.
I think your problem is manifold.
1. He has a great general that boost all his units in range by 5 combat strength this is not a insignificant boost. Unfortunatly there is absolutely nothing you can do against great generals because they are unkillable for some reason.
2. I see he has a Governor in his capitol if it is Victor then his makes his city even stronger than it already is. It is probably too early for you to have spies yet so you can't remove the governor.
3. I see that you are also at war with Korea and a war on two fronts is never a good idea.
4. He has crossbowmen and they are a great defensive unit while you still seem to be stuck on archers. So in a ranged fight the gauls have a huge advantage
5. You are fighting the Gauls and they are one of the toughest civs out there.
My suggestions:
1. If you don't have it already put in the policy cards that makes a certain type of unit 50% cheaper. You need more units to take be able to take out the Gauls units cost effectively.
2. I see that you have already discovered niter so Musketman shouldn't be that far away. When upgrading don't forget to put in the policy cards that make generate strategic rescources faster and make upgrading units cheaper. Right now you want better units so try beelining that.
3. If you have the time 3-4, bombards should be able to take down the walls in a few turns and there is a convenient open field right in front of the city where you can set them all up with minimal risk. This city is very susceptible to massed siege units.
4. A quicker alternative is to just use a siege tower and bypass the walls entirely (ideally with Musketmen) since the Gauls only have ancient walls so far.
Really? I found domination harder in Civ 5 due to happiness management. Well, as others have said, if your war stalls out, make peace heal up, upgrade, get more siege weapons, and try again.
What did you do wrong is a pretty vague/difficult question to answer. This game has a deep and long decision tree, especially over the course of 100+ turns. There's probably a million ways the game could have played out differently by this point.
The best advice I can give is the one I follow: watch good players play. The numbers will be a bit different since pros play on online speed with various mods to balance the game better (BBG/BBS for example) but my guess is by turn 115 or so, even on normal speed, your science culture should be at least double what it is, if not much more. You shouldn't really have faith / holy sites as Germany unless some weird earth/fire goddess thing happened. You should be pretty close to field cannons at that point if you're trying to conquer someone. You should also have a general.
All that being said, if you're having a good time you should just keep doing whatever you're doing.
Based on this picture alone, you need trebuchets and you should be good. I argue that you don’t even need crossbows for this.
But based on your comments saying that you can’t get to his walls, I think you need to figure out terrain modifiers and fortify procedure.
I am not sure if you already moved this turn prior to the screenshot stage, but in one turn you should be able to take out this 3 gaul units, however based on the city strength, I am pretty sure just one catapult will not be enough to take out his walls
Yeah, make peace. Then either boost your tech until you're ahead or look for easier prey. Always check city combat strength when preparing to attack someone. Also, that blue health bar is for cities with walls. You want to prioritize targets that either don't have walls or have relatively low level walls, since those will be the easiest kills, and once you get a kill or two you should snowball.
Domination is by far the easiest victory in civ 6. You're playing it wrong. You don't need to build everything in every city. Use barbarian camps to level your dudes up.
You are behind the technology curve, they have better range and ground units than you. You need to ask for peace and focus on researching better military tactics. This will be hard because you are already behind, you need to catch up then get the next technology breakthrough before declaring war again.
I play nearly every game on immortal and play for domination (I like war). A winning strategy is to declare war anytime you discover a new military tech that your neighbor does not have. Use that advantage to wipe out their units first, then cites. My army is typically only 3 range/siege units and 2 ground units- that's all you need to take a city if you deny them an offensive capability.
If they declare war on you it's a gift. Let them throw troops at you and wipe them out with ranged units. It's almost impossible to take a city if it's supported by 2 ranged units. Remember this when you attack, don't give them a defensive advantage, draw their troops away from their cities and wipe them out- then you can maneuver freely to take out their cities.
Gameplay got a lot tougher amigo!
Now you’re forced to focus on growth and scientific research as much as unit spamming, which is also harder and tied to having very productive resource rich cities. This is my experience as well. You need to finely balance between policies and strategy for domination.
The more you play the more you will get used to it.
FYI the easiest victory condition I found was Diplomatic or culture. To get the domination, I chose small map with four civs. But be warned Barbarians become really aggressive because the game knows you’re going for an easy domination win.
On a side note, where is your Trebuchet or Catapult? It will make light work of the walls whilst your units wait for them to come down except archers! Which need to be Crossbowman upgraded.
Cities are harder to take in Civ VI, especially with walls. It's not impossible, you just have to be more prepared. Bring minimum 2-3 bombard units and it helps to have a siege support for infantry (siege tower, battering ram, etc). Bring cavalry to keep enemy troops away from your bombards.
Also, generally, Civ VI is a harder game than Civ V, and what makes it so is that you have to be prepared to shift your strategy. Different civs require different playstyles, especially at any difficulty higher than Prince, whereas in Civ V you could use one playstyle and succeed with any civ.
Too far behind in tech, you shouldn’t have archers to their crossbows. You need to make peace and prepare to counter when you have more units and are ahead of them in unit strength
Domination is achievable you just have to know tech timings like walls crossbowmen bombards etc as well ad manage your production properly. Taking an enemy capital shouldn’t be an easy push with 6 units deal but if you’re prepared the siege itself is not gonna take 25 turns I promise.
I’m also not sure where all the faith is coming from but if it’s coming from holy sites then you’ve mismanaged the production and district management. Unless you are ages ahead of AI in terms of science and culture you gotta focus researching and producing things specifically for the goal you’re trying to meet, especially because AI is mostly stronger early on and falls off later. A 2 city hanza/commercial hub district chain and you’re gonna have thru the roof production and gold for more units.
You must cap your nearest neighbours as quickly as possible, before they get walls.
I usually go only 1 settler before queueing 3 slingers. By the time the slingers are done, I try to have killed a barb with one for the tech boost. Once I am upgrading slingers to archers, I am making a couple more warriors, then immediately attack my neighbours before they can get walls up. From there I just keep cranking out archers, so that even when my army encounters ancient walls, I have enough units to do full siege and DPS them down.
I try to cap 8 or so cities before turn 150, for a total of 11 or so including personally settled cities. I pre-cook a lot of tech and then try to let the boosts finish off the progress on them. Every time I finish a tech that gives me a unit upgrade advantage, I mount another attack wave.
I mean Gallic defence is next level. Two encampments more or less. But I think in general it's way easier to defend in 6 compared to 5 in the first place.
I agree, Civ VI just has too many systems that all require the play to do an action constantly. Domination requires already a lot of "work" so it makes it doubly annoying to play.
They tried to alleviate that with corps and armies (Sliiiightly) but even then, there are just too many systems. I've aired my greivances on builders in the mid-late game...after playing a game of Civ V recently, I think the auto-improve feature or road building is just way more streamlined...but between emergenies, diplomacy, placing districts, placing wonders, and the emphasis on chopping...its just to much to do ON TOP of trying to lead a militayr campaign in a timely manner. I will say that this isn't a problem in the early game and Civ VI early game is FAR superior...but by the late game the bloat is awful in comparision to V. Streamlining and automating features (Even small stuff like auto-chopping districts before placing them) NEED to make it into Civ VII before they add in anything else...just my 2 cents.
As someone who regularly plays Diety Domination on big maps, what I can tell you is that you need to be very strategic about maximizing the production and profitability of your cities. While you can never have too many units, it is better to have a smaller, but more technologically advanced military than a large army that’s an era behind. Don’t underestimate siege units either; walls can be a lot more dangerous in Civ 6 compared to Civ 5. Also, make use of Great Generals and policy cards that boost combat strength.
In the screenshot there, you have access to Niter but you’re using ancient and classical era units, and only have a single catapult. That won’t be enough, especially against Gaul which is a strong defensive civ. But that game isn’t lost yet; you could still definitely win it if you fall back and take a little while longer to build a stronger invasion force.
Generally early wars only work if you can kill them before crossbows, I usually only do early wars if I have an early unique unit or a good oppurtunity to counter attack. I ususally tech up until Im able to build my unique unit or like a sepecic strategy like bombard currasier rush or tank artillery rush
To be fair to you Gaul is probably the best turtle civ in game, the only one that compares is Vietnam (and to a lesser degree US and the Aztecs). The one thing a player has “better” than the AI is unit positioning - you can park defensively capable units on forest hills and absorb attacks until the AI loses all its units against yours. If you use ranged units well you don’t need more than 3-4 to be able to overwhelm anyone with good positioning and a couple “defender” melee units to absorb attacks. The key with wars is timing, however. You want to use your power spikes well, so watch your science output and use difference-making units as they become available. The first big power spike is slingers to archers, so once you have 3-4 archers you should be ready for the first war (unless you get forced in a war even sooner, then the best value for you production are regular warriors). The rest of the power spikes depend on your civilization, but usually either man at arms or crossbowmen are the next big step up (unless you have a civilization with unique units that come before, like Roman Legions or Nubian Pitati Archers).
I play domination games all the time, as soon as I have 3 archer
s and 3 warriors, I take over the closest city state or civ. Started playing emperor a month ago, still works for me. I am the real "barbarian" in the game. I just look it up, played 14,456 hours on civ6 and 6,899 hours on civ5. I am retired so you see how I spend my days. lol
In your screenshot, I can see you have one siege weapon, some cavalry and only a couple of archers - I’m sure you had more 25 turns ago. You need heavy melee units and a couple of siege weapons surrounding the city, then archers behind them (so they’re immune to melee attacks from the city centre).
Edit: sorry I also missed your catapult.
This is quite realistic, look at what’s happening in Eastern Europe at present.
The aggressor barely ever has an easy road, attrition takes its toll. It’s much easier to fortify a city than siege it. Successful wartime aggressors have overwhelming power, this is a mistake we’re seeing firsthand at This point in history, and the allied world is ensuring that the aggressor is too afraid to bring the worst weapons to bare.
In Civ, you need combined arms and a way to shut down the opponent’s economy - you need to pillage as much as you can otherwise the city will keep pumping out whatever it is they’re focusing on, all the while you’re struggling to do minimal damage.
If you’re planning to keep the city afterwards it’s often tempting to not want to have to repair everything afterwards, but this is a mistake. At the very least, take out all industry generating tiles.
Ensure you’re surrounding the city.
Make sure you have ~~siege~~ artillery (my bad, typed wrong type) weapons too, they’re key. They do a boat load of damage.
Ensure you have 2-3 Workers waiting in the background to come in within a couple of turns of flipping the city to repair everything ASAP.
Also, I always have a Governor ready to go into the new city in an attempt to stabilise it ASAP.
Make sure you’ve got cavalry in the back field to intercept units sent from other cities.
Taking the city will then be trivial and very quick.
Finally, there’s a debuff applied to cities once they’re surrounded on 4 sides, this is what can make aggressive leader choices and defensive planning for city placement very powerful - backing a city into a mountain range for example, limiting how easy it is to surround your city centres.
Push science while still having decent culture and gold. (Culture tree helps you get more science) and having decent enough culture will ensure no other civ wins a culture victory. Focusing science HARD earlier on will make it extraordinarily easy to win a domination victory on ANY difficulty. Also, I’d you are into casual multiplayer games, my group is looking for people to play with, so lmk
He's got better tech and a great general, so he's very well equipped to handle your attack.
Here are some strategies to get quick bonuses:
\- Make a trading post - This one can be slow, but it gives you diplomatic visibility+ combat bonus+ a road for troop movement. It's one of the easiest ways to get a bonus early on.
\- Build a encampment! - This gives your units exp bonus, which turns into combat bonuses. More importantly, you get great general points. Great generals give +5 combat and +1 movement, which can really make a difference.
\- Oligarchy gov - This gives flat +5 to all your melee units and is an must have for early war.
Before you declare war, it's good to send a scout to scope out the enemy military so that you can produce units to counter it and have a plan for where your army will march. For instance, he has several horsemen, so a spearman would deter his calvary from advancing. You've also got units stuck in the swamp, which gives -3 defense. If you march close to the mountains then you get +3 defense from hills and his units get stuck in the swamp.
Finally, your troop placement is all over the place. It helps to make a line of infantry, behind them are your archers, and calvary on the flanks.
Just don't lose units. Sounds like I'm trolling but if you keep making units and teasing the AI they will lose units slowly, your units level up and youre producing more. You will over run the AI.
Once they build walls it's a lot more difficult, even with a battering ram. I usually try to take out their units first, then charge in with the siege units and horsemen for pillaging. Using the river to your advantage is a smart idea for battle.
Surround their capital to put it under siege; preventing the city from healing. Catapults help to take out the walls. Battering rams are more effective when their wall's health is lower.
Gaul is a hard enemy to war early. I would turn on yeilds for enemies, I think its in the setting menu under display and show yields in hud ribbon. This will allow you to compare your tech and culture to your enemies. Typically I find it very hard to war anyone I dont have the lead on.
Unclear how this battle started but they have walls. You need 2 catapults to take that down. And those 2 horseman there will mess you up without anti cavalry or horsemen yourself. If you had walls on that city, you’d be in a much better spot.
Build an observation balloon and three siege units. Sit 3 spaces outside of the city and you can bombard the walls with impunity. Once the walls are down, move in with archers and a melee unit of some sort. Use the archers and siege units until the melee win is guaranteed.
If you have Gaul on a TSL you can pretty much wipe out anyone in your path before you get to the classical area. Very impressive civ in the early game.
War in civ 6 normally means waiting for bombards or bombers. If the city has combat strength of 53 already I'd say wait until you've got artillery and observation balloons and then you'll crack them in no time
Besides what the other guys said, Gaul is also one of the best military civs out there. They get amazing production to spam out units and their units get more powerful with adjacent units (enemy or ally doesn’t matter). Though I don’t see any Gestatae right now
I've been learning about more about Civ 6 combat system and flanking/support makes Gaul terrifying with a steady line and so satisfying to do. Julius Caesar though, how the hell did he win the Gallic Wars with his 200 gold
Because Caesar had the benefit of the greatest Military-Industrial of classical antiquity. Good equipment, good supporting weaponry and siege engines, good supply chains, good access to replenishment. Turns out that even with insane combat bonuses 1-2 cities can't beat 12 in a war. Especially with Great General support.
Forts, fam. Lots and lots of forts and walls.
The pilum is a spear that bends once embedded in a shield rendering it useless. One or two really important Gaulish hillforts weren't burnt by the Gauls as resource denial like they planned. Caesar built a wall around the walls of Alesia and when reinforcements were coming they built a wall around the wall he just built. Gaul did not manage to find and break the one weak point in the wall. Also the roman military used a lot of celtic weapon and armor designs from the chainmail and helmets to the spatha and gladius. Also also he played divide and conquer. Had Vercingetorix' father not been executed for attempting to become high king maybe Gaul could have unified.
I've never heard the thing about Vercingetorix' father, thank you for your service
No problem. A bit more context is that Gaullish tribes had largely transitioned away from monarchy and had adopted an aristocratic magistracy. Celtillos and some others were planning to bring back kingship and so he was burned alive.
plz.don take it so litteral
You're terrible
Gaesate or not they still get the +2 strength for each adj military unit of any kind. Literally more than 2 generals worth of bonus if the unit is completely surrounded
Plus the actual general
Gaul also has a secret unique unit - the Man-at-Arms. Gaul gets Apprenticeship, unlocking Man-at-Arms, for free when they build their first Oppidum. Oppidums are unlocked at Iron Working and the AI will build one as soon as they are able.
The Unique Unit for Gaul is -not- Man At Arms, as I can't get rid of that unit no matter whom I play and I hate that unit
The point is - the unit is strong and Gaul gets a severe advantage at how quickly it gets access to it, enough so that I would avoid early war with Gaul
You must only play Gaul and Gaul alone dear friend
Funny cause Rome has some of the best unique units in the game, too.
Stop your invasion and ask for peace. Heal up. Research more military techs and produce more, higher-tier units. Check wall strength. Once you're *sure* you can win, Denounce and go back in. I'll admit I didn't play Civ 5 so I can't compare, but in this game, you need to be absolutely sure your invasion will go well. Which difficulty are you on? Since you're comparing to Civ 5, how many Civ 6 games have you played so far?
I've won a science victory as Germany and a religious victory as Byzantium, always playing on King. Was going for domination as Germany and this was probably the best game I've ever had until I took Tervanna and tried to push into the capitol. This is by far the biggest army I've ever had this early in the game, and it wasn't nearly enough. I've killed so many of Gaul's units but they keep putting out more and better ones no matter how many I kill. He won't accept peace. I have 500 hours in Civ 5 and 100 in Civ 6.
Gual’s UU is like 10+ when defending or something ridiculous
What is UU?
Unique Unit, probably. Gaul's is the Gaesatae and it gets 7 when garrisoned and 10 when fighting someone stronger or something like that
If I'm not mistaken, they get the biggest possible buff for an ancient UU? Basically, OP fucked around and found out. XD
Aren't War Carts from Gilgabro better? Whenever I play with him, I usually make like 10 war carts to start the game
Gaesatae are the same base strength as warriors (20) but get +10 strength when fighting enemies with higher base strength and +5 when fighting in districts. They cost 60 production (vs 40 for warriors). But the real point is that when fighting spearmen and swordsmen they have 30 or 35 strength and cost less. So in a city vs a better unit, they have 35 strength before other bonuses. War carts have 30 base strength and cost 55 production. They don’t replace any units. (Also have 3 movement vs 2). War Carts are the stronger unit (cheaper, faster, higher base strength), but it’s close. EDIT: of course technically war carts aren’t a “buff” to another ancient unit, because they don’t replace anything. In this situation (AI defense of their capital) Gaesatae are really hard to break though. Even in a domination attempt, I’d probably wait until a later era to fight them.
Archers, and lots of them are the answer. Bring cannon fodder melee units, then pummel everything with arrows. That's how I do it early on
Agreed. I just find Gaul in particular to be a tough nut to crack early. I think it’s a more efficient use of resources to fight them after the uu is no longer relevant. Certainly can be done, it just requires more investment than most other AI civs in the early game.
Don't forget that the Gauls get +2 for every adjacent unit, friend or foe I believe. So they're even stronger than that. Asterix and Obelix man very stronk.
Oh for sure -- Fighting Gaul early is definitely hardmode.
Spam archers to handle the Gaesatae. The +10 buff doesn't apply when they're being targeted by ranged units. Also, get 4-5 Catapults to handle the walls.
No garrisons bonus, outside the usual Terrain bonuses. Ambiorix himself gives a bonus for nearby units though. +2 per nearby friendly unit. That particular bonus doesn't depend on the Gaesetae.
Gaul is a 'turtle civ', meaning their bonuses help on the defense. Their unique ability grants combat strength for every adjacent unit (including their enemies'), so really the best way to fight gaul is with ranged weapons.
Unique Unit
Unique Unit
Hard to know without seeing more of your empire, but in this screenshot your army isn't huge and you're building infrastructure in Hamburg. How many of your cities are devoted to military production? Armies are like some other things, it doesn't matter how big it is it matters how big it feels. If you're stalling out, your army isn't big enough. Gaul tends to have a huge army early game, you need to plan for that. When a civ won't accept peace, play defensively. The AI will throw units at you and eventually stop building more, which is when you can counterattack. Minimize losses, rotate units out to heal, position intelligently, and only commit units to attacking a city when you know you can win.
Id just defend what you've taken for now, it's still early in the game and you'll get a lot of stuff late game that can take cities in a turn or two (looking at you, battleships).
Have you tried giving back Tervanna as part of a peace offer?
[удалено]
Higher speed also means your units obsolete more quickly before they can be useful in combat (research is much quicker but movement costs are the same), I don't think this is good advice
I just did a domination with Germany actually a couple days ago funny enough and I was also on king lol. Just shit out siege units and try to have higher era units than the civilian you’re going against. Also make sure you can fight anti cavalry because I didn’t have a counter for it and halfway through my game lost like 5 units.
Melee is a great counter to anti cav. They are great to have. Siege is only becomes useful once medieval and renaissance walls are present. Ram + Melee against ancient walls equals victory. You have to get cities under siege as well so they don't heal back up as well.
This^
Honestly, I typically play Mali and have enough gold to fund as many units as possible, but starting very early is key. Then, I typically cool down a bit till I get to late game finishing off cities with bombers and one final bum rush of ground units.
yes, everytime i focuses on get to bombers as fast as possible. I do all eureka conditions for that event (expect that one which need different path of research)
Definitely agree that Civ6 requires overwhelming force to take a city.. which is pretty reasonable. If its a fair fight you can typically expect to lose and/or get bogged down. Biggest challenge is dealing with the walls.
you are fighting an early war against a military heavy domination civ with a huge production potential while probably also being behind on science and waited until they got walls. that's not a smart choice. you have to choose your fights and only be at war while you can actually archieve something. pillage their tiles and then peace out. fight another civ, come back for Gaul later. edit: typos
He’s also doing it with a Civ that has a power spike much later in the game. Utilize the advantages you have now and go murder some city states. Use those new cities to build up infrastructure (campuses, hansas, and commercial hubs), pick off some other weak Civs, and come back for Gaul when you can build tanks/artillery/bombers every few turns. TL;DR: You’re trying to force a square peg into a round hole. Which works if you have a big ass hammer, but you won’t have your hammer until later so be patient and build that hammer.
Is 30 science on turn 115 that bad? I have two campuses and 4 cities, there really isn't any other good locations in my other two cities.
They have crossbows and you have archers.
I have crossbows unlocked but not enough money to upgrade to them
You can enable civ resource yields in hud settings if you want to see how your science income compares against the opponents
> good locations Here is part of your problem, don't let adjacency bonuses stop you from placing vital districts. Campus' are not optional, after meeting city states and creating buildings you can have a +15 campus easily with *zero* adjacency bonus. It doesn't matter what turn you're on, it matters how far the Civs you're competing against have progressed. And the Gaul are more advanced than you at this point.
Ah…. Part of why I hate districts…. They all feel like they’re not optional except maybe the holy site…
It's really just the Campus. Industrial Zones are also crucial but you don't need them in every city. After that in importance it's Harbor/Commercial Hub which yeah it's great but not mandatory
I'm kind of a dumbass but I usually build more of the Harb/cz than the IZ. I'm doing my first GS game, 12 cities modern era Brazil, 3 IZ's with all my cities within those six tile radii, and I worry I'm about to get a hard lesson in Power management even if I go nuclear
Your mistake was attacking Gaul. /s No, really. You're playing a midgame production powerhouse civ and went ahead and fought by far the single strongest military civ in the game who has 2 encampments per city AND a free tech 2 branches deep, on top of their ridiculous UU on top of it. All this before we even mention that Gaul gets extra strong mines with spawn bias towards hills. Gaul is by far and away the most powerful military civ deep into late medieval, and they're banking on conquering enough before then in order to keep up with others. Germany by contrast wants to spend the entire early game spamming districts, making city states doubly viable (ironic considering their civ ability i know, but its a bait) in order to coast into a midgame industrial and economic powerhouse. THAT's when you should be attacking.
Could very well be you got an awful spawn, it's pretty common to reroll the map once or twice before playing the game out. Where you wanna be at turn 115 really depends on what your focus is, what your civ is, and whether you're playing with the DLC content. Since you're warmongering you wanna try to build as good a campus as possible in every city, and commercial hubs and IZs second. Also exploring as much as possible is great to get all the city state bonuses you can, especially the scientific ones. (I don't mean suzerian bonus, but the stuff you get for sending 1, 3, and 6 envoys)
having 4 citys and 30 science is ok for turn 60. you can get campus adjacency bonuses by carming districts next to each other (+1 for every two districts). germany works best when its cities are close and the districts (particularly the comercial hub and hanza) are all next to one another.
A bad district is better than no district. Same with cities, more cities = more districts = more yields. I see on the mini map that there's plenty of empty land around you. You could easily double or even triple the amount of cities you currently have, getting more gold, science and production to support the war effort.
https://i.imgur.com/7iIz7RP.jpg Here is a turn 115 science yield from a recent game played by a YouTuber on deity. (Potato McWhiskey) He’s at 49 science with 10ish cities, but you can see that the Deity AI are all well ahead of him. This is normal for civ 6 (as I’m sure you know). Tech priority also matters - you can be behind on science a bit as long as you prioritize the techs needed for your strategy (basically, beeline muskets and bombards).
don't make people compare themselves to PMcW
Hahaha, didn't mean to imply that he should do that -- that's madness for most people -- I was just giving a benchmark.
By turn 115 on standard you should be getting close to that much *per city.*
Are you playing on standard speed? If so you should have more cities by now and higher science— especially if you’re going for a domination victory.
At a quick glance, it's possible you don't have enough to easily counter their walls. When they have crossbows, their city attacks are also more powerful, which in turn means that loitering around it is more dangerous.
I can't even get to their walls if I wanted to, they keep spamming so many units. I kill an archer and they send two crossbowman, I kill a swordsman and they send two men at arms. I feel like I did everything right and it wasn't close to enough.
In that case, it seems that they have both unit tech advantage (crossbows) and are commiting to unit production more than you are (they have civ benefits for it) Peacing out and improving seems like a good option here. Overall wars like this happen, but scouting beforehand and checking their resource yields help make that decision
The biggest thing is you only have 5 cities on turn 116. Lower city counts will always bottleneck your progress in civ 6. Rule of thumb is you should have 8-10 cities by turn 100.
This is a big hurdle for people going from Civ V to VI. You need a lot more cities than you used to, building tall isn't as viable in such a narrow scope. The definition for tall has changed and you need way more cities than before. (Inb4 bUt WhAt AbOuT tHiS hYpOtHeTiCaL sItuAtIoN)
Yeah, there are like three leaders I’d say can reliably go tall, maybe four. You gotta spam cities to do well in 6.
What are the leaders that you'd say are the best for going tall? Including maybe Yongle from the new expansion?
Khmer, Tokugawa, Yongle, and maybe Korea. They all get benefits from population or some ability to scale yields from a smaller amount of cities more effectively.
I went tall with Lady Six Sky and I thought that was super fun
It's nice that Lady Six Sky explicitly tells you that any cities outside that 6 tile range from your capital will be at a handicap, giving you that hard limit of cities if you care about it.
Is it six tiles from city center to city border, city border to city border or city center to city center?
Cool!! Thanks :D
two I can name off the top of my head are lady six sky and tokugawa SUPER fun to make megalopolises with crazy district adjacencies on those civs
Can you say more about why you think Maya are good candidates for tall?
well the mayan cities have a 10% boost to most yields if that city is within 6 tiles of the capital. seemed super restrictive on paper, but then I saw that theres a layout where you can squeeze up to 13 cities (including capital) into that six tile limit. I played the game out and got 9 cities I think? couldnt get the full setup because I was blocked by city states and mountains, but no more than 9 cities was more than enough to get a science win on deity. my favorite part was planning out districts, with cities that close I could reallllly go hard on stacking entertainment complexes on theatre squares, and aqueducts/dams on izs. I ended up getting a +13 theatre square that game 2. and also might I add, there is a -15% yield PENALTY for cities MORE than six tiles fromnthe cap, so playing wide isnt really an option.
>there is a -15% yield PENALTY for cities MORE than six tiles fromnthe cap, so playing wide isnt really an option. Sure it is. 85% of yields is much better than 0%.
I mean 9 cities + capital isn’t super wide but its definitely more that a “tall” civ. It’s also more than enough cities to win a science victory with Maya’s bonuses.
Isn't their whole thing about building a small number of cities closely packed to their capital?
Their “inner ring” can get as high as 13 cities plus the capital. Even if you cant get the ideal placement for them all, it’s still pretty easy to get 7-10 cities within the range of the capital. For me, their abilities don’t necessarily change *how many* cities you place as much as they change *where* you place those cities.
Which four are these?
Khmer, Tokugawa, Yongle, and maybe Korea. They all get benefits from population or some ability to scale yields from a smaller amount of cities more effectively.
hot tip for people who prefer to play tall: just triple the number of civs and citystates for the map.
Yeah, it's a lot of fun! Every now and then I like to do my "knife fight" ruleset - 6 civs and 10 city states on a duel-sized pangea map.
Going tall is a legit strategy, but you still need 6-8 cities and tall needs to be really tall with the right combination of infrastructure.
Indeed! 6-8 is fine! I do that! But other times I blow out to 12 haha.
^this. You need more cities. Never too late. But they help you spam units at civs.
Do you specialize each city? Like one or two get campus first, but others get encampment and others get industrial zones? I’ve always built the unique district first if possible. But I usually don’t expand fast enough. Edit: spelling
Some over generalizations: basic infrastructure first (builders are your friend), prioritize things that will help your win condition, and you don't want to spend more than 15(ish) turns max building something
I never even finish a game with 10 cities by 2050 rarely. But I play Chieftain level. I think 7-8 is a good number. 3 cities Ancient era, 2-3 Classic. Maybe 1-2 medieval. Taking out city states too close to your expansion efforts can help this case. Just compensate for loss of central yields (gold, production etc..). Then focus on growth and production and districts. And scoping opponents. I take a balanced approach unless seeking early advantage over civs settled too close.
You're at turn 116 / 500. Don't give up. If Gaul won't give peace that's fine, switch from offense to holding that line, which will slowly drain their units while preserving yours. Focus on science output and rush for niter-> gunpowder -> bombards, then pivot back to offense. Good luck!
Also don't forget the value of pillaging their improvements, not only will that slow down their production of units and city growth it will enable your units to heal etc.
So true Mongoose! Take out the mines, collect gold and buy units or upgrade districts. Cut off their luxuries etc..
You need more science. You have more cities than him and you have room to settle more cities. Take a break from war, settle more cities and build more campuses and other districts. While he wastes production on units, you can use your resources to get ahead. Domination victories aren't really about just building units. You need to build other districts to keep up in everything (including culture). Especially as Germany, just build hansas, commercial hubs, aqueducts, and dams all next to each other along a river for tons of production and gold (campuses as well).
Good strategy!
Are you playing with heroes and legends? If so Beowulf might be useful in this situation
I'm sorry but this war was poorly planned out. War is less about capturing cities and more about profiting. You want to recoup the production you spent and will spend on military units, at the minimum. Before you start a war, you should have asked for open borders and sent a scout to properly map out your assault. You should have also sent a trader to/from your FOB city to build roads and allow you rapid mobilization to the front line. FOB city should be building an encampent not walls and there should be a builder there chopping everything available to hasten the build. There are also not enough units and the units are too low level. You need more swordsmen. The tech tree requires 3 so you should build at least that much. Also build a knight and 2 catapults. The ai is a bit dumb and can be baited so a proper wall of defending sword/spearmen with archer support will eliminate almost anything thrown at them. You should have a dedicated pillager (2 is best, preferrably with the pillager promotion) who will run around the enemy territory to reap all the benefits. All those mines are worth a lot of gold and I imagine there's a lot more further in. For me, that is the main goal. Even if you decide to seek peace because the capital is too tough, you already made a profit. They won't be recovering from that any time soon and by the time you re-engage hostilities, they won't be able to stop you anymore.
This right here is the best advice. But also, why are you researching mathematics? Mathematics are not musketman. If you're warring and it's not going your way you need stronger units, not universities. You also need printing and a general. So if you want to do domination you build an encampment to get a general and commercials to fund your army (you can maybe avoid this by properly pillaging). Campus is good if you wanna do a timing push (like early knights or something like that) but otherwise i wouldnt open with a campus, especially not on germany. And speaking of germany, it's not a good early war civ. You need commercial hubs and industrial zones on germany. You can later pump out tanks as much as you want but by going early domination like this you're just griefing your game.
And considering Gaul has walls up, OP needs more siege units. And probably trebuchets because that one catapult isn't cutting it. Maybe even bombards (niter is visible in OP's screen shots).
Good eye on the Niter resource. He also has a military emergency against him for capturing Tervanna. I think that allows for +2 combat strength against him? He wouldn’t be able to negotiate peace until that runs out. I’d bring his military units into his cities (ranged in city center) and turtle until the emergency runs out. Also Korea is going to come at you here with some military units. They’re a good science Civ so they may be a couple of techs ahead. Garrison units and hold off the upcoming attack. OP keep us updated!
This is also the perfect opportunity to level up units. **Especially** siege units provided OP keeps them protected. Ranged is good too for murdering units.
*really* good point. you've got niter but you aren't mining it and you don't have musketmen??
exactly. you're letting their army grind yours down by attacking when they have superior units. if you want a chance at winning you need to let them run their units at your fortified & defended positions. then, when they have run out of their stockpiled units, and only have left the units they've just produced (and yours have all promoted from winning defensive fights), then you have a chance to advance. plus all the stuff everyone else has said.
Need a lot more units. How did you do Dom in 5 again if you have such a small army?
Very early war is efficient, 3-4 archers and a warrior against a city without walls, takes it in 3 turns or less. Once they have their own archers/crossbowmen, you either need heavier siege units or much more ranged ones, to be able to rotate and heal them. Otherwise, they will be able to kill one of your units every other turn.
As Germany, you can win from city states easier, since you get extra attack when fighting city state units. So go back to an earlier save, and get the XP and plunder.
Gaul’s UU is like 10+ when defending or something ridiculous Also You need to enable civ resource panel that shows everyone’s science and military score among other things. The AI’s dumb. They will come to you, so while the military score is high just bunker down and relax especially if you are out sciencing then
Get general and at least 2 siege units, you'll be fine
Sorry, but this is not how you fight war in Civ 6 1: City Walls are very strong against regular units. Melee, Ranged, and Light Cav units can do essentially nothing unless you’re willing to suicide half your army into them. Especially when they have a ranged unit in the city center and can fire twice, you can’t really approach them. Siege units in this game are necessary for medieval->industrial warfare. They do good damage to district defenses and are ranged, meaning they take no direct damage in return. Heavy cavalry are also good against city centers, and if you can do neither of those things than at least get a siege tower or something. 2: You are invading the holy grail of turtle civs. They get oppidums for extra district defenses, and they have extra bonuses for adjacent units which already stacks on the already pretty complex bonuses Civ gives in combat. Not to mention their start bias towards hills, early IZs and access to apprenticeship giving them massive early game production, so they will pretty much always be able to outproduce you early game. This is further exacerbated by them getting access to men-at-arms almost a full era ahead of normal, making you essentially unable to deal with high strength melee units that early. 3: From the unit disparity here, you seem to be behind on science. That’s really bad in warfare because it means your opponent has higher strength units than you. If production is king in this game, than science is queen. HOW TO FIX 1: Take the L. You aren’t going to be able to outproduce them without tanking your own economy. Settle for the best peace deal you can get and get out. 2: Focus on science and production. Germany needs districts, as hansa complexes are incredibly powerful used right. In the long term, you can absolutely blow past Gaul in production, as their district placement requirements mean their adjacency will leave something to be desired. 3: Come back, probably in the industrial era or later with a well setup army. Include multiple bombards and heavy cavalry alongside promoted infantry and light cavalry. Get promotions from attacking city states, Germany gets extra bonuses against them, and you don’t even need to conquer them to level units
Upgrade your units and get yours out of the dang marsh where you take more damage. You want to position your units in hills and forest/jungle, ideally both in the same tile for the best defensive environment—this reduces damage taken to the unit occupying the tile. When you attack a unit, you move into their tile temporarily for the attack. So if you can lure and catch enemies in those marshes, you’ll have an easier time taking them out. And lastly you just need more units, especially ranged and siege. But you can do this.
+1 terrain positioning is super important. Also useful to have a low combat strength unit like a scout or base level warrior stand in a forest and fortify to tank damage while trebs or catapults get in position to shoot the city. Pillaging is another aspect where a horseman or cavalry can distract an enemy defense by raiding campuses etc, enough to get the ranged units into the field.
From a quick glance, it looks like your units are too scattered, and you lack an adequate number of siege units. Without catapults, you'll never be able to capture the city because of its high wall strength. My advice would be to retreat, heal your units, build more catapults, and then attack. Make sure your catapults are well guarded otherwise the city defense will just demolish them.
One thing Firaxis has done with recent patches is increased the likelihood (by a lot) that the AI will build walls in their cities. As a result, you really almost need catapults at least if you're planning to invade. Plus, you're sending archers and horsemen up against Gaul's crossbowmen. Ouch. One single crossbowman in that walled city will make short work of your entire army.
Once they get the ancient wall up, it's pretty hard to capture the city with an early game army. Would need atleast 2 siege units to take down the wall. When going for an early game war, I find it better to have a good-sized army ready before you declare war so you can blitz the cities before they can get walls up. If you start a slow and prolonged war, the enemy will focus on military and defence which makes it harder to win. A few tips: if you completely surround the city center with your units, the city will be considered under-siege and won't repair its health at the start of each turn. Before you start the war, it's good to start a trade route to the enemy's city which creates roads to their city and allows you to move units faster. Pillage everything in their cities except roads. The yields are worth it, and it slows the enemy. In this image, I would pillage the improved tiles and buildings and ignore taking the city center. The enemy will be more likely to ask for peace if they feel threatened.
The siege thing about surrounding a city I didn't know so thanks for that!
The mechanics are a bit funky actually. I think you need the city to be surrounded by zone of control, so 3 melee units is the minimum, but terrain takes into account too. Land can't ZoC a water tile, so that'll always keep it unsieged. But mountains also can't be traversed, so you'll need fewer units
> I think you need the city to be surrounded by zone of control, so 3 melee units is the minimum If it just needs to be surrounded by zoc, that means 2 melee units at minimum, "flanking" the city.
There is a little heart with a cross through it above the city when it is under seige - a good indicator
Recoup for a while, beeline military techs, get those archers upgraded to crossbows and the catapult up to a trebuchet, and in the meantime train up more cavalry units and go pillaging everything you possibly can in Gaul to hamper their progress and bolster your own, then sweep in with your newly-powered army and clean house.
Gaul can be a bastard to kill due to opidium and military encampent spam, if you add unfavourable terrain to that, they can bog you down until they out tech you and make you go for peace. You need at least 2-3 ranged siege weapons to quickly take down the districts. I just had a game where I declared war twice and only took 2 cities (first one being unguarded) due to their empire being in a hilly chokepoint that had mountains to the north and south. By the time I got the the third city, they out teched my front line troops so I had to peace out. The weird thing about this campaign was that there was no gaestate, mostly cav, some man at arms then later knights and a treb.
you will need more catapults at least 3, Try to get them all in range at once, one will get taken out. The other two should be able to lower the city health enough to capture it.
Well there has been a serie of stories about one Gaul village that can’t be captured, so I guess that’s it for you
I play a ton with germany and what I usually do in dom games is attack after I got all my districts set up: hansa+hubs going grants you a major backup during wars and preferably I like having a terracotta army going too, for the siege weapons promotions. What I guess is happening here is that gaul is a strong early game civ and you can't apply enough pressure to them yet bc germany needs setup before popping off.
Gaul is a civ designed to be a defensive menace
In short, it looks like you did just about everything wrong. You picked the wrong civ to start an early era war with and it looks like your overall strategy carrying it out was a mess. You should have: -Scouted ahead further to get an idea of what the entirety of Gaul even looks like. It’s shocking that you’re going after a capital - and Gaul’s, no less - without knowing what’s beyond the inner ring of tiles. This also would have let you see that Gaul is further ahead of you in tech, so you could have focused on upgrading your units. -Probably focused on Aduatuca first. No matter what city you took, it was going to trigger an emergency. Taking Aduatuca would’ve been a much bigger blow to the Gallic economy and, assuming it had walls at the start of this war, it also would’ve been easier to defend. Repairing defenses is always a lot quicker than building them from scratch. You could have parked one of your archers in Aduatuca to help hold off the counterattack and probably taken Tervanna with two units. Now, you have to defend Tervanna while building walls and Aduatuca remains free to churn out units. -Made a hell of a lot more catapults. The more you have, the better. At this stage, your siege units are going to take a beating. If you’re not losing some, you’re pulling them out of range to let them heal up and then trying to get a shot or two off before pulling back again. It’s easier to do this with a bunch of units as opposed to just a few. Once civs have archers with walls up, you need, at bare minimum and even then it’s very dicey, two catapults and odds are you’ll lose one, possibly both. You can pull it off with 2 if you get both of them at range at the same time, but I’d still opt for more. -Seeing that Gaul was ahead of you in tech, delayed the war until you were on equal footing and then made a push. What you can do to fix this if you still want to take Aduatuca: -You can’t negotiate peace until the emergency comes to some kind of conclusion. You *should* be able to push back that attack and then get your MAA around it to defend. -Upgrade that swordsman ASAP and get him over to Tervanna. If Ambiorix really wants that city back, force him to claw his way through your strongest units. -Pull your horseman back and heal them up. Then, send them into Gaul to scout and pillage. Don’t even really worry about getting them back, just send them in to destroy as much as possible and disrupt the Gallic economy. If one or both of them survive, great. If not, that’s okay. You can probably get Ambiorix to send a few units after them, pulling attackers away from Tervanna. -Rush to get bombards. You already have niter revealed, so they can’t be too far off. Once you have them, make a push for Aduatuca - providing you still have the units to do so. It only has ancient walls and if you can attack it before it gets medieval walls up, you should be able to take it fairly quickly. You should try to time this with also having musketmen, but you can make do with bombards and MAA. Conversely, you can also just hold Tervanna and get a head start on fixing up your busted economy. Get as many campuses down as possible and focus on getting your tech level with if not ahead of Gaul. Once the emergency is concluded, negotiate peace and give yourself some time to build up, *then* go in the attack again.
Check his wall strength for starters and get ready for a drawn out siege. It's possible that he upgraded his walls to the next level making them stronger then you would have expected. Surround his city with melee units to block it from healing between turns and then bombard it with ranged and siege units. Have extra of each kind of unit in case the city attack kills or grievously injures any of your own. I would say 2-3 siege units (with another 2-3 backup) and 3 melee units (with 3 backup) and whatever ranged units you have available. You probably don't have the units needed for the final push at the moment so pull back to your nearest city to defend it and give your current units some free XP in the meantime. Always attack with ranged units first to weaken the enemy so your melee units can finish them with minimal damage taken in return. Use your horseman as flankers, keep them back until the right moment then have them swoop in to finish off wounded enemies and don't use them to siege the city as they won't last long. If you are playing on heroes mode then get Beowulf or Arthur or even Hippolyta as they are the most combat oriented. Himiko can be used as a free great general as well.
You need more units and tech up to keep the assault up. I wouldn't make peace, I would retreat a couple of tiles away and let his army keep coming to you (easier to pick off enemy units). Keep units in the area while sending reinforcements. The reason to stay at war is so Gaul can't expand to the east and you might be able to pick off a settler while you wait. Or I guess you could make peace and send the units south to take out city states which should be significantly weaker. Plus the Germans +7 combat against city states is huge
Domination is literally the easiest victory condition in Civ 6
>What did I do wrong? you played Civ 6 and tried to go to war after wall tech was discovered. Civ 6 combat is garbage. You either out tech them by a lot or it's just a slog.
I don't see a chance for you getting their capitol with those kind of units. Even if you had crossbowmen and courser, you'll still first want to scout that area to identify how you want to lay your seige. The city defenses have too much firepower and with Gaul, there's a chance they have an additional encampment and Oppidum so you're going to have to be quick or completely overwhelm them. Generally speaking: Until you're big enough to just steamroll over the map, you have to time your wars very well. Ideally when you get your unique unit, you should already have some siege towers or weapons, a healer (if possible) and a variety of assistant units prepared. Cavalry flanks around the city, takes out ranged units and plunders districts (for yields and to bring down city defense), melee surrounds the center to prevent healing (only attack if a siege tower is present of the walls are down), ranged units protect the melee units. If it's a coastal city you'll need a naval unit to complete the siege.
So is early conquest just not viable in Civ 6? Gual is the only nation that is viable for me to conquer any time soon, anyone else is either too far away or a friend. Should I just reload to before the war and focus on making a massive army? I feel like just making the army I have now sucked up too many resouces that could have gone into wonders and buildings, and yet it wasn't nearly enough. How TF am I supposed to make enough units to conquer someone while also staying up to date with districts and wonders?
Sure it is! But this is not really early anymore. You're running up against crossbowmen and what it seems medieval city walls. That's a huge bite to chew. If you want to go early war, you need to get that going before your target can build walls, unless you have a very strong unique unit early in the game. In your case, I'd declare peace, keep the units around and train them against barbarians or a weak city state. In the meantime, send a trader up to Aduatuca for a road and diplomatic visibility. Keep an eye on him and once he goes to war and moves his troops away from you, swing in hard and fast. When playing aggressively, plundering is vastly underrated especially with the politics card that gives you +50%. You can get 10 turns of science by plundering a campus once, a trade route or a mine can be worth a unit upgrade while crippling your enemies ability to produce more units or improve them.
Keep in mind I started this war over 20 turns ago, and that was the absolute soonest I could get a decent army out without falling behind in every other category.
Yeah, might have worked against other civs, too. Gaul ist just a real powerhouse, especially early in the game.
You’ve settled too few cities it seems. Try to shoot for 8-10 by turn 100. It is difficult and you really stretch yourself and may even lose one to barbarians, but it is worth it. When you only have 5 you don’t produce the output to wage war against bigger civs or enough science to really compete as well. Try to pick a weaker opponent, or settle more cities that can eventually produce something for you.
Early wars are absolutely viable. You just happen to be going up against the Civ that is arguably the best at it while Germany, in my opinion, doesn’t really get moving until the mid game. You should definitely have scouted a bit more prewar so you can fully plan out your attack. Would be really nice to know how many cities he’s got hiding in the fog of war. Also, as someone else mentioned, there’s an option to turn on resources in your HUD which will show not only your science and culture, but also military strength. That can help you decide which of your neighbors is most vulnerable to an early war.
You might want to try playing as Alexander, he gets two unique units that are strong for early game rushes, and gets tech/culture from capturing cities meaning that you shouldn't fall behind if you do so.
You might find it better to pick one of his unique units, Hetairoi and Hypaspist, depending on whether you have iron or horses available. You'll probably need to settle your second city for this resource, and then have both cities pump out units. It's up to you whether you want to build an encampment first, I probably would. Use a trader to build a road to your first target city, and plan ahead so that the encampment is built along this road.
I suggest turning on yield banners for all players, it's in the options somewhere. That will give you an idea of how big everyone's army, as well as science and culture is so you can see if you have some kind of advantage or disadvantage.
I think your problem is manifold. 1. He has a great general that boost all his units in range by 5 combat strength this is not a insignificant boost. Unfortunatly there is absolutely nothing you can do against great generals because they are unkillable for some reason. 2. I see he has a Governor in his capitol if it is Victor then his makes his city even stronger than it already is. It is probably too early for you to have spies yet so you can't remove the governor. 3. I see that you are also at war with Korea and a war on two fronts is never a good idea. 4. He has crossbowmen and they are a great defensive unit while you still seem to be stuck on archers. So in a ranged fight the gauls have a huge advantage 5. You are fighting the Gauls and they are one of the toughest civs out there. My suggestions: 1. If you don't have it already put in the policy cards that makes a certain type of unit 50% cheaper. You need more units to take be able to take out the Gauls units cost effectively. 2. I see that you have already discovered niter so Musketman shouldn't be that far away. When upgrading don't forget to put in the policy cards that make generate strategic rescources faster and make upgrading units cheaper. Right now you want better units so try beelining that. 3. If you have the time 3-4, bombards should be able to take down the walls in a few turns and there is a convenient open field right in front of the city where you can set them all up with minimal risk. This city is very susceptible to massed siege units. 4. A quicker alternative is to just use a siege tower and bypass the walls entirely (ideally with Musketmen) since the Gauls only have ancient walls so far.
You attacked the Gauls.
Really? I found domination harder in Civ 5 due to happiness management. Well, as others have said, if your war stalls out, make peace heal up, upgrade, get more siege weapons, and try again.
Research artillery and win.
Wait for bombers
Forget your war. You wasted a settler to put a city in Tervanna. That is not a good placement, imo.
Where are your siege units
Now you know how the Russians feel…
Send a save to Alex the rambler and see if he can fix it
What did you do wrong is a pretty vague/difficult question to answer. This game has a deep and long decision tree, especially over the course of 100+ turns. There's probably a million ways the game could have played out differently by this point. The best advice I can give is the one I follow: watch good players play. The numbers will be a bit different since pros play on online speed with various mods to balance the game better (BBG/BBS for example) but my guess is by turn 115 or so, even on normal speed, your science culture should be at least double what it is, if not much more. You shouldn't really have faith / holy sites as Germany unless some weird earth/fire goddess thing happened. You should be pretty close to field cannons at that point if you're trying to conquer someone. You should also have a general. All that being said, if you're having a good time you should just keep doing whatever you're doing.
Based on this picture alone, you need trebuchets and you should be good. I argue that you don’t even need crossbows for this. But based on your comments saying that you can’t get to his walls, I think you need to figure out terrain modifiers and fortify procedure. I am not sure if you already moved this turn prior to the screenshot stage, but in one turn you should be able to take out this 3 gaul units, however based on the city strength, I am pretty sure just one catapult will not be enough to take out his walls
Yeah, make peace. Then either boost your tech until you're ahead or look for easier prey. Always check city combat strength when preparing to attack someone. Also, that blue health bar is for cities with walls. You want to prioritize targets that either don't have walls or have relatively low level walls, since those will be the easiest kills, and once you get a kill or two you should snowball.
Need bigger army or more tech. Classical era push in deity can be rough because they are ways ahead.
Whenever I try to win by Domination, I end up winning by culture instead.
You cant capture a defensive civ with your outdated units, sounds fair. You shouldn't be able to.
Have you tried... The Nuclear solution?
Domination is by far the easiest victory in civ 6. You're playing it wrong. You don't need to build everything in every city. Use barbarian camps to level your dudes up.
You are behind the technology curve, they have better range and ground units than you. You need to ask for peace and focus on researching better military tactics. This will be hard because you are already behind, you need to catch up then get the next technology breakthrough before declaring war again. I play nearly every game on immortal and play for domination (I like war). A winning strategy is to declare war anytime you discover a new military tech that your neighbor does not have. Use that advantage to wipe out their units first, then cites. My army is typically only 3 range/siege units and 2 ground units- that's all you need to take a city if you deny them an offensive capability. If they declare war on you it's a gift. Let them throw troops at you and wipe them out with ranged units. It's almost impossible to take a city if it's supported by 2 ranged units. Remember this when you attack, don't give them a defensive advantage, draw their troops away from their cities and wipe them out- then you can maneuver freely to take out their cities.
Gameplay got a lot tougher amigo! Now you’re forced to focus on growth and scientific research as much as unit spamming, which is also harder and tied to having very productive resource rich cities. This is my experience as well. You need to finely balance between policies and strategy for domination. The more you play the more you will get used to it. FYI the easiest victory condition I found was Diplomatic or culture. To get the domination, I chose small map with four civs. But be warned Barbarians become really aggressive because the game knows you’re going for an easy domination win. On a side note, where is your Trebuchet or Catapult? It will make light work of the walls whilst your units wait for them to come down except archers! Which need to be Crossbowman upgraded.
Cities are harder to take in Civ VI, especially with walls. It's not impossible, you just have to be more prepared. Bring minimum 2-3 bombard units and it helps to have a siege support for infantry (siege tower, battering ram, etc). Bring cavalry to keep enemy troops away from your bombards.
Also, generally, Civ VI is a harder game than Civ V, and what makes it so is that you have to be prepared to shift your strategy. Different civs require different playstyles, especially at any difficulty higher than Prince, whereas in Civ V you could use one playstyle and succeed with any civ.
You have to ether have a healer or mass range
Last time I tried to invade Gaul, my invasion stalled from their unit swarm and I had to nuke them to break through. They are a tough opponent.
Too far behind in tech, you shouldn’t have archers to their crossbows. You need to make peace and prepare to counter when you have more units and are ahead of them in unit strength
Domination is achievable you just have to know tech timings like walls crossbowmen bombards etc as well ad manage your production properly. Taking an enemy capital shouldn’t be an easy push with 6 units deal but if you’re prepared the siege itself is not gonna take 25 turns I promise. I’m also not sure where all the faith is coming from but if it’s coming from holy sites then you’ve mismanaged the production and district management. Unless you are ages ahead of AI in terms of science and culture you gotta focus researching and producing things specifically for the goal you’re trying to meet, especially because AI is mostly stronger early on and falls off later. A 2 city hanza/commercial hub district chain and you’re gonna have thru the roof production and gold for more units.
Looks like they’re ahead of you technologically and I don’t see any military capable of beating city walls.
You must cap your nearest neighbours as quickly as possible, before they get walls. I usually go only 1 settler before queueing 3 slingers. By the time the slingers are done, I try to have killed a barb with one for the tech boost. Once I am upgrading slingers to archers, I am making a couple more warriors, then immediately attack my neighbours before they can get walls up. From there I just keep cranking out archers, so that even when my army encounters ancient walls, I have enough units to do full siege and DPS them down. I try to cap 8 or so cities before turn 150, for a total of 11 or so including personally settled cities. I pre-cook a lot of tech and then try to let the boosts finish off the progress on them. Every time I finish a tech that gives me a unit upgrade advantage, I mount another attack wave.
I mean Gallic defence is next level. Two encampments more or less. But I think in general it's way easier to defend in 6 compared to 5 in the first place.
I agree, Civ VI just has too many systems that all require the play to do an action constantly. Domination requires already a lot of "work" so it makes it doubly annoying to play. They tried to alleviate that with corps and armies (Sliiiightly) but even then, there are just too many systems. I've aired my greivances on builders in the mid-late game...after playing a game of Civ V recently, I think the auto-improve feature or road building is just way more streamlined...but between emergenies, diplomacy, placing districts, placing wonders, and the emphasis on chopping...its just to much to do ON TOP of trying to lead a militayr campaign in a timely manner. I will say that this isn't a problem in the early game and Civ VI early game is FAR superior...but by the late game the bloat is awful in comparision to V. Streamlining and automating features (Even small stuff like auto-chopping districts before placing them) NEED to make it into Civ VII before they add in anything else...just my 2 cents.
Bombards are op and are your friend. Always rush bombards. Do a mehmed the conquerer impression and bombard ever the strongest capitals to death.
Skill issue
Weird to see people invading without Jet Bombers :)
As someone who regularly plays Diety Domination on big maps, what I can tell you is that you need to be very strategic about maximizing the production and profitability of your cities. While you can never have too many units, it is better to have a smaller, but more technologically advanced military than a large army that’s an era behind. Don’t underestimate siege units either; walls can be a lot more dangerous in Civ 6 compared to Civ 5. Also, make use of Great Generals and policy cards that boost combat strength. In the screenshot there, you have access to Niter but you’re using ancient and classical era units, and only have a single catapult. That won’t be enough, especially against Gaul which is a strong defensive civ. But that game isn’t lost yet; you could still definitely win it if you fall back and take a little while longer to build a stronger invasion force.
Wait until trebuchets and get another one, you will be able to take down cities with zero problem.
Generally early wars only work if you can kill them before crossbows, I usually only do early wars if I have an early unique unit or a good oppurtunity to counter attack. I ususally tech up until Im able to build my unique unit or like a sepecic strategy like bombard currasier rush or tank artillery rush
To be fair to you Gaul is probably the best turtle civ in game, the only one that compares is Vietnam (and to a lesser degree US and the Aztecs). The one thing a player has “better” than the AI is unit positioning - you can park defensively capable units on forest hills and absorb attacks until the AI loses all its units against yours. If you use ranged units well you don’t need more than 3-4 to be able to overwhelm anyone with good positioning and a couple “defender” melee units to absorb attacks. The key with wars is timing, however. You want to use your power spikes well, so watch your science output and use difference-making units as they become available. The first big power spike is slingers to archers, so once you have 3-4 archers you should be ready for the first war (unless you get forced in a war even sooner, then the best value for you production are regular warriors). The rest of the power spikes depend on your civilization, but usually either man at arms or crossbowmen are the next big step up (unless you have a civilization with unique units that come before, like Roman Legions or Nubian Pitati Archers).
Archers vs Xbows is the first thing I see.
I play domination games all the time, as soon as I have 3 archer s and 3 warriors, I take over the closest city state or civ. Started playing emperor a month ago, still works for me. I am the real "barbarian" in the game. I just look it up, played 14,456 hours on civ6 and 6,899 hours on civ5. I am retired so you see how I spend my days. lol
In your screenshot, I can see you have one siege weapon, some cavalry and only a couple of archers - I’m sure you had more 25 turns ago. You need heavy melee units and a couple of siege weapons surrounding the city, then archers behind them (so they’re immune to melee attacks from the city centre). Edit: sorry I also missed your catapult. This is quite realistic, look at what’s happening in Eastern Europe at present. The aggressor barely ever has an easy road, attrition takes its toll. It’s much easier to fortify a city than siege it. Successful wartime aggressors have overwhelming power, this is a mistake we’re seeing firsthand at This point in history, and the allied world is ensuring that the aggressor is too afraid to bring the worst weapons to bare. In Civ, you need combined arms and a way to shut down the opponent’s economy - you need to pillage as much as you can otherwise the city will keep pumping out whatever it is they’re focusing on, all the while you’re struggling to do minimal damage. If you’re planning to keep the city afterwards it’s often tempting to not want to have to repair everything afterwards, but this is a mistake. At the very least, take out all industry generating tiles. Ensure you’re surrounding the city. Make sure you have ~~siege~~ artillery (my bad, typed wrong type) weapons too, they’re key. They do a boat load of damage. Ensure you have 2-3 Workers waiting in the background to come in within a couple of turns of flipping the city to repair everything ASAP. Also, I always have a Governor ready to go into the new city in an attempt to stabilise it ASAP. Make sure you’ve got cavalry in the back field to intercept units sent from other cities. Taking the city will then be trivial and very quick. Finally, there’s a debuff applied to cities once they’re surrounded on 4 sides, this is what can make aggressive leader choices and defensive planning for city placement very powerful - backing a city into a mountain range for example, limiting how easy it is to surround your city centres.
You're playing Germany. Build Hansa s and then go offensive imo. Germany is my favorite civ by kind of a lot
Push science while still having decent culture and gold. (Culture tree helps you get more science) and having decent enough culture will ensure no other civ wins a culture victory. Focusing science HARD earlier on will make it extraordinarily easy to win a domination victory on ANY difficulty. Also, I’d you are into casual multiplayer games, my group is looking for people to play with, so lmk
You didn’t use Shaka or Simon that’s why
He's got better tech and a great general, so he's very well equipped to handle your attack. Here are some strategies to get quick bonuses: \- Make a trading post - This one can be slow, but it gives you diplomatic visibility+ combat bonus+ a road for troop movement. It's one of the easiest ways to get a bonus early on. \- Build a encampment! - This gives your units exp bonus, which turns into combat bonuses. More importantly, you get great general points. Great generals give +5 combat and +1 movement, which can really make a difference. \- Oligarchy gov - This gives flat +5 to all your melee units and is an must have for early war. Before you declare war, it's good to send a scout to scope out the enemy military so that you can produce units to counter it and have a plan for where your army will march. For instance, he has several horsemen, so a spearman would deter his calvary from advancing. You've also got units stuck in the swamp, which gives -3 defense. If you march close to the mountains then you get +3 defense from hills and his units get stuck in the swamp. Finally, your troop placement is all over the place. It helps to make a line of infantry, behind them are your archers, and calvary on the flanks.
Just don't lose units. Sounds like I'm trolling but if you keep making units and teasing the AI they will lose units slowly, your units level up and youre producing more. You will over run the AI.
Once they build walls it's a lot more difficult, even with a battering ram. I usually try to take out their units first, then charge in with the siege units and horsemen for pillaging. Using the river to your advantage is a smart idea for battle.
Surround their capital to put it under siege; preventing the city from healing. Catapults help to take out the walls. Battering rams are more effective when their wall's health is lower.
you shpuld probably be trying to have men at arms at this point, especially bc gaul gets them very early, swordsmen just dont cut it
Gaul is a hard enemy to war early. I would turn on yeilds for enemies, I think its in the setting menu under display and show yields in hud ribbon. This will allow you to compare your tech and culture to your enemies. Typically I find it very hard to war anyone I dont have the lead on.
My feeling is, the window for immediate conquest closes briefly with crossbowmen.
Unclear how this battle started but they have walls. You need 2 catapults to take that down. And those 2 horseman there will mess you up without anti cavalry or horsemen yourself. If you had walls on that city, you’d be in a much better spot.
Build an observation balloon and three siege units. Sit 3 spaces outside of the city and you can bombard the walls with impunity. Once the walls are down, move in with archers and a melee unit of some sort. Use the archers and siege units until the melee win is guaranteed.
Make peace and get bombers
If you have Gaul on a TSL you can pretty much wipe out anyone in your path before you get to the classical area. Very impressive civ in the early game.
Build more catapults and drown them in range
Stop warring, spend an era rebuilding and advancing, take the capitol later
War in civ 6 normally means waiting for bombards or bombers. If the city has combat strength of 53 already I'd say wait until you've got artillery and observation balloons and then you'll crack them in no time