It can seem overwhelming, but once you get used to the system, there’s a lot of scope for reward.
There’s a bevy of in game tutorials to help you with this, and once you’ve run through those a handy advisor will stick around to offer you tips as you go through your initial run.
Sid Meyer’s series has always had a steep learning curve to truly master them, I feel, with a lot of deep mechanics that run through the veins of the game.
Civ VI is not the kind game you can just drop into and hope for immediate success. I’m making this sound fairly heroic, but it won’t be an easy task. With just a tribe of warriors and a settler under your control, it’s up to you to find a lush verdant ground to establish a home on, before setting in motion the makings of a great empire. When you start out, you will have nothing but cavemen looking for a home. Jokes aside, having those leaders in place with each civilizations’ quirks and unique abilities, really gives you a reason to do multiple runs, despite each one lasting a literal lifetime. Each race puts you in the shoes of their respective leader, a famous face from the history books that can help you really get into the role, even if you’ll struggle to explain their seeming immortality. You have 500 turns to achieve one of these victory conditions, taking you all the way from 4000BC through to 2050AD, and there are 24 civilisations to choose from, including the likes of the Romans, the Japanese, the Sumerians and my personal favourites, the Spartans. It’s built around a deep system which will see you raising an empire and trying to achieve victory through either establishing military dominance, becoming the ultimate culture, converting everyone to your religion, or launching yourself into space. The Civ series is the daddy of all strategy games – the originator and the trend setter that has only grown over its six mainline iterations.