When it comes to settling in Civ 7, it is drastically different from the previous Civ games. One of the key things to note is it doesn't really matter where you settle your capital anymore. Previously, it was very important to make sure you're settling on a hill, making sure that you're getting all that production, but it's not the case here in Civ 7. So one of the key things to note, the differences that we've got here is that you can literally settle anywhere and you're going to be getting pretty much the same yields from that base in your capital.
So it allows you quite a bit of flexibility on where you settle now. Another key difference is that when it comes to the terrain, or specifically the biomes, you'll notice that even though we've got tundra down here, the yields are still pretty decent. And that's comparable to yields that we've got up in the north over here on the grassland, which is uncommon, but hey, it's a welcome change for Civ 7. So let's talk about some of the key things that we're going to be looking for when we settle a city in Civ 7. If we take a look at our settler lens, that'll give us an indication on where fresh water is. Now, sometimes it won't always... be accurate, but generally you can follow the rule.
If it's red, there's no possibility of settling there. It's literally not possible. Yellow is going to be just your sort of middle ground where there's no fresh water, and green is going to be where there's fresh water.
And the reason why you want to settle a freshwater city is because if you don't settle freshwater, it's going to take a hit to your happiness. And happiness, there's two components to it. Essentially, you've got a global component and you've got a local component, but we'll talk more about that later on in the video.
So now that we know that, we want to prioritize a freshwater settlement. Okay, so next up, we need to look at our resources. Some resources are going to be good in the early game. Some resources are not going to be good in the early game. So as an example, we've got 20% gold towards purchasing units.
This is not particularly good right now, but you want to know what is very good right now? Plus two food and plus two production. This is an incredibly good tile. And because of that, we want to prioritize getting over to it as close as we possibly can without...
without breaking the bank when it comes to our movement. So if we take a look at our settler lens, we'll see that there's a couple of options. So we've got one option here, we've got one option here, and we've also got an option over here.
The trouble is if we try and move over here, we're going to need to go one, two, and then three, and it's not going to be as efficient because we'll need to essentially spend an extra turn in the early game and we're not getting as close. So this definitely looks like a very strong spot for us in the early game. On top of that, we've got the gypsum, which is nearby, and there's nothing that stops us from settling a city down here a little bit later on if we want to pick up these resources, because we've got iron, which is going to be imperative, because if we take a look at our civilization, and we take a look, we've got a unique unit called the hoplite, and that is plus two combat strength if adjacent to another hoplite.
And we want to make sure that we've got this iron, because that's going to give us an extra three now all of a sudden. So this is going to be important for us to pick up, but not super important right this second. And even if we did settle a city where we could reach this, I don't think that we'd actually be going after this tile with our main capital, just because the yields on it aren't what we need right now.
What we need is we need growth. And that's going to be our primary focus in the early game. So further to this cotton that I see, and further to this gypsum that I see, I also see a beautiful navigable river.
And these things are incredible when it comes to growing. I mean, typically you're going to have quite a few tiles. So the way that this one's looking kind of looks like it snakes around like this.
So moving over towards this grassland could be absolutely amazing for us here. Because if we're able to move to this grassland tile, it means that not only do we get the cotton early on, not only can we expand to the gypsum, which is going to give us... And keep in mind, these are bonuses in addition to the yields that you see on these tiles. So we see plus one food, plus one gold, plus one happiness. Throw on the two food, throw on the two production.
And then for the gypsum, it's the same. Plus two production on top of that science, on top of that production. So it is a really, really nice opening to have like this. So the main focus would be moving in over onto this grassland and taking our expansion here.
But there's a couple of other factors that we need to consider. And that is your leader bias. So some civilizations or some leaders in particular have leader biases. And for Catherine, she's got a very specific leader bias.
If we take a look at. Her bonus is cities settled in Tundra gain science equal to 25% of their culture per term. Now, because we know that, it means that we want to settle in Tundra. It doesn't necessarily mean we settle only cities in Tundra, but it means that we want to prioritize cities in Tundra. And if we had an opportunity to settle a city in Tundra versus in grassland, then we'd want to try and take that opportunity if it was of equal value.
So if... we know that now and we know that this city here is grassland and this one would be tundra then it would mean that we would want to prioritize this position over the grassland position and if we made that mistake if we settled it in the grassland it would mean that we'd be missing out on that 25 extra i mean it's it's really quite literally 25 extra science so it can definitely add up uh so that is a huge consideration to make but in addition to that not only are there civilization or leader bonuses there are civilization bonuses now other leaders so if we take a look at trung track she's got a bonus for tropical cities so this is another thing that you want to be aware of but as an example if we take a look at Egypt. Egypt also has plus one production on Navigable Rivers.
So moving away from Navigable Rivers could be quite punishing if you were playing as the Egyptians. So now that we've talked about resources, we've talked about the priority resources, let's talk about a couple of different ways that you can abuse the start in the early game or the way that you can sort of bridge the gap here. Because I want to get onto this cotton as quickly as I possibly can. Ideally, I'd like to be on this tile here. I can't.
I'm going to go on this one. So let's talk about how we might actually get there. quickly as possible or some mechanics that we can use to shuffle around uh citizens so if we come through here i think i i think i just actually wasted a turn right there my bad uh if we come through here we're going to open up with the scout which is pretty standard uh we'll we'll jump in we'll take this we'll we'll just well it's tempted tempting to take the damage so our first expansion we want to be taking this gypsum but we want to be moving out towards the cotton So what we'll do is we'll come out, jump on the farm, we'll throw it down, we'll just grab just a couple of random things, I'm just going to throw another scout in the queue, and we're going to just end turn a whole bunch of times here.
I'm not going to move my scout, I'm not too fussed about it. We're going to wait for our citizen to come out, and then we're going to be able to take the cotton. But then what we can do is we can actually shuffle around our citizens.
So now that we've picked up this early cotton, what we can do is take a look at our resources, you'll see that it's in here, and if that wasn't in here, you can see the difference in resources. that that will make. So it's an extra two production, extra two food, which is lovely. So what we can do, even though we've got the scout in queue right now, is we can take this and we can grab a granary, put the granary down on this farm tile, right here where there's a farm, and move the granary to the top.
top of the queue and what that's going to do is that it's going to evict that citizen and what we're going to if you want to be really cheeky we can actually put the scout back does it doesn't make a difference it just means it will complete our scout now but that citizen is now homeless it needs a new home and that gypsum tile that we want to work it's looking very very juicy so what we can do is dive down now we can take the gypsum and if we take a look at our resource allocation you'll see that we've got the gypsum in there and just because of that we go from a 6-6 opening capital to a 8-10 opening capital it means that you've got a huge amount more production, a huge amount more food, and taking advantage of little techniques like this allow you to get ahead quite far in the early game just by using the resources that are available to you. So when you're settling it becomes imperative that you consider these things, consider leap frogging because this is what I call it, I call this leapfrogging a citizen out. I mean some people might even call it eviction, but this is one of the ways that we look to try and bridge that gap in the early game and make sure that uh that our starts are as successful as possible so let's take a look at another start so keep in mind that every single uh every single leader has got different biases every single civilization has got different biases and that means because of that your starts are going to require different considerations but here we're starting with napoleon on the persian empire and napoleon on the persian empire doesn't really have any leader or or um or you civilization biases in the sense that there's something that you need to consider. You've got biases in your starting location. The Persian Empire will start typically in the desert, and that's exactly what we see here.
So once again, we start off and immediately we're drawn towards the dates in the north. And the reason why is because of that extra plus two food that they've got. So an extra plus two food is going to make all the difference in a capital like this.
If we take a look at the starting tiles, it's not pretty. It's not pretty. It's a whole bunch of production and not a lot of food. But there are some silver linings, maybe some marble linings, depending on how you're feeling. So one thing to note is we've got a lot of pastures.
We've got two pastures, which is great. These don't look... good right now, but once we've got edible husbandry, these are going to look incredible.
On top of that, with the dates here, we want to try and get out to this as quickly as we possibly can, but the trouble that we're going to have is there's not really a good tile for it. We could move here and then kind of go over the sheep and then onto the dates, but there's no fresh water here. The other option that we could look to try and take is this flat desert tile, but we see that it's vegetated and that means if we move to the tile it's going to end our turn and we ideally want to put our city down on the very first turn because of how much our civilization generates culture and science it it is a significant burden to not be putting that that that city down the sooner you get started the better it goes so we've got a couple of options when it comes to fresh water we could definitely settle in place we've also got this option here these are the main ones that i'm looking at and keep in mind like the previous spawn we don't need to take the marble right now if we were to prioritize prioritize these with regard to their urgency.
You would probably give the dates the most urgent because they've got the plus two food and the plus two happiness. Then you would look at going into the both of the sheep, which are very nice. And then finally, you would look at picking up the marble. And keep in mind with these marbles, each one that you pick up is an extra 10%. So by having both of these, it will be a plus 20% bonus.
But I'm definitely of the mindset that these are not the priority. We could look to pick them up if our city grows out in that direction. and we just naturally go, oh, that's a pretty good ...file yield, but we don't want to focus these too much in the early game.
The main focus shall be on these. So the one thing that is drawing me in here is, once again, that prospect of leapfrogging. So I'm thinking what we can do is we can settle our city in place.
We're going to pick up fresh water by doing that. We'll get the scout out like we always do. And I'm not going to send this scout in any direction.
I'm just going to throw him on lookout. He'll just sit here guarding us up. And because I've got these two wool tiles or these two sheep tiles here, I'm going to go straight into animal husbandry because that's going to give me plus one food on my pastures, which means more growth. I've also got access to the granary. I'm not going to put that down.
I'm going to get another scout out. That's really important. I need to get those scouts out early.
So we've got a number of options when it comes to our first grow. Even if this tile here was like a single production, the same way that this is, we would still want to grow to this tile just because it opens up a lot of options for us in the early game when it comes to... this expansion. So we'll take this first tile, and you can see we are quickly growing towards our second citizen, and once again, we're going to look to utilize the leapfrog mechanic.
So we're going to grow our... to the wolf. That's going to pick that up and we want to get out here.
So what we'll do is we'll throw down our granary and that's going to evict our citizen and we will throw him into the dates and that is going to give us those extra dates. So we've got a pretty solid capital right here, going from six and eight up to eight and ten. So once again, a really nice and you can see that we've got the ability to grow out here and I'll show you another cool little trick.
So we'll finish off this granary here and we'll just slowly sit here. I'm going to move these guys out. Now keep in mind, normally you would be searching around the map, but just for the purpose of this video, we're going to keep them nice and close. Apologies if you can hear my son upstairs jumping.
So we've now finished our animal husbandry. That means that we pick up an extra tile over here on our pasture, which is absolutely lovely. Now keep in mind that when we complete the granary, if we take a look at the granary in here, it's going to provide us bonuses.
So plus one food on farms, pastures, plantations. So that's going to further increase that. So we don't always want to rush a grenary.
It will depend on the circumstances of your start. But typically, a grenary is quite a strong investment in the early game. So now that we're closing in on that fourth, that citizen, what we're going to do once again is we're going to compare these two tiles. And we're going to say, okay, we've got rough desert versus flat desert.
I really like this tile. But you know what I like even more? I like this pasture even more. So what I'm going to do is instead of growing to this tile, I'm going to grow here.
And then what I'm going to do is I'm going to put down my saw pit, but you're going to see that I have a problem. And this is something that occurs quite often and a mistake that you will often make. So be very cautious with this.
I want to get out to this pasture. I'm going to put the saw pit down. I'm going to do the thing that I want to leapfrog. I want to leapfrog this citizen. I put down the saw pit and now, oh, I can't put the pasture down.
Now, why is that? I can't put the pasture down because I am still constructing the saw pit. Now, the reason why we could do it here is because we had the connection in between. So we had the pasture in between the city center.
And that allowed us, when we put the granary out here and we evicted the citizen, we still had this position out here that we could expand upon. And so because of that now, we're going to have to wait for this citizen to, or for this... uh for this saw pit to finish completion before we can take this and there was no real option with regard to how we did this and now because of that it means that we are going to have to work this tile if we want to grow out towards this this area otherwise we would just have to wait for our next growth and we could have thrown it i don't know we could have thrown it out over here in the oasis so that's this start let's take a look at a third start we're going to be looking at a benjamin franklin start and this start is a little bit more about gambles when it comes to seven You've got the ability to make gambles.
I'm going to try and avoid talking while our lovely narrator is talking. So, here is a star that is an absolute gamble. Where do you go? Do you take your first... Or do you sit here and go, okay, I'm going to take these three tiles.
What have I got? I've got silver, not that important. I've got wine. It's pretty good yields that you get from the wine, because you get plus two happiness in the capital, and 10%... culture when in a celebration.
I think that's plus two happiness in the capital, full stop, 10% culture when in a celebration. I think that's what that is. And then we've got, once again, our iron that's here.
So all of these tiles are pretty low priority, right? But the one big one is going to be our cotton. So you'd look at this and you might be thinking, okay, do I make the gamble? Because technically I've got three starting moves with my citizen or my founder.
And if we take a look here, you'll see that we know that there is no more. We know that there is no freshwater over here. So it means that even if we were to make a move over to here, we're kind of hoping that there's freshwater on this tile, and you can already see from through the fog of war, there's not, or at least there appears not to be. So that is one thing to note. But essentially, we can make the decision, do we stay here in place on the freshwater tile?
Because we've only got two options, right? We've got one of these two options that we can look to take advantage of, or we can gamble. So let's do it. We're going to gamble.
We're going to come out here. We want that cotton real bad. So we're going to come dive out here, and we're going to hope that there's fresh water on the other side and have a look at that. We have got ourselves now.
Keep in mind, with the- with fresh water the way that it works. If it's a minor river, you need to settle on it. If it's a major river or a navigable river, then you can settle adjacent to it.
So if we have a look here, we need to settle on that. And that just goes to show you can't trust the fog of war. Sometimes it might show you something that you think is going to be the way, but it is not what it seems.
So once again, we'll go... So we've gone through one turn. Now we're going to have to go to a second turn to get over here and have a look at that. We found ourselves a little bit of ocean.
What do we reveal? We actually reveal... A really nice capital. This is a super duper nice capital.
Cotton immediately next to it. We've got the dyes for the extra happiness. We've also got the ivory here.
And of course, we've got this lovely flat desert, uh, minor river as well. So a lot of growth potential. We've also got a lot of production here. This is a great capital, but it was a gamble. And you've got to be careful with a gamble because often when you gamble, things don't go well.
Uh, so... It is definitely something that you have to be careful of in this circumstance. You know, if I can have my time again, you know exactly what I'd be doing.
I'd be planning here. I'd take this citizen spot. My second growth would be out here. I'd put my grenary on this tile and then I would jump out to the cotton and then I would look to grow back in from there. That's how I would do it again this time.
Now, another thing to note, as you'll see, is that while we've been moving, and this is something that I sort of alluded to earlier, we've still been growing. We're at three population right now. And that's because during that time, we've been... We've been growing our capital for some reason. That's the way that they've worked it just to basically make it so that you can go for a little bit of a walk if you want to go for a bit of a walk.
So we'll start off by going into the cotton. We could look to come out over onto the ivory. It's not a huge bonus.
So we're basically just judging by the yields and the potential growth factor after that. Realistically, what I think is that we want to try and take advantage of the water here. So instead of going onto this... tile here we're just going to look to try and take this and we'll put down a key in a little bit and we will look to expand out over onto the dies and that's going to be our start from there so overall when it comes to uh when it comes to settling in civ 7 you've got a lot of options when realistically it might not seem that way because when it comes to where you put down your capital you're always going to be getting these five food five production five happiness But there are still a lot of decisions that need to be made behind the scenes. Hopefully you've enjoyed this look.
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