HPR4770: Playing Civilization VI Part 3

Civilization VI made major revisions to the Trade system, totally changed how Roads are made, and created an entirely new mechanism around Civics. You need to adapt your play style to these new systems, as we explain.

Playing Civilization VI, Part 3

Trade and Roads

The next major system to be upgraded is the Trade system. And this is an important system to master since it is the major way of obtaining gold in the game. If you neglect Trade, you will be in continual financial difficulty, but use it wisely and you can have all gold you need, and then some. I’ve had games where I am bringing in as much as 900 gold per turn! And with a healthy treasury you can buy buildings and military units as needed, plus have all the gold needed for maintenance and upkeep. The other reason to master this system is that in Civ VI workers (now called Builders) do not build roads. Instead, roads are created by your Trade units when they travel between cities. This is a major change in the game dynamic.

Sometimes you need to send a trade unit to a city purely for the road it creates. Within your Empire you might send a Trade unit between two of your cities just to get the road. And you can send one to the city of another Civ to build the road, and then use the road for your military to invade! One thing to watch out for is that when you are looking at setting up a Trade Route, the game interface shows you the path your trader will take, and if you watch closely you might be able to send a trader to a foreign city but have it go through one of your own cities. So you can get a road connecting two of your own cities as part of a Trade Route that goes to a foreign city and brings in Gold. The one exception to the rule on roads from Trade is that later in the game when you discover Steam Power you can use Military Engineers to build Railroads. This does not use a charge from the Military Engineer, but does use one Iron and one Coal, which adds to your CO2 emissions. You would not want to overbuild Railroads, but if you are aiming for a Domination victory you will want to get the new units you build to front quickly, and there is no better way to do that than a good Railroad system.

But the primary reason to build Trade units to set up Trade Routes to bring in Gold (primarily), and perhaps other resources as well. You begin when you discover the Civic ForeignTrade, which gives you the capability of having exactly 1 Trade Route. You can gain the capacity for additional routes in