Thank you Zany for this knowledge im about to receive
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=926983840

**Building order**
1. Is it safe right now and will it be safe for me to build X for the number of turns it takes until it is finished building?
2. Out of the things I am able to build right now, which of them will allow me to DO MORE EARLIER?
3. Which order should I build these things in that will allow me to have all of them the FASTEST?

**Builder first for growth**
The FIRST thing to settling a new city is to make your starting city's population grow. Prioritizing this first will get you to the point of settling a new city that much sooner and give you an advantage later. Making a scout does not help you grow that population. At the start of the game the only thing that you can produce that can directly impact how soon your population will grow is a worker. Builder first is the fastest and safest thing to start with if you have growth in mind. But let's be more specific, BUILDER FIRST is the fastest way to reach having a second city.

**Victory conditions multiplayer**
Domination: Can happen at any time.
Religion: Mid game to late game.
Cultural Victory: Late game.
Science Victory: Late game.

In the hands of skilled veteran players of this game, Domination or "Military" is the key to "surivival" in this game and must be always one of the main concerns. Handling victory through Religion, Culture, or Science are alternative paths to victory that should not disregard Military.

**Value of builders**
The True VALUE of Builders:
Builders start with 3 charges in this game and can instantly spend a charge to build something called a tile improvement. Most tile improvements have to be unlocked through research, but right off the bat you have the ability to make farms.
Each charge on a worker is a permanent addition to your civilization's capability

Finally, every improvement gives half a housing... builders help your HOUSING!

Policies: If you are making multiple Builders for the near future turns and/or have multiple cities building Builders, then it is good to invest in policy to help you make them faster and more efficiently such as Ilkum, or later on, Serfdom which gives newly made builders 2 extra charges. Try to use policies that can help you with your current goals.

**Districts**
Because of the sheer power of districts, the developers of this game limited the amount of districts you can have in the game through population as: you have a base allowance of 1 and one additional for each 3 citizens (population) your city has, where from 1-3 population you can make 2 districts and from 4-6 population you can make 3 districts, and so on.

There are many districts to choose from in this game but what you choose will dictate how you play and how well you can play, so it is important to understand up front that the best district is an Industrial district.
Later, you might consider switching over to a more gold based or faith based economy but from the get go, the one resource that you need the most of and is the most important is production since it is the production that leads to everything else, it is simply the single most important early game resource.

Only use your own early game cities as "production cities". It takes too long to setup when you use conquered cities. The game might already be over by then.
SO, for those cities, with low pop or low production, I consider them "Satelite Cities" because they are what I use to make the "other districts" that are not production focused such as Commercial Districts, Campuses, and Entertainment Districts. Faith districts and Cultural Districts are situational and dependent on whether you are going for a religious victory or Cultural Victory. I wouldn't even bother with making them in Multiplayer. You get culture from population anyway, the more population you have the more culture you generate and that's already enough to progress you along through the cultural policies, and the only "culture building" you really need all game is monuments in all your cities because they are cheap, and have no maintainance cost.

The second most important district in the game is the Commercial District and here's why. Everything you make in this game from districts to Military Units require a gold upkeep. You could say Science is important, but a truly skilled player will know how to use the "Eurekas" to boost their science which is significant enough that you don't have to make campuses your top priority. Also, with enough gold income you can outright BUY a unit which is faster than building one and this mechanic allows for you to have a sort of buffer in response to being attacked by enemies.

So let's break it down. In general, regardless of which civilization you are playing as, you will want to build certain districts in your Main Cities, and certain districts in your Satelites.

Main Cities: Start with Encampment or Industrial district, second district should be Industrial for sure if you don't already have one, or a Commercial district, Third one Campus/Entertainment.

Satelite Cities: Start with Commercial District, and take your pick between Campus and Entertainment depending on your Amenities needs.

The only exceptions to this is when you want to try to focus on a Civ that focuses on a specific win condition.

**Housing and Amentities**
If you have the same population as your housing your growth does not stop as long as you still have excess food. The population will continue to grow beyond your housing limit as long as you have enough food in your city to feed the entire population. However, the population will slow down it's growth as it goes beyond the housing limit. Certain key buildings and districts help with Housing such as Aquaducts, Sewers, and Neighborhoods and it is usually a good idea to build them with the following consideration given for Amenities.

Amenities is the new and improved version of Happiness. It reflects the quality of life of your population. For every 2 population you need 1 Amenity to keep them happy starting at the population of 3. Meaning if you have 1-2 population you don't need amenities to keep the citizens happy. At 3-4 Population you need 1 Amenity, at 5-6 population you need 2 amenities, and at 7-8 population you need 3 amenities.

You can certainly have more amenities than required to give a boost to growth and production as well.

The Amenities come from Luxury Resources that you can get from improving their tiles with the correct improvement. Once you have 1 copy of that luxury resource you gain 1 Amenity to up to 4 of your Cities (unless you are Aztecs, then you get 6 cities worth of it). You don't get more Amenities for extra copies of the same Luxury.

I highly recommend thinking of the game in this way...

0 Luxury: I can afford to have as many cities as I want up to 2 population.
1 Luxury: I can afford to have as many cities as I want up to 2 population, 4 cities can be 4 population.
2 Luxury: I can afford to have as many cities as I want up to 2 population. 4 cities can be 6 population
3 Luxury: I can afford to have as many cities as I want up to 2 population. 4 cities can be 8 population.

In the long run it is always better to allow your population to grow, and so the order of business is usually:

1. Make city
2. Improve tiles around the city while considering where districts will go to get their bonuses.
3. Make districts as the cities grow and produce things out of them if they are not a satellite city.
4. Create more housing and Amenities as population grows accordingly.

**Roads and Trade Routes**
The way it works is every trader you send out will make a trading post in the target city. Each trader has a range of 18 tiles and once they reach a city with a trading post their distance is reset so they can keep going for longer routes. Every time a trader moves through an area they create a road which helps your units move through the area faster.

The roads improve as you progress in eras.

Ancient Roads: Allows units to pass through woods and hills like they are flat terrain but does not increase movement. So instead of a hill or woods costing 2 movement points they only cost 1.

Medieval Roads: Improves the movement speed of the unit moving on the road by 1 tile if you are moving from a tile with a road to another tile with a road (I believe). The cost of moving along a medieval road is 1 movement point.

Industrial Roads: Reduces the movement cost by 25% (kind of weird and awkward but it sometimes allows for one extra tile of movement along the road is what it comes down to depending on how fast the unit is.)

Modern Roads: Reduces the movement cost by 50%. This helps a lot because essentially you have double movement speed on roads... cavalry type units move up to 8 tiles and infantry type units can move up to 4 tiles.

Roads and You:
If you are considering to attack a civilization near you, it may be a good idea to link your city to theirs through a trade route first before you attack so that your army can reach them faster. In terms of also defending yourself from being attacked, since you have limited units and can't always have troops in every city, you can build trade routes between your own cities so that you can move your troops between your cities for faster defense response time.

**Units**
Recon Units:
They are mainly to act as vision units to give you vision of the enemy. A key promotion is Spyglass as it increases the view range. I believe that out of all the classes this is the least useful class in most situations due to their low strength but in the hands of really skillful players they can help with ranged units and siege units do their jobs better by being their spotter. I think they have their place but in general are hard to use to full effect.

Melee Units:
The key understanding of Melee units is to understand that their job is to be on the frontlines and to soak up damage. Their job is to not die, or if they die, to die slowly and buy time for your Ranged Units do to their own damage. They can also do decent damage on their own. In terms of using the Melee Units as your main core units, the melee units will give you the upper hand when taking Cities away from enemy players. Having a lot of melee units will help you achieve this goal, because their skills are all focused around this aspect of the game, they are the units you send in to take a city and conquer it. That said, often people misunderstand this to mean that you just ONLY make Melee Units. That's is a problem we will talk about after I cover all the other CORE UNITS. There are many very excellent promotions for this unit, but the main ones are War Cry, Tortoise, Amphibious, and Elite Guard. All of those are very excellent promotions with Elite Guard giving them a second attack on the same turn which allows them to take a city a lot faster/easier than most units. Civs like Rome and Aztecs have great unique units in the melee class and they show their worth by each being very capable of taking down cities on their own, and with support units they can be unstoppable.

When playing with Melee Units against other unit types, make sure you try to get Tortoise fairly soon, though it is a toss up between War Cry and Tortoise. When engaging against an enemy player with an army, use your Melee Units to force them to fight you on your terms. Melee are slow units and can't fight ranged on open ground, they can also get run down by cavalry without being able to retreat, so when fighting against those compositions you must make sure to push them against impassable terrain, use hills and woods against them, or choose to lay siege to their city and pillage them to force them to come to you. Generally Melee units have the hardiness it takes to continue to survive. You can further enhance this by simply choosing to stand still and fortify until healed. This will heal some HP depending on where they are, and they will also gain some bonus strength +3 for each turn of fortification, up to 2 turns worth.

Anti Cavalry:
Even more than Melee Units they are specialized in "melee combat" in that they are great at defending against anything with a close ranged attack. They can counter Melee units with their promotion Schiltron, they can counter Cavalry inherently and can get another bonus on top of that with the promotion: Echelon. The problem I have with this unit is that it is ironically NOT very survivable, because it is weak to ranged units. Melee units have Tortoise which allows them to survive against ranged attacks and THAT is the key to Melee Unit's survivability where Anti Cavalry often fails. That said if the enemy player is massing up only cavalry, it's best to mix in some Anti Cavalry units into your army. These units are not CORE and are more situational.
If you are fighting off cavalry with anti cavalry, you must take advantage of the fact that they are cheaper to make and make more of them. Anti cavalry excel mostly when they can push cavalry up against something or surround them and that takes numbers. If you ever heard of a "phalanx" used by the Greeks, they would push their enemies and surround them by having a long line of such units to make them hard to flank. Incidentally the Hoplites from Greece are their unique unit in this class.

In general due to their unit positions on the tech tree, Anti-Cavalry units have an awkward time to be effective, but if you time it right, you can be aggressive with them at these awkward times and do "timing pushes" and use them effectively at a time when horsemen have not come on line yet and you already have the numbers advantage by having made enough of them to push into enemy territory. Later in the game this class is more useful as a defensive class to protect your flanks and your cities from aggressive Light and Heavy Cavalry.

Light Cavalry:
If you look closely at this unit type's promotions you will notice that it focuses on mobility, flanking, and generally speaking initiating combat as shock troops. They want to hit fast and hit hard and kill any stragglers.

Heavy Cavalry:
Heavy Cavalry is like a mix between Heavy Cavalry and Melee Units, where they have both the mobility to maneuver AND the durability to smash into enemy cities. They do make a big threat on cities just like Melee units and they are also capable of attacking more than once per turn.

Ranged Units:
Ranged Units are the damage dealers who are glass cannons. They are very vulnerable units but can do a lot of damage to their enemies especially if they hit first and they often do that by being able to shoot from a range of 2, BEFORE the enemy can engage. Cavalry units can deal with Ranged Units really well, especially heavy cavalry, but most Units can deal with them by closing the distance between them. Once Ranged Units can't have the range they need, they become much less effective and are quickly killed. This is why Ranged units are commonly used with other unit types that are more meant for the frontlines, they stand behind Melee Units, and Heavy Cavalry, and do damage to enemy units from the safety of behind their friendly units.

Siege Units:
Siege Units are mainly used like Ranged units except they get more bonuses towards damaging city defenses and they are capable of hitting a city while being outside of the city walls range of fire with their promotion Forward Observers. They are even more vulnerable than Ranged units since a lot of units can specialize in destroying them such as cavalry, but they do have promotions like Crew Weapons to help with defending from attacks and is more suited to fighting a stationary fight near a city. They can't fire after they move however so they need a LOT of support and should always be kept away from danger as much as possible. They are great to have if you use melee units as this slow composition of melee and siege combined makes for a slow but unstoppable force when it pushes into a city.

Support Units:
Out of all the units, the most useful are actually the Support units and not because they can actually fight. None of them can fight on their own, but they help other units and enhance their ability to fight. They also stack on top of friendly units of other types so they don't follow the same rules when it comes to unit stacking on tiles. In the early eras, it can be very important to note that Battering Rams and Siege Towers significantly improves the Melee Units ability to take down a city. It is so effective that if you have both a siege tower and a battering ram next to each other on next to an enemy city and a melee unit on top of each of them, both melee units will be able to attack the city and do FULL DAMAGE to their walls AND the city itself. Often, even if the city has walls and are at full health, just 2 attacks from such a melee army can completely wipe out the city down to virtually no health... if you have a third melee unit next to the city it is almost a guarantee that you take the city unless the city is a really high population city as higher population cities are stronger.

Later eras Support units are able to support all other units better by being able to build roads(engineer), or heal them(medic). This is an often overlooked class, but they are very important because they get around the limit of having one unit per tile and enhances the combat abilities of other friendly units significantly.

Naval Units:
There are many classes of Naval units but usually they are not as relevant because most players play on Pangea maps in Multiplayer. I'm kind of sad this is how the meta is evolving but it does make sense that people don't like it when a player gets to sit on his own continent and build up for free and be untouchable until the other players have navy unlocked to reach them. However if my personal preferences are taken into account, I would prefer continents type maps because Pangea also runs the risk of having one player getting an early lead with taking over an enemy civ and then snowballing out of control by taking over all the other civs on the same pangea continent. Games like that end super quickly and give other players even LESS options to stop such a player. In a Continents game, even if someone did well by attacking and eliminating another player early on on their continent, they only get to have that continent, while the other players are given a chance to get up their armies and navies to be able to deal with this massive player in the lead in the mid game and late game. This also makes Naval units relevant again by forcing there to be a midgame transition to Naval units. Currently with the meta being around mostly Pangea maps and the common opinion that THAT is more balanced, you will likely see that civs with naval combat bonuses are irrelevant or next to worthless, and civs who can attack early and have a strong advantage early militarily will have more power on these pangea maps.

Air Units:
Air units are more like Late Game units as you only get them fairly late. They are hardly ever relevant in the game, and it is possible to do well without ever bothering to make them. Currently I would only consider them as one of the two delivery options for nukes... If you had a strong fleet in the mid game and you have things like battleships and carriers, then you can make bombers on your carriers to drop nukes. If you had a weak navy or didn't have a navy, then late game the better option would be to use the stealthy nuclear submarines to deliver your destructive payloads.

Anti-Air Units:
The ONLY reason to talk about this class is the mobile SAM. Like walls, they are simply, "Get them ASAP". If you ever reach late enough into the game that you can make these Anti-Air units called Mobile SAM, you want them in every "Main production city" to help defend against potential nukes. It's always a surprise to find a nuke being dropped on one of your main cities... just like you can be surprised when you suddenly lose your city early in the game because you didn't build a wall and you get rushed. Just don't let it happen, so there's no need to panic or be surprised! Build Walls! Get Mobile SAMs! It's that simple! Stay safe and use protection :)

**Choosing research**
Because of how research works, you can't skip any of the techs for too long before you are going to have to go back and get them because they will be required for important later techs. In this way you can think of the Tech Tree as all necessary, but the ORDER in which you obtain them is what will significantly influence your game and outcome. This is why the main concern when choosing a tech to research is to focus on what you can apply or use right away because you can argue that you can use ALL the techs in the game and that they all have a purpose, so your job is to choose which of the techs are most useful to you NOW or SOON. The Sooner you can do something using a technology that you unlock the sooner you get VALUE out of it.

Which brings me to the final point. When choosing your research decisions, think more along the lines of "What do I need to research now to help my city grow and develop in the next 10 or 20 turns?" "What military do I need in the next 10 or 20 turns to keep my empire safe, or which do I need to win a war?"

**Policies**
It is important to choose the policies that will help you the most right NOW. Sure later, you might want something to help you make more Units for war, but if right NOW you need to fight off barbarians, then right NOW you need the policy for that more than the policy for war.

I have found that by building a monument in your cities, if you are expanding fairly well and even conquering other cities at a decent pace, that is all the culture you will ever really need to "keep up". Going for a theater district would help but it is totally not necessary in order to keep up with the policies that your empire will need. You produce enough culture from monuments to keep getting you the policies you need in a timely manner.

If you produce a lot more culture than everyone else for example, and you obtain the higher level policies, a lot of the later policies won't actually be helpful to you if you get them sooner. For example, you can get a policy to help you build more Industrial or Modern melee and ranged units. When all you have are Medieval and Renaisance units unlocked through science, that future policy will have no effect on your Empire and having it earlier gives you no VALUE. Staying current and keeping pace with what you need RIGHT NOW is important when it comes to Policies and getting ahead in most cases won't help too much.

There is of course an exception, and that is trade. Trading is trading throughout the game. All policies regarding trade can help with this aspect of the game and by unlocking the later ones sooner if you apply those policies it can help you a great deal.