Gilgamesh Strategies, Build Order, and Technologies Question

Hey everyone, so I’m a huge nerd for mythology and legends and love the tale of Gilgamesh. So naturally when my friend showed me Civ 6 and Gilgamesh was a playable character I just had to buy the game.

Now I haven’t played Civ since Call to Power (a loooong time ago), so I read some guides and there was a ton to get my head around. But I still have a few questions regarding my main man Gilgamesh.

Most guides say something along the lines of “War Cart, War Carts, War Carts, Barbarian Camp, War Carts, kill a city, War Carts….”

I followed this to the letter and crushed Greece very early on netting me Athens as a city. But this is where my first few questions come.

Questions and Answer

• I got a free Settler for killing the capital. Is this normal? Or was there some reason a random settler spawned in Athens for me?
• When do I stop building War Carts? Do I ever stop? Do I need builders to develop my lands, or do I forgot that for more and more carts?

Some Builders will be useful. Ziggurats provide a good source of science, and farms help your cities to grow so they can work more Ziggurats in the future (not to mention improving luxuries to offset war weariness, and creating mines for production). Lots of science will ensure you can upgrade War-Carts to Knights before enemy Horsemen and Swordsmen become too common.

• How can I make Barbarian camps spawn closer to me? Only 2 camps have spawned one nearby since I started, and the rest have been super far away and I discovered them late, meaning they had better units to fight my war carts off with.

Make sure there’s plenty of land near your territory that’s not in your (or any other civ’s) line of sight. Barbarians only spawn where no civ has visibility. Usually snow/tundra areas are good for Barbarians.

• After killing Athens, I found 4 City-States around my continent. Do I want to be suzerain of all of them so I have the levy advantage? Or just a select few to gain their bonuses?

Levying city-state units is mostly useful when the city-state has a decent-sized army near an opponent, considering levied units will revert back to city-state control after a while. Otherwise, look for the key envoy and suzerain bonuses.

• Do I get the envoys by doing the special quests? Or is there a better way for Gilgamesh to get envoys to become Suzarian? Do I want to conquer any instead?

Completing city-state quests is one source of envoys, but it can be relatively difficult to do seeing as it often requires committing a lot of production.

A good culture output will help you accumulate envoys – quite a few civics (e.g. Mysticism) provide them, better governments make you accumulate envoys over time more effectively, and there’s certain policy cards (e.g. Charismatic Leader, Diplomatic League) which help you get them faster.

Usually, conquest of city-states is mostly useful if you don’t need the bonuses but can deny another civ them, you really need an extra city with a somewhat developed infrastructure, or if (with the Rise and Fall expansion) you want to deliberately trigger an emergency against yourself so you can get gold from winning it. Conquering a city-state does mean dedicating resources to that task that you could be using to conquer full civs, so I tend not to do it that much.

• I understand the whole beeline for Stirrups to get knights thing, but what if there’s no Iron nearby? In the tutorial, I locked myself out of war carts by rushing to Knights but not having any iron to build with. Also what do I do after Stirrups? Most guides say to get Stirrups but then don’t mention what comes after. Are there any key early technologies I should pick up too?

Researching Bronze Working reasonably early will show you where iron spots are, giving you time to work out where you need to invade/settle to secure control of it. Alternatively, you can become suzerain over a city-state with a mined iron resource in its limits.

• Finally, any tips, hints, tricks, or beginner knowledge for someone who hasn’t played Civ since Call to Power?

One of the biggest differences from Call to Power is the fact every civ has its own unique strengths. Sumeria’s great at early warfare, England’s good at naval warfare, America’s a late-game cultural powerhouse, and so forth.

Curiously some Call to Power-esque features are making their way to the main series. Civ 6’s Trader units have a lot in common with Call to Power’s Caravans, and the next expansion adds future technologies, pollution and even the risk of sea flooding. No Lawyer unit, though – mercifully.

Сonclusion

I have just a few more follow up questions.

• In the playthroughs from FilthyRobot that I watched, he tends to build early Scouts instead of rushing straight into War Carts. Is there a reason for this? Are scouts better for some reason? As far as I can tell, War Carts are faster and can therefore reveal the map much quicker, right?

Scouts are a fair bit cheaper than War-Carts, so they can reveal more land in the first few turns, and they’re also faster in rough terrain once promoted. Nonetheless, I prefer to go to War-Carts first as they can start handling Barbarian Encampments sooner, and a bigger War-Cart force will help you take more land sooner.

• How do Warmonger penalties work? I understand they become more severe later in the game, and to war as early as possible, but now that I have conquered both Germany and Norway early, I have Victoria and Gandhi knocking on my doors. Victoria saw the end of my war with Norway and denounced me, but Gandhi seems to like me. Is there a way to war without getting these penalties? Or at least a way to recover from the penalties? I feel like my next step is taking England but I don’t want Gandhi to think of me as a warmonger.

Warmonger penalty is a kind of diplomatic modifier that accumulates as you declare war and take cities, and drops if you liberate them. Using a casus belli reduces the warmonger penalties you get, and it appears you get reduced penalties with civs you’re already allied with.

• When I settle a new city (or take one in war) why is everything so slow to build? It takes 22+ turns to make something as simple as a builder! It takes forever to get new cities online.

This is a bit of a problem in Civ 6 generally (the research to production ratio still feels a bit off; I’d prefer it if research was a bit slower), but you can address this by ensuring trade routes start in your weaker cities, and by saving gold to purchase buildings like Water Mills there.

• What is the benefit of not keeping a city in war? Why would I want to raze a city instead?

Keeping cities comes with amenity costs, which could take away yields from more important cities elsewhere. You may also want to raze a weak city so you can reposition it somewhere more useful. I rarely raze cities on the whole, but occasionally there’s a use for it when the city’s very weak.

• How does religion work? I understand science, culture, and war, but I can’t fathom religion. My first game had me almost into space and then Cleopatra stole the game through religious victory (I had no idea she was converting my faith somehow!)

A civ wins a religious victory when half the cities of every civ in the game follows their founded religion. Founding a religion requires generating a Great Prophet (so lots of early Great Prophet Points is useful, or building the Stonehenge wonder, or playing as Arabia). With a religion founded, the main way of spreading it is to spend faith to purchase Missionaries and Apostles, send them to other civs’ lands, and use the “spread religion” function.

There’s a few ways of countering a religious victory:

• Found a religion of your own, build a Temple, buy an Apostle in the city and click “Launch Inquisition”. This will allow you to buy Inquisitors in any city you own with a Temple. Inquisitors can attack enemy religious units or use a charge to eradicate the pressure of enemy religions in your city, but aren’t very strong outside your own borders. When they get injured, you can heal them up at a Holy Site.
• Declaring war on a civ allows you to destroy their religious units with your military units by moving into the same tile and clicking the “condemn heretic” button. Doing this also reduces their religion’s pressure in your nearby cities.
• If you didn’t found your own religion, and don’t want to go to war, try to ensure you have at least two different religions with a majority presence some of your cities (trading with other civs can spread their religion’s presence to you). You can then build some Holy Sites with Temples in those cities, and buy Apostles/Inquisitors. These can fight off units of other religions, or spread whichever faith isn’t currently winning. Of course, this means using your district capacity on Holy Sites you might not otherwise want, so consider the trade-offs carefully.
• Playing on a larger map size usually means the AI won’t win a religious victory as there’s too many other religious opponents (because AIs are all equally-skilled, they’ll struggle to directly beat each other – this is the same reason AI seldom win domination victories).

Original Link – Continuation of discussion