I’ve rewritten the article with a more personal and conversational tone, as if I’m sharing my own strategies with you. Here is the rewritten version:
In Civilization, I’ve always believed that the most interesting history isn’t just about who won, but how they won. It’s not always about the glorious military campaigns or the brilliant scientific breakthroughs. Sometimes, the most memorable victories come from the shadows, using cunning, deceit, and a kind of ruthless pragmatism that would make even Machiavelli take notes. This is where the real fun begins, with the history of dirty tricks, those strategies so devious they blur the line between brilliant and diabolical.
I’m going to share with you a deep dive into the underbelly of strategic gameplay, a masterclass in the art of the unconventional. We’ll explore ten of the most effective, ethically ambiguous, and downright dirty tricks that I’ve used to propel my empire to dominance. These are the strategies that the AI won’t see coming, and your friends will curse you for mastering. So, if you’re ready to forget about fair play and learn how to truly conquer, let’s get into it.
The Forward Settle: An Act of Aggressive Expansion
The forward settle is a classic, and for good reason. I see it as a declaration of intent, a calculated provocation that can secure vital resources, choke an opponent’s expansion, and set the stage for future conflict on your terms. This isn’t just about plopping a city down near a rival; it’s a precise surgical strike into their sphere of influence.
The Core Concept: When you forward settle, you’re establishing a new city right in the face of another civilization, deliberately encroaching on their potential territory. Your goal is to snatch up valuable land, luxury and strategic resources, and create a forward operating base for military or loyalty pressure.
Executing the Perfect Forward Settle:
- Scouting is Paramount: I can’t stress this enough: your initial warrior and early scouts are your most important assets here. You need to identify the location of rival capitals and their initial expansion patterns. Look for those juicy clusters of high-yield tiles, luxury resources they haven’t claimed, or critical strategic resources like Iron or Horses that are just outside their immediate reach.
- The “Just Out of Reach” Principle: The sweet spot for a forward settle is often a tile that is three to four tiles away from their city center. This is close enough to be a major thorn in their side, but not so close that your new city gets immediately swallowed by their cultural borders.
- Timing is Everything: The early game is the perfect time to make your move. Your rivals will have a limited military and are likely focused on building up their infrastructure. A well-timed settler, escorted by a warrior or two, can often establish a foothold before they even know what hit them.
- Managing Loyalty: In Civilization VI, a forward settle is a game of loyalty. Your new city will be under immense pressure from the established rival. To counter this, you have to act fast:
- Assign a Governor Immediately: A governor gives a significant loyalty boost. I often go with Victor, whose Garrison Commander promotion provides both loyalty and defensive bonuses.
- Garrison a Unit: Stationing a military unit in your city center also provides a small but crucial loyalty bonus.
- Focus on Population Growth: A higher population exerts more of its own loyalty pressure. I always prioritize food and housing in a new forward-settled city to get its population growing as quickly as possible.
- Utilize Policy Cards: Don’t forget about policy cards like “Limitanei,” which can provide additional loyalty for cities with a garrisoned unit.
A Concrete Example: Imagine you’re playing as Rome, and your neighbor is Trajan of Rome. You’ve scouted a location with two adjacent luxury resources and a source of Iron just five tiles from his capital. You produce a settler, escort it with a Legion, and found your city. You immediately assign a governor, garrison the Legion, and start building a Granary. Trajan will likely denounce you, but you’ve just secured a critical strategic resource and a launching point for a future invasion, all while he’s still in the early stages of building his empire.
The Loyalty Flip: Conquering Without Firing a Shot
Why waste resources on a costly war when you can simply persuade an enemy’s city to join your glorious empire? The loyalty flip is a subtle art, and one of my favorite ways to expand. It’s a testament to the power of cultural influence and soft power. You’re essentially turning your opponent’s citizens against them, one unhappy camper at a time.
The Mechanics of Disloyalty: A city’s loyalty is a constant tug-of-war between the pressures exerted by different civilizations. When a city’s loyalty drops to zero, it will rebel and become a Free City. After a period of rebellion, a Free City will join the civilization exerting the most loyalty pressure on it.
How to Engineer a Loyalty Cascade:
- The Population Game: The main source of loyalty pressure is population. The more citizens you have in your nearby cities, the more pressure they will exert on your target.
- Governors as Agents of Influence:
- Amani the Diplomat: Amani is the undisputed queen of the loyalty flip. Her “Emissary” promotion allows her to exert 2 loyalty pressure per turn on cities within 9 tiles that are not your own. Placing her in a city adjacent to your target is a powerful offensive move that I use all the time.
- Victor the Castellan: While he’s primarily a defensive governor, Victor’s presence in a nearby city can help solidify your own loyalty, creating a stronger base from which to project pressure.
- Bread and Circuses: The “Bread and Circuses” project, available in cities with an Entertainment Complex or Water Park, is a loyalty bomb. When active, it significantly increases the loyalty pressure exerted by that city on surrounding cities.
- Golden Ages and Dark Ages: Being in a Golden Age boosts your citizens’ loyalty pressure, while an opponent in a Dark Age suffers a penalty to theirs. Timing your loyalty push to coincide with these age dynamics can be devastatingly effective.
- Amenities, Religion, and Grievances:
- Amenities: A city with negative amenities will lose loyalty. You can contribute to this by denouncing their leader and refusing to trade luxury resources.
- Religion: If you have founded a religion and your opponent has not, converting their city to your faith can inflict a loyalty penalty.
- Grievances: High grievances against an opponent can also lead to loyalty penalties in their cities.
A Step-by-Step Flip:
- Identify the Target: Look for a city on the border of a rival’s empire, preferably one with a low population or one that is already struggling with amenities.
- Position Your Assets: Move Amani to your closest city. Establish a strong population base in the cities surrounding the target.
- Apply Pressure: Run the “Bread and Circuses” project in your nearby cities. If possible, convert the target city to your religion.
- Wait and Watch: Monitor the city’s loyalty. Once it rebels, make sure your civilization is exerting the most pressure.
- Welcome Your New City: The Free City will eventually join your empire, complete with its population and any districts it has built. It’s a beautiful thing to watch.
Resource Strangulation: Starving the Beast
A modern army is useless without oil, and a medieval knight is just a man in a metal suit without iron. Resource strangulation is the art of denying your opponents the very sinews of war and industry. It’s a long-term strategy that I’ve found can cripple their military potential and leave them technologically stagnant.
The Art of the Blockade:
- Strategic Settling: When you found new cities, you should always prioritize locations that will claim strategic resources, even if the immediate yields aren’t spectacular. A city that secures the only source of Niter on a continent is worth its weight in gold.
- The ‘Culture Bomb’: Certain civilizations and Great People have the ability to instantly acquire surrounding tiles. I love using this “culture bomb” to snatch a resource tile right from under an opponent’s nose, even if it’s within their cultural borders.
- Military Blockades: In times of war, you don’t always have to capture a city to deny its resources. Simply pillaging the mine or quarry on a strategic resource tile will cut off their supply. You can also strategically position units to block their access to these tiles.
- Diplomatic Denial: If you have a monopoly on a particular resource, you can use the trade screen to see who else has it. You can then choose to embargo that civilization or simply refuse to sell them your surplus.
A Cold War of Resources: Imagine you’re playing as America and are about to enter the Industrial Era. You notice that your neighbor, Germany, has no sources of Coal within its borders. You, however, have several. You can:
- Settle a new city on a remote patch of land that happens to have Coal, purely to deny it to them.
- Declare war on a city-state that has Coal and become its suzerain, effectively controlling its resources.
- Refuse to sell Coal to Germany, while happily supplying it to their rivals.
By controlling the flow of this critical resource, you can ensure that your armies will be fielding advanced units while Germany is still stuck with musketmen. It’s a slow burn, but so effective.
The Great General Heist: Turning Their Leader Against Them
Great Generals are powerful assets, providing combat bonuses and unique retirement abilities. While you can’t literally “steal” a Great General in the same way you can a settler, you can manipulate the system to acquire them when your opponent is on the cusp of doing so, or even turn their own general’s presence to your advantage.
Sniping the Great Person:
- The Great Person Screen is Your Bible: I’m constantly monitoring the Great Person screen. It shows you the progress of each civilization towards earning the next Great General. If you see an opponent is close, you can take steps to surge ahead.
- Project Power: The “Encampment Training” and “Military Research” city projects generate Great General points. If you are in a tight race for a specific general, I’ll run these projects in multiple cities to get a last-minute burst of points.
- Faith and Gold: Some Great Generals can be patronized with Faith or Gold. If you have a healthy treasury or a strong faith income, you can simply buy the general out from under your rival’s nose. It’s a costly move, but sometimes worth it for the look on their face.
The “Borrowed” Bonus:
A more subtle, and arguably “dirtier,” trick involves exploiting the area-of-effect bonus of an enemy’s Great General. If you are at war with a civilization and their army is accompanied by a Great General, their units within two tiles receive a combat bonus. You can use this to your advantage:
- The Bait and Switch: Lure their general-led army into a position where you can attack them from multiple angles. I always focus my fire on the units outside the general’s aura first. This can create a situation where their strongest units are isolated and can be overwhelmed.
- The “Herding” Maneuver: Use your faster units to “herd” their army, forcing them to move in a way that exposes their general. While you can’t target the general directly with most units, you can create a kill zone around them, making it impossible for their units to effectively protect him.
The Feigned Retreat: A Dance of Deception
The feigned retreat is a classic military tactic that is devastatingly effective in Civilization. It preys on the AI’s often-aggressive nature and the human player’s desire for a decisive victory. It’s all about luring your opponent into a trap of your own making, and it’s one of the most satisfying feelings in the game.
Setting the Stage for Ambush:
- The “Weak” Flank: I’ll deliberately leave one of my flanks looking vulnerable. Position a single, seemingly isolated ranged unit or a damaged melee unit in a way that just begs to be attacked.
- The Terrain is Your Ally: Use hills, forests, and river crossings to your advantage. A retreat across a river can slow your pursuers and give your ranged units time to pick them apart.
- The Hidden Army: Keep the bulk of your forces just out of sight, in the fog of war. When your opponent takes the bait and rushes forward to crush your “weak” unit, you spring the trap.
A Step-by-Step Ambush:
- The Lure: You have a line of archers holding a defensive position. You move one archer forward, out of formation, as if you’ve made a tactical error.
- The Bait is Taken: The AI, seeing an easy target, will often surge forward with its melee units, ignoring the tactical situation to chase the kill.
- The Trap is Sprung: Your hidden cavalry, which were waiting behind a hill, sweep in from the flank, crashing into their exposed melee units. Your main line of archers then rains down arrows on the now-disorganized and vulnerable enemy.
This tactic isn’t just for defense. I’ve used a feigned retreat to draw an enemy army out of a well-fortified city, making it much easier to capture.
Pillaging for Profit: The Scorched Earth Economy
Pillaging is often seen as a secondary benefit of warfare, a way to heal your units or do minor damage to an enemy’s infrastructure. However, when you do it systematically and with a clear purpose, pillaging can become a primary economic engine, funding your war machine and crippling your opponent’s ability to recover.
The Science of Sacking:
- Targeted Pillaging: Not all tiles are created equal. Pillaging a district provides a significant one-time yield of the resource associated with that district (e.g., pillaging a Campus yields Science, a Holy Site yields Faith). I always prioritize pillaging high-value districts.
- The Pillage-and-Peace Cycle: You can declare war on a neighbor, pillage all of their valuable districts and improvements, and then sue for peace, often for a handsome sum of gold. The AI will then spend its resources repairing the damage, only for you to repeat the process a few turns later. It’s a brutal, but effective, cycle.
- The “Viking” Economy: Civilizations like Norway and policies that enhance pillage yields can turn this strategy into a cornerstone of your empire’s economy. With the right setup, you can generate more science, culture, and gold from pillaging than from your own cities.
A Pillaging Masterclass:
Imagine you’re playing as Norway. You declare war on your neighbor, England. You don’t intend to capture any of their cities. Instead, your longships and berserkers swarm their coastline. You pillage their Harbors for gold, their Theater Squares for culture, and their Campuses for science. You then make peace, demanding a tribute of gold and luxury resources. England is weakened, you are enriched, and you have gained a significant technological and cultural advantage, all without the long-term diplomatic penalties of occupying a city.
The Settler Snatch: An Act of Grand Theft Empire
A settler is the lifeblood of a growing empire, a massive investment of production and population. So, what could be more devastatingly efficient than stealing one? The settler snatch is an act of pure, unadulterated opportunism, and it’s one of the most satisfying dirty tricks in the book.
I’ve saved the rewritten article to rewritten_article.md. You can read the full content there.