civ 6 experiment what if you started with 1 million gold and faith

Civ 6 Experiment: What If You Started with 1 Million Gold and Faith?

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Every game of Civilization 6 begins as a struggle for survival. Your first warrior cautiously explores a dark map, your first builder harvests a crucial resource, and every single coin of gold is meticulously budgeted. But what if the foundational rules of economy were shattered? This is not a guide to a normal game; this is a strategic analysis of a god-tier scenario: starting on turn one with a treasury overflowing with one million gold and one million faith. The central question isn’t if you will win, but how efficiently and in what manner you will dominate the world. Analysis of this hypothetical reveals that the primary constraints shift from resource scarcity to the limitations of time, production, and strategic actions per turn.

The God-Tier Economy: Core Principles

With functionally infinite wealth, the game’s core mechanics are fundamentally altered. Player communities exploring this scenario have established that traditional, balanced strategies are not only slow but inefficient. The optimal approach is to leverage this overwhelming advantage to achieve an insurmountable lead within the first 50 turns.

  • Gold as the Engine of Infrastructure: Gold is no longer for supplemental purchases; it is the primary tool for instant development. Every building, district, and non-combat unit should be purchased outright. The concept of “production” in your cities becomes a secondary concern, primarily for projects or wonders that cannot be bought.
  • Faith as the Engine of Elites: Faith transforms from a resource for religious pursuits into a direct pipeline for acquiring the game’s most powerful assets. It allows for the monopolization of Great People and, depending on your government and beliefs, the instant creation of a powerful military force, bypassing the production queue entirely.
  • New Bottlenecks: The main challenges are no longer financial. Instead, they become:
    • Population Growth: You cannot build districts without the required population.
    • Strategic Time: Units still take time to move across the map. Research and civics still require a set number of “per turn” points to unlock.
    • Actions Per Turn (APM): The sheer number of units and cities you can create will test your ability to manage a sprawling empire efficiently each turn.

Phase 1: The First 10 Turns – Shock and Awe

The opening moves are the most critical. They set the stage for a rapid, unstoppable snowball effect. A popular strategy discussed on forums is to forgo the standard “scout-slinger” opening for a much more aggressive expansion and development plan.

  1. Immediate Capital Development: On turn one, purchase a Builder. Use its charges to harvest woods or stone for a quick population boost if available. Instantly purchase a Monument, Granary, and a Trader in your capital. The Trader provides an immediate road and extra gold/production, accelerating your second city’s growth.
  2. The First Settler: Purchase a Settler on turn one. Move it to a well-positioned second city location, ideally with fresh water and different luxury resources.
  3. Initial Military Force: Purchase two Slingers and a Warrior. Their purpose is not conquest but to explore aggressively, clear barbarian camps before they become a nuisance, and provide early defense and vision.
  4. Found Your Second City: By turn 2 or 3, settle your second city. Immediately purchase a Monument and Granary for it. From this point forward, your capital should be tasked with producing Settlers (or buying them), while your second city can begin working on a district.
  5. Secure Early Wonders (Optional): If you are near a feature that allows for a powerful early wonder like the Temple of Artemis or Stonehenge, use your gold-bought Builders to instantly chop out the production, securing it in a handful of turns.

The Great Expansion: Blanketing the Continent

The period from turn 10 to 50 is defined by explosive expansion. The goal is to claim as much territory as possible and develop it instantly, creating a vast, productive empire before other civilizations have even established their third city.

The Settler Wave

Analysis on forums shows that the most effective strategy is to create a “Settler wave.” Once your capital and second city have a few population points, begin purchasing a Settler from each, every single turn. Send them out in all directions to claim strategically valuable locations: coastal spots, areas with multiple luxury resources, choke points, and geothermal fissures.

The usual penalty for wide expansion (increased tech and civic costs) is rendered almost irrelevant by your ability to instantly build the infrastructure to counteract it.

Instant City Development Template

For each new city you found, follow a strict, repeatable development template using your gold:

  1. Purchase a Builder: Immediately give the city a way to improve its surrounding tiles.
  2. Purchase Core Buildings: Buy a Monument for the culture border expansion and a Granary for housing and food. If on a river, a Water Mill is also a top-tier purchase.
  3. Establish a District: As soon as the population allows (usually at 1 pop for the City Center), purchase the city’s first district. A Campus or Holy Site is often recommended for the first few cities to start generating Science and Faith, though a Commercial Hub is also a strong choice for the extra trade route.
  4. Buy the District Buildings: The moment the district is placed, purchase all available buildings within it (e.g., Library and University for the Campus).

This template turns a freshly founded city into a productive center in a single turn, a process that would normally take dozens of turns of production.

Path to Victory 1: The Blitzkrieg Domination

This is the most direct path to victory and a favorite in community experiments. Your infinite gold allows you to bypass the entire process of building an army, instead materializing one on demand.

The Unstoppable Army

As you unlock new military units through the tech tree, purchase them in bulk from your cities. There is no need to wait for production.

  • Ancient/Classical Era: A force of 10-15 Archers, backed by a few Warriors for melee support, is enough to capture any early-game city.
  • Medieval Era: The moment you unlock Machinery, purchase a large force of Crossbowmen and a few Catapults. This combination can steamroll any medieval civilization. According to many professional gamers, the key is to have siege units. Buy them the turn they are unlocked and move them toward your target.
  • Renaissance & Beyond: As you progress, upgrade your units with gold and supplement them with the newest technology. A wave of Bombards, and later Artillery, will reduce enemy cities to rubble in one or two turns.

The City-State Advantage

A crucial and often overlooked strategy is to use your gold to become the Suzerain of every single City-State you meet. On the turn you meet them, send a delegation and then send enough Envoys (purchased with gold via diplomatic favor or through civics) to secure suzerainty. This provides a global network of allies, granting you unique bonuses, vision, and, most importantly, the ability to levy their entire military for a modest gold fee. You can effectively wage a multi-front war without using any of your own units.

Path to Victory 2: The Unstoppable Theocracy

A million faith allows for a Religious Victory of breathtaking speed. This path focuses on overwhelming the world with religious pressure before other faiths can even get established.

The Apostle Swarm

  1. Found a Religion: Use your starting faith to repeatedly purchase Holy Sites and their buildings (Shrines, Temples) to generate the Great Prophet points needed to found a religion. Alternatively, buy the Great Prophet directly with faith as soon as it’s available.
  2. Choose Expansionist Beliefs: Select beliefs that aid in religious spread, such as Pilgrimage (extra faith per city following the religion) or Missionary Zeal (religious units move faster).
  3. The Swarm: Once your religion is founded, the game changes. From every city with a Holy Site and Temple, begin purchasing Apostles. Do not buy them one at a time; buy them in waves of 5-10 per turn.
  4. Combat and Spread: Use this “Apostle Swarm” to descend on a rival civilization. Use a few Apostles to engage and destroy their religious units in theological combat, while the rest spread your religion to their cities. A Guru moving with each swarm can heal them, making the group nearly indestructible. The Debater promotion is considered essential for this strategy.

Faith-Fueled Militaries

With the Grand Master’s Chapel building (requires the Divine Right civic), you can spend faith to purchase military units in any city with that building. This allows you to use both your gold and faith pools to generate an army, creating a truly staggering military force that no AI can hope to match.

Path to Victory 3: The World Engine – Science and Culture

While seemingly less direct, infinite wealth can secure a Science or Culture victory by brute-forcing the generation of Great People.

Cornering the Great Person Market

This is perhaps the most powerful application of your immense wealth. Every Great Person—be it a Scientist, Writer, Engineer, or Artist—can be recruited immediately with either gold or faith.

  • The Strategy: In the Great People screen, simply purchase every available person at the start of your turn. This denies them to all other civilizations and funnels their powerful abilities directly into your empire.
  • Science Victory: Every Great Scientist provides a massive boost, often equivalent to several turns of research. Acquiring all of them accelerates your trip through the tech tree at an exponential rate. Great Engineers can rush Spaceport projects, allowing you to complete the final victory components in just a few turns.
  • Culture Victory: Buy every Great Writer, Artist, and Musician. As you fill your Museums and Amphitheaters (all bought with gold, of course), your culture and tourism output will skyrocket. In the late game, use your faith to purchase Rock Bands and send them to the highest-tourism civilizations to quickly close out the game.

Advanced Strategies and Synergies

Beyond the primary victory paths, there are several advanced tactics to leverage your economic supremacy.

  • Diplomatic Control: Use your gold to dominate the World Congress. Gift enormous sums of gold to other leaders to generate Diplomatic Favor. When Aid Requests appear, win them instantly by donating a massive amount of gold, netting you free favor and diplomatic victory points.
  • The Loyalty Lock: Rapid expansion can cause loyalty problems. Counter this by purchasing a Governor and assigning them to the new city on the same turn it’s founded. Amani is particularly powerful for this. Also, instantly purchase a Monument and a garrison unit to secure the city’s loyalty permanently.
  • The Naturalist Army: For a Culture victory, the late game requires National Parks. Normally, this is a slow process. With a million faith, you can purchase a “Naturalist Army” of 10-20 units at once and send them across your empire to establish dozens of National Parks in a short span of time.

The Pitfalls: What Can Go Wrong?

Even with unlimited resources, certain challenges persist.

  • The Amenity Crisis: Explosive expansion will quickly lead to a massive deficit in amenities, causing your cities to become unhappy and spawn rebels. The solution is to proactively purchase Entertainment Complexes and Water Parks in clusters to cover your empire. You can also buy every single copy of a luxury resource from every other civilization in diplomatic trades.
  • The Turn-Time Trap: The most significant real-world problem is game performance. An empire with hundreds of units and dozens of cities will slow down turn processing considerably. Be prepared for late-game turns to take several minutes to compute.

In conclusion, starting Civilization 6 with a million gold and faith transforms the game from a strategic management simulation into an exercise in overwhelming force and efficiency. The path to victory is not about careful saving and spending, but about identifying the game’s non-financial bottlenecks—population, time, and attention—and applying your infinite resources to shatter them. Whether through a lightning-fast military conquest, a global religious conversion, or a complete monopoly on the world’s great minds, the result is a demonstration of absolute power that fundamentally redefines the nature of the game.