Here’s a rewrite of the article with a more personal, sharing tone.
Tall vs. Wide in 2025: My Take on What Wins in Civ 6
It’s the classic Civ debate, isn’t it? Tall vs. Wide. In the ever-evolving world of Civilization 6, figuring out whether to build a few super-cities or a sprawling empire is still one of the biggest decisions you’ll make in 2025. The game’s meta has shifted over time, but a clear winner has emerged—though it’s not always a black-and-white choice. I’m going to break down both strategies and give you the insights you need to choose the right path for your empire.
First Off, What Do We Mean by Tall vs. Wide?
It really just comes down to how many cities you build and what you do with them.
- A Tall empire is all about quality over quantity. You focus on a small handful of cities, pushing their populations as high as possible to make them incredibly powerful and specialized. Think of creating a few urban juggernauts that can carry you to victory on their own.
- A Wide empire is the opposite. You prioritize founding as many cities as you can, spreading your influence across the map. The strength here comes from sheer numbers—pulling in resources and production from a ton of smaller cities.
Let’s Be Real: Wide is King in the 2025 Meta
I’ll get straight to the point: if you want to win consistently in Civilization 6 right now, playing Wide is almost always the stronger strategy. This isn’t just my opinion; it’s baked into the game’s core mechanics. Here’s why a sprawling empire has a massive built-in advantage.
The Tile Problem: Districts and Wonders
This is the biggest reason wide is better. Unlike in Civ 5, you have to place your districts and wonders on map tiles. A single city, no matter how huge, just runs out of space. This puts a hard cap on how many districts and wonders it can build.
A wide empire doesn’t have this problem. If you have ten cities, you can build ten campuses, ten commercial hubs, and ten theater squares. A three-city tall empire can’t ever compete with that raw output of science, culture, and gold, no matter how developed its cities are.
Population Isn’t Everything
Big populations are good, but you hit a point of diminishing returns, especially late in the game. The main reason to have a high population is to work more tiles and specialist slots. But the yields you get from each citizen don’t scale forever. On the other hand, the benefit of plopping down a new city with a new district and its own production queue is immediate and huge.
The Settler Snowball
Settler costs go up each time you train one, but that’s not enough to stop early expansion from being the best thing you can do. The return on investment for a new city is almost always worth it. It gives you more yields, another production center, and a spot for another valuable district. The early game in Civ 6 is a land grab. If you wait to grow your capital instead of expanding, you’re going to get boxed in and outpaced by everyone else.
The Art of the Sprawl: How to Actually Play Wide
Just spamming settlers isn’t a guaranteed win, though. You have to be smart about it.
Settle Aggressively
Your first few city spots are critical. Put your capital somewhere with great food and production to pump out those early settlers. Your next cities should be placed to lock down luxuries and strategic resources, create chokepoints for defense, and just generally claim as much good land as possible. Don’t be afraid to settle cities close together (4-5 tiles apart). A little overlap is fine; the benefit of an extra city and more districts is way more important.
How to Manage a Huge Empire: Amenities and Loyalty
These are the two things that will trip you up if you’re not careful.
- Amenities: More cities mean you need more amenities to keep everyone happy and productive. Make it a priority to settle on new types of luxury resources. Each unique luxury gives an amenity to four of your cities, so diversity is key. Build Entertainment Complexes and Water Parks so their regional bonuses cover multiple cities. Also, look for policy cards that give you amenities.
- Loyalty: Cities that are too far from your power base or surrounded by other civs can lose loyalty and flip. To stop this, keep your cities populated and happy. Assigning a Governor is a huge loyalty boost. Amani (the Diplomat) is perfect for locking down loyalty in new cities on the frontier. Building a Government Plaza and its upgrades in a central city also gives a nice empire-wide loyalty buff.
Using Your Governors
Governors are your best friends for managing a wide empire.
- Magnus (The Steward): His “Provision” promotion lets you build settlers without the city losing population. This is a complete game-changer for early expansion. Put him in a city with high production and just crank out settlers.
- Pingala (The Educator): He’s often called a “tall” governor, but his +15% science and culture boost is great for your capital or any other powerhouse city in your wide empire.
- Amani (The Diplomat): Your go-to for any loyalty problems. You can also use her to put loyalty pressure on your neighbors’ cities.
- Moksha (The Cardinal): A must-have for a religious victory.
- Victor (The Castellan): Your defensive expert. Stick him in a border city to fight off an invasion.
Smart District Planning
With so many cities, you can afford to specialize. Make some cities your science hubs and others your culture centers. Focus on getting great adjacency bonuses. For example, build your Industrial Zones next to aqueducts and dams to create factory clusters that boost production in multiple nearby cities. Put Theater Squares next to Entertainment Complexes and Wonders. The sheer number of districts you can build lets you optimize your yields like crazy.
But What About Tall? It’s Not Dead, Just Niche
Even though wide is dominant, playing tall isn’t a guaranteed loss. It’s just a lot harder and needs the right situation to work. A tall strategy can still be a good choice if:
- You’re playing the right Civ: Some civs are just built for it. The Khmer can get insane food and housing from Aqueducts, letting them grow super tall. Scotland gets bonuses for happy cities, which is easier to manage with a small empire.
- You’re on an island or defensive map: If there’s not much land to expand into, or you can easily defend a small area, playing tall might be your only option.
- You’re rushing a Science or Culture Victory: While wide is usually better for every victory type, a super-focused tall strategy can sometimes make a beeline for a science or culture win faster than a wide empire that’s spread too thin.
The Tall Player’s Guide: Making Every City Count
If you’re going to play tall, you have to be precise.
- Find the Perfect Spot: Your few cities need to be on absolutely amazing land. You need tons of food, great production tiles, and access to lots of different resources. Being near mountains for Campuses or natural wonders for Holy Sites is also a huge deal.
- Population is Everything: Your main goal is to grow your population, fast. Focus on food tiles and buildings like Granaries and Water Mills. Use trade routes to bring in food and use policy cards that boost growth.
- Pingala is Your Best Friend: For a tall empire, Pingala is the best governor, period. His promotions directly boost the yields of your big cities. The +15% to science and culture is essential, and his final promotion gives another +15% on top of that, turning one city into a powerhouse.
- Be Picky with Wonders: You don’t have a lot of production to spare, so only build wonders that give you a huge, empire-wide bonus or help you win directly. The Forbidden City (for the extra policy slot) and Kilwa Kisiwani (for its massive yield boosts from city-states) are probably the best wonders for a tall game.
- Use City-States: You’ll have fewer envoys, so focus them. Become the suzerain of city-states that give you bonuses that fit your strategy (e.g., scientific city-states for a science game).
The Real Answer: The Best Strategy is Being Adaptable
So, what’s the final verdict for 2025? The game’s mechanics make it clear: playing wide is the most reliable way to win in most games. The power you get from more districts, more resources, and more overall yield is just too much for a tall empire to compete with most of the time.
However, this doesn’t mean you should only play wide. A tall strategy is a high-risk, high-reward approach that can be incredibly satisfying when it works. The best players don’t just stick to one strategy. They adapt to the game they’re in.
A great player knows how to use both ideas. They might start by expanding wide to grab land, then switch to developing their core cities “taller” in the mid-game. They look at the map, their civ, and their opponents, and they build a strategy that fits.
So while the meta definitely favors a wide empire, the player who really wins is the one who understands why these strategies work and can use that knowledge to conquer the world, no matter if they do it with a few towering cities or an endless sea of them.