So you want to learn how to play Civilization VI? (Part Three)

Welcome back! This is a series of posts I've been making on how to play Civ VI for complete beginners. If you missed the earlier posts, you can see them here:

Part One: https://imgur.com/gallery/63QwoeV
Part Two: https://imgur.com/gallery/znB96El

In this post, we'll be examining the Technology Tree and how it's crucial to your success.

In Part Two, we briefly spoke about selecting a Technology (Tech) to research during our first turn. This time, we're going to do a deep dive on what that involves. As an example, I loaded one of my saves - as you can see from the turn timer (top right) we're on turn 60, which is near the start of the game. We're playing as the Scythian Empire (Tomyris) and we're currently have 3 cities.

On the left hand side of the screen, we have the Research Shelf open - this shows us techs that are currently available to research, as well as the tech we're actively researching (and how many turns it will take to complete). In this screenshot, we're currently researching CURRENCY. Bronze Working, Irrigation, Masonry, Sailing and the Wheel are also currently available. We also have the option to 'OPEN TECHNOLOGY TREE'. Let's do so - that way I can explain what these techs are and how they help us.

You might need to zoom this one! This is the full Tech Tree, as of the Gathering Storm Expansion. Each of the blocks you can see if a tech we can research as the game continues. The above screenshot is what you will see at the start of the game - no techs are researched and only a handful are currently available to us. We'll discuss research strategies below, but first let's look at the tech tree for our current match above:

There are a lot of things to point out here - I'll go through them one-by-one:

TECHNOLOGIES:
1: AVAILABLE, NOT YET RESEARCHED (Dark Grey Blocks) - We have met the prerequisites for these techs but have not acquired them / are not working on them.
2: CURRENTLY RESEARCHING (Light Blue Block) - at any time, you can research ONE tech. Each tech has a Science cost - The time to research is based on the amount of Science you're generating per turn (more science = faster research times).
3: NOT AVAILABLE (Light Grey Blocks) - We have not met the prerequisites for this tech and cannot research it. Prerequisites are denoted by the dotted lines connecting techs
4: COMPLETED (Brown/Gold Blocks) - We have finished researching these techs and have gained their benefits.

USER INTERFACE:
1: OPTIONS/KEY (Dark Blue UI Element, Left Side) - From here, you can filter/search techs or toggle this element on/off as you please. The key also shows you what the various technologies yield when you complete them (more on this below).
2: SCROLL BAR (Dark Brown UI Element, Bottom) - You can use this to move back and forth through the Eras. This slider also shows you the progress you and other Civs have made along the tree, denoted by the circles on the slider
3: ERA INDICATOR (Background Graphic, divides tech Eras) - In this screenshot, there is a UI element that reads 'Classical Era' - once we research a tech past this barrier, our Empire will move into this Era.

There's a lot to take in here, but we'll explain each of them and what they're for. Let's start with one of the techs and what it yields.

Let's start with the 'Pottery' Tech - You can right-click any of the Techs in the list to open the 'Civopedia', which gives you a short description of the tech's yields and historical context.

In this case, Pottery costs 20 Science to research and unlocks 3 things for us:

* The GRANARY City Centre Building
* The GREAT BATH Wonder
* Allows harvesting of BONUS RESOURCES improved by farms (Special Unlock)

Each of these unlocks are shown in the tech's block and you can hover over them to see what they do. Note that completing Pottery unlocks the 'Writing' and 'Irrigation' techs as Pottery is the prerequisite for these. I'm not going to explain every one of these techs (I don't want to crash Imgur!) but you should now know how to investigate your available research options and make a decision on what to pursue next. Let's scroll up the Tech Tree a bit to see what we might want to get after Currency finishes:

As you can see, most of the techs in the Classical Era are unavailable right now. We still have a lot of work to do in the Ancient Era before these become available. However, we met the prerequisites for Horseback Riding and Currency already, so we're able to work on them. We CANNOT start researching Iron Working or Construction, as the Ancient Era techs these depend on have not been researched.

You might be wondering why I beelined Horseback Riding in this game - note the green bow icon. This is a SAKA HORSE ARCHER, Tomyris' unique unit. These guys are EXTREMELY powerful in the early game, so I wanted to get them out ASAP. This is where the tech tree allows you to be flexible - I was able to get these Horse Archers out earlier, at the cost of temporarily skipping other necessities such as Bronze Working or the Wheel. You'll need to make decisions on what techs to pursue/skip depending on your strategy and what you need now / might need in the coming turns.

Let's take a look at another example - let's jump into a different game, which has progressed to the Future Era:

This one probably looks a big more busy to you! In this screenshot, we're playing as the Australian Empire (John Curtin). This is a very late game Empire, and you can see a lot of late game improvements and wonders, such as solar panels, flood barriers, uranium mines and the Eiffel Tower. Let's take a look at our tech tree at this stage of the game:

Notice how far we've scrolled - we've researched EVERY other tech up to this point and have entered the Future Era. This Era has some highly advanced future Techs which grant you massive bonuses (Including my favourite under 'Robotics' - the Giant Death Robot). As you can see, we've passed out everyone else in the Science race and are closing in on the 'Offworld Mission' tech. At this point in the game, we're very close to a Scientific Victory and the AI has little hope of catching us. What's fascinating to note here is that the Offworld Mission has required us to build on our research step by step to be able to get to this point - if we beelined, say, Robotics to get G.D.R.s as quickly as possible, we may have neglected Nanotechnology and Nuclear Fusion and locked ourselves out of Advanced Power Cells and Predictive Systems.

This is another facet of Tech Tree strategy - you need to decide when to rush a tech ASAP and when to balance your research to be able to meet prerequisites. There's one more tech tree factor I'd like to point out - Eurekas. Let's go back to our earlier Scythia game to demonstrate this.

Take a look at the techs on the left hand side of the screen - notice that they have a line of text below the turn timer. For example, Bronze Working has text that reads 'Kill 3 Barbarians'. This is the EUREKA requirement for that tech.

Eurekas are objectives you can complete to boost your technology and cut it's research time. For exmaple, if we kill 3 barbarian units in this game, we will immediately be granted ~40% of the total research cost! As you can see, every tech has a bonus objective that can be completed to grant a Eureka, but you can also get these boosts from Great People, Tribal Villages, Research Agreements or Shared Research. Long story short, Eurekas help you research techs faster and are almost always a good thing.

Now that you know how the tech tree works, you're probably wondering 'How do I generate the Science I need to research these techs?'. This is out of scope for this post, but the short answer is Campuses and campus buildings. Behind the Pokrovka City Centre in this screenshot, you can see a Campus district with a Library built in it. The Campus district provides base science per turn based on where it's located (and what's adjacent to it) and the Campus buildings provide additional Science per turn. Boosting your Science output allows you to research techs faster and climb the tech tree! We'll be discussing speciality districts in a later post, so I hope this descriptions suffices for now

That's pretty much it! The Tech Tree is reasonably easy to understand once you know the basics, but it's extremely nuanced and requires careful planning and strategy to make the most of it. If you do everything correctly, you should be able to give yourself a leg up on the competition and achieve victory through your Empire's dedication to the ways of Science!

Thank you for reading this far! If you're interested in Civ, I stream over on https://www.twitch.tv/ianb528. I'm going to continue making these guides as I love Civ and I'd like to share it with as many people as possible. If you have any comments or questions, feel free to drop them in the comments and I'll do my best to answer them. Next time, we'll talk about the Civics Tree and how to use Culture to further your agenda!