In the beginning, your primary objective should be to learn about your surroundings. Not to sound like a broken record, but knowledge is power. Every turn you wait likely puts you 1 turn behind someone else, and 1 turn could be the difference in losing or keeping a city. Honestly, settling a city could have its own guide, but for now, just know that you should settle on turn 1, or turn 2 at the latest. That means, don’t dilly dally in selecting a place to settle. So how do you survive into the mid-game? First you have to realize that more experienced players will likely come for you, and if they know you are new to multiplayer, they will come early. Instead recognize that this is likely to happen to you and try to gain an advantage using them yourself, if possible. Don’t get too discouraged by these mechanics, as first and last moves are simply a part of a peer to peer hosted game like Civ 6. This becomes even more oppressive when you couple it with first moves on the next turn. That makes it harder for the defender to retaliate on that turn. For example, a lot of people do all their simming first, then wait for the timer to get very low before doing a bunch of quick attacks. You can potentially take advantage of last moves, which are also very powerful. If you don’t get first moves, don’t fret. This allows them to “get first moves on you”, which puts you at a disadvantage. People with good computers, or even those that don’t have to do as much processing between turns, will load into the turn slightly quicker. I mention lowering the graphics settings because how quickly your computer can process information and graphics does make a slight but noticeable difference in multiplayer, mostly when we refer to things like first moves and last moves. Yes, multiplayer games regularly use simultaneous timed turns, and you want to make sure you have enough time to do all your simming as well as all your war moves. Quick combat and quick movement because the slower animations take more processing power and also take more time away from your actual turn. I also recommend you turn your graphics settings to a lower setting, and enable quick combat and quick movement. Military strength, gold balance, science and culture per turn, as well as other valuable information for each civilization you’ve met will be displayed there at all times.
Knowledge is power, and this ribbon at the top of your screen will give you valuable insight with just a quick glance. You’ll find most people set this to ‘Always Show’. In terms of game settings, in the Interface settings of the Game Options menu, there’s an option called ‘Show Yields in HUD Ribbon’. The only downside to not owning all the DLC is that you cannot play as any civ you do not own. In CPL, the host will usually have all the DLCs, allowing those without them to play against civs they may not own as well as play with wonders and city-states that would normally be missing from their single player games. Ok, back to the advice First things first, let’s get your game set up for multiplayer You don’t need all of the downloadable content (DLC) content, but you should have both of the expansions, unless the people you’re playing with agree to play with the ruleset you do own.