I am writing this under the belief that many players coming into this game probably already have a basic understanding of Civilization and the mechanics native to it (Food, Production, Currency, Population, ETC…). If people need more details on that, I might work on something around those topics later.

I expect that more players probably have less experience with deck builders and may be struggling to adapt themselves to deck building principles. This guide is to deal with some of those topics in this game and encourage players to experiment with the potential that deck building tools offer to a game like this.

11-16-2023

- Edited note on Mulligans due to balance change.
-- "Can no longer redraw your hand for free after burning cards."

This game ends very quickly. In a 125 victory point game, you are probably going to take 10-15 turns. You could think of it as:

Early Game: Turns 1-4
Mid Game: Turns 5-8
Late Game: 9+

With that kind of a time table, tempo matters a lot. You need to be getting significant gains out of every turn you have. The principles discussed in this guide will help you squeeze the most out of each turn to give you the best chance of winning.

Many of the single player modes have other win conditions that make the game even shorter. These principles will be even more critical for doing well in those game modes.

Getting good at thinning your deck is probably the most important skill you can adopt to take your game to the next level.

The game incentivizes you to burn at least one card a turn. The first card you burn gives you 2 production and 1 science for that turn. Additional cards in the same turn grant you 1 production. Except in extraordinary circumstances, you should probably be looking to burn at least one card a turn.

As with many deck builders, there are countless ways to play, but I can confirm that it is very powerful to be in the end game with only 5-10 cards in your deck. This allows you to consistently play your strongest cards every turn and solidify your advantage.

You should always burn cards that you can’t see a case for using.

You should consider burning cards that provide less value than other cards.

Example:
You’ve unlocked Metal Working and have a variety of military units available to you. As soon as you see other military units in your hand that are less powerful than your best option, you should always burn them immediately. The only caveat would be if you have an economic reason to keep a card that costs less, but you are probably losing the game if you can’t afford to play the best military units at your disposal.

As you get good at this, you'll find yourself having burned your military cards long before you've even unlocked the tech that has what you are planning on building.

As you learn the game and get more experienced, you can consider taking the steps of burning tech cards. If you do not know what you are doing, burning a tech card can severely hamper your future, but used strategically, this is the most effective and efficient form of deck thinning.

Playing a tech card bloats your deck by removing the tech card and adding 3-5 more cards to your deck. Every tech card you play makes your deck less consistent. You need to do this to get more powerful cards, but you also need to control it so you can execute your plan.

As an example, if you burn the “Fishing” tech, you lose the possibility of everything in that entire tree. However if you aren’t planning to use most of that tree, it may be worth it even though you are losing some nice tools. By sacrificing those tools, you don’t have to take the time to draw the cards that don’t help you with your strategy. You accept the tradeoff of some weaknesses in exchange for being able to more quickly grow in other areas of the tech tree that might be more critical to your strategy.

Strategies like this allow you to go deeper on one side of the tech tree faster than other players, and ultimately surprise them by deploying late game technology more quickly than someone who is unilaterally progressing all areas of the tech tree.

When you initially play a tech card, you may be tempted to immediately pick the card that you are most interested in to add to your hand. A lot of times this makes sense. However, if you cannot play the card this turn, you may want to choose a card from the new tech that you know you won’t use, or value less, and then immediately burn it. This reduces the amount of cards that the new tech adds to your deck.

When making your choices, consider whether or not the next tech card should be burned. If the cards toward the end of the tech tree aren’t relevant for you, burning the next stage allows you to close that line down and focus on other areas.

It can be easy to miss, but every turn gives you a chance to mulligan and draw a new hand. Unless you really, desperately, need something in your opening hand – chances are using your mulligan is going to be the better play. The mulligan option remains available until you play a card (placing your starting city does not count as playing a card – you can place your starting city and still mulligan).

Mulligans move you more quickly to getting back to your discard pile. Your discard pile has the cards that you have recently gained by teching up – so you normally want to be drawing those cards over older tech.

11-16-2023
The initial launch of the game had an absurd feature that permitted you to burn cards and then mulligan your hand. This is no longer possible.

Making this even more powerful, you can burn cards before your mulligan. You can take your opening hand, burn as many cards as you want, and then redraw the hand back to its original size. This is exceptionally helpful for allowing you to thin your deck and gain tempo at the same time. In other deck building games, you sacrifice tempo to thin your deck – this game gives you ways to thin while gaining tempo and it is incredibly powerful.

Below is a sample strategy you can practice in a Skirmish (this can also help in some daily challenges).

Let’s say that you want to grow your population as quickly as possible. To do this, you’ll want to burn every tech card but Animal Husbandry --> Agriculture. You are going to be targeting pastures and farming to help you grow, and you are going to be burning every card that doesn’t help you produce population or settlers.

This means you are burning scouts, warriors, charge abilities, promotions, anything that is not aligned with your plan. Note: You’ll want to consider keeping mobilize because it allows you to get your settlers out more quickly.

This practice won’t help you win a long game because you are burning so many other techs, but it is a nice exercise to show you the power of a really thin deck that is targeted to accomplish a specific goal. If you can learn this principle in this simple scenario, than you can begin applying it to more advanced scenarios.

Some game modes commonly gives you an objective to build 3 wonders. You can use the principles of the challenge above to do this more quickly by sacrificing military and expansion options that don’t achieve that goal.

Accelerate tech into 3 target wonders, sacrifice cards recklessly to get the production you need, and build one wonder a turn. You should be able to easily complete this challenge within 4-7 turns depending on your fortune.

Absolutely.

I had a game where I burned every military card in the game and scrambled to try to win by building wonders before the enemy military crashed the few defenders I had left.

I had a game where I sacrificed a key tech with branching options and stuck me in the mid-game for the remainder of the game. It forced me to channel my win condition in a different direction.

The nice thing about deck building games is that there are countless ways to find paths forward and you almost always have a fighting chance if you are clever.

What I can assure you of is that you’ll lose more games keeping a 40 card deck. You can pray that you will draw into good cards. You can spend 20-30 gold drawing cards each turn. You could instead save yourself that pain by burning cards down to a 10 card deck.

Chances are, your gut is always going to be to keep more cards than you actually need.