Civilization VI best starting location guide. Best yields and position to settle your first city in. I will thoroughly explain how to get a god-tier first city for your Civilization.
Experts already know what yields have every type of hex. If you are newer to Civilization VI or you are like me and just prefer seeing the yield icons, then click on "Show Yield Icons" in map preferences.
Tiles are better or worse to settle depending on water availability, resources and yields. If you're new to the game and don't really want to go in depth about settling yet, the easiest way is learning by using the Settler lense. This lense won't tell you anything about yields, very little about ubication (it will tell you not to settle too close to other cities) and everything about water availability, which is very important.
Every single civilization on earth started with a city and a river: Rome and the Tiber, Egypt and the Nile, Paris and the Seine and so on. In Civilization VI water availability allows for higher population in a city, which in turns helps a city to have more citizens.
Okay, so depending on the terrain you settle the city it gains yields or not, for exaple if you settle on a hill:
Originally the tile (Hills) had 2 production and 1 food, after you settle it generates 2 food and 2 production. The city improves the tile by 1 food yield.
No, some tiles don't improve at all and others improve production instead of food.
As you can see the best tiles to settle are Hills, offering 2 food and 2 production once settled. This is 1 extra production when compared to Grassland.
Yes, that 1 extra production in your first city is very important as yields are very impactful early game and it will make the difference when competing for a wonder against the IA. Also in a 300 turn game that extra production means 300 extra production without considering bonuses or its snowball nature.
Settling on a strategic or luxury resource is very good, as you will not only gain extra yields once settled, but also will get the resource. In the case of a luxury resource you don't even need its technology to work it if you settle on it. On the other hand, settling on bonus resources is really bad, as although you will get the bonus resource (which isn't worth much anyways) you will not receive bonus yields. It is much better to settle next to a bonus resource than on it.
Not only the hex itself where you settle is important, but also its surroundings. You should check for the immediate 2 tiles radius, there should be either good workable yields, wood to chop (yes, chopping wood is good) and/or locations with great adjacency bonuses. More advanced players will settle in strategic locations too, for example to get a chokepoint or a resource.
Besides the 'ok' hex this city is settled on (Floodplains with Amber, which yields 1 extra culture). This city's surrounding tiles are good:
That's pretty much how you should analyze the surroundings of a starting location. Depending on the map and settings you should also check for things like barbarians, other civilizations and disasters.
This is more about your next city after the first one. Notice the Cattle tile surrounded by mountains.
If you see something like this you have to settle a city near it, clear that cattle and make either a Campus or Holy Site. No questions asked. You will get huge adjacency bonus from mountains and get a kickstart in either a science or religious victory.
Keep in mind some of the medium to bad locations sometimes are ok to settle if it's not your first city and/or you have strategic reasons to use them.
Ideally you should settle in the first turn, but if there are better locations it is worth to take some turns. Three turns being the absolute maximum if you intend to settle on a very godlike location (including yields and surroundings). Otherwise taking 2 turns for a good location is ok.
6 Tiles? No. The ideal distance is around 3 tiles, this way you make better use of the space available and you're able to make good use of district's adjacency bonuses between districts of different cities. There are strategies to get +50 production making clever use of Aqueducts, Commercial Hubs and Industrial Zones.