Civ 6 streamer figures out how to win without founding any cities in 'extremely impressive' video

If you ask me, we're ramshackle contraptions designed to hunt, gather, and perish early from preventable disease, and this society stuff all started going downhill the second we got into agriculture. When we were young, hale, and nomadic, roaming the steppes and plains? Those were our glory days. At least we can relive them via a recent video from a streamer called boesthius, who undertook the Civilisation 6 "no settle: domination challenge" to win a match of Civ without founding any cities of his own.

For me, that's already impossible, but boesthius decided to make life harder for himself by adding a few rules on top. Besides never settling cities, he also couldn't seize any more than three cities from each of his AI opponents, and he couldn't churn out any units beyond civilian units (like builders and traders) and siege units (like battering rams and siege towers), meaning he'd have to press gang enemy units into his service. He also played on zombie mode, because hey, why not?

And with that, he was off to the races on a small Pangea map, playing as Unifier Qin Shi Huang. It would've been more thematically appropriate to play Genghis Khan, though, since boesthius soon manoeuvred himself into position as head of a roving horde of archers, swordsmen, and the hungry, hungry undead. Boesthius used Huang's Thirty Six Stratagems ability to quickly amass an army of converted barbarians, and set his zombies to generating exponentially more of themselves by chomping on his enemies.

The whole video is worth watching. Boesthius made the challenge look easy, but it really wasn't, it required speed, knowledge of the game, and more than a little luck. It was so formidable, in fact, that the official Civ 6 YouTube account even commented "ok I'm not gonna lie this was extremely impressive" under the video, while the rest of the comments are split evenly between amazement at boesthius' feat and horror at his apparent masochism. In the video's intro, we see clips of a few of his previous attempts at an even tougher version of this challenge, all of which ended in ignominious defeat rather than glorious triumph.

So there you have it, apparently it's totally possible to win a game of civ without all that pesky 'city building' nonsense. All you need is one Chinese emperor, some amenable barbarians, a horde of undead, and a dream.

Joshua Wolens
News Writer

One of Josh's first memories is of playing Quake 2 on the family computer when he was much too young to be doing that, and he's been irreparably game-brained ever since. His writing has been featured in Vice, Fanbyte, and the Financial Times. He'll play pretty much anything, and has written far too much on everything from visual novels to Assassin's Creed. His most profound loves are for CRPGs, immersive sims, and any game whose ambition outstrips its budget. He thinks you're all far too mean about Deus Ex: Invisible War.

Read more
Confucius as he appears in Civilization 7.
Civilization 7 player stacks so many bonuses that the game breaks and demands negative food
A screenshot of Lycerius' Civilization 2 Eternal War.
'A hellish nightmare': Remembering the most famous Civilization game ever played, Civ 2's 'Eternal War'
Cropped Civilization 7 concept art featuring Amina, Queen of Zazzau, pointing a sword menacingly.
Civilization 7 senior historian prays it'll be a 'gateway drug' into textbooks: 'I teach undergraduates in my other life, and my God, man, they don't read'
Withers Big Naturals mod image - Withers with big naturals
Sure, why not, here's a guy beating Baldur's Gate 3 without a race or class at all
Civilization 7 leader image
'This task is both more wonderful and dreadful than you could imagine': After 638 days of drawing badly until Civ 7 is released, one dedicated YouTuber can finally put their skills to rest
Civilization 7 screenshot
How towns and cities work in Civilization 7
Latest in Strategy
Paths to Power DLC
Last year's best RTS gets its first piece of DLC alongside a meaty free update
Tzarina Katarin Bokha, the Ice Queen of Kislev
Total War: Warhammer 3 rolls out a cool Kislev overhaul, changes befitting Tzeench’s magic, new projectile units and creakier skeletal horses
Civilization 7 Great Britain - Modern Civ art (via YouTube)
As Civilization 7 struggles to keep up with Civ 5 player counts, a new patch is coming tomorrow with still more UI changes and gameplay tweaks
Battle Brothers
Nearly 2 years after its last update, the excellent Battle Brothers gets 'a bucket load of fixes' and free new content
King wielding his axe against would-be assassins in Norland.
Medieval colony sim Norland is getting a 'damn big update' that completely overhauls the game's mechanics: 'We're rolling out some radical changes to the core gameplay'
Age of Empires 2
Former Age of Empires 2 dev claims Microsoft demanded its first expansion should have a Korean faction, because 'StarCraft sold 3 million copies in Korea'
Latest in News
starcraft 2 face
StarCraft fans taunted by the announcement of a new StarCraft... board game
kingdom come: deliverance 2 henry looks confused
'Medieval Batman' completes Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2 pacifist playthrough with zero kills and 535 knockouts
SUQIAN, CHINA - OCTOBER 6, 2024 - Illustration Tencent's plan to buy Ubisoft, Suqian, Jiangsu province, China, October 6, 2024. (Photo credit should read CFOTO/Future Publishing via Getty Images)
Ubisoft and Tencent are forming a new company that will take control of its most successful franchises: Assassin's Creed, Far Cry, and Rainbow Six
The Huntress holding a bloody spear.
The biggest update since Path of Exile 2's early access launch is coming next week, bringing a new class and a bunch of endgame changes
A motley crew riding out in point-and-click adventure Rosewater
Promising '90s style point-and-clicker Rosewater rides out today, featuring trail-worn cowpoke authors and weird alt-universe science
A girl cheering in Everybody's Golf Hot Shots.
My favourite, most underrated anime golf game series is actually getting a PC entry for the first time in its nearly 30-year history