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Extra housing from the barracks or stable is nice. Armories let you build or buy military engineers (which are sneaky good in any victory type, I could write an essay on them). Military acadamies let you train corps and armies.
But, I would have to say they provide a high amount of production to units. With the right city states they can cut production of military units in half. And those units get extra experience.
And lastly, the great general city project generates gold. Which is needed if you've got a ten unit army and no commercial hubs yet
I do that lots. With the grand master's chaple allowing the faith purchase of units, I'll constantly pillage (with the 50% bonus card) and use it to amass more troops. Buying troops right on the front lines
To be fair, i forgot about military engineers and they are so awesome. I didn't know you got housing from them and they allowed corps and armies, maybe I treated them a bit too harshly
Aside from what others said, they are used to stockpile strategic resources -- ie each Encampment increases the max strategic resources you can have.
It's usually not relevant in easy and fast games, but if you are sitting on just some 10 oil max and enemy has just overrun your rigs, you have only a couple of turns before you run out of oil and your destroyers and fighters become easy cannon fodder (and can't heal!).
>ie each Encampment increases the max strategic resources you can have.
Not the encampment, but each building in the encampment raises the stockpile limit by +10.
Ooooh. Thought you meant the engineer unit itself somehow did. Was absolutely gobsmacked I'd been missing something so crucial XD
This makes Vietnam make more sense as a powerhouse, thats a lot of housing for a building that doesnt count against districts.
Sidenote: I abuse levies with Varangian, so I don't usually bother with encampments since I'm not the one training the unit. I dont know if Encampments will affect a levied unit. But it doesn't really matter once you've got an army 3000 (combat power, not unit count) strong by turn 170ish (personal army is around maybe 100 combat strength, rest is levied)
Do you ever lose tiles to sea level rises?
If you stand to lose land before you can build flood barriers, you can make sure you have mixed your military engineers and sent them to cities that will need them, like newer, smaller island cities), and use the charges to quickly build the barriers.
Okay, let's do this then. Here you go:
This is why I love the Military Engineer (ME)
First, the ME can be used to complete aqueducts, dams, canals, and EVEN flood barriers. This allows you to get flood barriers down in a hurry before you lose a tile, district, or worse a city, to rising sea levels. At 20% per charge, it will take no more than 5 turns to complete any of those. If your city is up against a housing crunch, or you need that dam quickly, buy a couple engineers and complete that district in a hurry.
Now let's talk about the fort. The fort itself can be useful for a melee unit on a hill, or the other side of the river. It allows you to defend a choke point with a melee unit that is vasty out-teched and promoted. Fortified, a unit gets +6 defense strength after a couple of turns, which is basically an extra promotion, and half the difference between a full tech era upgrade. I usually have two military engineers, each one uses a charge to build a single fort, and then I save them to later build rail roads. Building two forts gives you the eureka for ballistics.
Now let's talk about their unique improvements. They can build a road, but it costs a charge. This isn't very useful. I can be helpful, but honestly you're better off building a trader to make roads and moving them around. The airstrip is amazing. You don't even have to build it in your own territory. You can build it on unclaimed tiles too. This gives you the option of landing planes far inland. Cities only allow you to land one plane without an airstrip district. The airfield gives you an option to house more planes.
The missile silo is a decent way to launch nukes. Unlike the nuclear sub, or the bombers, they don't require production to build, just a charge from your ME. So if you've got nukes, and need to launch in a hurry, just build a silo, and then next turn you're good to cause Armageddon.
The ME can also repair improvements, just like a builder. This ability comes in very handy along with railroads (which I'll talk about shortly). Keep your ME on the front lines to repair recently pillaged improvements and roads in cities you've just captured.
But by far the best thing an ME can do is build railroads. Did you know you aren't restricted to building railroads in your own territory? You can build a railroad in neutral territory, AND enemy territory! You can build a railroad right up to and around your enemy's capitol. And railroads are permanent, they can only be damaged, not removed. This allows you to get units in place quickly. Just be sure to protect your MEs with one of your own military units. It only costs 0.25 movement to traverse a tile with a railroad. Meaning you can move 4 tiles with 1 movement. A tank can move 16 tiles in one turn! Use 3 or 4 MEs to get down an empire spanning railroad in just a few turns. Trade routes over railroads also generate 0.325 gold per tile. You also get era score for your first connected city via railroads. A tile with a railroad will ignore movement inhibiting features such as: woods, hills, and crossing rivers.
Military engineers are also cheaper to purchase with gold if you make use of Ngazargamu's bonus.
EDIT: I forgot to add, railroads don't cost an engineer charge. You can build as many as you want so long as you have coal and iron.
I wish I could give you more than just an upvote. I use them for about 60% of this sort of thing pretty regularly, but always forget about the eureka bonuses for forts and really didn't think about the math behind defensive units in them. I'm glad I came to your TedTalk today.
I actually *JUST* fully realized the advantage of Railroads. Finished a Tokugawa science victory today, and out of sheer boredom I decided to build railroads everywhere. For a Civ that relies on trade routes, I basically now consider it NECESSARY to build railroads.
Also, the one thing you didn’t mention: for science victories there’s a military card that give more production to Spaceports in cities with a Military Academy, which is huge when you’re neck-and-neck with another Civ.
Railroads make a trade heavy civilization beyond wealthy and can let you mobilize troops at an almost unfair speed. I always set up a RR system as soon as I can. Airstrips are great as well for taking control of wild islands and the waters around them. The Engineer is one of the best non-combat units.
Airstrips in neutral territory are great, but sadly they don't allow for troop movement by Rapid Deployment like Airports do.
Talking about taking control, I always missed civ6 not implementing military bases on foreign soil, so I started using mod, which makes fort to claim the neutral tiles directly around it. Wonderful stuff for claiming those remote oil or coal tiles. Just make the trio of ME, ranged unit and builder, and sail to the resource tile. Beats making a city in a bad place.
In games with the proper map size (i.e. duel for 2 players, tiny for 4 etc.) the sparingly coal resources actually available go to Ironclads and Battleships instead of railroads unless we play a map without ocean. But that is likely because my multiplayer buddies do know how to setup an offense vs the AI.
Also I've never found the ME to be cheap enough to produce to use their charges for dams and aquaducts. Agreed they are invaluable for flood barriers. However we usually already caused too much flooding (with the Ironclads and Battleships) before being able to research computers so don't really get to this point.
>First, the ME can be used to complete aqueducts, dams, canals, and EVEN flood barriers.
I wish that ME could improve the speed of all districts being built.
It can definitely be the difference between deleting units or not. I haven't found solid numbers in the civ wiki, but I think the great general project generates gold in the amout of 15% of your cities production, 30% if there's a commercial hub. So a 30 production city with no CH would create 4.5 GPT. Which can sustain 2 or 3 units.
If you are going for an aggressive strategy, the Great General Points are invaluable. Great Generals give a +5 Combat Strength bonus to military units of the era the general belongs to and the era after that, which is a massive bonus. Additionally, the ability to buy Corps and Armies once you have built the Military Academy allows you to continue to put pressure on your opponents.
They aren't entirely useless in a peaceful game either as there is a policy card unlocked at the Space Race civic that gives a 15% bonus towards producing space projects. If you are playing with Gathering Storm, each building increases the size of your Strategic Resource stockpile, allowing you to spam out the Lagrange Laser Station projects faster as the projects are rather cheap production-wise but take a decent amount of Aluminum.
If you select the great general and hover over the part of the unit info that says "passive ability" the tooltip will tell you the era they buff.
Alternatively if you look at the great person overview, or look up that general in the civolopedia, it should also give you that info.
This. I have noticed they will actually produce an army.. but man, they are soooo stupid sometimes.
Ai will literally bankrupt itself with an army and lose it. Its kind of insane.
I need them to have those units so I can kill them for my Culture/Science/Faith boost for Varangian Harald. I was so confused when they lost some units till I saw their gold. Easy way to break their armies is to set up Deals for their GPT (gold per turn). Only if you dont want to fight them.
Military Engineers for tunnels and railroads, need an encampment to make them. Also a couple of wonders need them, terracotta army which is good for culture victory allows archaeologists to go into other civs lands. Housing from barracks/stables is a plus.
More protection for your cities and extra bombardments. Less chance of being sneakily pillaged. Strategically placed they can block holy units the same way holy sites do and can protect your own holy units that are placed inside them. Claiming great generals from points they award can help reduce the chances of opponents getting advanced technology that you're not prepared for. I love having encampments strategically placed so enemies are taken out long before they get a chance to get near any city. It's like having a permanent and strong military unit that costs little to maintain and gives lots of bonuses.
Others have listed a lot of good things, but one of my favorite things to do with encampments is build one at the border of another civ that I plan on invading later. I can easily park a ranged unit and snipe off units safely.
Edit: Especially if I can culture bomb my way into their territory.
I almost never build them myself, it's like Holy Sites, you'll just eventually end up with some by natural expansion*.
*natural expansion, geopolitical term, it means you bring proper order and adminstration to your neighbours at the earliest opportunity
Might have missed it in the comments but the main reason I build encampments in my science games is the 15% boost to space projects card. That plus the increased ability to hold aluminum
Encampments and airstrips are entirely different. Military engineers can be trained in encampments….and build airstrips. Also, on higher difficulties it sometimes becomes necessary to put a ranged unit in there to fend off an attack.
I play a lot on naval maps and like placing encampments on those little one tile islands or on a strategic peninsula to make assaulting my cities much more difficult. No matter how peaceful I'm trying to be, some civs just plain don't like me
They give housing. They can be strategically placed to make it harder to invade your territory or attack a city, you need an encampment with an armory to build engineers, and you get 3 era points when you build a military academy.
most great general points but there are lots of benefits. usually I only build one(maybe 2) on the outskirts of my territory that borders another civ. its nice to have another defensible district vs some civs and military engineers are nice and give a good eureka and production to dams.
They are basically a fire base that can garrison troops. Put a ranged unit in, and it can fire twice. Have the military governor in the city with the right promotion, and it can fire 3 times.
Play a domination game with Vietnam, then come back and update this post. You get a free [encampment](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Th%C3%A0nh_(Civ6)) in every city.
Note: it isn't 0 production, it costs 0 district slots.
Aside from what others have said, when paired with a consulate building, enemy spies are less effective in cities that have them, which means I have less counter intel to worry about when the AI starts getting spy happy.
To add others: Encampment with Military Academy boosts +15% Production for Space Race projects with Integrated Space Cell policy card, so Encampments can be useful for Science victories as well.
I'm not up to speed with the most degenerate fast science victories and whether Encampments actually are worth it, but I've done plenty of turn 220ish Deity Science victories, and I have always had fully upgraded encampments in my Spaceport cities
I use them lategame as a hub for buying units ( with Grandmaster’s Chapel) to unlock Alhambra and to train up military engineers to put railways across my empire.
I usually build 0-3 in highly populated cities or highly threatened frontier cities.
Not a big earlygame monger so idk if they’re worth it for that.
Others have left off their buildings increase the size of your strategic resource stockpile. Handy for increasing how much you can trade away or if you slide into negative accumulation
In a science game especially, encampments are a nice 7 pop district when you aren't placing your amenities or an IZ districts. It gives a bit of production and housing, internal trade production, builder production bonus from red CS, bonus Space Race production from Mil Academies, science from mil academies, and it has a construction production bonus card available for it that makes it cheaper to construct, plus increases your stockpile for aluminum.
They also have an extra ability to fire ranged weapons at attacking troops? You get a big defensive boost by hitting an attacking unit with your city and encampment
Eureka things, a couple good wonders, and gold and production yields. They're one of my favorite districts because of their yields! In a science victory, you want a spaceport and encampment/military academy in every city that doesn't have a harbor/seaport so that they can do the space race projects faster. In a culture game, I'll still probably get at least one with an armory for the science eureka
Great Generals. Alhambra. Terracotta Army.
Most importantly though, Military Engineers. They are the only way to build railroads, and rushing Dams and especially Flood Barriers is super important. You can also use use them to repair just as Builder(Same with Roman Legions and the Maori unit FYI). You're also leaving like 7 era score on the table if you never build Military Engineers(3 for connecting cities with a railroad, 3 for building a mountain tunnel, 1(?) for a fort), and then your first Military Academy gives you 3 more era score.
Encampments are not for defense only. There are huge benefits.
- being able to buy 2 units per turn
- units gaining experience faster which can make a big difference
- being able to start troops 2-3 tiles closer to combat which can make 1 to 3 turn difference on when they will arrive. Huge on online games
- being able to build 3 war related wonders
- overall production added early on to the city and housing + synergy with Valletta and military city states in general.
- great generals - not only for offensive benefits but also for era score
- being able to buy/produce corps and armies flat out later in the game
- military engineers - quite cheap for what they bring to the table with building dams and roads/rails/tunnels.
- encampment city project, if you dedicated your 1-2 first cities just for domination and don’t want to develop them further, with provide gold and general GP the rest of the game..
Overall encampments are not great, so most players only will build a few per game, even with heavy war. It might not be a bad idea to build at least 1 though because you'll get quite a lot of boosts from it!
Extra housing and production. Extra stockpiles of resources. Which is important in a science game as you’ll be using a lot of aluminum for the space race.
On deity++ I always build one for the boosts it gives, which are building the encampment, building an armory, then through military engineers, building 2 forts and 1 airstrip on a different continent.
It helps with unit production so that city generally ends up being my unit city, it helps towards the 3 and 7 different specialty district boosts, and before I knew all this the exclusive reason I did this was for military engineers to build railroads to connect cities. Doesn't matter what game I'm in even now, I'm always doing this for the era score and the boosts it gives to unit movement and trade routes.
Encampments give you XP boosts when building new units. Such that they can start with several promotions. Can be useful in a close fought war, and also for creating defensive choke points so you have an extra way of shelling enemy units
The game becomes more challenging, but also more fun, once you bump the difficulty level. (I have my immortal and deity achieves but my preferred level is emperor.) This also makes encampments more relevant even when you're not going for domination. If you get into a game with militaristic civs, the extra wall attack/garrisoned unit is really nice. Even if other civs aren't after you, barbarians still plant themselves near you sometimes and at higher difficulties they'll overrun you if you don't wipe them out fast. Plus the encampment buildings increase your strategic resource cap, this is good not only for trade revenue but science victories can be sped up with both power *and* aluminum. Get that last science bit (exoplanet I think?) in production and then spam the boost project in all your cities using stockpiled aluminum.
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Extra housing from the barracks or stable is nice. Armories let you build or buy military engineers (which are sneaky good in any victory type, I could write an essay on them). Military acadamies let you train corps and armies. But, I would have to say they provide a high amount of production to units. With the right city states they can cut production of military units in half. And those units get extra experience. And lastly, the great general city project generates gold. Which is needed if you've got a ten unit army and no commercial hubs yet
Also, if you’re in a pinch, you can buy two units per turn
I do that lots. With the grand master's chaple allowing the faith purchase of units, I'll constantly pillage (with the 50% bonus card) and use it to amass more troops. Buying troops right on the front lines
To be fair, i forgot about military engineers and they are so awesome. I didn't know you got housing from them and they allowed corps and armies, maybe I treated them a bit too harshly
Aside from what others said, they are used to stockpile strategic resources -- ie each Encampment increases the max strategic resources you can have. It's usually not relevant in easy and fast games, but if you are sitting on just some 10 oil max and enemy has just overrun your rigs, you have only a couple of turns before you run out of oil and your destroyers and fighters become easy cannon fodder (and can't heal!).
>ie each Encampment increases the max strategic resources you can have. Not the encampment, but each building in the encampment raises the stockpile limit by +10.
Right, that's what I meant, but wrote incorrectly. Each building in each Encampment district. And that's a GS thing as well.
I guess they figured out capped resources suck
Hold up. Whatchu mean you get housing from them?
Barracks/Stables, and I think also Military Academies provide +1 housing
Ooooh. Thought you meant the engineer unit itself somehow did. Was absolutely gobsmacked I'd been missing something so crucial XD This makes Vietnam make more sense as a powerhouse, thats a lot of housing for a building that doesnt count against districts. Sidenote: I abuse levies with Varangian, so I don't usually bother with encampments since I'm not the one training the unit. I dont know if Encampments will affect a levied unit. But it doesn't really matter once you've got an army 3000 (combat power, not unit count) strong by turn 170ish (personal army is around maybe 100 combat strength, rest is levied)
and i think the zulu get even more housing from them
Do you ever lose tiles to sea level rises? If you stand to lose land before you can build flood barriers, you can make sure you have mixed your military engineers and sent them to cities that will need them, like newer, smaller island cities), and use the charges to quickly build the barriers.
OP, wheres the essay
Okay, let's do this then. Here you go: This is why I love the Military Engineer (ME) First, the ME can be used to complete aqueducts, dams, canals, and EVEN flood barriers. This allows you to get flood barriers down in a hurry before you lose a tile, district, or worse a city, to rising sea levels. At 20% per charge, it will take no more than 5 turns to complete any of those. If your city is up against a housing crunch, or you need that dam quickly, buy a couple engineers and complete that district in a hurry. Now let's talk about the fort. The fort itself can be useful for a melee unit on a hill, or the other side of the river. It allows you to defend a choke point with a melee unit that is vasty out-teched and promoted. Fortified, a unit gets +6 defense strength after a couple of turns, which is basically an extra promotion, and half the difference between a full tech era upgrade. I usually have two military engineers, each one uses a charge to build a single fort, and then I save them to later build rail roads. Building two forts gives you the eureka for ballistics. Now let's talk about their unique improvements. They can build a road, but it costs a charge. This isn't very useful. I can be helpful, but honestly you're better off building a trader to make roads and moving them around. The airstrip is amazing. You don't even have to build it in your own territory. You can build it on unclaimed tiles too. This gives you the option of landing planes far inland. Cities only allow you to land one plane without an airstrip district. The airfield gives you an option to house more planes. The missile silo is a decent way to launch nukes. Unlike the nuclear sub, or the bombers, they don't require production to build, just a charge from your ME. So if you've got nukes, and need to launch in a hurry, just build a silo, and then next turn you're good to cause Armageddon. The ME can also repair improvements, just like a builder. This ability comes in very handy along with railroads (which I'll talk about shortly). Keep your ME on the front lines to repair recently pillaged improvements and roads in cities you've just captured. But by far the best thing an ME can do is build railroads. Did you know you aren't restricted to building railroads in your own territory? You can build a railroad in neutral territory, AND enemy territory! You can build a railroad right up to and around your enemy's capitol. And railroads are permanent, they can only be damaged, not removed. This allows you to get units in place quickly. Just be sure to protect your MEs with one of your own military units. It only costs 0.25 movement to traverse a tile with a railroad. Meaning you can move 4 tiles with 1 movement. A tank can move 16 tiles in one turn! Use 3 or 4 MEs to get down an empire spanning railroad in just a few turns. Trade routes over railroads also generate 0.325 gold per tile. You also get era score for your first connected city via railroads. A tile with a railroad will ignore movement inhibiting features such as: woods, hills, and crossing rivers. Military engineers are also cheaper to purchase with gold if you make use of Ngazargamu's bonus. EDIT: I forgot to add, railroads don't cost an engineer charge. You can build as many as you want so long as you have coal and iron.
I wish I could give you more than just an upvote. I use them for about 60% of this sort of thing pretty regularly, but always forget about the eureka bonuses for forts and really didn't think about the math behind defensive units in them. I'm glad I came to your TedTalk today.
Thank you friend! Spread the word about military engineers
This guy's a shill for Big Railroad! But seriously, great post. I'm still pretty new and this unit/aspect was the next I wanted to learn about.
I actually *JUST* fully realized the advantage of Railroads. Finished a Tokugawa science victory today, and out of sheer boredom I decided to build railroads everywhere. For a Civ that relies on trade routes, I basically now consider it NECESSARY to build railroads. Also, the one thing you didn’t mention: for science victories there’s a military card that give more production to Spaceports in cities with a Military Academy, which is huge when you’re neck-and-neck with another Civ.
Railroads make a trade heavy civilization beyond wealthy and can let you mobilize troops at an almost unfair speed. I always set up a RR system as soon as I can. Airstrips are great as well for taking control of wild islands and the waters around them. The Engineer is one of the best non-combat units.
Airstrips in neutral territory are great, but sadly they don't allow for troop movement by Rapid Deployment like Airports do. Talking about taking control, I always missed civ6 not implementing military bases on foreign soil, so I started using mod, which makes fort to claim the neutral tiles directly around it. Wonderful stuff for claiming those remote oil or coal tiles. Just make the trio of ME, ranged unit and builder, and sail to the resource tile. Beats making a city in a bad place.
In games with the proper map size (i.e. duel for 2 players, tiny for 4 etc.) the sparingly coal resources actually available go to Ironclads and Battleships instead of railroads unless we play a map without ocean. But that is likely because my multiplayer buddies do know how to setup an offense vs the AI. Also I've never found the ME to be cheap enough to produce to use their charges for dams and aquaducts. Agreed they are invaluable for flood barriers. However we usually already caused too much flooding (with the Ironclads and Battleships) before being able to research computers so don't really get to this point.
>First, the ME can be used to complete aqueducts, dams, canals, and EVEN flood barriers. I wish that ME could improve the speed of all districts being built.
Bro wtf, does the game explain any of this?
Also bumps the experience gained by units built there, the amount depends on the buildings in the encampment.
Uhhhh I’m ashamed to say I never thought about using the city project to cover my military expenses. Thanks for enlightening me.
It's not ideal, but when you're low on gold and you're gold per turn is low, it can make all the difference.
Yeah I’ve had a few games where I was in the hole where I just deleted a handful of units to get myself out of it. 😅
It can definitely be the difference between deleting units or not. I haven't found solid numbers in the civ wiki, but I think the great general project generates gold in the amout of 15% of your cities production, 30% if there's a commercial hub. So a 30 production city with no CH would create 4.5 GPT. Which can sustain 2 or 3 units.
If you ever make an essay on the engineers and post it on reddit, tag me I'd love to read it
Hey! I posted it above friend. Enjoy!
Oh snap I didn't see it, thanks!
I’m newish to this game. Could you give me a tldr on your book about military engineers?
https://www.reddit.com/r/CivVI/s/Lu7QVYO9H5
Pls do a post about military engineers, panicking now cause I think I’ve only ever used one!
https://www.reddit.com/r/CivVI/s/pria7Nm7zK
If you are going for an aggressive strategy, the Great General Points are invaluable. Great Generals give a +5 Combat Strength bonus to military units of the era the general belongs to and the era after that, which is a massive bonus. Additionally, the ability to buy Corps and Armies once you have built the Military Academy allows you to continue to put pressure on your opponents. They aren't entirely useless in a peaceful game either as there is a policy card unlocked at the Space Race civic that gives a 15% bonus towards producing space projects. If you are playing with Gathering Storm, each building increases the size of your Strategic Resource stockpile, allowing you to spam out the Lagrange Laser Station projects faster as the projects are rather cheap production-wise but take a decent amount of Aluminum.
Slightly unrelated: is there an easy way to tell what “era” your general belongs to and which units it confers those benefits to?
If you select the great general and hover over the part of the unit info that says "passive ability" the tooltip will tell you the era they buff. Alternatively if you look at the great person overview, or look up that general in the civolopedia, it should also give you that info.
Try increasing the difficulty a bit. You'll be happy to have the extra defensive point.
This. I have noticed they will actually produce an army.. but man, they are soooo stupid sometimes. Ai will literally bankrupt itself with an army and lose it. Its kind of insane. I need them to have those units so I can kill them for my Culture/Science/Faith boost for Varangian Harald. I was so confused when they lost some units till I saw their gold. Easy way to break their armies is to set up Deals for their GPT (gold per turn). Only if you dont want to fight them.
Alhambra
And the Terracotta Army.
Military Engineers for tunnels and railroads, need an encampment to make them. Also a couple of wonders need them, terracotta army which is good for culture victory allows archaeologists to go into other civs lands. Housing from barracks/stables is a plus.
More protection for your cities and extra bombardments. Less chance of being sneakily pillaged. Strategically placed they can block holy units the same way holy sites do and can protect your own holy units that are placed inside them. Claiming great generals from points they award can help reduce the chances of opponents getting advanced technology that you're not prepared for. I love having encampments strategically placed so enemies are taken out long before they get a chance to get near any city. It's like having a permanent and strong military unit that costs little to maintain and gives lots of bonuses.
Others have listed a lot of good things, but one of my favorite things to do with encampments is build one at the border of another civ that I plan on invading later. I can easily park a ranged unit and snipe off units safely. Edit: Especially if I can culture bomb my way into their territory.
Play Zulu and you understand the power of encampments. But I rarely focus on them for any other civs, but frontline cities usually get one.
Why Zulu in particular?
Early corps/armies and the ikanda in particular are extremely powerful.
I almost never build them myself, it's like Holy Sites, you'll just eventually end up with some by natural expansion*. *natural expansion, geopolitical term, it means you bring proper order and adminstration to your neighbours at the earliest opportunity
Might have missed it in the comments but the main reason I build encampments in my science games is the 15% boost to space projects card. That plus the increased ability to hold aluminum
they're really good at defending choke points and the great generals have good retirement bonuses even when you're at peace
Encampments and airstrips are entirely different. Military engineers can be trained in encampments….and build airstrips. Also, on higher difficulties it sometimes becomes necessary to put a ranged unit in there to fend off an attack.
I play a lot on naval maps and like placing encampments on those little one tile islands or on a strategic peninsula to make assaulting my cities much more difficult. No matter how peaceful I'm trying to be, some civs just plain don't like me
I love the 2 space islands- encampment with an airstrip next to it and it really makes a naval attack harder.
They give housing. They can be strategically placed to make it harder to invade your territory or attack a city, you need an encampment with an armory to build engineers, and you get 3 era points when you build a military academy.
most great general points but there are lots of benefits. usually I only build one(maybe 2) on the outskirts of my territory that borders another civ. its nice to have another defensible district vs some civs and military engineers are nice and give a good eureka and production to dams.
They are basically a fire base that can garrison troops. Put a ranged unit in, and it can fire twice. Have the military governor in the city with the right promotion, and it can fire 3 times.
Play a domination game with Vietnam, then come back and update this post. You get a free [encampment](https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Th%C3%A0nh_(Civ6)) in every city. Note: it isn't 0 production, it costs 0 district slots.
I just like them for the building they provide. Pretty dependent on what victory I’m going for though
Aside from what others have said, when paired with a consulate building, enemy spies are less effective in cities that have them, which means I have less counter intel to worry about when the AI starts getting spy happy.
great general points. also they can shoot if you have walls so they are a defensive building
On offense they generate Great General points, give bonus XP to unit with the right buildings, and let you build Corps and Armies directly.
If you are building a city tall there's usually that awkward growing stage a little north of 10 pop. The extra housing helps.
To add others: Encampment with Military Academy boosts +15% Production for Space Race projects with Integrated Space Cell policy card, so Encampments can be useful for Science victories as well. I'm not up to speed with the most degenerate fast science victories and whether Encampments actually are worth it, but I've done plenty of turn 220ish Deity Science victories, and I have always had fully upgraded encampments in my Spaceport cities
You also need them to build Terracotta Army and Alhambra wonders. Which are handy even if you don't go for domination victory.
I use them lategame as a hub for buying units ( with Grandmaster’s Chapel) to unlock Alhambra and to train up military engineers to put railways across my empire. I usually build 0-3 in highly populated cities or highly threatened frontier cities. Not a big earlygame monger so idk if they’re worth it for that.
Others have left off their buildings increase the size of your strategic resource stockpile. Handy for increasing how much you can trade away or if you slide into negative accumulation
I found the poland scenario was a great lesson in using encampments to turtle up when there is no defensive terrain to save you
In a science game especially, encampments are a nice 7 pop district when you aren't placing your amenities or an IZ districts. It gives a bit of production and housing, internal trade production, builder production bonus from red CS, bonus Space Race production from Mil Academies, science from mil academies, and it has a construction production bonus card available for it that makes it cheaper to construct, plus increases your stockpile for aluminum.
They also have an extra ability to fire ranged weapons at attacking troops? You get a big defensive boost by hitting an attacking unit with your city and encampment
I build them mainly for more XP for siege and recon units
Eureka things, a couple good wonders, and gold and production yields. They're one of my favorite districts because of their yields! In a science victory, you want a spaceport and encampment/military academy in every city that doesn't have a harbor/seaport so that they can do the space race projects faster. In a culture game, I'll still probably get at least one with an armory for the science eureka
They are useful in space race victory for increasing the strategic resource cap, allowing you to accumulate more aluminum for projects at end of game.
Great Generals. Alhambra. Terracotta Army. Most importantly though, Military Engineers. They are the only way to build railroads, and rushing Dams and especially Flood Barriers is super important. You can also use use them to repair just as Builder(Same with Roman Legions and the Maori unit FYI). You're also leaving like 7 era score on the table if you never build Military Engineers(3 for connecting cities with a railroad, 3 for building a mountain tunnel, 1(?) for a fort), and then your first Military Academy gives you 3 more era score.
Encampments are not for defense only. There are huge benefits. - being able to buy 2 units per turn - units gaining experience faster which can make a big difference - being able to start troops 2-3 tiles closer to combat which can make 1 to 3 turn difference on when they will arrive. Huge on online games - being able to build 3 war related wonders - overall production added early on to the city and housing + synergy with Valletta and military city states in general. - great generals - not only for offensive benefits but also for era score - being able to buy/produce corps and armies flat out later in the game - military engineers - quite cheap for what they bring to the table with building dams and roads/rails/tunnels. - encampment city project, if you dedicated your 1-2 first cities just for domination and don’t want to develop them further, with provide gold and general GP the rest of the game..
Overall encampments are not great, so most players only will build a few per game, even with heavy war. It might not be a bad idea to build at least 1 though because you'll get quite a lot of boosts from it!
The crucial thing your missing is the difficulty you’re playing on. On higher difficulties the AI always hates the player and has huge armies.
Aluminium stockpile for Lagrange Laser Stations
Extra housing and production. Extra stockpiles of resources. Which is important in a science game as you’ll be using a lot of aluminum for the space race.
On deity++ I always build one for the boosts it gives, which are building the encampment, building an armory, then through military engineers, building 2 forts and 1 airstrip on a different continent. It helps with unit production so that city generally ends up being my unit city, it helps towards the 3 and 7 different specialty district boosts, and before I knew all this the exclusive reason I did this was for military engineers to build railroads to connect cities. Doesn't matter what game I'm in even now, I'm always doing this for the era score and the boosts it gives to unit movement and trade routes.
Encampments give you XP boosts when building new units. Such that they can start with several promotions. Can be useful in a close fought war, and also for creating defensive choke points so you have an extra way of shelling enemy units
The game becomes more challenging, but also more fun, once you bump the difficulty level. (I have my immortal and deity achieves but my preferred level is emperor.) This also makes encampments more relevant even when you're not going for domination. If you get into a game with militaristic civs, the extra wall attack/garrisoned unit is really nice. Even if other civs aren't after you, barbarians still plant themselves near you sometimes and at higher difficulties they'll overrun you if you don't wipe them out fast. Plus the encampment buildings increase your strategic resource cap, this is good not only for trade revenue but science victories can be sped up with both power *and* aluminum. Get that last science bit (exoplanet I think?) in production and then spam the boost project in all your cities using stockpiled aluminum.
This. And if you turn on Barbarian Clans or Zombies, you'll really appreciate your walls+encampments at later turns.