When you make a new game, there are a lot of parameters. Firstly, the ruleset, you should pick Gods & Kings (as these guides are made for this) but you can also pick modded rulesets that you downloaded. Then, the difficulty. To progress quickly, always pick the easiest difficulty that you didn't win yet. But if you have more fun trying easier difficulties, do it For the game speed, always pick quick, doing more games makes you be better faster. In the advanced settings, enable espionnage and nuclear weapons, these are great and important mechanics of the game. You can let the base 6 City states and 4 major civs. Pick the map type you prefer, pangea is the base one. With 4 major civs and 6CS, Medium is a good size, but you can change it. Adding strategic balance and legendary start is great to make the spawn less luck-based.

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