[Spoilers] Ichabod, the Civ King

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I've never been able to work out how exploration XP works. Do you get XP any time you find something interesting - another civ/city state/barb camp/natural wonder/some combination of those? Is it just a function of tiles defogged?

[suboptimal]

Scouts get XP for finding a natural wonder (+10, I believe) or popping a goody hut (not relevant here). Other than that, it's combat.

[Ichabod]

Scouts get XP for finding a natural wonder (+10, I believe) or popping a goody hut (not relevant here).  Other than that, it's combat.

That does not bode well for our brave scout, but, spoiler alert, he perhaps fulfilled all that was hoped from him.



Pretty important. That and the PP Inspiration are the luck based part of the PP beeline, which can make a huge impact on the game. Ah, speaking of the PP Inspiration:



We got that on the same turn, on the next move. Notice how far away the CS warrior is, enabling the meeting. I wouldn't even be aware of that city if wasn't for that, since even the settler view doesn't get it. We got the first envoy bonus, but the quest is a bit hard. No matter, we can't complain metting 3 CSs as first to.

With a 2nd religious CS, a pantheon will come soon. My initial thought is getting the culture from Pastures pantheon. This way, the first worker can give us +3 culture, which will speed us to PP, coupled with the coffee yield. I think this early benefit will have a deeper impact than the cute late game options, as God of Harvest. God of the Forge could be an option, Lady of Reeds would improve some nice tiles, but I think culture is a greater bottleneck than hammers. I can see we getting a very, very fast PP, with all the Inspirations (getting a district is trivial with Lavras). And fast PP will make everything else faster. The big prize is Monarchy -> Theocracy. If everything goes smoothly, we can actually use Theocracy to buy Knights, rather than Cossacks.

That's all far away in the future, though.



I lost a long time thinking about whether to grow to 4 ASAP or get the builder ASAP, deciding on the builder. The idea here is builder -> Warrior -> Lavra (to fix the cost and at least get some hammers before agoge is in) -> military with agoge.

That's the reason why I changed back to Astrology tech at the end of turn. I'll finish it without the Eureka. Our timings are working really well, I don't want to bottleneck myself waiting for another lucky break from the map. Early game Civ 6 has no shortage of science, so I'm not worried about it. Delaying PP would be way worse.



Settler is on the move.

[Ichabod]

I find a nice place for the scout to heal, where no enemy can hit me from the fog. I don't need to heal 100%, just enough so I survive another hit and can promote. I figure it's a good time to do it, as I don't expect to get anymore first to bonuses (I already gave up on the Astrology Eureka).



Next turn will be big. We get our pantheon, I think (+1 culture to pastures). We get our builder, which will improve the horse immediatly. And, we get the second city founded. Pretty nice.

[Ichabod]

Everything is back to normal, Brazil winning against Germany. Man, I really, really, really want to face them again on the WC and get a huge victory. I'm still not over the 7-1.

Regarding the game, I have the great next turn save, but I won't be home until close to the end of my turn playing window.

[Ichabod]

As usual, steam screenshots fail. At least this one shows everything there is to see.

1. Pantheon didn't arrive despite 26 faith.

2. Buiider finished, pastured the horses.

3. New city. Worker as first build. There's a little issue that I want the worker to plantation, but I don't have irrigation, nor the builder charges to get the Eureka (I won't waste the culture from a 3rd pasture only for that, getting to PP sooner is way more important). The solution I found was to get a second builder in the Capital early, which will farm a rice and chop 2 times, most likely. Chops will go into 50% military units, to overflow into the Lavra? Not sure. The second city builder will place two plantations and chop a forest to open up space for a Lavra + overflow. Not sure if the timings will work out perfectly.

4. The interface lies. True growth time for the Capital is shown on the city information screen.

5. Warrior from the CS is trying to take the camp.   I think I can get there in time, but I'm not overly worried.

[Ichabod]

As planned. 3 culture so early in the game is not something I can pass on. And I have some more pastures around, in the revealed land. Not sure what is on my settleable land, but we'll see. I think 10 culture from the pantheon is not impossible. But the main thing is speeding up the early game.



My first opponent, Rowain from Germany. I think he's a good target for an attack with Knights. If I hit my timings right, he may still be spending his hammers on Hansas and Commercial Hubs, while I'm faith buying knights... Good thing about knights is that they are easily beelineable, and they synnergize very, very well with high culture (Feudalism gives the Eureka), possibility of Faith Buying or hitting Mercenaties early.

I hope he's not staying there to try and take the barb camp...

I only just noticed, he has a promotion. Going by the logic, he must have found Natural Wonders in that direction... Well, I'm already finishing Astrology, so it doesn't help me with anything, really.

I really want a city on the tile the CS warrior is on. It can steal the 4/1 spices from Novgorod for growth, gets a new luxury (ivory, I have jade nearby), and has a lot of high hammer tiles, which I tend to favour. Great Lavra spot as well, with a stone ready for harvest. Just great!

Getting a settler from Novgorod will be in high order.

[Commodore]

When is the ideal "stop settlers" time? Given the ruinous ramp-up in expense, etc.

[Ichabod]

When is the ideal "stop settlers" time? Given the ruinous ramp-up in expense, etc.

This is a great question. I'm still thinking about it and I'll try and give an answer once I have a bit more thought and time into it. My current guess is that most people are doing it wrong and new cities stop being profitable way sooner than you'd think.

I'm up to 7,1 culture per turn, already finished Foreign Trade, Craftsmanship finishes in the EOT, and I have all the Inspirations needed for PP (just need to finish the Lavra, which only takes 4 turns). This is really good when no Cultural CS is involved (nor Rome). I'm probably reaching PP very, very fast.



The trained eye will spot that we have 2 cities here, not just one. Moving on the next turn revealed 2 CSs borders. I don't have any hopes that I'll be the first one to any of these, but the chance of getting a quest envoy is also nice. The western CS seems a prime target for conquest, as it's close and will likely not give me the envoy.




I didn't finish the warrior and switched to a builder. The idea is to overflow one turn of Agoge production into the worker, since the warrior is at 39/40. Not that amazing of a micro trick, but I guess it helps a bit. As you can see, I placed the Lavra 1NE of the Capital. It's on a hill, which is a shame, and gets no adjacency bonus. But I din't want to spend gold on tile buy, as I want to buy a monument in the second city. The city is very hilly, so I'll only "lose" that production when the city is size >10 and that doesn't really make much of a difference. I value the earlier culture more than that.

Now, I could get that culture faster, if I could capture that damned barb camp. Problem is, the CS warrior is just standing his ground, ready to kill the red-lined spear, in case I choose to attack. That's really annoying... And now, a HA spawned.



I'm gonna kill it next turn (likely not enough XP for a promo), but this whole barb camp ordeal is taking a lot of scouting time... A bit frustrating, but that's how this things work. I'm contemplating bringing the second warrior down here to help, once it's produced.

Rowain offered a DoF, which I declined. I don't like being buddy-buddy and counting turns until DoFs expire. If he wants to build an army and come pester me, I'm happy to oblige.

[Ichabod]

Lucky > Good



No idea where the barb spear went. I took the camp, netting the extra envoy in Carthage, and he was nowhere to be seen. The Carthaginian warrior is fortified and undamaged, so there's no chance that he killed the barb spear. I don't know, but I'll take it anyway.

That was actually the exact turn in whch the 50g from the camp allowed me to reach 240g to buy a monument on my second city. The timing was simply too perfect. I'm up to 9 culture per turn, PP has an ETA of 15 turns or so. That's simply huge.



I changed policies to Ilkum and Agoge and finished my 39/40 warrior while working extra hammers, which is better than a 30% builder turn.



Overview.

As usual, I forgot to take screenshots of my exploration. I found Krill to my NE, after the Bundar Brunei CS (quest is get a GG, as is Kumasi's quest, which has led me to think of a plan).

I need a settler to my NE, to finish a border with Krill that claims more land to my East (there's nice land there and I don't want him having easy access). Not that I need to be that fast, as Bandar brunei actually acts as a natural border there (and Krill has the first envoy, so I'm not sure he'll want to rush them). I'm also not sure if settling SW of the second city is a good idea right now (my plan would be to get a settler from the second city to place there). I like that a city there would have heavy prod tiles, a new luxury and pasture (I just need one builder there and a caravan for the city to really shine), but further exploration leads me to believe that Rowain is to my E, not to my W (because he already met Kumasi, for example). There's a chance that my West is just backfill land, so settling there wouldn't be a priority. Kumasi's first envoy is likely from EmpK, so he's also to the East.

We'll see. Exploration will be rough, as I'm not that invested into units right now. That's one of the beauties of Russia's early GWriters. I'll send them to explore the world, seeing as I'll only have space for one GWork in the early game.