Civ6 Succession Game 1: Commercial Free Programming

[Ichabod]

Hey guys, my grandfather passed away yesterday and it hit me quite a bit. I'm not in condition to play right now, so please skip me for a bit. Once things calm down, I'll come to see what is happening. Sorry.

[Ranamar]

2 works of writing is new. Apparently, Well of Souls hasn't updated with the latest patch yet. (The patch added the second slot.)

[Ruined Everything]

Ichabod, that sucks. Dreadfully sorry to hear that. Be well.

[Brian Shanahan]

Hey guys, my grandfather passed away yesterday and it hit me quite a bit. I'm not in condition to play right now, so please skip me for a bit. Once things calm down, I'll come to see what is happening. Sorry.

Sorry for your troubles Ichabod.

[Molach]

Sorry to hear that Ichabod.

Upcoming set. Some pre-turn orders  suggestions:
Remember to drop Red Herring’s culture district when it hits size 4.
Candy Mountain should probably be changed to a workshop so that with Iron Chef and Wheaties we can get the bonus for industrialization. Hm. We actually need 21 turns of hard research before we need the boost, and amphi + workshop should take 18. But workshop first will actually help production of the amphitheatre. And I do not really know how much science will rise - we will get some +0.7 per turn before too long. I switch.

Tech path: Machinery -> Industrialization -> Radio. (Computers are good after this, but also steel for Eiffel Tower .)
Civic path: Mercenaries then Merchant republic government.

I notice that we are about to get a great engineer. He will build some walls in a city, so I decide that I will skip him - because Arabia isn't too far behind us (Arabia is at 90 GE points and gains 3 per turn, so at the end of my set they will grab the GE and we can get the next one. I suppose). Hopefully we get one that can rush some wonders instead.

The writer battle against Pedro seems to be going well. Pedro will likely be our obstacle to overcome culturally. Perhaps we can make use of a war in the end-game, somehow destroy his anti-tourism defense and give us a faster victory? I can only hope - a little bloodshed will not go amiss.

Naturalists need to be faith-bought, we have 50 faith and get +2 every turn. Ho hum. But how much faith to buy one? 800 faith. Hrm.

Also, should we think on getting more science rolling in? We seem to have won any and all GA battles, but some extra science from a well-placed campus might help too. Or can we just set up breeding-cities and live off the +0.7 science per citizen..? On that matter, I find it slightly bizarre that 0.7 / 0.3 is actually a slider - locked in place. People hate sliders - micro - lets just lock that baby in place. 70% science, 30% culture boys, that should make everyone happy. Hmpf.

Okay, about ready to start playing.

[Molach]

Report without pictures for now - to pass the save along. It is after midnight here, after all.


Turn 111:
Do pretty much what was suggested. England enters monarchy (Fake edit: I optimistically wrote in that  first rumor...then just decided that meh, whats the point. We don't really care about the AIs except as cash-machines at this point. There was ...little interaction with them. So expect no more rumors. Sorry)
Turn 112:
Decline the Great Engineer. We end up with 100 GE points and 240 to get next guy. He gives +1 culture per workshop and a free eureka from a later age. Meh. But we’ll probably take him, because no one else will for a looong while.
We do get Michelangelo. He builds a work for our capital’s palace.

Then put to sleep until we can build art museums.
Archer uses barb sword for target practice while escorting settler eastwards. We shall claim lands far to the east with this one.
Northern eastern settler will settle crab lake. I can settle on a bare hill and chop wooded hill for a quick _whatever_ or I can settle on wooded hill for better spread. I think bare hill wins out. Now the question is; do we need theater or industries first? Yup, one can wonder.
Need food plz: Changed to a horseman. I am not happy with our security situation.
Turn 113:
Plop down theater square for Red herring city. Also decide we need industrial square near Feeling Crabby. Put it on a grassland.
Turn 114:
Claim Machiavelli.
Builder near Chocolate river is overawed by a carpet of doom from Pedro.

That is literally a carpet of doom-sayers (apostles).
Frosted flakes finishes builder, set it on a granary as it is maxed on housing and can still grow unto a few tiles.
Turn 115:
Machiavelli writes a book. On pasta cooking or something.
Barb swordman is hell-bent on taking our settler. Which he will never catch because movement rules.

He does also not seem to mind being riddled with arrows every turn, as he moved all the way around our archer here. Settler moves towards greener pastures eastwards.
Turn 116:

Chop a hill forest into a granary in Frosted Flakes. Next up industrial zone.
New settler in capital heads east. Capital starts granary.
Turn 117:
At some time I also revolt to merchant republic. I put in the -50% upgrade cost card, didn't use it yet.
Chop rainforest in Chocolate river. Build encampment in the spot. Or rather, build amphitheater after designating the encampment. (Building armory is aninspiration towards steel, anyway)
Turn 118:
Scout from south saw our city a few turns ago. Archer shot him, but he then ran away out of sight. Can’t find him no more.
Sell mercury to England for 6 gold and 12 gpt.
Sell cocoa to Arabia for 23 gold and 5 gpt.
Start traders in Need food plz and Wheaties, finishing in 3 and 4 turn.
Start art museum in capital.
Turn 119:
…remember that barb scout? That ran successfully away? He successfully managed to move next to my archer and was killed. He still had a big ! over him, so I suppose he never got to tell his big secret to anyone.
I hear a HUNH! sound – which means there is a new barb encampment somewhere. After some searching I find it – it is pretty close. Horseman is on the way, and suddenly I have archers to spare as well. The pic is in the overview shots.
Turn 120:
Well I didn’t do anything this turn. Mass production finished, we’re onwards to industrialism.

The west:

I decided not to send settlers westwards. Otherwise my builder up here has been severely delayed by carpet of doom-sayers. Religion – I think better the less I say. They did provide some nice fireworks over in India, catholics clashing against hindu in all-out theocratical warfare. Also we have Islam headed in from the east. I suppose, if only one AI had really gone for religion the game would have been extremely lost – but having 3 (or more) AIs expending faith converting each other back and forth means very little for us.
Middle kingdom:

Barb outpost to clear. Also two settlers. The south one can pick up truffles (to sell) and be an okay city. Eastern one I was thinking – more east. I’ve built a lot of stuff. Wheaties has reached 7 again. I was thinking entertainment district and then Collosseum? A spot NE or 2NE can reach a lot of our core cities. Even the new truffle one.
East:

New city Carb Cakes. Rice bowl has more improvements now, and forest 2N will soon be in culture for a chop. Also settler + archer just reached that spot, which might make an okay city. Next player’s call. You may of course push further east to next river as well, and leave this for later settlers. But we have one archer covering our eastern frontier...(which is not too bad, that is like 20% of our current military...)

To sum up, I built districts and buildings, being happy with the amount of settlers and builders for now. Builders are slightly more durable with 5 charges. Also horseman (mobile) and started two traders. We did lose some GPP from changing government, but I think we’ll still sweep any great artists to come. I was not certain about civic route – Bolshoi on the way to Christo redentor, or try for naturalists right away?

Upgrading archers to crossbows is -50% cost. Just sayin'

Probably some    here to be found, but I'll leave it to you as an exercise to actually find it.

Pedro is leading the cultural race (despite building a zillion apologists) and is even enjoying visiting tourists (3) He is a mere 45 more tourists from victory. We're doomed (literally).

-M

[Ruined Everything]

Another great turn set, Molach. Totally agree with building spam. I do like the idea of keeping the settlers flowing though - tier 1 culture districts with our city states are very nice indeed. Some thoughts on future planning:

-  +1 culture per workshop will be worth, what, 3 culture/turn soon and maybe 10 culture/turn late game. Eh. I'd be tempted to wait for the next one unless we're sure we can get it as well.

- Why aren't you happy with our security situation? Pedro is our friend, Gandhi is pathologically incapable of attacking us (until the age of nukes, maybe?), and Saladin is far away. At the press of a button we can have 6 crossbowmen (we should start upgrading - I agree), which are more than enough to defend chocolate river. What am I not seeing here?

- Frosted Flakes *needed* that granary. Good to hear that it finally has one.

- Crazy question: but is merchant republic strictly better than classical republic? Our current policies aren't that great (maybe that's changed) and I'd almost rather the +15% to GPP than the trade routes unless we're absolutely sure we can sweep all the artistic great people. Artistic great are a great source of culture and a pain if the AIs get them.

- What was your logic behind building an encampment? Is it really worth tying up Chocolate river's production to get an armory/military engineer for the 2 free eurkeas? None of those are anywhere near our beeline. What am I not understanding?

- Unless we have a good way of getting naturalists (do we have any way of accumulating 800 faith in a timely manner?), I would go for Bolshoi. The tourism from wonder building won't hurt either.

Any thoughts/critiques?


Finally:

Pedro is leading the cultural race (despite building a zillion apologists) and is even enjoying visiting tourists (3) He is a mere 45 more tourists from victory. We're doomed (literally).

- I'm 99% sure this is sarcasm going right over my head. On the 1% chance it isn't, I would love to hear your reasoning behind this - while our position isn't perfect I certainly don't think it's bad.

[Molach]

Last part was sarcasm, yes.

GE: I think we have to take him, other AI make too few GE points. We would otherwise be stuck without a new choice. Modern era eureka might be useful. (anything helping us get computers is good)

Security: Barbs. In my other games, barbs were good at pillaging... now we have a horse + archer to clear 2 outposts with.

Encampment: No hammers invested, was for future building. It is a quick build though.

Getting faith: We could try a trade route to some religious foreign city? Dunno how much they make. Otherwise holy site, or just forget them. We

About government, we did lose some GA points...I saved up much gold and discount will help us buy them (I should think) but it is actually possible that old republic was better at this point. We might get some use out of the routes though. Wonder what happens with extra traders if we switch govt. after they get assigned to new routes.

Settlers: capital wants to build city stuff (campus + buildings among other things) so if other cities can find the time to build 'em, better. It is strange -city spam is back, and the (civ2/3 old) - pop after building is often "no matter because city was at -50% housing cap anyway".

[taotao]

we need to store:

12 great writings (6 amphitheaters, easily doable)
15 great arts (5 museums, easily doable)
8 great musics (8 broadcast centers... hmm...)

From this analysis (feel free to correct me) it looks like the only thing that we might need wonders to store is great musics.

Ok, so I haven't bought civ6 (waiting for at least a couple of: sale/expansions/RBmod/new comp), but are there any (useful) archeologists in civ6 that also can excavate artifacts? 
I believe I've seen at least talk of religious artifacts? 
Can you trade/capture those? 
And does that impact what wonders you want?
From experience I seem to recall that the easiest way for CV in Civ5 (excluding sacred sites) was to get a crapton of archeologists, some key wonders that gave good theming bonuses and fill those wonders with appropriate artifacts/occasional work of art. [Oh and some 100% tourism modifier found at the end of the tech tree (so not that much different from a science victory)].

[Molach]

Seaside resort is a quick way to tourism, if you also get eiffel it is easy to build a ton of them.

The 100% tech is computers, which isnt too far behind radio (seaside).

Archaeologists need archaeological museum, which are mutually exclusive with art museums, sooo...need to calculate how many of which type we might need.

New tundra cities with chops available can probably build theater district and some art buildings. How about this, plant crappy wooded tundra city, start building theater district (to freeze cost)...then wait.. wait...until we need the spots. Then we chop (chops grow as game progresses, right) and get district and buildings right when we need em. Genial system.