Civ6 Succession Game 1: Commercial Free Programming

[Ruined Everything]

If T100
I send an envoy to Stockholm. We’re now making 11.5 points a turn towards all cultural great people. 

Red Herring is settled. I place a industrial district where you see it - it’s the best place we have that doesn’t overwrite a mine, it will share it’s factory bonus with Candy Mountain, and it’s by the sea for +4 culture. Very nice. I hold off placing a theater district so I can chop it’s jungle first. Jungle chops are worth 40 food, and you only need 15 + 24 = 39 to grow - a chop is a insta-size 3!

We recruit Lady Murasaki. The people rejoice. 

I/T T100
Pedro sends a flood of Catholic missionaries over and tries to convert our cities.
 
T101
Mathematics drops to 5 turns. Building the encampment will now save us 2 turns. I look around to see if there’s anything I can research to delay and nope! Everything on our industrialization beeline is dependent on education, and delaying industrialization by even a single turn does not seem wise. Ah well. RIP Encampment. I guess we needed the workers anyway.

Frosted flakes finishes it’s settler and starts a builder. It’s running up against it’s happy cap - it needs a granary and a little bit of love.

I reassign our workers to hammer related projects. I would go easier on the plantations - builder charges are valuable, and we don’t lack for gold right now. 

I/T T101 
Pedro’s army flails helplessly against Gandhi’s cities. Varu count: 0.

T102
I configure Rice Bowl for max growth. It’ll grow in 4 turns, and then work the mercury mine to make progress on a worker - it badly needs some love.

Feeling Crabby pops towards it’s fish. Eventually we should have Feeling Crabby work both fish and give its farms to Need Food Pls.

I/T 102
A slinger and a warrior trap our exploring archer in a patch of forest. I didn’t have visibility on the slinger until it was too late. Uh oh.

T103
Medieval faires comes in, and we lose the amenities policy.   Medina quarter (+2 housing for all cities with at least 3 specialty districts) isn’t nearly as awesome. I’m feeling a little bit jaded with all of our choices. Aesthetics looks good, but amounts to precisely 7 culture at this stage of the game. Land surveyors is useless because I’m not planning on purchasing tiles. Urban planning would be worth something like 8 hammers/turn. Is that better than Literary Tradition’s 2 gwp/turn? I decide it is. Could use some more choices around here!



Pedro is up to 9.1 gwp/turn. What. I mess around with him on the diplomatic screen and I notice his agenda is “Likes civilizations who are not competing for GP, and will recruit GP whenever possible. Dislikes losing a GP to other civilizations.” This is why we hate him. His ETA is now T117 (ours is T116 - not T115 as I implied earlier.) The situation bears watching closely.

Operation: grow the Red Herring goes off as planned. It’s nice to see I can do *something* right. 

I/T 103
Pedro cunningly splits his forces for a joint strike against Delhi and Agra. His horsemen pillages a pasture. The world trembles at the might of the Brazilian hordes.

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I thought I’d maneuvered our southern archer to safety, but another warrior came out of the fog and ate him.  Argh. I am not liking this turn set.

T104 
I purchase a granary in Red Herring to speed growth. We may want to waste a hill tile and build an aqueduct at some point. 

T105
Need Food Pls grows and I build a mine by it’s Industrial zone to be. It’s i-zone ETA drops to 6 turns. 

Here’s a state of the empire shot T105. As you can see, we’re doing a huge worker push. Wheaties and Iron Chef are finishing up amphitheaters to house our great works of literature, and Candy Mountain and Feeling Crabby will build a second batch next. Unfortunately, all of our cities are running up against their housing cap. My next set of builds will probably be granaries and settlers.

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We build a fishing boat to boost along red herring’s growth, and Eureka celestial mechanics. We’re only 1 envoy away from being the suzerain of Vilnius.

Pedro hits the same ETA as us, despite us literally making 16 GWP/turn. I decide to go to Military Tradition (2 turns) to run the GWP policy for 10 turns. I should have done that earlier. Hopefully that slip won’t prove decisive.

I/T 105
Pedro asks to declare friendship. I say sure - might as well lock that down before we piss him off by swiping his great people and forwards settling all over him. 

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[Ruined Everything]

T106
Mathematics comes in, and we start on Education. 

Iron Chef can do a Theatre Square Festival in 4 turns - we should probably do that next. 

After spending a little time thinking, I order up an amphitheater at Feeling Crabby. This was genuinely a tough decision - I’m still not sure whether the Granary -> Industrial zone route would have been better. I make my decision based on the fact that we need somewhere to store the 240 great writer’s works. This might have been a move. Take a look - thoughts?

I sell Pedro Sugar for 170 gold, and use the proceeds to buy Candy Mountain a grassland mine to work when it grows in 2 turns time.

Pedro has yet to damage an Indian city. His army is starting to look gassed. I haven’t see Gandhi field a single unit. Varu count: nada.

I/T 106
Pedro makes peace. He wins the Ruined Everything participation award.

T 107
More hammer improvements, more food improvements, nothing much.

I/T 107
Saladin pops up, and I sell him mercury for 120 gold to try and get on his good side. We now have enough money to by a worker when our settler arrives at his destination.

T 108
We hit 18.7 GWP/turn, and our ETA T115 pulls into the lead! Gonna be a nail biter, folks. 

A side effect of my GP race with Pedro is that we’re making vast amounts great artist/musician points per turn. We’ll get a great artist in 3 turns. I delay Humanism for long enough for it to receive the full effects of the boost. 

We become the suzerain of Vilnius. Our culture/turn hits 73.9. 

Even after my spendthrift ways our treasury is approach 675 gold thanks to resource trading with the AIs.

T109
21 GWP/turn. ETA 114. Pedro’s ETA is still T116. We got this baby. 

I get to reassign Need Food Pls’s trade route. The foreign trade routes look tempting, but I go with Wheaties. Need Food Pls needs food pls. 



T110
The state of the empire:

To the north, Red Herring is growing based on seafood, Chocolate river is about to finish a much needed worker, and Candy Mountain is starting on an amphitheater. Red Herring is geared for food, the other two are geared for production. 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. There’s no hammers into anything, so I’ll leave that up to you.

Everything in our core is geared to production. Frost Flakes and Feeling Crabby are in dire need of granaries - perhaps do that next? Iron Chef and Need Food Pls are running out of tiles to work. I would build mines next to their i-zones as that worker follows the northern settler East. 

EDIT: Screwed up the picture. Will fix when I get off a flight.

Finally, in the East, we have two settlers incoming. Where to put them is up to you. Rice bowl dropped a theatre square by our planned national park. It’s in dire need of a worker, so I had it do that. It could probably use a granary next.

Remember to keep thieving Pedros away from our GP, and I would suggest sinking a turn into exploration to maximize the humanism boost. Here’s the save - good luck!

[Ruined Everything]

Fact 4: Getting Mr Shikibu is not optional.

Murasaki is the surname, not Shikibu (actually it's all a pseudonym anyway, but even so). And she would probably have objected to Mr.
The usual rendering in English is Lady Murasaki.

I just spent the last 10 minutes reading her relevant Wiki page. Fascinating. Thanks for letting me know. 

The plans sound pretty nice. The Theater Square project gives 20 writer points, 20 artist points and 20 musician points (from my testing, it doesn't scale based on techs, but I could be wrong). For curiosity sake, the Carnival city project from Brazil gives all this plus 20 engineer and 20 merchant points.

Stockholm is going to be great in this game.

That's good to know! I didn't need it this turn set but I have no doubt it'll come up again. Stockholm is making us like 30 GPP. It's awesome. 

That encampment location is A+, if we can afford the tile and still bring in Lady Murasaki.  (and, at 800 gold for her, we definitely can...)  Not only is it hilarious because it's right in Pedro's face, but it is also strategically sound, because it blocks off land movement past that range of mountains.  We've got a couple turns, as you noted, and I'd personally buy that tile now, so that it doesn't accidentally get poached.  Unfortunately, it won't eject that slinger, because we have open borders, so chopping that tile might be dicey.

Regarding Varus, I swear I saw one during my turn set, so you may need to send an observer over to the shoving match between India and Brazil.  There are definitely some over there.  Also, given that it's a war elephant, I'm pretty sure it doesn't require horses.  (Arabia's knight replacement notably does not require any resources either.)

Since you're interested in the jade from Vlinius, you should check our city-states first.  We may already have jade from Nan Madol, but it's also possible that city-state got taken away from us.  If it hasn't, I'd be tempted to advocate putting the envoy towards consolidating our hold on Stockholm... but it's true that just getting to 3 gives us another +2 at all our theaters.

edit: Yeah, a quick check says Nan Madol has jade.  Vilnius would also reveal a bunch of land, though, so it might be a good idea purely for scouting... and apparently nobody else has sent Stockholm an envoy yet, anyway, so just having 3 gives us a leg up as it is.  I'd send the current envoy to Stockholm first, for sure, anyway.  Why do we have one lying around?  (Who cares!  We need it now...)

edit2: It also looks like we're set to grow onto the jungle tile for the encampment.  I'm still feeling paranoid, though, so I think you should buy it.  We can definitely afford it at 100 gold.

I deeply regret the encampment. It was hilarious precisely because it blocked off that land route. My heart broke a little when we got Mathematics in 5 turns. 

I even more deeply regrets the varus. Why Gandhi why? He beat off Pedro with no units. Good to know about horses though.

I was actually more interested in the +2 to all coastal districts. Between Nan and Vilnius, I'm pretty sure we're making +4 culture per coastal I-zone.

[Singaboy]

I even more deeply regrets the varus. Why Gandhi why? He beat off Pedro with no units. Good to know about horses though.

It seems, even the AI knows that you need no units to defeat an AI attacking you as they are so incredibly inept.

Pedro fielded two catapults and two horses. if played smart, he could have taken one Indian city. If nothing changes with the AI, you will hardly ever see a runaway Civ. It's sad.

[Ranamar]

Quick note: you're never going to be able to reassign the farms from Feeling Crabby in that location, unfortunately. They're in its first ring, and you can't reassign first-ring tiles away from a city. (You can, however, have a city work what would have been a first-ring tile and then not reassign it to the city that ought to own it... but if you ever flip it to that city, you're never getting it back!)

[Ruined Everything]

I even more deeply regrets the varus. Why Gandhi why? He beat off Pedro with no units. Good to know about horses though.

It seems, even the AI knows that you need no units to defeat an AI attacking you as they are so incredibly inept.

Pedro fielded two catapults and two horses. if played smart, he could have taken one Indian city. If nothing changes with the AI, you will hardly ever see a runaway Civ. It's sad.

Pedro had a few more units that were operating in the fog around Delhi. I saw at least one swordsman and a couple warriors. But yeah, not an entirely overwhelming invasion force by any means.

Quick note: you're never going to be able to reassign the farms from Feeling Crabby in that location, unfortunately.  They're in its first ring, and you can't reassign first-ring tiles away from a city.  (You can, however, have a city work what would have been a first-ring tile and then not reassign it to the city that ought to own it... but if you ever flip it to that city, you're never getting it back!)

Once again, very good to know - thanks! That's a terrible shame though - I though that that might have been a long term solution for Need Food Pls. I guess one of our trade routes is going there for all time, unless anyone has a better solution.

[Molach]

Ill get to this in a few hours.

Seems a path is laid out!

I shall not stray. Too far.

Any wonders coming up we want? They all give a bit of tourism, some can store artworks, some have nice benefits.

[Molach]

Sorry guys, it got too late to play now ... waiting for update with not-so-fast internet means my play window is up for tonight, but I'll have more time tomorrow.

Do we have consensus that we should _not_ capture any cities with a commercial district?

Will we have use for wonders to store our great works? Or will we have enough districts with buildings that this is a non-issue?

[Brian Shanahan]

I especially love the gold star for Pedro, Ruined Everything. Made me

[Ruined Everything]

Any wonders coming up we want? They all give a bit of tourism, some can store artworks, some have nice benefits.

According to Well of Souls:
Amphitheaters give 1 great writing slot @ 135 hammers & 1 g/t (I think this is wrong, they give 2 - I'm pretty sure Wheaties is storing both of Lady Murasuki's opuses.)
Art museums give 3 great works of art slots @ 265 hammers & 2 g/t
Broadcast centers give 1 great music slot @ 525 hammers & 3 g/t.

Assuming that there is 1 great person/era (this might be wrong - it got me in trouble with the great prophets) and that great writers and musicians give 2 works and great artists give 3 (again, I think this is right from the internet, but I'm not sure) 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.

Nice wonders:
Colosseum (amenities always appreciated)
Forbidden City (more policy slots nice)
Great Zimbabwe (mainly for the salt potential, +1 TR might be nice?)
Bolshoi Theatre (probably a must get + 1 music slot)
Ruhr (as always)
Eiffel (must get for national parks/seaside resorts.)
Broadway (probably a must get + 2 music slot)
Maracana Stadium (if we have nothing else to do)
Cristo Redentor (Pls for seaside resorts.)

Shame about Sydney and its 3 music slots.

Do we have consensus that we should _not_ capture any cities with a commercial district?

Yup. I thought about pillaging them, but then we'd have them staring at us on our build screen. My vote is to burn those bourgeois monstrosities off the face of the earth - they sealed their fate.

I especially love the gold star for Pedro, Ruined Everything. Made me