Adventure Two: An old fart with fragmented attention span makes a comeback

[Kylearan]

Hi all!  Long time no see, and it's nice to see some familiar names from way back when still around!

It was nice to play a good game of Civ again. I haven't played a complete game of Civilization since Civ4 Epic 24 in July 2009. I've played a couple of starts in Civ5, but didn't like it. Now I played a couple of starts in Civ6, liked it a lot (despite horrible AI and a baffingly bad UI), and decided to let Adventure 2 be my first full game - and had a lot of fun with it!

So, without further ado: pre-game thoughts. As a noob, I don't understand a lot of the mechanics yet, and religion in particular is very confusing - I have absolutely no idea how it works. So: Sulla to the rescue! From the Adventure description: "[...] Or is it better to skip religion entirely to focus more directly on science?". Saladin's traits suggest he should be good at using religion to boost science. But to have a meaningful comparison between the two strategies religion vs. no religion, you need at least one player who skips religion entirely - and that might as well be me, making my life a lot simpler.

The description also states that there is one more AI than usual, meaning the map will be crowded. After reading up on how research and expansion works, it looks like more cities means faster research, both from more population and more research buildings. There also seems to be little in the way of punishing the player for having a large empire. Both things combined (crowded map and the need for a large empire) suggest war is necessary - and so I decided to do something I almost never do in Civ games: An early rush. The higher number of AIs plus their extra settler should result in a nearby target for an archer rush.

With this in mind, I decided to move the starting settler one tile southwest before founding my capital, to get to work the horse tile earlier.



I have no idea if this is still valid in Civ6, but my old instincts not to grow a city into unimproved tiles kicked in, and so my plan was to produce a builder after an initial scout, improve the horse tile and two hills, and leave the capital at size 3 until I've built the units necessary for the rush and can afford to produce another builder. Thus my initial techs were Animal Husbandry, Mining, then Archery, and my initial builds scout, builder, then three slingers (to upgrde to archers later).

First WTF moment for me: During the initial turns, the game indicated that it will expand into the horse tile next, which is great! But as soon as Cairo grew to size 2, it suddenly changed its mind and now wanted to grow into the wheat tile! What use is such an unstable indicator?!? Ah well, on turn 9 I had the necessary funds to buy the horse tile anyway.

My initial warrior quickly met Hongkong, Tomrys, Harald, Frederick and Preslav. I decided not to send delegations to any AI to improve relations, as I figured I'd need the gold to upgrade my slingers to archers. The same reasoning led me to adopt God King (+1 faith and +1 gold in the capital) as my first economic policy on turn 14 (along with Discipline as my military policy). All three AIs did send delegations to me however, greatly helping me fund my attack. Thanks!

Civic research went into Craftsmanship next (for the -1 upkeep civic) instead of Foreign Trade, as I figured I wouldn't find the time yet to build traders. Meanwhile, some goody huts provided me with experience, a second scout, and an Eureka for Wheel while building my army. With 7 turns left on Archery, I swapped research to Pottery->Irrigation as I saw some barbarian activity near my slingers and hoped to trigger the Archery boost - which indeed I managed to do on turn 26.

On turn 30, I had 3 slingers and 2 warriors (finally starting a second builder next) so it was time to decide whom to attack. I had met Pericles in the meantime, but he was way down south and no practical target. Between Harald and Frederick, I found Frederick's lands to be slightly more interesting; however, he kind of forced my hand as he suspiciously moved a lot of warriors straight towards my capital.



The movement of Harald's warriors looked more like he was hunting barbs, but Frederick I was not so sure. Now if I would let him declare war on me, I wouldn't get any (initial) warmonger penalties with the other AIs. However, I wasn't sure if and when he would declare and didn't want to lose momentum; also I guess taking cities and eliminating civilizations from the game causes diplomatic penalties anyway, so I decided on a first strike instead on turn 32. (Tomrys didn't approve.)

Fighting the AI really is easy, and so I managed to capture Aachen on turn 48 and Cologne on turn 62, removing Frederick from the game and capturing a builder and a settler in the process.

In the meantime, Harald continued to loiter around my capital with up to four warriors at a time, so I decided to build another archer and warrior for home defense before starting to pump out settlers, and I needed an escort anyway. But Harald didn't declare (yet), so I founded my first own settlement on turn 53.



A couple of turns later, Harald also moved in a slinger and finally declared war on me.



Yeah, well, turns out an archer and a warrior are more than enough to fend off an AI invasion... and look at what Harald brought with him to assault my capital: A mighty settler! That was really silly, and I managed to chase it down later and capture it.

While I finished off Frederick and slowly killed each and every attacking unit from Harald, Pericles declared war on Scythia and kept Tomrys busy - good! At the time my capital was clear of enemy units, my veteran army from the German war were back, and I advanced on Harald's cities next. (I didn't plan on rushing two civs, actually believing that by the time I had finished off one civ, the others would be too strong - I now learned that was not the case. Also, Harald declared war on me, so he's to blame!) I captured Bergen on turn 77, Stavanger on turn 82 and Nidaros on turn 88 and Harald had left the game as well.

Religion-wise I did the bare minimum - founded a Pantheon (I forgot which - I think the 15% faster border expansion one) and founded a religion on turn 66, thanks to a holy site in Aachen (I wouldn't have built one). I selected Zen Meditation (+1 Amenity in cities with 2 districts) and I forgot what else. Then I ignored Religion, as I had planned.

I continued to found cities, and established my first trade route on turn 66. I also sent every envoy I received to Hongkong for the production boost, and would do so until the end of the game - always being barely ahead of Pericles. I think I ended up with 29 envoys vs. his 27.

Tech-wise I beelined Apprenticeship and Political Philosophy, but then decided not to go for Industrialization immediately as I felt I wouldn't have time to build industrial districts and workshops so quickly. Instead, I focused on helper techs like Machinery, Feudalism and others.

Overall, I feel I've dropped the ball a bit from here on, lacking game experience what techs and civics there are and which to prioritize. I expanded, researched techs as I went along but never had a clear long-term plan. I built the Colossus. I diverted considerable resources (like all of my trade routes) to a newly-found desert city in the far east to build Petra - only to find out in the end that the city didn't really provide anything meaningful to the space race, being so far away from my core. I also declared war on Preslav on turn 104:



Preslav had rather weak lands but later managed to contribute a factory and power plant for my core. I grabbed great people as they came along if they sounded useful, but only later learned that you apparently can deliberately beeline to certain ages to look for their respective great people. And so on - I had a lot of fun and learned a lot, but felt I wasn't really be anywhere near optimal play.

I met Catherine around turn 140, and A LOT of city states on the other continent as well. It also became apparent how bad the AIs are at expansion; lots of land remained unsettled until the end of the game. I founded one city on the other continent on turn 158 to claim two needed luxury resources, but otherwise was too lazy to expand more at that late stage of the game.



Pericles declared war on my a short while later, but all I saw before making peace again was one or two units, easily destroyed. Tomrys declared on me as well at some point, but fending off her attack wasn't hard even with archers and warriors against swordmen and mounted units. I didn't go on the offensive myself however, as I felt it would divert too much from my research and consolidation efforts.

Peter I met as late as turn 192, no idea how my scouting units had managed to avoid him for so long... He and Catherine fought some ware, but I'm not sure how much came out of that.

Sorry for not being able to provide more details, but I was too busy learning the game and forgot to create more saves or write down more notes. I can reconstruct from my screenshots which wonders I built and the great people I got if anybody's interested, however.

In the end I used Sergei Korolev to speed up the first space race project by 8 turns so my three space port cities could start the Mars projects sooner, and tried to balance production on these cities by sending the trade routes to the weakest city. It became apparent that I hadn't balanced research and production speed properly; I should have prioritized production over research a bit more, as I was finished researching a bit too early.

Anyway, I launched on turn 251 - having absolutely no idea how good or bad that is. :D Here are my lands (excluding my one city on the other continent) from one turn before:



If anyone's interested, I can provide some graphs from the end-game summaries; just ask.

[Athmos]

Nice game !
I had a comparable good start with early successful wars (I'll have to check but I think your conquests were a bit faster, and I thought I was fast), but I did lose focus completely around mid-game (while still enjoying myself, so that's okay).

I think early war wad quite necessary, and unavoidable anyway given the setting. I am amazed that you founded an early religion without looking for it while I had mine snuffed almost from its start.

[Sullla]

Kylearan! Welcome back old friend. I hope you and the family are doing well. For those of you who don't remember Kylearan, don't let his modest posts fool you. He has long been one of the community's best competitors in the Epics/Adventures, as can be seen by this very strong result in what, the first game of Civ6 played? Now that's impressive.

I think your decision to attack east after Frederick was the stronger path in this game. The land was better to the east than to the west, and there was more to be gained from an early conquest of Germany than an early conquest of Scandinavia. Your dedicated early rush also seemed to come out ahead of the approach that I tried, which was a combination of building settlers and units. I wasn't able to conquer my neighbor until about Turn 100, while you had it done as soon as Turn 60, plus the land over there to the east was better anyway. You'd think with spoiler knowledge of the map that I would have been aware of that...

29 envoys sent to Hong Kong?! Wow. Maybe I would have just let Pericles have that one.

I had the same experience in the lategame with research outstripping production faster than I expected. We also ended up finish on the same turn in one of those fun coincidences. Your early game was a lot better than mine, but I was able to catch up due to greater familiarity with the other stages of the game... despite the fact that I also felt that I misplayed a lot of the ending turns. I won't be able to count on inexperience in the other players for much longer - gotta keep practicing and getting better.

It's great to have you around again. Can we expect to see you for more upcoming games?

[MJW (ya that one)]

This report is "first place" for now though you were helped by the free settler. I'm in second (!) but your much better than me. 39 turns is way too much and me making the Spaceship out of thin air with Carl is just icing on the cake.

[T-hawk]

plus the land over there to the east was better anyway. You'd think with spoiler knowledge of the map that I would have been aware of that...

I know that feeling.  Looking through the eye of a scenario designer isn't the same as looking through the eye of a player.  You're looking for your overall vision and balancing factors like resources, not which directions are strategically best.  I've had players surprise me on my own scenario maps several times too.

This report is "first place" for now though you were helped by the free settler.

There's a reason that Civs 3, 4, and 5 didn't let you gain a swing that big of capturing settlers as settlers.  Guess Civ 6 finally buckled to everyone clamoring to be able to do that.

And hi Kylearan, great to see you around of course.

[MJW (ya that one)]

This report is "first place" for now though you were helped by the free settler.

There's a reason that Civs 3, 4, and 5 didn't let you gain a swing that big of capturing settlers as settlers.  Guess Civ 6 finally buckled to everyone clamoring to be able to do that.

And hi Kylearan, great to see you around of course.

You could do that in Civ3 at first but it was patched out by Soren.

[Kylearan]

the first game of Civ6 played? Now that's impressive.

Well, I read a lot about the game before starting this adventure and so knew a lot of things already, like how easy an archer rush is, that some techs/civics are very strong (enlightenment, industrialization etc.) and so on, so it didn't feel like my first full game. But especially in the second half of the game all this theoretical knowledge quickly fell apart and I was starting to get lost...

29 envoys sent to Hong Kong?! Wow. Maybe I would have just let Pericles have that one.  

Hehe, well, I just wasn't really able to think more deeply about a city state strategy (information overload!), so I decided to simplify things and just try to keep Hongkong at least... that was one small way to actually interact with an AI, which felt satisfying.

Can we expect to see you for more upcoming games?

Absolutely! I won't have time to play private games and have to limit myself to the Epics/Adventures, but I had so much fun and it feels so good to be able to compare games again that I'll surely play the next events as well. Thanks for organizing them!