Epic 1: Being a honorable French for the third time

[Kylearan]

TL;DR: Victory on turn 273, built 13 wonders for an overall scenario score of 56 points.

Hi and welcome to my Epic 1 report! After Civ 3 Epic 1 and Civ 4 Epic 1, this is the third time I've been a honorable French. 

For my usual pre-game analysis, the first step I had to take was to find out how a cultural victory actually works in Civ VI. And boy, that was hard to find out...the game can be really opaque with things like this, and it took a lot of searching in the internet to get a rough idea how it works. (Only a rough idea. For example, I still have no idea how much tourism wonders provide.) It looks like culture points themselves are only to slow down other people's cultural victories, while only tourism points are what really matters to win.

So at first glance, the inability to generate any culture apart from wonders and chateaus didn't look that bad... until I realized that most of the important cultural catalyzers are civics which are quite late in the tree, and you need culture to reach them. And the civic for chateaus, Humanism, doesn't really come early in the tree either, I think getting to chateaus as quickly as possible is quite important in this game. As a consequence, I decdided to make a beeline for Humanism, ignoring other (normally useful) civics on the way. That also meant I wouldn't try to found a religion since several religious civics are not on the direct path to Humanism, which suited me fine as I still have no idea how religion really works. :D What I didn't realize at that time was that I sacrificed the opportunity to build religious wonders and thus scenario points, and in hindsight I'm no longer sure skipping a religion was the best idea.

So this was the plan:

* Beeline Humanism for Chateaus
* Afterwards, get Mass Media quickly for Cristo Redentor. If Adventure 1 with no restrictive rules in place reached seaside resorts, they will certainly play a role in this game as well.
* I doubt/hope the game will be over before Social Media for Online Communities, but who knows...
* Tech-wise, get Flight as quickly as possible, as Chateaus will then produce Tourism
* Computers (for doubled tourism) and Steel (for Eiffel Tower) are important, too
* ...and to be able to do all this, expand as quickly as possible, as we cannot wage war to expand in this game.
* Of course, I have to balance all this with building as many wonders as possible, as a big empire and a fast cultural victory alone won't win the event. In fact, the base score for victory is rather coarse-grained (50 turns per category and 10 points equalling 5 wonders per category), so wonders will play a major role for the outcome.

So here we go! I founded my capital at the starting location this time, and opened up with a scout, then a builder, and then two slingers. Tech-wise I went for Mining, Pottery and Irrigation, then Animal Husbandry and Archery. My initial warrior went south and then clock-wise around my capital, quickly meeting Egypt. On turn 12, I received a big break: A goody hut provided me with Saint Aubert's Skull!



I have no real idea how much the early tourism will be worth in the end (I doubt it will really make a difference), but the four faith per turn are big - it allowed me to found a belief much earlier than usual (I took Fertility Rites in my attempt to increase population ASAP to increase culture output), and also allowed me to take Urban Planning, the +1 production civic card, once Code of Laws comes in. Nice! In hindsight, maybe here I should have re-evaluated my plan not to go for a religion - I don't know, and I'm really looking forward to report day to find out how other players fared who did found one.

Anyway, after Code of Laws, I went for Foreign Trade and Early Empire, then the civics needed for Political Philosophy which all lie on the beeline to Humanism. I would change to Classical Republic on turn 62 eventually, and never leave that government as all other governments would have meant a diversion from my beelines to tourism civics.

I also met China, Norway and Kongo, then Arabia, and much later America and Rome. During the whole game I tried to become friends with all of them, by repeatedly sending delegations, having open borders, making favorable trades etc., but their agendas made that a bit tricky. I would suffer declarations of war again and again, and not all of them easily explainable.

But first things first. More goody huts provided me with a second scout (yay!), some gold, +1 population (yay!), inspirations for State Workforce and Early Empire (double yay!) and an Eureka for Wheel. I was quite happy with my luck here.

After I had Archery, I went for Masonry next, as there was a floodplains near Paris and I wanted to build the Pyramids. Before I started those, I built two settlers however, as I wanted to claim some land in Egypt's direction before it would be gone.



Intially I thought this site would make for a nice Chichen Itza location, but later dropped that plan as I would have diverted my research away from my beeline. I had a hard time to find a good spot for my third city, and then chose that spot, favoring a quick win with limits on city growth over a long-term solution:



After that, I started the Pyramids. I deliberately skipped Stonehenge, as at that early point in the game I wanted to expand instead and knew that the AIs tend to build it quickly (and indeed, Egypt got it on turn 51). While peacefully building my first wonder, out of the blue both Egypt and Norway declared war on me! Argh. I would get this kind of double declarations multiple times in this game - I wonder if one bought the other into these wards, or if I triggered a casus belli for both at the same time... Anyway, with three archers, and easily defended frontline and only one real opponent (Harald was too far away), nothing came out of this war and I was able to make peace again 15 or so turns later. During the war, I finished the Pyramids, on turn 64.

Before starting my next wonder, the Hanging Gardens, I founded my next city.



This looked like a great place for Petra! But unfortunately I later lost the wonder to Egypt on turn 97, some 15 turns or so before I could finish it. That made the site far less powerful, but still okay.

On turn 78, I started my first district: A campus in Rennes. I had to spend some gold to get the campus tile, but was rewarded with a +5 bonus to science for all the mountain tiles surrounding the campus valley.



Tech-wise I had researched Celestial Navigation for the Great Lighthouse, which I build on turn 113, and then went for Apprenticeship. I also decided to skip Machinery and lumber mills in this game, as they looked like a huge diversion from my goal of Flight, Computers and Steel. Also, seeing how few river tiles I had in my empire for Chateaus later, I'd be forced to chop most river forests anyway and so decided to chop them now, to help with expansion and wonder building.

Between founding more cities, I built the Colosseum on turn 121 and the Colossus on turn 129. I also saw several AI-AI wars and was glad I wasn't the only one having to defend from time to time, like I had to do for example against Norway and America on turn 158, or Rome and America on turn 208, or Rome and Arabia later, then Norway and America, etc...sigh.

Civ VI allows for some fun city locations:



I really like that! I also annoyed Saladin by settling two cities on his part of the continent.



And much later, I also founded two important cities on a small, barbarian-infested island.



Actually I played that badly. I sent two settlers over, hoping that the AI, which had units on that island, would clear the barbs for me in the meantime. But they didn't - they just stood there with their superior units, doing nothing. So I had to send two units of my own over there as well, which cost a lot of time. Why was this island so important? Because it had several good spots for seaside resorts, in fact more than on my core lands! I could have constructed the resorts 20 or so turns earlier had I played this correctly.

I reached Humanism on turn 145, Flight on turn 176 (I think) and Computers on turn 215. As it turned out, there were not very many tiles I could build a Chateau on, that surprised me! But still, I think Chateaus were very important for me anyway. 

I build more wonders; a complete list is at the end of this report. After the important techs were in, my tourism output ramped up, also helped by the great merchant Melitta Bentz. I got several great persons, but I think Melitta was the only one directly related to tourism. But even though the pace I accumulated tourists accelerated immensely, with Kongo I had a really tough opponent! All other AIs were duds, but Kongo seemed to go for a cultural victory as well - and my low culture meant it had a real chance of winning itself! Here's an example from turn 265:



I even built some spies and tried to steal great works from Kongo, but in five or six tries never succeeded. (I guess it wouldn't have made much difference anyway, but since there wasn't much else to do...) In the end, I managed to win on turn 273.



Here are some overview shots of my lands at the final turn of the game. First, my core.



Here's my small enclave south of Saladin's lands:



And here is my holiday paradise island, plus a filler city where I didn't realize seaside resorts cannot be built on tundra:



Looking at the replay graphs, note how I only ended up third in culture, behind Kongo and Egypt:



But I all beat them with wonders.



...as well as the number of times I got DOW'ed.



Overall I claim a scenario score of 56 points: 30 (for finishing between turn 251 and 300) + 26 (for constructing 13 wonders) = 56 points. 

So, what could I have done differently? Looking at my finish date (turn 273), I would have had to finish 23 turns earlier for 10 more points. While I had made several mistakes, like not claiming the island earlier, I doubt I would have managed to shave off 23 turns (I'm pretty sure that is possible with a different strategy, of course)! Conversely, it also means I would have had 27 more turns without losing score, which I could have used for research diversions to other wonder techs for more wonder points - which is a lot. But I couldn't have known that in advance!

I also wonder how much difference it will make that my Kongo was doing so well culture-wise - with the given scenario rules, I don't think I could have done much to weaken him, and I'm looking forward to report day to see if all other participants had a strong culture AI as well.

Overall I had a lot of fun with this scenario! I liked how my priorities shifted: Production wasn't really important to me as long as it was good enough to beat the AIs to wonders (I only lost Petra), so industrial districts had low priority for me, and I had some strange district placements as well to leave or make room for specific wonders. I also liked the map, and was quite surprised that I couldn't build a lot of Chateaus. In hindsight, maybe I should have settled more aggressively with rivers in mind.

Plus, I still have no idea if skipping religion was a weedy move or not. :D

I close my report with the list of wonders I managed to build.

 64: Pyramids
 80: Hanging Gardens
113: Great Lighthouse
121: Colosseum
129: Colossus
163: Potala Palace
192: Oxford University
199: Ruhr
254: Eiffel
258: Cristo Redentor
267: Great Zimbabwe
269: Hermitage
271: Alhambra (yes, that late - and I actually had to build an encampment first...)

[Sullla]

It seems we are now the only two people to participate in Epic One across Civ3, Civ4, and Civ6. I don't know that's cause for a celebratory drink or a consolatory drink.

I completely agree that the cultural victory mechanics are horribly documented and opaque to the player. There's an excellent guide over at CivFanatics that I'll link here again for anyone who hasn't seen in before, but this information should be spelled out in-game. Once I learned how everything worked, I actually found myself enjoying the cultural games. Before that, it was frustrating because lots of random numbers kept appearing without making any sense. You had an impressive result here for someone learning the cultural mechanics for the first time.

The decision to run Classical Republic versus Autocracy was an interesting one for this game. While I normally favor Classical Republic, I think Autocracy was slightly better here for the wonder production bonus and the extra yields (including +1 culture!) in the capital. I wonder what everyone else who played this game thought... If the wonder bonus made the difference in landing even a single wonder, it was probably worth it. Hard to know if that was the case though!

That second city placement was an interesting spot. I've found that anything not on fresh water in the early game just gets crippled by the housing penalty; you can work around it in the midgame by cash-rushing granaries or using trade routes, but at the start of the game, those spots seem to struggle mightily. Was that your experience here? I was getting that impression from the report. I also hoped to land Chichen Itza with a city in that area, and I wasn't able to pull it off in the face of a strong Kongo.

We picked the same awesome spot for the +5 Campus district. From what I read, that was pretty popular in several games.

I don't know if that island city location was worth founding. Water tiles are terrible in Civ6, and most of the power of cities comes from districts... which a one-tile island city can't build (except for a Harbor). Very amusing spot regardless!

I had a strong Kongo in my game as well, although it seems as though your Kongo was even stronger from a cultural perspective. I'm not exactly sure what causes that to happen, beyond the number of wonders and Great People that an AI civ is able to claim for themselves. Some of it could simply be random based on what districts they choose to build on the spur of the moment. One thing to keep in mind though is that when producing foreign tourists, you are stealing them away from the other civs' domestic tourists. In this respect, early tourism can be multiplicative with itself, as the number needed to win is easier to achieve and it's even lower still because you're stealing away potential domestic tourists from the other civs by having early tourism. I hope that argument makes sense!

Thanks for another excellent report. You seemed to do very well despite not having a religion. As we found out over time with Civ4, a religion isn't necessary for success in Civ6.

[timmy827]

Good to see an(other) older-timer than me active!

Still reading other reports but think you had good idea on picking a growth pantheon and forgetting religion.  It's really only two wonders that require founding (plus Stonehenge). 

Wow on your Kongo.  In my game they were always the culture leader and got basically all the great works but still very little tourism (only 15 domestic tourists from final turn, 213).  Any idea if they reached Computers or some of the other tourism boosters?  Do AI's build seaside resorts if it goes that long?

Re: industrial zones - I still found them quite useful but I think it's map dependent.  Without two of those CS right nearby that I could get to 3-envoy level pretty easily with quests and meeting freebies, they don't look like such good investments.