Timmy's Terrifying Teutons in Epic 4

[timmy827]

My first RB Civ report was an AW game (Epic 14 of Civ4) and I got kindly lectured by a vet about report going too long.  This one probably is too, but it might be the last event so I went all in.  Thanks to the sponsor and all readers!

Quick scoring:
First city conquered:  T79 (if city states count) or T132 (if not).  I’d be shocked if the ruling matters
First civ kill:  T169 (I *better* not win this
Experience: 5 star field cannon in the west - 274 XP

36 cities on winning turn (187)


1W looks like obvious move at glance.  Also thought on the stone could be good too, the rice is a 4/0 marshrice; which first (with this then the tiles between the horses/cows is a good one)...I went with settling 1W.  

Idea was doing 3x pastures with the Open Sky pantheon (culture from pastures).   Also not sure why I can see that desert hill above the rice, but that looks like an ok spot already even if all desert to the north
That also allows going straight AH->Archery, no big need to do mining early.  
Was very tempted to gamble with builder first - I really bet Sullla playtested enough to make sure no AI’s real close, and that was true of the original AW civ3 and civ4 games - but warrior->builder was choice.  It doesn’t set back too much because all those pastures are 2nd ring, and can’t get the pantheon that early either.  Also deliberately did not build or use scouts, thought a few huts not worth possible extra trouble early.   I didn’t playtest a ton on what AW looks like but had thought that AI’s don’t scout great, so if I don’t wander out too far I won’t have to defend until later.  

Other early ideas - culture somewhat devalued, as envoys worthless
would it be easier to conquer nearby CS instead of building settlers?  One playtest indicated yes you definitely could with warriors/archers if fast enough.

Oh hey, there’s one.  A city would go where the warrior stood - with the pantheon those sheep hills are OK and has 5 grass hills in 2nd ring.  But eventually I decided against an early rush of Lisbon.  It’s not on freshwater and has a lot of desert/coast, so not a really strong site.  And the line of hills is an issue - would take 8 turns to move warriors or archers from the capital up there; that’s an uncomfortably long travel time and sounds like getting asked to have the AI show up in force while your army is away.  
(That animation was really neat - was able to move east, kill a lisbon warrior after it redlined a barb camp spear, and swipe the clearing gold + military tradition boost!).
With that gold, I was ok buying 2 of the pasture tiles, after normal culture got one plus the stone.  Pantheon not around yet so culture expansion pretty slow.

Mt. Kilamanjaro created a real interesting tradeoff here - the “c?” tile would be awesome with all the hills and bonus food, but really gimped on housing until Aqueducts available.  I would wind up doing it later, like my 5th city; curious what other players did with it.  

In my pregame I wasn’t necessarily planning to be doing a settler this early, but with no AI contact at all it seemed like this might be a very builderish always war game.  Also I have archery 1t from done (didn’t get slinger kill boost), want to prebuild some more slingers of course.  

Call me crazy but I’m building another settler (without Colonization!) as no AI’s around…
General approach was taking hold here.  I decided that I wanted to play a bit slower game:
-do not stomp an AI early with archer rush (none really close enough here anyways), or slightly less early with horseman attack.  That would play out a lot like my unwritten Adv 2 replay (didn’t finish a space win, but with better tactics early leveraged horsemen into wiping the continent around 400AD) or Adv 3.  
-wanted to play instead with siege and slower moving units, just for something different.  (But not glacial, thus getting GG seems key)
-and kind of wanted a longer game, wanted to develop my own civ more and defend for a while.  I had time to play this, and it looked like decent chance that the Epics would end after it; even if not I will be traveling a lot in Sept/Oct and probably can’t do the next game.  So wanted to invest some time in a longer game.
-also, unlike the last adventure, there were several good city sites around with rivers + multiple production tiles.


As far as districts - planned to do the CH+ Hansa combo basically everywhere, and probably a good number of encampments as well.  (their yields and buildings are kinda sucky, but GG are invaluable for the movement bonus).  Planning on totally ignoring other districts.
All that also explains why I didn’t settle Magdeburg 1W so it would get the horses - don’t really want too many of them, and can probably do encampments if needed (IE if I don’t get another city that grabs them).

Finally meet an AI, though the barb horses are a much more proximate issue, plus a camp to my NW also sending some units (thankfully no horses).  Also State Workforce isn’t urgent but was waiting on finishing Foreign Trade for when could ditch God King - did get the Open Sky pantheon, phew.  I guess backup choice would have been.  Really wish that you could see list of founded pantheons - maybe I’m wrong but think you see other civs pantheons when

1. They cross 25 faith after you’ve met them
   
2. They found a religion and
   

Maybe you also see the gossip “unknown civ founded pantheon XXX” - a couple civs in this game did no faith at all until very late -

Two much closer AI’s met now.  (Maybe accepting ‘look at our city’ on first meeting prior to DOW is against spirit of the rules?  But since you can’t DOW them until after that dialogue, I took it.)  Barbs quite nicely ‘gifted’ me that French builder.  And was able to cause a little more mischief too:

Lucky for me, Spain and France had gone to war before either met me.  Neat to get 50 gold and 25 science from pillaging (especially former, was going to be cash strapped) but no chance for either of us take city...maybe could have sent more archers/warriors down here but quite possible they get walls up before I do (even a stronger unit like a chariot or spear that boosts city defense can cause problems).    The spanish warriors either retreated or died, so I backed off rather than risk losing those two guys.  (Sure enough saw one French chariot as I ran away).  From where Seville is and the border edges visible, pretty sure Paris is a bit east of Lyon.

One other point that was sinking in - unlike the previous ‘first’ AW games in civ3, 4, we appear to be roughly in the middle of the pangaea - two civs south, Gilgamesh likely to the west.  No one met to the east yet but there appears to be a lot of land over there so probably someone.  Maybe the north is clear - I was the first to meet Lisbon, and there is some coast, so maybe that’s the north edge?  (And a 50-turn playtest seemed to indicate the CS won’t really come after you if you leave them alone).  I don’t have any idea what AI attacks look like in always war (do they send somewhat-threatening groups infrequently like civ4, or mostly trickle units like civ3?), but they could be coming from almost any direction.  That reinforced my defensive choice, again seems risky to have a lot of your army.  Also required some careful prioritization of finishing CH districts and sometimes taking less lucrative trade routes, and sometimes delaying settlers to have the roads done as soon as possible to new cities.  (Of course, not being able to prebuild roads compared to civ 3/4/5 is a little hair-raising…)  Even with that, there would be big trouble in moving armies around to defend a wide perimeter; will need more units spread out I think compared to AW maps with a more defined front.  

Finally, the occupation mechanic influenced my no-early-conquest decision - with treaties for ceding forbidden, you get very little out of captured cities until you can completely kill a civ.  Seemed possible that you could expend a lot of effort on a campaign and get a big delay on reaping rewards because either you can’t find a last iceball city, or have to delay capturing the last city because of some other AI attack.  


Considerable swing point started here. The scout to the SE would cause considerable headache, the camp it came from spawned horses that attacked from that direction (yet another to defend) and was too far to easily squash with warriors/archers. (Even though it was on France’s doorstep, Catherine was woefully bad at clearing it out, maybe due to the France-Spain war.  )

Barb archers do raise the threat level a bit in the north, so started sending reinforcements.  (Maybe I should have done that road on the reverse route?  Although the food would help Magdeburg more).  Started a very profitable sequence

Ok thankfully the camp isn’t far and its spear has run out towards Lisbon.  That simplified clearing the camp but also started a battle with the CS - I think they generally don’t attack you, but after they engaged the barbs they were close enough to keep going..

Fortunately all those hills meant the chariots couldn’t close in on the archers fast, nor could their archers advance-and-shoot the same turn, and with them being all deserts, no forests/jungles to block firing angles; so was able to handle Lisbon’s units pretty easily.
Took a while (think I went back to buildering instead of closing on Lisbon right away) but with no real AI attacks, kept 3 archers up there, and surprisingly Lisbon never got walls:

So archers (with the German bonus) were able to gradually shoot down the city even though the water tile made a siege impossible. Captured T78 - not quite the early boost I anticipated pregame but still had some very helpful effects:
-although housing gimped and little food, is already size 4 and can work 3 grass hills (2 mined already!)now, will claim 2 more forested grass hills soon once the monument is fixed.  
-intact Commercial Hub for another trader slot
-a farm that is not particularly useful (would eventually put a Hansa on it) but saves one builder charge for Feudalism boost.
-confirmed that it is the northern map edge


So here’s a pretty good overview of the eventual core.  One settler about to do the Mt. K city at eastern teal (which would get a trader from Trier to do as much roads per route as possible), and the one about to finish in capital goes to the tile northeast of the wheat south of Magdebug.  Wanted a city straight west of Aachen on that other river but Sumeria just blocked it.  

Backing up a bit,

Big, big break here with Gilg gaining lordship of a religious city state and them DOWing me.  That counts as both a meeting (3rd for political philospohy, had met Buenos Aires to the west; had been resigned to not finding a 3rd as culturing it now) and a DOW for Defensive Tactics which I thought was impossible.  Unfortunately this mechanic is part of the other war/peace issue posters in the game thread hinted at - if you meet the CS this way, you can’t DOW them.  Later if they go neutral because two AI’s both have 4 envoys or whatever, you get a 10 turn peace treaty signed automatically (not sure why it’s this way other than giving you the option to sign peace) and can’t re-DOW them within that time.  This would later cause some heartburn.

Regarding gov’ts, Autocracy seemed like only real choice as Diplo cards are all totally blank until Diplomatic Service.  Conscription became a fixture, and Limes saw a ton of action (was planning Monarchy down the road and they don’t cost gold, so yeah makes sense for Ancient Walls nearly everywhere, especially with the chop overflow abuse).  Economically did the usual bouncing between builder/settler policies depending on what was needed and fitting in Urban Planning when not doing both; though also ran some Caravansaries which was a bit unusual.The whole upgrading strategy was running into some gold shortages.  Really not surprising so should have seen this coming from needing to run a high military to stay safe, no CH bonus from city states, and no resource sales to AIs.

Also, I probably buy too many tiles in two ways
1) Chasing the pretty adjacency bonus, which comes with a hefty gold upfront cost
2) Want <somewhere> that’s flatland so I don’t have to waste a ‘good’ tile (resource, hill, riverside forest) on a district.

Problem 1) got a lot better this game out of necessity, and the first Merchant helped some too.  2) got somewhat better.  Though in a couple of cases (notably Cologne, pic coming later) I made a 3rd error, not buying tiles but just waiting for Godot culture picker to pick ones I wanted for districts, and never building them at all until very late.  

Also was pretty steadily in negative happiness most of the game, at first from lack of luxuries and then later war weariness.  However it very rarely reached worse than -3 in any city so it wasn’t really a big deal.  Never saw any rebels of ‘my own’.  


Alright enough big picture, more narrative.  In that overview I had to retreat a warrior back from 3 spanish units, and just after the first real attack shows up.  

Fortunately I got some weakening of Gilg’s army before Spain reached my territory; unfortunately the CS is throwing some in too.  (Do they do this if allied to an AI?  Do AI’s use the Levy Millitary feature?)  Also crashed out one horseman, for the city strength boost as much as the unit itself.  The road (still being built) was crucial, as much for evacuating units as moving them in.  Figured out the AI basically attacks with each unit individually on the best matchup they can reach, so by careful placement could prevent them from ganging up enough to get kills..  Here I drew one war cart in with that archer, which can flee east as others kill it.  

This hill was a great defensive position, suckers one warcart into bad attacks across the river while others would do something else.  

Ok maybe I should be taking this more seriously and getting walls in Trier.  But settling this city helped, the warrior escort can flash itself to lure some of the Spainish guys away from the main battleground.  The river at Trier and other rough terrain was really useful, slowed down the AI advances enough to keep this from getting out of hand.  One other thing that helped was bad AI retreating - they would sometimes pull back injured units which is ok, but then return them 3 turns later when they’d only partially healed and their comrades mostly dead.  Really they should pull them all the way back and put them in the next attack wave.  Also the lack of any resource-requiring units was a harbinger, AI’s are still terrible at securing strategics.

Berlin did go walls very early - wanted it to be a frontline damage soaker for Spain/France as much as its actual production.  Also needed the Engineering boost so Nuremburg (the Mt. Kilimanjaro site with a ton of food but without fresh water) can start Aqueduct, which was done almost in one turn with wallchop abuse.  I do like that the patch reduced Aq costs.



Here we had a considerable potential problem.  I was starting some encampments but none done yet, and France is gangbusters on the GG, and we already skipped the Medieval era for them.  Really wanted a Ren - was assuming I’d start offensive with muskets and bombards but if era advances again I would miss it.  Beating france to this one might have been possible if I dropped almost all other economic development to finish encampments and then spam their projects, and seriously considered it, but decided in worst case I could start slow without a GG.  Considerable risk.  

Finally I can do that camp clear with an assist from France’s settler escort.  It gave me some grief during that big fight at Trier but fortunately they mostly avoided pillaging.  Also note the teal border to the east - I was wrong, it was Brazil, but still haven’t met them.  Knew *something* was there for a while via the redded out areas on settling view, and have deliberately avoided more scouting over there hoping to delay possible fights.  Later I learned it was Geneva CS but Pedro killed them at some point (then somehow failed to wander 4 tiles to my border for about 50 turns).  

Cheekily tried chasing the French settler pair a bit,and oh !#$@#

Have seen  no horsemen or swords from AI, but France jumped straight to knights.  Her military score zoomed past me, she probably has more than one too...At least Gilgamesh wants to
Had seen this settler a turn earlier who had retreated.  This really shouldn’t happen - I think settlers get better vision?  Should have still seen my warrior and not moved next to him, even if AI can’t “remember” where it saw an enemy unit the turn before and extrapolate where it might be one turn later?

And another steal.  Good to learn that the newish Sumerian city has walls but BA does not.  

Planting that settler - had debated 1SW of here, but the spanish archer will kill my warrior if don’t settle now.  This was a good spot but had decided to pass on self-building a settler, seemed like just a bit too exposed and far from the capital to be worth it...but sure let’s use the freebie here.  This was the site of deferred district dreams, wanted a CH where marked and a hansa to its NW but culture never claimed the tiles.  

Heh, instincts were right about it being exposed!  Rough timing, just starting the trade route for road! (this is only 2T after its founding)...also before planting I didn’t consider that the one mountain would be a big pain as far as moving units around.  

Yikes.  At Cologne, was able to send the horse north around the mountain once to spank an archer, but the Sumerian horse forced a retreat.  I thought that was the advance guard of a Gilg attack (could tell by seeing ‘support bonus’ on his horse) so became too risky to send reinforcements that way, could only use that one road with the mountain and rivers bottlenecking other paths.  Some of the chariots had Barding so they aren’t easy marks for Archers either.  

And while I have walls at berlin, their 25 ranged strength barely scratches the knights.  I think they could have trucked the walls (one more knight came in a turn later) without a battering ram with intelligent use of pillage healing.  I do have Mercenaires + Machinery soon and xbows will help enormously, but this is still pretty tense.  

(oh, I don’t care about culture, the Theatre Square in the capital is just for food on the trade routes.  The patch changes making all districts a bit cheaper and bigger discount on ‘uncommon’ districts made it seem worthwhile).  

Could hold this hill long enough to chop walls, which means I can probably let spain flail against the city if I need to.  As for the knights -

Chariots were invaluable.  They can’t really hurt knights, but can safely take one hit then swap positions to prevent the knights from potentially one-shotting my archers; one upgraded sword (done before mercenaries but they’re not that expensive) served that role too.  In this pic I chose the xbow to upgrade and swapped the chariot 1NW of magdeburg with the archer next to the western knight.  Then next turn all can fire on the knight and kill it.  I think I got somewhat lucky with them splitting up, don’t think I planned that.  Eventually other xbow upgrades were enough to pelt them to death.  

And with that cleaned up, time for my first limited offensive.  Since BA contributed some considerable units to the earlier attack (and Industrial CS seem to have a lot running around) I wanted them dead, as well as (probably) preventing a joint Spain/Sumeria attack on cologne.  Also wanted to kill that one nearby sumerian city, but not go farther yet.  Still all quiet on the eastern front despite now knowing Japan and Brazil, but not sure that will last.  Also Gilgamesh’s other cities are quite far away, and he has the +10 strength when near same-religion city enhancer belief so he’s not an easy conquer target.  

Anyways, BA had gotten this knight for better city strength, and walls, and an xbow inside, so wasn’t total cakewalk, but fortunately did not run into Gilgamesh units until the walls down and fortunately no silly peace deal either.  (BA had flipped between Gilg and Phillip a couple of times but never long enough for the peace to end so I could ‘properly’ DOW.  

One neat trick - my warrior in the north (just a scout wandering, really) could distract some of their units indefinitely with the dead sea healing.  Got hit a lot but he never got more than 2 units to kill it in one turn.  Another was that my horse could pillage-heal and kill the archer the same turn, didn’t know that was legal!

Success.  Also the catapults are basically free kills - they seem almost pathologically programmed not to shoot at units.  Sure they are not strong but that seems odd…

Took a while to burn Abu Salaikh as a few more Sumerians wandered in from the west and my swords were a bit banged up, but got it done T132.  Razed and replaced with my own original design - this late, that was more about prinicple than really profiting from standing up another new city.  But I like building

[timmy827]

On the other side of the world

One of other in my lastwave self founded cities (not counting future settler captures).  Had put off this spot for a long time due to fears of meeting Brazil and being spread thin if a major fight breaks out, but new upgraded Knight (again was going mostly slower units for main force, but 1 for city strength and rapid reinforcement was a good investment) gave me confidence to push out.  It was a great investment and not just for the resources (that’s my cheapest source of Niter, though Cologne could 3rd ring buy a tile too).  It provoked a lot of skirmishes with Brazil but they would send 1 or 2 xbows/pikes at a time, easily killed.  After about 20 turns of this I didn’t worry about any real attack from Brazil, they pissed away their (strat-resourceless) army so never gathered any problematic group of 5+ units.  While I didn’t know it, I was really done getting attacked, the AI’s got quite passive - saw like one samurai from Hojo the whole game on the attack. Spain, Sumeria went into a shell as well around now.   France still sent knights on occasion but only 1 at a time from now on so no threat.  Especially when they did this:

Really no idea why...they would have to go several more just to have a legal spot and there’s nothing good, while they are ignoring a much more attractive location with whales and hills on the south coast that is ~7 tiles from Paris...

Since little defensive going on, I’ll move a bit quickly in reporting.  In big stroke of luck, enough folks stayed in Medieval Era long enough for another Renassaince GG to spawn after France grabbed Jeanne d’Arc, and now I had enough encampments/barracks that I easily got him.  Mostly followed boosts including chopping an Armory even to the musket/bombard/field cannon line.  Got Monarchy and that was good enough - originally I thought I would capture holy sites and use Theocracy to faithbuy units but AI’s built much fewer holy sites than other games I’ve played, then Mercantilism for Triangular Trade.  Didn’t seem like other gov’t worth detouring for since I couldn’t realistically do the boosts. Wanted to bask in glorious Hansa doubled boni from Craftsmen but I often had to run max gold policies to be able to afford upgrades or slip in some Meritocracy to push for better gold polcies at Merc and Enlightenment.  Even did some Great Merchant projects to speed them - the gold from Fugger and Astor useful though envoys not, and Adam Smith for another policy slot.  

I did get the Great Engineer with wonder-power about T113.  Pyramids were actually still open (!) but disappeared a turn later, just before Isidore could do them since needed to relocate to a desert city.  Other attractive options (petra at Frankfurt, colosseum) had fallen too so did Terracotta Army; nice but with a lot of units near the next XP level it wasn’t quite the payoff I hoped (thought it might give promo w/o XP, live civ4’s free promotions for Aggressive).  Didn’t try any other wonders.  I started a few entertainment complexes with eyes for future Zoo placement, but happiness never got really bad enough to finish them.  

Ok here’s the first force.  You can also see a lot of guys still waiting on upgrade gold - given the recent dropoff in AI attacks I probably have overbuilt units, and would have planned on actually waiting on slowbuilding more muskets if I could do it again instead of pennypinching for
Spain is first target - super weak as you can see, has never had any strat resources.  Also thought Colosseum would be nice to grab, though turns out it was on the coast near Madrid way out west and only covered two cities.  

Got a little hairy with the tight space/slow moving between Zaragosa and Seville,  French units coming over into that ground clogging further, and one spanish xbow having Garrison.  I was a bit rash with the bombards forward here - without the GG movement I would have definitely lost a couple.

After Seville I decided to turn east towards France.  Partly wanted to kill Spain so I can get something out of my conquests, but Madrid is kinda out of the way and I think they are little threat even if they do reach a Conquistador or two.

And they have 1 city I haven’t found yet.  Oh also, really wish you could choose trade routes better!  Need road home from here but why must it go through enemy territory???

Anyways, there was a bit of traffic jam at Lyon with peaks and rough terrain so I could spare a few units for Preslav.  Even with the german bonus, they are a bit more formidable as they have gotten a musket (no AI ever connected a single Niter).  France’s cities are much stronger but they appear to be gassed, the Seville-conquering force is close enough to draw out all of their troops.  Could use some muskets/knights with rams to supplement where they had farms for pillage-healing, also ran the Pillage policy to scrape whatever gold I can find, France had a few Fur camps:

Also started looking for harvestable gold resources - there was a copper at Nuremburg I spent 2 charges on (remove mine, harvest, replace mine); one of the captured settlers did a city on the north coast, at first intended it to do a Harbor for Cartography (other for boost would come from Madrid) but it’s real value was grabbing a couple of Crabs that turned into 500 gold.  Also was able to swipe a few enemy traders here and there (rare sightings - no AI built a single commercial hub the whole game!)

Without cannons, could have a separate force grab the one isolated city in the east, and yet *another* settler

Couple more notes here -

The war/peace notices are Preslav peacing and re-dowing me same turn due to a surezian flip.  Fortunately they didn’t stay neutral, I think a couple of my guys got teleported back a hex but didn’t really interfere with killing them.  Hope no one else got stalled by this CS war/peace thing.  
Also just jaw dropped at where the last spanish city is.  Glad I found it but man what was the AI thinking - there’s a single crab not yet revealed down there but otherwise junk.  The desert hill 1 NW of the xbow would grab two strat resources, fresh water, and a couple other hills, and it’s closer to the rest of spain….
Anyways back to France, things got a bit interesting

Well, I guess the AI’s do get bad war weariness problems! Had forces split so wasn’t really ready for two state of the art units (though the Battlecry on my muskets mean they actually aren’t much weaker; barbarians can’t get the capital-continent bonus of the Garde Imperiale.)  They probably could have taken Paris which would have been amusing, but they didn’t coordinate at all.  I regrouped/retreated a bit, lured one to the marsh 2W of paris and killed it under a hail of flanking bonuses.  The other pillaged some districts while the encampment wore it down (though pillaging their EC heals, apparently) so I could finish it off a few turns later without issue.  But that delay caused a new problem:

Ouch, France got one of those guys too, and 80 strength is a lot (plus Renassiance walls).  First cannon shots only doing single digit damage...the GG will help once I get it down from Paris but still yeesh.  Fortunately that unit just turtled in the city and never attacked out (tried to lure it with a naked builder at one point, no dice!), and the capital/continent bonus doesn’t boost the city strength yet more.  

Also some of the cannons were close to earning the Shells promotion which sped things up quite a bit (some muskets had Urban Warfare too).  And france’s walls are still attacking at only Crossbow strength, so promo-heals and a bit of pillage-heal could keep all of them in the fight.  Took about 5 turns to wear down this beast...Rouen was their only remaining city and didn’t get another GI inside, so it wasn’t too bad to finish them off.

End in sight.  France killed T169.

One final AI oddity, before I address the giant pile of German troops in the NE of the above picture...

Marseille was a size 8 city, on a river, with plenty of grassland hills.  Even with AI mismanagement (farming flatlands and putting districts on precious hill tiles w/o adjacency reasons) it’s amazing they never built the city center (non-wall) buildings here.


This was a somewhat embarrassing stallout.  Had a 2nd army ready to attack Brazil - they are weak in army but tech/culture leaders.  However this screenshot indicates they have gotten to Field Cannons before me, and decided that I didn’t quite have the firepower to move here without it getting pretty messy.  I’ve gotten an Industrial GG as well but he won’t help the cannons.  Originally planned to warp Gustavus over here before polishing france, but that 80 strength city meant I needed him till the end over there.  So I mostly parked my army here for quite a while, especially since I don’t know how much of Brazil I need to fight through - he has quite a few cities.  From the order in the trade screen Brasilia and Manuas (not in picture but I know the city from mousing over a tile, it tells you the city owner) are pretty high, so hoping Rio is somewhere only one city further east/SE - this was correct guess but couldn’t be sure here.  

So parked the army here, sometimes killing a Brail unit that wandered near.  Waited for the vet bombards to move from France, and helpfully Nationalism came in then too, merging to corps was a godsend.  (While there are still some big 1UPT issues in civ6, the corps/army system is a good idea to alleviate worst of the lategame traffic jams).  The vet with rookie unit merge is maybe a bit OP though...
Also did a lot of field cannon upgrades in the waiting period.  Techwise I mostly stayed on the bottom, Cavalry was the last unit I would get a lot of use out of.  Got one spy but not much to do with him - I hear the steal gold mission can be good but no AI had a CH so no targets.  Did get lucky on rolling a few tech steals from Brazil but nothing that I actually got too (Combustion and something).  Never actually did Industrialization - was finally verging in on enough gold to upgrade all troops so no big reason to boost production.  Final research was Economics but finished the game before upgrading to Infantry; I didn’t get to Steel either.   Happiness started improving as full kills of Spain, France relieved a lot of WW (more than I expected per the formula, maybe all the WW from those civs disappears as well as the flat -2000 points for “peace”?).  Almost all their cities had ECs too so they were happiness-neutral.  Didn’t need to finish research/building zoos or even run Retainers all that much - I was still mostly negative in my cities but as long as it doesn’t reach rebel-spawning at -5 it’s a very minor penalty.

Back to fighting!

The upgraded, merged, and GG’d force could whack Brazil around pretty good.

Here was the decisive turn, they threw all their guys forward but split fire and didn’t finish that one bombard corps of mine (retreated west already).  I have a 2-shot, 4star FCCorps than can actually kill two of theirs in a single turn, and wiped the rest here...that was every remaining Brazil unit.  And he didn’t have any strong melee units so his cities took a ton of damage, even with him finishing Steel so by battering rams were useless.

Good, capital is close, straightforward to finish him off from here.  (I’m firmly with Thawk and against Sulla on the change in the military victory first in Civ5 and carried here - needing capitals only is an improvment).  

Heh, I think that’s a weird bug - he lost a diplo slot because his capital had the Potala Palace.


Meanwhile Spain never got any stronger (in fact their mil strength has been stuck on 0 since I took Seville!) so can finish them off just with field cannons + a token horse to walk into redlined cities.  

Gilg is still at horses/xbows/pikes so he had litte chance... some skirmishes drawing his troops out with the pictured forces.  After smashing spain those vet FC’s slogged north (aided by Simon Bolivar, who had appropriately been fighting Spain ) and met up with this motley crew near Uruk and that was plenty to finish him off.   

I did have fun playing the longer game, but it was starting to drag now.  So left a lot of points on the table as far as the honorable mention for cities go - could easily capture all of Gilg’s and La venta, but stopped.  The Brazil army could have probably kept going as well - the muskets and bombards moved north in case needed for Japan but they never caught up with the cavalry wave.  Finally there were a fair number of ok city sites but did not’ build any settlers for them since about turn 120.

As for last civ Japan, they had some decent military strength but was having several old units (xbows, pikes, knights, samurai - no Renassaince or newer).  Since they never attacked there were a few more to wade through but not much of a problem.  

Weapon of choice here was cavalry corps, using horsemen upgrades of course.  Along with bolivar and Logistics a lot of these guys could move 6 or 7 tiles a turn and mostly ignored ZOC.  And they had plenty of punch to knock down walls with a ram. (Quite nice there is a flat land path for the ram from my western city to Osaka.  That was yet another captured settler, a total junk location in the desert founded just to run traders to build roads halfway to Japan).  

Here’s the end.  Some of Japans troops stayed in that northern city and some of them I could really just ignore.  72 strength on the cav corps is pretty brutal even though the light-cav promotion choices aren’t great.

So was fun but a little disappointing, the early interesting fights with Sumeria and Spain attacking gave me hope it would be a more action packed game but the eastern AI’s did very little but build.  Not sure if it’s a personality thing, or if Japan was always too far to try to attack me, or if at some point they look at the military scores and decide to turtle?  Or if finishing walls in all border cities dissuades them from attacking?
Of course the AI tactics are pretty bad - think I lost maybe only one warrior in “real” combat operations to that first group of 3 french knights, all my other dead guys were scouting units getting whacked.