Civ 6 Adventure 1: Tossing the Salad(in)

[Lord Parkin]

Welcome!

I plan to update every 100 turns or so, or when a major event occurs - whatever comes sooner.  We'll see how it goes.  

Admittedly I did play out a couple of starts with different civs on different maps in the 12 hours prior to Brick releasing the saves, so this won't technically be my first game - but it will be the first played to completion, and the first with Arabia.

Early plan: Spam units for the first 20-30 turns as insurance against the inevitable barb menace (seems Civ6 default setting is "raging" based on my limited experience in the first 12 hours of play). Then switch to other builds. I want to test how feasible ICS is in Civ6, but I also want to live up to my wonder-whore reputation. So we'll probably be trying some sort of a hybrid city/wonder spam strategy. Wish me luck!

[Lord Parkin]

So, let's get started!

We begin our Arabian adventure on the shores of a river with stone, rice, cattle and tea nearby. The terrain seems decent - a mix of forests and hills with some flood plains and even desert. The only notable absence is mountains.



First tech is mining for the quarry, though I skip building a builder for the first few builds to instead focus on Warriors and Slingers.  Good thing too, since the barbarian scouts arrive quickly from no less than three nearby encampments.  We deal with the scouts and take out the encampments, while completing a builder and improving the terrain around Cairo.

Next step: a second city.



North looks pretty decent, and functions as a chokepoint for the majority of the new barb spawns, so we head up that way.  Soon afterwards we meet Egypt.



A little while later we discover the Political Philosophy civic, which enables us to choose our first 4-card government. Barbs are still a problem for our explorers so we pick Oligarchy so we can keep the +5 combat strength.  We also pick all the production focused cards we can manage, particularly the one speeding up settler builds.  May as well crank out a few more cities and see how it affects our empire.



For the next 20 or so turns I set most cities to build to Settlers, while using all my gold to buy Builders in the new cities. Seems to be a reasonably effective strategy for fast expansion now that the barbs are under control. Yes - in a shocking turn of events, I briefly ignore wonders and focus on expansion! What a marvel. Egypt nabs Stonehenge at some point during these turns.



Once the barbs are under control, my next civic switch is to Classical Republic to turn that military card slot into an economic one.  Got to do everything possible to compensate for the terrible build times.



Egypt is friendly as ever. They sent this charming message at least three times.



Says the chick fielding only Warriors. (Facepalm.)

Anyway... remember how I was ignoring wonders to focus on expansion? Well, that didn't last for long. Once I got half a dozen cities I decided to make it my personal challenge to attempt to build every remaining wonder in the game - useless or not.

Here's the Pyramids.



And the Hanging Gardens. Perhaps not an ideal placement blocking an Aqueduct district, but oh well.



To be fair I had enough other cities continuing to build Settlers at the same time that I was still expanding as this was going on, albeit at a slower rate.

Egypt complains about my troops on their borders. Two explorers just happened to meet there at the same time, I hadn't even noticed. I promise to leave within 20 or so turns, though I don't realise that's what the option does. (Will be relevant later.)



A view of the southern part of my empire.  That +1 production on fishing boats pantheon is really nice, especially in the current production-starved state of the game.  (I say current because I'm hopeful this will be adjusted somewhat in future updates. Firaxis, please.)



It seems the AI doesn't explore much. I was the first to meet several city states around turn 100 despite other civs being much closer. Also, I kept continually running across unexplored tribal villages even later into the game.



The notifications that your delegates give you about your own actions are exceptionally pointless, but give me a bit of a chuckle.



Suspicious troop movements south from Egypt. Gee, I wonder what Cleo could be planning?



Meanwhile at home, we finish step 3 of our "build all the remaining wonders" plan with the Oracle.



Oh wow, a surprise war! I'm so surprised! 



I buy one Heavy Chariot, and in addition to my own two Warriors that's all I need to clean up Egypt's massively scary 3-Warrior invasion force.



I investigate further north and discover Egypt appears to have nothing but Warriors.  Well played.



I send an envoy to Hong Kong and become Suzerain.  Suddenly their carpet of units is fighting for me against Egypt.  Well that's handy.



I steal a Builder from Egypt, but stop short of attacking their capital.



Cleo offers a generous peace, and I don't feel like playing the warmonger game right now, so I accept.  (I'm sure I could have wiped her out easily if I'd wanted to, but I preferred to leave her in the game to see what happens next.)



And with about 110 turns played and the conclusion of the Egyptian skirmish, that seems like a good enough place to stop for now.  I'll be back with the next installment in a few days.