Stop, drop, shut 'em down, open up shop (America Adventure One)

[Gaspar]

Ok, so let's do a T150 update. I'll go through the empire in a bit more detail for those comparing the game to theirs but also talk a little more big picture.

So here's the issue with Civ6 on anything less than high difficulty in a nutshell.



I'm not doing anything special. I have a mediocre military and have attacked no civilizations. My culture production is very mediocre. I missed out on religion. But I'm leading in science. Except that I haven't built a single campus or building/wonder that drives science, have no science policies. I'm ahead on science simply because the AI does not expand. I'm at a very mediocre 9 cities. I haven't met Elizabeth, who is in 2nd place. But here's the city totals for the rest of my competitors.

China - 3
Egypt - 2
Kongo - 3
Arabia - 2
Rome - 3
Japan - 2

Some of this is geography. Kongo, Rome and Arabia are all pretty close together, as is Japan-ish. China is as isolated as I am though and is 6 cities down. Its not simply that the AI doesn't build enough Settlers (they don't) but its also that it has no idea how to place a city. I watched Egypt march a Settler around the map for 30-some turns, un-escorted, near barbs and me and city-states, to settle a decent-ish spot that is 15 tiles west of their capital. And now, rather than trying to fill in, or take out a city state, or whatever, Cleopatra is simply spamming out Missionaries to ineffectively convert the neighborhood to her religion. I watched Japan also march a settler hither and yon and as of now, we're talking 20t without putting it anywhere.

There are a lot of factors contributing to this but, wait for it, 1UPT is the biggest problem. The new movement rules make it even harder to get a unit across the map - I've had 10t marches to settle myself - and the city states pumping out a billion units, probably because there haven't been any concessions for the 1CC scenario so they literally have nothing else to spend production on, simply creates a logjam for the AIs they can't seem to navigate. Now I get that I can play on Deity or whatever and they'll just kill all the city states (and the player, if possible) and you won't have a lot of these problems. But I've never been a fan of play at the Deity (or even really Immortal level) where the level of cheating from the AI means whole game systems basically go unused. I want to play the whole game, not just the part that is left. Give me a competent AI and let me play on a reasonable difficulty level. Don't tell me I have to play Deity to get an engaging game. /rant over


Eastern Empire



Western Empire



Northern Empire



Here are all of the cities as of 780AD.












Civics wise, I'm pushing for Neighborhoods as you can see from the screendump, all the cities I've had to plant on coast rather than river has meant a serious housing shortage. Anyway, I'll try and get another 50t in shortly.

[Commodore]

Of all the changes, the weirdest to me is how incredibly good jungles are.

It's like late game xenofungus, but on turn 0.

[Gaspar]

T155, Cleo likes me again.  This is every bad relationship I've ever had.  Sure, I'll take you back snookums.  Keep in mind the sole change is I built a X-bow and sold her a lux.

T156, Saladin builds Petra.  Petra is so good.  But there just wasn't anywhere to build it here.

T160, Baltimore builds workshop, get Industrialization eureka.

T161, Jakarta builds Colossus, Qin yells at me.

T162, New York builds Great Lighthouse.  Gunpowder in, Humanism in.  Metal Casting and Mercantilism queued.

T163, Great Admiral gives me a free ironclad.  Yippee.  Cleo thinks I'm a pussy again.  Also settles Memphis ontop of Charleston.  Get Great Engineer.

T166, Hook up Niter at Charleston, get Rifling eureka.

T168, Metal Casting and Mercantalism in.  Education and Diplo Service started.  Triangular Trade means gpt

T174, Get another GM. Education in, onto Mass Production.  Meet Vicky on IT.  

T176, Build Chicken Pizza in Baltimore.  

T179, Build Forbidden City in Boston.  Another shitty great admiral.  Diplo and Mas Prod done.  Onto Industrialization and Enlightenment.

T182, Finally build first Campus in Washington.  Get Civil Engy inspiration.  Get another Great Engy.

T183, Enlightenment -> Civil Engy.  Sci Theory eureka.  Meet Seoul.

T185, Industrialization in, Steam power eureka. Banking started.  Buy factories, get Class Struggle inspiration.  Get goody hut, gives xp.

T189, Meet Mohenjo-Daro.  Banking in, Civil Engy in.  Start Ballistics and Nationalism.

T190, Saladin declares surprise war.  Unloads this force at Charleston:





Probably I should do the who chosen unwisely bit but I'm not sure I actually care enough about this game to go kill him.

Get another Great Admiral.

T192, get Urbanization inspiration.

T193, get GM.

T195, Econ eureka, GE. Killed like 8 Arabian units a this point. Square Rigging eureka. Da Vinci gives Electricity eureka. Goody Hut gives scout.

T196, Cleo wants to be bae again. Qin thinks I'm a loser.

T198, discover Tsingy, goody hut gives gold.

T199, Nationalism in onto Urbanization.

T200, Ballistics in, decide on Castles for no particular reason. On the IT, after I've killed probably a dozen Arabian units without anything remotely approaching a loss, I get a peace offer of all of his luxes, including one of us, all of his gold and 5 gpt. I take it, because I don't really care to press on to Arabian territory which would likely just result in my getting wardec'd by everyone else.

T201,Upgrade a couple X-bows to Field Cannons and get Scorched Earth inspiration. Will stop here for now.

[Gaspar]

Of all the changes, the weirdest to me is how incredibly good jungles are.

It's like late game xenofungus, but on turn 0.

Yeah, even better if you build Chichen Itza.

[Gaspar]

Ended up playing a few turns without realizing it. Built Terracotta Army. I'll catch the rest up in a bit.

[Gaspar]

So here's the scenario in 1500 AD - turn 211.

Science, I'm up 11 techs and 58 bpt on the next competitor.

Culture, up 20 tourism and 25 cpt on the next competitors.

(This is with one campus built and no cultural districts.)

Domination, nobody has any capitals but my Military is 2x the strength of my nearest competitor.

We were locked out of Religion but nobody is close to winning, though Egypt has mostly converted my cities.

Current city counts:

Me - 9 (none built since t150 update)
England - 2 (didn't see her on t150 update)
Japan - 3 (+1)
Rome - 5 (+2)
Arabia - 4 (+2)
Kongo - 4 (+1)
Egypt - 4 (+2)
China - 6 (+3, though one is conquering a city-state.)

For what its worth, I think the fresh water = housing thing is a big part of why AIs don't expand. They really just won't plant a city somewhere dry and if the map doesn't generate enough rivers (this one didn't) they have nothing. Most of my cities are smaller because of this, but it also meant I was able to build Harbors in almost every city. So while I'm not growing as large, I'm getting huge benefits from additional Routes.

The most relevant stat for me is that I now have 20 Trade Routes pumping around the empire. Going to push for class struggle for the +4 food to internal routes policy. I would guess it will take me another 100-ish turns to win, because I'm terribly inefficient at planning the late game and also largely disinterested. I probably should have gone for domination - that clearly on this difficulty is going to be the most "interesting" win condition. I just fine war so dull in this game. Primarily because moving units across the map is sooooo slow.

Anyway, I'll report the rest of the game but expect it to be sparse.

[Gaspar]

T214, Mostly spamming Neighborhoods now. Also pretty much all of the AIs hate each other.

T215, Complete Ruhr Valley in Washington. Great Zimbabwe done in Jakarta. There wasn't really a good place for Ruhr Valley. And Great Zimbabwe is pretty underwhelming for the cost. But so it goes.

T218, Electricity in. Steel next.

T220, Mass Media in, onto Mobilization. Saladin builds Hagia Sophia.

T223, Decide to build Great Library even though its useless-ish at this point, this is assuredly when Kongo finishes it.

T224, Steel in, going for Computers. Kongo completes Great Library (lol).

T228, Cleo reups as bae-4-lyfe, Mvemba tells me to eat it.

T231, Computers in, onto Astronomy.

T232, Mobilization in, onto Ideology.

T233, Astronomy in, Scientific Theory next.

T234, Naval Tradition boost from what must surely be the last hut on map.

T237, Sci Theory in, onto Flight. Ideology > Class Struggle.

T238, Complete Venetian Arsenal for no reason.

T241, Flight in, onto Radio.

T244, Class Struggle in, Colonialism coming.

T246, Build Colosseum in Baltimore.

T247, Colonialism > Professional Sports.

T251, Oxford done in cap. Radio, Robotics and Economics in. Start Advanced Flight.

T252, Potala Palace in New Orleans.

T254, Sports > Natural History

T257, Flight in. Mil Tactics next. Amazingly I have Aluminum at cap.

T258, MilTac done, Sanitation.

T259 Eiffel Tower done in Charleston. Natural History > Capitalism. No, I don't know why I'm doing half this stuff.

T261, Sanitation > Chemistry.

T263, Capitalism > Opera & Ballet

T264, Chemistry > Rocketry

T269, Cristo Redentor. Opera came in at some point, then onto Scorched Earth.

T270, Rocketry > Satellites

T271, Scorched Earth > Nuclear Program

T275, Nuclear Program > Cold War

T276 Huey Teocalli

T277, Satellites > Replaceable Parts.

Somewhere along the line, definitely lost track of time and space. I started Sputnik on t287. I've also been doing the cultural wonders-ish, so it will be a race really to see which victory type happens first.

Sputnik launched on t296. Started Apollo. I've gotten really lazy and started randomly buying great people and stuff, I think Culture is probably going to happen before Science. Man, this was a terribly played game on my part. Words cannot express how much I hate the espionage spam once your diplomatic visibility is high.

Yeah, gonna hit cultural in a turn or two. Man, I really checked out on this game.

[Gaspar]

So, Culture victory on t309. Apollo would have landed t310, I'd gather I'd have won Space on ~t325-330. Finished the Civics tree on the Apollo turn. I would guess without a strong cultural push but just by trying in any way, shape or form earlier, I probably could have won Cultural around t250, maybe slightly sooner, dunno. A good indicator both of the power of TR and the laziness with which I played this game is that I ended it with 24,227 as a gold balance without selling a single unit. If I had been using that gold to extort AIs out of relics, built cultural districts all over late instead of science ones (I only built 2 Theatre Districts as opposed to 6 Science at the end) and used that gold to buy great people... eh, maybe a game can get Culture pretty close to t200, even without playing the first 100t perfectly. I actually never left Merchant Republic because I wasn't convinced any of the later governments were going to pay out better than the two free Trade Routes and gold purchasing discount.

I grew Washington to size 28 - I easily would have broken 30 if I wasn't doing Space projects there, it had actually outstripped its housing by 2. Trade Routes to the capital, of which every city had one, were generating 12fpt. The Jakarta to Washington trade route, with the Great Zimbabwe bonus, was worth 12f,6p,18g,1f every turn, despite the fact that the two cities were adjacent to one another and was a 6 tile route. Charleston and New Orleans were also size 26, Jakarta 24. Even iceball New York made it to size 14. Obviously, its all a matter of where you prioritize your TR. Triangular Trade and Collectivization just explode the routes. There actually are a lot of good policies which boost international routes but there are two reasons why you'll never build one except occasionally to complete an envoy quest. 1. They don't generate food. Egypt destined routes generate 2fpt, but otherwise no food from internationals. 2. They're more dangerous, since your internal routes are little threat to be pillaged once you get them really going.

Looking back, I think the biggest thing I did right here was settle all but one city as coastal cities. That let me get double the trade routes from each one, since I could get the Harbor out in addition to the Commercial Hub. I built those two districts in every city except New Orleans, which only got the Hub due to being inland. I also built the Industrial District and all of its buildings in every city, so was getting solid production from TRs everywhere. Not that its really necessary, basically you only need enough uber cities to be trade route destinations, then basically every city feeds TR to those cities. In this game, I mostly used Washington and Baltimore for those purposes. Chichen Itza was very good in that location, generating strong tiles without any need for builders. Normally, one doesn't settle coastally, because it slows your growth in the midgame, but with this map lacking rivers in the starting area, it was the right choice, especially once the TR really started humming.

Otherwise, I played a pretty poor game. I built a ton of unnecessary wonders. I took a little too long to expand and probably could have gotten myself out to 15 cities comfortably, which I'd guess would have performed better in the later game even if it would have slowed my explosion curve down. I ambled through the game as basically a drunkard's walk, I was two eras ahead of China, three ahead of Egypt, 4 ahead of the middle 4 civs and 5 ahead of Japan. That tells you I should have ended the game sooner. I still don't have any plan in the endgame.

Anyway, I'll come back tomorrow with some final thoughts. If anyone wants pictures of anything, let me know. Sorry the reporting was so shoddy, I really just couldn't get into the game that much.

[Commodore]

Anyway, I'll come back tomorrow with some final thoughts. 

That bad, huh?