Adventure Two: seifer_md's Report

[seifer_md]

Adventure 2 – Saladin Space Victory T292, Score 659

And we’re back for another adventure! I’ll happily admit I had little to no idea what I was doing in Adventure 1 but at the very least it offered some insight into the drawn out and quite painful process of achieving a science victory. That game took me almost 400 turns! Having read some reports from CivFanatics I expect a finish around T200 will be needed if I want to be competitive. Still, any kind of improvement over last time and I’ll be happy. Before I get into the turns, I’ll briefly go over some thoughts for improving my victory time as well as other considerations unique to this Adventure’s configuration.

- Science Victory
From my experience a science victory is surprisingly less about the science and more about the production capabilities of 2-3 of your most adept cities. Adventure 1 and other games I’ve played since, I’ve noticed focusing largely on science has led to me hitting the end of the tech tree and trying to play serious catch up on production trying to construct the various space ship parts. I’ll attempt to change my approach by getting a decent science output early game but quickly changing focus to boost production output. In particular trying to hit Apprenticeship, Industrialization and Electricity as early as possibly, then focusing on the techs which unlock the space ship parts.

- The map script
Small continents and an additional AI civ is going to make for a pretty crowded game on paper. From what I’ve seen and read from others, it appears without fail the most optimal start to almost any game is centred on early conquest. This brings with it both the value of not having to waste resources/population on making settlers, and the benefit of taking control of already up and running cities. It also looks like the best way to get your science output going in the beginning since most of that is going to be relying on population (why waste time building settlers and losing a pop point when you can continuously march a small force around the map and take 3-4 pop cities while your original city just continues growing?). My plan will be to build a handful of slingers, get the tech boost for archers, upgrade and slowly take each city on my starting continent that hasn’t managed to protect itself with ancient walls. This game certainly will not be about diplomacy or making friends.

- Saladin of Arabia
I think religion will be somewhat useful this game but I don’t want to be distracted from my primary focus of increasing production. Having a guaranteed religion will be useful because we can focus on other concerns initially. Having Work Ethic’s +1% production for each population in the city could give me 10-15% increase (maybe 6-10 hammers) in my strongest production cities. I think an early pantheon with Divine Spark will be useful for grabbing great scientists since the backend of the game might end up with just cycling through science district projects in each city to hopefully get the few that help out with space projects. So really, this will probably be the extent of my religious pursuits.

- City states
There are a handful of city states that are particularly useful with this victory type, e.g Hong Kong & Toronto (production ++), Geneva (science ++). Weighing up whether these cities (assuming they are in this game) will be better serves as independent city states or simply cities in my empire will need to be considered. Also I’ll have to remember there is a need to explore the other continent(s) simply because missing out on meeting a city state and getting these advantages would be disappointing.
 
So my early game plan will be to archer rush my continent with the hope that by some bit of luck there’s more than just myself and Geneva on the starting land mass. I’ll see what eureka’s I can get without too much difficulty while keeping a focus on how early I can hit the production techs. An early pantheon and getting religious production bonuses once the great prophet arrives. Hopefully these are all obtainable and set me up for a faster science victory. Let’s get going!
 
T1 - Starting Moves

On a river and plenty of food, horses and wheat provide flexibility with military and opportunities to get a few tech boosts. There’s stone but I don’t think I’ll be distracted by Stonehenge.
Is there enough production though? Besides the first ring hill tile and stone, there isn’t much until 3rd ring tiles with maybe a few riverside lumbermills...
I’d like to know more of what lies down and upstream in case we can bring more hills into play. I sent the warrior south since it’s probably tundra north (based on the edge of the map/FOW). Moving the city 1 south will allow the farm triangle adjacency bonus from feudalism works better too, and only really giving up some grassland for a shot at more production to the south (plain farms could play a significant part if we get really desperate). This move also brings the 2/2 horse tile into play sooner.
So Cairo was founded, and we start on AH for pastures.


T5 – Already size 2, start working hill tile for better production. Unfortunately wheat tile will be first border pop. I could just buy the horse tile in 4 turns as well.
We meet the Norwegians to the west - typically aggressive so a military conflict seems unavoidable – let’s make it work for us. Then the Scythian people find us in the inter-turn.
I took a wounded barb camp under the noses of Norway (thank you very much) and receive boost for military tradition. With the gold I did decide to buy the horse tile after all.
AH à Mining
Slinger à Builder
Slinger picks off wounded barb scout for Archery boost. He then grabs EE boost from a hut.

T14 – HRE finds us with a unit and then Preslav to the east appears. Code of Laws completes à Foreign Trade (might not find another continent for the boost), I choose the faith card for a pantheon. Grab Pottery after Mining since granaries might actually be needed early for our rapidly growing capital not building settlers.

T18 – Meet Hong Kong, this will be good for boosts to city projects, easy quest to improve 3 tiles (craftsmanship bonus). Meet Vilnius a couple of turns later, nice production city.
T22 – Pottery à Writing


T25 – Exploring my immediate surrounds I see a retreating barb scout that must have spotted the Viking’s city. Trying to catch it I suddenly run into a small army of barb horse units. This can’t be good! I lost a slinger to a spear + horse barb combo, and end up losing another slinger just trying to clean up this mess. This really upsets the initial plan of early dominance since it’s cutting into my conquest time before walls start going up.
Also it looks like the Vikings and Scythians are already at each other’s throats as the first war of the game is declared.
Writing à HBR (might need to stop for Archery once slingers are ready)


T40 – Finally got my pantheon to pick up Divine Spark. Seems like a slow start due to barb horses making easy work of my slingers, but with a round of upgrades I now have my small army of archers to wreck my own havoc. Don’t know how much I will get done but I’m going after HRE first since they are closest and their capital looks decent on production.


T45 – Preslav receives a DOW.
Unfortunately Scythia declared war on Hong Kong which will likely require some liberating in the not too distant future.

T47 – Only 2 turns with my attention turned away I get a little call from our neighbours, a surprise war from the Vikings – going to need an archer or two to keep them busy while our eastern forces are doing their thing.
T50 – Preslav falls. A few archers back home are cleaning up against the subpar AI.
HBR à Astrology (so I can build my one and only planned holy district for religion purposes), then continue bee-lining to Apprenticeship.


T57 – The Vikings give up and offer peace with compensation.
DOW on HRE – hopefully can take their capital before walls kick in!


T59 – I get my great prophet. The holy distract in a handful of turns off but pretty well timed.


T64 – I found my religion (Islam because it’s late at night and I couldn’t think of anything witty) grabbing Work Ethic (+1% production for each city’s follower of this religion) & Church Property (+2 gold per city following this religion).


T68 – I took the HRE capital and simultaneously got half a dozen tech/civic boosts, including the one needed for Apprenticeship. Unfortunately I’m going to need this city to hit size 10 before I can build a useful district in there however. We march on!

T75 – Political Philosophy completes and we enter an Oligarchy since I anticipate more combat. Feudalism is usually the next bee-line for civics. Apprenticeship due next turn – not the fastest time since we had to stop for Astrology (~5 turns). Will tech through to Engineering (catapults) to Machinery (lumber mills + crossbows), then likely bee-line for Industrialization (power plants).


T77 – Made peace with HRE for gold and the ceding of the two cities I took. Not sure what the value of the ceding is since they still seem to hold a lasting grudge that I have cities belonging to them. Again, I’m not here to make friends.


T83 – Troops moved to western front and Vikings have a settler begging to be taken as well (turns out they knew how to swim =(). As luck would have it, just after I DOW our Viking neighbours, the Scythian people declare surprise war for territorial expansion on me in the inter-turn. I wonder if other players will have the same difficulties trying to conquer this continent early?



T100 – Currently at 8 cities with lots of AI cities still to take, Hong Kong to liberate, and a few filler sites to tie up later on. I’ve got my catapults on the way to start dealing with these slightly better defended cities. Only putting out 30 science/turn, largely from population, which really isn’t very good. I’ve played other games where it should be above 40 science/turn at this point, but it was a lot easier taking cities from the AI in those games, and I didn’t lose 2 slingers to unfortunate barb spawning thanks to the AI... Not much in the way of trade routes to brag about either. I’m not as concerned here since it usually takes a few districts to be up and running before trade routes get particularly interesting. Feudalism came in a few turns earlier with the next plan to move onto a better government type (merchant republic). Exactly 1 turn before I was going to get my great scientist, one of the AIs decided to purchase them instead which was again a bit of a setback because it means I miss out on the Education tech boost as well most likely. All in all it’s a start I can build off – no crippling beyond repair issues, but most importantly an improvement since Adventure One had me sitting at a measly 2 cities with 22 science/turn at this same point.


T110 – Education comes in and I continue towards Industrialization. I also capture the Scythian capital this turn.


T120 – Simultaneously wiped Scythia from the game as well as liberated Hong Kong for the suzerain bonus to city projects. Still so many more to go…

T124 – First apostle bought with faith, evangelize belief for Mosques (+1 spread per religious unit).
T130 – I complete research on Industrialization and start a round of power plants throughout the empire. Next I’m aiming for chemistry for the research labs. Unfortunately the game glitched out and reset my war with Vilnius the city state. I had the city against the ropes and now I can’t declare for another 10 turns or so, kind of annoying game…



T150 – Another empire update. We’ve grown to 13 cities and look like taking 2 more from Norway very soon. The entire empire is suffering from war weariness however with no growth so we’ll call it quits on the whole bullying play for some time at least. Science output has doubled in the last 50 turns to 67/turn and we now have 5 trade routes which will hopefully help my 3 main cities grow. I’ve chosen the 3 biggest production cities to fatten up for manufacturing space parts: our capital (Cairo), the HRE capital (Aachen) and Chetamylyk (old Scythian city). Not many hills among them so I’m hoping the lumber mills will have a helping effect. Aachen was slightly gimped because the AI had built 3 useless districts already and I’m trying to get it to pop 10 to finally get an industrial zone. I at least have a great engineer to boost this along with a free workshop & factory once activated. It’s also probably the best/only spot for Ruhr Valley. Cairo is building Oxford since there isn’t anything else to build in the meantime. Missionaries are coming out to spread Islam for the production bonus. It feels like this sleeping giant is finally starting to wake. I don’t see winning this game in the next 50 turns but we’ll see how close to T200 we can get.

T161 – And suddenly things take a turn for the worse… My lack of familiarity of Civ 6 mechanics see a fleet of Viking ships conquer my southern port of Pazyryk – I did not know you could take a city with a naval unit and it was contributing significant commerce to the empire. Then, a group of barbs spawn outside Pokrovka due to unhappiness and plunder several trade routes. I managed to mop them up but the damage has been done. My finances go into the negative and the following turn half my army is disbanded and more barbs spawn outside several more cities. The realization hits. I can no longer take any more cities from the Vikings and I may even lose all units immediately making it near impossible to deal with the barbarian threat.


To be honest I took this hit pretty hard and was thinking about giving up at this point as luck and my hope to carry out a clear plan wasn’t quite matching my expectations. A couple of deep breaths later I took the time to get some composure and think about all the Civ IV epics playing and reading about how others at RB dealt with adversity. At this point I knew without a doubt I would not get close to the fastest finishing time, but the idea of having a compelling story or adventure trying to get myself into a more suited position was going to be just as rewarding. Ok, baby steps. Step 1: can I get peace from Norway as I watch my army disappear before my very eyes?


T164 – Peace comes with Norway. I get a decent lump of gold and they are willing to give me back Pazyryk amazingly. This should help me keep what small force I have left on the field. A dozen more barbs run free through my lands pillaging just about every tile/district.


T171 – The colosseum is built in Chetamylyk which should help the amenity burden. The barbs are just about vanquished as well. I still need to get the finances back in the positive but that just needs some repairs from builders and re-established trade routes. We can reassess afterwards to see if I’ll continue taking cities from the AI but really I might not get much more benefit from doing so. We shall see.


T179 – I complete Oxford in my capital which triggers a few boosts which includes completing Chemistry. I can now build research labs once my commerce is improved. With a few trade routes being restored and my entire army disbanded I am now in the positive. Just the perfect time for Greece to DOW me… Goddamn it!



T200 – Time for another empire recap. Greece sent a total of 2 units into my lands which were easily dealt with by city walls alone. They shortly after offered peace. Things are looking somewhat peachier. No more barb issues, no more AIs at war with me, no more debt issues, science has almost tripled from 50 turns ago. I’m sitting at 163/turn and I have 10 decent trade routes on the go. Just a few more turns off completing Ruhr Valley and I was also able to claim the great engineer providing 20% production towards space projects. Probably still another 50 turns to get through the space part techs and manufacturing could take a little longer. I managed to get a scout over to the other continent to take a look at what other city states might be available to help.

Based on real life commitments and being very busy, unfortunately I’ll need to come back to my report and pulling screen shots from my game. If you’ve read this far then I thank you for your interest. Hopefully I can get the rest up shortly. =)

[Sullla]

Bumping this report since seifer has edited in a lot of details. Without a new post in the thread, it's really easy to miss the fact that the original post was edited with a report.

[seifer_md]

Thanks Sullla!

The rest of the story was fairly uneventful but picking up where we left off...

T207 – Electricity finally in for power plants, next onto Rocketry. I met Buenos Aires on the second continent and spent my envoys to become suzerain for the production bonus for districts/buildings and to convert bonus resources into luxury resources (improved amenities also very slightly adds to production, e.g. Chetamylyk has an excess and gets 5% bonus).

T211 – Urbanization completes and I can now build some neighbourhoods. Civic-wise I’ll head to Suffrage next for a better government (debatable) via Democracy.


T219 – Rocketry is done and the endgame begins. Science will just be guided around unlocking space ship parts for Mars now. Production will go into space ports in my 3 best production cities, Chetamylyk will build the first shuttle part since it has the highest production around 100/turn, however it’s still going to take 20 turns to build the space port in the first place! Power plants to be completed in as many cities as possible for the production boost to nearby cities and then I’ll focus on district projects to hopefully get the great scientist that aid space parts production.

The rest of the game was pretty uninteresting to talk about as the foundation had been put down and it was really just a matter of seeing out the turns. I’ll list a few important dates when techs came in or projects were complete for the sake of comparison. Otherwise skip to the end for my conclusion.

T233 – Satellites. They’re a thing and we’re going to put one into space just as soon as we finish a round of space ports.
T238 – First space port in Chetamylyk done.
T246 – Satellite launched, onto moon landing next!


T250 – Quick summary. Not much to say, there’s no runaway AI about to claim a religious or culture victory thank goodness!

T256 – Moon lander launched.
T268 – Mars habitat launched.
T275 – Nuclear Fusion in.


YOU HAD ONE JOB, SPY!
T277 – Third time my industrial district was sabotaged despite having a spy for protection. I don’t think it’ll be worth spending the turns repairing given delaying a turn on the space part won’t be made up with the I-zone district buildings back in play. Also the next great engineer is going to boost the final space part so I’ve focused every city to district projects to hopefully get him faster.

T286 – Mars Reactor done.

T292 – Nanotechnology complete, Mars hydroponics part queued up. I would like to say I was expecting this to happen but I insta-complete the final space ship part this same turn and the victory screen pops up. It caught me a little off guard, but for the first time in this game in a good way! I just got the great engineer for +100% towards space parts last turn and activated him before activating the great engineer I got a dozen turns ago for the 1500 production boost. I assume the two in tandem gave me the 3000 production needed, nice! Well… we got there! Here’s a shot on the final turn of our MVP, followed by the meaningless end game score.




Final thoughts
- Well I shaved nearly 100 turns off my last Adventure game which sounds even better when you consider that game was Prince difficulty and had all the chop spamminess at play too.
- In this game however, it’s worth noting I built every space project in 1 city. My research was almost perfectly timed to allow this - I’m not suggesting this was a good thing, just how it worked out. If I had gotten through the techs faster I might have been able to use the other 2 cities I set up just in case. Maybe I didn’t put enough emphasis on science output midgame, or conversely focused too much on production. Having read the Winter patch notes, I’ll need to change this approach because the factory/power plant bonuses don’t stack so there’s less need to have filler cities spamming I-zones if I understand that correctly.
- I also got a little confused on which district project type I should have focused on based on what great engineers or great scientist could offer towards the Science Victory. I could definitely optimize this part of the game however by the end I did have all the eureka boosts I needed thanks to great scientists, as well as all the production bonuses from the great engineers. The engineers I think I could have gotten much earlier to shave off precious turns from the victory date. But it does seem like it’s worth holding onto great engineers if you can get them to stack like I was able to.
- I really didn’t focus much on commerce this game and yeah I sure did pay for that midgame with the army maintenance issues I ran into. I only had 11 trade routes because of a lack of commerce/harbor districts, and I found I couldn’t swap into a later government type because I was relying on the trade routes coming through Merchant republic. Obviously more routes can mean getting more production in a given city but I just didn’t have filler cities with enough population to support more than the science and industrial zones, and I think the impact on getting great people at the end of the game via district projects was more important.
- City States weren’t particularly helpful this game for me. I had Hong Kong to help out with city projects when the Greeks weren’t regularly stealing away the suzerain title.
- My main city Chetamylyk was putting out 150 production per turn. It had all the trade routes contributing as well as 20% bonus due to my religion’s Work Ethic. I’m curious how high other people got with their production.
- All in all a fun game and I was able to carry out most of my initial game plan. There were several spanners in the works along the way not allowing for a smooth, optimized journey. It was probably like that for many people and without these hiccups it would be difficult to separate scores based on who foresaw these issues better. Looking forward to reading other reports and learning new things to improve my place once more. My thanks to Sullla and others who were involved in organising the event! Hope to be there for the next one too!

Disclosure:
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I played this game in the last 48 hours before the Adventure’s end date. I went back through save files to grab screen shots and noticed some things not adding up – particularly the space part production costs were greatly reduced. A quick search later and I see there’s been a Winter patch released changing these values. I have no idea if my game was altered because of this but the tool tips etc from the save files describe the Winter patch. I don’t have time to go through calculations based on how many turns it took to build space ship parts to give me that answer. Given I’m expecting my game to be far off the pace of the better games for this Adventure, I’m more than happy to put this game down as a shadow game.