Even with the buffs to Harbors in the last patch, coastal is still very meh, especially as there is nary a hill in the opening screenshot. I wandered inland some and settled here:
![[Image: 36fhNrO.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/36fhNrO.jpg)
Gave serious thought to on the cows 1NW (does give you a 3/1 city center tile, and would allow city back at original start), but decided against it. We are still hammer low and I didn’t want to push the deer and forests to the south out further; can wait a bit to pasture the cow instead.
Did get the first envoy bonus on all three nearby CS. Actually meeting that many religious was a little bad - the pantheon came so early I hadn’t explored much. Would have liked to see more tiles before deciding ,but with the pastures nearby and little immediate need for a faith-generating pantheonI went Oral Tradition (+1 culture on pastures)
As far as own development - went scout->settler in the capital. Bought a worker about T22 - 100 saved gold and 100 for 6 per turn loan from Cleo.
![[Image: 95hxmzg.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/95hxmzg.jpg)
Man, Sparta blocked off almost all valid sites to the W and SW. About time of this picture I was seriously considering an archer rush, just so many people close and no horses anywhere near. (Have met Cleo as well, and of course she doesn’t like me). Rough outline of plan was to get a trader to Athens to make the jungle movement slightly less of a nightmarish traffic jam, and use the 3 red dots. (The tile 1NE of sparta is kinda covered but it’s a flat jungle; archers on those 3 hills can hit sparta and no 2-move units would be able to attack them out of the city without being vulnerable to archer fire first). A little worried that a greece getting multiple hoplites out would be a tough nut, although the captured builder means maybe they've lost some of their starting units to the barbs?
![[Image: ej25cp9.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/ej25cp9.jpg)
2nd city, just about the only valid spot. With all the CS nearby I felt confident sending a naked settler.
![[Image: 5QjcgWO.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/5QjcgWO.jpg)
Well, I’m getting rushed again. This is really bad, those are my first two slingers under production; the starting warrior is way over by Egypt and can’t help.
![[Image: 5Dzmp3p.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/5Dzmp3p.jpg)
Greece joined a bit later. I got one slinger out (so did 2nd city but couldn’t walk over), and got a warrior in Madrid but only once it was already red, no chance to fight off 3 warriors. Resgned, too bitter to play out.
Hot take (wrote up when I lost, but got lazy and didn’t submit report until normal closing time) - well, this is really frustrating. I liked this game idea, couldn’t do Epic 3 on schedule (was just a rotten time for me, family visit + May always has lots of concerts for me + moving + a work conference) so was really hoping to play this one through. Spent a few hours poring over threads and playtesting how the passive spread actually works. (and some waiting time - cousin’s wedding plus big family vist in mid June), so anticipation built to when I actually started playing. And then splat.
To be fair, I was structuring my game plan (from about T23) around archer rushing Pericles so I shouldn’t get too high horse about early AI aggression. And I turned down friendship from him a couple of times so I could execute the rush, including once just after Cleo’s DOW; if I took his friendship I could have just scraped by her 2 warriors though probably still could have died with poor dice or if she had more coming a couple turns behind. And trying to be efficient I did the following not conducive to rush defense
-build trader first (wanted a road to Athens to conquer along) while waiting for Craftmanship (agoge) to finish
-was still training slingers not archers, hoping to save upgrade cash. Although if I finished archery tech once I saw more than one Egypt warrior, that slinger (become archer) may not complete before I get killed.
But games like this leave me with a somewhat sour taste - civ6 is maybe just a bit too militarily focused on close maps, because the AI’s are willing to rush, the escalating hammer cost of settlers + lack of any expansion penalties makes conquering a little too attractive, and it seems feasible in an early window without any strategic resource-classical units. (For comparison, Civ4 AI’s wouldn’t rush you this early; aside from a couple notorious UU civs you can’t rush AI’s this early on Monarch+ where they have archers (though choking is possible)...the civ6 equivalent would be a free ancient walls in AI capitals on Monarch+; civ4 maintenance model means that rampant early conquering can kill your research and doesn’t necessarily put you in commanding lead, and even small civ4 maps have more self expansion space with 3 tile mins and no CS taking up land). The incentives towards not building up your civ and instead killing AI are rather strong for my taste.
Cleo in particular I loathe, it seems like she has declared early in almost every RB game on me early, and on higher difficulties she is basically programmed to dislike the player (player will always be below-average military early with the free AI units)
That said, I do find my performace in Civ6 kind of funny - for the scored games I’ve tried I’ve either won (Epic 1, of the non-sponsor-shadow category + Adv 4) or gotten killed in the ancient era.
Well, maybe I will do some shadow work, I avoided reading the Epic 3’s so may do that if I have time before the next one that looks possible comes around.
Gave serious thought to on the cows 1NW (does give you a 3/1 city center tile, and would allow city back at original start), but decided against it. We are still hammer low and I didn’t want to push the deer and forests to the south out further; can wait a bit to pasture the cow instead.
Did get the first envoy bonus on all three nearby CS. Actually meeting that many religious was a little bad - the pantheon came so early I hadn’t explored much. Would have liked to see more tiles before deciding ,but with the pastures nearby and little immediate need for a faith-generating pantheonI went Oral Tradition (+1 culture on pastures)
As far as own development - went scout->settler in the capital. Bought a worker about T22 - 100 saved gold and 100 for 6 per turn loan from Cleo.
Man, Sparta blocked off almost all valid sites to the W and SW. About time of this picture I was seriously considering an archer rush, just so many people close and no horses anywhere near. (Have met Cleo as well, and of course she doesn’t like me). Rough outline of plan was to get a trader to Athens to make the jungle movement slightly less of a nightmarish traffic jam, and use the 3 red dots. (The tile 1NE of sparta is kinda covered but it’s a flat jungle; archers on those 3 hills can hit sparta and no 2-move units would be able to attack them out of the city without being vulnerable to archer fire first). A little worried that a greece getting multiple hoplites out would be a tough nut, although the captured builder means maybe they've lost some of their starting units to the barbs?
2nd city, just about the only valid spot. With all the CS nearby I felt confident sending a naked settler.
Well, I’m getting rushed again. This is really bad, those are my first two slingers under production; the starting warrior is way over by Egypt and can’t help.
Greece joined a bit later. I got one slinger out (so did 2nd city but couldn’t walk over), and got a warrior in Madrid but only once it was already red, no chance to fight off 3 warriors. Resgned, too bitter to play out.
Hot take (wrote up when I lost, but got lazy and didn’t submit report until normal closing time) - well, this is really frustrating. I liked this game idea, couldn’t do Epic 3 on schedule (was just a rotten time for me, family visit + May always has lots of concerts for me + moving + a work conference) so was really hoping to play this one through. Spent a few hours poring over threads and playtesting how the passive spread actually works. (and some waiting time - cousin’s wedding plus big family vist in mid June), so anticipation built to when I actually started playing. And then splat.
To be fair, I was structuring my game plan (from about T23) around archer rushing Pericles so I shouldn’t get too high horse about early AI aggression. And I turned down friendship from him a couple of times so I could execute the rush, including once just after Cleo’s DOW; if I took his friendship I could have just scraped by her 2 warriors though probably still could have died with poor dice or if she had more coming a couple turns behind. And trying to be efficient I did the following not conducive to rush defense
-build trader first (wanted a road to Athens to conquer along) while waiting for Craftmanship (agoge) to finish
-was still training slingers not archers, hoping to save upgrade cash. Although if I finished archery tech once I saw more than one Egypt warrior, that slinger (become archer) may not complete before I get killed.
But games like this leave me with a somewhat sour taste - civ6 is maybe just a bit too militarily focused on close maps, because the AI’s are willing to rush, the escalating hammer cost of settlers + lack of any expansion penalties makes conquering a little too attractive, and it seems feasible in an early window without any strategic resource-classical units. (For comparison, Civ4 AI’s wouldn’t rush you this early; aside from a couple notorious UU civs you can’t rush AI’s this early on Monarch+ where they have archers (though choking is possible)...the civ6 equivalent would be a free ancient walls in AI capitals on Monarch+; civ4 maintenance model means that rampant early conquering can kill your research and doesn’t necessarily put you in commanding lead, and even small civ4 maps have more self expansion space with 3 tile mins and no CS taking up land). The incentives towards not building up your civ and instead killing AI are rather strong for my taste.
Cleo in particular I loathe, it seems like she has declared early in almost every RB game on me early, and on higher difficulties she is basically programmed to dislike the player (player will always be below-average military early with the free AI units)
That said, I do find my performace in Civ6 kind of funny - for the scored games I’ve tried I’ve either won (Epic 1, of the non-sponsor-shadow category + Adv 4) or gotten killed in the ancient era.
Well, maybe I will do some shadow work, I avoided reading the Epic 3’s so may do that if I have time before the next one that looks possible comes around.
