Civ6 Succession Game 1: Commercial Free Programming

[Molach]

I can put up the CV screen when I grab this later this evening.
 PS I got it!

PPSh: Great turnset and report. Cant say you ruined anything at all, there.

[Sullla]

Very nice job! To explain what was going on with the archaeologist builds, I was planning on having Need Food Pls build its archaeologist unit normally, and then cash-rush the archaeologist in Chocolate River, since it has lower production as a city. I should have typed this in the notes from the last turnset. I don't think it will make a huge difference either way though.

So here's the one bit of bad news: Brazil is still producing more tourism than we are!



He's producing 80 tourism/turn right now and we're getting 79/turn. And this is with our team sniping a whole bunch of Great Writers and Great Artists that he would otherwise have picked up. I'm not exaggerating to make a point here: Pedro is legitimately playing a good cultural game. For whatever reason, the Brazil AI seems to be the strongest peaceful AI right now.

Fortunately, things are starting to swing in our direction on the tourism front. We're going to clean up all the remaining Great People, and we should be able to start sniping more of the wonders as well. On that note: I would definitely have Wheaties straight-up build the Colosseum, as its only an 8 turn build. That should be easily done at this point, no need for the Great Engineer. I would also skip trying to build the Forbidden Palace, or at least make it a secondary priority. I would suggest that we go for the two big cultural wonders we have available right now: Bolshoi Theatre and Hermitage. If we burn both Engineer charges, Iron Chef can do Bolshoi in about 7 turns, and that would give us a place to drop one of our Great Musician charges while waiting for the far-off Radio tech. Then Iron Chef could slowly build Hermitage, which would give us a place to slot in a bunch of Great Works of Art and save us at least one art museum. There's not a lot else the capital needs to build right now.

I would also go for Terracotta Army at Wheaties after it builds the Colosseum. All we need is a very cheap encampment + barracks (which the city has the population to add as a district), and then Terracotta Army is a 7 turn build. It even has a real use for us, since it would allow all archaeologists to roam through AI territory without Open Borders. I would probably not go for Ruhr Valley, as it doesn't do anything for us culturally (beyond the tourism all wonders produce) and we don't need to worry about building lategame military or a spaceship.

We also need to be very careful about what we do with our money from now on. Our income is starting to drop precipitously, as we predicted at the start of the game, and it's only going to get worse from here. Take a look at this:



Yeah, so that 54 gold/turn income we're seeing on the interface? 48 gold/turn of that is coming from deals we've made. We make essentially zero net profit right now for our empire as a whole. And that's with us paying nothing for our Ancient era military. Needless to say, we need to keep selling our chocolate resources whenever the deals expire to avoid going bankrupt, and it's still going to be a major crunch as we get closer to the finish line.

This game really is a blast. Good luck Molach.

[Ruined Everything]

Very nice job! To explain what was going on with the archaeologist builds, I was planning on having Need Food Pls build its archaeologist unit normally, and then cash-rush the archaeologist in Chocolate River, since it has lower production as a city. I should have typed this in the notes from the last turnset. I don't think it will make a huge difference either way though.

Whoops. Yeah, I remember thinking that that would have been the smart way to do it too - I just figured you'd done the math and getting the tourism quicker with the optimal move. Oh well. We got one set of relics 9 turns sooner, but the other set of relics 17 turns later, so I guess that was negative accomplishing?

I guess a mitigating factor here is that we did free up one of our best production cities and churn out a bunch of workers, but still. Whoops.

He's producing 80 tourism/turn right now and we're getting 79/turn. And this is with our team sniping a whole bunch of Great Writers and Great Artists that he would otherwise have picked up. I'm not exaggerating to make a point here: Pedro is legitimately playing a good cultural game. For whatever reason, the Brazil AI seems to be the strongest peaceful AI right now.

I want to emphasize this. And point out that the only reason that we managed to snipe those GP from Brazil was Stockholm. Seriously - you should have seen what I was about to do to our empire way back around T80 or so to pry the Medieval and Industrial great writers from Pedro's clammy hands. It would have involved chopping everything, zero growthing the northern cities, and tying up a turn sets worth of builds. Even now, without Stockholm we'd be making 16 gwp/turn to Pedro's 13. I think we actually passed him, unboosted, on Sullla's last turnset.

This all gives me hope that the AI problems shouldn't be too hard to fix. If Pedro had double his cities, I think we'd have to invade. He'd be a monster. Increase the AI's focus on settlers, give the AI bonii to settlers and military unit production, and get them to zerg rush/suicide against cities (sort of like barbarians, but with a heavy focus on murdering cities.) You could do more tweaks here and there, but that should cover a lot of it.

(I'd even take a shot at it after sigcomm, depending on what my research is looking like.)

I would also skip trying to build the Forbidden Palace, or at least make it a secondary priority. I would suggest that we go for the two big cultural wonders we have available right now: Bolshoi Theatre and Hermitage. If we burn both Engineer charges, Iron Chef can do Bolshoi in about 7 turns, and that would give us a place to drop one of our Great Musician charges while waiting for the far-off Radio tech.

I'd like to push back on this. Forbidden Palace is strictly better for culture than either Bolshoi or Hermitage. Bolshoi's big draw is that it's a no-maintenance broadcast center (the +2 free civics are pretty nice, but there's no guarantee that they're anything we need.) Forbidden Palace is a free aesthetics/rationalism civic. Aesthetics is a comparable in magnitude boost to grand opera (recall when I swapped them out we gained like 2 culture) - and we have a lot of culture buildings. Hermitage is a free museum, so that's cool, I guess?

I would go Forbidden Palace > Bolshoi > Hermitage. (Incidentally - with Bolshoi + Broadway + Sydney we'd have homes for 7 out of the 8 great musics in the game! I suspect wonders are supposed to play a major role in how you store your great musics. It doesn't help that Sydney is 1/3 as expensive as the entire Mars Mission (and at 3300 production, more expensive than any single part.) )

Is the tourism production of wonders worth exploring? 5-9 base tourism isn't bad when you only have 70 tourism/turn.

Yeah, so that 54 gold/turn income we're seeing on the interface? 48 gold/turn of that is coming from deals we've made. We make essentially zero net profit right now for our empire as a whole. And that's with us paying nothing for our Ancient era military. Needless to say, we need to keep selling our chocolate resources whenever the deals expire to avoid going bankrupt, and it's still going to be a major crunch as we get closer to the finish line.

Gentle reminder about the seafood economy here. It turns out that fishing boats are only a +1 to food (+1 to gold after cartography) - not a +1 food / +1 gold like I thought (did this get changed in the patch? I could have had some bad information here.) Even so, we have 13 crabs worth 4 gold each and 11 fish worth 2 gold each - the majority of which we're not working. There's at least 50 gold on the map for us to pick up! We might even want to plunk down cities in the unsettled north if we see luxury patches as cash cows. We have alliances with Pedro and Victoria - the only people who could take those cities are Saladin and Tomyris - if we plan eastwards we should be fine.

[lange17]

Lurker here. I bought every Civ since the first one, but 5 took the wind out of my sails, and I haven't pulled the trigger on this one yet. Just wanted to say thanks- y'all are making this game sound like a blast! Definitely leaning toward purchasing now... either way, thanks for the entertainment, and good luck defeating Pedro et al!

[Molach]

I decide to try a second variant on wonder.
Iron Chef...wants to build Broadway. So I started it on builders first while we get the civic. 3 builders got out before we got to start Broadway.
Also Colosseum in Wheaties, will slowbuild it in 8 turns. I swap civics - take away the +100% culture from theater square buildings. This costs us 40 culture, but I'm not sold on the need for culture. I swap in +15% wonder building policy. And I think I'll try to get a +industrial district adjacency bonus swap too later on.

Also, swapped a David statue with a Michelangelo statue between our art museums. I guess some people can tell the difference... because we got 2/3 theming in both our art museums, which bumped our culture/tourism up a few points.

Moved worker near Crab cakes to choppable tiles. Started workshop in feeling crabby. .

T 151:
We get a civic, and can build neighbourhoodlums. Set culture towards broadway. Need food plz finishes builder, starts electronic factory to boost cities around.
Candy mountain starts an Archaeological museum, it has decent production to build archaeologist after.

Trader is free, having boosted caffeinated. I relocate him to Rice bowl, looking to send a caravan to Arabia. Yes, less output (more gold though) but also boost tourism.
T 152: Art museum in frosty completes, I start making great works with artist there. Next build is electronic factory.

T 153: Get Square rigging. Rice Bowl continues building its campus.

T 154: Red herring starts an Art museum.

T 155: We recruit Jane Austen.
Scout is gonna die, because I 3-moved him somewhere, and there were barbs in the way. He decided that my movement order surely must stand. So yeah. Sorry bout that.

T 156: Mass media finishes, we gain a boost for nuclear program. We loose our garrison unit policy. I take logistics....not much else that seems useful. Except if we were at war. Probably why they are military policies...Logistics actually seems useful for defensive war as well. Just sayin'
I slot in the ind. district + adjacency bonus to see how good it is, taking out +housing one. We should probably micromanage here, use high food + housing for a stint, then +production ones. Amenities seem useful all around because of +% gain. We start Broadway.
Pedro builds Chichen Itza. Obviously.
We also get the 0.5 roads.
I generally build production all around in central cities, fringe cities get art stuff.
Scout didn't die because barbs didn't attack. Yay. But healing next.

T 157: Some deals have ended, and I've improved another cocoa. We have no problem finding buyers.

T 158: Wheaties Start forbidden palace. EDIT: Builds Colosseum.



T 159: Start the Hermitage in Need food plz. Most cities around are building elec. factories.

T 160: Cultural victory screen shows ... we are gaining now, tech is limping towards computers, culture is coming in very fast now. When our current builders get low, just slot in the policy a few turns, never hard to get a civic change.

Save added, pictures later.
EDIT: Culture screen:


So I started a lot of wonders. No Ruhr though - it looked like it could hardly pay back its cost before the end. Broadway is close to complete. I goofed a bit, should probably have built an art museum earlier instead of an archaeology one - we have an artist who must chill several turns now. Red Herring is catholic and could faith-buy museum, but lacking 150 or so still.
Ada Lovelace arrived, and civic swap should be lined up
Forgot to call the save RBSG1 though. Hoji Tokimune it is then.

[Sullla]

Looks good Molach! I don't know if I would have gone after Broadway as hard as you did (mostly because it's so expensive to construct) but it will finally give us a place to house some of those Great Works of Music, and that's certainly helpful. Other quick thoughts:

* I approve of sending a trade route to Arabia. We should send all three of our trade routes to foreign locations from here on out, as the +25% tourism bonus helps quite a bit. With our incredible culture, we're not that far away from Social Media civic at the end of the civics tree and the +50% tourism bonus from trade routes at the Online Communities policy. If we're getting +75% tourism to three of the five AI civs, it will speed us along nicely.

* On a similar note: we do not have Open Borders right now with Arabia and Scythia. Saladin will sign Open Borders and give us a big chunk of gold by sending him our excess cocoa resource (I was able to get all 150 of his gold and 5 gpt). Tomyris will sign Open Borders in exchange for 7 gpt on our end. I would make that deal since it's tourism we care about, not money. Open Borders + trade route is the difference right now between 103 tourism/turn (current status with Tomyris where we have neither) and 155 tourism/turn (current status with Pedro, where we have both).

Remember, 900 tourism with another civ = 1 foreign tourist. We're up to a new foreign tourist with each of the five rival civs every 6-8 turns, and that should keep increasing.

* I would go ahead and burn Ada Lovelace (the Great Engineer) before we forget about the ability. There's no reason to delay on the special ability, which will boost Computers tech for us. Very nice.

* The next Great Artist (Rembrandt) will finally theme THREE art museums for us. We'll need a place to put him though, so I would have Rice Bowl build an art museum for him starting next turn, which should finish just around the time Rembrandt is ready. Then we can shift the paintings and sculptures around for the theming after that. With Heritage Tourism policy also about to arrive on the next turnset, we should be able to top 200 tourism before the end of Ranamar's turnset.

* Don't forget either that Terracotta Army is still out there too as a very cheap wonder that benefits our archaeologists. We only need to build an encampment somewhere and a barracks, then we can produce the wonder. We even get half cost encampments per our Japanese leader ability.

Sullla <<< on deck
Ruined Everything
Molach
Icaboad (skipped)
Ranamar <<< UP NOW

Thanks as well for the nice comment lange17!

[Ranamar]

Wow, that was fast... I get distracted by another game for what feels like a couple days and I'm already up again.

I need to read up on where we are and what our strategy has become, but I can definitely get this done tomorrow.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

You guys have 8 envoys to place?! Looking at the Sulla post re income you aren't in the diplomatic policy for gold from places envoys. At this stage that's gotta be worth 20gpt+ what have you got in its place?


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[Ranamar]

You guys have 8 envoys to place?! Looking at the Sulla post re income you aren't in the diplomatic policy for gold from places envoys. At this stage that's gotta be worth 20gpt+ what have you got in its place?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

IIRC, a civic to generate the envoys we aren't using faster.
I'll take a look at that when I load up the file.

[Ranamar]

T160:  First order of business... civics!

Yup, we're generating new envoy points faster for the envoys we haven't sent anywhere.  I put a couple envoys into Stockholm to put it up to six right off the bat.  Then, I put 2 of the remaining ones into each of the three city-states we have suzerainty over.  The other two have suzerain England or Brazil, who we want on our good side, and neither of them does us much good anyway since we have no holy sites.

I also swap in the Merchant Confederation diplomatic policy for +26(!) more gold.  (Raj also looks okay, but +6 each science, culture, faith, and gold isn't quite as good for us.  It's a solid second diplomatic policy if we ever get another slot, though.)  The rest of the policies seem good, especially with all the wonders we're building.

The deals the AIs will accept with me seem to be different from Sullla's.  I got open borders with Tomyris for 4gpt and with Saladin for 5 gold and 2gpt.  I think I could have gotten one of them for a cocoa, instead, but I screwed up the deal.  We have an extra cocoa, anyway... which it looks like I can sell to Gandhi for 15g and 6gpt.  That beats what we would have gotten above anyway.

Candy Mountain needs a build.  It looks like we're a little short on money for the Archaeologist in Candy Mountain, but it's 39 turns to build the Bolshoi Theatre, which feels long.  (However, it turns out that's slightly above average...)  Unlike some of our cities, Candy Mountain has a ton of flatland, so we're going to build that there.  We can build or buy the archaeologist later.

I sent Ada Lovelace to Candy Mountain.  It has a lot of flatland, unlike many of our cities, so building an extra district may actually be usable there.

Oh, and I did some things with workers; I'm not sure how well thought out they were.

T161: Rice Bowl finishes its campus.  We're 23 turns from Computers at the moment.  As much as I want to build an electronics factory because it will get us +9 cross-empire production for 355 production (payoff in 39 turns), we really need that tech, so 2 science per turn from a library first, and then the factory.  (Then, probably the art museum even if we might wish we had a university, because we'll have more GPs coming...)  It's a 2% science bonus at this point, admittedly, and it trades 18 cross-empire production for (at current build time of 11T) 22 science.

I also decide to see who I can get embassies with.  Tomyris will take one; the rest won't.

T162: uneventful; moved some workers around.  I did discover that the ruin near Hyderabad seems to be permanently garrisoned.  I gave up on moving my archaeologist onto it in favor of things closer to our sphere of influence.

T163: Coal mining comes in.  We discover 3 sources of coal; 2 are under existing mines, and a third one is not.  Tuna suddenly has a ton of production: it got 2 sources of coal on its own.

Rice Bowl also finished its library.  It's 2 turns later and now it's only 19 turns to Computers, down from 25 or so.  Rice Bowl starts on an Electronics Factory.

T164: Frosted Flakes completed something; I'm not sure what.  It says Art Museum, but that's already full.  We're actually kind of running out of things to build here, too.  There's an amazing +6 neighborhood site while also totally lacking tiles to work... or we could drop a campus that completes in 8 turns when we've finally got our science rate up.  The +6 neighborhood tile is 260 gold, and I'm feeling okay about our gold situation right now, so I'm going to buy that tile (it's 3rd-ring tundra surrounded by forest) and drop both of those.  The campus might shave a turn or two off Computers, and just completing it will be +6 science.  The neighborhood is just to lock in district costs now.

Crab Cakes also finished something, probably a factory.  (It's definitely not the workshop it says it is...)  I drop a theater square next to the industrial zone.  Completion is in 6 turns, and then we'll have another of these districts available to build up.

Tuna finished an amphitheater.  It also has a worker with 4 turns left.  We'll want that soon, but, for now, I queue up an art museum.  We'll need a couple more soon.

Interturn, Saladin offers salt and 5gpt for truffles and open borders.  We have 3 truffles, and I couldn't sell it for money anywhere, the last time I checked, so I take it.

T165: Heritage Tourism completes.  We enter the Atomic Era and have Rapid Deployment boosted.  Our next civic is Mobilization, because it gates everything down the line.  It's 4 turns, because we haven't built much of any military.  (heh)

It's also civic-switch time!  We're doing quite well in terms of happiness, so liberalism (+1 amenity from 2 specialty districts) is out for Heritage Tourism (+100% tourism from art).  We'll get another slot soon from the Forbidden City to slot it back in or even also take the wonder card out for a worker card.  We'll need more workers soon.

We also got 3 envoys, which I distribute among our three client states for extra gold.  Additionally, we got another great person: JS Bach.  He moves somewhere so he can sleep until we have a place to put music.

In not entirely funny news, Need Food Pls literally cannot feed its citizens now that it has grown.  I force citizens onto one of its crab, which brings it up to exactly stagnant.  We could build a water mill (2T) to get 1 more food per turn, but the fact of the matter is that it just can't feed a very large amount of people.  Later, I discover that this is because its trade route ended.  As much as I'd like to go to Iron Chef or Wheaties for the +3 food, I think we've decided we need different foreign trade routes.  The best targets are India or Scythia, since we actually get less tourism from England as a base.  Our best option is Delhi.

T166: Truffle Dream finished something; I think it was a factory.  It's low on housing, so we start a Granary... 2 turns.

I moved some wokers around and just remembered we can farm hillls now!  It's not amazing compared to what we get from mines, but it should help with Need Food Pls's problems, especially if we can get a large enough nexus of them to have them enhance each other.

Chocolate River completed something.  It's definitely not the archaeologist it says, but I can't remember what.  Terra Cotta requires adjacency to an encampment, which we can't do here, but we're lacking other valuable things to build, so we can at least get a little housing and production out of a barracks.  We definitely need to switch over to building builders sometime soon, and this is a prime spot to do that, too.

Feeling Crabby finished its factory.  It can drop a district, none of which are terribly exciting, or it can get us started on another museum.  We're still on industrial artists, so I think we're safe to build at least one more art museum.  I start that.

I also decided to look into ways to accelerate stuff in Frosted Flakes.  It's at 10 of eight housing, so I put one into the industrial zone.  This shaves a turn off the campus, which I had actually missed for a couple of turns a little while back, so it will now be coming in the same turn as Electricity.

Somehow, an entire turn disappeared in my log here.  I guess so little happened that the two turns blurred together.

Interturn, Victoria offers horse and 8gpt for sugar and mercury.  I've been neglecting my resource trades, but I decline.  I bet I can get a better deal for each of those separately.

T168: As it turns out, if I offer them in trade separately, I can sell each for 15 gold and 11gpt.  That's vastly better than a useless third horse.

Our friendship with Pedro apparently ended, but we still have the graphic for it up top.  Also, Gandhi built Alhambra.

Iron Chef finished Broadway:

Now we can put some of our music somewhere!  I use some of the charges on our great musicians.
(This apparently also boosted Flight and something I can't remember.)

Tuna is size 4 (and apparently ahs been for a couple turns...) so I start up an industrial district.  The spot is currently useless, since we haven't even finished the adjacent industrial zone that will be one of the adjacency bonus, but we have James Watt coming soon, and one of those cities is going to get its factory for free.

Iron Chef finished a building, and it does not appear that we can build any new buildings, or even place  right now.  (It's getting a truly astounding 89 production.)  It's 2T to a builder, so we're going to churn a couple of those out.  6T to Electricity and we can build a factory there.  Truffle Dream finished a factory.  Build starts on an Amphitheater.

We finished putting artifacts into our archaeological museum, so it's time to do some theme shuffling.  I swap two of them around and we now have two themed archaeological museums in Chocolate River and NEED FOOD PLS (it's not clear to me how the names interact) generating 27 tourism per turn each.

Interturn, Victoria completed the Hagia Sophia.  Saladin asks for an embassy, which I accept.  Tomyris wants a lot of luxuries for Jade and Coffee and a flat sum.  Meh: refused.

I also, unfortunately, finally got that scout killed.

T169: Mobilization comes in.  We need the builder civic for the charges.  I swapped out the industrial zone adjacency civic for it, because we're still building a pile of wonders, and most of them are in places where the adjacency is not worth 15%.  (even 4 production ends up being more like 10% for those...)
Next civic is ideology.  We want Space Race (for music tourism) and possibly Professional Sports (for amenities).

We got a great person: Rembradt, another artist.

Red Herring completed an art museum.  Next build is a factory.  However, we can't get our artists in because Brazil has a freaking unit on it.

Caffeinated finishes an industrial zone.  Next build is a workshop, followed, I expect, by a factory.  we get James Watt in 20-30 turns, which is about the same as the time for Caffeinated to build it, but we can finish the one in Tuna too, and use him on that one.

Chocolate river switches to a worker.  We'll probably want to take the worker card back out soon, but I don't know exactly when.  Maybe when we get Electricity and can build a power plant...

T170: I really wanted to get that art piece in, so I did this, but the rest of the turn is for the next person.  It's so satisfying to get that theming in.  (Also, if I'd realized, I would have put our other artist on wherever was vacated, but I didn't think of that...

I neglected to check the score at the end of that, because I had someone asking for my attention, but I think we're well on our way, now.  I think our culture output increased a lot this turnset just because things finally came together.