Civ 6 SG2 - Duty Free Egypt

[pindicator]

I think we should aim for campuses and getting all the science buildings after growth is good. So aim for chemistry IMO

[Ruined Everything]

I agree with Pindicator that now is probably time to start boosting our science. I would spend Gaspar's turnset laying down infrastructure and getting our core cities to size 9-12, but after that we should have all the infrastructure we need. If we start heavily laying down campuses and optimizing BP, Silk Road, and either Tradewinds/Hudson for spaceship parts in soonish, we'll probably have the win in 40-50 turns. 
 
We should also consider wiping out Spain since Philip's last two cities keep revolting and sending conquistadors to bug Madrid. I've planned Madrid's zoo under the assumption that Valencia will be part of our empire at some point. If we really wanted to speed up our win date, we could eat Tomyris for more science.

(Of course, if we feel like being warmongers, a series of cav-based alpha strikes would end the game in 20-30T - I think the AI capitals are mostly coastal.)

[Sareln]

All makes sense to me. Do we have any sense of where the space-ship great people come in from? I can never remember if they're split ENG/SCI or if they're all in SCI.

[pindicator]

They are a mixture of both Eng and Sci

[Gaspar]

Not going to get to this until tomorrow, sorry chaps.

[Ruined Everything]

Relevant great people:

Great Scientists
Carl Sagan (Information Scientist): Provides 3000 production towards the Space Race construction project.
Stephanie Kwolek (Information Scientist) +100% Production towards space race projects (or Immediately complete production of The Space Race Project)

Great Engineers
Robert Goddard (Modern Engineer): Triggers the eureka moment for Rocketry, and +20% production towards Space Race projectsS
Sergei Korolev (Atomic Engineer): Gain 1500 production towards a Space Race project
Wernher Von Braun (Information Engineer): Rush production of a space race project

With reduced cost spaceship parts, we may very well win people hitting Information Era Great people. The two to keep an eye out for are Goddard and Korolev. Goddard is preceded by Alvar Aalto and is 5 great engineers away, Korolev is preceded by John Roebling and is 8 great engineers away. (Von Braun is 10 great engineers away and is preceded by Correa.)

Incidentally, the Stephanie Kwolek one makes no sense. Stephanie Kwolek was a great *chemist* known for the invention of Kevlar. If they wanted a scientist who did work on space projects, I would have suggested Margaret Hamilton who among other things lead the team that wrote the Apollo 11 software.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Relevant great people:

Great Scientists
Carl Sagan (Information Scientist): Provides 3000 production towards the Space Race construction project.
Stephanie Kwolek (Information Scientist) +100% Production towards space race projects (or Immediately complete production of The Space Race Project)

Great Engineers
Robert Goddard (Modern Engineer): Triggers the eureka moment for Rocketry, and +20% production towards Space Race projectsS
Sergei Korolev (Atomic Engineer): Gain 1500 production towards a Space Race project
Wernher Von Braun (Information Engineer): Rush production of a space race project

With reduced cost spaceship parts, we may very well win people hitting Information Era Great people. The two to keep an eye out for are Goddard and Korolev. Goddard is preceded by Alvar Aalto and is 5 great engineers away, Korolev is preceded by John Roebling and is 8 great engineers away. (Von Braun is 10 great engineers away and is preceded by Correa.)

Incidentally, the Stephanie Kwolek one makes no sense. Stephanie Kwolek was a great *chemist* known for the invention of Kevlar. If they wanted a scientist who did work on space projects, I would have suggested Margaret Hamilton who among other things lead the team that wrote the Apollo 11 software.

Like in adventure 2, I really think that the AI will struggle to pick up a lot of GEs and we won't reach them in time (5GEs is a lot if we are picking them all up) the scientists are less of an issue as the AI normally has a few campuses.

[Gaspar]

Ok, playing now. Going to do a bit of stream of consciousness here...

The Retainers thing seems to have worked a treat, though the only problem is the policy is made obsolete by Mass Media, which I think we have to research relatively soon en route to the endgame policies. I don't know maybe there's a way to avoid it. Maybe we can build the Maracana. Anyway, I won't be touching Mass Media in my turnset, so we can worry about that later.

I think we're more like 80-100 turns from victory but maybe I'm underestimating our snowball.

Silk Road really just needs to bite the bullet and hit a growth phase. I'm going to just bite the bullet and hack out the jungle and lay down some farms there and work them. I'm sure we'll have to plow over at least one for another district/wonder anyway. I think we should also head towards Replaceable Parts with all the farms we've laid down. We probably also need a neighborhood there.

This is basically the story around the empire. Ruined did a nice job of getting us back on the horse but the empire for the most part is stalled at or near housing cap in a lot of places. We need more workers in most areas and then we need Aqueducts/Neighborhoods in a lot of others afterwards. We also need to start getting Campuses and their associated buildings down so we can accelerate science and start competing for Great Scientists.


Inherited turn 170: Chop finishes the I-zone in Liquidity Trap, start a workshop. Interturns are taking a lot longer now.

T171: Scientific Theory comes in. Decide to slot in Printing before Economics so we can get the boost in from completing 2 banks. Alliances with Greece and Harald expire. We'll see how much the warmongering penalty hurts our ability to reup. Discover some Silver and Ivory by China that are unclaimed.

T172: Natural History in, onto Nationalism. We really need more slots because we basically want about half the yellow policies. I don't change any though because all the others are basically required. I guess Toronto isn't as key for a Science Victory anymore now that the regional bonus has been nerfed. Harald will give us Silk for Jade, OB and 10 gpt, worth considering when we outkick our coverage on amenities. We have 3 envoys saved up which is 3 gpt. Something to consider. Buy a builder. Common Market finishes C-Hub, start Trader.

T173: Scythia declares war on China. Huzzah. Antiquity Site popped up underneath proposed farm at LT, so we can't build one there anymore. We earn a great admiral, which is pretty much garbage but I claim it because it gives a free Ironclad and maybe that will improve Harald's impression of us. Also, is there a good Great Admiral? Doubtful. Rainforest clear finishes Bank at cap, restart Ruhr Valley.

T174: As expected, that warmongering penalty has pretty much ruined our relationships with everyone. Its so absurd. Pericles and Harald denounce us. Printing in, onto Economics. Lots of farming. There are a few units on random-ass gotos. Don't do that unless its a really short duration and its destination is obvious (i.e. the Scout for ACME was fine.)

T175: More farming.

T176: Start a campus in BP, buy another builder.

T177: Second bank completes, Economics boosted. More farming.

T178: Economics and Nationalism in, start Replacement Parts and Urbanization. Neither one will be boosted since while I can upgrade for one Musketman, it would take about 8t to build two more and I just don't think that's worth 4.5t of science. We're not remotely close to 15 pop in any city for Urbanization and I think we need to lay a couple Neighborhoods down before however long its going to take to get one of the size-10 sites to size-15.

T179: This has been one dull turnset.

T180: I line up some builds and take care of stuff in progress. I'll do a big overview since I took no pictures during my incredibly sleepy turnset. We just tipped over enough gold to buy another worker. I'd recommend Cobden-Chevalier or Big N Large. Though we may just want to call those cities sunk costs that would have been valuable pre-patch. If you don't want to buy there, the former Spanish colonies could certainly use the builder labor as well.

[Gaspar]

Ok first things first, I need to rant about this...



That is patently ridiculous.  We have a -52 for warmonger, but only a +18 for being an Ally... AND WE WERE ALLIED WHILE WE WERE "WARMONGERING."  I could accept a warmongering penalty that severe if we were threatening their interests (on a different continent entirely) or their friends (Spain, as best I can tell, is an international pariah AND we were at war with them when they accepted the alliance.)  Or if we were marching all over the world like a killing machine but the only war we've been in was declared on us and we took 3 cities off the guys who attacked us.  If you do any fighting whatsoever in this game after the Classical Era, you will have no friends and be denounced by absolutely everyone.  Who thinks this is logical diplomacy?  I mean honestly, even if we were the world's worst warmongering scum, somebody in the world would be bound to like us, be it by fear or opportunity.  +2 for good trade relations, -52 for defending oneself against an ill-advised attack and punishing the perpetrator.

I mean, of course it doesn't matter - the AI is virtually totally unwilling to declare war from Industrial on and even if one or more of these guys did attack us we'd do a couple unit upgrades and annihilate them but why even bother having a diplomacy system? Argh, easily the thing I hate most about this game.

Ok, so overview time.

Various ranking screens:


We're up 7 techs on Greece, 9 on China, 11 on Spain, 13 on Scythia and 15 on Norway. Seems good. Greece is the only threat culturally and I feel comfortable we'll be able to manage well enough to not lose a CV. Tomyris, for all her missionary spam has only successfully converted us so I'm not really worried about that possibility.



We have everything but the Military techs behind us. We can clean those in 2-3t a piece for the most part if needed. I thought Replaceable Parts was the most necessary next tech due to the farming boosts which should coincide nicely with getting some Neighborhoods down in cities we want to grow larger in. We might need to buy a tile or two after Urbanization comes in to get them started in places that most need the housing boost - BP in particular. I would love to build Forbidden Palace and Big Ben, the techs for which came in on my turnset, but I have no real idea where and when we could fit them in build queues. We'd probably want the wonder boosting policy for that one. I'd suppose Steam Power, Electricity, Flight are the next 3 techs. We're not building Shipyards or Privateers but Ruhr should be complete before Flight for that boost. From there we probably head to Combustion and start the Space Race in earnest.



We have everything behind this but Reformed Church and Naval Tradition. Normally, Mass Media towards Ideology and the modern governments should be our next step after Urbanization but as stated above, Mass Media nukes retainers and that's basically -1 amenity per city. So I think we're going to want to make sure we have Zoo coverage before we research that. Could stall by knocking out Opera and Ballet and Scorched Earth before that, though neither one really does anything but giving us 2 envoys each. We're sitting on 5 right now and we could definitely snipe Toronto from Greece with it. Toronto is still probably the best other place for our envoys, since the IZ bonuses are good since we have IZ almost everywhere. *shrug*



North. Acme is basically what its going to be, I bought a builder up there and improved 5 tiles, I'd let it build the Harbor and then just idle out on a CH or something. The other cities are all in pretty good shape and just need some housing boosts and to grow.



Capital area. Silk Road needs to grow and once Ruhr and the tech/civics currently worked on come in, I would reconfigure for growth and throw down a neighborhood. We can give some mines to TPP/OPEC while that goes on. TPP has some potential and should be able to boost a little bit once RP comes in but its just going to be a mid-sized decent production city. OPEC will really shoot up post-RP and a neighborhood/aqueduct. Additionally, we probably want a Campus here once it finishes growing. It can be a pretty darned strong production city once it is fully mature.



The icy South pretty much is what it is. If we knew the patch was coming, we definitely would have put LFF on the river and skipped C-C. They need builder labor but I didn't really prioritize it because this area is never going to be all that valuable.



The West shall rise, all of those cities are only beginning to scratch the surface of their potential and once the housing crisis is solved, BP, Madrid and Market Peak are all going to be great cities.

Anyway, fairly sleepy turnset but sometimes you have an action set and sometimes you have to keep the mission of the previous player alive. At peace and with micro greatly reduced, 10t really doesn't feel like much at this point of the game.

SAVE

[Sareln]

Gaspar -- Just played
>> ReallyEvilMuffin - UP NOW <<
Sareln - on deck
Pindicator
Ruined Everything

I think we've come around again, so it's REM's to play?