Civ6 Adventure 1 - Egypt. Game complete :)

[yuris125]

Apparently nothing happened in the next 50 turns. The only screenshot I have from this period is this one, and I'm not even quite sure why I took it. Showing off Oxford University in Iwnw? Possibly...




But that's all I have, so have to go straight to T250 overview

The east




I built a Colosseum in Thebes, mostly because amenities were becoming a problem, and there was a spot for it. Also note the Starport in the capital, under construction and 11 turns from completion. Satellites is almost done as well

The west




That's a lot of units Teddy got there. Yet another example of AI building a lot of units and not knowing what to do with them. I posted a screenshot of Kongo having the same carpet of units in the other game in the general discussion thread, and this seems to be happening here as well. This is prince ffs, we're not supposed to get carpet of units on prince! Also note English units approaching, I'm still at war with Victoria from that joint war declared 70 turns ago, I signed peace with Kongo, but never with England

One more matter that was talked about in the general discussion thread was what happens when there's a strategic resource under a district. Here we have the answer - that strategic resource does count. I have aluminium under the commercial hub 2NW of the capital, and this aluminium is showing in the resource bar at the top




Now just above I was gloating about AI building a lot of units and not knowing what to do with them... well I'm gloating no more. Because 2 turns later, Teddy did declare on me. And the game says he has a lot more military than I do...




The good news is, all that military score comes from Spearmen and Catapults, and AT Crew kills a fully healthy Spearman taking around 3 dmg. The bad news is, AT Crew is actually the best unit I have, otherwise I'm still fighting with Knights and Crossbows (ignoring the bottom half of the tree does have consequences). And while Teddy's units are terribly out of date, he does have a crapton

So how will this go? Stay tuned for the exciting (no promises!) conclusion

[fluffyflyingpig]

Yeah, that seems like the way to do the space race tech. Well, it's not like you have many choices!

The way everything is super stretched out makes reading screenshots hard. Odd ui choices abound!


Thanks for reporting!

[yuris125]

Last time we looked at this game, the question was - how do two AT Crews, two Crossbows and a Knight perform against a crapton of Spearmen and Catapults. The answer turned out to be - admirably. An AT Crew at near-full health will kill a full health Spearman in a single attack, and won't take more than 5 damage on a counter-attack. I wish there was a kill counter on units in Civ, like in Starcraft, because I think those AT Crews had around 20 each by the end of the war

Here's how the action looked at T253, the turn after the war was declared




Pretty easy, right? One AT Crew attacks a Spear, the other attacks a Catapult, both get a kill. Crossbows swap so that the wounded one is in the city, and between them and the city attack should kill the English Heavy Chariot and at least wound the Catapult. There's nothing AI can do to punish the move, it can try to attack the AT Crew which ends up in the midst of Spears, but they just won't do any damage against a unit from the same class, but much later era

Teddy did try some tactical tricks and coordinated a two-pronged attack. Here are the units coming at Shedet; not only that, but they're actually cunningly staying out of city bombardment range - the Spear 2 tiles away from the city can't be shot at because the dye tile between it and the city counts as wood




In general, I found tactical UI much improved compared to Civ5. It will not do obviously stupid things, it will try to make non-straightforward moves, it will remember to move wounded units to the back to heal.. the AI really did a good job trying to make some progress against me. Not its fault that strategically it can't keep up with the player at prince difficulty, all it can do is to through Spearmen at Tanks (not literally, but pretty close)

In the meantime, I killed those English units, and Victoria decided she's had enough




I decided to take it. I felt Teddy has chosen unwisely once too often by now, and wanted to put him out of his misery in this war. English units were not something I wanted to worry about in the process

Only 5 turns into the war, and the stream of units is already noticeably smaller, while AT crews are still at safe health




Now one of AT Crews picked up a promotion and healed to full. As if it wasn't strong enough before




Meanwhile in foreign news...




You're in trouble Mr. Roosevelt

An aside on England - I think they have a pretty terrible start in the Egypt version of the adventure. I will show a screenshot a bit later, but basically they had space for London, then a jungle area, then a desert, then Teddy. There was no obvious way to expand, and Victoria didn't manage to find one. Ever since barbs razed Sheffield, she's been playing OCC, and I can only imagine how much her AI script was pushing her towards expanding at any cost. That has to be why she's been so aggressive this game, alternating war declarations between Teddy and me

Back to the action, and American forces are really starting to whittle down now




One last push to clean them up, wait for the two extra AT Crews currently in production to finish, and I can start my offence

Here's the point where I came closest to losing a unit in this war, moving a wounded Knight into Washington's bombardment range and with a risk of several anti-mounted units being able to risk it




But I felt the end of the war approaching, and wanted to start clearing units a little faster. And the Knight did survive just fine

Moving in now...




This feels like three elephants in a china shop to be honest. There's still a bunch of American Spearmen, but AT Crews are just ignoring them, taking up positions and concentrating on the city




And... well... no siege necessary. AT Crews were strong enough to attack the city immediately and deal substantial damage




The city fell next turn




Teddy did make one desperate attempt to negotiate peace, but I was no longer interested. On T269, he died. At least he had the grace to say gg

[yuris125]

While I was still at war, on T268, I finished the Class Struggle civic and switched the government to communism. However much I believe that communism is a non-viable, near-criminal ideology not dissimilar to fascism in real world, it has always been a strong option in Civ games. In Civ6, its biggest problem is military policies taking up three of its slots, and only one wildcard slot, so no acceleration for great people. But with the way my game was going, I actually was going to be thankful for some military bonuses, and its innate 10% bonus to production was going to come up handy as well

Here's how I set up the government




Back to peace, and I noticed a lot of notifications about lack of amenities popping up. Upon checking, I found that everyone's favourite Civ mechanic struck again




Minus seven. SEVEN!!! In the capital, where production penalties are especially harsh, as it's building spaceship projects. According to Civilopedia, war weariness accumulates every time you fight a battle, win a lose, and doesn't go away when you sign peace (or eliminate the opponent)

This is why the game needs a way to manually assign amenities. I wouldn't care about harsh production penalties in any other city. But not in the capital

This is what I had to do to at least bring the unhappiness level from 'Unrest' to 'Unhappy'




Yep, that's 29 gpt + a spare luxury - admittedly I was getting Saladin's unique luxury, no one had spare copies of ones I didn't have

Fortunately, shortly after I caught a Japanese spy, and they hooked up second copies of their luxuries




The screenshot shows me asking for gold, because I was curious how much they valued the life of their spy. 500g - that's how much it's worth. Or spare copies of their two luxuries

Here's one rough edge of the game I ran into




I decided to pass on this GE, as the effect wasn't particularly useful for me. I already had Computers boosted, and didn't have problems with the limit on districts. Problem is, the engineer has to be recruited by someone before a new choice appears. And no one else is getting any GE points. Kongo are the next behind me, and they're limping at 2 points per turn. They need 113 turns to recruit this GE. Yeah.... I will not get another GE for the rest of the game

There really has to be a way to get the next GP choice after you pass. The way the game works now, just don't pass on GPs you have no competition for

Anyway, that's enough of economic stuff. We came here to fight, so let's fight. Or at least so said Trajan, just as I was setting up after the war with Teddy




Well, the good news is, now I actually have units. Just need to bring them over from the west

I'm not going to show yet another war in details. Trajan had pretty much the same units as Teddy had, except fewer of them. And I now had Mech Inf. Which are resourceless units, so I could just buy them when I needed. So yeah... he didn't have much of a chance

Oh look, another idiot with obsolete units. Is he going to declare as well?




Not yet. But Victoria did.... time to put her out of her misery as well

First take Rome though. I was curious if a single Mech Inf could take a city when the owner was 4 eras behind. The answer is - yes it can. But after a couple of turns, satisfied that it was possible, I brought an extra AT Crew, just to speed things up




Also, go home China, you're drunk. America is dead these past 25 turns, what "evil deeds" are you talking about? There were similar pop-ups appearing about dead civs for the rest of the game, not sure what's going on with that

Rome has been playing OCC for a while as well, so I thought he was going to die. He didn't, turned out he settled this iceball




Decided not to bother with it, he came with a peace offer a turn later and I agreed

Here goes Kongo....




This is like the first war all game where I actually saw it coming and prepared. So he's throwing a bunch of Crossbows at me, the most advanced unit I saw an AI use this game, and I have 3 Mech Infs and an AT Crew fortified and ready for him. Yeah, this is going to go well....

Meanwhile, the war against Victoria was so one-sided that apparently I didn't even bother to take screenshots of the units the threw at me and the clean-up process. Just the finishing blow. Dealt with 1 AT Crew, 1 Field Cannon, and 1 Knight. Yeah.... it's nice to be ahead in tech




...and dead




...and Rome thinks I'm a warmonger. Come on man, you declared war on me, not the other way around




I breezed past Kongo's cities, one of them they took from Japan earlier in the game, and I returned it to ease some of warmonger penalties. This actually did help, I wasn't denounced for warmongering for the rest of the game, and Japan became friendly

No screenshots of the war though. Sorry. There's only so many screenshots of roflstomps one can take

Here's what I got instead of a gg though. Show some class man!

[yuris125]

Here are some overview screenshots from T300

The east




This screenshot shows the two cities captured from Kongo, but the main focus is on spaceports in Thebes and Iwnw. When planning for constriction of space projects, I thought Iwnw and Shedet were going to be the two cities working on them in addition to the capital. But then Teddy declared war, and I expected some pillaging to take place around Shedet again, including districts, then it would have to spend hammers repairing the buildings.. and Spaceport is an expensive district (I was wrong earlier about its cost increasing along with the rest of the districts btw, it's fixed at 2000 hammers.. which is still a lot!). So I was looking through the list of the cities, and noticed Thebes's production was almost as high. So that's where the third spaceport went

Also of note is that there currently are no space projects under construction. However long it took to complete a Spaceport and the two initial space projects in the capital (around 60 turns, as predicted), it was not enough to finish the tech tree. So at the moment my space cities are just staying idle, setting up, sorting out their housing problems, generally just waiting to start work on space projects

The middle




Everything I said about other spaceport cities applies to the capital as well. Except it's building up the Aerodrome district, which might come up handy if I have to go to war again

Also of note, there's a new city in this screenshot, Edfu. I captured Settlers while conquering both America and England, and however reluctant I was to expand before, a free Settler is a free Settler. This city was mostly founded for the oil, which I did't have at all until then

The west screenshot features the other new city, Abydos, which is mostly just a filler




I hoped to quietly finish off the tech tree and build my spaceship parts, carefully balancing trade routes to optimise their production. But it was not to be

I have to say, I don't know how I feel about AIs being so aggressive despite being hopelessly behind. Maybe they only look on the military strength rating the game shows? Maybe they know they're behind and see no other way out? Also notable that others talked about how passive AI is.... even if we discount the fake "joint wars" in this game, I had 7 wars declared against me in this game. 7 wars which actually saw action. Not sure why my experience ended up so different, but AI definitely wasn't passive in my game, I would even say it was excessively aggressive

Anyway, no more suspense... I was attacked by China. They had Knights. Against Tanks and Bombers, yeah




First thing I did was send a couple of Mech Infs left over from the Kongo war against Beijing




Meanwhile the main force killed those Knights and rolled in to the north of my territory, towards Mbanza Kongo. Here, for the first time in the game, I actually had a little bit of a trouble bringing down defences with just melee units. Bombers had to join in. Not that they minded




The game actually suggested I might want to return Kongo in the game. Not that smugface! Remember what he told me instead of gg! Every action has its consequences!

Then there was this city




This one was actually out of range of my Bombers. Unfortunately for Qin, I researched Stealth just a turn prior. So upgraded the Bombers to Jet Bombers, then they had no trouble reaching the city




And just as I was laying siege to Taiyuan, Qin decided to plead for peace. He agreed to give up Taiyuan in addition to ceding the cities I already captured, and with this being his first declaration, and me being close to win at this point, I decided not to insist that he has chosen unwisely, and agreed to peace

Here's one more rough edge of the game. If you have units besieging a city, and this city is passed under your control in a peace treaty, those units are bounced out of the territory which is now yours




Meanwhile in foreign news....




Culture Victory victory, huh? Well, good luck with that




Not only that, but I already had two out of three Mars modules finished by then, with the last one estimated in 5 turns. I hoped to be able to balance the trade routes in such a way that all three modules would finish at the same time. But the last space tech took too long. Despite the capital being the highest production city, despite me getting every possible production modifier (including fully building up an encampment district, because there's a policy which gives 15% production bonus to space projects in cities with a Military Academy), despite moving every single trade route into the capital, it still lagged behind

T340 is when I expected the last module to be completed, but there was an extra turn shaven off, maybe some extra hammers shaven off due to city growth, maybe an extra 1% production bonus from Communism's legacy bonuses kicked in... anyway, I was going to take the last overview screenshots on T340, just before the launch... as it turns out, I'm taking them on T340, just after launch

Science victory on T339

I don't expect this result to be anywhere near competitive, but you have to take all those wars into account

[yuris125]

So, empire overview just after the win

Northwest (London and formerly Chinese cities)




Southwest (Giza is the last city I founded, pretty good location, surprised neither Teddy nor Vicky went for it)




The middle




The southeast




The northeast (Kong cities and Beijing)




While taking these screenshots, noticed Roman units on approach... were they going to attempt to recapture Rome in another suicide attack?




Close-ups on the three spaceport cities and Shedet (almost a spaceport city )










Score




Science




Yeah... AI certainly can't compete with the player on prince difficulty. I understand why this game was set up on prince, but very much looking forward to higher difficulty levels

Domination. China were leading in this category for a long while after capturing Mbanza Kongo. But then I had to deal with America, England, and Rome, capturing those three capitals in the process, then I captured the Kongolese one as well when China declared on me. So at the end of the game, this screenshot shows just me with multiple capitals. As it should be




Religion - the only victory AI had a chance of winning. Fortunately for me, there were two AIs seriously competing for this victory - you may have seen hordes of Chinese and Japanese apostles in my screenshots. Neither could win this religious battle, and the stalemate continued to the end of the game, with two civs converted into each of the two dominant religions (no one bothered converting Rome's iceball :P )




Culture pretty much unchanged in 4 turns that passed since I showed this screen I was ahead, but not close to winning. Unusual - culture district is normally a high priority - but after the early war I had to concentrate on science and production, only adding culture as an afterthought. And it shows here




Think this is it. Questions? Any more screenshots you want to see?

[BRickAstley]

Any difficulties managing a wide empire, specifically with amenities?

[yuris125]

Yes and no. I did have to build up 5 (I think) entertainment districts, and adopt some amenity-helping policies. Here's the endgame government




Despite that, cities are out range of Colosseum were only content, some even displeased




However, can't say I really noticed that. Maybe if I went wide early on, things would've been different. In the other game I played I expanded to 12 cities, but with Aztec unique ability that's equivalent to 8 for other civs in terms of amenities, and I had so many luxuries that they never became an issue. Still early days. But in this particular game, most of the cities after the core 8 were added too late to meaningfully contribute to victory, so I didn't really care if they became unhappy. Unhappiness in the capital due to war weariness was the worst amenity-related problem I had this game

[Old Harry]

Congrats on your science win, and your patience to stick with the game on Prince up to that point!

Comparing our games - is SIP really better than heading over to get the sugar hooked earlier? (I played no Civ5 so I was going off the Civ4 maxim of food uber alles.)

at the blind American slinger and invisible hut... Perhaps Firaxis made your warrior similarly invisible to the Roosevelt AI?

Finally that war weariness is horrible - it definitely needs to be modded out if that's how it works. But I'm not sure it is - I didn't notice it in my game at all - and looking back now I had 0 WW on turn 197 after eliminating America, England, Kongo, China and Rome and whilst at war with Arabia and Japan. I wonder why the difference?

[yuris125]

Yes, I'm pretty sure SIP is better. As far as I understand Civ games (which is by no means as deep as others ), the most important resource in general is production, not food. Food is so important in earlier versions because foodbox size doesn't increase very fast, so you can grow cities relatively quickly. It's even more important in 4 because it can be directly converted to production via Slavery, and . In 5 and 6 growth is slowed down by significantly increased foodbox, so faster growth is not as important as getting extra production earlier. For this reason - yes, I think SIPping an having a 2/2 tile in the first ring is better than moving for higher food

Of course, all of the above could be plain wrong