Civ 6 Adventure 1: China!

[The Black Sword]

I'll try to do periodic reports throughout my game, here we are on T44:



I started off with a Builder first, since I play civ 4. My first warrior went exploring and I built two scouts to go exploring as well but the barbarians were too active and scouts had to stick around to defend my city. Though the barbs never actually attacked my city or pillaged any tiles, perhaps that was my units distracting them but they had some opportunities. Anyway, I have very little immediate map knowledge for where to put my first settlers, so I think I really could have used some better units defending and the scouts out exploring.

My builder initially started improving tiles for me, but I realised half way through that chopping forests is really powerful. 1 builder charge for ~30 hammers, so one a 50h builder can quickly return 120h in chops. I'm pretty sure if I'd chopped earlier I'd have easily had the hammers to defend the city and explore.

You can also see I built the Pyramids(before my second city  ).  China's wonder ability seemed pretty powerful, so I decided to try abuse it. You get 15% of the wonders hammers for each worker build, so for 7 builds(~90h) you can build any wonder. In the case of the Pyramids, you automatically get a worker for free and you increase your builder's charges from 4->5. So by the time I've built 2 more builders, the Mids will have paid themselves back. And if I plan to wonder whore I expect to build a lot of workers! The downside of the ability is that you can only put 1 build into wonder per turn, it's not an instant build like a great engineer, but that seems a fair drawback. The other problem is the UI; you have to actually be building the pyramids to use the worker's ability, but the most efficient way to build the wonder is not to use any real hammers. Every turn I had to go Build Mids -> Use worker charge -> Change to actual build.

One part of the game that I really liked so far is the civics and governments:




On a normal turn you have to pay to change policies, but on the turn you complete a civic it's free. This can make 'temporary' policies pretty powerful even if they look weak and it adds an extra factor to think about; do I want to research something cheap so I can get in and out of these policies quickly or something more expensive that unlocks powerful options. I really like it. In my game I think I went for foreign trade first, which was definitely a mistake. I didn't realise we could do these temporary switches yet and for some reason I thought we could buy the trade unit for a mere 40 gold. At that stage I figured out a plan though; I went to Craftmanship next, and switched to Ilkum(+30%h to builders)  and Agoge(+50%h to military units), building most builders while I made it to Early Empire. This gets me access to the Colonisation above, +50% towards settlers, and I'm quickly rushing two out to catch up in city count. Since I'm not building military units right now, I could take the combat bonus for a few turns instead. Next up is Mysticism, the cheapest tech since I had the inspiration bonus, which will allow me to switch out of the settler-building policies(and allow me to build the Oracle wonder  ). 

I currently have 1 settler our moving, another under construction:


I sent him into the fog up here, because I don't have much vision right now. I wanted the horses but I hoped to find some luxury resources too. Anyway, the first settlers seem pretty cheap, so I'm not confident that this early empire strategy is correct, I'd be interested in trying to chop out early settlers in future games. In general I've felt very hammer restricted so far, while culture/tech/faith has motored along. As a result I haven't constructed any buildings since I thought units would be better. Maybe it's different with chopping.

Speaking of faith; I picked the Lady of the Reeds & Marshes, giving +1h on flood plains, marshes and oasis. I'm working 2 FP in my cap, I have a marsh I can acquire too and I felt I needed something that gave hammers.

The other bonus China gets btw is +60% Eureka/inspiration instead of +50%. I think I've hit all relevant eurekas so far, which perhaps explains why tech and culture have felt fine.


I think i went something like Mining -> Pottery(thought it was necessary to hook rice, but apparently not) -> Irrigation(unlock tea) -> Masonry(Pyramids) -> AH(hook cows). Not much else seemed useful right then, so I got Archery for some better military and BW to see iron. Astrology has Stonehenge, another wonder to build.

Map overview:




Been pretty fun to play so far. The most annoying thing has been the lack of information, as I've seen people mention in first impressions thread. I can't see how much food/hammers/culture/tech etc. has been invested into stuff, I can only see the turns to completion. I don't know how much food it takes to grow each size. I have no clue how cultural expansion works. I assume it's the same as BE under the hood, but I can't see how much culture I've invested/how much do I need/even how many turns till the next expansion/any idea what tiles are coming next.

[mackoti]

thanks for report.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Wait until you war. 1upt still sucks hugely.

[Ituralde]

Nice report!

Interesting thing coming from my first 100 turns as Kongo.
You seem to have started in the position that Japan is having in my game, though. I'm confused.

[The Black Sword]

Our exploring warrior met his Eygptian counterpart and we discovered our first friend victim.


Not sure whether I'll continue to sell luxuries. It's not as bad as selling strategic resources in BE I guess(which I generally didn't do). We also traded vision of each other's capitals(though it wasn't clear I was agreeing to that in the diplo).



Unfortunately she had Stonehenge almost complete. That seems like a very powerful wonder, giving an immediate bonus in a free prophet to found a religion(disclaimer: I have no idea what a religion does), so I was a bit sad to see it go. It is unlocked at Astrology though, which could theoretically be your first tech and I was researching it as my 8th, so I guess losing it is to be expected. Instead I built 2 other wonders over this 30 turns:


Taiyuan picked up the Oracle. I'm planning to quickly put up research and faith districts here, which get a lot of boni from the mountains. The Oracle gives me more GPP from each district and makes it easier to buy GPs with faith later. 



Meanwhile the capital picked up the Hanging Gardens(+15% growth in all cities) and I have plans to build the Coliseum too. That will go NE of my cap and an entertainment district will go due east, getting 3 bonus culture from 3 adjacent wonders. I'll probably try spam any cities I can that are in range of the Coliseum's bonus.

My 3rd city is not quite as powerful as the other two, I'm not entirely sure about it's location, a big factor was the multiple forests around to chop out a quickstart:


It's doing ok, but the lack of fresh water makes it hard to grow too big. Building settlers costs 1 pop point so it makes more sense in small cities, I might try to push some settlers from here now. I did get one more settler out from my capital, but now I think I want to grow it to size 10 for an inspiration. That settler went here:


Really awesome city location. Jungle appears to be good in this game.   It increases base yield, and chopping jungle gives immediate food as well as hammers. On the topic of chopping btw, the early equation I gave is not entirely accurate. Apparently builders increase in cost for each one produced, but so does the amount of hammers/food from each subsequent chop, so the general idea should work. The city also has those spices with a lovely +2f, best luxury I've seen yet. There's the Chichen Itza coming up soon too, which turbo charges a single jungle heavy city further. I might try for a city in the west for that instead though, so I can chop some of these, the wonder is still at least 20t away.

Btw, this was my first coastal city and I finally triggered the euraka for Sailing on T76. It's getting a bit harder to achieve all the eurakas, but I only gave up 1 in this turn set; you needed to found a religion and I figured that wasn't happening anytime soon with Stonehenge gone. My main civic goal was to unlock a government with more policy slots:


Out of the 3 options, I went with Autocracy for bonus to capital yields. The policies pictured I'll only be in for 2t before switching out. The Envoy policy timed nicely with a)the eureka for sailing, which was a long standing quest from a couple of city states and b) naturally generating my first envoy with influence points. Usually I've been getting 2 GS gpp from that slot instead. For land surveyors I've built up a bunch of gold and can now buy a couple of tiles I want at a discount. In general I've been switching between the settler bonus, the worker bonus and a generic +1h in all cities. The military has stayed pretty much the same.

In tech I picked up Apprenticeship for an extra hammer on my mines, which was nice. Apart from that though, none of the rest of the civics/techs were too interesting, so my path was mostly decided by what eurekas I could achieve.

For future tech goals I'm looking at Castles and Machinery which unlock my uniques. Machinery has some sort of UU crossbow unit, not that I plan on warring anytime soon. Castles boost my unique Great Wall improvement. Currently this gives +1g for each adjacent Great Wall improvement, but gold does not seem all that valuable. Castles give +1culture for each adjacent GW as well. At that stage it's looking attractive to spam those improvements I think.

The eureka for Castles is to unlock the next form of government(which already sounds nice), so that's probably my civic goal after the Coliseum, in addition to possibly the Chichen Itza.

Btw, I'm very happy with the Pyramids, I've felt I produced a lot of builders over the recent turns. What I'm not so sure about is my city count, it will be interesting to compare to others at this stage of the game.

[The Black Sword]

Glad you guys like them.

Wait until you war. 1upt still sucks hugely.

I guess I'll have to see, I usually just try to play economically in SP. Even in civ 4 you can really exploit the AIs mistakes in war and I remember in BE the 1upt made it a total joke to attack them(I've never played 5).  If the system is good enough that an AI can bring a huge production advantage(which I assume they get at higher difficulties) to bear so that war has some real risks I'll probably be happy. Whether combat is fun or not in MP is a whole other thing of course.

You seem to have started in the position that Japan is having in my game, though. I'm confused.

Strange, have to check with Brick I guess.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Glad you guys like them.

Wait until you war. 1upt still sucks hugely.

I guess I'll have to see, I usually just try to play economically in SP. Even in civ 4 you can really exploit the AIs mistakes in war and I remember in BE the 1upt made it a total joke to attack them(I've never played 5).  If the system is good enough that an AI can bring a huge production advantage(which I assume they get at higher difficulties) to bear so that war has some real risks I'll probably be happy. Whether combat is fun or not in MP is a whole other thing of course.

You seem to have started in the position that Japan is having in my game, though. I'm confused.

Strange, have to check with Brick I guess.

In hindsight a warrior rush might have been optimistic, but I had a lot of troops just waiting to be able to be used and a cap with 1 warrior in healing up loads each turn...

[Ituralde]

That Shenyang location seems to be popular. The AI settled their city on the exact same spot in my game.

[The Black Sword]

Multiple first ring resources, lots of rainforest, coastal for water access, it felt like the best site in the area.

T120:


I've recruited 3 great people since the last update. The first was a scientist who triggered 3 random classical/medieval eurekas for me. This wasn't that exciting, I got all the low value ones out of the way first but the eurekas it triggered where all pretty doable, even if they'd have taken some investment. The 3rd is the great scientist above; he seems pretty good; 100 faith and 4bpt. The 2nd was a great prophet to found a religion. Actually I got beaten to the prophet by Arabia on the first time around. I thought I had it won but I guess he must have used patronage to buy it out from under me the turn I would land it. That would have been fine but it turns out he was the last great prophet available. I don't plan to reload here but I do want to explore the game, so I made an exception and went back and bought it with faith points myself.

Some thoughts on the GP system:
-idea seems very good
-they aren't nearly as powerful as civ 4 GP though. I've perhaps been overvaluing gpp(and by extension, the oracle).
-would really like to see GP born show up in the event log at the side. I thought we were only on the second prophet, not the 5th. You can check the GP screen each turn but that's really tedious.


Anyway, this meant I got to try out the religion system. It seems like you use faith to buy missionaries to spread your religion and then your choice of beliefs determine what advantages you get per city you have spread the religion too. 


Currently this does not seem all that useful to me outside of pursuing a religious victory. There is something about relics generating tourism though(which is the victory I'll probably go for). The only other way I see to spend faith points is to buy great people, at what seems like a pretty bad exchange rate.

What is a tourism victory?



That's a good question, I still don't really know. It says it comes from generating culture, so that seems like a good victory for China, with it's Great Wall improvement which is good at generating culture. But how do you generate tourism and how do you get foreign tourists to come to my land?  The game is not very clear on the matter. I guess I'll have to figure it out. 

Btw, the fastest victory to me seems to be almost definitely military. I'm on 8 cities right now, Cleopatra is on 2 as is my other contact Saladin. Unless the game has some very severe war penalties I can't imagine they'd have much of a chance. But as I previously mentioned I'm not interested in exploiting the AI in this game, just exploring the mechanics.

In tech we're getting to that stage in the tech tree where nothing looks very interesting. All the wonders and buildings unlocked seem pretty bad for their hammer cost and if you pretty much ignore military stuff as I am it's already pretty sparse. I remember this problem in civ BE too; I was never excited for the techs I was getting, I was just picking them up for affinity points as a route to a victory condition. Here I'm not even sure if tech is necessary for my victory condition and I'm wondering if I'm just teching for the sake of it. The civic tree remains more interesting for me at least and it is getting a lot harder to trigger eurekas without actually targetting them(which is a good thing IMO). 

On the topic of expensive hammer costs, the only things that really seem worth while to me are settlers, builders, granaries and monuments. Districts, which seem like they should be one of the games best features, increase in hammer cost each time and quickly get too expensive IMO. They are in general comparable in cost to a settler and their base yield is not as good. The buildings they unlock very expensive for what they do. In the current game state, I think the best plan would be to rex across the map, chopping forests and harvesting resources(resources often given just 1 yield per turn, while I got eg. 100h for harvesting a stone resource). Also, you don't need tiles to be inside your border to get full value for chops/harvests, which seems really silly to me. You could send builders right up to the AIs borders and harvest their resources... I guess the only caveat here is that I am playing as China with the Pyramids(5 base charges per worker instead of 3), perhaps the value would not be so high with a different civ. Anyway, I still want to build at least one of each type of district to evaluate them.

In game, I'm up to 8 cities, with 2 more in the north:


My pantheon belief starts to get some more value from the marshes in these cities, Beijing didn't need any immediate tile improvements, we can just start chopping the rainforest instead. Chen's already been clearcut. I decided to build the Chichen Itza in Shenyang btw. I didn't realise that my wonder bonus was only for ancient and classical wonders, so it's debateable whether it's worth it now. But I decided to go for it anyway and if I have to build it naturally it needs to go in an established city.

Meanwhile I completed the Collosseum and built two more cities in range of it in my starting area:



Guangzhou is to the west. 10 cultures and 15 amenities for the cost of 1 builder seems pretty good. Unfortunately I did screw up the build somewhat, I mixed up the entertainment district(necessary for construction) and the theatre district. So that made it a bit more expensive. It's still a good spot for the theatre district at least with 3 adjacent wonders.

It also unlocked a project called the Theatre Square Festival, this 'provides a small amount of culture, great writer, great artists and great musician points'. Exactly how much? A lot of items have this type of vague description in the city screen but at least they have the full information in the pedia. Not so for this I'm afraid.

You can also see some Great Walls in the north, I'm still experimenting with legal configurations. I'm hoping I can put them in diamond rather than just straight lines.

[AdrienIer]

Arabia getting the last prophet is their UA : if they didn't get a GP the normal way they automatically get the last GP when someone takes the penultimate one.

Edit : I also settled the Taiyuan spot as my second city in my adventure (as Rome). It's a great spot for districts.