Civ 6 - Adventure 1 - Kongo - Always War

[Singaboy]

I am not even sure how many turns there are But that could be a possibility as I am getting really frustrated with the slow movements

[Magil]

I don't think running out of turns is much of a concern, but I do think that the war weariness from those captured cities is going to cause you all sorts of problems down the road

Good luck, I enjoy Civ VI but I generally try to play peacefully when possible because 1UPT warfare also annoys the heck outta me Interesting to how the other players handled the Kongo though!

[Singaboy]

The world is my oyster - if I only had the sufficient troops and the ability to move them to the front.

Here we are at turn 253 (there is a total of 500 turns according to the time victory screen)

I am making some progress in the east facing England, Egypt and Rome. Thanks to our vast technological superiority in terms of troops, we could simply steamroll the AI, if only....(see above)

With the Egyptian capital taken, that makes 3/7 for domination victory. Sounds nice
Below you can see the battles that we fight at 2 out of three land bridges that presumably lead to the other bigger landmass. I am fighting with cannons, cavalry and muskets, the AI comes with legions, catapults and spears. Not what I count as a nail biter.

Anyway, the challenges lie elsewhere. On turn 275, we have managed to enter a new era and can make infantry now.
However, the scaling of unit costs is way, way off. This is getting ridiculous. I mean, these are the production options of my capital, not some far away corruption city of Civ 3.

13 turns for an infantry, 10 for cavalry? Are they kidding me? And have a look at the grand new unit, the military engineer that I can't wait to use for making roads (he takes 5 turns to produce). My capital has 15 citizens. Fine, it's not super happy thanks to a shortage of luxuries (thanks to the new mechanism of 1 luxury type for 4 cities total AND you are not allowed to distribute them yourself. No, that would be just to much work for the ipad generation). Ok, lets have a look what my capital is making here in terms of shields.

A grand total of 35.2 shields. Well, in combination with unit production scaling, this is not a lot. Look at those added benefits like two shields from the armory. Woot, now that makes a HUGE difference, ain't it? C'mon guys, that's not fun. Clearly, I have to focus entirely on shields and economy in my next AW game. Forget science, forget tourism and religion. Nothing but production and commerce.

Wait, wait , wait. We built a military engineer (mind you, that was only 5 turns). He can build roads (oh, by the way, movements have increased in the industrial era, it seems like double the movement). Let's have a look at the guy and I almost fall off my chair. This clown can make two builds? He is worse than a builder? I mean two pieces of road before he fades...Speechless

Well, no worries then. A look at the mini map shows that there is quite some land to uncover yet. Beating the AI is not the problem at this point. It's beating the fatigue that has set in. Crawling through bottlenecks thanks to 1upt, the need to keep cities to prevent a barbarian spawnfest (I mean there is a FOW tile in the midst of my empire, one tile and if I don't have a unit there to cover that, barbarians will spawn in no time. I don't want to imagine what happens if I start to raze most enemy cities.)

There is some good news. The Roman capital happened to be nearby and we are getting closer to domination.

I have started to beeline to totalitarianism and nukes to end this game in a glorious way. I just want to find those 3 capitals and sink them as fast as I can. My apologies for the increasing degree of frustration.

[Singaboy]

After a day's break due to other commitments, I picked the game up again and played through to turn 292, where we finally eliminated the Egyptians.

Now, there are only 4 Nations left to defeat entirely (and 3 capitals).

In the meantime, I tried to improve our capital's production with some production boosters as well as deliberate trade routes that increase production and I have managed to effectively increase production there to 60 hammers/turn. With some social policies, that gives me the capability to make a tank every 7 turns (still very slow imho).

So, I am fielding infantry and tanks with some artillery support. The issue I face is not the AI which still runs around with spears and catapults (c'mon, it's almost 300 turns and you can't do any better, AI?). It's a farce. The simple reason why I have not managed to end this game is the terrible movement rules in Civ 6. My own territory now has modern roads, but due to the fact that traders decide where they lay the roads, you can't have a direct route to the front as you could with your own workforce. The constant traffic jams don't add to immersion but to deep frustration.
So, in the end, it's now a battle between me and my own frustration and patience. The AI is a non event. We know this from all the reports we read. The AI isn't there for you to compete, but as a sidelined distraction. Not what I expect from a civ game. Let's hope they can improve on it.

And let's see how long the few tanks that I can churn out, will take to eliminate the remainder of the AIs.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

Lol what madness is that?! 2 builds of roads . Suicidal traders ftw. I suppose it is balanced by roads being worthless (although in the 10 odd games I have started I haven't made it past the medieval era out of bordem so it might get better in later eras...

[Singaboy]

I have to apologize. I couldn't make myself finish this game. Prince is way too easy and unit movement way to cumbersome. I have finished AW games on Emperor and Immortal in the meantime. I find Inland Sea to be the most viable map type so far for AW games.

However, the lack of proper troop movement and the many rounds it takes to siege a city with higher defenses, is a real killer. AW games turn into a series of city sieges. There is hardly any open warfare as the only place the AI troops are safe, is within the walls of a city or encampment.

I guess we will need to await the developers grand ideas before playing this again. I find science, tourism and religious wins a total cheese fest.