Mr. Cairo Epic4

[Mr. Cairo]

First of all, despite the CS issues with this game, I really enjoyed it, more than any other game of Civ6 I've yet played (not that I've played a lot).

I'll get the important stuff out of the way first:
I wasn't nearly as aggressive as I probably could have been, so I didn't win until turn 332, and then by science.
I probably spent I little too much time empire-building, if I had just gone for the conquest victory all-out, it would have been a lot easier, but then again, I wouldn't have got to play around in the modern era either so whatever.

Honourable Mentions:
Fist city capture: Turn 29 (Lisbon)
Cities controlled T200: 13 (I think, my closest screenshot is 205 and I had just captured my 13th city)
Fist Elimination: Some time between 250 and 260, during which I eliminated Sumeria and Spain (in that order)
Highest promoted unit: A Level 8 Machine Gun at 536/540 XP. Probably all of that XX came when it was an Archer/Xbow, as Machine Guns are pretty much useless.

The general way my game went:
-First conquests were against CS: Lisbon, then Geneva (but Geneva had just been conquered by Brazil)
-My first proper invasion was against Japan, and I was trounced, so I left them and Brazil alone for most of the game, and until right near the end they were ahead of me in tech.
-I continued to defend and expand normally to the west until I ran out of CS's to capture, and began to eat the Sumerians and Spain, who had been fighting eachother as well. 
-Then it was France, the most useless of the AI this game, and then into Brazil. Brazil was my equal in tech, if not military power, so it promised to be a real slog, but then I saw that Japan had started on a space victory. So I sent my army up to there to try and stop him, while also going for space myself.
-In the end I did quite quickly defeat Japan, by this time I had Mobile Artillery, which made things a lot easier, and I quickly took their capital and their space city. I didn't really need to though as my own capital was more than capable of winning a spacerace with Japan despite their headstart, as I had both the GPs who add +100% to Space Projects (or whatever they're called in Civ6), and after I built the spaceport, it only took around 3-4 turns for each of the projects.
-At that point it became a race against myself, to see if I would win by science before I could capture Brazil's capital. In the end I got to Mars just a few turns before I would have won by conquest.

I ended the game with 37 cities, I think.

[Mr. Cairo]

I played this game (and took the screenshots) about a month ago, so my memory might not be perfect.



I settled in place, and quickly found Lisbon, my first target


A couple of warriors and slingers later, and I had my first city capture on turn 29.


I chose this as my pantheon, expecting to be facing a lot of units from the AI in the early game. In the end, it probably wasn't necessary, and I should have gone for one that'll help me throughout the whole game.


First civ encountered. I was advancing on Geneva when I met Brazil's units, and they ended up taking the CS. I met France and Japan shortly thereafter.


With only a warrior on defense, and already damaged from Brazil's own attack, all I needed was a warrior and 2 archers.


Unfortunately, it was mostly useless for the rest of the game, and served only as a bulwark against Japanese attacks while I was fighting farther to the west.




My empire and the score screen on turn 78. I think Sumeria had already captured Spain's capital.

I apparently didn't do much for the next 80ish turns but expand a bit and build stuff, since my next screenshot is this:



Here's the rest of my empire, starved of amenities as it was for most of the game. Every time I sort of solved it, WW got worse, but in the end it wasn't too much of a problem. Brazil's cavalry shows how much more advanced they were than me. If they had ever sent more than one or two units at a time it might have been an actual problem. Single Brazilian oir Japanese Cavalry, sometimes accompanied by a GG or escorting a settler, were constantly running around through my land, largely impervious to attacks from city walls and the Xbows I had on defense there, but incapable of actually doing any real damage.


Invasion of Sumeria well underway. They built A LOT of Xbows to defend.


Now into what's left of Spain.


France moved out of Chiefdom on turn 231.


And where back in it 3 turns later... I just don't know.

I actually remmebered to take some empire-shots for turn 250:









Eliminations started to arrive:







Now Japan and Brazil are sending tanks, helicopters, and AT infantry to escort their settlers on their journeys to nowhere.


While being invaded by me:



I took this city, then saw that Japan was in danger of winning by space, so I sent my army up to invade Japan, while starting on space myself. Fortunately I had both of the GP thaat give +100% hammers on Space Race projects, and my cap produced a crapton of base hammers:







I like this screenshot

Meanwhile, the invasion of Japan:





That ended the threat of Japan winning by science before me, not that there was a chance of that.

So I go and see if I can win by conquest before space:



But...



Victory Graphs, if you're into that kind of thing

Why humans are so much better than the AI



Only Gilgamesh really put up much of a fight once my invasions began in earnest.

Here's the screenshot showing my highest promoted unit:

[timmy827]

Glad to see a big detailed report!

Re: god of the forge - I passed on this not just because only early units, but because I assumed would likely get +50% from Agoge/Maneuver on most unit builds once pantheon available anyways. 

Interesting that Geneva stayed occupied the whole game (?).  Can you liberate CS in this version?  Is it possible to liberate then kill it (so no occupation penalty then?)


I've never fought with modern units (or played any game that really went that far).  What did you find useful that was genuinely new/different there?  (As opposed to artillery which are stronger bombards/cannons, tanks seem like stronger knights, etc).  Did you get use out of air untis?

[Mr. Cairo]

Glad to see a big detailed report!

Re: god of the forge - I passed on this not just because only early units, but because I assumed would likely get +50% from Agoge/Maneuver on most unit builds once pantheon available anyways. 

Interesting that Geneva stayed occupied the whole game (?).  Can you liberate CS in this version?  Is it possible to liberate then kill it (so no occupation penalty then?)


I've never fought with modern units (or played any game that really went that far).  What did you find useful that was genuinely new/different there?  (As opposed to artillery which are stronger bombards/cannons, tanks seem like stronger knights, etc).  Did you get use out of air untis?

I guess I could have liberated Geneva, then conquered it again, (maybe). But that would have been going against the spirit of the game a bit.

The weird thing about the modern era warfare was how inconsistent the power levels were, and how different types of units jump in power at different times and in drastically different ways.. For example, The Xbow to Field Cannon jump is huge, especially if your Xbows are well-promoted already. But the jump from Field Cannon to Machine-Gun is very underwhelming. You lose the safety of having 2 range, but they're not really tough enough to fight on the front line, especially against city defenses. 

Later on, when I first attacked Brazil in earnest, I was using Tanks, Infantry, and Artillery, and having a hell of a time against the city and encampment defenses. One shot from them would redline a tank or infantry and kill a Machine-Gun. Attacking a city with Infantry or tanks also hurt them badly for little gain. Having artillery, and farms to heal your units, was necessary, and even then I took losses, and this against an AI that had barely any units, just a few Tank Corps.
But then I got Rocket Artillery, and I blasted through Japan easily. They took out units and city defenses in no time and outranged everything. If I was to compare it to Civ 4, it's like the jump from Cats and Trebs to Cannons. 

But to answer your question, there didn't seem like a lot new/different from previous eras. I suppose Tanks did act like Knights but a lot tougher, so you could actually use them against cities, but until Modern Armour, you still needed infantry to be confident in talking a city from an enemy at equal tech to you.

Air units I didn't really use. I had a few airships that I upgraded to Fighters, but their range was too short to be of any use offensively, unless you really commit to building airfields with Military Engineers. Bombers had the range, but I think I only really built one. Actual fighting units were more useful, and didn't require and entirely new District to build.

One final thing, it seems the AI drastically cuts down on the number of units it maintains at later eras. During the medieval era Japan sometimes came at me with 6-10 units at a time. But when I invaded them they barely had any. Which is really disappointing, I expect to steamrolll an AI of much lower tech than me, but not one on equal footing. Just a few more Tanks or Infantry would have made the whole thing a lot harder.

[Ranamar]

I feel like they wanted to make the unit upgrades feel like they were impactful, but I'm not a huge fan of the effect that results from only having a unit every other era. The knight->tank upgrade, for example, is an 80% attack power boost or something. Warrior->sword->musket->infantry is similar: each of those is around a 60-75% attack power increase. Different things get boosts at different times, but that mostly seems to mean that only a few units don't suck in each era. (And some units, like anti-cavalry, suck in all eras.)

Meanwhile, the build and maintenance costs of individual units skyrocket, so I never want to maintain many units, either, but I can especially see the AI falling into that trap. They also don't take advantage of how cheap it is to upgrade units, relative to building new ones.

[Mr. Cairo]

Meanwhile, the build and maintenance costs of individual units skyrocket, so I never want to maintain many units, either, but I can especially see the AI falling into that trap.  They also don't take advantage of how cheap it is to upgrade units, relative to building new ones.

And yet, even an only slightly competent human player like me, who has spent the entire game at war with everyone and has every city starved of amenities, is still able to produce a massive army and pay for it. By the end of my game I must have had at least 30-40 modern era units running around: Modern Armour, Mechanised Infantry, Rocket Artillery, Helicopters, etc, and a majority of them were newly built. The AI is just so bad at this game, it's hard to believe.

[Ranamar]

Meanwhile, the build and maintenance costs of individual units skyrocket, so I never want to maintain many units, either, but I can especially see the AI falling into that trap.  They also don't take advantage of how cheap it is to upgrade units, relative to building new ones.

And yet, even an only slightly competent human player like me, who has spent the entire game at war with everyone and has every city starved of amenities, is still able to produce a massive army and pay for it. By the end of my game I must have had at least 30-40 modern era units running around: Modern Armour, Mechanised Infantry, Rocket Artillery, Helicopters, etc, and a majority of them were newly built. The AI is just so bad at this game, it's hard to believe.

I really think the AIs underprioritize both production and gold buildings and districts.  The former is needed to get the army in the field (Japan probably had stuff, but they ended up building wonder in my game) and commercial districts in particular are needed to keep late-game armies paid.