[SPOILERS] yuris125 fumbling and clicking buttons

[yuris125]

Yeah I did notice it by now which does encourage me to go for early Mining. As far as I understand is not common in Civ6, as mining bare hills is generally considered an inefficient use of builder charges, and the common wisdom for early game is to go for yields which allow to rush-buy things (either gold or faith) along with culture

As England, I would prefer gold out of those two - but I would need to get harbours up and get traders going to boost gold income. Obviously I have no harbour spot at the capital (unless there's a lake in the fog), but with the map being based on seven seas script, I'm betting on finding coast early on

One more thing of note is that vast majority of MP games out there on YouTube are played on online speed and with barb threat either non-existent or significantly lowered. At least some of the meta figured out for those settings will not be applicable to a game on normal speed with normal barbs. I never saw an online MP game go for an early warrior, but do think it would be valuable with my start, especially with the tundra which probably won't be fogbusted by other players and will be a barb paradise

I will need to see my yields and production timers once we're in-game - not like I know hammer costs of everything by heart like in Civ4 - but I'm currently thinking scout-warrior-settler would be a decent plan

[Cornflakes]

My thoughts that I've previously posted on the first unit build:

Thanks Woden! Tile yields are appreciated

Can't complain about this start, plenty of production now and into the future! Forest hill deer is one of the better tiles to work early game, behind forest hill spices (6 yield!) and jungle hill banana (with all the production available here I'd rather have the 3 food from the banana). Rice will provide food as we grow, and the irrigation eureka. 1NE on the plain hill with deer 1st ring is probably my best option.

Starting build order I still favor Warrior > [settler + builder in some order, depending on terrain] > Scout. I've detailed previously the advantages of warrior first but I'll put a summary here. The two options to compare with are (1) slinger, and (2) scout. 
(1) The only advantage of slinger first compared to warrior is achieving the Archery eureka (worth 20). Downside is that a slinger independently is not capable of taking on a barb camp independently without luck and good terrain. More often than not I was forced to retreat a redlined slinger back to the capital when confronted by barbs. In PBEM 11 my warrior-first play enabled me to successfully plunder early barb camp spawns on both sides of my capital, without triggering an eruption, while still escorting my settler.
(2) Scout first is a trade-off between expansion speed and exploration. For the cost of delaying your first settler + builder by about 4 turns you can slip in a scout before the warrior and gain some additional early map knowledge. Personally I prefer to get the first settler + builder out early and then build the scout while still waiting for Craftsmanship to slot Agoge for more military. Two warriors are enough to meet any immediate city states and defog enough territory for intelligently settling the 2nd city.

In the past I almost always skipped the Archery eureka and straight-up built archers rather than upgrading from slingers. Now in Gathering Storm with the upgrade costs increased it cost 60 gold for the slinger > Archer upgrade vs. 20 extra cost with Agoge for just building the archers. That's a 3:1 ratio which is not great. I'd rather spend the gold purchasing a builder or monument to speed development of a new city, or saving for sword upgrades (or later Mercenaries-boosted medieval attack).

Regarding mines, it depends on whether you have other production tiles available. If a mine will increase the production yield higher than your best available production tiles (and you will actually work the tile), then it is almost always worth building. But many times you will have jungle hill or forest hill tiles already and so the mine won't actually provide any benefit over just working those tiles.

[yuris125]

I agree that slinger first (or ever really) is not a great option. Yes, getting Archery eureka is nice, but it is unreliable at best. In test games, where I built it I struggled to use it, and where I didn't build one I didn't miss it

Scout first is interesting, most MP games I watched the player went scout first. But those were games on online speed, with huts, and with no barbs. In our settings the value of scout feels greatly diminished. That said, there are some eurekas which are painful to get, such as finding a different continent or a natural wonder, and scout would be helpful for those. This looks like a relatively high production start, so fitting a scout before settler may be worthwhile

Builders are interesting. On one hand you'd rather not work unimproved tiles, on the other, apparently a lot of Civ6 MP nowadays revolves around building an army of builders with Serfdom card (gives builders 2 additional charges) and using them to generate a thousand hammers by chopping everything in sight. Since builder cost increases with every produced one, you'd rather not build too many before Feudalism unlocks Serfdom. Building too few builders in the early game is a mistake, but so is building too many. At least so Youtube tells me, so it must be true. And I do think this part applies to our settings as well

Depending on the start, it is still valid to go builder first on occasion, but with this start I'm actually ok working unimproved tiles for a bit, so expect builder to slot in after settler. Which again suggests that warrior before settler would be a good play, I would like to not have to worry about barbs while building civilian units

For mines, I wouldn't be surprised if people don't build them in the early game simply because Mining rarely is a priority research, it leads to early military techs, but the meta thinking is that it's extremely hard to go to a profitable early war in FFA settings. It's way better to let the opponent develop their land, and then attack them, getting resources from pillaging along the way. However with this start and with my leader I will want early Mining and BW, which means I actually might want to build mines

[yuris125]

After some more messing around in single player, I'm quite convinced to go warrior first in a game with barbs

[yuris125]

Opening the save, I'm greeted by a eureka message




Awesome, one less headache to worry about

Warrior follows the river to the west and finds diamonds and wine




What he doesn't find is coast. Sticking with England may not work out, there's a high chance my first two cities won't be able to build harbours

I am going to try to micro the city, switching between the 4 food rice and the 2f/3h deer to finish warrior and grow to 2 at the same time, then start settler. Research AH first to reveal horses (that will influence where the second city goes), then Mining

[Cornflakes]

Foreign Trade eureka is nice! Tough luck on the lack of coast though. Hopefully horses work out for you!

And don't worry too much about missing a policy card for your first builder. You'll need the improvements anyway for a eureka on Craftsmanship civic that unlocks Agoge, and Serfdom won't be available until much later. If you will actually be working the improved tiles, then the extra tile yields plus the eureka should more than make up for missing the policy card.

[Krill]

Can I suggest that you ditch the standard view and only play in strategic view?

[yuris125]

Oh I'm definitely not waiting for any policy cards for the first builder! Plan is to get at least one after the settler, barb situation permitting. Marsh rice doesn't need improving, but I will need to improve the deer, the marble, and probably the 3-food rice for Irrigation eureka. 2nd city will want its tiles improved as well. Just a matter of choosing and prioritising production

I'm not a fan of strategic view, I like my game to look pretty. But I can take some of the screenshots in strategic view if it will help with clarity

[Krill]

Civ 6 strategic view is the prettiest any civ game has ever been and I'll die on that hill.

[Cornflakes]

Probably better to farm the marsh rice. Increasing the yield from 4>5 food tile is worth more than getting a second 4 food tile. One citizen on the 5f tile can produce a larger net yield for example when regrowing after building a settler.