Civ 6 Adventure 1 - Dreylin searches for honour in Japan (in progress)

[Dreylin]

Well it seems that I'll be playing my first CivVIes game as Japan. I've read some reviews of the new game and have picked up odd things here and there, but haven't delved into minutiae at all. I expect my strategy to be equal parts stumbling in the dark, listening to dodgy (in-game) advisors, and misunderstanding things.

BRick posted these useful summaries of the civs, so I know that Japan looks & thinks like this:

---

Japan
Unique Ability: Meiji Restoration All districts receive an additional standard adjacency bonus for being adjacent to another district.
Unique Unit: Samurai: Does not suffer combat penalties when damaged.
Unique Building: Electronics Factory:Replaces the Factory. Provides bonus culture and production to nearby cities.

Hojo Tokimune
Leader Bonus: Divine Wind: Land units receive +5 Combat Strength in land tiles adjacent to Coast; naval units receive +5 Combat Strength in shallow water tiles. Builds Encampment, Holy Site, and Theater Square districts in half the time.
Leader Agenda: Bushido: He prefers civilizations with both a strong military and faith or culture. He dislikes civilizations with a strong military with weak faith and culture.

---

So my game plan will be roughly:

1) Explore! (Dreylin's Player trait)
2) build cheap districts adjacent to each other
3) attack neighbour with Samurai (sticking close to the coast where possible)
4) ...
5) suffer ignominious defeat Profit!

My plan is to go into this without any practice time (assuming I can work out where the Save file needs to go without starting a game to create my own) and to report periodically as the game progresses rather than all at once at the end - I figure that's OK for this casual Adventure even though the standard is to unleash the whole thing on Report Day.

... 4hrs of work ... 3hrs with the kids before bedtime ... and then we'll see! 

[Dreylin]

Session 1 - to t37

Here we go! This is our chap:


Handsome devil.

I founded in place because I didn't know any better:


Turns out we're exactly the right distance from the coast to prevent Harbouring. I don't really understand all the stuff on the left, but I'm building a Scout first for some explorationy goodness.

My first Eureka came just a couple of turns later:


Turns out the river is pretty-much the boundary between continents! (As a Geologist, I'd have expected more Hills/Mountains, but whatever).

Soon after we encountered our first Barb:


And then Encampment:


Goody.

I managed to intercept the Scout and prevent it from getting back to the Encampment, but it was a wily devil and dodged and weaved NE. Bit at it's ankles until the kill was eventually stolen by this guy:


First contact, Militaristic, with active Warriors roaming outside its borders. With just a Warrior & Scout, I left the SE Encampment alone for now until I have some proper troops.

Code of Laws pops and I get to enact some Policies:


Don't think I've changed these yet despite being several Civics further down the tree. I've mostly been following the Eurekas ... or pre-following as in this case:


Bought the Rice tile (because who the hell knows what's going on with the automatic picker!?) just in time for the bonus. I've actually only built 1 Worker Builder so far; it improved the Rice, Tea & a FP.

Since then I've built another Scout (& popped a 3rd from a Hut) and 2 Slingers to take on the Encampments - yeah, I found others to the SW, N & NE. <Sigh> The SE triggered, but I managed to get my first Slinger out to deal with it; the NE I came across Kabul working it over and this time stole their kill  and then I sent both Slingers to deal with the SW.

Meanwhile my Scouts were off meeting a few more CS neighbours:




Note that I was not the first to meet Jakarta, so didn't get an automatic envoy.

A little further North I met Egypt:


We exchange pleasantries and Delegations. She's far enough away for now so we'll see how things develop.

And here we are at the end of the session:


Just about to grow to size 6 to Eureka Early Empire before losing the pop to the Settler. I just bought a second Builder who will head South with the Settler, improving the Cows along the way.

On to Session 2...

[Dreylin]

Sessions 2&3 (to turn 100) -

When last our hero stalked these shores, we were about to Eureka Early Empire and then complete our first Settler. That went to plan and we pushed on towards Political Philosophy, which appears to be a key tech as it opens up some more expansive Government options:


(I would actually end up delaying the beeline for a couple of turns to match the revolt with the tick of the Legacy bonus for Classical Republic up to +5% GPP)

Anyway, before that happened and before my second city was founded, we reached our Pantheon threshold:


Trying to balance short-term gains with longer term utility; lots of Milk & Horses around, and as I've played through more I appreciate the flexibility of frequency access to civics changes, so I believe a strong Culture game will be important.

Anyway, here's where I put the second city:


Man is this place a dreadful hole. Crap water, crap land and too many of the best tiles in the 3rd ring. This place would be a drain on my empire for years is still a drain on my empire.

A period of exploration & teching settled in as I worked towards a new form of Government:


Yep, the no-military one. Well I'd pacified the surrounding Barbs and the CS ring was friendly around my pod; Cleo was sabre-rattling, but she's far away. Settler boosting & low tile purchase costs ... must be time for some more expansion! I maybe should have spent more time in the other Diplo Policy, but I found the accelerated accumulation usually beat the emplacement - especially since now most of the CS I met had already been contacted and I wouldn't get the free Envoy for finding them.

Envoys actually seem to be something that can be held and not emplanted immediately, so you if I was planning to send to a new CS, I wan't usually far off a Civics switch that would get me the bonus.

And of course the GPP points targeting the Prophet since I haven't finished my Holy Site yet.

My neighbour was going great guns on Religion; as you can see here she built Stonehenge and has been the first to found Catholicism:


Also highlighting the newly met CS. I'd send an envoy here later to pick up the Culture bonus. Soon after we also met Hong Kong (to our NW) and Jerusalem (a bit further North).

Soon however it was a time for celebration:


We birthed a Prophet and founded a Religion for the ages:


Cleo had taken the extra Faith building, and added food & production seemed like the way to go.

With our new religiosity we started to occupy the map:


Much better than FUK U OK AAAAAAAA. Ahem. 

You can also see that this was my first notification of a "Death in the Fog" as one of the AIs evidently succumbed to Barbs or their neighbours. I received a second notification much later, but this was also when we started to meet other civs (being alone with Cleo was a mixed blessing the feisty wench!). Mighty Rome and Proud Saladin were not quite at war with each other, but there were rumours of other with whom they had contact and even worse relations.

My intrepid Scouts found Seoul to the far North and was the first to do so, and the first Natural Wonder of the Dead Sea. All the while we pootled on slowly at home. Cursing our slow build times and only later realising that maybe we should have put out a few more Builders to get some Mines going (maybe still too much in Civ IV mode where Food is King....)

Next up: overview shots, Districts, Wonders & Religious insanity!

[Dreylin]

t101 overview:

So by this time I'd founded a 5th city in the SE to grab the Iron:


Foolishly I chose to buy the Fish instead of the Milk, and I ended up losing that tile to Kabul.   As you can see it's District time, with my first Campus and Industrial districts going up and a second Holy Site. Japan's District build bonus is clear here on the Holy Site build time vs. the other two.

In Foreign news, Cleo still though my Army was weak (it was) & Saladin didn't like that I wasn't spreading my Religion (I wasn't). Trajan was quite friendly because I had so much land (most of the AIs were on 2-3 cities at this point) and was letting him explore the map (not deliberately, most of my Scouts met sticky ends).

CS wise I had also Suzered Hong Kong - although there would be a prolonged (and continuing) fight with Cleo over that - for the added production, and was getting drip bonuses from most:



On the Religion side, we were now competing with Saladin's Islam as well as Cleo's Catholicism:



Civics have pushed into Medieval:



And same with Techs:


I found myself making deeper beelines with Techs than Civics, possibly to keep a steady series of opportunities to switch up those Policies. Even with my : you can see that I'm outdistancing the AIs on both trees. 

Finally for the overview, the claimed Great People:


Yeah, after the Prophet I'd used my Wildcard Policy to grab a General. He hasn't seen any use, so this was probably a mistake, but we'll see, that extra promo may come in handy.

[Dreylin]

Session 4 (to t15n) -

There are hints of future plans in the overview screenshots, but before they are realised let's talk about the Elite Unit naming system RNG:


The tale of the Terrible Jackets is long and gloried - as are their eponymous clothing. Here we see them detouring South after discovering Seoul, lonely in the Arctic Ice. They're heading West, but detoured even further to grab a Hut on this spot and trigger the upgrade - funny story, the Hut gifted me a Trader unit ... 1t before FUK U OK AAAAAA would complete one - and you can't have more Trader units than Routes - hey at least I'm 1t away from the next one once a slot becomes available! After this they would continue West meeting the fabled Kongo (they hate me) and the far distant Chinese (mixed reaction). They are currently following rumours of a place called "America" and their fabled leader the Green Rooster.

Anyhoo, back home we had more pressing matters to attend to, namely:


Which shortcut my way to the Apostles needed to finish off the true message of the Pretty Butterflies:


Which is spreading nicely.

Things were starting to look better at home:


Having slowly realised some of my earlier mistakes, I was busy correcting them with Granaries (for Housing) and a round of Builders ... with a few enhancements:


And:


Much better:



I put two of the new Builders on ice for part 3 of my 4-part plan:

Part 1: Builders
Part 2: Military (as you saw in the Monarchy Policies)
Part 3: Settlers
Part 4: Profit!

Military builds ramping up in Kyoto & Shizuoka (Samurai & Knights, respectively), and my numbers are even starting to look semi-respectable. Settlers queued up and ready and then I see a massive wave of Cleo's Missionaries on approach from the NW, where she's recently planted a couple of cities.

OK I think, time for some lightning from the skies combat I've heard about. I purchase an Apostle and run it into the first Missionary approaching Tokyo and suddenly Cleo's in my face swearing at me about converting cities!?!?


Wait, she was the one trying to convert MY city, is she mad I wouldn't let her?

Some digging and lenses later I realise what has happened; when you win a Theological combat, it sends ripples through the nearby Religiousphere, extracting the defeated Religion and adding the victorious. Turn out that by stopping her Catholic invasion, I'd actually converted here nearest city to my Pretty Butterflies:




Those two other Missionaries would finish converting Nekhen for me. As you can see I built a second Apostle in anticipation of having one of hers arrive. What followed was just another Missionary ... but for some reason it wouldn't let me attack it, did it have Holy Armour, or was it a glitch? Nope, turned out she had now bought a Pretty Butterflies Missionary and was reinforcing my own religion into my city!  

Here's a final overview (a few turns old) before the Settler push:


Mercenaries comes in and then I'll build 3 Settlers before the next policy switch. One will head NE to the Bananas, while the other two are destined for a grab past Jakarta - with Knight & Samurai support. Still well behind Cleo on Military (though I wager my units are better than hers), so buildup will continue before I consider it time to wage Holy War against her.

Next time: who knows, since it's unplayed! I predict new cities, Wonders and maybe War...

[Dreylin]

Well it's probably time to face the fact that I may not get back around to finishing this game; blame Jowy's XCOM2 report for drawing me away into that game with my limited free time!

Anyway, pending going back into the game post-patch, I should report the final turnset I played pre-patch, so:

Session 5 (to t180-ish) -

Well, my prediction from last session came true before I had anticipated:


Fortunately I had been preparing somewhat for this, while it doesn't really seem like she has:


I respond by forcibly ... settling some more cities! You can see the Settling party in the previous shot heading to the marked spot beyond Jakarta, and I also settled this one in the NE:


City States were taking part on both sides, and several tactical switches of allegiance took place (well my grabs were tactical). At least it thinned out the Warrior spam from these two neighbours somewhat:


Thebes had built walls, so took a while to crack, but with Samurai attacking at full strength and promo-healing I did indeed crack it:


And receive my education in Warmongering Penalties:


Nekhen had no Walls, but a swarm of Egyptian units arrived to slow the advance; nevertheless I took the city with minimal losses (and much profit from the "killing obsolete units" Policy card):


Oh, and I captured a Settler as well, which started to head SW.

Meanwhile I had revealed Niter and so I had a choice;

Peace:


or War:


I was happy to go either way, but Cleo popped up and offered me a deal:




What is pretty ridiculous is that the turn before I had played about in Diplo to see what I could do to get Peace with her and at the time it would have taken me gifting her 4-5 of my own cities in addition to the captured cities in order to get her to sign.   Methinks the AI does not update its battle assessments too frequently. 

Well, with Peace declared I could go back to poking around and exploring; I had eventually found Teddy in this clusterfuck of a region:


And then found Pouty Queen Vic beyond.

I'd also naturally spawned a Great Engineer:


Who started his long career of "sitting around waiting for something to do".

I also used a bunch of Faith to grab a Great Writer out from under the AI's nose:


I put one Book straight into the Palace, then a couple of turns later realised that I could trade it to Saladin for the Shroud of Turin. That went into a Holy Site so I could then popthe second Book into the Palace!

And that's about where the session ended; I've got the Settler out West to grab the Niter next to Rome, and another one venturing further towards Seoul for some luxuries. I've read a bit out of the discussion threads and the first SG and I realised that I never did actually place a Commercial District, which seems suboptimal! I kept meaning to, but there always seemed to be something more important to buid. 

I don't know whether I'll come back to this game knowing a bit more about it as I do now, or whether I'll look for a different challenge. It's probably fair to say that XCOM2 is likely to get more of my attention in the immediate timeframe ... that and Burly Men at Sea, which I plan to be playing soon with my 5yo.