Stop, drop, shut 'em down, open up shop (America Adventure One)

[Gaspar]

That's how Ruff Ryders roll.

[picklepikkl]

USA gon give it to ya?

[Gaspar]

Ok, so I’m finally going to get around to playing Adventure One.  At this point, I have a fairly extensive list of half-finished games, so it isn’t the true new to Civ6 experience that we had suggested.  I don’t have a good reason for this - obviously, this isn’t a scored event, so there’s not any reason to sandbag until I understood the game better to play, not that I’d do that anyway - I’m nowhere near a disciplined enough SP player to ever win one of our events.  Unfortunately, I think mostly I held off because I always hate playing as America in Civ games.  Other than when I first started to get into Civ, 20+ years ago and didn’t know any better, I’ve never really enjoyed playing as America.  Probably in the later games it has more to do with America’s uniques mostly being either underwhelming, late game focused or both.  That is mostly the case here, though the +5 on your own continent certainly will work with Barbs and an early rush, otherwise the rest of America’s stuff either sucks (the UUs, Founding Fathers) or will come too late to really matter (Film Studio.)  Anyway, as I’ve gotten good enough at the game to expect this to be an early game rofl-stomp, followed by me getting bored in the late game, I’m going to put two personal restrictions on this game:

1. Honorable ruleset.  Basically, I won’t declare war on anyone who hasn’t declared on me first.  I’ll put a slight caveat in that if I feel I’m getting Apostle raped or something, I can wardec to end that nonsense.  Once someone has wardec’d me, I can of course press on as hard as I wish, for they have Chosen Unwisely™
   
2. No selling units.  There are other less obvious exploits in the game and I’m not going to trip over myself to avoid them but the Horseman economy is just ridiculous.
   

Beyond that, I’ve set a few other goals for the game.  These aren’t restrictions, just objectives to try and make things a bit more interesting for me.

1. I will try to found a religion and somewhat aggressively spread it.  I find Civ6’s religion to be underwhelming, so generally I’ve taken a really passive approach to it.  I’ll try and tweak things here to see if I’m underselling it.
   
2. I will try to REX aggressively.  I’d like to be at a minimum of 8 cities around T100, maybe to push to 10.  I think I’ve been a bit too Civ5-ish in my city plants and I think TRs and districts can make even marginal sites worth settling.  Settling on a river or coast isn’t as important as I’ve made it either, since Aqueducts mostly make up the difference.  Let’s see if we can’t push that a bit.
   
3. I’m going to stop every 50t and really assess what I need to be pushing towards.  I get really autopiloty once I feel I’m ahead and that’s a thing I need to cease if I’m going to improve my play.
   

Decide ultimately to settle 1W  - it just seems better, even wasting a floodplain because it gets the tea first ring which will possibly save me some gold even if it will probably grab the second tea before the cow.  I’ve been going Slinger first pretty consistently but I think for variety sake I’m gonna try Scout first.  Research on Pottery -> Irrigation to get the Tea improved.

T3, Get boost for Foreign Trade.  Apparently my move sent me from Zealandia to Gowanda.  That could be important given TRs bonus.  I wonder if I’ll like or hate that move once I know more.  I don’t love that I moved to get coastal tiles in 3rd ring but that really won’t matter I don’t think.

T7, Scout completes, start on a Slinger.

T8, Find first Barb camp, which TRs ability would have helped with if I had SiP.  

T10, Meet Jakarta in the West with the Scout.

T12, First Goody Hut gives me 40g.

T15, CoL in - grab Discipline and God King.  Really want to grab Survey since I’m trying scout but still banging on that barb camp in the east.  Queue Craftsmanship as per usual, expecting to get my tiles done in time to get the boost.  Might need to swap to Foreign Trade for a turn or two depending on the tile moves.  Definitely don’t care enough to plan specifically.

T17, Clear barb camp. Get MilTrad boost + 40g. Switch off half-done Irrigation to Mining.  7t on Builder still. 

T18, Meet Kabul in east. Find other barb camp in south with Slinger.

T19, Barb spear comes after me, which works great since it means we’re fighting on home continent.  The rules in this game are so dumb sometimes.

T21, Kill Spear with Slinger, get Archery eureka, which earns Kabul envoy. :4head:  Mining in, back to Irrigation.

T22, Builder completes and I farm FP where I realize I won’t get Irrigation eureka because not a resource.    Oh well. Cap on another Slinger.

T23, Meet Hong Kong in NW.  Goody Hut gives Inspiration for Political Philosophy and State Workforce.  

T25, two more huts.  40g and 20 faith.  Scout also gets promo, take ranger, though I usually take alpine.

T26, Pantheon.  Decide to go with Godden of Festivals (+1F from Tea, etc) over Lady of Reeds and Marshes (+1 cog from FP) because I’m not sure whether tile I settled on would get the +1 cog. Mysticism inspiration, obvs.

T27, Nan Madol met in north.  I feel isolated.  Am I going to have to kill Jakarta to get out?  Would that be violation of Honorable ruleset?  If I don’t see another connection to west gonna do it anyway.  Would be a really lame game to be hemmed in in east here.  Irrigation in, going AH -> Archery now.  Craftsmanship in, swap to Ilkum with Pantheon in.  Go Foreign Trade for Trader.  Start on Settler.

T30, Get BW eureka from killing another barb.

T31, Meet Kandy. AH done, start Archery.

T33, Goody hut - Wheel eureka

T35, Archery in, start BW.

T36, Foreign trade in, start State Workforce.  Settler done, decide to settle east for Marble. Start Archer.  Think I’m just gonna kill Jakarta and be done with it.

T40, Meet Kumasi in West. Finish Archer, start Warrior. Found New Orleans at Marble. Start on Monument.  Upgrade both Slingers and get Machinery eureka.

T42, Early Empire inspiration.

T45, Get Astrology when discover Cliffs of Dover in west.  First time I’ve seen that Natural Wonder.

T46, State Workforce in, start on Early Empire.

T49, Washington completes Trader, starts on Builder.  Meet China. Send delegation because I have no idea.

T50, TR starts, get Currency eureka. Will do overview next turn.  Someone builds Stonehenge on IT.

T51, Wheel in, start Masonry. Met Yerevan by China.




You can see I’m intending to RoP rape Jakarta.  Not sure if it will work, since just discovered it.  We’ll find out shortly.  I feel like that lake might connect but whatever, ilia acta est or whatever.  I’ll do some thoughts after I attack.  It did teleport my warrior.

T53, Early Empire in, swap to Settler policy, onto Political Philosophy.  Take Jakarta, Sailing Eureka.  

50-ish turn thoughts.  Well, really failing at the agendas.  Nowhere near religion, REX very slow, broke Honorable rule perhaps unnecessarily (still can’t tell if we connect in north to mainland.)  Have not played very aggressively at all.  For next 25t, let’s try and get 2 more cities and a Holy Site down, while moving towards TRs.

T55, Masonry in, Writing up next. Clear other barb camp.

T56, Does appear it connects.  Oh well.

T60, Political Philosophy in.  Always have a tough time choosing here.  I feel like Classical Republic is probably best because of the potential for 3 yellow cards but the Autocracy boost is always tempting.  Regardless, go with CR and this initial setup.  I probably want to try for Pyramids, but I suspect I’ll get a chance to swap before I start it.  Going to do what I always do here and beeline Feudalism now.  Not sure if it is correct but it feels correct.





Start holy site in Washington.

T63, Currency in, decide to bang out Sailing.

T64, Sailing in, HBR next.

T68, HBR and Construction in; Apprenticeship and Defensive Tactics up next.  Get first envoy, send to Kabul.

T70, Found Baltimore for Spices. 

T71, Meet Cleo in North, apparently playing a 1CC. 

T77, Washington completes Shrine, starts on Settler.

T81, D Tactics in, onto Feudalism. Meet Kongo in the west. He has 2 cities. Cleo tells me I’m a pussy on the IT.


T86, Apprenticeship in, onto Math. Note, I really hate the autocyling.

T87, Start Mids in Washington. Found New York in Iceball location in south for Silver.

T89, Get envoy, send to Hong Kong.  Meet Saladin, south of Kongo.

T90, Someone finishes Oracle.

T91, Rome wardecs Kongo, though I haven’t met Rome yet.  Meet Rome.

T94, Meet Zanzibar.

T96, Feudalism in. Clean up on MilTrad.

T97, Math in, onto Celestial Navigation. Found Boston aggressively towards Cleo for Ivory.

T98, MilTrad in, Mysticism up.

T99, Mysticism in, onto Drama and Poetry. Get Envoy, Send to Kumasi.

T100, Complete Pyramids. Get yelled at by Kongo for not spreading a Religion I haven’t founded yet, get yelled at by Qin for building things.  On IT, learn I missed out on all religions.  Ending play session one here.  I’ll do a bunch of overview reporting when I load on T101 next time.  The TL; DR though - I have not executed my gameplan very well but I’m definitely in a winning position.  That doesn’t mean much because isolated start meant no early AI aggression and Prince means they don’t expand enough.  I’m about to hit stride on Builder spam/Trade Route spam portion of the game which means the growth should really start exploding in the next 50t.

[Gaspar]

USA gon give it to ya?

Indeed.  Additionally, I have no idea why I can't get the images to work on the new forum.  Is there some trick to getting dropbox images to display?  Where are mah screenshot tags?!

[Dp101]

Screenshots are now under a drop-down menu, click the third button from the right (on the bar above the text).

[Gaspar]

Well, figured out the screenshots, but apparently pasting in from a text editor somehow turns the font color black. Too much of a pain to fix that.

[BRickAstley]

Well, figured out the screenshots, but apparently pasting in from a text editor somehow turns the font color black.  Too much of a pain to fix that.

so the screenshot tag is now kinda not needed as such, it will size your images down on a smaller screen and expand them on click. Though the screenshot tool will make them start small even on bigger screens.

The text going black is a function of the new editor. It's been giving people more problems, thinking I might disable it by default for everyone..... Anyways, you can set in your user settings to use the older editor (and I went ahead and did that for you), and toggle it when making a post at any time with the "paper" icon on the very right of the editor toolbar.

[Gaspar]

Well, figured out the screenshots, but apparently pasting in from a text editor somehow turns the font color black.  Too much of a pain to fix that.

so the screenshot tag is now kinda not needed as such, it will size your images down on a smaller screen and expand them on click. Though the screenshot tool will make them start small even on bigger screens.

The text going black is a function of the new editor. It's been giving people more problems, thinking I might disable it by default for everyone..... Anyways, you can set in your user settings to use the older editor (and I went ahead and did that for you), and toggle it when making a post at any time with the "paper" icon on the very right of the editor toolbar.

Thanks Brick!

[Gaspar]

Ok, so let's do a big, PBEM-style report before I continue the game.





So I'm at 6 cities on t101. Not great. I'm not really sure specifically where I went wrong, other than mostly just ending up on autopilot. Also, the land isn't super appealing, so that isn't really helping. You can see an Egyptian settler right next to Boston in the 2nd screenshot there, I'm fairly certain she's going to do one of those classic walk across the map deals and plant that somewhere really inconvenient. In the core, there's room for a mediocre site north of Washington and maybe another one south of Kabul. In the west, I can probably get another 2-3 out there before I start really over-extending myself but given them most of my cities are pretty unimproved and I pick up no new luxes without pushing past Hong Kong for diamonds, I'm not positive that's going to work. I'm going to try and force myself to get out there though, I don't think 8 cities with 3 being very marginal is really going to do it for me long term. The land here is pretty terrible, probably the least rivers I've seen in a game I've played.



Tech tree. I have everything before this and I have Apprenticeship after it. Grabbing Celestial Navigation right now for Harbors to increase TRs. Probably head to Machinery for Crossbows after this.



Civics tree. Probably push for Merchant Republic now.

That's all I really have at the moment. I'll stop at t150 and maybe focus on a few other things but just going to try and push to get at least 3 more cities down and really fire up the TR spam while getting Industrial districts done. I definitely need a little bit more military as well, so we'll see if we can sneak that in. But at the moment, Commercial Hubs take precedence both for the TR slot and I'd like to get ahead of Kongo for Marco Polo.

[Gaspar]

T102, Japan wardec's Rome, who I also haven't met yet. Drama and Poetry in, onto Military Training.

T103, Celestial Navigation in, onto Engineering. Trajan likes my empire.

T104, Cleo thinks I'm still a pussy.

T107, MilTraining in, onto Medieval Faires.

T111, Engineering in, onto IW.

T112, Arabia wardecs Kongo. What it with this map, everyone is onto of each other except for China and America tucked into little corners. Sirian, come back to Firaxis and save us.

T114, Qin builds Hanging Gardens. On IT, Saladin offers Friendship. Sure buddy, why not. Additionally, I could have captured Egypt's wandering settler every turn for the last 15 turns. AI, you so bad.

T115, Medieval Faires in, onto Mercenaries.

T116, IW in, onto Machinery. Meet Jerusalem.

T120, Mercenaries in, onto Exploration. On IT, after I built a couple Archers, Cleo thinks I'm a badass. Offer's friendship. Sure, why not?

T121, Get Carto eureka. Settle Charleston at marginal location for Tea.

T122, Machinery in, onto Stirrups.

T123, X-bow upgrades give Metal Casting eureka.

T124, Guilds inspiration. Goody hut gives me Printing (lol.) Kongo snagged Marco Polo. I'll get Irene of Athens next turn, no big.

T125, Get GM. Mercantilism inspiration.

T127, Stirrups in, Egypt finally settles a city. Start Shipbuilding.

T128, MilitaryEngy eureka.

T133, Shipbuilding and Exploration in. Construction and Recorded History up next. Earn mostly useless Great Admiral. Switch to Merchant Republic, get Castles eureka. Here's new govt.



T135, Qin likes me again. Meet Hojo.

T137, Recorded History in, onto Civil Service.

T138, Found San Francisco north of Washington.

T139, Construction done, Military Engy queued.

T140, Cleo thinks I'm a pussy again.

T142, Earn shitty GM. Enlightenment inspiration. Found Chicago in south for Whales.

T144, Military Engy in. Carto queued.

T145 Civil Service in, onto Guilds.

T149, Saladin reups friendship.

T150, Carto and Guilds in, Banking eureka. Start Gunpowder, maybe I'll have Niter since I have no Iron. Start Humanism as well.

I know this is dull. I'm really just ambling through this game as per usual. Its very hard to focus when you know you have 150+ turns left but simply due to geography and their inability to expand, there's no way this game can be lost. I'll spam out an picture filled update in a little bit, let's call this end session two.