Civ6 Adventure 1 - Science Victory - Show me what you got!!

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America – Science Victory T381 – Score 759
 
After a long hiatus from the Civ franchise thanks to the rather unimpressive Civ5, I find myself back here, awaken by the collective rumbling of intrigue and optimism stirred up by the RB crowd. Civ 6 huh? Sure, going into this with curtailed expectations but by all means... SHOW ME WHAT YOU GOOOOOTT!!!


Full disclosure: do not expect to find any overly insightful or revolutionary gameplay within this report. I came into this game with zero knowledge on new designs and other such principles that were going to set this title apart from the others in the series. I figured at the very least Adventure 1 would bring some enjoyment from the sheer novelty. 

We begin at the start. I rolled America, consistently and unsurprisingly a late game civ in terms of unique units and buildings. Maybe I’d get to fool around with cowboys and mustangs (the planes) and really put to the test this 1UPT, more evolved and intricate tactical experience...  Actually this was Prince difficulty and I was not expecting a challenge unless the map start had something else in mind - they’ll do that to you at RB! 



Here’s our start: The land of milk and umm... tea. Looks like the fine people of America got their chai lattes early this time round!  
From what I could tell max housing was only available along the river and I had no reason not to settle in place. I had what looked like decent production tiles to the north and a couple of flood plain tiles for early growth.

Quick side note, this game has many UI issues that need fixing or modding. It would be nice to see numbers in the growth/food bar to help plan/anticipate, as well as an indicator as to which tile the culture of the city was going to claim next. Also huts in this game are really difficult to see and other than a small visual pop up on the far right I would have been completely oblivious to their existence.

Eureka moments or tech and civic boosts are one new interesting idea. Cutting that time in half seems like a very big deal in quickly churning through the tree but I was more curious how random it would end up, and how your starting map may push you down a particular arm of each tree. Just how far out of your way should you go just to get the boost? You might not need a handful of galleys but will that then get you the Colossus faster without curbing your growth in the long run? I guess we'll see as time passes.

Similar to my previous Civ4 approach I decided to concentrate on growth, get a unit or two out for exploring my potential 2nd city site, get a worker/builder knocking out improvements as the techs come in and look to ship my first settler out of the capital around pop size 4. This farmers gambit I play against the AI needed to be tested but boy was I in for a shock! 

Before long I found this just to the north:


And this to the southeast:


There was even another barb camp directly south which all quickly led to this:


T20. Three barb horse units fly out of the fog and surround my capital!  
Fortunately with the help of some dumb AI I manage to skirt around and mop up the barbs with a couple of units defending, only for 6 turns later to find another wave approach from the north! Holy hell!  
So yeah… I learnt pretty quickly why being scouted by barbarians could be a problem, not to mention the further danger if the barb camp happens to be in close proximity (6 tiles?) to a horse resource. I guess the developers wanted to put a strong emphasis on managing barbs in this game, and not just for the early game! A subsequent game on higher difficulty had my backwards civ terrorized by barbarian cavalry when my civ was just realizing making one end of the stick a bit pointier could end in better results. My neighbour was further ahead tech-wise and the game must accommodate for this. Bit rough having units from several ages ahead of you show up because of that though...   
“Fog-busting” has become harder to do in this game so it just looks like I’ll have to re-think my whole approach to barbarians now. The encampments show up on the map despite fog of war so every few turns I'm checking for this. I’m not sure how much of a fan I am of this new approach. It gets pretty disheartening when it seems like barbs were wandering from their camps way yonder, past all other civs/city states, and coming directly for my borders…

Eventually the small town of Boston was established north of the capital on T43 – a lot later than I would have liked. The site offered fresh water for max housing. My map knowledge was lacking but hovering the mouse over tiles suggested this was coast, so I figured a harbor town couldn’t hurt either. This city did get its fair share of harbor improvements and coastal wonders, but only turns later I found out it had no connection to the proper ocean. We also had some spice resources to claim later as borders expanded.


T50:

Here's the state of play at T50. I met Kongo somewhere out in the northern jungles. My empire was a pair of cities that had a lot of potential for growth and production. Looking back I was very slow to have builders improve tiles. The feeling I got was that it is more important to focus on builders improving tiles than having your city build districts at this stage of the game. A shortage of housing (mind you there were houses, just not an excess like the game requires!! ) really hit growth hard, amenities not so much. My first district (campus) went next to mountain for the adjacency bonus after I bought the tile. And yes… I was still having barb troubles!
I didn’t have many notes regarding civics from this play through. In general I focused on economic governments & policies, switching them around as the situation demanded.


Boston also got a campus in a pretty sweet spot (+4!) thanks to the mountain range and rainforest tiles running along the north eastern border (certainly a site worth paying for).

I met Egypt, our northern neighbours, and even founded a very late pantheon promoting growth (zero f---s were giving about chasing religion this game). Egypt threw down Thebes, a city just to the north of my lands (well in my lands depending on how you look at it) which I thought was bold. They had a lot of room to use in other directions so I felt the AI was really trying to stir things up by making this play. You ain't seen nothing yet! 

T100:


Here’s a T100 overview. I put down my third city New Orleans on T94 (again very late). At this point I had no wonders or great people to my name, not enough trade routes either. At some point that crazy Kongo guy declared war on me. His civ was so far away I didn’t particularly care. A handful of his unique units came by at some point but were easily mopped up. I even stole one of his unprotected settlers at some point giving rise to the city of Buffalo. 
The next 100 turns weren’t that exciting. I put down a few more cities, but really I just noticed with better empire management than the AI at this difficulty I was fast becoming the front runner. No real wars at this point but then Egypt went ahead and did a thing like that:

Umm ok. And the AI has the audacity to call me out on putting down cities in their vague direction... 
This insult was not going to stand.

T200: 








Just a bunch of screenshots for comparison’s sake for anyone interested. Six cities founded, although I noticed I hadn’t really made any use of strategic resources for settling cities or making units. I met Japan, Rome, Arabia and England, and on that note diplomacy was such a small factor in this game. It just seemed like it was too difficult to please the other AI civs, and between them all taking turns to denounce me for no strong reason, I was surprised to find my best relations were actually with Japan to the point I had open borders! Guess that's something new they've added to Civ6 too   
Diplomacy is a little interesting as AIs have their own agendas (hidden or not) and I guess with time we will predict just what rubs each Civ the right or wrong way. I was just disappointed diplomacy didn’t come more naturally (at least in this game). Kongo gave up their pointless war and just timely I produced my first rough rider unit. Time to find someone else for him to round up!

At this point there was no uncertainty that this game was mine for the taking whichever way I saw fit, so I had to pick a victory condition. I concluded domination would be fastest but I wouldn’t get much out of quickly picking off the AIs one by one. I had nearly no culture or wonders, and no interest in religion either - the AI is bonkers with their religious unit spamming to the point you can't move units around your own territory (thanks 1UPT!) No instead I chose to head for a science victory, mainly to see what was actually required and how long it would take. And as it turns out... it takes a very f---ing long time! I mean to keep my interests, the peaceful American civ we all know and love had to produce a squad of rough riders and tear up ol’ Egypt town. Naturally all the AIs (including the newly met China) absolutely despised me for it. And boy, ain't war weariness a bitch too! It's over the top considering what seems part and parcel to a Civ game now seems like something you'd try and avoid altogether.

I fooled around with spies a little bit, but being so far ahead there was little to gain. Essentially it boiled down to running interference with AI’s spies and stopping them from sabotaging the production districts in my main cities – that got old fast! 

The game ticked on, and hitting next turn got so tiresome I had to turn on quick combat and movement just to save time. Different bits and pieces were slowly launched into space:


And eventually on T381 I won what might be the slowest space race victory we see here at RB!  
To be honest I was just glad the game was over because the challenge had clearly left 100’s of turns back. I get the purpose of setting the first adventure at a friendly and forgiving level to encourage everyone to have a go. I personally just didn’t get too much enjoyment from this little adventure. However that said, the last 100 or so turns had me thinking how much I wanted to start up another game, go for another victory type on a higher difficulty. My brush in with Civ 6 is far from over, and I’m looking forward to whatever scenario the RB community cook up next.

Reflecting back on this game I think some of my biggest misplays were from not managing the barbarian threat in the early game. Not settling my early cities faster - you still grow pop while producing them so no real reason not get them early if you can defend against barbs. Getting out more builders earlier on to improve tiles rather than starting on districts, and chopping like mad for both the food and production hit. Those are at least a few areas I’ll be working on with my next few games. 

Any constructive criticism is always welcome. If you made it this far thanks for reading, and a big thanks to BRickAstley and the others who put this event together. See you at the next one!