Civ6 Succession Game 1: Commercial Free Programming

[Sullla]

Welcome to the first Civ6 Succession Game hosted at Realms Beyond! We will be using the following setup:



Civ: Japan/Hojo
Difficulty: Emperor
Game Settings: Standard speed, Ancient era
Map Settings: Small, Inland Sea

Variant Rule: No Commercial or Harbor districts 

This is a simple variant. Everyone knows by now that the trade routes are extremely strong. Going commercial districts into industrial districts at every city is pretty much the one right choice at the moment. Let's take that off the table and see what happens to the gameplay. Note that this does not mean that trade routes themselves are banned, only commercial and harbor districts. We'll get one free trade route from the tech tree, Merchant Republic can provide two more, and some Great Merchants grant additional ones. We'll need to think carefully about where to send our very strictly limited trade routes, both for the bonus tile yields and since they're the only real way to build roads. (Does this mean using Military Engineers in this game? We shall see!)

Japan is a natural civ to pick from there. (Rome would also fit but working around limited roads is intended to be part of the fun.) Japan gets three half cost districts, none of which are commercial or harbor districts. (Japan gets cheap Holy Sites, Encampments, and Theatre districts.) Japan also gets an adjacency bonus from putting districts next to each other, which seems like it could make for some fun planning as a team. I'm picking Emperor difficulty as a level that should be a challenge without being too unwinnable. I prefer Small maps at the moment to keep micromanagement from getting out of hand, and I haven't tried Inland Sea yet, so let's give that one a spin. 




Roster:
Sullla
Ruined Everything
Molach
Ichabod
Ranamar


Files were generated with the Aztecs civ turned off. First turnset immediately follows this post.

[Sullla]

Here we go, the first succession game for Civ6 at Realms Beyond. Let's hope this is the first of many. 



Turn 1: Holy moly, what a starting position! There are four wheats, three sheep, mercury, truffles, a double river valley, and hills galore here. Is this what turning on Balanced resources does? Feels like some kind of crazy map generation error; I wonder if this option is bugged and also picks the "Abundant" option? In any case, I go ahead and found on the starting tile. I really want the 3/1 grassland hill sheep tile in range as soon as possible, will probably purchase either that or one of the 2/2 tiles as soon as possible. I considered moving the settler to get one of those tiles in range immediately, but that would have taken 2 turns of movement, and I didn't want to delay that long, plus it would have moved that excellent 1/3/3 truffles tile into the third border ring. 



I start by working the truffles tile as best available and build a scout (5 turns). We'll be able to purchase a tile in 5 turns, and I'll start growing the capital at that point. Animal Husbandry research first; the sheep are the best tiles here at the start, and we want to improve them first. Mining will probably be second. We don't need Pottery just yet for an early granary because we're on a river and we'll be getting lots of housing from upcoming pastures/farms. Code of Laws only choice on civics tree, as always. 

Turn 2: Cocoa to the north, stone to the west. Lots of resources on this map.

Turn 4: Meet Gandhi's warrior to the west in a region full of cows. Hopefully he's not too close to us in the early game; this might be the direction we send the first settler. I exchange hospitalities for now, which reveals his capital. Uh, we are in fact really close; Delhi is about a dozen tiles from Kyoto. We are also getting a -6 to our relations for "unknown reasons". Great. This game could get interesting in a hurry!



Turn 6: We hit 50 gold this turn and I purchase the 3/1 sheep tile, swap Kyoto over to working it. It will take 3 turns to grow to size 2, and then we'll pick up the truffles again until culture expands to hit one of the 2/2 sheep. I start construction on a builder, as I want three pastures for the three sheep tiles. That will give us tiles with 3/2, 2/3, and 2/3 yield, very strong in the early game (plus more housing to keep growing). Once we get those wheat tiles all farmed and boosted with a water mill, this is going to be an insane start. 

The scout heads north and immediately finds water. We are on the south side of the Inland Sea. Not sure where we are relative to the east/west axis, somewhere in the middle I'd say. And yes, there is even more wheat southwest of our capital. Something is funky with that "Balanced" map option!

Turn 9: Kyoto hits size 2. Culture grabs one of the 2/2 sheep tiles at the capital, and I start working that one alongside the 3/1 sheep tile. Growth in 8 turns, builder finishes in 6 turns. I have seen no sign of barbarians at all yet, does that mean that they're disabled somehow for this game (?) That was not my intention. Something really buggy with the setup for this game, but I'm going to roll with it. 

The territory to our east is very hilly, we should be able to get an excellent production city over there. There appears to be a large amount of tundra to our south.

Turn 10: Nope, nevermind, spotted our first barbarian unit (a scout) this turn. They are still around, whew. In not so great news, Gandhi has used his free starting Emperor settler to plop down a city between us. There is room for us to get our own city to the west, albeit just barely. We will need an early settler ASAP to make sure we control that extremely fertile land. Animal Husbandry research complete, on to Mining tech. 



Turn 12: Scout finds a barb encampment to the east. We also spot an injured barb scout to the west. Definitely will need a military unit next, I'll get a slinger ready. 

Turn 15: Gandhi pops up with some kind of cryptic message I don't understand, which is apparently worth +5 to our relations for unknown reasons. I try to send him the 25 gold delegation to improve relations, but he refuses me. I'll try again later, no idea what he's thinking right now. 



We finish Code of Laws civic and get to adopt our first policies. I take Discipline (+5 strength against barbarians) and God King (+1 faith/gold in the capital) so that we can get started on our pantheon. Even if we don't chase after a religion, we definitely want our own pantheon as soon as possible. We'll have it on Turn 40 if we run God King policy and nothing else pops up to give us faith for free. I start researching Craftsmanship next, since both of the available policies are highly useful (Ilkum: +30% on builders and Agoge: +50% on melee/ranged units). We will also get the boost for Craftsmanship by improving 3 tiles in the next few turns.

The builder is done and I start a slinger in the capital. I decide to use one of our charges on a wheat farm, for three reasons: it saves a turn of movement that would have been otherwise wasted, it fulfills the boost for Irrigation tech, and it gives us another 3 food tile to use for faster growth in Kyoto. Swapping to the improved wheat tile (3/1) now allows Kyoto to grow next turn instead of in two turns. Worker (err builder) micromanagement ahoy!

Turn 17: Mining research done. I'm going to research half of Archery and hope that we can finish the other half by killing a barbarian unit with a slinger. I don't think we need Pottery just yet, or the stuff immediately behind it. Improve one of the cows with our builder and get the boost for Horseback Riding tech. We actually do have horses nearby, so this may come into play if Gandhi gets too frisky. Warrior is patrolling along the western border to keep visibility with Gandhi, scout is off in the far east and hasn't found anything yet. Hoping to meet city states, more civs for contacts, or find another continent/natural wonder. 

I have tried a couple more times to send a delegation to Gandhi, and he continues to refuse to meet them. 



Turn 19: Scout finds a foreign continent and boosts the Foreign Trade civic. That's our next target, making this a very welcome discovery. He also finds a goody hut across the river, nice. 

Turn 20: I use the third builder charge for a sheep pasture and we get the boost for Craftsmanship. Now it will take 6 more turns to complete. Slinger finishes in the capital; I'm keeping it inside Kyoto for the moment since there's nothing threatening visible right now. The capital is size 3, working 3 improved tiles, with enough housing to reach size 6 before growth begins to slow down. I'm going to go ahead and start a settler (9 turns), as I want to beat Gandhi to that spot off to our west. I think we can win the race if we go for a settler right now. Not sure that area will last very long if we wait. We seem to be OK for military right now, and I don't want to train another builder without the +30% production bonus. There's also a stone resource over there for a potential Stonehenge build, and that might be the best way to land a religion. Settler it is then.

Turn 21: The goody hut gives us the boost for State Workforce. Whoa, that's very nice indeed!  The boost normally requires constucting a district, and I'm normally loathe to do that in the early game. This is going to save us a lot of time in the push for the early govements at Political Philosophy.



Turn 23: There is a LOT of empty territory to our east. I expect this is where the future heartland of our empire will be located. We are clearly at the southwest corner of the Inland Sea. Swap off Archery tech because we now have half of it done; we can finish the tech if we kill something with a slinger. Research into Pottery tech.

Turn 25: Kyoto is size 4, settler now due in 3 turns. I'll be able to found a city on Turn 30, which will make a perfect place to stop this first session.

Turn 26: Finish Craftsmanship civic, start on Foreign Trade (9 turns). A barb scout appears to the south of our capital away from where our slinger is located, and that means potential trouble incoming. I'm going to swap into Agoge for the combat unit production bonus and crank out a couple of slingers as soon as this settler finishes. Still running God King on the economic side for the moment; we are at 11 faith currently. 



Turn 27: Lots of barbarians. Definitely need to get units out next. 

Turn 28: Settler done, Kyoto drops back to size 3 and starts regrowing. I begin a slinger, which will only take 3 turns thanks to our policy choices. 



In the east we meet Saladin and I send him the 25 gold delegation to improve relations. He appears to be at the southeast edge of the Inland Sea. (For that matter, this is a pretty big map for "Small" size! If we run these map settings again, I'll probably add another AI to compensate. Maybe I should have picked Tiny.)



Turn 30: Pottery tech finished. I select Writing next but that can be changed since we have no beakers invested yet. The city of Sendai is founded; it is the minimum distance of 4 tiles from Kyoto and also 4 tiles from Gandhi's city of Agra. There was a horses tile (2/2) just outside its borders, and I spent 55 gold to purchase it so that Sendai would have a good tile to work right away. I tentatively set the city to a builder, which is very much subject to veto as well. We have a lot of tiles that need improving between our two cities. 

Concluding thoughts to follow in the next post.

[Sullla]

First things first: here's an overview of our surroundings using the Settler lens:



There's definitely room for more cities here along the rivers that get the freshwater bonus. I'm especially interested in that freshwater area to the northwest by the double cocoa resources; it may be worth building another cheap scout to go check it out and head north around the Inland Sea to find out what's up there. The fresh water comes from a very small river that's tough to see in these pictures. 

Here's a more immediate screenshot of our capital and new city for use in team planning purposes:



I did not attempt to plan out districts while playing because it was so early in the game. Feel free to suggest away with good spots for various stuff. I think we have a nice balance of flatland for farms and hills for production, plus about a billion sheep and wheat resources. 

Civics suggestion: research Foreign Trade until it's nearly complete, then start researching State Workforce until we can found our Pantheon at 25 faith. Then swap back to Foreign Trade, finish that, and change civics to Ilkum and get a builder out of both cities. I have the barbarian scout pretty well trapped at the moment between river movement and zone of control rules. See if we can kill it with a slinger if possible for the Archery boost. When we have the chance to establish our pantheon in 10 turns, I would heavily suggest God of the Open Sky (+1 culture on pastures) since we're already working 2 pastures, we'll shortly connect 2 more, and that would essentially triple our culture here in the very early game. There are sheep everywhere at this start. (If we would later take Agra from Gandhi, that city also has multiple cows that can be pastured. Sheesh!)

Tech suggestion: maybe research half of Astrology next and hope we can get the other half from finding a natural wonder? We won't be able to place a Holy Site district or start Stonehenge until we have that tech in hand. It's 11 turns at present with no boost, drops to 6 turns if we can land the boost. 

Finally, check out Sendai in that picture above. We have stone in third ring, and SIX nearby forests for chopping... 



It sounds like Stonehenge might be a good target to shoot for here, no? If we purchase the tiles over here and chop some of those forests, it shouldn't be that tough to land. This is probably an easier route to founding a religion than trying to build a Holy Site district, as we don't have a lot of mountains in the immediate vicinity. I checked the Great Person screen and currently Gandhi is the only one with any Great Prophet points generated to date: he has exactly 1/60 Prophet points. Keep in mind that Saladin is also in this game, so we'll have to move fast if we want our own religion. This is definitely a good issue to discuss as a team. (The red dot is a potential future city site; we may want to send the third settler here. But I think we need builders before settlers next, and our policies will line up well with that too, since the +30% builder policy finishes before the +50% settler one). 

I played 30 turns to get us started. Let's try go 20 turns / 20 turns for the next two sets, and then 15 turns / 15 turns for the following two. That gets us to Turn 100, and we'll do 10 turns apiece from there. Here's the roster:

Sullla
Ruined Everything <<< UP NOW
Molach <<< on deck
Ichabod
Ranamar

I generated the save without the Aztec civilization. That should mean that everyone can use it without a problem (if you have the Aztecs, you may need to turn them off on the Steam menu for Civ6, I don't know). The savegame file can be found here. Let's figure out what we want to do next, and then it's off to Ruined Everything for the second turnset. Wish us luck! 

[Ichabod]

Great starting position and nicely done with the starting turns. 

Some questions:

1. Do we really want a religion?

The pantheon is a no brainer, since we don't lose it even if another religion spread to us (and I agree with Sullla's suggestion of the culture for pasture pantheon). But what are the benefit we get from religion other than that? If we want to get benefits of tithe or church proprierty (the gold generating beliefs), we need to invest heavily in faith, since the bonus is only meaningful if we have lots of cities with our religion (and so we need faith for missionary spam). My SP experince shows Saladin investing heavily in faith and I bet Gandhi does it as well, so we'll need to win the religious warto have our religion spread wide against them.

If we are planning to go heavily in faith, I think getting a Great Prophet through Holy Sites might be best. This way, we already invest hammers on the faith generation, not only the Great Prophet. And we get Holy Sites for cheap, which is even better.

If we don't want to invest heavily in faith, we can use the religion for some of the less faith dependant pantheons. Here's an idea: the one that gives relics three times the tourism/faith bonus. We could make Apostles to be sacrificed for these relics and use the relics for Tourism generation. In that case, we would be planning for a cultural victory (otherwise, the plan doesn't make much sense).

And that leads me to the next question:

2. How do we plan to win?

Religious win is a possibility, though I'm not a big fan of it. Conquest win goes against our variant, because units are very expensive. It's certainly doable, but I don't think this is the right game for it. I'd say we should aim for a science or cultural victory, and I think it makes sense to ask this question so early, because we need to know what districts to invest into.

I wonder if we can win a very fast cultural vistory if we spam Theater Distrcits for the great people points. I wonder if all the tourism bonuses in the game are tied to the Civics tree, or do they intertwine with the Science tree. I need to study the trees to observe that.

The other benefit of a cultural/science victory is that they seem to be the less expensive type of victories when it comes to gold. With our variant, we have two choices: 1. figure out how to get gold, considering our limitations; or 2. figure out how to not spend much gold and still manage to win. If we cut on our expenses, we don't need to go out of our way to get money. In that sense, considering Japan's incentive for going the cultural route (with both the Theater District discount and the UB) and considering the map also helps (I expect us to get a lot of culture from our panthen), I think we could start planning to go that way very early.

Just some thoughts. I think the main thing now is to consider what do we want to do with religion. Do we really invest in Faith, or is Stonehenge enough? Or, perhaps, ignore it altogether? In my experience, the AI doens't slack on the faith department, so we need to start planning ot soon.

I think we need to go the Holy Site way for religion, otherwise we won't have enough faith to really play with it. Stonehenge feels a bit wasteful, in that sense.

[Ruined Everything]

Got the save.

Looks like a splendid turnset. Let me digest everything, and then if I don't have anything to run by you I'll play my turns when I get home!

[Ranamar]

Do you remember what the cryptic message from Gandhi was? Usually, they're hints as to the AI's agendas.

More to come, probably when I go back and finish reading everything.

Edit:
Originally, I was on Team Stonehenge. However, thinking about it more, we get doubled adjacency bonuses from districts, and that means districts are as good as mountains for a Holy Site. That, in turn, means that we can plunk them down wherever, as long as they're next to a couple other districts. (Similarly, this means that districts are as good as mines for industrial districts.) As a result, I'm actually not too bothered at the possibility of just kinda throwing them everywhere. Usually, it feels suboptimal to me, but with Japan, that seems pretty good.
... Wait, on reading that again, it sounds like having any district adjacent makes all adjacency bonuses, including ones that aren't from districts double... Do we know what it actually does, here?

On a different note, can we annex India? As was noted, it's quite close to us. Probably, we don't want to pay the production for the units when we could be REXing eastward.

[Sullla]

No, I didn't write down Gandhi's exact words. I'll try to remember to screenshot those messages from the AIs in the future. 

I have never built Stonehenge and I have virtually no knowledge of religion in this game yet. We were simply discussing religion a lot in the pregame planning thread, and Stonehenge could be one way to get access to a religion. I don't know if it's worth the effort either.   We should probably decide as a team if we want to pursue a religion, or simply plan on letting Gandhi found a religion and annex his territory later. 

I haven't really thought about winning the game yet either.   We probably should think about it though. Japan would be well suited to a Culture victory with those cheap Theatre districts, and we're going to have to build something in those district slots with Commercial and Harbor districts taken off the board. Any other thoughts here? At 10 turns apiece, I'm up for anything. Lategame slog is way easier when it's split between five people.

[Ruined Everything]

So, I've spent a bit of time thinking about things. The first 10 turns are obvious, the next 10 turns not so.

All we can do over the next 10 turns is slog out 3 workers. We will want the 30% bonus to workers civic here. The micro plan is:

Tech
T40 Astrology completes.

Culture
T35 Foreign Trade completes. St. workforce 35/70. 2.5 cul/turn, 
T38 St. Workforce 42.5/70. 2.8 cul/turn.
T45ish St. Workforce completes.

Kyoto
Current: 17/33 food, 33/35 slinger, 4 f/t, 9 h/t, 6 g/t, 3/7 housing
T 31 slinger finishes. Start worker 6/54 h. 21/33 food
T 34 Kyoto size 4. Worker 33/54 hammers. 0/44 food. Buy sheep (65g in treasury if we buy). 4 f/t, 11 h/t, 6 g/t, 4/7 housing. 5.5 sci/turn, 2.5 cul/turn.
T 35 30% boost to workers. 4/44 food. Worker 44/54 hammers. 4 f/t, 14 h/t, 5 g/t 0 faith/t. (21 faith) 
T 36 Worker finishes, start worker. 8/44 food. Worker 10/58 hammers. 2 f/t, 17 h/t, 8 g/t (work truffles instead of farm)
T 37 10/44 food. Worker 27/56 hammers. 4 f/t, 14 h/t, 5 g/t (work farm again) 4/8 housing.
T 38 Pasture completes. 14/44 food. Worker 41/56 hammers. 4 f/t 16 h/t 5 g/t.
T 39 Worker finishes, start settler. 18/44 food. Settler 1/100 hammers.

Sendai
Current: 0/15 food, 0/54 worker, 2 f/t, 3 h/t
T 36 12/15 food, 18/54 worker, 2 f/t, 3 h/t
T 37 14/15 food, 20/54 worker, 1 f/t, 2 h/t 1 sci/turn (work mercury) (now 33g in treasury if we had to buy both)
T 38 0/24 food, 21/54 worker, 1 f/t, 4 h/t, 1 sci/turn (work mercury and horses)
T 39 1/24 food, 24/54 worker, 2 f/t, 5 h/t Size 2. (work wheat and horses) 2/5 housing. 6.2 sci/turn, 2.8 cul/turn.
T 40 5/24 food, 68/54 worker, 3 f/t 5 h/t (farm & chop (with 30% boost) completes).

[Ruined Everything]

Generally, there are two things that we want to do on my turnset, I think. 

The race for chocolate mountain
First of all, we want to grab Sullla's city by chocolate mountain. In doing so, we lock down those two chocolate tiles from the murder-Gandhi next door. With a plantation, those two tiles can support 8 (!) tier 1 cities. The chocolate economy is real! There may even be more in the fog - I've noticed that in civ 6 resources tend to be clustered. This probably requires Kyoto to go settler next after it churns out 2 workers by T39, and we'll probably have it T45-6 or so.

The 'henge (friend or foe?)
Secondly, the case for the henge is clear, but I do think we should discuss this as a team. The henge is a 180 shield wonder that gives you a (nerfed) holy site and a great prophet. A holy site is 33 shields. We'd in effect be paying 150 shields for a great prophet. Is this worth it?

There are 3 (I believe) great prophets in the game: classical, medieval, renaissance. Saladin is guaranteed the last one (if he doesn't get one), so that leaves us with 2. One is worth 60 points, the other is worth 120.

Assuming we build holy sites by T45 at both of our cities, we will have 2 GPP/turn T45, when India has 17/60. Assuming that India doesn't build a shrine, we win. 

But provided that Gandhi isn't siccing varus on us (entirely probable), he'll probably build a shrine. (If he has a religion, he has a causa belli for his varus.) Gandhi has a 40% production bonus (varus are 40% more efficient than horses), and assuming that he's working the production tiles that I see he has (thanks to based scout) he'll have his shrine up by T34 (9 production, shrine costs 40 hammers after discount.) 

What happens then? By T45: we have 0 GPP, Ghandi has 28GPP, both of us are rocking 2 GPP/turn (and varu spam is commencing.) We then build 2 shrines in 5 turns with another 130 hammers (130 hammers = 3 varus (varui?, varupodes?)) by T50 we have 10 GPP and 4 GPP/turn, Gandhi has 38 GPP, and his ETA (T56) is better than our ETA (T62.) Assuming that no other ETA gets to the 2nd GP by T75 (our new ETA), we get our religion - and then promptly get murdered by 10^7 varupodes because we've accumulated a -50 (no city name starting with a vowel) malus from Gandhi.

With 7 worker charges by T40, I can burn 4 on chops for ~160 worth of hammers T45-6, 1 on settler, and 2 on a mercury mine and a horse pasture for Sendai. This will leave us on T50 with: 2 archers (cause that's where we're goin' after Astrology), 1 warrior, 0 (zero!) workers, 3 cities, and 1 'henge. EDIT: Assuming EE, I can squeeze another worker/archer out of Kyoto.

This will cripple our mid term growth, but hopefully the slow expansion of the AI and the vast tracts of land to the north and east will allow us to stay competitive. 

Alternatively, we could leave a religion (which I do think is our best shot at non-map related gold) on the table and go for all out city spam to try and claim huge tracks of land. This is probably the safest option, because I can put out a couple more archers.

Our three options, IMO, are:
a. Religion via the 'henge.
b. Religon via the shrines.
c. All out expansion.

Thoughts? I'll give you guys the day to discuss, and then I'll play my turn set mid-afternoon/early evening EST (~4-5pmish.) That should be 24 hours. I was gonna try and do it tonight but I got back too late for me to make a plan and leave it up for discussion - and I do think that this turn set is important enough to merit team discussion. Hopefully Molach should have all night to think and make his/her/their moves.

Of course, this all might be rendered irrelevant when 19 varus sail over the border next turn (Gandhi has 3x our military might.) I'll let you know. 

[Ruined Everything]

(One last micro thing it occurs to me we could do is go for 'henge and Early Empires instead of State Workforce. That will require us to burn an extra worker charge on a chop, which is why I didn't think of it before, but we might not need the pasture with that chop. I'll run the numbers tomorrow.)