Epic One: Sullla's (Shadow) Report

[Sullla]

My report is linked here on my website. As I was the sponsor for this game and put the map together, my result is a shadow game. I'm looking forward to seeing how everyone else fared with this one, and where the winner score ultimately ends up. If you want the short details, I'll put them in a spoiler below.

Cultural victory on Turn 238 (40 points)
18 wonders constructed (36 points)

Total score: 76 points

[unaghy]

"Maybe comparing to those who stayed on the starting tile will shed some light"

I settled on the spot, but I dont see much difference in overall. Different game planning and strategy was much more important in the end, I believe.

"I was quite happy at how well the AI was doing in my game, and I would be shocked if anyone managed to run the full slate of wonders"

Same here. Egypt landed Stonehenge on Turn 7! My reaction was like, "ehm, ok, so this wont be easy at all". EDIT: I have re-checked my notes and I have note that Stonehenge was build on Turn 7, but when I think about it, it cant be possible, as even getting that tech would take twice that time. I could have made mistake when noting it, but ihad to be early anyway.

"Making matters worse, a random Kongolese scout happened to be passing through my territory and managed to snipe my settler that was about to establish a new city northwest of Rouen. Are you kidding me?! What were the odds of that? What a needless pain in the rear"

After you complaining quite often about "AI does not protect its settlers", this had to be great AI satisfaction on your behalf. Lol. 

"I need to mention that Mvemba was grabbing Great People left and right"

This was the case in my game and made mistake letting him doing that constantly throughout the game - longer game took, more culture & tourism he was getting from them. In my game I had to pull more than 306 visiting tourists to beat him in comparison to your 157, what costs me scoring points for earlier finish.

"Yeah yeah yeah, stupid Civ6 combat AI can't get out of its own way, no need to worry" (about suzerain-ed city state of civ you have war with)

In general, we found Civs far away from us as not dangerous. Not anymore! With 2-3 city states right next to your empire that other Civ is suzerain of, we are now in real danger. I have learned hard way as well, so now I´m keeping my eye on who is suzerain of which city state and keeping envoys in reserve in case I would need to end suzerain status of other Civs.

"my entire core was already full of districts and wonders! I was running out of room to build much of anything" (about not having enough riversides for Chateau)

I made great job in planning Chateau placement, when I had each Chateau next to a wonder doubling its culture. Even sacrificed Commercial districts placements. But I lacked in overall strategy in comparing to your results.

"I had overlooked one of the lesser-known aspects of Flight tech...aha, talk about it being better to be lucky than good sometimes"

Good riddance for your case. I have paid hard with my overlooks in this game

"I'm finding it harder and harder to believe those who continue to claim that "everything takes forever to build" in Civ6"

I cant just agree more with you. Besides, being not able to build everything brings interesting choices to be made in terms of neglecting something in order to have something else that suits better in your current strategic concept. Being able to build everything would be just boring...

"Don't be fooled by the (as usual) terrible interface. All five of those foreign trade routes are getting the +50% bonus to tourism. I have no idea why two of them are grayed out and why the trade route to Arabia was missing the tourism indicator entirely"

I understood this mechanic in the way, that only active trade route from AI city to your city brings you active 25% bonus and if you have trade post with very same city, then 50%. With no active trade route from that civ, no bonus at all. I have tested it in my previous games. Did I misunderstand this?

"There is no other indication in-game that the chateaus are producing tourism, and this is extremely easy to miss - as I did while playing"

There is, even on the very same screenshot written as rule for Culture victory - "you must attract visiting tourists by generating high amount of culture", which means every culture produce tourist. Its not that obvious, I agree, but at least I have read it several times to understand this concept and got Chateaus generating tourism in mind rightaway.

By comparing your report with mine, I can just congratulate you for well played game!

[Singaboy]

You lament that many people here do not appreciate Civ 6 and that it's their loss. Maybe it has something to do with the situation you faced on turn 25.

What a letdown by the AI, being able to eliminate you on turn 25 and then simply turning around.

(Of course, there are more reasons why people shun this game)

[Dhalphir]

You lament that many people here do not appreciate Civ 6 and that it's their loss. Maybe it has something to do with the situation you faced on turn 25.

What a letdown by the AI, being able to eliminate you on turn 25 and then simply turning around.

(Of course, there are more reasons why people shun this game)

That isn't really a fair argument. I've had AIs in Civ IV eschew opportunities to eliminate me, even on Always War.

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[Singaboy]

Are you trying to say that in Civ4 an AI declared war on you with 4 units next to your city and simply turned around? I admit that sometimes the AI would not be able to be most efficient in their attacks and go for another city instead of the one right in front of them. However, here, the AI has only 1 target and would be sure to take the capital (btw the way domination is set in Civ6, the capital should be THE target) and they simply turn around?

The issue is, that I have not seen the AI doing much better in any of my games so far. You simply play with yourself here (and fight off the much bigger threat called barbarians).

[Dhalphir]

I have played an Always War game where an AI had a warrior pass right by an empty capital through my land.

I vastly prefer IV myself but Civ 6 is not unique in having terrible AI.

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[Sullla]

The AI in Civ6 is a miserable failure at combat. The One Unit Per Tile rules simply break that aspect of the gameplay, which is one reason why we are likely to do relatively few conquest-centric setups for upcoming events. I understand that Singaboy essentially only plays Always War games, and I agree that Civ6 is not a good fit for that particular setup. If that's the gameplay you're looking for, Civ6 will not leave you satisfied.

As Dhalphir pointed out though, this is hardly the first game where the AI was militarily incompetent. I have numerous examples from Civ3/Civ4 of AIs ignoring undefended cities, running off to capture workers instead of attacking cities, marching huge armies of tanks past cities guarded by warriors or archers without attacking, etc. Civ6 is undoubtedly worse than Civ3/Civ4 in this regard, but it's important not to look at the previous game through rose-colored glasses either. Civ4 is definitely a better game than Civ6. However, Civ4 also came out over 11 years ago, and the fact that Civ4 is amazing doesn't mean that we can never play anything else ever again. I do respect that this game isn't for everyone, but I also think that a lot of the community is missing out on potential fun here. It's really up how each individual wants to spend their time. I'm having fun, and that's enough for me.

Anyway, I don't want to turn this into yet another debate about the merits of Civ6. I've had two late nights and I've barely had time to read through the other reports. I'm planning on typing up some responses tomorrow - we could use some more discussion in these threads!

[fluffyflyingpig]

If the AI sets a warrior to explore it won't attack cities. Even undefended cities.

[Dhalphir]

If the AI sets a warrior to explore it won't attack cities. Even undefended cities.

I know how the AIMission feature works, yeah. Civ IV was made in a time when PCs probably didn't have the spare processing power to be constantly recalculating AI missions to see if it was still the right move.

[Athmos]

Are you trying to say that in Civ4 an AI declared war on you with 4 units next to your city and simply turned around? I admit that sometimes the AI would not be able to be most efficient in their attacks and go for another city instead of the one right in front of them. However, here, the AI has only 1 target and would be sure to take the capital (btw the way domination is set in Civ6, the capital should be THE target) and they simply turn around?

The issue is, that I have not seen the AI doing much better in any of my games so far. You simply play with yourself here (and fight off the much bigger threat called barbarians).

Civ AI can use stacks better than 1UPT, certainly. Still, Civ 4 AI also did some very silly thing. It was notoriously incompetent at anything involving crossing water (since it handles unit embarking better than using transports, civ 5 and 6 AI are actually better at this), It never hit a city even whith overwhelming forces so long as it could bombard it, units had set missions that meant that a stack could fail to defend an almost empty city right next door or could ignore a vulnerable enemy city if they had another target. The All AI games Sulla organized and reported will show you no end of AI silliness.

So OK, civ combat AI is weak, and 1UPT makes translating AI bonuses into actual strength harder, but don't tell me civ 4 AI was great, and specially not that it wouldn't ignore undefended targets.

I also suspect that there might be grace periods where the AI won't just kill the player by taking his only city before a certain date, just as there was a grace period that prevented them from declaring war in civ4 (no barbs until T10, no wars until T30 I think ?). I've had T7 war declaration in civ 6.
You can't possibly defend the idea that civ 6 AI let you go for too much of a farmer gambit, when worker first was the one true choice in civ 4, while it is actually a huge gambit in civ 6.