MJW’s lame Epic 2 victory

[MJW (ya that one)]

As per the start-up plan I outlined in the announcement thread I planned to DoW. That is until I realized that Sullla would dump us on our own private island (‘Island Plates’ usually doesn’t do this) due to his response to me in that thread and the fact that he doesn’t like you warring.   DoW is still worth it if just two AIs get whales though… Turn 250 is too long to consider so I’ll play normally to start expect:

--I will try to get as many whales as possible at Turn 150.
--I will try to grow Delhi as much as possible to get 5 points and drop everything else. With so many cities, as per the usual, I won’t be able to go ‘tall’ that much.
--When a builder can improve a whale it must.  
--I must run a trade policy when possible.

Turn 1:
Moved to avoid settling on a hill and away from the whale to avoid having to waste a builder charge on it just yet.

Turn 2: Move one more hex in so I could settle on that one-tile island. (Fake Edit: After writing this I found out that you can settle in illegal locations IF they are on different landmasses. You can get away with one less tile.) Found hut. Builder first. Because I want to go with a horse rush instead of an archer rush to use battering rams and the UU I research Animal Husbandry first. I don’t know if I’m on island for sure and seeing horses would be useful for the shields if nothing else. 
Turn 4: Get useless exp from hut. 

Turn 7: More useless exp. I really now really suspect we are on an island…

Turn 15: First to meet cultural city-state. With military units and the monument (because I have the city-state) less important I go with settler next.

Turn 19: Well the bad UI said I would grow onto the stone but I didn’t so I waste a bunch of builder turns. LOL

Turn 23: I got lucky and took out a camp before it “got me”.

Turn 41: More barbs. Took Lady of the Reeds because when else would you take it? (good map for it)

Turn 56: Typical opening aside from beelineing shipbuilding in order to embark.  

Turn 79: Found a civ that is rushable if you had map spoiler info—Egypt! Too late here though. I have half the military score of them.

Turn 90: I get DoWed by Egypt and Scythian. Yay. This is a hidden reason why Civ games domination tends to be best because you have to build a military anyway. (Fake Edit: After writing this report I found out that adding a single battering-ram transforms not dying to taking over the civ that DoWed you which makes it even better.) I could get away without it here because of the map. Let’s see what happens.

Turn 98: Well warrior-rushing Cleo is probably the best move (no way to know that without spoilers):

   
One warrior is winning against Egypt! Too bad he cannot take out cities…

Turn 111: No other sources of whales found yet! That’s very impressive with abundant!

Turn 150: Didn’t find any more whales. I suspect that Sullla did that on purpose to prevent you from having to DoW an AI to get the whales. Harbor and Commercial district spamming for turn 200.

Turn 200:
I got 21 unique trade routes. The UI doesn’t display how many turns the route last so I had to resort to using some CFC guide to make sure that the routes got back in time for the points. TI-83+ for the win!

There also were not that many islands so I know how many will be under my control at game end.
Calculating the points I already will get from Sullla’s list top to bottom...
25+5*5*3 (I don’t know why Sullla listed the same thing three times)+10*3(6 true islands, 1 big starting-island, 3 ice ball islands) +21+25=176
All that remains to be seen is how many cities I can get to size 25 by turn 250 (5 points each). I’m only hopeful about the capital.

Turn 201:
It’s now pretty obvious, after a little math, that I will only be able to do it in my capital so my final score is 181. The location I settled in has more than enough to harvest to get to size 25. Nothing else is even close. You need that and many trade routes (21) to fill up the foodbox so fast (less than 50 turns for 8 population!). I just have to dump everything in the capital now and prepare for the harvest.

Turn 209: Found another crappy island so my score will be 184 unless something strange happens. Sent a pre-built settler to it.  

Turn 250:
Nothing strange happened so now I just have to win the game without being at war with anyone and I get 184 points.

I looked at the map one last time and there were no other sources of whales, which ruined my plan of stealing one and giving it back to the AI for 10 points. If there were more whales, it would be possible to dig yourself out of the 25 point hole after DoWing. But on this map it would be very hard to do at three points apiece for each new landmass you control.

I wasted a lot of effort trying to find whales that were not there. I would have to spend lots of energy finding those tiny islands but not as much (I would have till turn 250 not turn 150). I probably would have only about gotten my second city to size 25 and an extra trade route for 190 points if I had suspected that there were no other whales on the map. 

Germany is still technically ahead in the space race but only because I haven’t been researching useless techs to keep my ‘game progress score’ lower to lower my district costs. No-one else is even close to winning any kind of victory. This should be an easy space win with only one AI to focus on.

The only thing I have left to say is that Nan Madol’s bonus for this map is silly. See the spikes below (the city-state itself is used as a proper ‘x-axis’):

   

Turn 339:
I finally win the spaceship victory. Germany just didn’t have the teching power to be a serious threat. Scythia proved to be an unexpected threat to win a culture victory. My normal solution of DoWing wouldn’t work out but I managed to stop them from winning before I launched the ship by stacking as many “culture-get!’ policies as possible, stealing great works and the fact that it was only Emperor difficulty. I also had to make their leader sign peace with me by attacking their harbors and fishing-nets with my navy.  

Finally, I did guess correctly that Firaxis would nerf the trade routes so I got to turn 200 ASAP.   

Fake Edit: After I’ve written this report I realized something. While playing I didn’t consider the Galapagos Islands to be an island because it is “coast” which is a water tile so it isn’t land. It’s just a special water-tile—not a land-tile as the rule description said. I should have PMed Sullla about this earlier instead of going with what I thought.

[MJW (ya that one)]

If this is the only submission I'll tell you why: everything but the size 25 cities and trade routes are give me points. I feel it would be extremely hard to get anything other than the capital to size 25. So the points that matter are the number of trade routes you have. So if you didn't get to turn 200 before the patch there's a good chance of you rage-quitting on the spot. It was not a good idea to start this game before the patch especially considering that people were drumming on how OP trade routes were. Having to whip out a TI-83+ to make sure the routes get back in-time for the points is also extremely annoying and also could lead to a rage-quit if you didn't get burned by the bad UI before (I was when a plan of mine in a casual game was ruined).

[TheArchduke]

My first try on this map ended with a city taken by Scythia because I did not take my naval power seriously enough.

Good game, although it saddens me we only have one report so far.

Nan Madol is impressive.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Under the current patch you don't need a navy to defend yourself. Ships don't have what it takes (at least for AI) to take out a city if they don't have troops to help out. You can stop their troops easily due to their low strength. Melee units can also attack into the sea, keep their land-strength so deal great damage and not take any damage from the sea-units.

Edit: Not worth own post but this game was played before the patch. In the game Egypt was a total joke (as seen by my warrior raid) and Scythia didn't even attack me (probably because they got bribed into that war and so didn't have troops in position).

[MJW (ya that one)]

Well it made sense to give out an extra day because of the forums being down but now that day has past...

[Singaboy]

I tell you why I don't like those competitive Civ6 games. The starts are too luck based. If you are lucky, barbarians aren't a threat at all, the AI laves you alone etc. If you are not, you are held back by multiple turns to deal with this nuisance. Might be even worse.

This particular Epic2 sounds far too convoluted with the many arbitrary scoring rules. Not a game I would want to play.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I tell you why I don't like those competitive Civ6 games. The starts are too luck based. If you are lucky, barbarians aren't a threat at all, the AI laves you alone etc. If you are not, you are held back by multiple turns to deal with this nuisance. Might be even worse.

This particular Epic2 sounds far too convoluted with the many arbitrary scoring rules. Not a game I would want to play.

It would be fine under the current patch. Barbs no spawn-in so aggressively now that you have to build a real military. And if you have a real military AI DoWing you isn't a big deal on this map for reasons I told Archduke.

If you know what you are doing the points that matter are the number of trade routes you have. Not very convoluted or arbitrary.

I'd admit that I want the patch to be the real cause. It would make my victory legit because then other gamers played but rage-quit and it would make me totally right for suggesting not starting this before the patch drops. So just ignore everything I wrote down.

[Sullla]

I don't agree that these starts are too luck-based at all. Controlling barbarians is an aspect of the game to be managed like any other; in the specific context of this game especially, a handful of units could fogbust the starting island and keep barbarian spawns to virtually nothing. I also want to push back against the scoring goals of this game as being too complicated, as we routinely ran games for both Civ3 and Civ4 that had much more complex rule sets than this. Civ3's Epics used this exploit-based ruleset for every single game, then added further scoring goals and restrictions on top of that. I get it Singaboy: you don't like Civ6 very much, and you prefer to play everything as Always War. You are perfectly entitled to those opinions, but there's no need to keep making these kind of complaints against those of us who do enjoy these games.

MJW: you are incorrect that trade routes were the only important scoring goal for this game. The scoring setup also placed a heavy emphasis on exploring the map and establishing territorial control over islands. The trade routes were only worth 1 point apiece, while each island was worth 3 points, and there were quite a few small ones out there, enough to get close to a dozen of them if the player pushed for them. You also failed to understand the "grow cities to size 25" scoring element; the idea here was to rush culture and reach the Collectivization policy quickly for the +4 food per trade route benefit, then use trade routes to push the growth of individual cities to size 25. With 250 turns to work with, that should have allowed enough time to get a number of cities to size 25. The Nan Madol city state was specifically in this game to help players push culture and get down the civics tree faster to the lategame policies that boost trade routes. The trade routes only accounted for 21 points out of the 184 in your total, so I genuinely don't understand the argument that they were the only scoring element that mattered.

What a disappointment. Only one reported game, and that from someone who spends all their time complaining in every post. I put a lot of time and thought into the scoring for this game and then picking out a map that fit (since there's no map editor); getting this lack of reaction from the community is hugely depressing. I couldn't play myself because I'm sinking 2 hours into playing and reporting the Civ6 PBEM game every single day, but I wish I could have found a way to provide an entry that showed what I had in mind for the scenario design. I have a couple more ideas for games that I'll put out there, but if we're not getting more response than this, I think I'll be back to solo games pretty soon.

[MJW (ya that one)]

It's very VERY easy to get all islands and all the possible points except the trade routes and size 25 cities. I had an easier time due to giving up on everything other than the capital to size 25 but I'm sure someone who's actually good could do it anyway while growing cities. The goal is to get 1st place not to get as many points as possible (interestingly this philosophy is also reflected in Civ6's victory conditions). If I'm right about it only being possible to get capital to size 25* then the only points that matter are the number of trade routes.  

*I'm probably wrong about this because now I know that spent a lot of time one this... I felt that Nan Modal was there for a reason but didn't even get close to Class Struggle so I assumed it was to bail you out from a cultural victory attempt from an AI.

[Bobchillingworth]

I can only speak for myself, but based on the community response so far I don't believe I'm the only one who started out genuinely excited for Civ VI and has become increasingly jaded with each patch. The AI improvements thus far have been minor tweaks, while most of the major changes have focused on taking away the tools which made large empires powerful, without generating any replacement strategies. That the DLC civs so far have been grossly overpowered (and overpriced) doesn't speak well of Firaxis's intentions either.