So this will be an unusual game. My Civ6 experience is as follows: a test game as Trajan when I first got the game, and then Adventure 1 also as Trajan. I did fairly well in that game I thought, but I've literally played 0 games since then. I'm essentially a Civ6 noob.

To get back in the swing of things and see how I feel about the state of the game now, I'm going to play Brick in a duel and report on how poorly it goes. I know the basics of Civ6: production is king, barbs are evil, the UI is trash, unit upgrades are good, probably don't go builder-first unless barbs are off, etc. I figure I'll learn quicker against a human than the AI, but overall I'm just going to be playing by feel/gut. I'm not quite sure how much Brick has played, but I know it's much more than me, so this could be tough. Please point out my mistakes - I would like to learn here. Let's start.



Moved my warrior and saw this look. I was a little skeptical of the UI telling me to SIP. I know coastal tiles are generally worthless, and it seemed more worthwhile to get the stone/rice in my first ring. I thought about moving across the river to also get the horse first ring, but I figured keeping the 2/2 tile first ring was more useful initially.



I decided to go scout first. This is a duel-sized map with 3 city-states, and finding those first seems super valuable and fairly standard play, so let's try to do that.



A few turns later I've got my scout up, and he's headed northeast for that hut. I decided to roll the dice and go builder next. I haven't seen any barbarians yet at this point, and I'm hopeful that the water around me will help shield me from barbarians. I don't see an obvious spot for a settler yet given the dryness to my immediate northwest, so sure why not, let's get a builder. I'm teching mining first for the stone and mines in general, and there's plenty overall for the builder to do. I'm not quite sure if I should burn a charge to chop or not. I could chop/mine that hill and mine the stone to really pump out some production, but my Civ4 instincts are dying at the prospect of ignoring my rice (it's obscured by the city name bar here).

So that's my start to the game, and hopefully there'll be plenty more to come. My burning question here is... did I screw up my capital placement?

A fair amount of discussion took place over hte past week in my PB37 spoiler thread, but I'll just post the current suggestions here:

Quote:Minor changes:

Ikhanda: -10% city maintenance (down from -20%)

Work boat: requires no tech (working water tiles still requires Fishing, stolen from Seven and ToW)


Major changes:

Privateer, available at Gunpowder, require Compass, [Copper or Iron]. Strength 6, 4 move, Hidden Nationality, Can Attack without Declaring War. Cost 80 (only change from current stats are tech requirements and loss of sentry).

Galleon, available at Astro, strength 4, 4 move, carries 4 land units. Cost 80 (gains 1 transport capacity)

Caravel, available at Optics, strength 3, 3 move, has +135% attack against privateers. Cost 50 (I checked combat calculator, needs to be +135% otherwise C2 privateers get odds on defense, so this is a nerf to CHM specifically)

That then leaves just the Carrack and EIM to deal with. I'd say Carrack = Caravel + 2 transport capacity, and EIM = Strength 5 galleon, or strength 6 galleon with -35% against privateers?

So as my real life has stabilized, I've been itching to get back up to playing 2/pb at a time... any takers? I don't think I'm looking for anything very far off a bog-standard RtR game, but if I had to pick ideal settings:

Map: Normal bound of lushness, preferably cylindrical (have a bit of commodore in me), at about the level of map-balance as PB27, maybe a bit less.

For context, what I mean by that is PB27 had not literally mirrored starts, but pretty symmetrically accessible "types" of things, ie something like your metal-happy was 3 cities away, 1 calendar happy in capital, copper in 2nd city next to X food, etc. By the geometry of the map was pretty much not mirrored at all. Putting aside whether or not PB27 astro-islands only was balanced (for my part, I don't really care, it was still cool).


Player Count: 10+ is my hope  25
Mod: RtR 2.X.X.X.whatever the newest one in that line is  2.0.8.3 2.0.8.4
Picktype: 2 leader, 1 civ, 2 mulligans

Stuff we never change:
Difficulty/Size/Barb/Villages/Speed: Monarch/Standard Huge/On/Off/Normal

Anyone interested? To start as soon as plausible, but guessing might mean not until after holidays given there is no mapmaker lined up and where we are in the calendar.

And if we wanted to christen this the next in the "big-PBs" line and round up as much of the standard crowd as possible... well that would be the cherry on top. Once we did every civ... how about every leader this time ?

Mapmaker: BRick, Mardoc, many others

Final Playerlist, presented in TaoTao Tier (TTT) order

1)   The Black Sword
2)   Mackoti
3)   Old Harry + Fintourist + shallow_thought + TheHumanHydra
4)   Dtay
5)   GermanJoey
6)   Commodore
7)   Gavagai
8)   OT4E + chumchu
9)   plako
10) Mr. Cairo
11) Dark Savant
12) 2metraninja
13) AdrienIer + TruthBehindTheLies
14) WilliamLP
15) Boldly Going Nowhere
16) Pindicator
17) Dreylin
18) spacetyrantxenu
19) Donovan Zoi
20) Rusten
21) elkad
22) B4ndit
23) superdeath (1st time player)
24) naufrager (1st time player)
25) Aretas (1st time player)

More info stuff:

(January 7th, 2018, 17:12)The Black Sword Wrote: Regarding how everything works, there is a pitboss etiquette thread which might be useful: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=7311.

So I just a 50% off coupon for the Deluxe edition of Civ 6, includes all DLC released to date...... That makes the Game + DLC bundle down to $40 for anyone who doesn't have the game yet. Anyone interested in the coupon? I'd like to give it to someone interested in jumping into the Multiplayer scene, if anyone would like to jump in but doesn't have the game yet....

Seeing as I was the one to set up this Imperium, I cannot submit an "official" entry, but I would like to explain my thought process behind making this start into an Imperium and how my original playthrough of this save (that inspired this imperium) went.  

In my original playthrough, I sent my initial colony ship south to colonize what turned out to be that small, size-20 rich world (quickly boosted to size-30 with an early research of IT+10).  Looking back, it would be interesting to see whether colonizing the much larger terran world to the left of Cryslon would have been more optimal with my initial colony ship.  Because as it turned out, I was able to use my rich world and homeworld to both crank out a ridiculous number of colony ships and get a ridiculous landgrab (eventually managing to peacefully colonize over half of the galaxy's stars before having to go to war!), but getting the new planets filled with pop turned out to be an EXTREME bottleneck.  I was often lucky to see my new planets with maybe 5 extra pop each, and it took probably about 75+ turns before they were anywhere near full (having to daisy-chain transports to the even more far-flung planets on the frontier was another factor that kept most of my planets' populations low for so long).  

I did manage to scout one of the two nearby artifact worlds (the one closer to the Bulrathi; the Mrrshans beat me to the other one closer to them), and I was lucky enough to pop nuclear engines from that!  That accelerated my ridiculous colonization sprint even more, but did nothing to help my pop grow faster or my transports go faster, so if anything it caused me to be spread even more thinly for a long time.  Good thing the AIs started so far away on this map!  (This is why I suspected that, despite being on impossible difficulty, this map would be quite feasible for newbs to tackle—even ones not already familiar with the Silicoids' unique gameplay).  

Therefore, I had a funny situation in the very first council vote around 2390 where I had almost half of the galaxy's planets colonized, but still nowhere near enough pop for a veto bloc.  Thankfully, the AI were not consolidated into any cheesy alliances, and I was only at war with the 3-planet Mrrshans at that point, so I was able to survive that first council.  Soon after, I had achieved a veto bloc, and just kept growing from there.  With like 30 planets, my empire-wide population grow each turn got to be ridiculous.  Once my Silicoid empire hit its stride around 2400, I was adding like 40 pop per turn (+1 and +2 population growth at every little planet adds up!), and so I was gaining like an extra council vote every 2 or 3 turns!  

Shortly after the 2400 council vote, all of the AIs started to turn on me, but by then it was too late.  I was already running away with the game just from peaceful expansion alone.  I had IRC4, tons of pop, good computer tech, decent missile tech, decent shield tech, even biotoxin antidote.  I was able to self-research all of it.  When you're pulling in 10000+ BC per turn by 2400, it's not so hard to keep up with the AI tech rate.  

The Bulrathi and Psilons put together some decent attacks on my western flank, but having that size-50 ultra-rich radiated planet in that sector (which eventually got up to size-100 with just improved terraforming!) made defending that sector a cinch, even with just nuclear engine ships.  Eventually around 2425, I was able to spy-steal impulse drives from the Psilons and pulson missiles from the Bulrathi, and was able to research Omega-V bombs and go on the offensive by about 2430, mainly targeting the Meklar and Mrrshans first.  At my handful of huge ultra-rich worlds, I was 3-turn-building huge ARS dreadnoughts against which the AI had no answer.  Victory was in 2449 after wiping out the Mrrshans and Meklar, and glassing a bunch of Bulrathi and Psilon worlds just for fun (I probably would have had more than 2/3rd pop by that point anyways).  Funny enough, the Darloks remained quiet the whole game, confined to a pitiful 2 planets!  I guess if I had been playing this game for a score, it would have been:

10 starting points
+1 for scouting one of the artifact worlds
+2 for colonizing both of those easy-to-reach artifact worlds
-3 for allowing 3 council votes to elapse.  
=10 total.  

Theoretically, if I had been playing for an official Imperium score, I could have prolonged the game another 25 turns by abstaining from another council vote (-1 point), but which would have also allowed me to scout and colonize Orion +2 points), which would have left me with 11.  But I was getting bored with this playthrough by that point and wasn't playing for points anyways, so I just wrapped it up.  As it turns out, it looks like Ianus still would have beaten me in score via his clever strategy of postponing colonizing some of the trashier planets (and preventing the AI from colonizing some of theirs) so as to delay the council vote.  Even if I had been playing for an Imperium score, I wouldn't have chanced such a strategy, as I (like Ianus) would have had no idea ahead of time how much breathing room this map was going to give me, and knowing my thought process, I would have (unlike Ianus) wanted to make sure to win at all costs, first and foremost, and would have not wanted to chance that win with score-oriented gambits (I learned my lesson about that the hard way with Imperium 43).  So, well played, Ianus!

My one regret about how I set up this Imperium was the choice of a large map, as that might have daunted more players from starting or finishing the game.  But, the fact that this map was large and gave the human player so much breathing room early on was what made this map distinctive and why I thought, and still think, that...

Unfortunately I did not manage to complete this game in time. I hope to get back to it and finish at some point, as Psillycyber had given us a very interesting scenario...not to mention a truly amazing land grab.

After just over 100 turns the council had not yet met, but I expected the first convening would not be delayed much longer. The Psilons were grabbing world after world across the north of the map, and I was finishing taking control of much of the south. Of course, they had far, FAR more population than I did.....

Like Ianus I managed to scout Nordia and Seidon on the same turn and thus only got one tech. I was more fortunate on the result, however, getting Fusion Bombs for my troubles. I did colonize both worlds first.

Thanks to Psillycyber for sponsoring this game. At some point I am going to actually finish an Imperium on time. Really! Quit looking at me like that!

I don't yet have a detailed report put together. I wrote a very detailed turn-by-turn report over the first 100+ turns which was then eaten by the computer gods. Somehow I offended them. So I will post a summary now and hopefully get a complete report up soon.

Summary
Total Score: 12 points

Score breakdown: Starting score: 10
I Scouted Nordia and Seidon, the galaxy's two Artifact planets on the same turn   and due to a well known game bug only pulled a single tech from the two of them. So per the rules of this Imperium I only get 1 point. And the tech I pulled? Controlled Barren!   Score 11.
I did colonize both of them for an additional +2. Score 13.
There ensued a LONG period of inactivity. I had 18 planets for a long time and held the AI from ever colonizing enough planets to convene the Galactic Council. Then in 2450 I discovered Cloning tech and *accidentally* colonized 19 planets that same turn.    This convened the council and led to an inconclusive vote. -1 points, score 12.
25 years later I won the council vote with 43/76 votes (plus 9 from my allies the Meklar).
Final Score 12.

Inspired by Sullla's excellent AI survivor series, I'd like to try our hand at a ... curated version of AI survivor.

Settings:

Random Leader (!)
Difficulty: Deity 
Size: Standard

Pangaea
Tropical

No Tech Trading 
No Vassals
No Events
Choose Religions
Aggressive AI

Oh, but here's the thing:

Human player will start with deity techs and deity units. So someone (maybe me), can worldbuilder in:

Archery
Hunting
Agriculture
The Wheel

+1 settler
+4 archers
+2 scouts

All on the starting tile)

(delete the warrior/extra scout that's not on the starting tile).

Oh -- and we have to found on the starting tile. Anyone interested? Alternatively, I'd be interested in running this as PBEM on base BTS, but I've never played PBEM so the whole random leaders thing might not work.

My only Deity experience is with Epic 4, which I played as an unreported shadow game.

If no one is interested, I'll start reporting the game here. I've played a couple of these on Emperor (trying Immortal tonight) and the slingshot start makes it quite fun.

EDIT: Here's what happened the last time I did one of these one-turn-at-a-time playthroughs: http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8164

I've been exploring the built-in map scripts trying to understand how they work and how they could be tweaked. Here's what I found so far:

• Terrain generation is split into two distinct phases ... (1) plot generation, followed by (2) terrain assignment.
  
• Plots are essentially elevation, with [OCEAN, LAND, HILL, MOUNTAIN] types. At the plot level, there is no distinction between OCEAN and COAST.
  
• Terrain is the specific terrain that we see in game (e.g. PLAINS, or TUNDRA, or TUNDRA_HILL).
  
• Each script has variations on how the assignments are made, but a plot set is always generated first, followed by terrain assignment, followed by everything else. In fact, as far as I can tell, the difference between the map scripts I think is solely attributed to the Plot generation phase. Everything after the plot generation including terrain, resources, features, rivers, etc. are generated using cookie-cutter scripts located in the Maps > Utility folder.
  

So I'm starting to dabble in what is needed for modding in Civ 6. I don't have anything to show yet, but wanted a thread to talk about possible ideas for a mod. Since my main focus has been MP games, I'd ideally be looking for tweaks to rebalance parts of the game for multiplayer competition. I don't expect a lot of knowns since our MP play is in its infancy, but doesn't hurt to start taking a look at it.