Setup: Impossible, Max Power, Huge land
Wizard: 6x Sorcery (Resist Magic, Floating Island, Guardian Wind, Phantom Warriors, Focus Magic) + Myrran + Warlord + Specialist + Sage Master

Plan:
1) Build my economy steadily.
2) Locate a good adamantium or mithril site for producing a doom stack as soon as possible.
3) Go to war with all AIs more or less immediately upon meeting them, but without going for fortress strikes. Instead, I'll be going for their outposts and trying to hamper their expansion while boosting my own.
4) Push heavily for settlers at all times, especially in contested regions. City development will have lower priority.

Capital:
10 pop, +91% production, 2x Quork, 1x Gold, 1x Mithril, 1x Orihalcon! Also, I'm already seeing a neutral city to the north west of me.

This is the Closing Day for Civ6 Epic 2. Players have until the end of Tuesday, March 14th to post a game result. Please post your results in the Event Reports and Discussion Forum. Thanks to everyone who took part in this game!

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.

Game 1.

Warlord, Alchemy, Tactician, Barbarians, 8 Life books. Impossible, don't remember the other settings.
Produced 2 spearmen for scouting.
No enemy wizard on the continent, 2 neutral cities.
The small neutral city, protected by 2 shaman and 2 swordsmen (halflings) fall before the might of my swordsmen with holy armor and heroism. The other neutral has 5 cavalry and 4 shaman - I will need more than a single swordsmen to attack that.

1401 April, the Fighter's Guild is complete. Compared to how far I got by spamming bears in this time, it feels relaxing and slow. Good sign, we might not have a balance problem with Barbarians.

Made contact with a wizard. Sorcery/Nature, has Nagas and Sprites. Maniacal and Militarist. Looking towards a hard battle. I realize Nagas on their own might be enough to stop many early military strategies. No spell protects against Poison, and both Barbarians and Gnolls are low on resistance. Berserkers can slaugther them easily though, thanks to their thrown and 18 hit points so further testing is necessary.

After enchanting my berserker, I attack the other neutral city. This one unit has so much power that enemy units are trying to keep distance. Cavalry moves 5 and there is no rough terrain in the battle. My berserker cannot catch the Cavalry and with Life books I have no way to kill them through spells. I can't take the city - 3 Cavalry units survive and I can't hope to kill them using the Berserker. I'm starting to cast Endurance for the Berserker, at 4 moves it should be able to corner the enemy.

I made contact with a Death+Life wizard. Both of my enemies has Guardian btw. I still don't know where they live, the contact was made through them coming to me. I need ships. And this one is also maniacal, expansionist.
I'm finally able to corner the remaining cavalry and conquer the other neutral city.  The road made it possible - without that, I couldn't have done it.

The blue wizard has a stack of 5 Nagas and 2 Sprites on the continent. It's already turn 26 so they can attack me if I'm unlucky. I don't think I can defend myself with only 3 berserkers, out of which 2 are unbuffed. By this time, I had taken over an entire continent three times this size using Bears.

The blue wizard builds an outpost next to my capital, on a mithril ore. I was busy making berserkers so I have no settlers yet. Barbarians cannot use mithril, and the halfling city wasn't able to produce a settler this early - the only way would have been to do it before a sawmill and probably by spending gold.
I have to build at least a couple more berserkers to pick a fight with anyone. There is a Sorcery node with only Phantom Warriors nearby - but I also need more berserkers for that - 2 of them are busy defending the 2 neutral cities.

I decide to take the risk as I'm way too slow and send my berserkers to the sorcery node. The stack I saw 3 turns ago attacks my capital the turn after. Not sure how they did that, cities should have a scouting range of 2. Maybe I wasn't paying attention? Indeed, reloading shows they were on the map, there was a turn between the departure of the berserkers and the arrival of the enemy. Either way, this game is lost, and I didn't feel the strategy was anywhere near what could be considered overpowered. Sprites sealed the deal - without them I could have kited the 5 enemy nagas using my 2 spearmen, and waited for the lightning to kill them all. This shows how important it is for the AI to have flying ranged sprites - without flying they couldn't have made it to my continent, and without ranged they couldn't have won the battle.

I will try again one more time later, but I got a strong impression that barbarians are not a risk to game balance on Impossible difficulty. (they might be for hard and lower but I guess that's acceptable)
Gnolls, lizardmen and klackons will need to be tested as well, although I doubt klackons can be a risk.

On a dare from Nelphine, I'm trying something other than Sprites this time. I'll admit that I rarely play without either Life or Nature, so this will be a change of pace for me. At least Troll Warlord is familiar, though. My report will be minimalistic, not planning on uploading pictures due to time shortage.

Wizard: 6 Chaos, Myrran, Warlord, Specialist, Archmage
Spells: Fire Bolt, Shatter, Warp Creature, Warp Wood, Disrupt
Setup: Impossible, Huge, Max
Capital: 21 pop, +71% production, Wild Game, Mithril (jackpot!)

Early strategy:
1) Send my swordsmen out hunting along with a magic spirit (in different directions), hoping to find a neutral city to take over
2) After a unit of spearmen to replace my swordsmen, I'll build a unit of settlers right away
3) After that, early econ buildings
4) After that, Alchemist's Guild and Fighter's Guild + Halberdier spam
5) My expansion will be used to buy another unit of settlers at size 2, I'll be expanding slowly and focusing on good locations

I'm going to gather problems we've discovered in this thread to prevent forgetting about them, and to see the big picture better, with a short status description. This thread will be kept locked and only serves as a reminder - the discussion for each of these should be kept in their appropriate thread.

"Open" problems.

[Garrisoning] Investigate why winning games without building reasonable garrisons (mobile garrisons included) is possible, and make sure it stops working for higher difficulties. http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=9502
[AI Difficulty] - AI Difficulty of higher levels (Master, Lunatic, maybe Expert) might be too high or too low. Further testing after all aspects of game balance is perfect will be necessary.
[Archangel] - Might be too powerful as is. I suspect the main culprit are the buff and healing spells in the Life realm, not the unit itself.
[Life Realm] - Healing magic might be too effective on high end creatures in general.
[Huge Land] - Maximal city limit might be too low for Huge land size games, discuss here : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=9554

"Closed" problems - unable to solve.
[Chain Shipping] http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=9538
[Large Land Sizes] These inherently change the balance of the game as the number of enemies cannot be raised to keep the amount of territory/player constant at the beginning. Doubt there is a way to solve this problem. See second paragraphs here : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=9090
[Starting Location] - Unable to improve this due to the order of steps in map generation.
[Movement Bug] - Terrain changing effects do not update movement costs on map. Unfixable, terrain movement cost data is not even loaded in wizards.exe, it's used at the time the map is generated only.
[Starting Conditions] Cons outweight the pros, so not changing it. See : http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8957
[AI] - "As army strength requirements are steep for attacking, the AI is unlikely to use sprites effectively against the human player. A specialized attack type that allows attacking stronger ground bound enemies with all flying stacks in the early game might be needed?" Not worth implementing, too risky, AI might lose their troops in combat by melee attacking after using up ammo.

Quote:

Quote:The real problem with spamming early spells is that you get spells for free. This was poor design from the start (in the original game), and it should be fixed.

This is a train of thought that I often ride on...only to get slapped in the face by reality. The AI needs the starting commons and would completely fail without them. The main reason why they don't get stuck on islands is the starting spells, for one. And honestly, the ability to pick two books for a starting common makes the game more varied and interesting - losing this feature would be sad. Commons spells have a high availability - even if you don't get them at start you'll most likely get all 10 of them with as few as 1 book - by trading, looting wizards, and finding them in lairs. So a spell being 'guaranteed' doesn't have a lasting impact. In fact, 6 books are enough to make sure you have all 10 spells.

It occurred to me that with all the extra starting options (I think they were added in Insecticide), the game becomes far more difficult to balance. Land size in particular is a notoriously difficult factor because the gameplay is immensely different from smallest to largest. The same goes for Power, and to a lesser extent Minerals and Climate. Never mind difficulty level and number of enemy wizards, they're less relevant to this discussion.

I'm curious to hear which settings you prefer playing with. I think we should make a decision to either remove unused settings or simply issue a statement saying "These are the default values which the game is balanced against. The other values are available for your game enjoyment, balance is not guaranteed". Maybe Fair should be considered the default value for all fields, but only if that's actually what people prefer playing with.

I play with the following:
Huge land (I like expansion and territory struggles, and I think the AI manages best here)
High Power (nodes should give big rewards, although 2.5 is overdoing it a bit)
Fair Climate (I don't like everywhere being lush, and I don't like tundra everywhere either.
Fair Minerals (Poor gives hardly any, and Rich puts an obscene amount on the map)

Following our discussion in the other thread, I'll be using this thread to investigate how easy it is to take nodes with various defenders. I'll be doing by setting up testing situations and doing a couple combats, counting number of sprite shots to kill a particular defender. I'm noting for each if it's in a node or not.

Also, for fun I decided to take on a lone webbed Sky Drake with 9 War Bears. To my surprise, I was able to reliably take it out with none or 1 unit lost. For future games (before the exploit is closed) I'll definitely look into using War Bears for special situations where Sprites come up short. I don't think there are many, but I'll keep an eye out for them. That said, my War Bears are quite damaged and take several turns to heal up afterwards. If I were to use them early on, it might slow me down. They're certainly useful for stuff like ghouls and sprites, and they do very well against enemy wizards.

I'm catching up on Hadriex's recent 'Kill all nodes' series and it struck me how many stacks of units there are. It seems daunting and messy, at least as a CoM novice / viewer of the game. At times, it blocked unit movement. A minor inconvenience perhaps but does this 'clutter' adversely affect the gameplay experience?



At first I thought perhaps re-evaluating CoM's reduction of food upkeep might be worthwhile. But it seems many of the 'stacks' were 1 or a few units. Compounding the problem, I imagine the AI gets stuck, unable to move units, which causes more congestion. 

A few misc suggestions (@Seravy):

• Unless you have an alliance, have AI keep their units at least 2 tiles away from other wizard controlled cities.
  
• Modify AI to encourage consolidation of stacks
  
• Modify AI to disband/unsummon weaker tier units as higher tier units become available
  
• Keep halved food upkeep as-is but increase unit money/magic upkeep
  
• Or, perhaps just consider reverting halved food upkeep