I've added the Adventure Three results to the ongoing Google Docs spreadsheet of Civ6 results. We ended up getting more participants than I expected, after factoring in the early reports from a few weeks ago. Congratulations to Behrens for winning the event and posting a very impressive Turn 103 finishing date.

I'd be interested in hearing opinions on the open reporting format for this event. From what I saw, it appeared to split up the closing day reporting without serving much other purpose; no one appeared to be posting updates as they played in Pitboss/PBEM fashion. We'll try it again at least one more time in a future game, but (IMO) the open reporting didn't seem that useful for this particular game.

Troll magicians plus focus magic is an incredibly powerful strategy - especially if coupled with adamantiu/Orihalcon/barracks for good measure (though not required). 
However, should a stack of nine be able to defeat virtually everything in strategic combat? That was the impression I had. They defeated every lair/node/tower (admitted I didn't find a strong sky drake setting, nor demon lords, but pretty much everything else). 

Now you could argue that using strategic combat as a human is cheating - but an AI in that situation would easily be able to act in the same manner. 
9 trolls in that setting are very strong and should be able to defeat even strong enemies - but I am quite certain there were some battle I would otherwise have lost, if not for stalling tactics.

Is that intentional or even unavoidable?

I'm giving this another go, now with a more appropriate race.

Setup

Inspired by Nelphine's thread about hero strategies, I'm posting my latest test game here.

Settings
Impossible
4 opponents
Huge land mass
Max power
Wet climate
Rich minerals

Wizard
Barbarians
6 Life (took Endurance + Holy Armour + Just Cause + Healing + Heroism)
Warlord
Tactician
Famous
Sage Master
Specialist

My game plan is to get early heroes, put Heroism on them and rush neutral cities + easy nodes and lairs. I'm finding myself wondering if I shouldn't rely on Nomads and Rangers for Pathfinding instead, but oh well.

Having given in to the dark side, and tried a hero strategy, I've decided to see if it can work reliably on impossible.

Under the assumption only enchant item will be used (the game should be over before I can realistically research create artifact, one way or the other), and given that I will only have four spellbooks, I'm trying to decide what 4 spell books I should pick - 2 life, 2 death seems best?

And if I go for 6 spell books, should it be 4 life/2 death?

Edit: actually, I'm completely in the air. I will have between 3 and 6 spellbooks.

Finally, because I've been so antihero for so long, are there any actual rules regarding getting your first hero (when it happens, who it will be)?

This will probably be the only one. That's why I called it "the".

Edit: Changed thread title because of PBEM 2.

OK here goes.  Following Sullla’s example/comment on my other writeups, mostly uncropped but shrunken screenshots (hopefully helps me finish faster).
Poked around a bit at start and settled here:

Started with warrior - just think slingers a little too fragile.  
Hut popped Writing boost, probably not helpful as AI’s not too far away.  I did get the bonus envoy at Hong Kong from first meeting, and a more useful Mysticism boost from another hut, and most important...

That’s really good, the +2 science is very noticeable early.  (+2 culture is even better since science costs and per-citizen production are more, but still this rocks).  

Yes!  Egypt always hates me and DOWs, good to see them busy.  Eventually I’d learn that Germany captured their 2nd city from the free settler in the war.  Oh and 2 more horses found, this is looking pretty straightforward now.  Was able to get two warriors near the camp, it spawned one horse but wasn’t a big problem and gave the boost for the horsebuilder civic.  Very nice.  

Did I mention Egypt always hates me?  This was madness, they were still fighting Germany I think and only sent a single warrior that was no threat.  
You can also see the only Kurgan - this was not used very much.  I did work it a bit to get out of God King earlier.  Took Reeds and Marshes (again!) for pantheon - it probably will do little outside the capital, but most snowbally for expansion/conquest plan.  Ignored faith/religion after that.  

2nd city.  Glad to get this as India not too far.  Was planning more cities before conquest, the other spots are good (and all on rivers!  Map was nice in this way) but not essential like the horses are.

Ugh (though the text is kinda funny).  2fer with Greece being the instigator.  

Fortunately the attack was not too threatening nor immediate from Greece.

Cleo nearly got killed but held out.  I signed white peace with her around this time too.  And Gandhi built Stonehenge for 1st religion.  

Got the Archer boost from helpful barb scout - yeah this war not very threatening so my warriors/slingers had time to go after a camp.  I think two peacefulish AI’s DOW’d me then realized “crap, we don’t build attacking units to prosecute this war”....white peaces soon after without any more serious action.  Started selling lux about now, and went into Colonization for settlers.  Did wind up rush buying monuments at this location (nice hilly spot)

Another one...

Not as promising but a few good tiles and 2 more lux.  

Greece took this spot from me

Considerably later but last self-founded city.  Nice 6-tile wonder with two lux, river, and hills tiles all in the first ring - didn’t ever build a monument here I think.

Jumping back in time -

Stuck with Autocracy for the mil slots (and lack of diplo slot).  
Also district wise - laid down early campus at capital but didn’t finish forever, now that cities can do monuments it didn’t seem worth doing one very early for State Workforce.  Other than that prioritized CH’s; in my unwritten partial Adv2 replay (stopped after conquering the starting continent) I had big cash crunch from skipping them and just doing units then capturing a bunch of money-sucking AI districts/buildings.  The river abundance was good for the CH’s too.  Laid down a couple IZ’s but don’t think ever finished them - expected to be building mostly units, they just don’t pay back very fast at all.  Did do one encampment + another campus at 2nd city mostly for the civic boosts.  Enough about building...

...time for revenge on that stupid impostor-pacifist!

Aw crud.  Didn’t have a ram yet, and Madras built its walls as soon as DOW.  Could do some pillage profit but he soon adopted the +city strength policy and suddenly this looked too hard.  Decided to retreat, denounce Greece and make them target in a few turns instead.  


Um, don’t know how they are so advanced to have that CB, but nice of them to save me the warmonger penalty regardless

My units return.  Got some use out of the UU but not much - think I just built 1 (2 with unique ability) of them.  The 1-range is big limitation; even against dumb AI they can often get counterattacked easily and hurt badly.  And means they get more in the way of your frontline units than normal archers.  

Yeah, these Varu are tough SOB’s.  He only sent one so it wasn’t too bad but would have been hard to conquer him with just horseman spam.  Wonder if any player pulled that off before he got too many walls and Varu?  Maybe I could have if I didn’t settle so many cities.  
Anyways, after that white peaced Gandhi.  Belatedly gifted him some gold too - I had sold him two lux for lump sums before the war that had 10-12 turns left when DOW’d.  I don’t know if we’ve done exploit rules yet but trying to track those cases and gift back proportionate gold if I DOW before 30 turns (should have done it before the war but forgot)

Rhodes - no walls so pretty easy mark.  

Next city pretty easy as well.  And good lord sending that naked settler right next to my army…

Side thread - I would eventually capture that builder + a barb settler in this region and plant a city 1W of the builder’s tile in the picture.  And completely forget to ever give it a trade route or improved tile.  Whoops.
Argos was tough to attack.  Those hoplites could have given me big issues with my all-horse army but they rarely attacked...still just having them occupy south of the river meant I couldn’t get a siege going.  Mostly had to exhaust my units health…

That was just enough, and this poofed two hoplites (Yes there were as many as 7 at one time earlier!  Capturing Argos killed one in city, one in encampment.  It seems kind of silly the 2nd one dies - I now own the encampment but w/o walls now so other Greek units could walk in…).  Also did one vet warrior->sword upgrade before getting Professional Army, it helped clear the rest of them a lot once it got to front.  

Athens wasn’t cakewalk either, the pike was a pain.  He also flipped Zanzibar (irritating, also irritating that its catapult never fired on athens despite several turns where it was positioned to do so while allied with me).  Fortunately I had saved an envoy, that plus the one from Mil Tradition about to finish got Zanzibar back on my side next turn.  But greece didn’t build any more units, so I could knock down the walls, then be patient for sword to advance, wound the pike, kill the hoplite after the pike burrows into the city, then surround for siege and take it.  Was able to run the pillage policy and got good science haul from the mines while this waiting was going on too.

Placeholder

First ever game on the website. Let's see what Civ 6 offers in terms of multiplayer (and hopefully more games like this will come).

I'll post some thoughts and screenshots later this evening about my first city.