Game Report

This feels like a redux of my Adventure 1 game, where I rolled Saladin in the pot luck.  This gives me a chance to improve on the t341 completion time, which shouldn't be too difficult since I was still just learning the game's features there.  But from the first game I'm also expecting the game to go in 3 phases

• Growth in the early game
  
• Science in the middle
  
• Production at the end
  

• 232g (all he had)
  
• 5gpt (as much as it would let me)
  
• Ceding Aachen
  

• 204 - Construction
  
• 205 - Military Engineering
  
• 206 - Gunpowder
  
• 207 - Castles.  Science tops 400bpt
  
• 208 - Metal Casting
  
• 209 - Ballistics
  
• 210 - Steel
  
• 212 - Siege Tactics took 2 turns, ending my streak.
  
• 213 - Military Science
  
• 215 - Rifling
  
• 216 - Not a tech, but we finally grabbed Conservation at this point.  I build and buy workers where I can to plant trees
  
• 217 - Combustion
  
• 219 - Plastics
  
• 221 - Synthetic Materials.  Top 500bpt
  
• 224 - Composites.  Top 600bpt
  
• 226 - Nanotechnology
  
• 227 - Economics
  
• 228 - Replaceable Parts.  650bpt
  
• 230 - Combined Arms
  
• 231 - Advanced Ballistics
  
• 232 - Nuclear Fission.  700bpt
  
• 234 - Lasers.  750bpt
  
• 237 - Nuclear Fusion.  800bpt
  

I got DoWed by Norway and Germany before I could do anything. Through I manged to fend them off with archers it wasted a lot of time. It only took adding a little horses a little later to kill both off and take their cities so I did so. The key to get enough production (and gold to upgrade to archers) to fend off EMP AIs is to rush the second city as quickly as possible; don't know what to do about IMM and Deity. You want that second city anyway too. I should mention that I settled east (edit actually west) and a little south from my start for that city.

Then Greece DoWed Tomyris so I killed her too and then Greece. Then I raced for the spaceship but I mailed it in due to time being wasted earlier. Finished @ turn 289. The only notable thing that happened was that Carl caused massive overflow finishing two spaceparts and almost the third one. I think this is unintended and caused by modifiers multiplying the production. The best plan is probably is to rush Norway and hope Germany doesn't DoW you. Norway is going to DoW at some point so you might as well take them out as quickly as possible. EMP is probably weak enough to not justify horses if you play good too so it would be an archer rush.

Screenshot to prove I finished:


   

Adventure 2 – Saladin Space Victory T292, Score 659

And we’re back for another adventure! I’ll happily admit I had little to no idea what I was doing in Adventure 1 but at the very least it offered some insight into the drawn out and quite painful process of achieving a science victory. That game took me almost 400 turns! Having read some reports from CivFanatics I expect a finish around T200 will be needed if I want to be competitive. Still, any kind of improvement over last time and I’ll be happy. Before I get into the turns, I’ll briefly go over some thoughts for improving my victory time as well as other considerations unique to this Adventure’s configuration.

- Science Victory
From my experience a science victory is surprisingly less about the science and more about the production capabilities of 2-3 of your most adept cities. Adventure 1 and other games I’ve played since, I’ve noticed focusing largely on science has led to me hitting the end of the tech tree and trying to play serious catch up on production trying to construct the various space ship parts. I’ll attempt to change my approach by getting a decent science output early game but quickly changing focus to boost production output. In particular trying to hit Apprenticeship, Industrialization and Electricity as early as possibly, then focusing on the techs which unlock the space ship parts.

- The map script
Small continents and an additional AI civ is going to make for a pretty crowded game on paper. From what I’ve seen and read from others, it appears without fail the most optimal start to almost any game is centred on early conquest. This brings with it both the value of not having to waste resources/population on making settlers, and the benefit of taking control of already up and running cities. It also looks like the best way to get your science output going in the beginning since most of that is going to be relying on population (why waste time building settlers and losing a pop point when you can continuously march a small force around the map and take 3-4 pop cities while your original city just continues growing?). My plan will be to build a handful of slingers, get the tech boost for archers, upgrade and slowly take each city on my starting continent that hasn’t managed to protect itself with ancient walls. This game certainly will not be about diplomacy or making friends.

- Saladin of Arabia
I think religion will be somewhat useful this game but I don’t want to be distracted from my primary focus of increasing production. Having a guaranteed religion will be useful because we can focus on other concerns initially. Having Work Ethic’s +1% production for each population in the city could give me 10-15% increase (maybe 6-10 hammers) in my strongest production cities. I think an early pantheon with Divine Spark will be useful for grabbing great scientists since the backend of the game might end up with just cycling through science district projects in each city to hopefully get the few that help out with space projects. So really, this will probably be the extent of my religious pursuits.

- City states
There are a handful of city states that are particularly useful with this victory type, e.g Hong Kong & Toronto (production ++), Geneva (science ++). Weighing up whether these cities (assuming they are in this game) will be better serves as independent city states or simply cities in my empire will need to be considered. Also I’ll have to remember there is a need to explore the other continent(s) simply because missing out on meeting a city state and getting these advantages would be disappointing.
 
So my early game plan will be to archer rush my continent with the hope that by some bit of luck there’s more than just myself and Geneva on the starting land mass. I’ll see what eureka’s I can get without too much difficulty while keeping a focus on how early I can hit the production techs. An early pantheon and getting religious production bonuses once the great prophet arrives. Hopefully these are all obtainable and set me up for a faster science victory. Let’s get going!
 
T1 - Starting Moves

On a river and plenty of food, horses and wheat provide flexibility with military and opportunities to get a few tech boosts. There’s stone but I don’t think I’ll be distracted by Stonehenge.
Is there enough production though? Besides the first ring hill tile and stone, there isn’t much until 3rd ring tiles with maybe a few riverside lumbermills...
I’d like to know more of what lies down and upstream in case we can bring more hills into play. I sent the warrior south since it’s probably tundra north (based on the edge of the map/FOW). Moving the city 1 south will allow the farm triangle adjacency bonus from feudalism works better too, and only really giving up some grassland for a shot at more production to the south (plain farms could play a significant part if we get really desperate). This move also brings the 2/2 horse tile into play sooner.
So Cairo was founded, and we start on AH for pastures.


T5 – Already size 2, start working hill tile for better production. Unfortunately wheat tile will be first border pop. I could just buy the horse tile in 4 turns as well.
We meet the Norwegians to the west - typically aggressive so a military conflict seems unavoidable – let’s make it work for us. Then the Scythian people find us in the inter-turn.
I took a wounded barb camp under the noses of Norway (thank you very much) and receive boost for military tradition. With the gold I did decide to buy the horse tile after all.
AH à Mining
Slinger à Builder
Slinger picks off wounded barb scout for Archery boost. He then grabs EE boost from a hut.

T14 – HRE finds us with a unit and then Preslav to the east appears. Code of Laws completes à Foreign Trade (might not find another continent for the boost), I choose the faith card for a pantheon. Grab Pottery after Mining since granaries might actually be needed early for our rapidly growing capital not building settlers.

T18 – Meet Hong Kong, this will be good for boosts to city projects, easy quest to improve 3 tiles (craftsmanship bonus). Meet Vilnius a couple of turns later, nice production city.
T22 – Pottery à Writing


T25 – Exploring my immediate surrounds I see a retreating barb scout that must have spotted the Viking’s city. Trying to catch it I suddenly run into a small army of barb horse units. This can’t be good! I lost a slinger to a spear + horse barb combo, and end up losing another slinger just trying to clean up this mess. This really upsets the initial plan of early dominance since it’s cutting into my conquest time before walls start going up.
Also it looks like the Vikings and Scythians are already at each other’s throats as the first war of the game is declared.
Writing à HBR (might need to stop for Archery once slingers are ready)


T40 – Finally got my pantheon to pick up Divine Spark. Seems like a slow start due to barb horses making easy work of my slingers, but with a round of upgrades I now have my small army of archers to wreck my own havoc. Don’t know how much I will get done but I’m going after HRE first since they are closest and their capital looks decent on production.


T45 – Preslav receives a DOW.
Unfortunately Scythia declared war on Hong Kong which will likely require some liberating in the not too distant future.

T47 – Only 2 turns with my attention turned away I get a little call from our neighbours, a surprise war from the Vikings – going to need an archer or two to keep them busy while our eastern forces are doing their thing.
T50 – Preslav falls. A few archers back home are cleaning up against the subpar AI.
HBR à Astrology (so I can build my one and only planned holy district for religion purposes), then continue bee-lining to Apprenticeship.


T57 – The Vikings give up and offer peace with compensation.
DOW on HRE – hopefully can take their capital before walls kick in!


T59 – I get my great prophet. The holy distract in a handful of turns off but pretty well timed.


T64 – I found my religion (Islam because it’s late at night and I couldn’t think of anything witty) grabbing Work Ethic (+1% production for each city’s follower of this religion) & Church Property (+2 gold per city following this religion).


T68 – I took the HRE capital and simultaneously got half a dozen tech/civic boosts, including the one needed for Apprenticeship. Unfortunately I’m going to need this city to hit size 10 before I can build a useful district in there however. We march on!

T75 – Political Philosophy completes and we enter an Oligarchy since I anticipate more combat. Feudalism is usually the next bee-line for civics. Apprenticeship due next turn – not the fastest time since we had to stop for Astrology (~5 turns). Will tech through to Engineering (catapults) to Machinery (lumber mills + crossbows), then likely bee-line for Industrialization (power plants).


T77 – Made peace with HRE for gold and the ceding of the two cities I took. Not sure what the value of the ceding is since they still seem to hold a lasting grudge that I have cities belonging to them. Again, I’m not here to make friends.


T83 – Troops moved to western front and Vikings have a settler begging to be taken as well (turns out they knew how to swim =(). As luck would have it, just after I DOW our Viking neighbours, the Scythian people declare surprise war for territorial expansion on me in the inter-turn. I wonder if other players will have the same difficulties trying to conquer this continent early?



T100 – Currently at 8 cities with lots of AI cities still to take, Hong Kong to liberate, and a few filler sites to tie up later on. I’ve got my catapults on the way to start dealing with these slightly better defended cities. Only putting out 30 science/turn, largely from population, which really isn’t very good. I’ve played other games where it should be above 40 science/turn at this point, but it was a lot easier taking cities from the AI in those games, and I didn’t lose 2 slingers to unfortunate barb spawning thanks to the AI... Not much in the way of trade routes to brag about either. I’m not as concerned here since it usually takes a few districts to be up and running before trade routes get particularly interesting. Feudalism came in a few turns earlier with the next plan to move onto a better government type (merchant republic). Exactly 1 turn before I was going to get my great scientist, one of the AIs decided to purchase them instead which was again a bit of a setback because it means I miss out on the Education tech boost as well most likely. All in all it’s a start I can build off – no crippling beyond repair issues, but most importantly an improvement since Adventure One had me sitting at a measly 2 cities with 22 science/turn at this same point.


T110 – Education comes in and I continue towards Industrialization. I also capture the Scythian capital this turn.


T120 – Simultaneously wiped Scythia from the game as well as liberated Hong Kong for the suzerain bonus to city projects. Still so many more to go…

T124 – First apostle bought with faith, evangelize belief for Mosques (+1 spread per religious unit).
T130 – I complete research on Industrialization and start a round of power plants throughout the empire. Next I’m aiming for chemistry for the research labs. Unfortunately the game glitched out and reset my war with Vilnius the city state. I had the city against the ropes and now I can’t declare for another 10 turns or so, kind of annoying game…



T150 – Another empire update. We’ve grown to 13 cities and look like taking 2 more from Norway very soon. The entire empire is suffering from war weariness however with no growth so we’ll call it quits on the whole bullying play for some time at least. Science output has doubled in the last 50 turns to 67/turn and we now have 5 trade routes which will hopefully help my 3 main cities grow. I’ve chosen the 3 biggest production cities to fatten up for manufacturing space parts: our capital (Cairo), the HRE capital (Aachen) and Chetamylyk (old Scythian city). Not many hills among them so I’m hoping the lumber mills will have a helping effect. Aachen was slightly gimped because the AI had built 3 useless districts already and I’m trying to get it to pop 10 to finally get an industrial zone. I at least have a great engineer to boost this along with a free workshop & factory once activated. It’s also probably the best/only spot for Ruhr Valley. Cairo is building Oxford since there isn’t anything else to build in the meantime. Missionaries are coming out to spread Islam for the production bonus. It feels like this sleeping giant is finally starting to wake. I don’t see winning this game in the next 50 turns but we’ll see how close to T200 we can get.

T161 – And suddenly things take a turn for the worse… My lack of familiarity of Civ 6 mechanics see a fleet of Viking ships conquer my southern port of Pazyryk – I did not know you could take a city with a naval unit and it was contributing significant commerce to the empire. Then, a group of barbs spawn outside Pokrovka due to unhappiness and plunder several trade routes. I managed to mop them up but the damage has been done. My finances go into the negative and the following turn half my army is disbanded and more barbs spawn outside several more cities. The realization hits. I can no longer take any more cities from the Vikings and I may even lose all units immediately making it near impossible to deal with the barbarian threat.


To be honest I took this hit pretty hard and was thinking about giving up at this point as luck and my hope to carry out a clear plan wasn’t quite matching my expectations. A couple of deep breaths later I took the time to get some composure and think about all the Civ IV epics playing and reading about how others at RB dealt with adversity. At this point I knew without a doubt I would not get close to the fastest finishing time, but the idea of having a compelling story or adventure trying to get myself into a more suited position was going to be just as rewarding. Ok, baby steps. Step 1: can I get peace from Norway as I watch my army disappear before my very eyes?


T164 – Peace comes with Norway. I get a decent lump of gold and they are willing to give me back Pazyryk amazingly. This should help me keep what small force I have left on the field. A dozen more barbs run free through my lands pillaging just about every tile/district.


T171 – The colosseum is built in Chetamylyk which should help the amenity burden. The barbs are just about vanquished as well. I still need to get the finances back in the positive but that just needs some repairs from builders and re-established trade routes. We can reassess afterwards to see if I’ll continue taking cities from the AI but really I might not get much more benefit from doing so. We shall see.


T179 – I complete Oxford in my capital which triggers a few boosts which includes completing Chemistry. I can now build research labs once my commerce is improved. With a few trade routes being restored and my entire army disbanded I am now in the positive. Just the perfect time for Greece to DOW me… Goddamn it!



T200 – Time for another empire recap. Greece sent a total of 2 units into my lands which were easily dealt with by city walls alone. They shortly after offered peace. Things are looking somewhat peachier. No more barb issues, no more AIs at war with me, no more debt issues, science has almost tripled from 50 turns ago. I’m sitting at 163/turn and I have 10 decent trade routes on the go. Just a few more turns off completing Ruhr Valley and I was also able to claim the great engineer providing 20% production towards space projects. Probably still another 50 turns to get through the space part techs and manufacturing could take a little longer. I managed to get a scout over to the other continent to take a look at what other city states might be available to help.

Based on real life commitments and being very busy, unfortunately I’ll need to come back to my report and pulling screen shots from my game. If you’ve read this far then I thank you for your interest. Hopefully I can get the rest up shortly. =)

This was a really really fun adventure and I will certainly be participating in future adventures. 

I finished turn 307 and then loaded up a save from turn 77 and played a shadow game with a different strategy (more warfare before building peaceably) that netted me a finish date of 279. The last 3 turns of that game I was getting ~650 production per turn for my last piece.  

I will come and add the report to this post, but here is the google doc link for the report. 

https://docs.google.com/document/d/110p-...=drive_web

My Build Order was Scout -> Scout -> Rush Buy Slinger with the warrior and scouts staying local.

I was eliminated by a 4 warrior rush from Germany on T24.

Pictures will go up later in the day.

Hi all!  Long time no see, and it's nice to see some familiar names from way back when still around!

It was nice to play a good game of Civ again. I haven't played a complete game of Civilization since Civ4 Epic 24 in July 2009. I've played a couple of starts in Civ5, but didn't like it. Now I played a couple of starts in Civ6, liked it a lot (despite horrible AI and a baffingly bad UI), and decided to let Adventure 2 be my first full game - and had a lot of fun with it!

So, without further ado: pre-game thoughts. As a noob, I don't understand a lot of the mechanics yet, and religion in particular is very confusing - I have absolutely no idea how it works. So: Sulla to the rescue! From the Adventure description: "[...] Or is it better to skip religion entirely to focus more directly on science?". Saladin's traits suggest he should be good at using religion to boost science. But to have a meaningful comparison between the two strategies religion vs. no religion, you need at least one player who skips religion entirely - and that might as well be me, making my life a lot simpler.

The description also states that there is one more AI than usual, meaning the map will be crowded. After reading up on how research and expansion works, it looks like more cities means faster research, both from more population and more research buildings. There also seems to be little in the way of punishing the player for having a large empire. Both things combined (crowded map and the need for a large empire) suggest war is necessary - and so I decided to do something I almost never do in Civ games: An early rush. The higher number of AIs plus their extra settler should result in a nearby target for an archer rush.

With this in mind, I decided to move the starting settler one tile southwest before founding my capital, to get to work the horse tile earlier.



I have no idea if this is still valid in Civ6, but my old instincts not to grow a city into unimproved tiles kicked in, and so my plan was to produce a builder after an initial scout, improve the horse tile and two hills, and leave the capital at size 3 until I've built the units necessary for the rush and can afford to produce another builder. Thus my initial techs were Animal Husbandry, Mining, then Archery, and my initial builds scout, builder, then three slingers (to upgrde to archers later).

First WTF moment for me: During the initial turns, the game indicated that it will expand into the horse tile next, which is great! But as soon as Cairo grew to size 2, it suddenly changed its mind and now wanted to grow into the wheat tile! What use is such an unstable indicator?!? Ah well, on turn 9 I had the necessary funds to buy the horse tile anyway.

My initial warrior quickly met Hongkong, Tomrys, Harald, Frederick and Preslav. I decided not to send delegations to any AI to improve relations, as I figured I'd need the gold to upgrade my slingers to archers. The same reasoning led me to adopt God King (+1 faith and +1 gold in the capital) as my first economic policy on turn 14 (along with Discipline as my military policy). All three AIs did send delegations to me however, greatly helping me fund my attack. Thanks!

Civic research went into Craftsmanship next (for the -1 upkeep civic) instead of Foreign Trade, as I figured I wouldn't find the time yet to build traders. Meanwhile, some goody huts provided me with experience, a second scout, and an Eureka for Wheel while building my army. With 7 turns left on Archery, I swapped research to Pottery->Irrigation as I saw some barbarian activity near my slingers and hoped to trigger the Archery boost - which indeed I managed to do on turn 26.

On turn 30, I had 3 slingers and 2 warriors (finally starting a second builder next) so it was time to decide whom to attack. I had met Pericles in the meantime, but he was way down south and no practical target. Between Harald and Frederick, I found Frederick's lands to be slightly more interesting; however, he kind of forced my hand as he suspiciously moved a lot of warriors straight towards my capital.



The movement of Harald's warriors looked more like he was hunting barbs, but Frederick I was not so sure. Now if I would let him declare war on me, I wouldn't get any (initial) warmonger penalties with the other AIs. However, I wasn't sure if and when he would declare and didn't want to lose momentum; also I guess taking cities and eliminating civilizations from the game causes diplomatic penalties anyway, so I decided on a first strike instead on turn 32. (Tomrys didn't approve.)

Fighting the AI really is easy, and so I managed to capture Aachen on turn 48 and Cologne on turn 62, removing Frederick from the game and capturing a builder and a settler in the process.

In the meantime, Harald continued to loiter around my capital with up to four warriors at a time, so I decided to build another archer and warrior for home defense before starting to pump out settlers, and I needed an escort anyway. But Harald didn't declare (yet), so I founded my first own settlement on turn 53.



A couple of turns later, Harald also moved in a slinger and finally declared war on me.



Yeah, well, turns out an archer and a warrior are more than enough to fend off an AI invasion... and look at what Harald brought with him to assault my capital: A mighty settler! That was really silly, and I managed to chase it down later and capture it.

While I finished off Frederick and slowly killed each and every attacking unit from Harald, Pericles declared war on Scythia and kept Tomrys busy - good! At the time my capital was clear of enemy units, my veteran army from the German war were back, and I advanced on Harald's cities next. (I didn't plan on rushing two civs, actually believing that by the time I had finished off one civ, the others would be too strong - I now learned that was not the case. Also, Harald declared war on me, so he's to blame!) I captured Bergen on turn 77, Stavanger on turn 82 and Nidaros on turn 88 and Harald had left the game as well.

Religion-wise I did the bare minimum - founded a Pantheon (I forgot which - I think the 15% faster border expansion one) and founded a religion on turn 66, thanks to a holy site in Aachen (I wouldn't have built one). I selected Zen Meditation (+1 Amenity in cities with 2 districts) and I forgot what else. Then I ignored Religion, as I had planned.

I continued to found cities, and established my first trade route on turn 66. I also sent every envoy I received to Hongkong for the production boost, and would do so until the end of the game - always being barely ahead of Pericles. I think I ended up with 29 envoys vs. his 27.

Tech-wise I beelined Apprenticeship and Political Philosophy, but then decided not to go for Industrialization immediately as I felt I wouldn't have time to build industrial districts and workshops so quickly. Instead, I focused on helper techs like Machinery, Feudalism and others.

Overall, I feel I've dropped the ball a bit from here on, lacking game experience what techs and civics there are and which to prioritize. I expanded, researched techs as I went along but never had a clear long-term plan. I built the Colossus. I diverted considerable resources (like all of my trade routes) to a newly-found desert city in the far east to build Petra - only to find out in the end that the city didn't really provide anything meaningful to the space race, being so far away from my core. I also declared war on Preslav on turn 104:



Preslav had rather weak lands but later managed to contribute a factory and power plant for my core. I grabbed great people as they came along if they sounded useful, but only later learned that you apparently can deliberately beeline to certain ages to look for their respective great people. And so on - I had a lot of fun and learned a lot, but felt I wasn't really be anywhere near optimal play.

I met Catherine around turn 140, and A LOT of city states on the other continent as well. It also became apparent how bad the AIs are at expansion; lots of land remained unsettled until the end of the game. I founded one city on the other continent on turn 158 to claim two needed luxury resources, but otherwise was too lazy to expand more at that late stage of the game.



Pericles declared war on my a short while later, but all I saw before making peace again was one or two units, easily destroyed. Tomrys declared on me as well at some point, but fending off her attack wasn't hard even with archers and warriors against swordmen and mounted units. I didn't go on the offensive myself however, as I felt it would divert too much from my research and consolidation efforts.

Peter I met as late as turn 192, no idea how my scouting units had managed to avoid him for so long... He and Catherine fought some ware, but I'm not sure how much came out of that.

Sorry for not being able to provide more details, but I was too busy learning the game and forgot to create more saves or write down more notes. I can reconstruct from my screenshots which wonders I built and the great people I got if anybody's interested, however.

In the end I used Sergei Korolev to speed up the first space race project by 8 turns so my three space port cities could start the Mars projects sooner, and tried to balance production on these cities by sending the trade routes to the weakest city. It became apparent that I hadn't balanced research and production speed properly; I should have prioritized production over research a bit more, as I was finished researching a bit too early.

Anyway, I launched on turn 251 - having absolutely no idea how good or bad that is. :D Here are my lands (excluding my one city on the other continent) from one turn before:



If anyone's interested, I can provide some graphs from the end-game summaries; just ask.

I am asking because I attacked a node with 5 Phantom beasts with 7 adamantium golems, each with 18 attack and eldritch weapon (obviously that doesn't matter much with phantoms but anyway). The beasts each had 20 attack and 2 defense, the usual node stuff. 
I thought I was going to win pretty easily because of my superior defense but failed miserably. They only managed to kill two beasts.

It felt like the golems were suffering from illusion attacks.
Maybe I was just extremely unlucky, but still wanted to check.

This is my first report ever, so I will do a short one for a beginning.
Finished in turn 351. I wasnt focusing on early victory date, just played my usual game. I´m still Civ6 newbie, around 6 games played total.

My warrior did not reveal anything special on his first move, so I have settled on the initial spot with my settler.
I have started with my classic opening - slinger, slinger, builder, slinger, slinger. As for research and culture tree I followed rule of delaying until no other option to utilize inspiration boosts at max.

I have met Norway, Germany & Scythia soon and two city states. Map seems to be crowded a bit I should hurry with Settler. On turn 23 Norway declared war. I could see that coming, however I was out for clearing barbarian outposts in tundra with most of my army. I have moved them back defend capital and cleaned initial Norway units with easy, promoting my slingers along the way. After building extra 2 slingers, moved towards Norway second city to capture it. Started siege of the city without resistance, however horde of barbarians emerged north of my capital. I should have cleaned those outpost before going back to defend capitol in beginning of the war with Norway. I stop the siege, sign peace with some money gift from Norway a head back to defend capital. Cleaned those pesky barbarians and moved to finally get rid of their outposts in tundra region. Meanwhile I have founded my second city in the south on the river spot.

As for my economy, I´m using "delaying" strategy - not finishing any tech unless it is needed now and researching only until 50% to allow inspiration boost to complete it for me. This way I spare tons of beakers, while sparing gold for unit upkeep and district costs. In general I delay 1gpt units research until I get conscript policy and later 2gpt/3gpt units research until I have -2gpt policy in place. I have researched Archery till 1 turn to finish to be ready for surprising attack from AI. With this strategy I never had lack of money and freely used it to build buildings in my new cities, upgrading army or buying strategy tiles. In meantime I have choose my pantheon (+15% quicker border expansion) and scouted my neighbors. 

Speaking of surprising attack from AI, Germany declared surprising war around turn 42.  I was again out in tundra killing and raping barbarian outposts   when this happened. Finished Archery in one turn, upgraded one slinger in capital to archer and moved my slinger army back to capital. Two warriors, one spearman and 4 chariots showed up in initial attack. Once my army was back and upgraded I have cleaned initial attack and moved towards Germany cities. This time there wont be any peace as I need more cities and land is already quite full. City walls were no help for Germany capital, my 6 archers and 2 spears put it down fairly quickly. Any wounded archer was moved in back lines and replaced by fresh one. It was not that much necessary as usually I have used promotion when health was too low and was ready for another promotion after few turns again. Second city captured shortly after. And that was end of aggressive Germany, there wont come back again anymore...

Turn 86. Here is the situation after the war. I´m using eyefinity (3 screens) with wide resolution, so picture may not be readable easily on single screen.
   

Now with five cities I have switched to settler policy and built 4 settlers in few turns. Three of them went in tundra in north to cover whole coast there with bonus/luxury resources and one went south near Brussels in only vacant spot. With 9 cities I started to build my economy. in Economy first motto tradition I´m building commercial/Harbor districts first to get domestic trade routes flowing. I have been granted by last prophet, so I have founded my own religion using former Germany capitol´s holy district for this purpose. Incidentally I have selected same symbol as Sullla in his game and for my own amusement I have named it "Crab Diem" ™. Scythia was already spreading her own religion, so I had to barricade my holy city in order to convince my citizens that crab diem ™ is only religion they want to follow.

Turn 160. Aachen barricaded to defend only right religion in this game.
   

Dozens of turns later I had 4 apostles to defend my borders. They were slaughtering all foreign missionaries and as side effect all other religions were dropping in my cities and crab diem rising without the use of missionaries (nice), which I have purchased only for my back line cities. My relations with other civilizations were worsening constantly. Each neighbor was complaining like little girl that I´m settling too close or moving my units on their borders or converting their cities. Are you kidding me? I´m founding cities in backlines, moving my units within my territory and just defending against other religions. My apostles killed a missionary in my territory, but also other civs border cities suffer penalty for that religion and leaders got crying on my shoulder that I´m converting their cities. Something is broken here...

Soon I have met also civs from other continent (Russia & France) and sent my settlers quickly there to claim empty land in north continent. Again, I´ve made enemies due to my settlers spam, though I was able to put down only 3 cities. Peter did not like it, as well as my lack of culture (only one theater district, even that one was built by Germany before I conquered them), so declared a war against my empire. I did not felt any threat as he was far away from me, but his suzerain-ed city state Preslav was in the middle of my empire with lot of knights at hand. Ooops. Upgraded all archers to field cannons and capture city state shortly after.
This act of active defense was translate as warmongering, so my relations with everyone worsened further. I would be really dumb to leave Preslav in other hands in the middle of my territory. For the rest of the game I was warmonger in eyes of other civs, despite I haven´t declare a single war in whole game and was defending most of the time. 

Aimed for few wonders (Petra, Colossus), but got beaten to it few turns completion. I started to think that on higher difficulties AI is cheating and completing instantly wonders if player is close to completion...
In following turns I was working on districts slowly teching forward. Despite my lack of research focus (only two campus districts) I was leading in tech and felt no pressure to speed up. Few more wars declared against my empire that ended with more cities under my rule including city states that I was not able to suzerain or were useless for me (unit production bonus). I did not have to built any new units at all. I still had initial 8 slingers I kept upgrading, many of them were already with last upgrade of 2 attacks.

As per my government/policy focus I went trough path Classical republic -> Merchant republic -> Communism; policy improving housing/amenities & gpt/trade routes.

With 18 cities in my great empire I was teching towards space. With around 30 trade routes I have boosted my 3 biggest production cities and finished last three components in around 10 turns.

Game was quite easy, AI not even close to beat me. Score per turn started to exceed all other AI already around 100AD. Still, I could play this much better - I could conquer whole continent and focus more on science victory itself. Nevertheless, I had fun playing this game and looking forward to next one.

Some statistics at the end:

End score - 924
Total units lost - 8
Total units killed - 108
Total wars against player - 26
Total wars declared by player - 0

Turn 350. Last Turn.
   

Hello !


I've been a lurker and an avid reader of reports here for years, but this is actually the first time I participate in an adventure ! Sadly I didn't take notes during my game, so I will only give the outlines of the game I played, which definitely won't make for a fast finish but I had a few strange moments that might be entertaining to read about (particularly regarding religions).

At the time of writing this intro, I'm getting to the end of the Tech tree but the game still has some hours in it. I will probably go back and load a few saves to make screenshots before I finish this report, and maybe some more specific dates and turn numbers If I can (later edit : Well I didn't, maybe I'll add some screenshots later ?).


We are playing Saladin, which goes well with some religious play (obviously), but we are going for science victory, which needs a LOT of production (and some science, but production is the hard bit).
One nice thing about Saladin and religion, is that "The last prophet" allows you to get a religion while still being quite lazy about it. I resolved to use it by ignoring faith beyond getting a pantheon and worry about religion later, when the last prophet will come in.


As we are on emperor, I started with a slinger : I like to get that Archery eureka as soon as possible, as an insurance against barbarian and usual AI early game aggression (Archers usually being all you need for a few millennia). I think I pushed a scout out next, then a builder, before going for my first settler, which went west to found Aleppo.

It was apparent very soon that this would play as a low production map - at least for me, compared to the last games I played. Not many hills, no really obvious spots for great industrial zone. In most Civ games but specially in VI and particularly when going for science, I tend to obsess quite a bit about production and most often make my dotmap by picking ideal industrial zone spots and planning around these. Here the pickings are slims, but I'll try to make do.


I quickly met Preslav and Frederick Barbarossa in the east, then Norway in the west, and finally Scythia in the south west, and the Hong Kong city state (which I wanted to be suzerain of : production yet again !). I was expanding toward Scythia with my third city (Baghdad) when the Norses declared war on me.
I had my figurative pant down, with an army of one warrior and a single slinger (with a kill to his name), and possibly a scout (I don't remember when I lost him). I quickly recruited 2 more slingers before grabbing archery and upgrading all three, while Tomyris joined in the dog-pile and declared war on me as well.
I started to beat down on the Norse warriors, and took the peace Harald was quickly ready to pay for to turn my attention on Scythia. Luckily for me, Tomyris had probably been pulled into the war by Harald and didn't have units ready to strike at my cities when she declared, as all my units were busy fighting Norway at that time.

While I was positioning to strike at Scythia (directly to the capital Poprovka, which was close to Baghdad), Tomyris took Hong Kong (I wasn't suzerain, she was already at war with Hong Kong at the moment). It took some time, but I ended up taking the whole of Scythia, and even Kept Hong Kong for myself. I thought about liberating it, but in the end the AI always end up hating me whatever happens anyway, so I decided that the "liberator" bonus wasn't worth it, and while I like production city state in general, Hong Kong bonus is not the best...
Now If it had been Toronto or Buenos Aires, I would have liberated it simply because I rank the bonuses above the benefit of a city, but as things were... Hong Kong would make a fine Arab city.

I planted Hattin between Cairo and Hong Kong, and started to think that early conquest was probably a good thing after all, as the map felt quite a bit cramped to me (I don't often play small maps), and I still didn't find some of the Hilly production paradise I was looking for. I met Pericles and Vilnius in the south, founded a Pantheon (Religious settlement : anything to get faster border expansion !), and started to consider, now that I had an army (well, 2 warriors and 4 archers anyway), who should I strike next. Despite my counter invasion of Scythia, I still felt I needed more land and started to look toward Germany...

Frederick had been peaceful so far, not attacking city states as he is usually prone to do, but he a had founded a religion and was starting to convert my cities to Catholicism (while Harald was pushing Protestantism he had founded).

While I was pondering what to do with my army, I saw Harald send an unescorted settler to colonize further up my north (he had already taken the coast north of Aleppo while I was fighting the scythes), and I decided, since he had denounced me already (for warmongering of course, although of course he and Tomyris were the only leader who had declared a war at that time) that I wouldn't allow it.
The penalty was moderate, I quickly snagged the settler and a pair of city he founded on the north coast. It was still early war, notably without city walls to protect any of the places I conquered.

Then, as Nidaros was fortified, I accepted peace from him for a hefty tribute. Now rich of 9 cities, I decided to spend some time on infrastructure and improvement. I beelined governments, then feudalism on the civic tree, as is hard to escape, and I was gunning for apprenticeship and Industrial zones in the science tree.
I managed to get almost all eureka and inspirations, and I had built an early campus in Cairo to make use of those nice mountains, so science and civics were progressing nicely. Somewhere along the road, Pericles founded Sikhism, and I got my prophet and founded A'Tuinism in Pokrovka (the Church of the Cosmic Turtle). I didn't try to get any wonders.

I started to get industrial zones everywhere, get workers to improve what I could, and I think I managed to get OK science and food, but production was always an issue. Then some time before turn 100, I realized that I still didn't have any other city converted, and more and more German missionaries were flooding my country...  Most of my land was Catholic, I had very low faith generation, 2 or 3 basic holy districts only pulling adjacency bonus and I think one more with a shrine in Pokrovka, and I would have a hard time saving A'tuinism from being extinguished by Catholicism. I had neglected faith too much and couldn't generate missionaries or apostles to spread my religion...

Actually, I had it extinguished before I could do anything. I will admit I shamefully reloaded an auto-save when I finally realized what was happening, as my original thought of letting faith take care of itself since I was "guaranteed" a religion to play with was coming back to bite me in the arse...

Alas, even with this shameful reload, I only managed to get out one missionary before A'tuinism was extinguished again, and I could only convert Poprovka back for a handful of turn with it before Catholicism killed it again. Even save-scumming couldn't save the true faith. A'tuinsit faith lay smouldering below vast majorities of catholic and protestant believers. Even if the game is to be won by science, and Madrassa and mamluk are still available, I wouldn't get my awesome (and super cheap !) Meeting houses and the "righteousness of the faith" bonus.

This shameful passage was a bit disheartening, and Germany just forward settled another poor city on my frontier, despite my protests (I had asked them not to forward settle, nor to convert my cities when I reloaded the auto-save. They immediately promised not to, and then immediately did it anyway). I was disappointed in my play and almost ready to abandon the game.
Then, probably because I had let my fearsome army of ancient conquest obsolesce its way into irrelevance, they declared war on me. Of course Frederick hated my warmongering  since I dared conquer Scythia who had chosen unwisely some millennia ago, but he came at me with a Casus Belli and everything : this was a war of territorial expansion.

Well, that got me interested again ! My army was old and slightly crappy : my archers were still well promoted and quite useful to defend myself, but my units would almost die in one shot from German city walls, so as things stood I couldn't attack.

I had techs however, and notably stirrup. I already had a game with Arabia before, and by now everyone should know it but guys : Mamluks are the best.
March was always one of my favorite promotions in Civ4, and here you get marching knights.
Knights were good in Civ IV, good enough that a beeline to Guild was one of the strongest war moves in the game. I don't know about Civ 5, in civ 6 most of the time range units are the real deal because they can attack without using up their strength by losing HP, and you only get enough melee to protect them.
Well, mamluks lose HP, but they always gain some HP back, and if you're fighting near your frontier, if you really take a beating you can retreat for a turn, heal 15hp at EoT somewhere in your territory, and strike back with a vengeance right away the next turn.
Combined with a siege tower or even a simple a battering ram, they will reconcile you with melee units if you needed to be. Of course being cavalry, they are quite mobile enough that getting sieges against city to prevent them from healing is quite easy. Mamluks are awesome.

As the war was declared, I ordered 4 of them (using the policy to boost their production, can't remember its name), and started to bring my troops toward the east (most were stationed near Norway, where I thought the next war would happen, as I still somehow resented Harald for declaring the first war against Arabia eons ago).
Preslav was a vassal of Germany and sent quite a few units to threaten Cairo, but after I killed only one unit, seeing 2 swordsman closing on the city still defended by a single injured warrior, I remembered I had quite a few envoys in reserve (I usually do that to make sure I can keep the suzerainship I want the most, and it comes in handy in such situations) and quickly turned Preslav against the Germans. Surprise diplomacy !
It would possibly save my capital and certainly help delay the germans while I mustered my forces.

Frederick didn't send many unit directly, so I got my old army to the south and took the small undefended forward city he had settled there. Then began the march on Cologne (which he settled below Aachen in my game) for my first Mamluks, accompanied by a siege tower I outright bought in Hong Kong (close to my target).
I was vaguely hoping to find some Catholic missionaries around to kill, hoping to lower the level of the religion in my cities (in the hope of reviving A'Tuinism), but no missionaries were hanging around and it didn't happen. Well, that would have been a long shot, but crazier plans have been known to work... from time to time.

Anyway, In the end I took all Germany for myself, so let's see, in order of conquest :
Trier, Cologne, Aachen, Heidelberg, Magdeburg and another city (Holm ?) I founded in the north with a settler I found twiddling its thumb in Aachen. That was some war of territorial expansion alright, although maybe not the one Frederick was looking for.

I got monarchy then Theocracy, and finished Norway sometime after Germany, since I had all those Mamluks hanging around twiddling their thumbs.
Pericles was anyway destined to hate me to the end of time, as I had a penalty for warmongering in the multiple hundreds despite declaring only a single war with a moderate penalty. A second one would not change much.
For some reason for the longest time I was afraid of winning a domination and thought I had to choose between Nidaros and Athen, while of course there were two unmet player on another continent still, as the description of the game made abundantly clear from the start, and as even a casual glance at the minimap should have told me at this stage.

At that time, since I finally got the desert tile outside Cairo (I bought quite a few tiles in a few crisis using the 20% reduction policy, but never that desert), and the pyramid was still available, I got it. That was the first wonder I got (Although I had conquered Stonehenge with Aachen and the Oracle with Nidaros).
Super late of course, but a late pyramid is still better than no pyramid, and I started a long sweep through ancient, classical and other neglected wonders that were hanging unbuilt since the dawn of time.

This is how I managed my greatest coup ! After a long time (very poor production there) in Hattin I managed to get a Holy site beside a still standing wood (most of these were chopped for hammers a long time ago), and I landed the Mahabodhi temple !
I was hopping for one of the apostle to be a proselyte, but I wasn't THAT lucky. I was lucky enough that the temple had remained unbuilt, apparently all religions had been founded on our continent and no one had been able to build it, what with the wars and everything. One of my apostle immediately launched the inquisition (I still had no cities with my religion so couldn't get inquisitors anyway). The other went on a pilgrimage to Holy Mount Kilimanjaro.

When the holy man came back to Poprovka, he spoke to the people of their lost faith, not one, not 2, but 3 times ! Poprovka's people couldn't continue following the false Catholic, Protestant, Sikh Dogma that had taken hold over the years. When the majority of the people there went back to the true faith, the holy man departed. Inquisitors were immediately recruited in Poprovka, and they performed their duties admirably. The original pilgrim spoke 4 more time, bringing A'Tuinism back from the abyss as a new strong, vibrant faith for Arabia. A mix of missionary and inquisitors washed over Arabia and soon the True faith was also the Only faith.
Meeting houses sprouted everywhere, eventually a proselyte apostle was recruited and converted Preslav, Vilnius and Brussels to the way of the Great Turtle.

Their faith restored, in an extended time of peace they had long longed for, Arabs went about exploring the rest of the world, while the country was set for an early industrialization (I beelined it quite aggressively, as factories looked like the only way to get some decent enough production).
I got a few more wonder, among theses the Potola Palace in Aachen, The Forbidden one in Hong Kong, the Hagia Sophia in Pokrovka, and even mount Saint Michel in Aleppo. I also grabbed the Colossus and the Great Lighthouse, which had remained unbuilt for unknown reasons.

As time got on, I would not build additional holy site since quite a few of the cities I had captured had one, but added a few campuses and some commercial hubs, and as I usually do, industrial zones in every single cities. For a time, after the last Norse war and before my second commercial hub, I had a worrying deficit (around -10 each turn).
After eating through most of my cash, the "double commercial hub income" policy, then the addition of several new commercial hubs put an end to the problem.

I met the French and the Russian with my caravels (my first naval units ! hooray !), and set profitable trade with them (they didn't have as bad a relationship with me as Pericles, as they didn't know of us Arabs when we ate up Scythia, Norway and Germany), mainly for luxury resources and some GPT.

I had a lot of faith, as I had a scramble for holy buildings when A'Tuinism was threatened by German missionaries a long time ago and I then couldn't spend it until I built the Mahobadi temple, and I grabbed several holy districts from all my conquests. I set to convert all the city states to my religion, and some of the French, Greek and Russian cities, specially in the new world. Soon A'Tuinism was by far the dominant religion. Thankfully I realized in time that I should be careful enough to avoid a religious victory.

I found (with an adventurous mamluk) a long unoccupied peninsula to my east, south of Amsterdam and la Valletta; I had a wave of settler built and colonized it, settling 4 cities there, plus 2 more in the north.
I was racing through the tech, but Civics were slower : I never built any theater, and only got 2 in the ex-German cities of Aachen and Heidelberg. Monuments everywhere and the wonders were seemingly enough to get enough culture.

Production was now really a lot better once factories and their overlapping bonuses began sprouting everywhere. I got quite a few more wonder, notably a Big Ben that was worth almost 3000 gold, and notably ended up with 4 free additional policy slots (Alhambra, Big Ben, Pottola Palace and Forbidden Palace), which is pretty crazy. Make it 5 with Adam smith !

I used a mix of Faith buy (I had the belief which allow to faith buy scientific and cultural building), cash rushing, and a lot of caravans to develop my lands. There actually were no further wars, although I massed a navy (using the Venetian arsenal to produce Battleships) and hesitated to eliminate Greece, which somehow had access to 3 of the 4 oil resources on the map (Brussels had the 4th one), but really I had no need for oil.

I rushed through the remains of the Tech and Civics tree; In the end I built a Trio of spaceport, and rushed blindly through the great engineers, merchants and some scientists with district project in the rest of my cities (and with a lot of cities, this generates great people insanely fast). I really wasn't focused, didn't plan my strategy and could probably have finished quite a bit sooner (Actually I had a go at that from my last save and could shave almost 15 turns, despite that save being very advanced already).
I built my first Spaceport much too late, didn't prioritize the right science order, and could have rushed to the relevant great people much earlier to get the best bonuses for the job.

In the end, the Arab people considered their goals achieved when they had launched all the required modules into orbit, so as to send a party to explore Mars and hopefully get a better vantage point from which to study the Cosmic Turtle, in 1852.


I guess this is quite a late finish, I actually didn't follow any strategic planning to win earlier beyond an emphasis on science and production. Just by replaying the last part, without plans but better priorities, I could shave 15 turns. Without messing up science priorities (would have had to get farther back to fix that), a lot more could have been gained. I had a blast anyway, specially reviving my religion from the brink of extinction.

On that matter, I really thought A'Tuinism was dead after my failed save-scumming attempt, had my "so be it" moment.
Then later I saw that the Mahobadi temple (including the 2 free Apostles) was still unbuilt, and had a very long shot at building it (I had no holy temple next to a forest, and had to build one AND the wonder in a low production city). I didn't even know If it would really work and spawn A'Tuinist Apostle despite Hattin being Catholic while building the wonder...
But it worked in the end, and that was a fun idea to play with, and gave me quite an incentive to actually write a report to tell my tale, despite the shameful reload and everything.


In most of my personal games I had more room to expand, and usually more productive terrain (more hills, etc). In this game I only founded 4 cities until the discovery of the new world (which occurred very late in my game), most of my empire was made of AI developed cities, and obviously the AI needs a lot of work when planing its cities.

Really, does it even try ? Everything look like AIs build any district they can as soon as they can, without planing for the later ones, so they usually end up wasting good locations for a district with a wonder or another district, do not plan for tiles they will get later, improvements they can build... And of course, things like Chichen Itza on the only jungle in the city radius, providing exactly 1 culture (as an adjacency bonus for a theater) at the cost of one tile and 710 production.

Anyway, I found most of my cities had very questionable urbanism, and had to work around it and make do with poor early development. You don't have ta race for as much settlers as early, but the drawback is quite clear. Actually for some of my later conquest I think I might have been better off razing and resettling...

But in the end It taught me that adjacency bonuses, while making things vastly faster up to the industrial era (I was used to getting at least +3 adj bonus for almost every Ind zone in my previous games, here +2 were the good ones) actually don't matter THAT much once the regional effects of factory takes precedence. OK, I read people stating so, but experiencing it is still different.
So an efficient strategy for space victory might be to pack cities as close as possible and focus mostly on science to rush up the tech tree as science mostly need population after all, even if a few campuses are nice.
Then, just crawl-build factories everywhere (chopping or buying if possible) to get the craziest production for the actual late game and spaceship production. I probably don't have it in me to try again from the start, though, but that is certainly useful learning and interesting speculation.


Thanks for the game Sulla, I definitely enjoyed my first adventure (after yeeeeaaars of lurking and reading), I even found the will to report despite a busy life, and I'm eager to see what the other will have done with the game :-)