[SPOILERS] Parity Parody

[suboptimal]

This is an outstanding map for the Cree and they should be one of the favorites on this map. Low-food setups are amazing for the Cree: the core strategy is to find whatever spot has the most pastures/camps and then build the Government Plaza + Campus districts there, followed by running every trade route to that spot. You can even add the Magnus promotion with +2 food on trade routes to further enhance this strategy although that does mean giving up on the Mangus bonus for chops which may not be worth it. This map has few camps/pastures but suboptimal could have set up a city with a pair of them and then add the Plaza plus a Campus district for 5 food trade routes. (Remember that a 5 food trade route is effectively a 7 food tile because there's no population point that has to feed itself with 2 food.) Then every city runs trade routes there and grows endlessly upwards using the mekewaps for infinite housing. That's what TBS did in his runaway PBEM17 game and on a low-food map like this one no one could compete with Cree cities which were hitting size 7, 8, 10, etc. while everyone else is stuck around size 4 for lack of food.

But this is suboptimal so he hasn't done anything like that. It's the same story as always and I think that I've come up with the best way to describe the playstyle: suboptimal is a tourist in his own game. Reading his turn reports is like watching a visitor strolling by, enjoying the scenery, taking in the sights. It's fun, certainly, and suboptimal writes very nice turn report but there's never any clear goal or purpose. Suboptimal will build away and play around with the Grove districts and passively watch while another player wins the game.

* Suboptimal I do not trust. He seems to have no real plan for the Cree and is just a bit lackadaisical and unfocused.

I'm not going to disagree with either of these criticisms. My inability to forward plan more than 20-30 turns out (ie be strategic) is something I'm self-aware of, know it's a problem as it makes me an ineefective opponent but it's one that I can't quite seem to get my head around. I believe I've also made comments to that effect in earlier games, either in-game or in prior post-mortems. Something I will likely continue to struggle with (and be criticized for) in any future games. My MP experience in Civ VI is now....eight games...ever (don't play pickups on PYDT or other forums because time constraints).

Referring to Thrawn's exhausting sandboxing of the game, well, if that's where things are headed in order to be competitive (despite my issues above), count me out of that. That is too time consuming a task for me to perform but more critically that would make the process of playing unenjoyable.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Don't worry. That's only me and we'll find some way to balance it in future games. And it's not as involved as the lurkers made it sound. I run very few sims because I find them tedious too, I just have a nice spreadsheet for the cities where I can move the citizens around to work different tiles and see what happens.

Your play style is interesting because you are one of the people here with the most precise knowledge of the game mechanics and that usually goes hand in hand with strategic thinking but with you it doesn't. I have a theory that one can play a game in two way. Casually, where it's about the playing and the experience, and you quickly forget who 'won' because that didn't really matter. Or competitively/strategically/whatever-you-call-it, where winning is the one goal and everything revolves around it.

So I think you play the first way, and that's actually the more enjoyable one, but it can be nice if you can 'switch' to win-mode for a moment to see how you like it and if you want to play like that sometimes too. I sometimes play one way and sometimes the other and both have merits but it wasn't like that before. I used to always play to win and needed to find my way the other way.

Does this make sense? Or if you compare your way of playing to mine what would you say is the difference? It certainly doesn't matter how many turns exactly you plan ahead, or whether you use a spreadsheet. The essence of it is more in simply asking questions like 'If I do X, what will happen? If I do Y, what will happen? Which outcome do I prefer?' and answering them as shallow or as deep as you feel like.

Oh so you sim out a few plans then use spreadsheet for fine-tuning? That would take around two full days of work and you would get reimbursed a day because you can just follow the spreadsheet. That's not so bad...

[suboptimal]

Don't worry. That's only me and we'll find some way to balance it in future games. And it's not as involved as the lurkers made it sound. I run very few sims because I find them tedious too, I just have a nice spreadsheet for the cities where I can move the citizens around to work different tiles and see what happens.

Your play style is interesting because you are one of the people here with the most precise knowledge of the game mechanics and that usually goes hand in hand with strategic thinking but with you it doesn't. I have a theory that one can play a game in two way. Casually, where it's about the playing and the experience, and you quickly forget who 'won' because that didn't really matter. Or competitively/strategically/whatever-you-call-it, where winning is the one goal and everything revolves around it.

So I think you play the first way, and that's actually the more enjoyable one, but it can be nice if you can 'switch' to win-mode for a moment to see how you like it and if you want to play like that sometimes too. I sometimes play one way and sometimes the other and both have merits but it wasn't like that before. I used to always play to win and needed to find my way the other way.

Does this make sense? Or if you compare your way of playing to mine what would you say is the difference? It certainly doesn't matter how many turns exactly you plan ahead, or whether you use a spreadsheet. The essence of it is more in simply asking questions like 'If I do X, what will happen? If I do Y, what will happen? Which outcome do I prefer?' and answering them as shallow or as deep as you feel like.

I think I may be somewhere between the two....I think I'm playing in a manner that's conducive to "win mode" but it's not to the eyes of the more experienced (or better suited thinkers).

Regarding the spreadsheets, up until this game I had three - a player score tracker, a civ tracker (tech/civic progress plus city trackers for builds & growth) and a city planning sheet, which is along the lines of what you posted in response to MJW's question.  This game I ditched the player score tracker completely and didn't miss it at all - having a screenshot each turn of the diplo ribbons is enough for the most part and where I need to check something specific I keep EoT saves for the duration of the game.  The civ tracker I just have to keep city yields updated and they don't change frequently - a one-click macro handles all the calculations for build & research progress.  It also has a sheet for calculations (game progress costs & yields [chops, districts, etc] and a combat calculator or two).  As for the city planning sheet, I generally only use that to determine the best position for settlement, my course of action for the first 30-40 turns and perhaps the first 20-30 at my intended next 2-3 city locations, depending on what I'm trying to do.  How much I use it beyond that varies by game, but it's less frequent the longer things go on mainly because it's tedious or would suck me in for 3-4 hours when I could (should) be doing something else (typically not related to Civ).  I'll likely continue that practice but I'm certainly not spending time plotting all the different possibilities when there's 6 or 7 cities on the map.