Civ6 Succession Game Planning Thread

[Hail]

For the first succession game, I don't think it's necessary to do anything too crazy. We're all still learning here, and I would prefer to hold off on the truly crazy variant stuff until I feel more comfortable with the basic gameplay. With that in mind, I'm going to suggest this setup:

Civ: Japan/Hojo
Difficulty: Emperor
Game Settings: Standard speed, Ancient era
Map Settings: Small, Inland Sea

Variant Rule: No Commercial or Harbor districts

This is a simple variant. Everyone knows by now that the trade routes are extremely strong. Going commercial districts into industrial districts at every city is pretty much the one right choice at the moment. Let's take that off the table and see what happens to the gameplay. Note that this does not mean that trade routes themselves are banned, only commercial and harbor districts. We'll get one free trade route from the tech tree, Merchant Republic can provide two more, and some Great Merchants grant additional ones. We'll need to think carefully about where to send our very strictly limited trade routes, both for the bonus tile yields and since they're the only real way to build roads. (Does this mean using Military Engineers in this game? We shall see!)

from what sources the player is supposed to gain gold from?
military engineers suck as they get two charges regardless of slotted builder civic cards.

I suggest you check the map forehand to confirm the absence of the City-State Carthage as its suzerain bonus grants one TR per encampment.

without gold from CD's buildings, most civ6 buildings suck imo. probably near optimal way to play is to focus on faith, switch to Theocracy to buy units with faith and sell them.
Great Merchants can only be faith-bought.

[Ruined Everything]

For the first succession game, I don't think it's necessary to do anything too crazy. We're all still learning here, and I would prefer to hold off on the truly crazy variant stuff until I feel more comfortable with the basic gameplay. With that in mind, I'm going to suggest this setup:

Civ: Japan/Hojo
Difficulty: Emperor
Game Settings: Standard speed, Ancient era
Map Settings: Small, Inland Sea

Variant Rule: No Commercial or Harbor districts

This is a simple variant. Everyone knows by now that the trade routes are extremely strong. Going commercial districts into industrial districts at every city is pretty much the one right choice at the moment. Let's take that off the table and see what happens to the gameplay. Note that this does not mean that trade routes themselves are banned, only commercial and harbor districts. We'll get one free trade route from the tech tree, Merchant Republic can provide two more, and some Great Merchants grant additional ones. We'll need to think carefully about where to send our very strictly limited trade routes, both for the bonus tile yields and since they're the only real way to build roads. (Does this mean using Military Engineers in this game? We shall see!)

from what sources the player is supposed to gain gold from?
military engineers suck as they get two charges regardless of slotted builder civic cards.

I suggest you check the map forehand to confirm the absence of the City-State Carthage as its suzerain bonus grants one TR per encampment.

without gold from CD's buildings, most civ6 buildings suck imo. probably near optimal way to play is to focus on faith, switch to Theocracy to buy units with faith and sell them.
Great Merchants can only be faith-bought.

Plenty of ways, albeit with less efficiency.
Luxury tiles: as usual.
Trade: Selling luxuries/open boarders/etc.
Hammers: Building and selling units. (And technically i-zone logistics/barracks stuff, tho that's horrifically inefficient.)
Religion: Tithe: +1 Gold for every 4 followers of this Religion, Church Property: Gold +2 for each city following this Religion. (IDK how good these are - but that is a 'free' c-zone bonus at each city.)
Policies: Specifically: Merchant Confederation (Medieval Faires): +1 Gold from each of your Envoys at city-states and Raj (Colonialism): +2 Science, Culture, Faith, and Gold from each city-state your are Suzerain of. seem to be the best (there are others.)

And if we want a hilarious troll strat, preserve 9-10 barb camps, put a cannon/crossbow by each one, and:
Native Conquest (Exploration): Combat victories over units from earlier eras provide Gold equal to 50% of the Combat Strength of the defeated unit.

If I was smarter, I'd be able to tell you which of these options actually makes sense. But the general point being that while we might not have a huge gold surplus, there are mechanisms for generating gold - this variant does not at all imply a no buildings game! Hell, assuming that selling units is kosher (without exploiting unit doubling, etc), HANSA Strat still works.

[Sullla]

From the responses in this thread, I can see it has definitely been a while since Realms Beyond ran a lot of succession games (or for that matter, a lot of variant-themed Single Player games). The goal of succession games was traditionally to explore unusual or suboptimal approaches to playing the game, as a form of self-restricted challenge to make things more fun. The joy came from working together to overcome the variant rules through skill and planning. There's been so much Civ4 Multiplayer in recent years that it seems much of the community culture is now based around very serious optimization. That's not intended to be the goal here. We won't be playing Civ6 in powergaming fashion, and that's entirely the point. (I'm kind of disappointed that this needs to be spelled out; there's been too much focus on cutthroat MP here in recent years.)

Fluffball, I'm sure that we could still build some archers and warriors and rush the nearest AI without issue. That's the easiest way to win the game right now because the AI has no idea how to engage in combat. I'm taking that off the table for this succession game though: no early rushes. We can still engage in warfare, even go for the Domination victory if we choose, but we won't be loading up on units for immediate 3000 BC aggression. If that's what someone is looking for, this is not the game to sign up for.

Dp101, the tradition for succession games is 24 hours to claim the save, followed by 48 hours to play the turns and report. Each person is only playing about 10 turns per round, so it shouldn't take anywhere close to a week to play. In the past, I've found that longer turnsets than the 24/48 rule tend to lead to games slowing down and getting abandoned. You want a new turnset coming in about every other day to keep interest levels high and the team engaged. Again, each person only needs to play 10 turns at a time, and they are only "up" to play about 1/4 or 1/5 of the time, so the time commitment is significantly less than our MP games. 

Hail, I think Ruined Everything did a good job of explaining some of the different ways to collect gold. We'll have to experiment and see what works. We won't have a lot of gold on hand for rush-buying things, and that's intended to be part of the challenge. 

Molach, welcome aboard! I agree with a general policy of not using exploits: no building units intentionally for disbanding purposes, no exploiting the broken trade screen, no mass chopping of forests/jungles outside borders. We might want to disband an old unit when it's served its purpose, or chop one or two forests that are just outside our borders, but we want to avoid systematically abusing these things. I hope that makes sense. 

That makes three participants for now. Four of five tends to be the ideal numbers for a succession game, so we have room for one or two more.

[Jkaen]

Glad to see this kicking off again, but I think i will just lurk for now

[Ichabod]

I'd like to play, if you'd have me. I have the Aztecs DLC.

[Ichabod]

One interesting SG idea could be winning by Domination while being able to produce only melee units.

[Ruined Everything]

One interesting SG idea could be winning by Domination while being able to produce only melee units.

I could very well be wrong (since I haven't done domination on either Immortal or Deity), but doesn't this look a lot like Knight/Cav spam? Does this change at very high difficulties?

Certainly it cuts down on your ability to defend yourself against an AI with a higher tech level than you.

[oledavy]

Just checking in to say I'll be lurking with interest. I have been really enjoying Japan in SP.

[fluffyflyingpig]

So how long till Daring Deity Part 2?

[Fluffball]

Fluffball, I'm sure that we could still build some archers and warriors and rush the nearest AI without issue. That's the easiest way to win the game right now because the AI has no idea how to engage in combat. I'm taking that off the table for this succession game though: no early rushes. We can still engage in warfare, even go for the Domination victory if we choose, but we won't be loading up on units for immediate 3000 BC aggression. If that's what someone is looking for, this is not the game to sign up for.

Oh I didn't mean to suggest rushing everyone for an early victory, just that there isn't really anything you can do to lose. If there is never a threat from the AI, it almost doesn't matter what variants you add. Although like I said I am looking forward to seeing if any new ideas come out of the experiments.

Is gold used for anything other than rushing/upgrading? There is no maintenance at all for anything, correct?