Civ6 Succession Game 1: Commercial Free Programming

[Ichabod]

Considering church proprierty versus tithe, it seems the first is the best. In civ 5, tithe was usually better, because you had fewer and larger cities on the map, but also because it worked even before the city converted to the faith (and because even the stray religious citizen here and there would add up to give you some gold). Natural spread of religion worked pretty well in Civ 5 and you started accumulating religious citizens in a reasonable pace, after some of the cities were already converted. My SP games of Civ 6 gave me the impression that natural spread was nerfed, though. And, if you are going to invest fully on religion, you are going to end up converting cities anyway.

If we want to generate lots of gold, despite our restriction, I think spending heavily on religion is the way to go. But I think we can survive without it, by cutting cost, using TRs for city state routes and scrapping what we can from some policies here and there.

[Sareln]

Considering church proprierty versus tithe, it seems the first is the best. In civ 5, tithe was usually better, because you had fewer and larger cities on the map, but also because it worked even before the city converted to the faith (and because even the stray religious citizen here and there would add up to give you some gold). Natural spread of religion worked pretty well in Civ 5 and you started accumulating religious citizens in a reasonable pace, after some of the cities were already converted. My SP games of Civ 6 gave me the impression that natural spread was nerfed, though. And, if you are going to invest fully on religion, you are going to end up converting cities anyway.

If we want to generate lots of gold, despite our restriction, I think spending heavily on religion is the way to go. But I think we can survive without it, by cutting cost, using TRs for city state routes and scrapping what we can from some policies here and there.

Are Church Property / Tithe mutually exclusive?

[Ranamar]

Considering church proprierty versus tithe, it seems the first is the best. In civ 5, tithe was usually better, because you had fewer and larger cities on the map, but also because it worked even before the city converted to the faith (and because even the stray religious citizen here and there would add up to give you some gold). Natural spread of religion worked pretty well in Civ 5 and you started accumulating religious citizens in a reasonable pace, after some of the cities were already converted. My SP games of Civ 6 gave me the impression that natural spread was nerfed, though. And, if you are going to invest fully on religion, you are going to end up converting cities anyway.

If we want to generate lots of gold, despite our restriction, I think spending heavily on religion is the way to go. But I think we can survive without it, by cutting cost, using TRs for city state routes and scrapping what we can from some policies here and there.

Are Church Property / Tithe mutually exclusive?

Search this post for "evangelize" or "church property", and I have a discussion of the mechanics I discovered while playing as Arabia:
http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...448&page=2

The short version is that, from what I can tell, there are 4 categories of beliefs: "follower", "worship building", "economic", and "expansion" (which I sometimes have called "combat").  Both of the gold-gain ones are from "economic" and thus are mutually exclusive.

[Ruined Everything]

An exciting set of turns.

T30 
It seems that there’s a consensus to skip religion and go straight for rapid expansion, so let’s do that! How many workers and settlers can I churn out? We’ll see!

On the home front, Gandhi, (who I am assured is peaceful for ever and ever and will not be murdering me with varus) is contentedly spamming districts. The bastard. The plan is to settle around him -  he’ll make a very nice barbarian shield.

Kyoto is finishing up a slinger, and Sendai is starting a worker. I nix that for a monument. Why? Because the extra 2 culture/turn will nearly double our culture/turn, and get early empires 5 turns sooner. That means we get settlers 5 turns sooner! Kyoto will be putting out plenty of workers by itself - trust me!

Our scout is chilling with Saladin. Despite being half a world a way, he still hasn’t found any city states or natural wonders. Grumble. Let’s hope we get luckier in my turn set. 

In the meantime, our slinger is quietly menacing a barb scout right by our cultural barriers. Let’s hope we kill him and boost archery. With that in mind, I press next turn and end the 0th turn.

I/T 30 
Gandhi pops up, and complains that we are settling too close to him. Given that our capital is like 7 tiles from his capital, I’m not sure I can help him. After careful consideration, I decide that ignoring his request is less likely to annoy him than breaking a promise or telling him to mind his own. I am rewarded by a new -3 malus on the diplomacy screen. My diplomatic adviser sits in the corner and starts mumbling about elephants.

T31 
Barb scout runs away, with our glorious army in hot pursuit. Another barb scout shows up. He’s probably going to run away and tell his friends, worse luck. Nonetheless, we persevere. 

Kyoto finishes a slinger and starts a worker. I am horrified to discover that civ 6 doesn’t have any production overflow. My micro plan is in tatters.  O tempora! O mores! 

T32
So civ 6 does, in fact, have overflow production. It just doesn’t show up until you click next turn. Kyoto pulls 4 hammers out of the ether and now sits on 20/54 worker production. I decide that our citizens must working over time because of my brilliance. 

T33
I’ve maneuvered the army into a position that guarantees me a kill on the weakened scout. I’ll kill both of them unless the first slinger moves NW - W. If you can kill scouts before they get back to their camps, no barbs will spawn and get you. I feel clever. 

Arabia seems to have a ton of salt. Looks like Saladin’s been browsing reddit. 

T34
Scout II runs into Gandhi’s land. This was a ruse that I was not expecting. Well played the scout. Hope you get eaten by varus. My slinger pincer is closing in. Soon, scout I will taste justice. 

Kyoto grows and I move it to this configuration. My calculations found that sacrificing hammers for high growth wasn’t worth it - since I’ll be spamming settlers out of Kyoto, growing to size 5 means wasting food. Much easier to regrow population when your city is small.

Scout finds yet more salt by Saladin. It really does look like they decided to cluster the resources on this map. This was way before my time, but I’m reminded of the demogame. This makes grabbing the chocolate cluster even more urgent - if there are 5 or 6 chocolates up there, we could be looking at 30 gold/turn.

T35
Operation: scout pincer comes to a gristly end. One scout snack. Archery completes, as does irrigation. It looks like Gandhi gibbed the other scout. No barb horsemen for us (fingers crossed.) Slingers are recalled for upgrades. Warrior continues on to scout north of chocolate mountain.

T36
Worker finishes, starts worker. After our worker completes a pasture on Kyoto’s third sheep, Kyoto will be rocking 19 h/t and can 3 turn workers. Very nice. 

T37
Arabia denounces Scythia. In other news, Scythia is playing. 

T38
Sendai hits size 2, and early empires is boosted. It hits 4 h/t - less nice, but with Kyoto 3 turning workers we’ll have it fixed up in no time. Chocolate corner looks infinitely lush - I resolve not to lose it to Gandhi. I will declare war if he tries to interfere with my plans.

T39
An unmet player has been defeated. What? Did someone kill a city state? Kyoto finishes its third worker, starts another. Everything is going as I have foreseen it. I clear a potential worker crunch by moving the worker that just finished pasturing the sheep onto the second sheep mountain. 

T40
We start the wheel. Every fiber in me is screaming about breaking the beeline to apprenticeships, but there’s just too much wheat around here not to get water mills going ASAP.

[Ruined Everything]

T41
Scout is half the map away, and still has not found a natural wonder. Argh. I switch back to a monument for 1 turn in Sendai and chop it out. Early Empire ETA drops to 4 turns. I feel invincible.


Holy gosh the Brazillians are next to us too! With all of us crammed into one tiny corner of the map, Saladin and Tomyris must have complete run of 75% of the map. If the AI knew how to build settlers I’d be scared.

T42
Worker precisely finishes this term after gorgeous micro. We start a final worker in Kyoto. 

In other news, we find Tomyris. Glance at the minimap (you can see enough of it), if you will. Draw a line horizontally through its middle. Notice how no civs start north of that line! Unbelievable. Instead, the civs are tightly clustered in groups - Tomyris and Saladin to the East, Brazil, Ghandi and us to the West. 

Here, Tomyris and Brazil are the big winners, with half the map to expand into. Saladin and ourselves do ok - we have the bottom quarter of the map to expand into, but not much more. Gandhi is the big loser, wedged in the corner between us and Brazil. To expand, Gandhi will have to go through someone - although Gandhi being Gandhi he’ll do no such thing, and will likely slip into irrelevance.

This would be a great map to go domination on if we weren’t planning on doing culture. 

T44
We mine the mercury north of Kyoto to trigger the Eurkea on the wheel. Mercury, at 1 food/2 hammers/1 science appears to be a subpar tile until apprenticeship, and we mine the one north of Kyoto since that’s the way the worker micro worked out.

BTW - look at the two workers ready to spend their last charge on those woods the moment colonization (50% to settlers) comes in. Of note: a chop around T50 is 34 hammers. That becomes 51 hammers with colonization. Settlers are only 100 - 120 hammers. 2 chops and a few city turns = a settler! This is why chopping out stonehenge would have hurt so much - 5 forest chops is 2 1/2 settlers! 

T45
T45 settler baby from Sendai (more like sempai, amirite?). And Sendai will grow the pop point back in one turn (as will Kyoto!)  I feel affirmed. Overflow goes into another archer.

Our archer to the south east chased down and killed a barb scout. As long as you can kill the scouts, you don’t need to worry about barbarians! We’re now only one barb kill away from the Eureka on bronze working. 

Thanks to the monument we’ll have state workforce in just 8 turns. We still haven’t found a city state (!) but looking at the map there should be like 5 million of them to the north, where our scout is about to reach, so hopefully we should meet 3 to trigger the Eureka for political philosophy. Providing that we do, we should hit the first tier governments by T65! That’s early. 

Gandhi settles away from us (thank the sweet lord), guaranteeing us chocolate mountain. (Seriously, there’s 30 g/t right there.) That region is insanely fertile. It must be ours. It even has desert (next to dessert, heh) for Pyramids!

T46
Kyoto finishes a worker, and starts a settler. It’s rocking 21 h/t, and will regrow the moment the settler finishes. More importantly, I make an executive decision. Look at that spot right between those four chocolate bars. There’s no part of that spot that doesn’t rock. We’re setting right there. Better call us Willy Wonka ‘cause we’re getting a chocolate river. 

What’s Brazil going to do, declare war? I have no fear defending jungled hills from the AI. Bring it.

T48
Tomyris adopts oligarchy. We’re only one civic behind the leading AI in the race to the early governments. Kyoto’s settler completes, dropping it to 30/33 food, with a +3 food surplus. Nice.  Settler number 2 is bound for chocolate mountain. 

T50 
I kill a third barb scout, and get the Eureka for bronze working. Let’s take a look at the map.

Here’s Willy Wonka’s chocolate factory. Look how much gold there is there. I urge you to settle that settler at the chocolate river location at chocolate dot (in the middle of the 4 chocolate bars.) You must. It is your destiny. There’s room for a +4 campus by the mountains. We should be able to get a third city up by the crab at blue dot - send the warrior up there to investigate. The cool think about blue dot and chocolate dot is that there's a natural chokepoint created by those two mountains - very easy to defend! (Incidentally, the squares hidden behind the pop up are 2f/2h jungled hills - very nice!)

Our second settler is moving to Sulla’s chocolate mountain (red dot) and will be there by T53. 

(http://i.imgur.com/aGnRejH.png)

Here’s the center of our empire. I’ve burnt through 10 worker charges, and despite training 4 workers we already need more. I would send our fourth settler to the chocolate factory to claim the remaining contested ground, and then switch back to worker spam at Kyoto (it’s set up to 4-turn workers with a ridiculous 19 h/t with the 30% boost.) Make sure you switch back to the worker boosting policy when state workforce comes in in 2 turns.

Sendai should move onto a trader after it finishes it’s archer and grows to boost currency. That trader should probably be tasked with creating a road through the vegetation up to my Wonka’s suggested chocolate river city, since that city might see conflict with Brazil. 

There’s a third great gold city up by the triple crab to the East of our empire (man, so much gold on this map!) You can probably do something creative with science with that ring of mountains. The East is mostly barren tundra, which makes claiming the chocolate lands (and maybe the area to the south of Gandhi?) all the more important. Maybe we should colonize across this sea - no one's over there!

Incidentally, I'm starting to understand why the AI is placed where it is. Inland sea looks like it has a lot of tiles, but the vast majority of those tiles are at the poles and buried in tundra! The only two places where there is temperate land are on the west and east edges of the sea - the entire temperate/equatorial zone of this map is underwater. All of the action on inland sea is happening along the sea's coast - which is great for us, since we have divine wind. The vast majority of the world is a snowball. Fun! 

Finally, our poor scout is nearly as far away from our starting location as it’s possible to be (check out the minimap on that last picture), and still (!) hasn’t found a single city state or a natural wonder. I wish you luck.

Here’s the save. Claim Willy Wonka’s chocolate land for me. 

[Ranamar]

I don't know if it's just me, but your later images all seem to be dead. I can't wait to see Chocolate Mountain up close, though.

[Ruined Everything]

Huh. They work for me. Any advice on how to refresh the links? Is anyone else having a problem?

https://ruinedeverything.imgur.com/all/ is where my images are sitting.

EDIT: Where do the images start breaking?

[Ruined Everything]

I deleted and reposted one of the images (check T50 to marvel at the wonders of the chocolate river.) If that doesn't work for you, I'll link to all the images below like I did that one.

[Molach]

Thats a fun read.

Good turn on the builer-ing and settlering and barbfighting. Thanks for leaving all city states and wonders to me.

Unmet "player" is indeed a city-state. Why AIs feel they need to kill those poor puppies with tons of land to xlaim, I do not know.

Playing tonight because work, in about 14 hours.

Discuss!

which government...

tech to apprenticeship?

do-we-really-want-tons-of-science-while-rushing-cities-and-districts?

[Molach]

Trade route..? From Chocolate hill to cap for the road, the minuscule yield and trading posts? To India? Brazil?

Also, Chicken Pizza (forgot how the original is spelled)