[Spoilers] Ichabod, the Civ King

[Ichabod]

Finished my first Lavra. Krill is up to 7 GPro points. I decided to speed up my second Lavra, which will be chopped next turn into my second City. I'm hoping to get it done in 1t, but it'll be close, when considering the -5% from the negative amenities the city will have (those apply to chops, right?). Finishing it in one turn is the way to go because you want to avoid spending time building things without % bonuses. 

After the Lavras, it's settler time, in both cities, using the 50% settler civic. I'm up to enough military (3 warriors, two slingers), so expansion is the next order of business.

PP will be done in turn 40!   That's incredible for a Civ other than Rome to achieve, even more so without a cultural CS, and I'm proud of it. Bacchus Rome seems to be on track to reach about the same time we do, but everyone else seems to be behind. Not sure yet what government I want to go with, but Oligarchy is likely to be it. Why? Because of policies distribution. I want the diplomacy one for faster envoys, I want a military one for % bonuses and I want a wildcard one for GG, GPro or GSci points, depending of what we go for. And the only way to get those is through Oligarchy. Autocracy is up for debate, though... Perhaps the faster envoys aren't worth a second military slot and the improved yields from Autocracy. Who knows.

[Ichabod]

Scratch that about the amenity penalty. A city growing from size 3 to 4 doesn't require an extra amenity. After size 3, you need an extra amenity every 2 sizes. 

The more you know, heh? 

[Thoth]

Lurker question: I don't own c6....what is "PP"? And why do you consider it so important?

[Ichabod]

Lurker question:  I don't own c6....what is "PP"?  And why do you consider it so important?  

Hey, Thoth!

PP refers to a civic called Political Philosophy. Essentially, it enables the first goverment changes of the game, where you can choose between Autocracy, Oligarchy and Classical Republic. These 3 options allow you to use 4 civic cards together, up from the 2 civic cards from the initial government, called Chiefdom. So, essentially, you can run double the Civic cards from the players that are still in the initial government.

These governments also give a boost to envoy acquisition (which you spend on City States to get even more boosts) ang give you some new card options. Also, some small bonuses, like Classical Republic +1 amenity for cities with districts.

Essentially, getting on these new governments early helps your snowball. You run more cards, get more envoys and the distance between you and your opponents widen. So, the faster I get there, the more advantage I get over the others. Arguably, it's the civic that gives you the biggest increase when reached, so the initial turns of Civ 6 are usually a beeline to it (the only time you won't do it is if you are rushing with mounted units). And since getting there fast depends a lot on the usually pretty random early culture and early Inspirations, there can be a big difference between timings. I'm up to 9 culture per turn, while there are players still at 2 culture per turn.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Just to emphasize, the number of cards you can run really is crucial in Civ 6. For one, the production boosting cards are so good that most players loathe producing anything without a card in place to boost it - it feels like production down the drain. For another, they also boost resource chops and apply the overflow to anything that you build next, so card-boosted chops are a (regrettably, in my opinion) very important part of multiplayer play - you can rush wonders, districts, settlers or other units, anything you want, really.

Then you have cards that do things like give you bonus culture generation for every district you have, or more gold per trade route. Anyone with more cards than the other guy has a huge leg up on him. I'd say after cities and districts themselves, civics cards are the most important part of the snowball.

[Ichabod]

Chopped into a slinger -> Lavra in the second city. Krill has 9 GPro points already, I have 2, but I'll overtake him 4/2 in the points per turn. The slinger wants to go north, to try and get the archery Eureka (as you can see, there's a barb camp up there). 

Capital is working on a settler, that'll be chopped. I changed policies to the 50% on settlers, since we finished State Workforce. Back of the envelope math gave me an ETA of 2 turns for that settler, but I'm not sure it's right. I have awesome terrain around, with loads of happiness resources (seriously, I have them all...) and high yield/choppable tiles. I need to come with a plan for this land grab... My units are still revealing some more tiles here and there, so I won't be amking any final decisions yet. I'm considering getting to 5 cities, with 2 settelrs from the Capital and 1 from the second city. After that, getting some horses and capturing City States seems to be the order of business. 

How do I get a GG while all this is happening? Is it worth it to invest on a Camp? Do I go for some more builders?

Or perhaps taking Bandar Brunei with just warriors/archers could be possible? If I'm going for Oligarchy, perhaps... We'd need to hope for some AI idiocy, adn prehaps Krill can meddle with our plans.



Great lands down here. fresh water, high food, high yields, new happiness resources. I get the feeling that this map was cooked a bit, with resources being added. Or I just have a tremendous start and my opponents weren't so lucky. It seems that I'm the middle of the map, so perhaps I need a bit more help due to the startegic disadvantages.

[Ichabod]

Krill is down to 1 GPro GPP per turn. Did he get a district pillaged by a barb or player? It's the only thing that makes sense... I'm getting further ahead of him in the GPRO race, anyway, and I don't think I can lose it anymore.

Emperor K went for the early great Scientist, so I'm happy I went for the GG as my 2ng GP plan (I bet he'd invest a whole lot of hammers if he saw he had competition, and I think he won't be the only one going in that direction). I'll be placing a discounted Encampment next turn, if all goes well, and I'll be running the GG card, once it's avaiable. The idea is basically getting it so I can throw my weight around more easily in the middle of the map. This is also the reason why I decided to settle towards the middle with my next two cities, instead of the perhaps better yield cities of the backlines. I need to project my power right now and the best way to do it is by capturing Bandar Brunei. That city is great and I can defend it by using DotF and GGs.

Yerevan will also fall as soon as I can capture it. That's because they have a Holy Site and are building a shrine. Too good to pass up (also, they will give me the naval Eurekas). The city lacks food, but it's free, so, why not?

[Ichabod]

Update before I leave. I have 2 cities, with a settler on the move and another settler waiting for a chop to finish. 



This screenshot shows a lot of info. I just completed BW and I have iron on the Capital and a second source to my south. The city I considered settling on the south instead of this northern jungle one would have that iron, so it'd be even better. But, strategic wise, settling north is way better. That's also the reason why I'm building a trader, I want a road on that city ASAP (a second reason is to help the new city grow faster, since it has high hammer tiles, but not a lot of good food tiles). To be fair, i'm still undecided about where exactly the new city will go. My current idea is 1SW of the deer, but I haven't made up my mind yet and I may end up settling it closer.

I wanted to attack BB with horsemen, but I'm reconsidering it, perhaps going with warriors + oligarchy or swordsmen. Swords would be faster, since I would only need to upgrade them from my warriors. My gold generation is low, but I'm about to take a undefended barb camp with my slinger. There's also a barb camp close to where my third city is intended to go, I wonder if I get gold by clearing a barb camp through border expansion of a city? Anyway, if I can get there fast enough, 2 swords are bound to take BB easily, I just need a third unit to complete the siege. The problem with attacking with warriors is that Krill is close and he can probably intercept me if I bring only an AI-stupidity capable force.

The more I think of it, the more I like the swords idea. This would also allow me to take my time getting the archery Eureka.



I have 5 civics already, so I'm pretty sure 57 hammers is a discounted price, when the base cost is 54. I didn't have time to check, though... Hopefully. Anyway, after I placed this Camp, I could also place a 57 hammers Camp in my second City. According to Cornflakes formula, this shouldn't be the case. I don't know, I was in a rush. Hopefully things are working out. 57 hammers for a district is pretty low anyway you slice it, so I'm happy.   I'll try to chop overflow this beauty soon, to start working on that GG.

Just so you know, my plan is to get a classical/medieval GG, to boost early units and knights/xbows and an Industrial GG, to boost Cossacks. I'm pretty sure I can do it, with enough dedication.



I finally found a Natural Wonder (getting +10 XP, which was, in practice, only 1 XP, since my scout was 14/15 and XP doesn't overflow). This shows how you can't get too fixated about Eurekas. Usually, skipping inspirations is more common, since there's not a whole lot of civics to choose from in the beggining and you need to reach PP ASAP. But it's easy to go for another tech trying to fish for an Eureka. If I had done that with Astrology, I'd be severely behind on the GPRO race. By the way, I wonder if finding the second Great Bareer Reef tile gives +10 XP again. That would be nice.



Man, what a great place for a city. But we can always backfill later. This is actually a city worth settling, even a little bit later, due to all the great tiles. To the east, you can see another city site, that will smetime be settled with the only purpose of harvesting a whole lot of things.

[Ichabod]

I'm back from a trip to Rio de Janeiro, where I watched an amazing Radiohead concert. I'm in a pretty good mood! The game is going fine as well, though I'm running a big risk in this last turn.

I reached PP on turn 40 and I wonder if that's a record. Government went Oligarchy, due to avaiable slots. 



Back of the napkin maths revealed these would be the best hammers possible, considering the 2 turns I'll be spending on these policies (I'll be chaging the wildcard slot to Strategos, once I reach it). As you can see, I'm planning on getting builders, from Capital and City number 2. Ah, the chop I made into a settler was with the +50% settler still in place.



Settled 3rd city on the coffee, instead of moving a bit further east. East would give me some 1/3 tiles, which I think will be better than a lot of 2/2 tiles and it'd get a +3 faith spor for a Lavra from the get go. But settling now makes for a faster city and I want things to be fast. The trader finishing in the Capital changed duty, I sent him from Capital to BB, instead of a food route from 3rd city to Cap. That makes up for a great stepping stone to conquering BB, we get +5 gold per turn to upgrade into swords and we get a nice little road to our target. Perfect!

The builder from capital will use its charges to chop a warrior into Camp for Capital, mine the Iron for IW Eureka + resource for upgrade and chop a forest for Yaroslav, to overflow and finish a Lavra. I placed the Lavra next to the Capital Lavra, which amounts for +1 faith to the Lavra in the Capital. Most of my faith will come from the religious buildings running Choral Music, so I'm not too worried about adjacency for Lavras, I'm more focused on adjacency for Campus.

My idea is to get 2 discounted Campus ASAP, as science is my main weakness. Divine sparked Rowain is going for Hypathia as well, so I'm yet more convinced joining that race was a bad move. I can get a 4 ajacency Campus and a 3 Adjacency one and I'm planning on going pretty quickly to the double adjacency card. This is an obvious beeline to Cossacks and I'm planning to get there by skipping a lot of techs. That's very late into the future, though.



My current techs. I'm going for IW now, probably shouldn't have wasted turns into Archery, but it's not hugely bad. I'll upgrade 2/3 swords and try to conquer BB. Krill will not like it, but if I get my planned GG and DotF, I don't think he'll be able to do much about it (I'm saving faith for a missionary buy and I'll get a Shrine in the Capital when possible, so I can spread DotF to BB once I capture it). Main problem would be if he decides to go for the city as well. We'll see... I can probably get an attack ready in 10 turns, and I won't be delaying it for any reason. 



Turn 41 - here's the risk I'm taking. I'm pretty sure that Rowain scout has the forest promo, so he can take my settler, if he goes for it. Since he can't see it, I don't think he knows my city went down a size, he has no reason to expect a settler to be there and he is very unlikely to make an opportunstic attack, I risked moving the slinger in a way that won't delay the founding of my 4th city, but leaves the settler open to a leap of faith from that unit. We'll see what happens.

Ah, my damned game bugged out and it always start with the resources bubbles off, even though the UI says they should be on. That's why my screenshots look so bland...

[Ichabod]

Going for that GG. Bacchus has a placed Camp in the city I can see, near Carthage. He is Rome, so he'll be early to PP as well. Finally, Bacchus is prone to some cutesy plays, so he'll probably try and run projects and the like to get the GG. Ah, and he's being ded-lurked by Archduke, who is probably going all out saying he needs to rush someone. You sum this all up, and we have competition for the GG. 

I can rush it with faith, since I'm actually doing pretty well in the faith department. If I can get the archery Eureka soon (Yerevan's quest), I can use my Mysticism envoy into a Suzerainity of Yerevan and enjoy even more faith in my Lavras (though I'll waste one envoy, as I'll probably conquer that city soon). I don't want to waste hammers on GG projects, though. I'm not worried about being attacked by Bacchus, as I'll have an army of my own and DotF, but getting that GG would be pretty nice.



Rowain didn't capture my settler, but he can mess up my settler pathing. I'm not sure he'll do it, probably not. I see myself being allied with Rowain, because he's the likely target for Bacchus Legions, if I'm reading the map correctly (that would be me, if I didn't get DotF).

Religion comes in 7 turns. I'm messing with the idea of going for DotF + Church Property. Why? Well, it'll take a while before I have shrines/temples to make Choral Music good, and I'm doing pretty well in the culture department (with a great pantheon + soon to be Great Writer). I'm pretty sure Krill would go JE over Choral, and I'd prefer Choral, I think, but I don't mind Krill having the first choice, either one is good... So, I could choose any of the choices later...

That would be a great plan, but I just remembered that Stonehenge exists. Argh! Stonehenge + Arabia means that the last 2 religions will likely be founded before I can get an Apostle, so my idea is probably out. I can't justify losing Choral/JE just to get Church Property. And someone is bound to pick Choral/JE as opening beliefs (though the Stonehenge builder and Arabia won't have Holy Sites to use Choral, so perhaps they wouldn't go that way).

I'm being too cute here, I think. Choral Music is really good for me, since it allows me to skip culture generation in favour of science, while I stockpile faith to purchase units. Better to stick with the plan.

I really want to capture BB. Krill is top power, with ~100, while I have ~90. That's not a lot of units, so I'm not sure that he is getting ready for that attack, might just be using his pantheon to get some boosted chops. I'll put a sentry there, which will later be used to get the city under siege.