Civ 6, Adv 1 - Roads Away from Rome

[Sir Bruce]

Starting Civ 6 with Rome - should be fun! My Civ skills - which were not terribly great to begin with - are extremely depreciated since I played only about 20 hours of Civ 5 many years ago (but a few hundred of 4!). Also, I am coming into Civ 6 more or less blind with respect to new mechanics and gameplay elements. All I really know (from 5 minutes of Sullla's youtube channel and the first posts of a couple other adventure reports) is that it's still 1UPT! This potluck should be a great way to explore some of the new ideas while constantly being confused about how or why anything works the way it does.

Before we get started, I'll copy Brick's summary of Rome and its leader, Trajan:

---

Rome
Unique Ability: All Roads lead to Rome: All cities start with a trading post, and new cities in trade route range of your capital will automatically have a road going to them. Trade routes going through your cities earn extra gold.
Unique Unit: Legion: Replaces the Swordsman. Has higher combat strength and does not require Iron to build, but is more costly. Can construct roads and forts as though it were a Military Engineer.
Unique District: Baths: Replaces the Aqueduct district. Provides an additional bonus of +2 Housing and +1 Amenity.

Trajan
Leader Bonus: Trajan's Column: All cities start with an additional City Center building. (Starts with a Monument building in the Ancient era)
Leader Agenda: Optimus Princeps: He tries to include as much territory as possible into his empire, and he dislikes civilizations who control little territory.

---

Looking at the Civilopedia, it seems that trade is now automated once you have a trader, but it's limited to 15 tiles on land (30 on water) and that Rome's ability allows for easier rebasing and extension of these limits. Apparently trading posts provide a "bonus to yield" but the Civilopedia doesn't say how much... But the automatic road placement between cities seems great! Automated road networks within your empire must be the biggest draw of the Roman ability.

The Legion is Rome's unique unit, and replaces the Swordsman. It is slightly stronger (40 vs 35) and slightly more expensive (110 vs 90) but doesn't require Iron to build. They can also build a Roman Fort a unique (?) upgrade that provides a defensive bonus as well as automatic fortification. So Rome's early to mid goals may be: build a front-line city to a neighbor, quickly move your legions to the front (from the automatic roads) and then build a fort as a forward base to launch an invasion.

Rome's unique district is the Bath, which replaces the aqueduct and supplies fresh water with a bonus to housing and amenities. I am totally unclear on what districts, housing, and amenities are! Districts look like special city extensions that let you build on other tiles? Housing and amenities look more straightforward: city and empire growth limiters.

Then we have Trajan, who automatically generates a city center (it's not clear whether the "additional" means 1 or 2 total though...) At least in ancient times, it's just a free monument in every city - sounds good!

Finally, we have his agenda, which I'm guessing is for an AI controlled Rome.

So, as discussed, it looks like Rome's plan is to expand fairly quickly and use the free monuments to control territory while taking advantage of a more powerful trade network to use gold to further expand. Heading towards Engineering (for Baths districts) should help keep the cities growing and then Iron Working for early warfare.

Alright, let's fire up the start and see what we've got!

[Sir Bruce]

Here's the start.




We're on a river (usually good but not sure how quite yet :P). We have 3 resources in range - stone (requires Mining), cattle (requires Animal Husbandry), and Tea (requires irrigation). The warrior moved to the hill revealing more fertile grassland as well as Jade (requires Mining). The start is filled with food (growth!) and two luxuries so early expansion seems like a promising goal. It's a little confusing that the cattle icon is milk and not an icon of a cow, but oh well.

I'd really like to have the cattle in my city for early growth (a pasture provides +1 food) and I'm not sure how city expansion works yet. I'm guessing culture adds up and then I get to grab new tiles? I'll go ahead and settle in place.




First oddity is that by settling I actually lose some vision! I guess my settler has better binoculars than the actual city?! But it does reveal rice nearby. More growth potential!

Here's my city screen - I've switched my one citizen away from the stone to the grassland. And here are amenities and housing. Looks like amenities are global limits and housing are city limits on growth. Both are fine for now. Fresh water seems super important for growth though - my housing from water is 5! Without a river that would be 3, I believe.




Other details on cities: You can buy expansion tiles for gold and faith (no idea how religion works though). And they appear cheap to start (50g). I'm guessing that goes up with expansion. You can also buy units and buildings with gold (or faith) for 4x the amount of tiles. I'm getting a 3.5 culture per turn but can't find any indication of how much is required to expand (if that's how it works) and can't find anything about it in Civilopedia. I queue up a scout to explore my surroundings which should finish in 8-10 turns depending on how I use my second citizen.

Time to choose a tech path!




Interestingly, it looks like you can boost almost all of the techs on the tree. I'm guessing that's a bonus (flat or scaling?) to research if you meet a requirement? Anyway, I have resources requiring all three early techs so it's between Pottery and Animal Husbandry. I wish I knew where my borders would expand to to help me choose! If it goes south I want Animal Husbandry and if it goes east I want pottery. And if it goes anywhere else then I'll just be mad! I'll choose pottery so that I can then boost irrigation by building a farm on my rice.

Finally, it looks like there's another tech tree for government! I suppose this is a refinement on the social policies of Civ 5? It doesn't look like I have any choice to start so gogo Code of Laws.




And with that, the first turn ends!

[Sir Bruce]

Hills are too hard to see! The middle hex in the top is the hill and the other two are flat grassland. I have to squint to make that out...

[Sir Bruce]

Some comments from first 15 turns:

My first boost! I found a continent! I thought this was Pangaea? Also, it looks like I had already found two continents from my start so why didn't I get this to begin with? Anyway, Foreign trade got boosted, whatever that means.

Next, Rome's borders expanded. I guess culture did it but there's no info and no pop-up for it. And it chose the worst direction!  I want the rice and cows, not the stupid tea.




First combat! No idea how the numbers work. It's 20 vs 10 combat strength and the Civliopedia reports that all units have 100 HP - it looks like combat strength measures how much of that HP is lost? Before bonuses at least. I attacked and did 46 damage and took 20. So who knows. The scout then ran away and I went back to exploring with my warrior.

Went Pottery->Animal Husbandry->Mining in tech and Code of Laws->Foreign trade in Civics. The boosts lead to some interesting trade-offs. It seems clear that getting a 50% discount on techs is a huge bonus so prioritizing these boost goals as miniquests are going to be a key part of tech planning. I wonder if it will discourage beelining - at least for the ancient and classical boosts it appears that it's much easier to get "current era" boosts than boosts further down the tree which could encourage filling in the tree as you go instead of beelining and backfilling techs later.

World at end of Turn 15. Haven't found any other civs or city-states. Rome is growing fast and I'll probably go warrior->settler. I have no idea how aggressive barbs are but there's a lot of fog of war out there and I need some defense and escort for the settler. Not sure yet where the next city site is. Could be coastal by the crabs and horses or east along the river to grab the marble and grow from all the food.  I have maybe 10-12 turns to decide. A turn 30 settler feels late. Maybe I should have prioritized a builder earlier?

[Sir Bruce]

Huts are too hard to see too! There's a hut to the southeast of my scout that I only noticed because of a pop-up notification. They should add a notification or change the color to contrast better against the terrain.

[Sir Bruce]

Update at turn 30:




I've been slowly exploring - still haven't met any other civs and just the two city-states. You can see a few barbs and their camps in the screenshot. This would get better worse before it gets better. I kept the policy that added +5 strength to barb fights for a long time. They ended up having numerous horsemen and horse archers which were roughly evenly matched with my warriors and lone slinger. Fortunately for me and somewhat unfortunately for Civ 6, the AI for the barbarians appears brain-dead. Sometimes they would throw themselves at fortified warriors on hills for no benefit and other times they would just randomly wander around inside my border without attacking or pillaging. Net cost of barbarian wars was a lone scout and a pillaged pasture (for 2 turns before a builder could repair.

The plan at turn 30 was to finish the settler at Rome then warrior->builder->settler with possibly an additional warrior or spearman and maybe think about the Pyramids at some point. A lot depends on how obnoxious the barbs would get. The settler is headed for the coast and crabs. Also, My initial plan of early warfare is looking useless now. No nearby civs and lots of fertile ground to settle means I should probably switch into a peaceful expansion for the time being.




My second city is founded! It can work two horses, crabs, and rice and maybe spices in the longer term. Looking good. You can see Rome's automatic roads between cities which ended up proving a godsend in barb defense.




Barb attacks! Not pictured: 3 more south of Rome. I eventually cleaned up after some dumb AI moves and then wiped up the outposts which should hopefully improve the situation going forward.

I founded my 3rd city on Turn 53, which headed east to grab marble, rice, and cows in another fertile river valley. For no real reason other than it looks fun you can see that I started production of Pyramids in Rome. Probably better spent on something else but oh well!




State of Rome on Turn 60:




I have three cities up and running. Still haven't met any Civs! I did run a trade route from Rome to Kabul which gets a bonus from the free trading post in the route via Arpinum.

 And that Jakartan warrior in the north is blocking a chokepoint to northern exploration. He hasn't budged in 5 turns so I'll have to send a scout west through Jakarta to see if the rest of the continent is up there. It looks like there are 1-3 more city sites south of the current empire. One by the whales and corn, one by the silver and deer, and maybe one by the iron and crabs (woah gold!). We'll see how expansion costs work though.

I researched Political Philosophy on 60 as well, which gave me a bunch of government choices. Grabbed government and policies to help wonder production to speed the Pyramids along.