Civ6 Succession Game 1: Commercial Free Programming

[Ruined Everything]

Pedro of Brazil in particular is playing a nice game here, leading in almost every category in the rankings and only slightly behind us in score. I guess these AIs didn't get the message that they are all supposed to be terrible in Civ6?

Let's not get silly here. I mean I can almost feel the tension in the air due to this nail-biting cliffhanger you have here.

I mean, Civ6 does have nice aspects, but the AI is not really one of them. By the way, if you really want to have a tight game, where the AI is able to even take a city, try the same map (Inland Sea) on deity Always War with barbarians enabled. It can certainly be nail-biting stuff.

I disagree. Pedro's AI doesn't do a terrible job with tourism, and with a couple more bonuses he could be quite good. His effects are less pronounced because the AI isn't good enough to force you to divert to military stuff/invade you and mess you up. If the military AI was better, he'd be quite dangerous - imaging spending all your production and attention dealing was repeated Tomyris horsemen invasions while Pedro sat in a corner building art galleries and stealing all the cultural great people. Scary stuff. 

[Molach]

Great writeup Sullla.

Plan:Building seems nice. Cant log in to check tech costs or such.

We dont have many breathtaking seaside tiles..but perhaps the north coastof our inland lake has more?

If we wont get faith for a naturalist  we can use faith (400 or so) to buy theater buildings in catholic cities. God knows (heh) if a given city will be catholic in the future though.

[Sullla]

Good discussion! Let me try to offer some thoughts on your post, Ruined Everything.

- I think it's cheaper to research Stirrups and Gunpowder (Stirrups with the Eurkea), buy a musketman, and thwack a barb than it is to research the second half of square rigging. I might preserve that barb camp for barb thwacking duty. I'm also going to look at building those privateers.

Would it really be cheaper or faster to do this? I think this may be one of those cases where it's better not to chase after the tech boosts and simply head straight for what we really want. Square Rigging tech currently is listed as taking 10 turns to research, for example. We could save 5 turns by killing a unit with a musket. However, that would require researching Stirrups (3 turns) and Gunpowder (8 turns), building a musketman, and then finding a barbarian to kill. How long is that going to take? Sure, we're saving researching if the goal is to get every tech... but that's not our goal in this game! All we care about is the tourism stuff, and there's nothing we want anywhere in that part of the tech tree. Computers will double all sources of tourism, and getting there as fast as possible is what will do the most to speed us to a victory.

Getting the privateers to boost Electricity tech could be more doable, since we have more turns until hitting that tech and it would save 8 turns (out of 16 total). However, most of our cities are pretty tied up on building infrastructure right now, and privateers aren't exactly cheap at 280 production / 940 gold purchase price. Still, it may be worth doing, I don't know. It also might be worth grabbing one of the lategame governments to boost Computers tech after that, since our cultural output is so strong. I think we should stay in Merchant Republic to retain the 2 extra trade routes, but researching one of the lategame governments for the boost could be a good call.

- Tech-wise, is it wise to delay radio for computers? Computers gives a earlier boost, but it does delay our high-production broadcast centers/great musicians, perhaps to irrelevance. If we go computers first, we should make sure we take the opportunity to get power plants up to boost the broadcast centers the moment we get Radio.

Yes. 100 percent yes. Broadcast centers are not especially good in terms of pursuing a cultural victory. They produce a small amount of Great Person points (that we don't really need) and provide a single Great Work of Music slot. Those aren't all that important, as they have no theming bonuses like the museums do. Seriously, each broadcast center with a slotted Great Work is worth 4 tourism. That's it. Museums are worth significantly more, and even amphitheatres are better. And that's leaving out the fact that the broadcast centers are extremely expensive to build - 525 production each! Contrast that to Computers, which will instantly double all sources of tourism everywhere without needing to invest any production at all. Computers is the much better tech.

Of course we do eventually want both, and we'll build some broadcast centers in our core cities as soon as they're available. We'll also want to build seaside resorts on the available tiles, and they get unlocked at Radio tech as well. But the fastest path to victory is digging up artifacts and stuffing them into museums, with the big boosts to tourism that come from Computers, Heritage Tourism policy, and (eventually) Online Communities for the big trade route boost. Broadcast centers and seaside resorts are small additions to that, not the main show.

Trust me, once we get Computers tech and Heritage Tourism, plus a few more museums completed and themed, our tourism is going to shoot up to about 300-400 per turn.  

- Is it worth building Portola and Forbidden city to get an 8 policy slot government for computers + tourism? Is it worth going archaeologist or Ruhr at Iron Chef? Where were we planning on putting Ruhr? I know somehow had a great location but I can't find it in the thread.

It looks like Potala Palace has already been built, so that's probably out. There are some wonders out there that are pretty cheap now that we're hitting Industrial production; Ruhr wouldn't be a bad call, for example. (If we had a location for Ruhr planned, I also don't know where it was, heh.) Colosseum and Forbidden City are also both looking pretty tempting, now that they are getting relatively inexpensive.

Also on this note: we have a Great Engineer coming in about 8 turns who will give us two charges of 480 production towards wonders. What do we want to use him on?

- We need 7 art museums to store all of our great works of art. We should make sure we have them built on time/we don't accidentally build too many archeology museums.

We definitely need to keep an eye on this. Fortunately we only need one museum per Great Artist, and we have two so far, with a third Great Artist due soon. The next museum should probably be an art one for that reason. In the long run though, we'll probably want more archaeology museums, just because the quantity of ruins is likely to be larger than the number of Great Artists we manage to pop.

- We should wait until we get power plants, and then use the higher production to start spamming settlers for throwaway culture cities.

Agreed! This map has plenty of room for throwaway cities if we need more cultural slots. Our current list of 13 cities is probably enough for a while though. That's enough for 5-6 art museums and the rest archaeological ones, which I think will be enough.

Good luck with the next turnset!

[Ruined Everything]

Here are my plans for the coming turn set. As always, take the day to critique, and I'll play the turns in the evening.

City breakdown

To the north, Candy Mountain and Red Herring need culture stuff, and my beloved Chocolate River needs to industrialize. I'd like to get more housing into Candy Mountain and Chocolate River - I might look into building a neighborhood if we get the relevant civic. Our science isn't doing so hot right now as well - depending on which districts have already been built I might go campus before culture up here - computers ASAP would be very nice indeed. (Our culture rate is crazy right now - we're 3-4 turning most civics.   .)



The center of our empire took a little thought:

The man ordered more science, and Iron Chef can churn out a Rationalism boosted library and university in 8 turns for 12 science - 1/6 of what we’re making right now. After that, we should consider building an entertainment complex + Colosseum - Iron Chef can build both in 16 turns.

Wheaties can also start on a campus in 6 turns. I suspect the best thing to do is drop it on Truffle Dreams’s farm and get Truffle dream working a boosted farm instead (i.e. by farming the plains tile surrounded by three grassland farms. 

Truffle Dream should probably construct a granary for growth. Granary + farm + truffles will have it up to size 7-8 rapidly, at which point it’ll have 2 mines and 2 timbre mills and can begin working on culture buildings/campus in earnest.

Feeling Crabby is… chill, I guess. It ain’t gonna bother nobody, and nobody gonna bother it. 

Need Food Pls is probably gonna buy an archeologist which will boat over to Saladin and mine those ruins near him for +tourism. It’s second archeologist will finish just in time to start populating Chocolate river’s museum using the ruins close to the center of our empire.





The East is really feeling the lack of trade routes. Under normal circumstances, the hill rich terrain would be some of the most productive in our empire. Currently, with no boosts to production it's pretty underdeveloped. More culture stuff everywhere, with the exception of Crab Cakes (which is gonna build out a granary first.) I was amused to note that a base culture district adjacent to the city settler is pulling in 10 culture/turn these days.

General notes
Tech wise, I agree with Sullla's points about the beeline to Computers. His analysis was edifying - very helpful indeed. Hopefully rationalism + campuses will get the science flowing. Culture-wise I'm sticking to our beeline to Cultural Hertiage with one small exception - a detour through Opera and Ballet for Grand Opera. 100% to all cultural buildings will be insane.

Government-wise I like rationalism/grand opera/+1 amenities to all cities with 2 districts (most of them.) I'm gonna get rid of logistics, triangular trade and the cultural adjacency thing - we have no workers to boost, I'd rather +14 science per turn (from just Wheaties and Iron Chef) than +12 g/t and +3 faith/turn (we're not gonna get a national park at 8 faith/turn, I suspect) and grand opera is strictly better than aesthetics.

Wonder-wise, a quick Colosseum in the core would give some much needed amenities (and a handful of cheap tourism.) We could one shot it with that great engineer - seems a good use, Sullla. The spot for Ruhr is two west of Iron Chef - Need Food Pls would love it - if it could work all of its mines. Unfortunately, it needs food, pls, and without trade routes it's will never become the monster it would be in any other game.

Again, as per Sullla's comments, Candy Mountain should have an art museum out for our next artist. From there I'll need to work out if we're gonna get another archaeologist or artist next. If worst comes to worst, we can convert a worker and a settler into a new art museum somewhere in the tundra - I really do like the idea of the Polar Bear Enlightenment Program and hope we can implement it at some point. 

I think that's it. Any thoughts?

[Ranamar]

I need to look through this a bit more for more comments, but I was going to put Ruhr at Need Food Pls. if we could ever manage to feed all those tiles, it is basically entirely hills, so the production would be absurd with +1 at every mine.

Beyond that, I'd prioritize factories over museums if we have enough slots for our expected artifacts and works of art. (Only if we have enough slots, to be fair.) That is to say, I'd be in favor of Just-In-Time building for tourism slots.

Oh, one more thing. I think archaeologists don't have charges. Rather, they despawn then their museum fills up. Given that, we should be able to keep a single archaeologist alive longer if we aggressively transfer the artifacts that are found to another museum.

Edit: more things...
Wheaties already laid down an entertainment district. You should finish that and build the arena and zoo there. it should cover most of our core cities with its AOE happy. (This should probably be the next build after the factory, actually...) come to think of it, we could build the Colosseum on one of the flatlands next to it, and it doesn't necessarily need to be Wheaties that builds it. (That said, one of the flat tiles next to it is first-ring for Wheaties, and the other one hasn't been grown onto. The third option is a forest we could do worse than to chop, though.) Unfortunately, it looks like there's no way to shuffle tiles around such that Iron Chef can build it.

Oh, also, if you get some spare builder charges, it would be great to finally mine all the hills around Need Food Pls's industrial zone. I think I see two which have not been mined yet.

[Molach]

Plans seem good, on phone so cant log in though.

From the article Sullla posted, I got the impression that arch. museum has 3 spots, can support 1 and only 1 archeologist, and that you cant move artifacts around until the museum is full. Then I suppose he will despawn like Ranamar said.

British will have 2 guys running around filling up the 6 slots, but only them.

[Ruined Everything]

I need to look through this a bit more for more comments, but I was going to put Ruhr at Need Food Pls.  if we could ever manage to feed all those tiles, it is basically entirely hills, so the production would be absurd with +1 at every mine.

Beyond that, I'd prioritize factories over museums if we have enough slots for our expected artifacts and works of art. (Only if we have enough slots, to be fair.)  That is to say, I'd be in favor of Just-In-Time building for tourism slots.

Oh, one more thing.  I think archaeologists don't have charges.  Rather, they despawn then their museum fills up.  Given that, we should be able to keep a single archaeologist alive longer if we aggressively transfer the artifacts that are found to another museum.

Edit: more things...
Wheaties already laid down an entertainment district.  You should finish that and build the arena and zoo there.  it should cover most of our core cities with its AOE happy.  (This should probably be the next build after the factory, actually...)  come to think of it, we could build the Colosseum on one of the flatlands next to it, and it doesn't necessarily need to be Wheaties that builds it.  (That said, one of the flat tiles next to it is first-ring for Wheaties, and the other one hasn't been grown onto.  The third option is a forest we could do worse than to chop, though.)  Unfortunately, it looks like there's no way to shuffle tiles around such that Iron Chef can build it.

Oh, also, if you get some spare builder charges, it would be great to finally mine all the hills around Need Food Pls's industrial zone.  I think I see two which have not been mined yet.

I agree with the Just-In-Time approach to museum building. Lazy compilation FTW.

I think Colosseum > Zoo - I'm going to investigate whether Iron Chef can build it - if it can I'll definitely do a small amenities push in our core.

We have zero (0!) builders. Yet another thing I need to get around to. Maybe I'll try and shuffle in public works at some point soon.

Plans seem good, on phone so cant log in though.

From the article Sullla posted, I got the impression that arch. museum has 3 spots, can support 1 and only 1 archeologist, and that you cant move artifacts around until the museum is full. Then I suppose he will despawn like Ranamar said.

British will have 2 guys running around filling up the 6 slots, but only them.

This is my understanding of how archeologists work too. I'll play around a bit though.

[Ruined Everything]

T140
Aright. Let’s make this turn set transpire. 

The first thing I do is examine our city’s micro. It all looks pretty good - the only change I make is to swap Need Food Pls from working an unimproved crab to an unimproved plains hill to up it’s production slightly.

The second thing I notice is that our lands to the East our still somewhat unimproved. Look at poor Crab Cakes. It’s giving up 5 hammers and and 1 food for lack of improved tiles. Now granted this isn’t a huge deal - but all else being equal we’d rather not if we have the production - and we certainly do. I switch Need Food Pls from an archaeologist to a worker - I’ll buy it an archaeologist to get its artifacts in 10 turns sooner as per Sullla’s suggestion. After that, it’ll build an electronics factory and a campus.




I notice we can make alliances with Pedro and Victoria. I don’t *think* that an alliance is going to make them drag us into war (or at least, the civopedia seems not to mention it) and I know that allies give crazy good trade deals, so I sign them both up. Pedro’s hidden policy is heavy industry - I guess he likes our production? Lizzy’s hidden policy is City-State Ally - I don’t see any diplomatic pluses or maluses from it. 

Pedro has two great works of writing. He’d be crushing us in GWP if we didn’t have Stockholm. For what it’s worth, Pedro doesn’t do a terrible job with culture victory stuff.  (Pedro would be willing to sell us both of us great works for 91 g/t for 30 turns and 1000 gold. Maybe we should take the deal, and immediately war/peace him? Is that something we can do? (No it isn’t - we’re allied. Damn. At least he can’t declare war on us now.))

I/T 140
Saladin and Pedro’s apostles engage in vicious religious warfare near Need Food Pls.

T 141
Enlightenment comes in. I switch out logistics for Retainers, and put liberalism in its place. 

Our scout is still alive! Go scout!

We had more workers than I thought. Yay Sullla! 

We can 1 turn (!) Opera and Ballet. Wonderbar.

I/T 141
Lightning crackles and more blood is shed outside Need Food Pls. Life is biblical out there. 

T 142
I swap in Median Quarter to raise the housing cap of our biggest cities, and replace Aesthetics with Grand Opera. Culture shoots up to …250 from 248 per turn. At least it was an improvement. The combination of liberalism and retainers has all of our cities on +2 happiness or higher. Very nice. 

Our next great artist is coming in 4 turns and we have nowhere to put his works. Very sad. The fastest way to get more space is for Frosted Flakes to build an art gallery - due in 11 turns. I would have been nice for it to build a power plant, but tourism must come first. 

I/T 142
Crab Cakes and Truffle Dream have gone from Islam to Christian and back to Islam every turn now for 3 turns. Our poor citizens.

I/T 143
Gandhi, Pedro and Saladin’s apostles are fighting and dying at a ferocious rate. Lots of lightning. Pedro gets serious and sends an inquisitor.



T144
Mary Shelly is born. We grab another 8 tourism points. With our great engineer’s help, Iron Chef can build the Forbidden City in just 10 turns. After it churns out it’s science buildings I’m going to have it do that. 

T145
Our cities are growing rapidly with Medina quarter’s increased housing capacity. Iron chef is now working an unimproved hill. Need Food Pls can 3-turn workers, so I’m going to have it do that for a bit.

[Ruined Everything]

T146
Titian is born. He goes to Frosted Flakes to await his art museum. The next great artist is only 13 turns away! Candy Mountain will belatedly get on cranking out an art museum after finishing it’s electronics factory next turn, but even then it will finish a turn late.

T147
Our densely packed core is starting to rock production. Iron Chef hits 60 production per turn and is climbing. It might get 100 production/turn by the end of the game if we have time to build a full complement of power plants.

Eiffel is born. I think we should use him on the Forbidden Palace - extra civics slots are always nice (rationalism or aesthetics, probably), Eiffel is still pretty far away, and at nearly 300 culture/turn we don’t need Bolshoi. The next great engineer is… Ada Lovelace!  Very nice. We’ll have that eureka for computers in 15 turns - nicely on time.



T148
Need Food Pls finishes another 3 worker, and I send him east. Need Food Pls and Iron Chef can 5 turn settlers. Beethoven is born, and he goes East to Need Food Pls because why the heck not. Gustav Eiffel positions himself for a potential Portola boost. Archaeologist reaches the Arabian ruins. Gosh this game is fun to play.



T149
Vicious 4-way religious warfare breaks out as Victoria starts sending apostles down too. Pedro has kept building wonders - he’s built Itza and started Portola. I wonder how much that’ll help him.

T150
The state of our empire is strong. 

In the north, Chocolate River is working on its archeologist, Red Herring is industrializing, and Candy Mountain is frantically churning out an art museum in time for Qiu Ying (8 turns away.)



In our core, Need Food Pls is churning out workers. The North needs worker help (chopping jungles and mining) - I would have it continue to do so.

As it happens, only Wheaties can build the Colosseum. (8 turns.) Iron Chef can also 10 turn Forbidden Palace (with Eiffel's help), but has to sacrifice one of it’s wheat farms to do so. Given that it has a 12 food surplus, I would do so, and replace it with a 4 food farm to the east of Wheaties, but it’s your decision.



The East is just beginning to build workshops. The land is still a bit underdeveloped, but I have a swarm of workers on their way from Need Food Pls.  



Keep an eye on the gold situation. It’s dropped 40 points since the start of my turn set - partially due to deals expiring, but also partially due to our building glut. 

Save is attached. Good luck!

[Gaspar]

Game looks like its chugging along nicely. Any chance someone can post the cultural victory screen for those of us lurking?