Upcoming Civ6 Epics/Adventures Discussion

[Athmos]

Hello !

Well, I've just played (and reported, and commented upon) my first ever RB game. I've probably read hundreds of  reports before without playing, but now that I've tried, I think I'm hooked. So, what about another game for the end-of-the year period ? And If "no spoiler" games are to be called "Epic" from now on, why not Civ VI Epic 1 ?

Now, should we play on epic speed ? I must confess I have no idea about the impact on the game, I only ever played on standard speed in Civ VI so far.

Should we keep the tradition and make it Honorable, possibly even French ?

What about the difficulty level ? Map size ?

Or is it just too early to suggest a new game ?

[Sullla]

I have a scenario ready to go for Civ6 Epic One. I wanted to see the results of the Adventure Two game before picking the final settings. Expect to see more details by the end of this week.

[Athmos]

I have a scenario ready to go for Civ6 Epic One. I wanted to see the results of the Adventure Two game before picking the final settings. Expect to see more details by the end of this week.

Great ! And thank you of course :-)

[Sullla]

OK, now that I can post on an actual computer, let me provide some more thoughts on upcoming Epics/Adventures for Civ6.

First a little bit about the Adventure Two game that just closed. I wanted to use this event as a test case of sorts to see where the community stands right now with Civ6. If the game was way too easy or way too hard, then we could shift future events accordingly to better fit with our playerbase. From what I can see, the game ended up in about the right spot: some of our players won without too much trouble and competed for the fastest finish, others had a competitive game and pulled out a victory despite some early setbacks, and we had a few losses. Those came due to AI early game cheese rushes, but I still think that's significant. While the Civ6 AI is thoroughly lousy, it performed more or less the way I expected. This wasn't all that different from what we used to see back in the Civ3 and Civ4 days with these games.

My thinking for the next few events is to stick at roughly the same level of difficulty. Games on Monarch will be "easy", games on Emperor will be roughly "average", and games on Immortal/Deity geared towards more of an "extreme" setup. We can revisit this in a couple of months depending on what happens in patches and how the games are playing out; the community is obviously going to improve in skill level over time. We will naturally mix up the leaders/civs chosen and pursue a variety of different victory types and variant setups. I did want to ask everyone what they thought about the map - do you want to see bigger maps? Smaller maps? I promise the games won't all be as crowded as Adventure Two, that was a bit of an outlier case there. I've been liking the "Small" map size myself, but that's a personal preference. What do you want to see?

Here's the immediate upcoming schedule plan. Civ6 Epic One should be ready to open this upcoming weekend. The plan for this one will be a Monarch game with a significant variant and a customized "points" scoring system as we've used in the past for a bunch of games. It will involve France, being Honorable, and building wonders. Then I'm thinking of starting up Adventure Three shortly thereafter, to run in parallel with Epic One about a week later on the opening and closing date. Adventure Three will be an open spoilers game, since that was requested by a number of people when we were discussing this earlier. I am thinking of a conquest-focused Immortal difficulty game for that one, although I'm open to other suggestions. Based on whether people are enjoying the closed nature of the Epic setup or the open spoilers nature of the Adventure setup, we can decide where to go from there with future events. (My preference is for the closed "no spoiler" events but we'll go with whatever the community prefers, including both options as long as there's interest.)

The scuttlebutt is also that there's some kind of 60 day patch upcoming for Civ6, which if true will be releasing in the next few days. I would prefer to open new games after that happens if at all possible. Of course, we almost might not be getting any patch at all, which is why I plan to put out the Epic One game this weekend even if we don't hear anything. Let's hope that patching doesn't cause any problems.

Aside from Epic One, the calendar is basically wide open for upcoming games. What would you like to see in upcoming events? Feel free to post in this thread, or PM me if you'd rather discuss an idea outside the forum. Thanks.

[Athmos]

Impressive ! Your patch sensor is quite accurate, sir !

About the game, I'm curious about how an actual "epic speed" game would play, but given the heavy handed production and amenity crush promised by the patch, I'm not sure I want everything to take even longer to build.
I'd like a standard map size I think.

I'm glad we'll be paying respect to the tradition, It'll give me an opportunity to pay homage to your Epic 1 report for civ IV, which was probably the first ever RB game report I read. Found it out from the hugely popular SG you had with Sirian on civfanatics (Spain on a lake !), I'm sure I'm not the only one.

[ReallyEvilMuffin]

I would love an always war set up on any difficulty with points not on earliest finish, but rather points per total elimination on turn date. So something like points = max turns number - current turn number per player wiped off the map and then 4(max turn number - current turn number) for victory triggering (note this may mean that people can play on after taking the caps to score more points if they wish. Variant rule would be have to declare and stay at war of any AI met, not including city states.

[Sullla]

REM, an Always War game is definitely something I'd like to run as well. I'm hoping that if we wait another month or two first, the AI will be at least a little bit better. (Also Always War is a lot to ask for someone who is still learning Civ6 gameplay. ) I would also like to run an Always War game with a small mod that removes war weariness completely. The challenge of an Always War scenario is dealing with the AI civs - not a war weariness mechanic that doesn't understand the variant.

[Ruined Everything]

Adventure Three will be an open spoilers game, since that was requested by a number of people when we were discussing this earlier. I am thinking of a conquest-focused Immortal difficulty game for that one, although I'm open to other suggestions.

I'm really excited for this. Obviously not everyone agrees, but the collaboration and discussion at RB makes Civ 6 for me. One of the reasons I had a hard time finishing Adv 2 was that after coming up with my strategy I was more or less in 'execute idea' mode - having people to bounce ideas off of and get input from really helps keep a game exciting. (IPad generation, I guess, but it's still true.)

I would love an always war set up on any difficulty with points not on earliest finish, but rather points per total elimination on turn date. So something like points = max turns number - current turn number per player wiped off the map and then 4(max turn number - current turn number) for victory triggering (note this may mean that people can play on after taking the caps to score more points if they wish. Variant rule would be have to declare and stay at war of any AI met, not including city states.

This sounds really fun, but having to grind through and eliminate the AIs seems kinda tedious. What was the thinking behind that? If the problem is the idea that conquest should be Conquest, not a series of alpha strikes on AI capitals, maybe a mixed strategy (AI is eliminated when its reduced to 3 cities or something?) is preferable?

[unaghy]

For the upcoming holiday season period , how about great sea battles scenario?

Difficulty: Emperor or Immortal
Map: Island Plates
Civilization: Norway
Victory condition: Conquest
Rest default.

Why I think It could be interesting to try out?

Low production start - water tiles provides no production, cities cannot be placed ideally within 6 tiles from each, etc.

Low housing cap - only few rivers, mostly coast

Interesting research choices - ship/sea techs to be prioritized

No movement issues - sea tiles provides no terrain movement restrictions, easy embarked units movement, less impassable tiles

No terrain issues - AI should handle battles better on sea without movement/terrain restrictions

Great people - different focus than usual

No early rushes from both sides. Scouting will not be optional. Different policies to be used. Different city states to suzerain,...

[LKendter]

First a little bit about the Adventure Two game that just closed. I wanted to use this event as a test case of sorts to see where the community stands right now with Civ6.

I still hope to finish this at some point. This game was more then challenging for me. I still don't know if I can pull a win off. I didn't get stuck with death by early rush, but I got to few natural cities down.

My thinking for the next few events is to stick at roughly the same level of difficulty. Games on Monarch will be "easy",

This is where I would I like to see it. That second settler from emperor really makes more a much for difficult game. It feels like Civ3 trying to escape the diety hole for me.

I've been liking the "Small" map size myself, but that's a personal preference. What do you want to see?

As long as it isn't as insanely packed at Adv2, I prefer small for less of a time commitment. Unlike my Civ3 / 4 days, I have plenty of other games fighting for my time.