Dave's Not Throwing Away His Shot

[Zero_1627]

 That being said, farming barbs is certainly going to be something I'm going to try to do.

Farmer's Gambit redefined 

[oledavy]

Turn 7

Everyone is now at size 2 except Singaboy. My culture picker will grab the copper next turn, and the slinger will be completed. I've decided I want to send him east, edging slightly northeast. One of my main priorities with scouting right now is to find another continent, and since this Pangaea is almost certainly an oval of some sort, there are more likely to be continental divides running north-south than east-west. 

My warrior is going to loop around and come back towards Hamilton from the south. 

My second warrior when it arrives is probably going to head north along the river. 

Scouting priorities at this point are: 

1. City-states (I absolutely need to find at least three). 
2. Another Continent
3. Other players (for Eureka)
4. Good city-sites
5. Barbs (for culture farming)
6. Natural Wonder (for Eureka)

Anyway, since this was a boring turn, I used Microsoft Paint!



You can see my scouting moves for the last few turns, and my planned scouting moves for next turn. 

A couple other observations. 

 - With 2 flood plains at Hong Kong and a swamp at the capital, Our Lady of Reeds and Marshes is looking better all the time. 
 - Hong Kong would be a dynamite Petra location, bridging the divide between "location that has a lot of desert hills" and "location that doesn't completely suck even without Petra"

Of course, the issue with targeting Petra this game is China's presence. It's still worth considering though.

[oledavy]

 I don't know if there is anything to this, but I know I run into Brussels and Hong Kong seemingly every game but Auckland never. 

Now that I think about it, I think I saw Sulla's comment that there's 3 cities of each kind. Wiki definitely shows more. And Auckland is on New Zealand... May it be that these 'rare' cities are from DLCs, and disabling DLC simply prevents them from showing up?

I've been wondering if this is the case. Can anyone confirm this?

I also never had anyone comment if I was correct in whether or not Agoge buffs Hoplite production.  If nobody does know, I'll run a test game at some point and figure it out.

[Sullla]

I don't know about hoplites and Agoge promotion. Auckland is definitely a DLC city state though, as it's not in the base game. The four Industrial city states are Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Toronto, and Brussels.

[oledavy]

I don't know about hoplites and Agoge promotion. Auckland is definitely a DLC city state though, as it's not in the base game. The four Industrial city states are Hong Kong, Buenos Aires, Toronto, and Brussels.

Thank you for clarifying re: Auckland. I went back to the Civ6 wiki and noticed the little cross beside each city-state  that indicated they were part of the Vikings Scenario Pack, I can't believe I didn't notice that before. 

Regarding Hoplites/Spears and the Agoge civic, they do not get the +50% production bonus. This feels like a huge oversight on the part of the game designers. If they wanted to create an alternate upgrade path of units, why not allow them to be produced with the same production buff? As it stands, this really disincentivizes ever building spears/pikemen as they already lose to units 1 era back (warriors/swordsmen) and aren't even that effective against cavalry. The only thing they have going for them is that they are resourceless. I seriously just do not understand. At any rate, I will likely not be building any Hoplites this game. 

Anyway, we had a pretty exciting (for the early game) turn. 

Turn 8

So, I moved the warrior west, and...



I yelled in happiness and freaked out the cat when I got this. Seriously though, finding a foreign continent in any sort of timely manner in the early game is very hit and miss, and getting this inspiration was essential for my plan to grab early Mysticism. Now, instead of sending my units far afield desperately searching for a continent, I can relax, explore in a more deliberate manner around my start, and be more ready to respond in the event of a barb invasion. 

Anyway, I present you with Laurentia!



Also of note: 



So, I'm either on the western end of the Pangaea, or on a peninsula. 

I seriously doubt there is anyone squeezed in to my north, since I seem to be a bit above the equator. So, this means my nearest opponents are most likely to my south and east. This has the effect of more or less confirming where I want to put my second city. With my limited exploration, I had narrowed it down to three spots:

1. North along the River.
2. South of the Lake.
3. On the Western River. 

Fresh water is obviously a must for early cities, and my following logic will be reviewed if I discover something amazing to the north or west. However, the west is unlikely to be strongly contested, given my probable position on the Pangaea. The north is likely something of a backline for me, and exploration indicates there is not an amazing city that can be founded within 4-5 tiles up there.  The south however, has fresh water, is not in desert, and is likely the direction one of my opponents is in. With this in mind, I will probably be settling southwards and staking a claim to towards the center of the continent with my opening city. 

The other big news of the turn: 



Not only is there a culture pinata close by, but a scientific city-state! I assume given it's proximity I'll be the first too it. Here's hoping it's Stockholm!

One synergy of my early mysticism strategy is that I can get out 3 envoys really fast to a scientific city state. 

1. For first to bonus.
2. For Mysticism Envoy.
3. For completing the city-state's quest. 

This buffs my early Campus's yield by a cool 2 beakers, not to mention giving me the CS's luxuries and suzerain bonus. This will likely be the city-state I attempt to use this strategy on. While Hong Kong is slated for death, I will likely attempt to befriend this one for the entirety of the game. 

So yeah, things are looking pretty excellent. Queued up a warrior, hopefully those three units can accomplish as much scouting as I need and protect me from early barbs while I'm cramming out a worker and settler. 

A couple notes: 

 - My western warrior will start moving southward to defog the area south and southwest of Hamilton. Meanwhile, the slinger will meet the CS then likely move north in a counter clockwise direction. I have not decided where the 3rd warrior is going yet, perhaps north. My primary objective with him will be to protect the worker, Hamilton, and escort my settler to the city-site. 
 - I'm feeling more and more strongly about building Petra in Hong Kong. From what I've defogged so far, it has 6 desert hills in its radius, likely at least a couple more. Each of those tiles becomes a 2/4/2 with Petra and Apprenticeship mines. That's a freaking amazing city.

What would a Petra Beeline look like? 

1. Tech Order: Animal Husbandry -> Pottery -> Irrigation -> Mining -> Writing -> Bronze Working -> Currency -> Mathematics
2. Hamilton: builds campus and commercial hub early. 
3. 2nd City builds encampment, to complete Mathematics Eureka (and since its likely a frontier city, the encampment would help fortify my position). 
4. Adopt Autocracy, +15% wonder building civic. Route 2 Trade routes from Hong Kong to Hamilton and 2nd City for 2/2 and 1/2 each. 
5. Get a couple workers to Hong Kong, chop forests and mine hills. 
6. Profit?

I could additionally adopt the pantheon that gives extra wonder production, that would be a very all-in play though. Better would be OLORAM, since Hong Kong has two flood plains. 

It's a big investment, but I'm pretty sure with a concerted beeline I could minimize risk from China. Moreover, I firmly believe that Petra would be very worth the hammer investment in this case, and could be far more impactful than similar hammers invested in expansion would be. 

At any rate, just a pipe dream at this point, at least 50 turns off from completion, but I don't have a whole lot else to do at this point, so I might as well plan and dream.

[Ituralde]

I miss the point where you go and conquer the city state in your 6 point plan, might have to squeeze that in there somewhere.

Also love OLORAM. All hail OLORAM!

[RFS-81]

Also love OLORAM. All hail OLORAM!

May her frogs be ever plentiful!

[oledavy]

Turn 9

Quiet turn. 



The barb scout disappeared, and my warrior found a river out to the west. Probably not a city site I will aim for anytime soon, but good to know its there. 

The biggest news was international, as Woden was the first to finish Code of Laws, courtesy of that cultural city-state he discovered on t3. He has seriously had good luck with those, as the sound has indicated that he has met 3 already.

I have to say, it's been really great to see how much everyone is updating this game! I hope it continues, as I can remember many games where the updates started off frequent, then tapered off just when things were getting interesting. 

I miss the point where you go and conquer the city state in your 6 point plan, might have to squeeze that in there somewhere. 

Also love OLORAM. All hail OLORAM!

I will admit, I hope I am not being too presumptive and tempting fate in these grand pronouncements of conquest or farming barbs. I made a lot of long-term plans like that in Civ 5 PBEM 5 and wound up eating my words a couple dozen turns later when Ichabod killed me. Hopefully the same does not transpire here. 

Also love OLORAM. All hail OLORAM!

May her frogs be ever plentiful!

You're making me want to try and come up with a long list of OLORAM benedictions. 

May her flies be ever loud
May her mosquitoes be ever satiated
May her cypresses be ever knotty

[oledavy]

Turn 10

Survey says....



Probably the worst scientific city-state I could have gotten, besides perhaps Hattusa, which I also rate pretty low. That being said, at least it's not another industrial city-state! I'll take those 2 BPT thank you very much. 

The one issue is that their quest is not really a great one, I'd rather have a quest for a Eureka I was already targeting. Now I'll have a tough decision to make. 

They really don't look like they're worth conquering though, they're not on fresh water and the initial ring of tiles is pretty meh. Now the big debate is whether to go north or south of the city with my slinger next turn...

PING PING PING PING



What's that? Oh, the CS radar is going off again. Somewhere to my southwest. I'll take that political philosophy inspiration please! 

Hopefully it's cultural...

Finished animal husbandry and restarted mining. 

Oh, the final thing of note: 



Woden didn't take God-King....

That's a little surprising. I wonder why he isn't prioritizing a pantheon. I guess the extra hammer is just that important to him at this point.

[oledavy]

Turns 11-12

Moved the warrior south, and...



Positives: 
 - Political philosophy eureka! 
 - 3rd first-to bonus (I should have only gotten 2 strictly playing the numbers).
 - It's Buenos Aires! Arguably the best of the Industrial City-States. Bonus shown below.



This potentially gives me 10 extra amenities if I'm their suzerain. I already have 7 of them defogged so far. These are great because they can stack as population growth requires, rather than automatically being spread out at 1 per city for luxury resources. 

On the flip side though....

Negatives: 
 - Another industrial city-state 
 - I'm never going to meet their quest. I don't intend on ever building a Holy Site. This means that quest will sit there all game long, and I will not have an opportunity to get more envoys with the city-state through quests. 

Although, now I'm curious, does everyone see the same quest for a city-state? Or does everyone receive individualized quests for city-states? Does anyone know?

So yeah, if I was only vaguely considering banging out an early monument and district before, I'm strongly considering it now. Even if it's not a great thing to do in the early game +4 hammers per turn is quite a premium, and I would be foolish to not capitalize on it at least a little. 

Still wish the CS had been cultural though...

Here's what the world looked like at the end of t11. You'll note that I marked what I think will be a definite city-site to the west, pending a little more exploration with that warrrior. 



The warrior is crossing the river and heading southeast to defog the area southwest of my capital, explore potential city-sites in that direction, and hopefully find my neighbor in that direction. 

I decided my scout is going to circle all the way around Seoul before heading northwest to defog the area northeast of my capital. 

The world on turn 12: 



Note the barb scout to the southeast, and the mountain range south of me. 

I grow to 3 pop next turn, and finish my second warrior. It will then be time to figure out which direction I want him to explore in. 

Probably going worker next, but I've been now considering monument next. I'll have more time to mull over my actions on t14, so I'll consider it then. I'll also check if anything radical happened abroad, but the only thing I noticed glancing over things quickly was people finishing their first techs. 

Oh, and Woden met his 4th city-state. I bet none of them were industrial 

Although none of them were religious either, for what that's worth.