[Spoilers] Pindicator already misses slavery, and other out-of-context quotes

[Ichabod]

With Valletta around, faith will never be useless. And I think the new Belief that gives culture equal to faith production is really powerful. The thing really compounds itself -> faith will give culture, culture will allow newer governments and policies that will give you more faith (simultaneum is the main one), that will give you more culture. Getting a religion and making a run to the lower parts of the culture tree can be a very solid move. It's the fastest way to get a 6 slot government and you'll really enjoy the Theocracy ability (with Valletta).

With the new Belief, a Holy Site with shrine and temple gives you 50% more culture than a Theater District with Amphitheater and Art Museum, while costing a lot less (200 hammers less, or something along those lines). That, my friend, is what we call bullshit.

So, I favor going for an early religion. The main problem is China and Stonehenge, but I don't think CFCJester will go for the killer Culture Belief, even if he beats you. Most likely DotF and the faith from Wonders.

[pindicator]

Turn 010



Krill and Japper both got their first tech this turn as well, so I think it's safe to say that nobody has found a scientific city state yet (or just found one) as that would have sped up their research. I guess someone could also be going Astrology first, but that seems a bit more far-fetched. Astrology 2nd is clearly where it's at, though, and we are starting on the 14-turn tech. (More amazing, the game actually recommended teching Astrology next!)

Krill and Japper also both grew to size 3, which means they have more food than me. Either two 4-food tiles, or a 4 and a 3, something like that. Bananas.

Speaking of Bananas, our scout may have found city #2:




I really want to settle on the coffee, but then I noticed that would orphan the horses. (All the coastal spots in the east are invalid thanks to Valletta.) So most likely we're looking at putting the 2nd city on the flood plains between the banana and wheat. Or we could put it on the coffee tile and then put another coastal city between the wheat and deer and just grab the horses as 3rd-ring. 3rd ring horses seems risky, however, or at least expensive.

Also note that the tile grabber did pick the crab over the tea. I think that's awful algorithm to have all tile types weighted equally. Or maybe just give us the option to tell it what we want to grab next and make it so all (most?) 2nd ring has to be claimed before going on to 3rd ring. Anyway, the tile has been set to the Tea for 2 turns in a row, so that should be the next one we get.




The warrior has mapped out what will be a good production city location later on in the game, but now it is time to recall him back for escort duty. He'll take 4 turns to get back so we have a little leeway.

[pindicator]

Turn 013

Well, I screwed up the micro. In a plan where I only have 1 turn of citizen yield adjustments I still screw something up

To be honest, i don't think it will matter. But last turn I was going to swap off the truffles (1f, 3h, 3g) and onto the grass hill forest (2f, 2h) in order to grow to size 3 a turn earlier, and get that extra 0.3 culture and 0.7 science. Which in turn would mean that I get Code of Laws done a turn faster. However, it appears that maybe Civ 6 keeps track of all yields to 2 decimal places regardless of how much it shows in the UI, because I have more gold than I should unless you count out to 2 decimal places. And if it keeps culture to that amount then we are still getting CoL in 2, and the game even says I'm getting CoL in 2. So ... let's just blame this on the user interface

I'm definitely the worst in culture. Everybody else has had Code of Laws for a couple turns -- except for CFCJesterFool who seems to be down in the culture dumps with me. Should expect to see him pick up CoL next turn, as he planted a turn ahead of me.

Meanwhile the settler is almost out, and we have uncovered some interesting things about this map:




I'm still not positive where I want to put city #2. Do I try to get horses with the 2nd city so that we can get the other horses later on and make for easy building of horsemen? Or do I emphasize the luxuries? Planting where the scout is now will be on top of a plains hill, be coastal, and riverside, plus it has 2 luxuries in 2nd ring. Or is there better?

Another very important thing is take a look at the settler layer:




It appears that the land ends to the northeast, which means it probably extends farther to the west. I'd bet it also extends past Valletta due to the 2nd continent.

But I'll have to think about this.

[pindicator]

Turn 015

I was a bit surprised but we managed to get 2 more turns in today. Which means I get to end the night on a high note:





Since we're going in on the holy site idea, I figure we go all in and use Urban Planning to get it done by turn 29. The holy site faith can get us our pantheon, and as I stated before, we're already picking last, so why not embrace that and just get the religion faster? Also, this will help city #2 get itself up and running faster. I gave a bit of thought to the greedier choice of Survey for my military policy, but after backing out of the menu and seeing a new barb camp, I quickly dashed that idea. I also moved my warrior west to stave off any potential scouts, and found that the scout was indeed heading my way.




I pulled the scout west since I'm pretty sure northeast is a dead end, and it looks like the landmass down continue farther north and west.

Next turn the settler comes out, and needs to go NW onto the forest across the river for the fastest route to the city. I could settle on the desert tile off the coast, as that has a lot of good yield tiles in the first-ring, but it puts some good bonus tiles out to the 3rd ring, especially the whales. But then I could also settle on the plains hill on the tile between the coast and the river, which is just a perfect tile: it has a lot of great tiles in the 2nd ring including 2 new luxury types. So what I'm kind of thinking now is that I settle there and then buy one of the coffee tiles to work, which will help the city expand further on it's own. (And if I'm going to spend that gold there, then I might as well also spend the 110g for getting the holy site in that +2 faith location.)

Next turn I also need to decide if I want to go builder and only have the warrior for defense, or if I need to squeeze out a slinger and delay that builder. As far as the holy site is concerned, I have enough production for 85h worth of stuff before we get Astrology, which means builder and slinger. I was originally hoping to get the builder out first, but we may not have that luxury now that a barb camp has appeared.

[pindicator]

Oh!

I could also settle on the desert, and then buy the holy site tile as a 2nd-ring location from city #2 for 55g, and then swap control of it to the capital and build the holy site there. Is that worth having a city #2 without the 2h city tile and delaying/skipping the Sailing eureka?

[Ichabod]

My initial gut is that the desert hill is better, but I'm not sure. The plains hill settle is the thing, I'm not sure how much it's worth, compared to the easier district placement and the earlier settle from the desert hill. What I think is key is working the coffee tile from the get go, you can't pass up on the culture from that tile. I think the whale tile is meaningless. When you need that luxury, you can just settle a city to the north. Housing won't be that much of an issue when you are basing your strategy on faith + Valletta (which means easy granaries).

Anyway, I think that, if you go for the coastal spot, you should favour acquiring the coffee tiles with gold, rather than the perfect tile for the district. That +1 faith won't make that much of a difference in the long run. If you want to have a respectable faith production, you need buildings and civic cards (and you can't abuse Valletta without good faith production). The better faith would only mean a faster pantheon, and we decided to forgo that. The faster you get to PP, though, makes a lot of difference.

It's a tough call, on both accounts. I'm unsure about what's the best path.

[pindicator]

I had just about convinced myself that settling on the coast and buying the coffee tile to work was the best choice: buying the coffee tile to work straight away seems a better deal than buying a monument, and the biggest benefit of that coastal spot is the extra hammer in the plant. In that case I don't think I would also buy the spot for 2-faith adjacency in this case.

But with the desert location you don't need to buy the coffee, and can use the gold to buy the 2-faith location. So effectively trading 1 Faith for 1 Production, and even at the discounted purchase rate of Valletta production is still better bang-for-buck. (Or I can pay 165g to get both.)

Add in the fact I think the coast location is better long-term, and I think that's the winner

[pindicator]

Turn 016

This caused me to make a few decisions:



So I haven't seen that barb scout since my own scout first gleamed it back on turn 9, but he never came back across the river. And now I see him with half-health ... so there is either a human or a city-state to my northeast, and that land extends farther than I thought. So with that in mind, I decided that my warrior needs to explore that way a little bit after escorting my settler, which means I am going to delay my builder until after I get a slinger built first. (I switched to a slinger after the next screenshot was taken.)

For instance, if I see a human up north, then I think settling on the desert hill gets a lot more appealing because it's a more defensive location. And if I find a city-state then I've got my Political Philosophy eureka done.




What do you make of the recommended spots? I'm a little intrigued by settling on top of the coffee, but it also suffers from a lack of good 1st ring tiles.

[pindicator]

Turn 019

Just a quick update. Settler moved onto the desert hill this turn, but I'm pretty sure I'm going to the 2h plant on the coast. I worked out the growth rate compared to the culture, and the worst case scenario is the whale gets picked ahead of the other good tiles, and if that happens we just spend 60g on buying the other coffee tile.

Slinger finished in the capital; the builder I queued up next as well as Astrology are both 5 turns out. The barb scout has found our capital and ran off again, so I'm expecting to see incoming. There's horsemen at that camp too, so this could get interesting. My settler also can see a 2nd camp out in the jungle to the northeast. What's the range of horse resources for a camp to produce barb horsemen? If it's 5 tiles then that camp will also be spewing out horsemen. If it's less then we'll be okay there.

Krill built a settler. Unless other people are timing their settler to go with growing then I think we're the first ones to get a 2nd city. Krill also got an increase in faith this turn from something.

Rome got their second civic, everyone except me and CFC have 2 techs. Funny thing about CFCJester: he hasn't researched any techs yet. I guess he's half completing things, or he's also heading for an early Astrology.

[pindicator]

Turn 020

Another surprise from the map:




I am the first to meet La Venta (or rather, they met me last turn as I already have 2.1 faith). This means pantheon opens up on turn 31 regardless of where we put the holy site, so I'll be revisiting which pantheon I want to get in the upcoming turns. La Venta's quest is to train an archer, so it could be that I'll be using my 2nd envoy there to pick up the additional faith. They're quite a distance away to conquer in the near term.

I'm quite surprised that I am the first to meet them. Does that mean there is nobody in that direction? More likely it just means the scouts went another way. Still, I turned the scout west thinking that maybe La Venta is in an enclave of land rather than in the middle of the continent.

Settler moved to the coast this turn. I'm sending the warrior towards the barb camp in the northwest. With stacked bonuses I have very good odds on that spear, so I want to kill it before it starts spawning trouble.