Sengoku Chevalier: Hiun no Kishi

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 12ish

Two more turns. We're pretty isolated in the nor'east corner, I think:






 

I have two coasts to explore, and the interior is thick, hilly, jungly, and filled with volcanoes. A few barb scouts nosing around, and no sign of any other city states or civilizations yet. A few players have finished their starting tech, and most of us grew to size 2 at roughly the same time, except Whosit, who grew a few turns earlier - must have a 3 food tile at the capital. Remember, there is zero balancing of the map, so some players may be near more natural wonders, near more city-states, have better capitals, etc. No sense complaining about it, just take what's dealt to us and make the best of it.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turns early teens

Can't find my screenshots for yesterday's trio of turns (or so), but

1)The scout survives with 1 hp, because of course it does, and retreats into the tundra, so our warrior will need to brace for a barbarian invasion. What joy. 

2)Scouting warrior uncovers more jungle and hills west of Hong Kong. Still nothing on settler radar, and I'm not talented enough to use appeal radar, so no news there. 

Sailing is in and our builder is out in 2 turns. It's a slow start but with only a few tiles to choose from we can hardly do better!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn somethin'

New turn, because we fly through these. Scouting continues, no news. I pursue the barb scout, no news. 

I do unlock our first government, the Chiefdom, and slot the usual two policies:

 
Again, trying to give a sort of tutorial, in Civ VI culture unlocks governments as you move through the tree. Each government has a few inherent bonuses (the Chiefdom slowly generates envoys to send to city states, for example, but as the tier 0 government offers nothing else), and has few slots for policy cards - civics which you also unlock through the culture tree and can mix and match to grant further bonuses to your empire. Mastering policy cards is probably the most important aspect of higher level Civ VI play, I think, even more so than managing your city builds or moving on the map. 

Happily, at level 0 there's only two choices in each category. For our military, we can either run Discipline, +5 combat strength against barbarians, or Survey, which doubles the experience gain of our scouts. Well, we have 0 scouts and an impending barb spawn, so that's an easy call. Our economic sloti s a little harder - God King gives +1 Gold and +1 faith in the capital, basically garbage, especially compared to Urban Planning's +1 production in all cities, EXCEPT that tiny trickle of faith is needed in the early game. When you save up 25 faith you get to select a Pantheon, a basic religious belief that all your civ's cities will share, with bonuses attached. So I need to run God King for 25 turns or so to grab my pantheon. We'll be among the last to get there, as Rome unlocked the government ages ago with bonus culture, Khmer will likely get an early holy site, and odds are at least one other civilization met a religious city state and so netted a free +2 faith/turn in their capital.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Another flurry of turns. Our builder is out, but we need gold to buy our turtle tiles. Korea & Rome have both reached size 3, ouch. That's the way she goes sometimes! 

Scout finds nothing, but we DID spot the Imjin River. That could be either a Japanese or a Korean name, and I can't be arsed to look up the game files to see which it is. The Imjin itself is in Korea, but it's significant in Japanese history due to Toyotomi's invasion in the 1590's. 

I'm going to guess it's a Korean name, and try to follow the river to greenline.

[ljubljana]

Heh. Interesting that it sounds likely to be on our eventual border with Korea, and might end up significant due to OUR invasion in the 1590s

It's looking like we might end up with a disproportionate share of land area here from the random map roll - always a good sign. I am also liking the width of our peninsula, which seems to be in the sweet spot of just wide enough such that every city can be coastal for harbor access and shipbuilding, but just narrow enough that they can all reach inland to contribute to one or two Japan district clusters down the center of this little finger of land.

Thoughts on the choice of pantheon? I see depressingly little that is boosted by the usual suspects of God of the Open Sky/Festivals, but at least our seafood count is looking decent for God of the Sea.... Also, does the sailing research indicate a plan to push out some early galleys to hunt for coastal city states (or an unsuspecting player capital....? :D) Are we going Astrology next for the holy site, or something else?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

We'll probably build two galleys for the shipbuilding/cartography inspiratiosn eventually, but I'm going to use the Great Admirals that spawn - assuming I have a monopoly - for early exploring.

Tech path is Astrology (while we build the settler) -> Animal Husbandry I think? while the holy sites build at Korutu and City #2 (Oda Tekisanzu). Then at size 4 both sites will want the harbor for food and growth, even though it means delaying the government plaza.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 21, who knew




Found the barb camp. Following the Imjin river, still no sign of intelligent life anywhere. 

3 turns until I can afford the turtle tile. I know it's a slow start, here's hoping I can snowball better than the other guys.




Side note on the pins: Did you know that you can see the size of the entire map at game start, using pins? Drop 'em in the fog of war and it'll let you zoom out more than you've scouted. Then use the enhanced zoom to drop MORE pins, and repeat until your camera wraps. So we know about how big the continent is, and when we should start hitting the middle of it. A tiny little thing, but a handy little trick if you've not heard of it.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 22, for sure

Look! We're not alone in the world, at last!


An unknown city, 4 tiles due east of the warrior. Could be Korea?

We bumble along at the bottom of the scoreboard, but Krill also is having trouble growing.





Also found the barb camp, don't know if I mentioned that. Healing up then cleaning it out.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 23

The unknown city state meets us on the interturn and turns out to be Zanzibar, one that will be hotly contested:






Zanzibar's suzerain bonus grants 2 unique luxury resources to its sovereign, one of the better bonuses in the game.

Quick primer on amenities & luxury resources:

Cities need 1 amenity for every 2 pop (I think), or they grow unhappy. A city with a surplus of 3-4 amenities gains +10% to its yields, and a city with 5 or more surplus amenities gains 30%! But, if you're UNHAPPY, you have an increasing penalty, from 10%, to 30%, etc. I believe you can eventually get rebels, but I've never actually had it happen so not sure. Anyway, a luxury resources provides 1 amenity to 4 different cities in your empire. The catch is, each luxury only works once - extra copies do nothing. The people crave variety, I guess. So even if I have 10 turtle resources in my empire, I still only get 4 amenities, not 40, from them. Thus, you need different luxury resources to keep your cities happy. We have turtles, silver, truffles, and silk in settling range so far (purple resource icons, if you need help spotting them on screenshots), for example. 

Each continent in the game spawns with its own set of luxury resources - I think 4 - and if you want different ones, you have to find a continental boundary. I think the system was meant to encourage international trade and colonization. Anyway, Zanzibar's cloves & spices, only obtainable via suzeraining them (not conquest!) can grant us +1 amenity in up to 8 extra cities than otherwise, which could be effectively a 10% boost to yields across many cities! Very nice.

We can deduce a few other things. We didn't get the "first to meet" free envoy, so another player is in the area. And checking Zanzibar's info screen, we see that two civs have met Zanzibar. We can conclude, further, that one of them is probably Korea, given the presence of the Imjin River. And that in turn tells us that the other civ is most likely Rome, since greenline and Whosit both gained +1 era score on the same turn a few turns back - you gain +1 era score for meeting another civ, so simultaneous gains like that in the early game are a good clue. So, putting all this together, our two immediate neighbors are Rome and Korea, and our two distant neighbors beyond them must be Khmer and China. Hopefully Archduke and Krill check each other, instead of shaking hands and shooting skywards in peace.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 24

Literally the SAME fucking turn we get our first improvement of the game - on our only improvable tile, no less, which we had to save up to buy twice to reach - a barb galley spawns only 2 tiles from our capital, because of course it does:



-sigh-

Well, lemons out of lemonade. I see no alternative but churning out a galley with our build after the settler. It must be done, otherwise the galley will pillage our fishing boats and we'll have quite literally nothing improved at a shitty capital with only 2 2/2 tiles to work. What joy. 

Rome has his second city down:





We trail in total score, with the fewest technologies researched and flat nothing in Era score. That's okay - the era score is a bit unlucky but we're researching the two most expensive techs to start. And as for our capital growing more slowly than everyone else's, well, what are you gonna do? n_n Just roll with the punches.