[Civ VII]Learning from Napoleon - A Civ VII Exploration/Tutorial

[Japper007]

Some settling and urban planning things I've learned in one and a half games now (just got about halfway into Explo on my second game, Thrung Thrac of the Maya, now of the 'Abbasids, triple stacking science, working out very nicely so far):

Fresh water is pretty much unimportant, gives some extra happiness which can be nice, but resources are key. Can easily go off fresh and make up for it with buildings or by assigning less specialists (if you even upgrade to a city at all).

Building adjacencies stack by type, usually their own. It'll say something like "+1 adjacency from science buildings". Some rare cases of things like resources providing adjacency too, but it is all specified in the tooltip. 

Unique improvements are pretty bad. You can only really build them with gold in towns, since they preserve yields, cities want as many Urban tiles/buildings as possible. I went Han>Ming in my first game and barely found any Great Wall tiles worth the cost, even though 5 culture is really good.

Unique quarters are insane. They are ageless so you get their yields right away after the age transition. I had three with the Maya and I was able to one turn the opening techs   First build in every city. Wonders and ageless buildings are great for the same reason. It means you get a big headstart.

I'm not sure exactly how specialists work. Seems they have a 2 culture, 2 science yield and then some yield bonus from the buildings they go into (so a full quarter with two is usually very good), and a -2 food happiness cost. They are key to getting huge outputs though, especially for the science goal in Age 2.

Towns need food, cities need production. I usually err on the side of keeping everything towns until I get an excess of city resources. Then I update one that has a lot of production potential. Leaving resources unassigned is wasteful, they are really strong, overtuned maybe.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Part III: Greco-Roman Wars (turns 25 - 72)

Okay, now I KNOW I've taken more screenshots than this, but many are missing! Apparently my image-capturing software doesn't fully get along with Civ VII yet. Once again I have gaps! Well, I'll get it sorted out, I hope. I might replay some parts in order to capture those images again. I'll try to go back and cover some lost ground, because I knew I'd skipped quite a lot of my gameplay, and I'm not usually that sloppy. Then we'll fight our first war. 

Anyway, digging into my screenshot files shows that I did INDEED take some that failed to upload - for example, my first expansion city, Neapolis on the navigable Tiber east of Rome:


When uncertain about how to settle, I usually just try to pack my cities as densely as possible, with resources & yields nearby. Neapolis also was deliberately settled near the coast, in order to serve as my exploration & colonization hub in future ages. How the good people of Rome could realize this in 3375 BC, I don't know, but that's why I'm the immortal god-king and they're mere pixels. 

Anyway, Neapolis shows another of VII's changes, seemingly lifted from Humankind: the split between cities and towns.

 
Settlers create towns, which serve as minor support settlements. They have limited buildings compared to cities, produce nothing, and instead convert their production into gold. You can purchase buildings with the gold or use the gold to upgrade the settlement to a full-fledged city, gaining access to more buildings to further develop the settlement. Towns can also be specialized for various bonuses such as trade, food, science, etc, later on, unlike cities. I'm sure there's strategy to be gleaned from this system, but so far I don't really grasp enough of how it works and how the various mechanics balance against each other to know the optimal play. For my first game, I mostly upgraded key hub settlements into cities, as gold allowed. 

Another missing mechanic from the lost screenshots is the celebration:


Happiness is back in VII. It can be generated as a yield by map tiles, or by buildings, or received as a bonus from goody huts. Then it pours into a bucket, as I said, and when your bucket fills up it triggers a Celebration - We Love the Monarch Day, from Civs past. Here it interacts with the revamped government system from Civ VI. In VI, governments granted inherent bonuses such as Oligarchy's +4 combat strength or Monarchy's +1 palace yields, as well as having different configurations of policy cards. To my regret, the government system has been dramatically dumbed down. Specialized policy slots are gone - no more juggling Economic, Military, Diplomatic, or Wild Card policies. Instead, civs all start with the same amount of generic slots and can acquire more via civics research and wonders. Governments, meanwhile, are chosen once at the start of an age and then never interacted with again. They grant you a pair of rewards to choose between for each celebration. I went with Oligarchy and its increased food/production options, again on the general principles that those two yields can't go wrong. 

A few turns later, I get my first surprise of the game: On her own initiative, Harriet Tubman launches a surprise attack on Frederick - and devours him!

 
I'm playing on the third-hardest difficulty, somewhere in the neighborhood of older Civ's Emperor difficulty, where the AI normally isn't too aggressive. Wars could drag on for entire games in Civ VI and not a single city would change hands, but here we find the robots a bit more competent! This sets Tubman up well with two civ's ladn and cities under her control, and I need to respond. I also need to conquer another civ to achieve my Military victory conditions, as well as leaning into Napoleon and Rome's strengths. I've been training quite a sizeable military, and have a veteran leader from wars against various "independent powers" nearby, so I think wi the my Legions I should be able to overrun an AI, too. 



For example, here's a small campaign against the city-state of Syvash. Commander units by default can "contain" up to 4 units when they're first built, so my basic army has 3 warriors and 1 slinger for support. The commander can pick up and drop off units, moving rapidly with his army across the map, but needing to deploy when he gets near the enemy. He can also be targeted and killed, as can all civilian units! So I have to keep him safe. In return, he gains experience - not any of his units - and can lend various boosts and bonuses to his units, such as increased combat strength, better defenses against flanking, and so on. So, I make sure to use the barbs for experience in order to get him promoted rapidly, as he'll be the tip of the spear. 


A few turns later, Syvash is burnt to the ground - you can't capture city-states, remember, which is on net a good change - but contrary to my expectations, the massive fleet of galleys occupying the Tiber estuary to the north do not disperse. Instead I'll have to clear them out bit by bit, while my army deals with more urgent tasks, and I haven't even researched sailing so I can't exactly build a navy of my own to drive them off! 

Here are the more urgent tasks: The conquest of the Marquis de Lafayette, leader of Greece.


Okay! So, at top left you can see that we've progressed about 42% through the Age of Antiquity. When that meter fills, the Age will reset. Wars will end, units will disband, and everyone will sort of take the stage for the next phase of the game. This transition should never take you by surprise - the meter is there throughout, you receive frequent warnings, and, of course, there's a crisis to navigate at the end that should be a clue. So don't fret about having progress wiped or the game hard-reseting you for no reason - the reasons are knowable and predictable in advance, you just have to prepare for them. 

Below that is my Legacy Path. At the end of each age, depending upon how many of these objectives you've met, you'll receive various points to spend on bonuses in the next age. So, the better you do in Antiquity, the more powerful you'll be in Exploration. Meanwhile, players who fall behind will at least get the soft reset of a new tech tree and a new military, so they don't become totally irrelevant and in fact can still win - but they've a hill to climb to do so. 

Anyway, the Expansionist/Militaristic path demands that I conquer a settlement off somebody. With Freddie d. G. dead (Tubman is a psychopath), that leaves either Tubman herself, Xerxes and his Persians, or Lafayette's Greeks. Now, Tubman is a long way away and has a large army, and Xerxes is close but has many cities and Persia is an extremely warlike civ. Lafayette has only one settlement to my four, and is my other neighbor over open terrain. I've just unlocked Legions, my general is marching here with the main army from Syvash, so the time is ripe. I plop a pink dot Pompeii right in Lafayette's face, only three tiles from Athens, to serve as a base for our attack. A road is automatically built back to Rome (nice perk of VII, that), so I can move rapidly up it, deploy, upgrade in my borders, and attack. 

By turn 63, we're in position:


I have available 3 legions, 2 warriors awaiting gold to upgrade, the supporting slinger, and my general (level 3 now). Lafayette fields one hoplite (on the road to Rome, irrelevant), a slinger defending his Acropolis district, and I know of a heavy chariot unit on the city center itself. There's no military power report that I've yet found to scout, so I have to depend on the Mark I eyeball for my strength estimates, but this should be more than enough. 

But, problem! I can't attack, because Lafayette and I have friendly relations. I COULD declare a surprise war anyway, but without having prepared the ground, the Roman people aren't going to support that. Why die for Greece? With low war support I'll lose happiness at home and suffer a combat penalty at the front. Instead, I need to gin up a campaign of hatred against Lafayette. Posters proclaiming that he poisoned our water supply, burnt our crops, brought a plague unto our houses, etc, etc, duly go up around Rome. Once he's a proper Hellenic Emmanuel Goldstein I can cross the border and end this threat to world peace, by force.

Two turns later we're properly ready:

 

Two more turns and Athens has three legions next door, the acropolis having been overrun practically without a fight. Note also the irrelvant hoplite east of Pompeii:



City attacks in VII work somewhat similar to VI, and somewhat similar to Humankind. The city center and various special districts are Fortified - you'll need to bring the walls down and occupy all districts, as well as eliminating any defenders. The acropolis was unfortified and so conquered in one blow, but the city center has walls and a chariot defending it. My legions begin storming the walls:


Once they fall, I have to clear the Chariot. The good news is I don't have to weather ranged attacks from the city every turn - unlike V and VI, those are gone. 

For three turns, the Legate coordinates the attack on the city, lending his attack bonus, while the chariot nearly kills my southernmost legion:


However, I am just able to squeak out a victory with that final unit, and Athens falls:






Athens falls, and is incorporated as a Town - not a City. Well, nuts. But you can raze capitals in this game! Weirdly, Lafayette doesn't disappear from the game for a few turns after this. I cast about for another city, but find none, nor do I find any military units, his entire force having been wiped out in the conquest. A turn or two later, though, he pops up with a defeat message and vanishes into the dustbin of history. 

My new, beautiful city of Athens. I think the designers really hit the aesthetics of this game out of the park:

 
The Acropolis especially is lovely, even down to the odeon nearby, like in the real Athens. Side note, the only time I've seen a human being die was at the Acropolis, but that's another story...Just looking at those tall cliffs reminded me of it. Anyway! Let's move on, eh? 

The core of Rome 70 turns into the game:

 
Various clay pits and quarries dot the countryside, while I've built a Roman forum and the Colosseum is nearing completion. In fact, a few turns later:



My first wonder is completed! The Colosseum grants +3 culture, as well as +2 happiness in every quarter of this city. That seems like a good place to call a halt. The Roman Empire, turn 72 of the Antiquity Age:



We're 2/3 of the way through the age, so probably about 36 more turns to go, give or take. I'll see y'all with those next time.

[haphazard1]

Thanks for the report! Very interesting.

Government choice is locked in for the age? The devs really, really hate micro, don't they? No workers, no assigning pop points to tiles (except once, sort of), no changing government. Seems like you get locked into choices made pretty hard. How do you adjust to changing circumstances? You can spend gold to rush production, but are there any other ways? Changing course seems to be pretty difficult or impossible.

[Krill]

How do you adjust to changing circumstances? You can spend gold to rush production, but are there any other ways? Changing course seems to be pretty difficult or impossible.

You mean fixing mistakes will have a cost?

Looks like players are going to have to get better at gathering, understanding information and making decisions!

[haphazard1]

Planning ahead is important, certainly, and should be rewarded. But unexpected things do happen, or at least one hopes they do; games would be pretty boring if they did not. But it is also important to have some flexibility and capacity to change course. Making a sub-optimal choice at turn 25 should not be permanent doom.

If I have been focusing a city on food and science, for example, and I realize from new scouting info that I have a potential enemy who may attack me 20-30 turns from now, how much flexibility do I have to shift that city to production and get some military units out? In past civ games, you could reassign your pop to production tiles, maybe rush buy or whip some units, or whatever. In Civ7 it looks like gold is your main option to increase production. Past civ games may have overdone the "last second pull a ton of production out of nowhere" capability. But having some ability to change course is important. Have opportunity cost attached to that -- in past games it might be lost pop to the whip, or worker turns spent reworking your tile improvements, or whatever. But it could be done.

[Japper007]

I found you can usually build the units in 1 to 3 turns, especially since cities need to be set up for hammers anyway (food comes from their towns, and growth is quick). 7 is a lot less stingy with throwing big hammer bonuses around than 6. Also gold is plentiful and units are cheap to buy due to their lower production cost (seems lower across the board, getting rid of carpets of doom with the new great generals might've affected the cost balancing). Then again I've only played AI, and so far not at a higher difficulty then Emperor equivalent, so that may be different in MP.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Japper is right - military units seem much more cheap compared to previous editions of Civ. In modern times I was attacked by the AI when nearing a victory condition, and iwthin 10 turns I had a modern air force shredding his units.

There's also one technical way you can re-assign pop - when you build an urban district over one of your rural improvements, the population becomes available to be plopped down someplace else. So you can build, say, a farm, which pops your borders to bring a gold resource into the city, then place a granary over the farm and immediately reassign the pop to build a gold mine. So in THEORY you could place a whole bunch of buildings without actually placing any turns into them, then re-assign the population from those tiles to high-production tiles instead...but that's a one-time thing, and you've locked your city into that development state more or less permanently so I can't imagine many use-cases.

In MP, I'm curious how wars will go. You have no way of scouting strength other than actually moving scouts in, and units are cheap, BUT the influence system encourages you to only go to war after a long period of seeding the ground, since a Surprise War will hamper your economy & military strength. I think, though, in most cases the aggressor will roll over an unprepared defender, or else botch it like Russia in Ukraine and the two sides settle into an endlessly destructive slog as both are forced to build nothing but units in order to keep up. It's a real Red Queen's Race situation.

[Japper007]

If you have a sizeable war chest you can go from having no defenses to walls and a ranged unit in every frontline settlements in one turn. (Though I guess you could argue banking up money means you are prepared, but should only set you back about a K of gold)

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Part IV - The End of Antiquity (turns 72-120)

So, let's talk about how ages progress, and victory conditions. Civ VII doesn't have VI's eureka quests. Instead, the quest system has been relocated to your victories. There are four victory types in VII - Militaristic/Expansionistic, Cultural, Scientific, and Economic. Each one has a series of checkpoints to jump through in each age, which in turn reward you with points and bonuses in the next age, before culminating in victory in the modern age. 

So, to progress through Antiquity, we have

Culture


Basically, just build World Wonders. Every handful of wonders nets you +1 culture point to upgrade your Leader with in the next era. Building 7 nets you a Cultural Golden age. 

Military


Have 12 settlements in your empire. Captured settlements are worth double. So, just grab cities, settle towns - the steps along the way reward you with militaristic and expansionist upgrades next age. I got close on this one, I was too hesitant to cross the settlement cap before I quite grasped how happiness worked. 

Science


Display 'Codices' across the empire. These are Great Works produced via the tech tree, some wonders, etc. The science buildings accelerate you through the tree and let you display the codices. Yep, Civ VI's great works system now is for both science and culture, what joy. I didn't faff with this much while I was learning the nuts and bolts, so I didn't get close. Culture seemed more important in general due to all the civilizational upgrades it grants, yet the Culture legacy path has nothing to do with your cultural output! It's just wonder-whoring, and science is Great Works whoring. Odd choices here. I like the idea of carrying over points to each age depending on your performance, but some of the specific performances chosen are goofy, and not what I would have done were I designing the game. 

Economic - why is this an adjective when the other 3 legacy paths are nouns? Get it together, Firaxis. Clearly should be Economy. 


Basically, just attach resources to your settlements. You'll either need to have a sprawling empire to have enough resource slots, OR find lots of camel resources, which let you attach 3 extra resources for each camel.  I quite like the way resources work in this game compared with VI. We'll get there, they'll be quite important in future eras. I JUST missed the golden age on this one, I should have had more merchants trading for resources in foreign lands. Oops. 

Anyway, with the fall of Greece, I felt that I had a firm enough grasp on the basic gameplay now to seriously begin considering how I was going to win the game. I enabled legacy tracking on the main screen so I could see at a glance what I needed to accomplish, and let that guide me through the end of the Age. 

Meanwhile, just after the conquest of Athens, the crisis hit:




Towards the end of Antiquity and Exploration, the game puts pressure on the player by spawning the crisis. The barbarian invasions that brought down the Roman Empire, the Protestant Reformation, the Black Death - these events show up and force you to a)deal with on-map effects, in this case new "independent peoples" spawning and invading my lands, and b)slot "crisis policies" that require you to pick between various unpalatable alternatives. Some players may hate this, the way they do Realm Divide in Shogun II, but I didn't find them too onerous. You just have to adapt and deal, and the policies allow you to make some choices in what you'll be faced with and how you'll tackle it. In this case, I hadn't suzerained too many city-states, so taking the -10 gold per was the obvious choice. 

Which reminds me, let's look at governments. Like I said yesterday, there are no more different combinations of policy cards with each government - instead you simply have a finite amount of slots to put in any policies you like. It's definitely simpler and easier, but I'm not sure I like the change. For example, here's my Roman government after the Greek war:


I don't have to make hard choices, most of the time. I take effects that grant me an extra policy slot whenever I can. Some wonders grant it, you can gain it as a suzerain bonus, some civics grant it, etc. PLUS, each Celebration grants you one additional slot for the remainder of the game - so if you spam happiness, which I had no trouble doing, you can more or less always have room for everything. The card with the little quills on the corners are my Roman traditions, unique policies only I have access to. I keep those for the entire game, as well, into the modern age if I like. 

Here's what the barbarian invasion looks like on the map:


A large barbarian army is operating near Athens, where happily my army is still deployed after the Greek war. Here, it's mostly a nuisance, since the barb units are no match for my legions backed by the Legate. They'll intensify and even seriously threaten some settlements later, but for now I can cope. In the meantime, I start trying to collect objectives. I need a second Wonder, so I build the Hanging Gardens outside Rome:



That grants +1 food to all farms, +10% growth to all cities, and +1 expansionist point to my leader. I'll show those trees sometime soon, too. 

Meanwhile, the game starts trying to prep me for the end of the age:


Essentially, the game has a soft reset at the end. My cities will downgrade to towns (none will disappear), independent powers get swept off the board and fresh ones spawn, and units will demobilize. However, every city  will receive one garrison unit (maximum 6), AND my commanders will also be able to retain all units in their armies. Further, I can annex any independent powers with sufficient influence (I never did this, there was always somewhere else to settle), too. So you don't lose everything and you can take measure to prepare for it. With enough commanders, you could even maintain a huge army into the start of Exploration and fall upon your enemies while they try to spin up their new age militaries. 

I continue to try to accumulate legacy points and prepare for Exploration. I have cities on the east coast, like Neapolis, but I'd like to explore the western seas as well. That's a long stretch, EXCEPT just south of Athens there's a large lake, with a navigable river running down to the sea:


I send a settler that way. Any ships built there can sail to the ocean and explore, and it brings in more resources that I don't have. 

By turn 89, the Crisis grows stronger and I'm forced to take more policy cards:


I maintain two armies now, one in the west near Athens and another growing in the east to defend my original homelands. 

Soon, they grow severe enough that I'm largely tied down defending my lands from within the cities, leaving me no offensive capacity to go and invade Xerxes when HE declares war on me a few turns later. For example, defending Athens:


Notice the Lycians even have a hostile commander unit on the field now! 

At the same time, in the east, my second army desperately defends Ravenna from Persian invasion, while I also try to drive off the hostile city of Champa in the highlands southwest of the city:

 
Fortifications go a long way in this game and my army being present essentially prevents Xerxes from making any progress here, but with Champa on my flank I can't effectively counterinvade - only a narrow coastal plain pressed in by cliffs and mountains winds south to Persia, and two abortive efforts to push down it are stymied by Immortals and archers on the heights. I need to clear Champa to get at the high ground and clear a path, and that takes more units than I actually have available. 

 

Instead we fortify for a sitzkrieg at Ravenna, like so:



So, there's little change as I race through the final 20 turns of the age. I finish the Civics tree due to my heavy emphasis on Roman culture, but that does nothing for my Cultural legacy as I don't build enough wonders (none seem really impactful). I gain a few codices, though not enough for a science golden age, and my efforts to scrape up more resources also fail as I worked out too late that I needed merchants to acquire fresh resources outside my borders. I also respect the settlement limit too much, and when my invasion of Xerxes comes up short I'm going to finish a few settlement points of the Golden Age there, as well. I make it about 3/4 of the way through every tree and pick up plenty of points to spend in the next era, but yeah, in the future better management could definitely open up some Golden Ages for me. 



by turn 119 the age is ending. Everything resets, and we get to choose our next civ.

I have many to choose between, but like Napoleon I have only one choice:


In the next age, I will be Norman! My own family is Norman, tracing our descent all the way back to Rollo himself, and it's the first time they've featured in a Civ game, so yeah, gotta take 'em. The Normannites, as the game insists on referring to them, are a prototypical medieval European aesthetic, once again geared for war and culture. Here's the rundown for the next age:


Boosted cavalry, boosted embarked units, a settler that insta-builds walls in new cities, and a unique fortification that grants culture and happiness. The Normans are built to dominate culturally and aggressively settle overseas, relying on thier combat boost, their medieval walls, and their Donjons to hold the land seized. It'll be a fun exercise in colonialism!

Next time, I'll show you my boosts from the antiquity age, and we'll get started with Exploration!

[haphazard1]

Thanks again for the very informative posts. I am curious to see how you come through the age transition, and how things look in the new era.

How do the AIs seem to perform, in a general sense? They do seem to expand and develop fairly well, unlike Civ 5 at release.