An old warhorse comes home

[Aabraxan]

I'm not exactly where to put this. Mods, if it's in the wrong place, please move it and accept my humble apologies for the inconvenience.

The TLDR: It's one part nostalgic ramble and one part questions about Civ 6.

Years ago, I bought Civ 3 Complete, and it pretty well consumed my gaming time from 2011-2015, if my posts here are any indication. Then I bought a new computer that wouldn't run it for whatever reason, and I got caught up in life and other hobbies. I was a decent C3C player, but I was never great. I won consistently on Emperor, but my handful of Deity wins pretty much always involved a riverside, cow-included start and some dumb luck popping Scientific Great Leaders. Sid? Pffft. It was a slaughter. Not even funny. And to be honest, anything above Emperor took too much math for me. At times, it felt like I was playing a game of Excel.

Well, with The Current Situation, and lots of Going Nowhere going on around us, my kiddo talked me into buying a Nintendo Switch. We haven't had a gaming console in our house in about 5 years, and it's only the third one we've ever had. That also means that I skipped right over C4 and C5. And by the way, The Little Aabraxan tricked me. She used Civ VI and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as bait to get me to buy that Switch. She admits it, too. Anyway, having now rescued Hyrule, I have now turned my attention to C6.

My goodness gracious, there's a lot going on here! I've started and restarted several times (pfft. more like 20), just to get a feel for things and figure out where everything is and what a few things do. Heck, it took me 3 restarts and a google search to figure out how to found a city. Still, I'm off and limping along now. I've figured out how to build settlers, units & buildings, trade with other nations, explore and kill barbs. I played as Rome in my first ever C3C game, so I figured I'd start as Rome in my first ever C6 game. I have to say, despite my early issues figuring out the controls, C6 feels familiar. It feels like I've come home after being away from Civilization for so long.

For my first game, I've set it for:

• Playing as Trajan
• Warlord difficulty;
• Continents;
• Standard size;
• Random Opponents.

I don't know about C6, but C3C, you could pretty much do anything you wanted below Monarch (the equivalent of C6 Prince?) and get away with it. Lots of players learned lots of bad habits at Settler and Chieftain in C3C. Anyway .... Interestingly, in my early (but now abandoned) starts, I made the very same mistakes that I did when I first played C3C on Warlord. Specifically, I tried to build everything. I looked at all of the nice, shiny, new buildings available to me and tried to build them and an army at the same time. I kept thinking, "that looks useful." Sure enough, at about 6 cities, my economy started choking on upkeep. So I cruised the internet for a while and read some articles. I know how I played C3C, and I know how I'm inclined to play C6. As scoutsout put it years ago, I'm a builder. From SGOTM 10 - Xteam"

You guys misunderstand me. I am actually a builder at heart.

Seriously, I like to build stuff:

• I like to build cities, so that I may build an empire...
• I like to build barracks, so I can build veteran units.
• I like to build roads, to connect my trade network, make some gold, and move some units.
• I like to build markets, for happiness, gold, and unit support.
• I like to build libraries, so I can learn to build better units.
• I like to build MORE cities, for more unit support
• I like to build railroads, so I can move my units really fast.
• I like to build factories, so I can build units faster
• I like to build things that throw rocks and drop bombs, so I can ... kill other civs' units!
• I like to build universities and banks... (see "libraries" and "markets")
• I like to build airfields, so I can move units around really, REALLY fast.

I read some articles on warmongering and city placement and a few things and restarted once again. Drew a nice riverside start and went to work. I'm still playing Trajan and have the Japanese and Scythians as neighbors so far. Planted my cities tighter than I had before. Now I'm up to 3 cities with 1 or 2 settlers already on the move to new sites. (I'm not at home, so I can't look at my game right now.) I fought an Ancient Age war with slingers and warriors and burned one Japanese city to the ground. (They settled too close to 'my' incense, and I didn't feel like dealing with an unhappy populace.) I know that in C3C, the conventional wisdom was that speed kills so many players liked early horsemen for AA wars, but I always had better luck with swords.

So question 1: Preferred unit for early war? Horses or swords?

Next issue: Faith, governments and culture. So this whole Faith aspect is all new to me. From what I'm seeing, though, it doesn't look like it flips cities the way culture did in C3C, but opens a door for a Religious Victory. I'm not entirely sure how to fight that, except by: (a) building my own Faith buildings, which will eat into my military budget; or (2) kill the dominant religion's people? Their missionaries? Or maybe kill enough that nobody can meet the victory conditions?

It also looks like I'm going to have to get at least some culture going if I ever want to get much past Chiefdom. This doesn't look like something I research in the same way as I do techs. Can I trade for knowledge of gov't types? I haven't seen it come up in any trade screens, but that doesn't mean much at this point in my short C6 tenure.

Spending: In C3C, there was a slider that one used to dedicate a part of one's budget to science. Is there anything like that in C6? I haven't found anything, so I'm guessing I just have to rely on generating beakers?

Oh, and while I'm on the topic of spending, has corruption in outer settlements been carried over this far? In C3C, corruption got really bad after a couple of rings of cities and folks turned to specialist farms to deal with it. I'm just wondering if I'm going to need to learn to do that, too.

I'm going to stop there, and thank you all in advance for your help. I'm sure I'll have more questions later, but I'll try to use the Quick Questions & Answers thread when I can.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Welcome back!!

Don't have time to dive into this now but am sure others will, just one comment - you're Rome so you build Legions!!

 

[Thormodr]

Yeah, welcome back! Glad you are having fun!

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

Next issue: Faith, governments and culture. So this whole Faith aspect is all new to me. From what I'm seeing, though, it doesn't look like it flips cities the way culture did in C3C, but opens a door for a Religious Victory. I'm not entirely sure how to fight that, except by: (a) building my own Faith buildings, which will eat into my military budget; or (2) kill the dominant religion's people? Their missionaries? Or maybe kill enough that nobody can meet the victory conditions?

Faith is it's own currency. You can ignore it and I've never seen AI end up winning a religious victory because there are always at least a couple of dominant religions in the world. But if you want one you need to build Holy Sites or Stonehenge to even try to get a religion. That will produce faith which you can eventually by units with it. The production will only be for the first two buildings. You don't necessarily need a religion when playing with Rome.
Though you can declare war and go on a missionary killing spree if you want.

It also looks like I'm going to have to get at least some culture going if I ever want to get much past Chiefdom. This doesn't look like something I research in the same way as I do techs. Can I trade for knowledge of gov't types? I haven't seen it come up in any trade screens, but that doesn't mean much at this point in my short C6 tenure.

With the free monument as Rome you will be able to gain a lot more culture quicker than other Civs. You want to look for Political Philosophy to acquire one of the first three "actual" governments available in the Classical Era.
It's a separate culture tree that does work the same way for technologies and science.

Spending: In C3C, there was a slider that one used to dedicate a part of one's budget to science. Is there anything like that in C6? I haven't found anything, so I'm guessing I just have to rely on generating beakers?

In the city menu you can select what you want the city to focus on, or not, above the name.

 

[Deadly Dog]

Well you picked right in picking Rome since you won't have to worry about border expansion and roads until you get the hang of things.

There is no science/tax slider anymore. Science is a separate resource from gold, collected mainly from campuses and their buildings. Some tiles can yield science directly.

Culture is a separate resource like science used to learn new civics and governments. Faith too, but as noted not as necessary to the game. Faith works more like gold in that it can be used to "purchase" certain units or buildings, great people.

No unhappiness or corruption, but you need both amenities (luxuries and sports) and housing in addition to food stockpiles to grow.

There are many many new avenues to customizing/tweaking civ mechanics, notably through civ traits, religion traits, policy cards, and city-state suzerain bonuses.

Maps are much more varied (I'm sure you noticed), and more impotant to the decisions a player makes.

Difficulty levels work more or less the same. Until the AI gets production and starting bonuses (Emperor and higher) you can pretty much do what you want. So if you were an emperor player in civ3 you'll probably play emperor and above on Civ6 once you get the hang of things.

Welcome back. The game may look intimidating but imo it is way more fun than the early versions. Many routes to not just victory but just glorious looking civs.

Oh, and you can build canals now!

 

[Naeshar]

I'm not exactly where to put this. Mods, if it's in the wrong place, please move it and accept my humble apologies for the inconvenience.

The TLDR: It's one part nostalgic ramble and one part questions about Civ 6.

Years ago, I bought Civ 3 Complete, and it pretty well consumed my gaming time from 2011-2015, if my posts here are any indication. Then I bought a new computer that wouldn't run it for whatever reason, and I got caught up in life and other hobbies. I was a decent C3C player, but I was never great. I won consistently on Emperor, but my handful of Deity wins pretty much always involved a riverside, cow-included start and some dumb luck popping Scientific Great Leaders. Sid? Pffft. It was a slaughter. Not even funny. And to be honest, anything above Emperor took too much math for me. At times, it felt like I was playing a game of Excel.

Well, with The Current Situation, and lots of Going Nowhere going on around us, my kiddo talked me into buying a Nintendo Switch. We haven't had a gaming console in our house in about 5 years, and it's only the third one we've ever had. That also means that I skipped right over C4 and C5. And by the way, The Little Aabraxan tricked me. She used Civ VI and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as bait to get me to buy that Switch. She admits it, too. Anyway, having now rescued Hyrule, I have now turned my attention to C6.

My goodness gracious, there's a lot going on here! I've started and restarted several times (pfft. more like 20), just to get a feel for things and figure out where everything is and what a few things do. Heck, it took me 3 restarts and a google search to figure out how to found a city. Still, I'm off and limping along now. I've figured out how to build settlers, units & buildings, trade with other nations, explore and kill barbs. I played as Rome in my first ever C3C game, so I figured I'd start as Rome in my first ever C6 game. I have to say, despite my early issues figuring out the controls, C6 feels familiar. It feels like I've come home after being away from Civilization for so long.

For my first game, I've set it for:

• Playing as Trajan
• Warlord difficulty;
• Continents;
• Standard size;
• Random Opponents.

I don't know about C6, but C3C, you could pretty much do anything you wanted below Monarch (the equivalent of C6 Prince?) and get away with it. Lots of players learned lots of bad habits at Settler and Chieftain in C3C. Anyway .... Interestingly, in my early (but now abandoned) starts, I made the very same mistakes that I did when I first played C3C on Warlord. Specifically, I tried to build everything. I looked at all of the nice, shiny, new buildings available to me and tried to build them and an army at the same time. I kept thinking, "that looks useful." Sure enough, at about 6 cities, my economy started choking on upkeep. So I cruised the internet for a while and read some articles. I know how I played C3C, and I know how I'm inclined to play C6. As scoutsout put it years ago, I'm a builder. From SGOTM 10 - Xteam"

I read some articles on warmongering and city placement and a few things and restarted once again. Drew a nice riverside start and went to work. I'm still playing Trajan and have the Japanese and Scythians as neighbors so far. Planted my cities tighter than I had before. Now I'm up to 3 cities with 1 or 2 settlers already on the move to new sites. (I'm not at home, so I can't look at my game right now.) I fought an Ancient Age war with slingers and warriors and burned one Japanese city to the ground. (They settled too close to 'my' incense, and I didn't feel like dealing with an unhappy populace.) I know that in C3C, the conventional wisdom was that speed kills so many players liked early horsemen for AA wars, but I always had better luck with swords.

So question 1: Preferred unit for early war? Horses or swords?

Next issue: Faith, governments and culture. So this whole Faith aspect is all new to me. From what I'm seeing, though, it doesn't look like it flips cities the way culture did in C3C, but opens a door for a Religious Victory. I'm not entirely sure how to fight that, except by: (a) building my own Faith buildings, which will eat into my military budget; or (2) kill the dominant religion's people? Their missionaries? Or maybe kill enough that nobody can meet the victory conditions?

It also looks like I'm going to have to get at least some culture going if I ever want to get much past Chiefdom. This doesn't look like something I research in the same way as I do techs. Can I trade for knowledge of gov't types? I haven't seen it come up in any trade screens, but that doesn't mean much at this point in my short C6 tenure.

Spending: In C3C, there was a slider that one used to dedicate a part of one's budget to science. Is there anything like that in C6? I haven't found anything, so I'm guessing I just have to rely on generating beakers?

Oh, and while I'm on the topic of spending, has corruption in outer settlements been carried over this far? In C3C, corruption got really bad after a couple of rings of cities and folks turned to specialist farms to deal with it. I'm just wondering if I'm going to need to learn to do that, too.

I'm going to stop there, and thank you all in advance for your help. I'm sure I'll have more questions later, but I'll try to use the Quick Questions & Answers thread when I can.

You posted right, welcome back.

As for your questions:
Yes, you can do whatever below Prince. I am a King player, which isn't any hard, but at least the AIs are not always hampered by random barbarians. Warlord is an easy game. Rome is a solid civ.

Early war units - both swords and horsemen are solid, perhaps if you mix some archers in to save health. Horsemen are less effective against anti-cav and cities, but swords are bit slower and susceptible to ranged fire. It is best to have a Great General already, it helps with maneuvers. The 1upt is limiting. On higher difficulties you need an army as AI will flood you with its early warriors. Also, keep an eye on horse barbarians, just in case.

Spending: There is no slider, only yields. You generate a few beakers by population (0.7 per pop, I guess), some features or resources like Iron, but you might want a few Campuses with buildings. Not necessary on King even.

Faith is almost a whole alternative economy, as it is used for the religious units, but can be spent for military, civilian units or some buildings with a belief or city state (think Valetta). It has little effect on loyalty (+3 if the city is of your majority religion), but loyalty is another system, not connected to culture and allows city flipping.
Religious victory is like a dagger in the back. Keep an eye on it, if you don't have own religion, wipe out the leading civ, they cannot win when dead. You can fight their religious units with your own or declare war and slaughter them with your military. One only needs half of the civilizations cities converted, so stay alert when on a conquest spree.

As for governments, there are four/five tiers and can be unlocked in the civics tree. First three are available at political philosophy and I always ignore the top and bottom to get this first. Inspirations and eurekas help a lot to save culture and science. There is no technology or knowledge sharing at all. All you can do is sign alliances and improve them for additional bonuses like free eurekas or envoy points.
I found there are a lot of easy ways to generate bonus culture, unlike bonus science.

Corruption was forfeited in Civ6. All cities generate full yields, unless they are unhappy, but that is a rather minor malus.

hope this helps hf

 

[Aabraxan]

Thank you, one and all, for your help.

Welcome back!!

Don't have time to dive into this now but am sure others will, just one comment - you're Rome so you build Legions!!

I knew that! Honest, I did. I actually have Legions in the field right now in my game. I like Legions. The only thing I didn't like about them in C3C was that they gave you a very early Golden Age if you weren't careful.

Faith is it's own currency. You can ignore it and I've never seen AI end up winning a religious victory because there are always at least a couple of dominant religions in the world. But if you want one you need to build Holy Sites or Stonehenge to even try to get a religion. That will produce faith which you can eventually by units with it. The production will only be for the first two buildings. You don't necessarily need a religion when playing with Rome.
Though you can declare war and go on a missionary killing spree if you want.

I'm not sure I'm all that interested in having a dominant religion right now, but I'll have to keep an eye on this. I know me and can see how it might escape my notice.

With the free monument as Rome you will be able to gain a lot more culture quicker than other Civs. You want to look for Political Philosophy to acquire one of the first three "actual" governments available in the Classical Era.
It's a separate culture tree that does work the same way for technologies and science.

Good info.

In the city menu you can select what you want the city to focus on, or not, above the name.

Also good to know. I'll look for that.

You posted right, welcome back.

As for your questions:
Yes, you can do whatever below Prince. I am a King player, which isn't any hard, but at least the AIs are not always hampered by random barbarians. Warlord is an easy game. Rome is a solid civ.

Early war units - both swords and horsemen are solid, perhaps if you mix some archers in to save health. Horsemen are less effective against anti-cav and cities, but swords are bit slower and susceptible to ranged fire. It is best to have a Great General already, it helps with maneuvers. The 1upt is limiting. On higher difficulties you need an army as AI will flood you with its early warriors. Also, keep an eye on horse barbarians, just in case.

Spending: There is no slider, only yields. You generate a few beakers by population (0.7 per pop, I guess), some features or resources like Iron, but you might want a few Campuses with buildings. Not necessary on King even.

The 1upt came as a surprise to me, but I'll figure out how to war with it. I've been sending slingers (or even better, archers) along with my foot soldiers, and it's been working so far, at least moderately well.

Faith is almost a whole alternative economy, as it is used for the religious units, but can be spent for military, civilian units or some buildings with a belief or city state (think Valetta). It has little effect on loyalty (+3 if the city is of your majority religion), but loyalty is another system, not connected to culture and allows city flipping.
Religious victory is like a dagger in the back. Keep an eye on it, if you don't have own religion, wipe out the leading civ, they cannot win when dead. You can fight their religious units with your own or declare war and slaughter them with your military. One only needs half of the civilizations cities converted, so stay alert when on a conquest spree.

Can you see loyalty anywhere? It's got to be assigned a number somehow, right?

As for governments, there are four/five tiers and can be unlocked in the civics tree. First three are available at political philosophy and I always ignore the top and bottom to get this first. Inspirations and eurekas help a lot to save culture and science. There is no technology or knowledge sharing at all. All you can do is sign alliances and improve them for additional bonuses like free eurekas or envoy points.
I found there are a lot of easy ways to generate bonus culture, unlike bonus science.

Corruption was forfeited in Civ6. All cities generate full yields, unless they are unhappy, but that is a rather minor malus.

hope this helps hf

That's all very helpful.

Again, thanks to everyone for your input.

 

[PhilBowles]

wanted below Monarch (the equivalent of C6 Prince?)

Civ 6 is easier than earlier incarnations once you know the basics of the system, not harder - this has been a recent trend (Civ V was easier than Civ IV, Civ VI easier than V), though I'm not sure whether Civ IV was easier than Civ III. So a Civ III difficulty is at least two or three 'levels' lower than the closest Civ VI equivalent - Monarch in Civ III might be Deity in VI.

and get away with it. Lots of players learned lots of bad habits at Settler and Chieftain in C3C. Anyway .... Interestingly, in my early (but now abandoned) starts, I made the very same mistakes that I did when I first played C3C on Warlord. Specifically, I tried to build everything. I looked at all of the nice, shiny, new buildings available to me and tried to build them and an army at the same time. I kept thinking, "that looks useful." Sure enough, at about 6 cities, my economy started choking on upkeep. So I cruised the internet for a while and read some articles. I know how I played C3C, and I know how I'm inclined to play C6. As scoutsout put it years ago, I'm a builder. From SGOTM 10 - Xteam"

Upkeep isn't much of an issue in Civ VI, but you need to be aware that much of your income should come from trade routes. This means building commercial districts or harbors (I'm not sure if it's a patch change that applies to a basic game or something that applies only to expansions, but you may need a level 1 building - Market or Lighthouse respectively - in that district once you have the district up). Adjacency bonuses are also useful to understand - these two districts are straightforward in that regard in terms of initial placement (Commercial Districts give gold for being along rivers, Harbors for being next to sea resources), but the key consideration with all district types is that adjacent districts always give adjacency bonuses. This incentivises you to plan around placing districts next to each other, so that both will benefit.

So question 1: Preferred unit for early war? Horses or swords?

As far as taking cities the two units are almost identical - and the best Civ VI strategy is to use multiple ranged units to damage the city before taking it with melee units. In general Swordsmen are more useful early because of their placement in the tech tree (the route leading to Iron Working is more useful in the early game than Horseback Riding) and because they upgrade directly from your starting Warrior, while Horsemen have to be built from scratch. If you have a civ that's incentivised to go for early cavalry this will be different, but for the Romans specifically the Legion replaces the Swordsman and it's preferable to focus on your uniques..

There is also a strategic resource consideration: Horses are more common than iron, and if you find after unlocking Bronze Working that you have no nearby iron (or conversely if you're in the rarer situation of having no nearby horses, but have iron) that will dictate which unit you'd prefer to use, as ideally you don't want to spend early resources trading for strategic resources from other civs.

Next issue: Faith, governments and culture. So this whole Faith aspect is all new to me. From what I'm seeing, though, it doesn't look like it flips cities the way culture did in C3C, but opens a door for a Religious Victory.

Faith is similar to gold, as a resource that you directly spend on specific units and buildings (some of which depend on whether you have a religion and which tenets you have, others - Great People, Naturalists, and in an expansion Rock Bands - are universally available). It's not all that useful unless you have a religion of your own until fairly late in the game, where you may want it for the said generic units, or in some cases if you have a religion that's been spread to you which allows you to build certain buildings or units for faith.

I'm not entirely sure how to fight that, except by: (a) building my own Faith buildings, which will eat into my military budget; or (2) kill the dominant religion's people? Their missionaries? Or maybe kill enough that nobody can meet the victory conditions?

Faith doesn't have any direct effect on other civs - what high faith generation allows is buying units that can spread religion, through a system called religious pressure, and fight other religious units (which you can do even if not at war, and killing enemy religious units close to your cities will reduce the pressure of their religion). If you don't have a religion, or have one but aren't going for religious victory yourself and don't particularly need the benefits your religion provides in every city, having religions spread to you is beneficial rather than something to fight since you will usually get access to buildings you can buy with faith.

It's a quirk of the system that, with more than two civs, it's not really possible for the AI to win a religious victory - pretty much invariably at least two will be doing their best to spread their religion to other civs, and in a typical 8- or 12-civ set up there will be five or more each claiming some subset of the available cities.

It also looks like I'm going to have to get at least some culture going if I ever want to get much past Chiefdom. This doesn't look like something I research in the same way as I do techs.

Culture is researched just like science in Civ VI. Culture is a resource that levels you up along the purple Civics tree. Culture is harder to come by passively than science, and Theater Squares (cultural districts) only get adjacency bonuses from other districts and World Wonders that you need to build - most of your culture in the early and midgame will come from Theater Square buildings (the amphitheater being the level 1 building), Monuments (which are available from the start) and sending envoys to cultural city states. Governments are unlocked through certain civics.

Can I trade for knowledge of gov't types? I haven't seen it come up in any trade screens, but that doesn't mean much at this point in my short C6 tenure.

There is no tech or civic trading in Civ VI.

Spending: In C3C, there was a slider that one used to dedicate a part of one's budget to science. Is there anything like that in C6? I haven't found anything, so I'm guessing I just have to rely on generating beakers?

No, there's no slider. Each resource is accumulated in its own bucket and associated with a specific specialist district and its buildings: Campus for science, Theater Square for culture, Commercial District and Harbors (and the traders linked to them) for gold, Industrial Zones for production (with further production boosts for units through Encampments or Harbors) and Holy Sites for faith.

Oh, and while I'm on the topic of spending, has corruption in outer settlements been carried over this far? In C3C, corruption got really bad after a couple of rings of cities and folks turned to specialist farms to deal with it. I'm just wondering if I'm going to need to learn to do that, too..

Corruption is gone. Each Civ game since Civ IV has replaced it with a different attempt to pace expansion. Civ VI has largely done away with expansion constraints altogether - you'll notice that settlers, traders and builders become more expensive as you build more of them, but this is the only way that expansion is managed. There are two local systems that affect production in cities - happiness (amenities) and health (housing). Neither is particularly punishing and can mostly be ignored at the level you're playing - housing is the more important constraint as it impacts growth, and is mitigated with several buildings, with farms, and with settling on freshwater. Amenities are mitigated with luxury resources - unhappiness very slowly reduces productivity, but you start with a lot of 'free' amenities and luxuries are generous so it will rarely be an issue unless you're at war for a long period (which causes war weariness)..

 

[Naeshar]

Can you see loyalty anywhere? It's got to be assigned a number somehow, right?

Loyalty is part of the RnF, probably all expansion content, not present in base ruleset. You can see a small green arrow in the city panel on map, right where the civ icon is. There is also a tab in the city details for it, together with housing and amenities I guess... Its a border mechanic, but very helpful as AI doesn't simply forward settle.
The number is a 0-100 value with increase/decrease per turn, mostly influenced by pressure from neighboring cities. Once it drops to 0, the city becomes independent and can be conquered freely or if it reaches 0 again, it switches to another civ.

 

[Aabraxan]

RnF doesn't show up in the Common Acronyms post, but R&F does. Rise and Fall?

My dog got me up at about 3 this morning, which isn't unusual. So I played a little further. Somewhere I saw on here that 10 cities by turn 100 was doable. I didn't make that goal, but I had 7 (I think) by turn 105. Japan insisted on settling near my incense which is now within my borders, so I suspect some other resource may be there, but invisible to me. (The C3C AI certainly knows where all resources are, whether I can see them or not.) Tokimune got belligerent with me, so I sent Legions to do what Legions do best -- kick in some doors. I backed them with archers and about 6 turns and two captured cities later, Toki asked for peace. Tomyris to the north started smack-talking during all of this, so when Toki offered 12 gpt for 30 turns, I took it and sent a bunch of units her way. She's now down 2 cities (and her diamonds) and I'm up 2 more. Somehow forgot to research The Wheel all this time, so I'm backtracking and picking up some older techs real quick before I move forward. Nonetheless, I moved into the Medieval Era in 265 BC.

 

[PhilBowles]

RnF doesn't show up in the Common Acronyms post, but R&F does. Rise and Fall?

My dog got me up at about 3 this morning, which isn't unusual. So I played a little further. Somewhere I saw on here that 10 cities by turn 100 was doable. I didn't make that goal, but I had 7 (I think) by turn 105. Japan insisted on settling near my incense which is now within my borders, so I suspect some other resource may be there, but invisible to me. (The C3C AI certainly knows where all resources are, whether I can see them or not.)

Pretty sure you're correct that this is still the case in Civ V. It was in Civs IV and V. But Hojo may really have liked incense. One thing you may not have picked up on that Civ VI inherited from Civ V, and is a change from earlier games, is that you can only get the amenity bonus from any given luxury resource once (and the AI doesn't obsessively try to trade for luxuries as it did in Civ V). Duplicates are only useful to trade away, other than the resource bonuses they provide to the tiles they're on. That prompts settling in a way that provides as diverse a mix of luxuries as possible.

Tokimune got belligerent with me, so I sent Legions to do what Legions do best -- kick in some doors. I backed them with archers and about 6 turns and two captured cities later, Toki asked for peace. Tomyris to the north started smack-talking during all of this, so when Toki offered 12 gpt for 30 turns, I took it and sent a bunch of units her way. She's now down 2 cities (and her diamonds) and I'm up 2 more. Somehow forgot to research The Wheel all this time, so I'm backtracking and picking up some older techs real quick before I move forward. Nonetheless, I moved into the Medieval Era in 265 BC.

Coming from a game where Prophecy is a tech you're undoubtedly used to the level of abstraction in tech trees, where Civs I and II at least made an effort to approximate a plausible real-world tech progression, but as an old-timer it does make me sad that The Wheel is not a very useful tech and isn't something you're incentivised to go for early unless you need chariots for some reason (which aren't bad since they upgrade to Knights - Horsemen don't have a good promotion path - but just aren't that useful in their own right).

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I'm not sure I'm all that interested in having a dominant religion right now, but I'll have to keep an eye on this. I know me and can see how it might escape my notice.

Yes. My first game I found a religion and didn't really do anything with it. It never spread and my Holy City was converted so I pretty much lost that. Every missionary/apostle I bought was from the new one that I was converted which is also something to consider for the future.

RnF doesn't show up in the Common Acronyms post, but R&F does. Rise and Fall?

Rise & Fall is the name of the first expansion. It does introduce a loyalty mechanic where you can flip cities.

 

[Aabraxan]

....One thing you may not have picked up on that Civ VI inherited from Civ V, and is a change from earlier games, is that you can only get the amenity bonus from any given luxury resource once (and the AI doesn't obsessively try to trade for luxuries as it did in Civ V). Duplicates are only useful to trade away, other than the resource bonuses they provide to the tiles they're on. That prompts settling in a way that provides as diverse a mix of luxuries as possible.....

I've seen that amenities are certainly handled differently than in C3C, where 1 luxury could supply every city connected to it by road or harbor. I read an article on how they're handled in C6, but it's still a little fuzzy for me. It'll become clear in time.

....as an old-timer it does make me sad that The Wheel is not a very useful tech and isn't something you're incentivised to go for early unless you need chariots for some reason (which aren't bad since they upgrade to Knights - Horsemen don't have a good promotion path - but just aren't that useful in their own right).

I did notice that horses don't upgrade very well in C6. As I mentioned earlier, I always had better luck with swords, anyway. I'll be interested to see what Knights & Cavs can do, though.

 

[Alexander's Hetaroi]

I did notice that horses don't upgrade very well in C6. As I mentioned earlier, I always had better luck with swords, anyway. I'll be interested to see what Knights & Cavs can do, though.

The latest expansion adds in two units that fill in the cavalry gaps at least. The courser( light cavalry) in Medieval from the horsemen and the cuirassier (heavy cavalry) from the knight in Industrial.
They streamlined it in this game so you're not unlocking a new unit for every era, which is fine by me.

 

[PhilBowles]

I've seen that amenities are certainly handled differently than in C3C, where 1 luxury could supply every city connected to it by road or harbor. I read an article on how they're handled in C6, but it's still a little fuzzy for me. It'll become clear in time.

It's unnecessarily opaque for a system that doesn't really matter very much in practice (not least because Civ VI has a very poor UI as far as explaining what system is doing what is concerned - you'll notice, for instance, that all the resource breakdown tooltips when you hover over each bucket - pointlessly say that you're getting basically everything from "Cities" with no useful information), so you don't particularly need to and I never track it in my games. In broad outline, each unique luxury provides amenities to up to four cities (this is essentially just translating the Civ V system - where a luxury added +4 to a global 'happiness pool' - into Civ VI, hence the otherwise arbitrary number. It made sense in the Civ V system but that worked very differently). Possibly it's more relevant if you expand more rapidly than I tend to, but others have also mentioned that happiness isn't much of a constraint in Civ VI.

I did notice that horses don't upgrade very well in C6. As I mentioned earlier, I always had better luck with swords, anyway. I'll be interested to see what Knights & Cavs can do, though.

As Alexander's Hetaroi mentions, the gaps are filled by expansion content - I wasn't even remembering that the horse promotion path has missing units in the base game. My earlier comments about horses and swords being roughly equivalent assumed the full game - with the worse upgrade path, swordsmen definitely have the edge.

 

[Aabraxan]

Played more last night and during the Insomnia Hours of the morning. Japan will probably never recover from the beatings at this point. Well, they won't if I can help it. It's down to 2 cities and I'll have those 2 sealed off from further expansion in less than 10 turns by my estimate. Tomyris continues to denounce me, but as far as I can tell, she's also down to 2 cities, and I've filled in pretty much all the free space I can. So now it's time to free up some more Elbow Room, and Auckland is in my way. I have horses, iron and niter. Knights will take the field soon (~20-25 turns), I built a Legion Corps using El Cid, and galleys are mapping the edges of my continent.

An amusing exchange took place when Little Aabra walked through the living room last night.

Little Aabra: How's Civ going?
Big Aabra: Good. (opens right hand 'tray' about that time)
LA: Good Lord, Dad. Does everyone hate you?
BA: Yeah, pretty much.
LA: Let me guess. You're a builder?
BA: Yeah. (Sees 'heart menu' in diplo screen). Hmm. Let's see what's here.
LA: Sees "-83" relationship due to "your warmongering" on the screen and bursts into laughter. Yep. You're a builder.​

 

[agonistes]

I'm not exactly where to put this. Mods, if it's in the wrong place, please move it and accept my humble apologies for the inconvenience.

The TLDR: It's one part nostalgic ramble and one part questions about Civ 6.

Years ago, I bought Civ 3 Complete, and it pretty well consumed my gaming time from 2011-2015, if my posts here are any indication. Then I bought a new computer that wouldn't run it for whatever reason, and I got caught up in life and other hobbies. I was a decent C3C player, but I was never great. I won consistently on Emperor, but my handful of Deity wins pretty much always involved a riverside, cow-included start and some dumb luck popping Scientific Great Leaders. Sid? Pffft. It was a slaughter. Not even funny. And to be honest, anything above Emperor took too much math for me. At times, it felt like I was playing a game of Excel.

Well, with The Current Situation, and lots of Going Nowhere going on around us, my kiddo talked me into buying a Nintendo Switch. We haven't had a gaming console in our house in about 5 years, and it's only the third one we've ever had. That also means that I skipped right over C4 and C5. And by the way, The Little Aabraxan tricked me. She used Civ VI and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild as bait to get me to buy that Switch. She admits it, too. Anyway, having now rescued Hyrule, I have now turned my attention to C6.

My goodness gracious, there's a lot going on here! I've started and restarted several times (pfft. more like 20), just to get a feel for things and figure out where everything is and what a few things do. Heck, it took me 3 restarts and a google search to figure out how to found a city. Still, I'm off and limping along now. I've figured out how to build settlers, units & buildings, trade with other nations, explore and kill barbs. I played as Rome in my first ever C3C game, so I figured I'd start as Rome in my first ever C6 game. I have to say, despite my early issues figuring out the controls, C6 feels familiar. It feels like I've come home after being away from Civilization for so long.

For my first game, I've set it for:

• Playing as Trajan
• Warlord difficulty;
• Continents;
• Standard size;
• Random Opponents.

I don't know about C6, but C3C, you could pretty much do anything you wanted below Monarch (the equivalent of C6 Prince?) and get away with it. Lots of players learned lots of bad habits at Settler and Chieftain in C3C. Anyway .... Interestingly, in my early (but now abandoned) starts, I made the very same mistakes that I did when I first played C3C on Warlord. Specifically, I tried to build everything. I looked at all of the nice, shiny, new buildings available to me and tried to build them and an army at the same time. I kept thinking, "that looks useful." Sure enough, at about 6 cities, my economy started choking on upkeep. So I cruised the internet for a while and read some articles. I know how I played C3C, and I know how I'm inclined to play C6. As scoutsout put it years ago, I'm a builder. From SGOTM 10 - Xteam"

I read some articles on warmongering and city placement and a few things and restarted once again. Drew a nice riverside start and went to work. I'm still playing Trajan and have the Japanese and Scythians as neighbors so far. Planted my cities tighter than I had before. Now I'm up to 3 cities with 1 or 2 settlers already on the move to new sites. (I'm not at home, so I can't look at my game right now.) I fought an Ancient Age war with slingers and warriors and burned one Japanese city to the ground. (They settled too close to 'my' incense, and I didn't feel like dealing with an unhappy populace.) I know that in C3C, the conventional wisdom was that speed kills so many players liked early horsemen for AA wars, but I always had better luck with swords.

So question 1: Preferred unit for early war? Horses or swords?

Next issue: Faith, governments and culture. So this whole Faith aspect is all new to me. From what I'm seeing, though, it doesn't look like it flips cities the way culture did in C3C, but opens a door for a Religious Victory. I'm not entirely sure how to fight that, except by: (a) building my own Faith buildings, which will eat into my military budget; or (2) kill the dominant religion's people? Their missionaries? Or maybe kill enough that nobody can meet the victory conditions?

It also looks like I'm going to have to get at least some culture going if I ever want to get much past Chiefdom. This doesn't look like something I research in the same way as I do techs. Can I trade for knowledge of gov't types? I haven't seen it come up in any trade screens, but that doesn't mean much at this point in my short C6 tenure.

Spending: In C3C, there was a slider that one used to dedicate a part of one's budget to science. Is there anything like that in C6? I haven't found anything, so I'm guessing I just have to rely on generating beakers?

Oh, and while I'm on the topic of spending, has corruption in outer settlements been carried over this far? In C3C, corruption got really bad after a couple of rings of cities and folks turned to specialist farms to deal with it. I'm just wondering if I'm going to need to learn to do that, too.

I'm going to stop there, and thank you all in advance for your help. I'm sure I'll have more questions later, but I'll try to use the Quick Questions & Answers thread when I can.

Haha! Welcome back Aab! Nice to see you!

VI is easier. So no worries at monarch.

Can’t trade for techs, but no corruption.

Cities are much easier to flip with loyalty mechanic.

Spice on hills is the new cattle, but disaster buffs to tiles can get crazy.

You only need warriors to conquer unwalled cities, might want archers for walls.

Really can’t think of anything else. Holler if you have any more questions. Maybe we can do a MP sometime.

 

[Aabraxan]

Thank you. It's been nice to get such a warm welcome after so long.

 

[agonistes]

Thank you. It's been nice to get such a warm welcome after so long.

Well, you’re civ legend afterall!

 

[Aabraxan]

Thanks, but "legend?" Hardly. I'm just a mid-level micromanager.