6otM07 Opening Action

Never won on Immortal. Think I can survive till the end, but I'm last in Culture and Science, so will take a lot of work to get a victory!

- Where did you settle your city?
In place

- What did you research and which policies did you choose and why?
Research went straight to archery. Then bounced around the bottom of the tech tree hitting eurekas. Want to get to crossbowman and knights before then teching what is needed for a science victory. I am still not at either crossbowman or knights, but close.

Culture was straight to PP. Just hit feudalism and now heading towards merchant republic.

- What was your build order?
Very nervous on Immortal. So went slinger slinger slinger archer archer archer builder ...

- Were there any early wars? Did you start them?
Haha. yes! t12 China DOW'd. But weak advance. Slinger and warrior. Sued for peace at t23 and got all gold/gpt.
Sumeria was then being sketchy. Kept marshalling a lot of units around my capital - 6/7 - but not attacking. So i DOW'd him when i had built a small army by T39. Killed all his units near me.
I then DOW'd China two more times in first 100 turns. Got one city in first war, but his capital had put up walls and I did not have enough units. Then pumped out some war chariots and attacked the capital again with archers and war chariots. So - but defeated China and he out of the game.
Currently in a way with Sumeria again, which I started to grab a settler. Have just taken one of his cities. But will be slow to wipe him out. His army depleted but walls up everywhere, and he seems to have gunpowder now.

- How soon did you build a District? Which ones did you prioritize?
I've been focusing very heavily on war. Only have one science district in capital. But china capital had built holy site, theatre district and encampment. Thank you
Plenty more science districts started, but not close to being complete.

- Did you emphasize expansion? How many cities have you built/captured in the first 100 turns?
Sort of . Have settled four cities, one with a stolen settler. Captured 2 from china and 1 from sumeria. So 7 in total.

- How did you play your governance cards, priorities?
+5 barbs and +1 production for the start. Then bounced around 50% settlers, and 50% archers and 50% war chariots. Also running -1 gold for military units as large army.

- What City-States did you meet and which ones did you cultivate to your side?
Jakarta has been captured by Sumeria. Preslav declared against me as sumeria is suzerin. But that is it. I have not explored much land. Sumeria has a line of cities down my east side. Ocean on my west side.

- Were your neighbors peaceful?
No! But have had an easier time with others. China declared with crap army. Sumeria could have caused my damage early, but just sat an army outside my capital without declaring!

- How were the Barbarians?
Again, I had a pretty easy start with barbs. No horseman or horse archers. Just warriors slingers and spearman. And only a few camps popped up - each with no more than 2 units.

- Any surprises?
Compared to everyone else, I have had a much easier go of it with the barbs. I did see them swarming around the first china city i captured, so maybe they caused the AI more problems than me!

 

Turn 107. I settled in place and built scout then 2 slingers. Second slinger was just built when China DoW with 4 warriors + scout. Just got my exploring units back in time:- Nidaros hit red health for one turn! I turned the tide, quickly upgraded to archers (4 by this time) and headed towards China, only to find that barbarians had captured and razed their second city (not seen this before in Civ6). Noticing several warcarts in the vicinity of Nidaros, I made a lucrative peace with China (taking a relic with me) and returned home. The warcarts moved back slowly and I planted a city towards Sumeria and DoW myself (joint war with France), taking one city. I was then DoW by France and (at first contact) Russia:- this was turning out to be harder than the previous Deity 6oTM! After dealing with the attackers, I made good peace agreements, including horses which allowed me to produce horsemen and conquer China (by about turn 80 IIRC). I currently have 9 cities (including 2 from captured settlers) and have just upgraded to knights and crossbows:- the plan is to take over the cream of French and Sumerian cities before concentrating on science. I currently have 3 campuses but hope to ramp this up soon. Now looking a lot better than turn 20!

I have 3 longships, which were delayed in production due to land wars. With shipbuilding, I have been able to explore much of the map but still have 1 AI to meet. Most CS seem to have been overrun by the AI.

 

- Where did you settle your city?
In starting position

- What did you research and which policies did you choose and why?
Archery to get them faster in this war game

- What was your build order?
After 5 Slingers I build my first Builder

- Were there any early wars? Did you start them?
China declare war on turn 9.

- How soon did you build a District? Which ones did you prioritize?
Not in first 100 turns. My priority was to make armies and cities.

- Did you emphasize expansion? How many cities have you built/captured in the first 100 turns?
11 cities total: 5 captured, 6 build

- What City-States did you meet and which ones did you cultivate to your side?
not in first 100t.

- Were your neighbors peaceful?
not at all

- How were the Barbarians?
Barbarian do a good work. They keep busy china and Sumeria to destroy them.

- Any surprises?
Hmm yes. After few restarts of the game because China attack me too early i change my default build order and destroy them.

 

Very nice map

Settled in place. I must say, a barb scout spotting you and escaping to alert the camp sometimes can be a good thing. The invading wave of barbs clashed with the warriors Qin has been parking on my border and they annihilated each other a bit. Qin did not declare and went away, and I had time to build some troops (my order was slinger, builder, few slingers and a warrior), to mop up the territory, get the early eurekas and settle the second city to the west.

Then I went for two early campus districts in both cities and thought I had a breather for a bit of peaceful expansion, but Qin and Giggles ganged up on me. My archers shot the few Sumer's war charts to pieces and I made profitable peace with him, then went after Qin. After a while I got four original Chinese cities, and Qin was left only with Jakarta, which he'd conquered earlier.

There was now a vast swathe of empty space between my heartland and the new possessions and I was preparing to fill it in, when Giggles dropped a city five tiles away from my capital. Well, if he insists… By the time I've already met France and for some reason Cathy was very friendly with me, approving the strength of my spies (of which I had none, what was she talking about?). So she agreed to gang up against Sumer. I razed the offending city and resettled in a slightly better spot, then got Ur and Uruk and left him in peace with a single city. I also got Galileo and popped him in that sweet valley between me and Sumer, surrounded by 5 mountain tiles. Boom +1250 science – nice!

Finally I'll have some peace for commercial district spam. Fun fact – I only discovered the iron source on T120, when had to go there to see where all those barb quadris were coming from…

Interesting to note, I did not get any warmongering penalties with France, despite completing the last conquests in the Medieval era. But she declared a surprise war on me anyways… I even felt the need to build walls with the Limes card. After a long-ish journey from the south to the north-east my xbows finished off the terrible invasion force of three pikemen and a swordsman and I made peace for some bucks. Also met Peter in the SE.

Now will I have peace? Peter doesn't think so and sends four knights and two catapults surprise. My heavily promoted xbows, two pikes and catapult-upgraded-into-bombard trudge down to the south again, kill the invading force and besiege Yaroslavl which is in difficult terrain. I finally gave up the siege because the shooting positions were awkward, there were too many sword corps in sight, fresh knights reappeared and I was about to take losses (I see people claiming that the AI cities do not bombard, but… they do. And it can hurt). So I just peaced out for some 50+gpt from Peter and some valuable literature.

Now, finally, I had peace for IZ, harbours, and all that stuff. Faithbought J. Watt – free workshop and factory in a freshly built IZ was extremely nice.

I inherited religion from China and it was a good one – it allowed to buy science buildings with faith. I also inherited quite a few holy sites in ex-China and ex-Sumer, so my faith generation also became decent – it was enough for buying an odd university or even a research lab, and there was left enough for emergency buying of Watt.

Speaking about city states, for a very long time I knew only of Preslav and was saving my envoys for commercial and scientific CS I met later.

I just hope I'll have enough time to finish this game before the submission deadline. I've played two practice games before this and in my last one there was also a Russia, and Peter went to space on T288. On immortal! I was mightily shocked. From those games I learned not go after any religion on immortal and build campus districts asap. Then you have the chance to get key GS and such.

It's ~T200 now, I have 13 cities (6 of them conquered) and I'm waiting for the faith price to drop enough to buy the dude that grants Rocketry eureka and +20% to space projects. I wonder if I'll manage the SV at least before T300 this time.