SV T186
One of the most tense civ6 game I played... Not that I was scared to lose, but I was literally one turn away from winning a cultural victory!
Strategy
I really tried to make Vertical Integration work for this game, but after crunching the numbers it simply does not make sense to do it... (especially when you can boost the production with royal society builders) Combining the facts that you need significant investment in infrastructure (factories, oil/nuclear power plants), the required strategic resources (oil, uranium), that unlocking these power plants come very late and that you are essentially researching at one tech per turn at that point of the game, it becomes really hard to build a case for Vertical Integration... Theoretically, even with the 7 IZs with nuclear power plants in range possible in this game (assuming I had the necessary uranium), Space Initiative was the better option (especially when you can boost production with a royal society builder per turn). Sadly, if one cannot make Vertical Integration work with Gaul (and the Oppidum) and 5 industrial city-states (including Mexico City) on the map, one will never be able to do so in any other set of circumstances...
This game I focused on getting a tall capital. I built the Apadana first and then the other wonders in the capital for extra envoys. Getting the Diplomatic Quarter and Kilwa Kisiwani in the capital were also key. All the extra envoys allowed to get 100+ gold alone from Merchant Confederation early on.
Gaul
Opening with double scouts makes the early culture accumulation faster
Culture bomb from mines helps you save a lot of gold (which would have been used to purchase tiles)
You can easily increase adjacency bonuses early on by placing mines next to districts (which is faster than building other districts next to them)
Harbors aren't really good with Gaul since you can't get the +2 gold when adjacent to the city center (unless placed next to another city center before it is founded)
Map (Highlands map script)
Obviously the map contains a lot of hills which make it handy to use the gallic culture bomb ability
There weren't many rivers though which made it harder to have good commercial hub spots. Combine this with the harbor limitation of Gaul and you do not get much gold from passive adjacency bonuses.
The map had a lot of good campus locations, I managed to get a +4 campus in most of my cities. It might have been possible to get one in all of my self-funded cities.
Since hills are likely to spawn near mountains, any of the following combination will get you a +4 campus: 3 mountains+2hills, 2 mountains+4hills, 1geothermal+1mountain+2hills, etc.
Pantheon
I been dying for a long time to find an occasion where Earth Goddess wouldn't be the go-to pantheon of choice for a science game. The recent nerf to Earth Goddess combined to the buff in the distant past of the Lady of the Reeds and Marshes has finally made this possible. When my starting warrior initially found a marsh and then multiple ones, I said: "This is it, the time has come!"
At the victory turn, from the better report screen policies table, it shows that I was getting 52 production from the pantheon versus the 102 faith I would have gotten from Earth Goddess. There are different things that enter into consideration where comparing production versus faith yields, but as a rule of thumb when you compare production cost to faith purchase costs the relation is that 1 production is equal to 2 faith. Thus, it was the first time that I saw a pantheon beat Earth Goddess late game.
Cities
15 self-founded cities
3 cities captured from Egypt (had to declare war anyway to liberate Fez)
2 cities loyalty-flipped from Egypt
Golden Ages
Since I was lacking from the early faith generation normally provided by Earth Goddess, I went with Exodus for the classical golden age which allowed me to found the 2nd religion. Unfortunately, Gitarja had already picked Choral Music with the first religion pick. A non-Monumentality classical age is definitely slower for expansion. All other golden ages were Monumentality.
Things I learnt in this game
After all these hours spent in civ6, I am amazed to still find some new things:
Apparently, if you complete the Pyramids by chopping with the last charge of a builder, you will not lose that builder and will still have one charge left on it
Bad luck from RNG
Bolshoi Theater (Got Cultural Heritage and Capitalism when I wanted Ideology)
Nalanda (Got Advanced Flight when I wanted Rocketry)
Mistakes
I misplaced 2 cities/2 campus location (which resulted in lower than +4adj campus)
Because of the lower era change pace of Prince difficulty, I lost 3-4 turns of science on early era changes
I missed Hypatia and Newton (didn't pay enough attention)
I was 1 turn too late to complete the Satellites eureka
I should have run the Liberalism card late game to get more bonuses from happiness
I decided to hard build the first Spaceport (it took 7 turns to build, it was a few hammers shy of taking an ideal time of 6 turns). Since on such a setup, reaching Globalization essentially means researching 1 tech per turn for the rest of the game any delay to the moon landing has a huge impact. I was however too short on faith to purchase it as usual and as mentioned before my governor titles were invested in Vertical Integration.
Barbarian Clans Bug
For some strange reason, a barbarian scout that has spotted a city does not seem to automatically trigged a "Barbarian Attack" operation when it returns to camp as it has happened in this game.
