[Vanilla] An old warhorse, Act II

[Aabraxan]

Some of you may have noticed my other thread, An old warhorse comes home. As I noted at the end of that thread, I finished that game, winning by Domination. I like to keep things pretty much standard & average until I get my feet under me. I'll also be the first to admit that since I kicked it up 2 levels from Warlord to King, I restarted a few times until I got a riverside start with a food bonus (cattle). So for Act II, I went with:

• Trajan (for the early culture + roads & trade)
• King difficulty
• Continents
• Standard size

As of T27:

• I sent my 1st warrior out exploring;
• Aabraxa (my capital) went warrior->builder->settler->slinger for production.
• First slinger is on the move.
• I'm beelining Political Philosophy on the civics side.
• Second city is on the ground. I founded it around T22. It's working on a slinger.
• I'll have a hard time making PP by T50, but another city or two might make it possible. We'll see.
• Research: I also went Animal Husbandry (to feed my cows)->Pottery->Archery. Once I get some Archers, I'll head for horses, because there are some not too far from my second city.
• I've been micromanaging Aabraxa primarily for growth. It's about to pop to size 4, and it seems like I can comfortably produce more settlers if it's swinging from 3-4 in size.
• I can't look at the game as I type this, but I think I got Tea as a lux? EDIT: I have Coffee as a lux, with some Tea not far away.
  
• I have some mountains to the north and northwest, so I'm eyeballing those sites for a campus later.

It's unlikely that I chose ideal starting moves, but they seem reasonable.

ETA: Current goals include:

1. Get to 10 cities by T100;
2. Get to PP by T50, if possible.
3. Get out of Chiefdom;
4. Get horses & iron;
5. Open up some trade routes for roads & gold.
6. Trade with the AI more than I did in my last game.
7. Get the settler discount & extra worker moves.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

warrior->builder->settler

I founded it around T22

Wow to get all that done by t22 is very impressive!!

 

[Aabraxan]

Wow to get all that done by t22 is very impressive!!

Thank you. I'm still so new to C6 that I don't really know what's impressive and what's not, but a strong starting location & a little early micro does seem to be helping my game.

 

[Half Nelson]

Good going. With Trajan (free monuments) you have one of the best opportunities to get early PP. I usually go warrior / settler / builder then warrior or slinger depending on the neighbours. Sometimes the third unit precedes the builder if the locals are very hostile. The God King policy to get an early faith pantheon opens up the opportunity to get extra early culture from tiles (or even an extra settler from one pantheon). I always used to start with the +1 production card but now always go for an early pantheon.

 

[Aabraxan]

I'm not digging the fact that I can't post a save here, thanks to playing this on the Switch. I just may have to buy it to play it on PC. With that said, I played for a little while last night, and here's a quick turnlog. Any and all input is appreciated.

T27 -> archery comes in; head for mining;
T30-> Early Empire comes in. Barbs keep me busy through the next ~15 turns, spawning from 2 or 3 camps;
T33->Mining->irrigation
T35-Bronze Working boost;
T37-> England moves to the Classical Era. I'm still 4T from State Workforce, but I can trim it to 3 by working the Coffee; (Tea isn't actually in my borders. I had it wrong and have edited my earlier post. Coffee is inside my borders, but Tea isn't far away.
T46 - Plant town 3, BW comes in, HBR next. 6 turns to Political Philosophy.

I won't make PP by 50, but I won't be too far off. I only have 3 turns, but now that I have 3, perhaps I can let Aabraxa mostly focus on settlers. I clearly have some work to do if I'm to get close to 10 towns by turn 100. The mountains to the NW of Aabraxa will provide both iron and a couple of excellent chokepoints, since mountains are impassable in this game.

ETA: This morning's turns:
T50 - PP is 2 turns out. I need builders, settlers, military and culture. I meed Saladin, who is in the classical age
T52 - Get Pol. Philo., start Mil Tradition, switch to Classical Republic;
T53 - finish a settler and a scout, start a couple of builders.
T63 - Grabbed a barb settler. Built another around this time. Not looking like I'll make 10 cities by T100, but I expect to get to 7 or 8. Also, I'm settling around the Dead Sea to claim its culture tiles. Good idea?

Also, when another civ asks you to quit settling near them, just how far away do you have to settle to keep that promise? England says I broke that promise, but after she & I discussed it, I intentionally settled further from her.

 

[Victoria]

I'm settling around the Dead Sea to claim its culture tiles. Good idea?

Can be good for a variety of reasons, the culture pool is a bit of a trap as it does not give food so you need to grow first or use a trade route.

when another civ asks you to quit settling near them, just how far away do you have to settle to keep that promise?

I believe it is 9 tiles, will have to check, my memory is bad on this.

 

[Aabraxan]

I took advantage of the Epic Games sale and got a copy of Civ 6 (vanilla) for the PC for free. Perhaps that will allow me to upload some saves from other games. That said, I kind of have to choose between the Switch and the PC, having insufficient time for both. I did try a handful of starts on the PC, though, and I'm getting the snot kicked out of me, even at Prince. For whatever reason, the Switch game is going much better than any of the PC starts I tried. Nonetheless, I was bright enough to take a few pics of my TV screen this morning when I hit Turn 100. Played for a few more minutes, and the situation changed, so I took a few more.

Here's the Roman Empire at T100. I have 8 cities, including the one from the captured barb settler. I'm a Classical Republic and have put my policies right below the map.




First, no, I don't give every city a name beginning with "Aa." Usually just my first 5 or so. I started naming my capital Aabraxa years ago, so that I could easily find it by alphabetizing my city/province/planet list in whatever game I was playing to help me find my core cities.

Second, I took down some notes from the various screens available in the game.
At T100:

• Researching construction;
• Suzerain to 1 CS;
• 6th in science;
• 3rd in culture;
• 2nd (to Macedonia) in domination;
• 7th in religion;
• I have horses;
• I have Iron;
• I have gypsum, coffee, and tea;
• Open borders with England, Macedonia, and Arabia, but not Australia

Anyway, I have a nice mountain range to the north and northwest, which provides a couple of chokepoints with which I can hold England off if our relationship goes sour. I know that Cumae (11:00 position) says it's building a campus, but I just did that to set the cost. Then I switched to a spear. Macedonia and Arabia are west and southwest of me. I'm not completely out of room, but that point is coming quickly. My plan is to go ahead and fill the land south of me, as well as all of the open areas to the SE and SW. At that point, I'll be bumping up against Arabia, and since I don't have a mountain range to protect me there, Saladin will be first on the chopping block. Note that Saladin has also denounced our relationship. Well, I'm pretty sure he did, but I don't see it in the diplo screen. Anyway, at T103, I went ahead and switched to Oligarchy and rearranged my policies. They're hard to read, but they're: (a) decreased unit support costs; (b) added builder charges; (c) Charismatic Leader (extra envoy points?); and (d) Literary Tradition. Sorry, but I can't remember the names of all of the cards.

My tentative plan will be to take out Arabia, then turn my attention to Macedonia, since my army will already be in their neighborhood. Honestly, though, I'm gonna need more rock-throwers for that, though.

So here's the diplo situation:







Any thoughts y'all might have on the situation would be appreciated.

 

[Half Nelson]

There are some differences between the base game and GS expansion that I can't remember in detail (get-out clause for my possibly poor advice), but check whether your intended target has walled cities before headlong charge. You will need a battering ram to make rapid headway and ideally a couple of catapults to benefit from oligarchy promotion boni (only really necessary if you plan a lot of "expansion" in later game). Siege weapons become much more effective with promotions, bombards which can attack after moving with +1 range are just the job (although you are likely to have researched Flight, enabling +1 range observation balloons, before getting that field promotion unless going full warmonger). Australia are usually a good AI opponent.

 

[Aabraxan]

So I squeezed in a few more turns over the past couple of days. I went to war with Arabia. Mamluks were interesting.... and dangerous. I don't think I lost any units to them, but it was touch-and-go. And I'd read a lot on here, seems like the standard advice is "trade with the AI, play nice." So I played nice (except when my war with Saladin was necessary), traded just about everything I could...... and then Victoria ROP-raped me. Up and declared war out of nowhere. Fortunately for me, Vicky doesn't know what a kill box is, and she walked a bunch of warriors and archers right into mine. Unfortunately, my bank account was suffering mightily from unit maintenance. She won't make peace yet, but she doesn't have much left to fight with. I made peace with Saladin to go fight Vicky and even had to sell The Art of War for a pittance just to keep from losing units.

I have soooo much to learn about this game!

 

[Victoria]

but I just did that to set the cost.

Perfect.... as soon as a city can build a district you want, place it.
As Rome and learning, do not use holy sites or bother trying to research them, just go for iron working because that is key to your early game, and also to both campus and commercial hub as they should be what you are building.
It looks great that you are starting by getting settlers out but as Rome the idea may be to get 2 settlers out then get a warrior/archer army out (sling upgrade is better, building the slings with the agoge card)
At this stage you should be nearing bronze working or be at it. If you get bronze working go straight on to swords if you have iron and mine that iron ASAP, ideally have a worker ready. Now get to campus to get some placed before getting to swords... it takes time to get a stockpile of iron. But look at trading and placing commercial hubs to get more trade routes and gold.

the general idea is to get some swords out there as soon as you can and just attack someone, you do not need lots of cities to do this but if you do this as your main aim you will kill people easy on prince, make sure you have some archers to back up your legion.

no iron is annoying, you can try trading but it can be hard. If you have scouted well you can see some you can settle and this is well worth doing.... but no iron is annoying. You then should be looking at getting crossbows as soon as you can and kill with those. Early science will be needed.

an alternative is start with animal husbandry to see if horses are nearby and just try an early horse attack. If you do have horses research archery next then horsemen while getting military tradition so you get a 50% discount building horsemen card.

as Rome ideally you should try to attack as early as you can. You can play peaceful but agressive is a good way to learn first because it is powerful. Once you have a small powerful army then spew out more settlers as you conquer, but having 5 cities before you start this process is too slow.

 

[Half Nelson]

Pillaging enemy tiles can be quite lucrative in Civ6:- gold, science and faith as well as health are available from different improvements and districts. I used to avoid doing this (never felt "right") but it is a solid warmongering strategy.

 

[Aabraxan]

I put a few hours in yesterday, and I got:

• Infrastructure installed;
• Back in the black;
• Manchester managed;
• London returned to its rightful Roman rulers;
• Leeds 'liberated;' and
• Victoria vanquished.

I am back to positive cash flow and have changed over to a Merchant Republic. I also located the HUD setting, so I now have new intel to look at. The game doesn't fit on my TV screen right, so there's some guesswork and lots of report reading going on. Alexander is the only one who has a higher military score than I do. Last I checked, I was in the mid 600s, and he was in the mid 800s. So he's within reach, but I have other matters to attend to first. Victoria was at 0 right before I marched on Manchester. I guess she had sent everything she owned into my kill box. I keep trying to sell Saladin some coffee, but he seems to think that I should pay him for the privilege. That's not going to happen, and he never liked me much, anyway. He's next on my list, as he's between me and Alexander. That said, he and Alexander are currently warring, and who am I to interfere?

 

[Aabraxan]

Well . . . . . yesterday was a lazy Sunday with lots of civving for me. And I gots good news, and I gots bad news out of my game. The good news: I have almost killed off Macedonia, but I did discover that they have at least one more city than I thought. I have discovered the other continent and made contact with China, Spain and Sumeria. The bad news is that China and Spain are almost an era ahead of me, technologically. Once I discovered that, I bribed China into a joint war with Spain (to which I sent no troops) to try to slow down the tech pace on the other continent. I've got cav armies on the ground and I'm not far from tanks. If I can get a few tank armies out, I might (MIGHT) still pull this one off. Then again, the AI might pull off a science victory.

 

[Aabraxan]

Things aren't looking all that promising. Several of my cities were mighty unhappy, so I had to make peace with Saladin. I thought I had a ton of luxes, but it apparently wasn't enough. I had barbs and partisans spawning all over the place. Saw about a dozen pop on one interturn. I have some questions:

• If they're driving tanks, can they really be called "barbarians?" (Rhetorical question)
• Why do some of my cities say they have to get to pop 10 to build an entertainment complex, while another says it has to get to size 16?
• Why can't I delete some units? For example, I have a couple of knight corps floating around. I was hoping to upgrade them to tanks, add a tank to each, and have tank armies. Money-wise, that's looking like a long way off, so I was going to delete them to save on unit costs. I can't. There's no delete button for them.
• Is sending them to die in battle my only way to get rid of them?
• Does losing units increase my war weariness more than winning battles? (ETA: Victoria, I found your article on WW.)

Thanks again.

 

[Aabraxan]

Well, my line about things not looking promising may have been borne out of my newbie-ness. Things are looking better, and I expect this to be the last update before the game ends. As it stands:

• It's the 1950s around T350;
• This 1UPT mechanic has really slowed down my warmongering compared to C3C;
• I've made some mistakes that didn't help speed things up;
• I also learned from them;
• I hit future era tech and civics a while back;
• England is dead;
• Arabia is dead;
• Macedonia is dead;
• Australia is dead;
• My continent is cleared;
• Australia was the SV leader until I DOW'd it;
• Sumeria is now the SV leader;
• Sumeria has completed one of the three tasks necessary for an SV, and looks like it's about 25% through the second;
• Australia had built a couple of spaceports which I am repairing in case I decide to go for a space victory;
• I think I have one city working on Launch Earth Satellite;
• Spain leads in Religion;
• I think Sumeria leads in Culture, but I'm not sure at the moment;
• Spain thought it would be OK to settle on my continent;
• It was not OK;
• China thought it would be OK to settle on my continent;
• It was not OK;
• I didn't really want to DOW Spain, but it was between me and Sumeria, and he planted a city on my continent, in a really good spot for reaching the other continent;
• After wrecking Phillip's empire, I made a lucrative peace deal that included ceding cities, gpt, luxes, and open borders (on his part, not mine);
• Phillip was also willing to join a surprise war on Gil;
• China is also between me and Sumeria;
• China will not even discuss open borders;
• I could (in theory) go around the world the other way to reach Sumeria, but I've already established my beachhead;
• Going through China will be faster than moving my forces around the world to the other side of that continent;
• China declared war on one of my city-states, which qualified me to DOW it as a Protectorate War;
• My warmonger penalties are in the 1400 range;
• Pillaging has been both fun and lucrative.

So, all in all:

• Spain will never recover;
• I'll have to go through China to get to Sumeria;
• I'm OK with that;
• I have plenty of fighters and jet bombers;
• I don't have enough spots for them on the new continent;
• I do have Military Engineers on the way to build airstrips;
• Failing to build MEs earlier is one of the mistakes that I made;
• Gil's going to have a really hard time building space stuff once I cut through China.
• Amenities and housing continue to be problems for me.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: Thank you. I appreciate you all taking the time to share your expertise with me. Win or lose, I couldn't have gotten this far without it.

ETA: I'll also say that T350 is really, really slow, from what I'm now seeing in the GOTM threads!

 

[Aabraxan]

It's over, with a Domination Victory for me at about 1976. After making peace with Spain, I DOW'd China and chewed my way through the middle of its empire, taking its capital in the process. Shortly after I'd gotten to the doorstep of the Sumerian capital, China sued for peace, and I took everything it had in the peace deal, including cities I hadn't conquered. I just kept adding things to it's offer in the peace deal and Qin just kept saying, "I'd be happy to accept this deal." I then turned my attention to Spain and made a beeline for its capital.

As I have downloaded Vanilla for the PC (for free thanks to Epic Games), I probably won't post much more from Switch games. I know how much more helpful a save file can be, as opposed to a cell phone pic of a TV screen.