Civ VI - Beta Gauntlet II

Thats a good benchmark to aim at

 

I used 2 stepwells to increase housing in my spaceport city.^^
Thank you for the information, did not know that!

I usually build colloseum with the 215 GE. Turn depends on wether im suzerain of Stockholm and how many cities i settle, slowing down IZ. Sometimes you have to wait to get the best city for the ED to pop 4 or 7. Usually i get it at ~t120. I don´t think the Forbidden City is mandatory or even important, but i find the 480 GE to be quite suiting to rush it, especially if Ruhr Valley is finished. The extra policy slot comes in handy for gold cards.
I usually get Big Ben, Ruhr Valley and Colloseum when going for SV, Pyramids are great as well but you should not overcommit trying to get them, the AI likes it a lot.

I will get one early settler, 2 early builders for apprenticeship and craftsmanship heurekas and 1-2 slingers if barbarians are aggressive. I then start pumping archers/horsemen/UU(Legionaire) with the respective policy card. I always start with a scout, so by turn 40-50 when the first horsemen are coming out i already know how much conquering i want, where i want to do it and how many units i will need. Then i swap in the settler policy and start builiding settlers. In conquered cities, if production is good, i also build settlers. Often you will capture a builder so you can chop your last 2-3 settlers, i like using their charges on stone if available.

In the capital and the first expansion city I start a CD, in the other cities i start building a worker and swap to IZ once it is researched. Grainary for cities without access to fresh water. I will always work one turn on new districts at pop 4 and 7 to minimize production costs, but the finishing orders are: IZ, CD, campi. I like getting aquaducts if the city is in a great spot and does not have fresh water. I may deviate from this if there are +4 or +5 adjecency spots for early campi.

Some turns before Feudalism i will proceed building the worker in almost every city with the 30% policy and stop it when 1 turn is left for completion. Then i swap in the +2 charges policy and finish the workers in the cities with the worst production first. I will only get few workers afterwards and i mainly use them to chop or to improve the spaceport city.

For traders, i like to buy the first one to help with settlers and getting the boost for currency. Then i just build them in cities without anything else to build at the moment and good production.

I start projects iny every city after i have markets, bank, libraries, university and full IZ. This gets interrupted to build stock exchanges once they are available, but only if it does not need more than 3-4 turns to finish the stock exchange.


In my last game i was really lucky finding 2 scouts in huts and therefore be able to actually scout the map properly. I found Toronto first, directly next to my capital and Stockholm just in time, before the mass of IZ were finished. Hongkong was the last citystate, i discovered it in turn 141, almost perfect timing. No Geneva, but i always felt Geneva is not as important as science is hardly a bottleneck.

 

I'll try one more time and try to aim for a finish under 250...At least until the next GOTM or gauntlet.

I can say CIV 6 brought my attention back to the series, I practically skipped CIV 5, but played a lot of CIV4 and earlier releases. I used to try GOTM's before but submitted fewer than 5 games if I remember correctly. Compared to our HOF's, I've always remained at emperor level of play. Maybe the current game really is easier compared to the earlier ones.

 

Imo civ 6 is much easier than civ 5, everything happens on a wider scale and mistakes are not punished as hard. Also the civ 5 deity ai was good enough to force you to play carefully when conquering or manipulate them when rushing to victory.

I did not play any other civ, as i only got hooked up last summer when watching acken´s videos of the deity challenge, realising how good you can get playing this game

 

Can we use mods that provide better information, but do not alter game play? Like BUG/BUFFY for Civ IV BtS.

In particular, I would like to try the Better Trade Screen mod:

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources/better-trade-screen.25406/

It doesn't alter play; it just turns making trade routes from something tedious and without knowledge of when trade routes end into something you do occationally because of trade route sorting, filtering and automatic renewal, optionally of the best route available based on your original route sorting parameters (done on a per trader basis).

 

Impressive. T180 nice city planning, I really need to take my time to think that stuff.

I made it in turn 253 I think, first save is not here and again I made silly mistakes due to lack of knowledge hahaha.

Finished big Ben thinking I could buy the modules rofl! Had 30k sitting there doing nothing.

Cities were very Spread. Although anyway all trade routes to spaceports were +3.

And the cake cherry, I passed an engineer and I couldn't get the others until like turn 200 cz nobody else was getting it. Terrible.

I'll try one more time before submitting and thanks for the feedback guys!

I think the comercial districts are very important but that culture boost is really needed too.

The Map is kind of annoying but I'm having fun trying this gauntlet.

 

What is annoying about the map? I really like the Inland Sea map type, because it has lots of rivers flowing radially inward to the sea, providing many great places to settle cities.

Plus, for early conquest, I never saw an AI city not on a river. So captured cities seemed nicely located as well.

 

I had issues finding the proper Civ city states many times. I miss the restart button .

Maybe I'm getting my scout out too late? Is it worth to get the tech for land units to embark asap ?

 

Ok, meeting the right City States might be tougher on the Inland Sea map type. It takes a long time to get an explorer or missionary all the way around the Inland Sea, without even considering exploring away from the coast.

 

And yes you are right, the amount of river doest make it very nice to build wide empires and easy to reach 7 pop. Although I feel that almost always you must go wide in Civ 6. I miss tall cities strat , was also fun although no civilization ever aimed to that objective.

 

I think the only chances to find all city states in time is having luck with huts (scout) or let your horsemen swarm the map as soon as you are done conquering. The problem is see with the latter, on this map type your almost guaranteed to have large tundra borders, which are prone to barb attacks.
Guess the luck/frustration factor is just a little higher on inland see maps, at least concerning exploration.

 

My latest game (not a gauntlet game) really went to show the power of Hong Kong, Stockholm, and Toronto. I got tired of banging Gandhi's head against the Inland Sea and decided on a break. I set up a deity continents game with Frederick, with intention from the start to pursue science victory, to better understand the timing and mechanics. I was fortunate that Stockholm was right next to me, and that Cleo was so thoughtful as to provide me with several settlers and cities before I finished conquering her. Hong Kong was a little further away, and I didn't discover Toronto until late in the game, but all three of those city states were invaluable in aiding me to a turn 218 science victory, which is more than 50 turns better than my previous best SV time.

Now I'm ready to give Gandhi a shot again...

 

2nd submission: 1808AD Turn 275 Space Race Victory

Some improvement over the last two games, but still not the finish I'd hoped for.

After the first 6 cities around turn 100, I failed to leverage the advantage by spamming settlers and aiming for 20+ tightly-packed cities. Instead, I continued warfare against city states (religious and military) well into the medieval era. Also, I realized a bit too late, I had only 1 campus district and university!

Had some gold problems as I emphasized getting ID and buildings up fast. Also, my early empire being spread out, I had trouble with barbs from the map edges. Around turn 199 I realized my number of cities weren't enough so I founded another 8-10 more.

Also, reading up on the Big Ben, I was wondering how you get 35k gold, when I realized it doubles your current gold upon being built. The civilopedia was silent on this, instead showing +6 gold and 1 commerce card.

So, more warmongering on the next attempt, but spamming settlers in between until the push to ID, Campuses and Commerce.

 

I dont understand why sometimes I cant place a Campus in a tile... I can't find any information about "limitations" to district placements!

 

Maybe the tile is jungle and you don't have Bronze Working? The other option could be if the tile has a strategic or luxury resource. Or a floodplain.

 

They are not jungle, I can chop them, and right there is a graslland with nothing... but anyway even if I buy the tile I can't place the district there.

I don't get it.

 

Can you post a screenshot?

 

Second Attempt: Turn 289

This one was war. Took Kongo, England and Norway to have something like 23 cities. Got to Spaceport tech around 180 - 200 but not enough population in Delhi (main production city) so had to build in London. Finished all relevant techs by around turn 220 so then it was a 60 turn slog to get more spaceports up and build the parts. Got the 1500 GE right near the end and the 100% GE was on offer 1 turn before launch...

 

@RaidandTrade, I had a look at your save. If you want to improve, there are two areas you should focus on:

-Keep your empire more compact
-Build less unnecessary stuff

Aim for a compact empire to maximize production from Factories and Power Plants. A good Spaceport city should have at least 7-8 Industrial Zones within 6 tiles, it can have a lot more. Place your Industrial Zones to maximize the amount of cities they hit with their area of effect, don't worry too much about adjacency bonuses. In a compact empire most cities can have 70-80 production without trade routes while the Spaceport city should have at least 150 production. 200 is better. If Delhi was supposed to be your main Spaceport city, I can see at least 5 city spots that should have been settled long before Delhi was supposed to start building said Spaceport.

You are building waaay too much stuff that doesn't help you win the game. I see you invested almost 10000 production into nuclear weapons. Since you have Hong Kong, that same production invested into Campus Research Grants could have given you 2500 Great Scientist points, which should have earned you Carl Sagan quite a long time ago (he's the next one to come up when you recruit the guy you can recruit on your victory turn).

For a turn 200 victory you don't need a single Theater Square, Holy Site, Harbor, Encampment, Aerodrome or Entertainment District. You don't really need a single wonder either. Building one Entertainment Complex and Colosseum is good, as long as Colosseum hits a lot of cities within 6 tile radius, and Ruhr Valley can help in Spaceport city, but the rest of the wonders you can forget. Forbidden Palace is not really worth it. Big Ben has been discussed in this thread, probably only worth it if you have way more than 15k gold available when you build it. If not, then it's not worth it, neither are commercial hub buildings. Oxford doesn't help you at all, unless you need it to get the final techs in time for launch, which most likely is not the case.

If you have another go, I'd recommend you actively avoid building anything but Industrial Zones, Campuses and Commercial Hubs. You want Power Plants everywhere and Universities in most cities, research labs probably not needed. Two Banks for Economics eureka is okay, but otherwise Commercial Hub buildings are not worth it unless you really do get something like 20k gold in time for Big Ben, and use that gold to buy Great People. Without CH buildings, you can keep your gold positive by actively selling surplus resources to the AI. You don't need any modern military units at all that would cost lots of upkeep. Don't ever tech Astrology tech or Theology civic, that should get rid of any urge to waste production on Holy Site buildings, in case you were to capture some of those. If you capture Theater Squares, don't build any buildings in them. All you should care about is getting up a tight empire with lots of early Campuses and as many cities as possible having an Industrial Zone with Factory and Power Plant within range of your main production city. Once Power Plants are up, all but your spaceport city should build nothing but Campus Research Grants.

 

@elitetroops - Thanks for taking the time to look at my save and put together the above points. Greatly appreciated. Going to give it one more go.

Missed a trick with the Campus Projects - I thought I'd got the good ones and was building nukes for something to do while waiting for space parts to complete...

Quick question: Do you *always* conquer the neighbours or just if they're close?

In hindsight, I probably should have left Kongo, Egypt and England in peace and taken out Norway and possibly France instead then filled in the gaps where needed.