Civ6 6otM 06 After Actions Report

[bbbearbbb]

Cultural Victory, turn 282, Neville Chamberlain
Settled on spot.
BO was builder - 5 slingers - builder - settlers.
Egypt declared war early, captured two cities, then Spain and Scythia declared war, captured one Scythia city on my continent. Settled another 11 cities for 14 in total.
After the initial skirmish, was very peaceful.
Focus was on commercial districts, trade routes, some Lavra, IZ, Campus where required, then Theatres everywhere.
Ended up with over 1000 tourism per turn and several wonders, overtook Greece by turn 200 or so and was ahead on every victory condition.
Fun game.

 

[Comandante]

Cultural Victory turn 269.

-How many cities did you settle or capture?
I capture two cities and I had in total 9 cities.
- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
I prioritized research that offered cultural wonders to build. I chose policies that increased tourism.
- Did You get the first religion?
I got religion and it was very useful to have Christ the Redeemer.
- How much warring did you do?
At first against Cleopatra. In the end against Gorgo, she had Christ the Redeemer and I wanted it.
- Were City-States helpful?
Mohenjo-Daro was very useful for his culture.
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
I was building Christ the Redeemer and I had a couple of turns left when I saw "Gorgo has built the redeeming christ". I conquered Sparta to have that wonder.
- Did you enjoy the game?
Yes, I did. But it was simple.
- Spread the word thru peace and love, or conversion by the sword?
As long as it does not interfere with my interests, love and peace.

Spoiler :

Spoiler :

 

[Rain]

Cultural 312 Catherine the Great rank

How many cities did you settle or capture?
39 mostly capture
- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
Military and commerce
- Did You get the first religion?
Did not try a religion
- How much warring did you do?
Quite a lot. 5 Capitals taken. Wiped out Egypt France and the Greeks
- Were City-States helpful?
Carthage was very helpful and later the 2 culture civs remaining and the 2 two industrials.
- Did you enjoy the game?
Enjoyable but a bit long ~ could have won much earlier without culture.
- Spread the word thru peace and love, or conversion by the sword?
Arrow and Bolt and Cannonball

Notable moment ~ Built the Hermitage and the Bolshoi Ballet in St Petersburg.

 

[jshelr]

Thanks for the game. There is some evidence learning took place but I made several dumb mistakes. Not going to finish this one. Keep 'em coming!

 

[WillowBrook]

T220, score in Nero range (is there any way to get the score outside the game if you forget to write it down?)

I maximized culture at the expense of science, so I ended up (1) finishing Christo Redentor, (2) researching computers, and (3) getting the info-era policy card giving +50% tourism for trade routes all within 10 turns of each other and then the game was over in less than 10 more turns. I never made it to steel for the Eiffel Tower, as I'd almost completely ignored the bottom of the tech tree in my beeline to computers. Getting Sarah Breedlove a few turns before the end probably cut off a turn or two.

Mohenjo-Daro was quite useful, and Kumasi provided a ton of culture as long as I was able to hold on to it.

I noticed suspicious tile yields as I was exploring and held off more discovery until I could grab Kandy; ended up getting two relics out of that, and bought two more from AI (Phillip stupidly declared on me about halfway through my 60 gpt payment for his).

I did not found a religion, but the one with triple tourism from relics eventually spread to me and I helped it spread further in my lands.

I don't know if I was extra lucky with great artists, but I was able to get two themed art museums. The restrictions on moving art around were opaque and frustrating (and different than for artifacts, it seems), but I'll know better next time how to handle it, I think.

Greece was my competition for culture, with over 180 domestic tourism at the end. I suspect I could have shortened the game (though by how much, who knows) if I'd just attacked and pillaged her lands.

 

[alh_p]

Well I feel like a right novice. This was my first civ6 GoTM, first go on emperor and first real crack at a CV - and I am ashamed to say I gave up.

I'm at work so can't remember the exact date but I gave up before T300, having unlocked social media and computers. Why did I give up? My culture screen read something like 140/420 and to my understanding, that means I was essentially buggered.

To be clear, I knew it was going to be hard from much earlier and I should/could yet have done more to level the playing field (i.e. hamstring/criple Sparta and Scythia), but I didn't fancy winning that way. Both Sparta and Scythia had runaway domestic tourism, as other posters have reported here - I suspect because Sparta had GWs from being suzerein of Kandy and Scythia picked up the first religion.

I focused on religion and culture and built only 2 caravels after my archer rush stole Ra Khedet + 1 settler from Egypt.

I had 7 cities and think my culture approach was hampered by not enough cities and not enough focus on production. I managed to get the oracle and with a lot of Lavras i had GPPs flooding out. I foolishly took all the artists i could but not enough museums to house/swap their type of works. Also didn't focus enough on theatre districts - i had gone more with faith. I also managed to build MontSaint Michel, so had a flood of kamikaze apostles churning out relics.

But, as Scythia and Sparta built broadway and then Cristo redentor before me (I got hermitage, bolshoi, ruhr and eifel tower), my relics ended up an expensive sideshow. I hadn't built any sea resorts by the time i gave up, but from what i took from Victoria's excellent culture guide, they wouldn't have been enough to shift the balance anyway. I knew that religious/CV is hard but had assumed (ha) i'd have a lead enough to build cristo in tome.

I think the main takeaways fro me, there are many, are that:
a) If a stand up fight is too hard, cheat and beat up your rivals. in other words, I should have pruned the spartan and scythian faith/culture machines. I should have been more ruthless with Egypt and frigate rush is not something i previously knew about!
b) I should not have neglected production or science so much
c) I should have beelined Cristo and Radio
d) I should have only built archaeological museums, not bothered with artists.

Thanks again for an entertaining GoTM and I think I'll try it again...

 

[Rain]

Well I feel like a right novice. This was my first civ6 GoTM, first go on emperor and first real crack at a CV - and I am ashamed to say I gave up.

I'm at work so can't remember the exact date but I gave up before T300, having unlocked social media and computers. Why did I give up? My culture screen read something like 140/420 and to my understanding, that means I was essentially buggered.

140/420 Does not mean you are lost. The 420 has nothing to do with your score its what the other civs need. What you need to look at is the 140 in relation to the domestic tourists of the other civs. EG in my game the number at the end was something like 176/900. The highest other civ domestic in my game was sumeria who were would have been like 172 or so. Took a careful reading before i saw how it worked as well.

 

[kcd_swede]

Woo Hoo! So far nobody has been able to extend the pleasure as long as I... that is why the ladies love me and will never love you as much. Achieving Björn Borg level is unattainable for you mere mortals. Mwahaha!

 

[WillowBrook]

140/420 Does not mean you are lost. The 420 has nothing to do with your score its what the other civs need. What you need to look at is the 140 in relation to the domestic tourists of the other civs. EG in my game the number at the end was something like 176/900. The highest other civ domestic in my game was sumeria who were would have been like 172 or so. Took a careful reading before i saw how it worked as well.

I understood140/420 to be the number on the top right of the culture victory progress screen. If that's the case, then, yes, you do need 420 foreign tourists to win - 420 is one more than the number of domestic tourists your best opponent has, and you need to that to win. Whether it's doable depends on how fast you're gaining foreign tourists.

In my game, at the end, I had over 1000 foreign tourist points (number at the top of the main screen) and was gaining over 10 foreign tourists per turn due to having all the good multipliers (computers, trade routes with all the bonuses, etc).

I don't know what numbers you're putting together to get 176/900, but you can't win if that's your foreign tourism and your best opponents domestic tourism (which I gather from your post it wasn't).

I would want to know what @alh_p has as tourism points on the top bar of the main screen before judging whether all is lost.

 

[Rain]

I understood140/420 to be the number on the top right of the culture victory progress screen. If that's the case, then, yes, you do need 420 foreign tourists to win - 420 is one more than the number of domestic tourists your best opponent has, and you need to that to win. Whether it's doable depends on how fast you're gaining foreign tourists.

In my game, at the end, I had over 1000 foreign tourist points (number at the top of the main screen) and was gaining over 10 foreign tourists per turn due to having all the good multipliers (computers, trade routes with all the bonuses, etc).

I don't know what numbers you're putting together to get 176/900, but you can't win if that's your foreign tourism and your best opponents domestic tourism (which I gather from your post it wasn't).

I would want to know what @alh_p has as tourism points on the top bar of the main screen before judging whether all is lost.

OOPS

You are correct I was going from memory but when i went back and looked it shows 173/166. The 961 was my domestic tourists so the ai was showing xxx/962. The tourism number you refer to was 1262/turn for me. I guess if hes 140/420 that will be a lot to overcome.

 

[Zinad]

Cultural Victory Turn 282, 527 points

- How many cities did you settle or capture?
Settled 8, captured 1 settler and captured 2 cities

- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
Archeology, Social Media, Radio, Computers, Built Cristo Redentor with help of a great engineer (2 x 480)

- Did You get the first religion?
No. I tried to, but was not successful.

- How much warring did you do?
I tried to remain peaceful for the whole game. Captured an undefended Egyptian settler in the early game. Then got DOWed by several times.

- Were City-States helpful?
Yes. I liked the cultural benefit in the early game.

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
No.

- Did you enjoy the game?
Yes. I liked the map with all the resorts in the late game, but the AI could be more thrilling.

 

[aba aba aba]

Game ends at T332,1911... First GOTM, not really used to Standard speed, everything seemed so slow...even with petra...

- How many cities did you settle or capture?
Including cap i settled 5 cities, 2 of them using settlers taken from AI, captured 13... razed 2 of them...
- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
tech: math industrialisation mechinary education...
policy: political philo, exploration guild ideology
- Did You get the first religion?
nope 4th...
- How much warring did you do?
A lot... I eliminated Egypt and France, half of Gorgo and waring with Synthia before I won...
- Were City-States helpful?
Yeap, the 2 early CS are helpful to make sure I got $$ and a better choice for city locations.
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
When I was warring with Gorgo, I tried to have some fun by nuking her... and somehow the nuke dropped onto my city and troops, although I clicked Gorgo's city...then I did the same thing again to check if i misclicked... same thing happened again... Maybe it is a bug... Anyway, I was leading in terms of science culture and production, so does not really affect my game other than dragging it longer by another 20, 30 turns...
- Did you enjoy the game?
Yeap, was leading thru out the game in culture n science and production, got almost all wonders and got rid of whoever stood in my way.
- Spread the word thru peace and love, or conversion by the sword?
Sword and love... I used sword to make my love spread faster(warmonger ftw)

 

[Sempronius]

CV T338

- How many cities did you settle or capture? Settled = 8 (2 from captured Egyptian settlers), Captured=4 (3 from Egypt, 1 from Spain when they dared to settle on my continent)
- What did you prioritize for research and policies? Any civic or tech the would eventually increase tourism
- Did You get the first religion? No, the 3rd, but I was ahead in every victory condition most of the game, I had to limit my religious expansion to make sure I won via culture.
- How much warring did you do? Destroyed Egypt after stealing two settlers from them, they were expanded very quickly early on, so they had to go. I took Cordoba from Spain when they settled on my continent, and then I had a few DOW from Scythia and Germany and Spain came back for round two, but of course the AI doesn't know how to wage a war it seems.
- Were City-States helpful? For some early gold yes, but eventually I moved all trade routes to other civs for the tourism bonus.
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it? I was surprised in the way my culture rating would leap up at various times rather than steadily progress. Next time I'll push for more buildings to hold great works too, I had some musicians sitting around for 10 turns waiting for a place to play.
- Did you enjoy the game? Yes, it was fun and a good balance of a challenging victory condition (first culture try for civ6 for me) and easy enough on the difficulty to not have to micro-manage every turn.
- Spread the word thru peace and love, or conversion by the sword? A little bit of all of it with emphasis on art/music/writing and seaside resorts.

 

[fortydayweekend]

Turn 243, Score 706

- How many cities did you settle or capture?
19 founded, 2 captured. 3 were late, on the islands to the East, just before teching Radio.

- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
Currency, then Radio, Computers, Steel
Civics - Exploration, Cultural Heritage, Suffrage, Social Media
With 13 CDs and 16 trade routes for most of the game I prioritised trade route bonus policies, then culture (and Heritage Tourism)

- Did You get the first religion?
Nope, didn't try for it.

- How much warring did you do?
Just Egypt, kept good relations with everyone else except France

- Were City-States helpful?
Mo-Daro was good for water at the start, made a lot of money from 6 envoys in Amsterdam and 13 CDs, other cultural ones good for a culture push at the end and Brussels helped building CR and ET.

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
Not really - after filling the continent with cities and meeting everyone else it was pretty much just a peaceful building game. Not even any barbarians in the southern tundra.

- Did you enjoy the game?
Sure, was good to figure out how CV works. It's quite a bit different to SV after the initial expansion.

Main mistake I made was to save money and faith for a Big Ben end-game push - like in a SV - but there dosen't seem to be anything to spend money on at the end. I should have been spending it on monuments and buildings the whole way through.

Other mistake was to neglect science - I only finished the Eiffel Tower 2 or 3 turns before victory. Should have had 2 or 3 campuses instead of 1 and bought libraries and unis for them.

 

[Damnburger]

- How many cities did you settle or capture? Settled = 8 (1 from captured Egyptian settlers), Captured=A large number (round 20+?)
- What did you prioritize for research and policies? Whatever I could eureka.
- Did You get the first religion? Did not found one, never built a single larva. Reading some of the other posts, I guess I didn't realize that religion added to tourism. This was my first cultural win.
- How much warring did you do? Egypt built a city right next to capital, took it with archers and warriors, couldn't quite take capital but kept them off southern continent. Later on, right after I had started spamming battleships in the 1700's Scythia, Egypt and Spain all declared war at once. I took almost all the cities on the continent and got scythia to capitulate and give about 6 cities that I hadn't captured. Took the fleet and conquered all of Greece to steal their culture and reduce competition. Then it was just hitting next turn till win.
- Were City-States helpful? Yes, not so much any one in particular, but the district bonuses added up really well.
- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it? First time abusing Venetian Arsenal. Two battleships for the price of one is truly insane on a water map when you are leading in science. Also surprising was that no other civ was doing science, so I got a number of science great people without really trying. I was also surprised how hard it was to get the early cultural great people while making that a focus, but I think that's due to Greece (gogol) getting a big leg up on that.
- Did you enjoy the game? Yes, but I am still dismayed with the AI's ability to fight a war. First time to try and win on cultural, so reading you guy's after actions has been enlightening.
- Spread the word thru peace and love, or conversion by the sword? Battleships!

 

[Quillan]

Turn 248, Score 1153.

First GOTM since who knows how long ago. I wish I had read what I was going to have to say before i started so I could keep notes! At any rate, I scouted early and as soon as I realized I was alone with egypt I killed her asap. I put down petra in her capital and got knicked for chichen by a turn, which sucked with all those juicy jungle tiles! Certainly I could have won faster if I had gone for war all the time but tried to play more cultural. I did end up destroying france and greece as they were building a lot of culture and I wanted to lower the # of tourists I needed.

I was surprised to not get to settle that wonder on our starting continent - by the time I was able to sumeria already had two cities there and again, while I could have just wiped them out I wasn't all war mongery and he kept those till the end of the game.

I probably should have put down some more cities earlier but it is what it is. To be honest I didn't enjoy the game all that much as like all civ6 games now its pretty much over really early; once egypt was dealt with the game was won and it was a lot of end turning.

I beelined tourism techs and policy cards and built a lot of wonders. I did get a religion but only used the faith for a few national parks and a GP. I would say it would have been better to go full religion with martyrs for relics but by the time I considered that there was no serious religious civ left for me to slam apostles into so I just built resorts everywhere I could.

City states are always helpful but the majority of them being off island made it difficult to cultivate the ones I would really want to have (kumasi for example). I had geneva but didn't keep it up as I was almost always being joint DOW by spain + whomever.

 

[BBInMass]

Cultural Victory T237/238 1635AD Score 459

Very late victory in my opinion. It took forever. In the final push i was generating 600 tourism per turn, but it took way way too long to get there.

- How many cities did you settle or capture?
I built 9 cities, I captured 2 in the early game from egypt, but never captured any after that.

- What did you prioritize for research and policies?
Beeline to Theater, and then to computers. Stuck to policies that gave a cultural or tourism bonus.

- Did You get the first religion?
Did not build a lavra, and did not get a religion.

- How much warring did you do?
Very little. Egypt DOW on me, and I captured two cities. Germany and Spain did a joint DOW, but after they lost a few units they accepted peace.

- Were City-States helpful?
I was suzerain of most of the cultural CSes most of the game. I'm not sure if it helped or hurt

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
I was surprised how long it took after I reached the lead in culture per turn to actual win the game, I was clearly in the lead at around T175. But it took until around T200 before my first Tourists started showing up, and until T238 to win..... that took way way way too long.
I was surprised that I got the same number of tourists from tiny Egypt which I beat down to 1 city (and kept them that way) very early, as I did all the other civs who had much larger populations.
I was surprised how much culture it took to win. I noted my lifetime culture total at the end of the game. It was between 29K and 32K for each civ (it gets affected by modifiers). That is crazy. I had 487 domestic tourists!
Building theaters too early in all my cities actually hurt me. It caused me to gain culture too fast too early (that was what I was trying to do), which escalated the costs of districts to an insane amount. This I think made the path to victory a grind. If I had a few more campuses, and a few more IZes it would have helped get to computers a lot faster, and more production is always helpful.

- Did you enjoy the game?
It was ok for my first civ 6 CV. But the long slog to get to victory was pretty horrible. Next time I won't try to be as peaceful as possible, as it really hurts.

 

[CappyAA]

Culture Victory, Turn 255, 1720 AD

- How many cities did you settle or capture?

Settled 9, captured 1 for a total of 10 cities on my original continent

- What did you prioritize for research and policies?

Research: I focused on researching my eurekas early. As I moved on throughout the game, I stayed on the top half of the tree through the sailing technologies and beelined towards Computers.
Policies: Made my way to Classical Republic, Merchant Republic, Democracy pretty quickly. Then focused on getting the +Tourism cards.

- Did You get the first religion?

No - I think I got the 3rd one. Didn't really try to spread it. Mostly just built Apostles and played defense on my little continent vs. Spain.

- How much warring did you do?

Not much voluntarily. I had a few slingers / archers hovering north early and saw a settler, so I declared on Egypt to steal it. During that war, I stole 2 settlers and took Ra Kadet before making peace. After that, I didn't declare on anyone else, but was constantly in war the rest of the game. Greece and Spain joint-declared on me 2 times, and Sumeria and Germany joint-declared on me once. No one really sent any forces towards my continent though. I took out a spare unit here and there and then took pretty generous peace deals.

Gorgo never offered me peace on the 2nd war, so I stayed in a war with them for the rest of the game. That turned out to be kind of lucrative. I kept a few ships hovering around their capital and picked off trade routes as they passed by.

- Were City-States helpful?

Yes, very. I was Suzerain of about 6-8 of them and got some nice bonuses.

- Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?

Biggest surprise was the good start. Things went perfectly well for me and then it was just city building after that.

- Did you enjoy the game?

I did. I liked really trying to optimize my city building. I've learned a ton here, and this was the first game where I felt really good with my strategy. I didn't really waste a ton of turns and felt good about everything.

- Spread the word thru peace and love, or conversion by the sword?

I can lay the hammer if needed.

 

[Eliminator_Sr]

Cultural Victory on turn 296 in 1850!

I'm kind of a cultural newbie as I've learned quite a lot just from reading the other posts. I intentionally avoided researching any cultural victory strategies to see how well I could do on my own and I now realize I could have optimized much better. Russia has some great bonuses and they are one of my favorite civs so far. My strategy was to go heavy trade because of Carthage and then maximum culture with Reliquaries to boost tourism - it worked pretty well as the victory felt really easy but probably not best for a speed win. I didn't build a single campus district yet I was still 2nd in science for the entire game. I think I'm starting to use Carthage as a bit of crutch and their bonus seems over-powered to me so I'll probably avoid them for the next few games.

How many cities did you settle or capture?
I settled 11 total cities and didn't capture any. My attack on Egypt was ruined by barbarian horse camps and I ended up going all out peace after that since I had yet to focus on diplomacy. I was best buds with Egypt and Greece for almost the entire game.

What did you prioritize for research and policies?
I beelined for computers but it took me a long time because of my lousy science output. There were several key policies that I wasn't really aware of ahead of time (Humanism for one) that I probably should have targeted early on. I never got to Eiffel (apparently important) and Radio came even later than computers but my tiles weren't that great for resorts - I was only able to build a handful of them.

Did You get the first religion?
I think I got the fourth religion. Unfortunately I missed out on Jesuit Education - it seemed extremely useful from reading these posts. Most of the really good beliefs were gone by the time I founded but Reliquaries was really helpful. I got about 5 or 6 relics fairly early but then ran into a bug - my apostles stopped creating them on defeat (had Mont St. Michel). I lost out on at least 2 more relics and probably could have created quite a few more because France was swarming my territory with apostles. I think this set back my win time but probably not by that much.

How much warring did you do?
I declared on Egypt early but never took any of their cities. Scythia and Spain declared a joint war on me but it was short lived. Other than that it was all peace.

Were City-States helpful?
They always are but Carthage is among the best and I put all my early envoys there. The rest of my envoys were sprinkled out to the cultural CS to get the bonuses. I was Suzerain of 4 in total.

Any surprises you ran into, how did you deal with it?
I was really surprised that I was out researching everyone with no focus on science at all. On a slightly embarrassing note - I first realized that culture drives policy research midway through this game . I'm still learning some of the really basic stuff in civ 6.

Did you enjoy the game?
Yes - thanks for creating and posting it! It was a nice change of pace to try for culture and I think I enjoy it more than the space race.

Spread the word thru peace and love, or conversion by the sword?
Peace all the way in this one. It's my first game where I avoided capturing any cities.

 

[alh_p]

I understood140/420 to be the number on the top right of the culture victory progress screen. If that's the case, then, yes, you do need 420 foreign tourists to win - 420 is one more than the number of domestic tourists your best opponent has, and you need to that to win. Whether it's doable depends on how fast you're gaining foreign tourists.
...
I would want to know what @alh_p has as tourism points on the top bar of the main screen before judging whether all is lost.

140/420 was indeed the number at the top of the culture victory screen. Sparta had 419 domestic tourists and Scythia over 300! I could have won this still if I'd war'd Sparta and Scythia, reducing their domestic tourists though I think I was even behind in tech...

I replayed the game for my own satisfaction, winning by largely peaceful means (cough, sorry Egypt) some time short of turn 300. Having more cities, a stronger and more determined approach to religion, production and great works meant I was flying. Although this time round Sparta barely played the culture game and Scythia was much weaker culturally than it had been before (even in 2nd place after Sparta). A bit of preparation was helpful but i don't feel like i particularly exploited foreknowledge of the map either, so I am content with what is likely to be a fairly mid-table result.

It's a shame that victory in CIV6 seems, whatever the case, to come down to the number and contribution of cities. Or at least its a shame that you really only have to ensure that you have a lot of cities and plan districts reasonably well to win more or less however you like (religion possibly the only exception).