Culture Victories - Under 200 Turns - Deity (Any tips? Faves?)

[planetfall]

You didn't mention Stonehenge. I presume because it's too risky, correct?

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

You didn't mention Stonehenge. I presume because it's too risky, correct?

Both too risky, and its anti-snowballing you, both being very bad.
When I bother with a religion, its usually to abuse work ethic and crusade (unless I play the better balanced game-mod, where these are nerfed), as these two beliefs are broken in the base game.
In order to exploit that, I need a holy site that gets the produciton boost to recoup the investment spent for the religion, and I need a missionary to spread my religion to the nearest target before invading.
With Stonehenge I not only take a huge risk by attempting it, but when finished I dont even have a holy site to benefit from work ethic, and I definitely dont have neither the shrine for a missionary, nor the faith income to pay for one in order to spread crusade.
So even if I can get the Stonehenge, I dont have the infrastructure that make having a religion worth it to begin with, meaning I have to invest in that infrastructure anyway (anti-snowball, since you could have just gone for the holy site directly and not waste additional time and chops on Stonehenge)

You should pretty much never attempt Stonehenge except for the most extreme cases, but those are so rare that I'm not gonna go into them here.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Point here... extra cities... isn't a lock to get enough culture to get you down the civic tree enough for either National Parks or... if you need to target highest-culture-CIV: Rock Bands.
Yes, you need culture & "High Base Tourism" (from that culture).
***But - (and this goes back to the thread OP) - maybe it's just possible that not all Civs can get a sub200 culture victory.***
The culture has to come from... *somewhere*...
And... for a non-Culture Civ like Babylon - then... from where does the culture come - if there is NO nearby civ to war in Ancient/Classical era?

All civs can get a sub 200 win, I've even done it with Cree once to see how viable that (bad) civ would be.
Even if you dont have neighbouring civs, that doesnt prevent you from settling more.
This is also why monumentality is so important, because it lets you get out a ton of settlers.
Since I personally prefer 4x Moksha first, every settler bought and settled immediately gets another faith bought holy site, in order to give me more faith (with work ethic as a bonus) in order to fuel more settler buying and more district faith purchasing.
You can easily get to something like 10 cities rather fast if you abuse this, and if you have no neighbours at this point it means you can ignore military units and get monuments immediately in every new city (which is a very good early source for culture, until you get mass TS up and running).

In your reference to 800s/800c...
At what turn do you hit this?
And who is your chosen leader?
What settings do you play? (Deity, Map=?, Size=?... and no special game settings, right?)

Is this through:
i) Taking early cities thru war - and growing them yourself,
ii) Taking established cities thru war/loyalty - later,
iii) Using some 'buff' on a specific leader, or
iv) Other


Without war...
[Without cheese game options like heroes/monopolies, etc.\...
And without a culture-buff leader...
I don't see 800s/800c in the first 200 turns on Deity as a possibility.

I dont have the hard and fast numbers on which turn I usually hit these numbers, but I would estimate around turn 130 or so (for normal speed).
Its kind of hard to say, because I usually play on epic speed and tend to have these numbers around turn 170-200 (epic speed).
Science and culture explodes exponentially at that point, as I can get to numbers like 1500s/1500c about 20 turns later with careful minmaxing (city state envoys, trade routes with an ally, certain cards etc.).
I can check some recent saves to find out, or play a normal speed game for once and note down the timings.

Usually my settings are:

• Random leader.
• Pangea, continents or random map depending on what I feel like.
• Shuffle tech, sometimes barb clans.
• Huge map (12 players), usually with 10-12 players in total (if I want to have a shot of playing more peacefully, 10 players, if I want to have early war, 12 players).

But to target one CIV - it's gotta be through Rock Bands.

Yes, thats what they should be used for.
High base tourism should be the main "fuel" of your tourism push and ideally take care of most of the enemy civs, and rock bands to initiate a short term "sprint" towards the finish line by targeting the leader.

 

[Pengwin7]

Amazing response.
I can't thank you enough for these replies.
I'm "late to the Civ6" party - which just has to do with personal life demands and only having a console (PS4).
I only started playing Jan 2024, but am sooooo in love with the challenge and strategy of this game.
Some people mention the "1000 hours"... and in just 400 days... I can tell you... I might be at 2000. LOL.

Anyways - YOU... first person to have ideas to bounce back & forth with.

I'm playing on console (PS4) - and part of my own challenge is that I notice sooooo many people play with Quick Deals.
I don't have this luxury - so I'm slowly losing turns to people that can micro-manage DiploFavor/resource-sells/luxury-sales (general 'trading') thru this.
I think QuickDeals, on PC-version, probably would auto-shave 10-15 turns. Maybe more.
My best guess - this is where others really have Deity advantage.



As for my current game.
It's over. I replayed from turn 106.
CV at 211.

I... am pretty proud.
It was actually, probably, the most efficient city development I've ever had.
My Pingala-Babylon capital is a workhorse, with triple IZ city-formation around a dam.
I was just really, really happy with this game.

In my original game, I tried your advice and spent turns around 80-120 pushing out settlers, with 4-5 being sent to Tundra (last space with room) - which I wouldn't normally do - but I like trying people's methods.
I love the advice... but... here... nope, didn't work. (And you'd probably say "well, if its the Tundra... yeah, not going to be good prod". It wasn't... no food, I even tried to go Preserve/Grove [get both w/Hamm]... but it came online so late, like 30 turns, even with Palgum on a snow river).

So when I dialed it back, I used that previous production to make Kilwa and chop out IZs (not settlers) in cities 4/5/6.
Much better pay-off.

Instead of getting to Rock Bands at turn 208 (previous pace, which I quit at 200),
I got Kilwa, more production in other cities, and got to Rock Bands at turn 193. So... I had a shot.

[My rock bands were garbage - really bad luck, in 12-14 Rock Bands churned from 193-208.
Only three had what I'd call 'good promotions' [Theatre/Campus-Spaceport/Wonder]. Prob half died on turn 1. Only three survived 3+ turns. This is bottom25% performance, for me, from RockBand use).

But... the Rock Bands - having faith to send one per turn... it worked - it was the right play to reel in Norway.
This can be seen in the amount of tourists from Norway - like 69 IIRC... compared to 25-35 from the others

Previous to the Rock Bands... did - make 6-8 very high appeal NPs - which was good general base tourism against all Civs (btw turns 170-185)

But... if my main-game play was stronger for culture - I had the city for the Rock Bands adjacent Norway (with the golden age of OtherCont4pop+Loyalty) - and trade route path.
If I had gotten "Rock Bands" opened at turn 185... then I knock this out in sub200.

------->An absolute FUN and wonderful play for me.<-------------

*Is there a way to find "map seed" on PS4? (I have to explore that)
- because I'd love for somebody (YOU?) with higher skill (95-100, sounds like you) to give it a whirl and say "Here is how you could do it differently/better."


!!!!Anyways - whatever the maximum THANK YOU possible - sending it your way!!!!

The Moksha faith/holy is something I'm really motivated to try.
My next CIV up to try... is Khmer (though... you should see the start I got off to - wondering if you ever try to continue a BRUTAL start... I've never had a deficit THIS big! LOL. It's almost comical).
Khmer seems like HOLY SITE powerhouse and one where settler-spam is the way to go.
Forego all early wonders (except maybe Kilwa, Colosseum - IDK... tell me what you recommend for Khmer)

Some photos from my Babylon turn 211 CV win... below. (I usually put them in "Spoiler", but I accidentally clicked a new post: sorry-all)

Six of my favourite wonders tactfully in one city... might be a first for me (Oracle, then Great Library, then Colosseum... pause, then St.Basil's, then Broadway - needed for Culture push to get to Rock Bands - and finally MSM... just bc there was nothing else to build in the turns where I was pushing Rock Band. I suppose I should've run Theatre Square projects). I ran out of key things to build - but Eiffel/Cristo/MSM came out in three cities btw turns 200-210. I think the main 'snowball' was I got the green-card with the 5% culture boost to all Suz CS, I was suz of 8-9 CS by end of game, and the extra 50% trade route card.
*I'm still curious how much it hurt to have just one Cultural CS. I feel like having 2-3 + Kilwa can be a big difference vs just having Vilnius in-game. Bah.


Onto Khmer next...



[oops - looks like I posted them in separate post below. Tough morning - and needing to switch to work/work-mode]
*usually I tuck those in a Spoiler - mis-click.

Hard to see but photos are:
Turn 200. 100s/760c
Turn 211. 100s/960c (so yes, there's the *pop* you mention.... usually I don't get to these CultureTree Policy cards... I don't normally go 18 turns beyond Rock Bands... cursed Harald.]
There's a photo of my opening area with Babylon (cap), Rapiqum (where I built Ruhr - to trigger 'Flight'), and Borsippa (wasn't really a great city - but I used it for Nazca lines)

One photo is my turn60 score with Khmer - which I tried this morning.
Terrible, terrible opening - "Dark Age" - Hammurabi and Kupe are off to blistering starts.
I'm not sure pursuing a start this terrible (it's map-terrible... not me-terrible...) is worth it for sub200 culture.
Opening was basically middle of flat river floodplains. One 2/2 tile (deer). No hills. No luxuries. Only two tress to chop. Awful.
But I like to try new things - esp bc I can roll into a Heroic Age pretty certainly. [Monumentality + 5-charge Miss/Ap might be fun together... albeit turn 90-on is super late to take advantage of that...\

When I started my sub200 culture interest... I had found a video where the guy runs AFTER a dark age (with Ludwig).
Can't find the video on YouTube... but it's there.

 

[Pengwin7]

 

[Pengwin7]

TLDR version:
Any tips on Khmer for quick CV?

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

TLDR version:
Any tips on Khmer for quick CV?

Pretty much the following:

1. Get an adjacency pantheon, not river goddess (those people over on reddit shilling for it have no clue, high adjacency for the frontloaded food bonus is absolutely nuts for Khmer).
2. Spam as many high adjacency holy sites as you can.
3. Get granaries and monuments in all cities.
4. Get shrine and prasat for high base culture (obviously delay Prasat it you find it worth to delay it, though usually the answer is, dont delay it for long because its free culture and faith, which is generally what you want above all else).
5. Get aqueducts in all cities for more faith and housing.
6. Spam CH/TS districts in cities that dont have them yet.
7. Get Angkor Wat, its not mandatory but the free housing is so worth it on Khmer since you wanna get all cities with Prasats above population 10 by the time you rush Flight (obviously other good wonders you can get as well, and Kilwa is near mandatory as always).
8. Spam the usual museums and archaeologists (unless you are drowning in artwork).
9. Spam the usual natural parks.
10. Rush straight to Flight, make sure that you have all Prasat cities above pop 10 (not exactly hard with an adjacency pantheon and aqueducts, granaries, Angkor Wat and housing cards).
11. Spam rockbands against the leader(s) and win.

Khmer is super nuts if you get to choose a high adjacency pantheon.
Idc what people over at reddit say, river goddess is trash when compared to adjacency pantheons, and yes I've tried playing with it over the "usual" adjacency pantheon.
It was not worth it, you're delaying yourself hard for dubious late game bonuses, and missing out on an absolutely ridiculous snowball from free food/production holy sites.
The problem with Khmer (and why I dont rate him among the very best civs personally), is that his power depends on you getting a fast pantheon and religion up.
Unfortunately Khmer do not have any early faith bonuses that allow them to secure the ideal pantheon, and thus if you wanna reload for a strong start (where you get free faith sources right from the start), Khmer is a candidate where it is definitely worth it.
The difference between Khmer having Sacred Path/Dance of the aurora/Desert folklore compared to any other pantheon is like night and day in terms of snowball potential.

 

[Pengwin7]

Love it. Very excited to try this with a dedicated Moksha governor. (And you move Moksha, immediately on new settle, yes?)

re: River Goddess. Yeah... I read that absolutely everywhere - every.single.guide.
It seems like the "People's Choice" in the same vein as Canada/Tundra and Russia/Tundra are "Aurora" - but as you say - adjacency Pantheons are great!

I'd imagine it's hard though - to get a large settle swath of land in either: Tundra or Desert.
But maybe, maybe Rainforest (not my fave, bc I prefer to chop those).

Can't wait to give them a go tonight.
(I'm usually heavy early-wonder... and the stress from having to chop-out Oracle... always eats me up... causes me to give-up/restart a lot games).
I'm so ready to just not stress about early wonders - for a change.


Thanks!!!

ps. Do you build GovPlaza somewhere - just to get an extra governor title - given the want to get Moksha to his 4th ASAP?
[I, typically, look for City2 to be "Chop City" for settler-spam... tons of woods/rainforest, put Gov-Plaza down immediately - clear it out with chops w/Magnus+50%policy... but that might not be the right play here. I usually try to get 4-5 settlers out on the chops, send first farthest... and with *ideal pace... have both Ancestral Hall AND Feudalism complete for the 5-builder when each hit their -location-.]

 

[planetfall]

Thank you for stonehedge response. I had given up on it as it never seemed to pan out. Now I have a better idea of why it is a waste of effort.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

The river goddess tip is written by people who don't understand snowballing properly.
They see that Khmer needs housing and amenities, and conclude that its the best for him, without thinking it properly through.
Yes you get free housing, which is good.
Yes you get amenities, which is also good.
The problem is that housing and amenities pay off late in the game when you are housing capped and have high base yields that benefit from +20% from the amenities.
But you are paying for that with giving up front loaded +4-8 base faith, food and production in cities (before you even add the scripture card) and you can easily get housing and amenities elsewhere.
In the early game, those yields make your newly settled cities explode in population and production, where some newly settled population 2 city can double to triple their food and production yields and more or less become capital levels of good almost instantly when you get the holy site up.
You cannot get such insane front loaded yields otherwise, and delaying a broken early snowball for late game benefits is... unwise, to say the least.

Love it. Very excited to try this with a dedicated Moksha governor. (And you move Moksha, immediately on new settle, yes?)

Yes, the goal is to have him faith buy a district as often as you can, preferably in cities that have low production since they are otherwise unproductive for so long as they try to get their holy site up. Move him immediately to the newest settled city, faith buy the holy site after 5 turns to make that city super productive, and ideally you have another settler about to settle on the same turn so that you can immediately move Moksha over to faith buy the next holy site.
After that you ideally have such strong production and food yields in that city that you dont need Moksha in that city anyway, as that city can take care of its own needs from that point on (it will soon hit pop 4 and has more than enough production to build the next district in short time).
It takes a while to get the rythm down with faith buying holy sites in new cities, but by focusing hard on faith income early you can essentially fuel a self sustaining faith snowball that lets you spew out settlers and more holy sites.
If you play on something like epic and especially marathon speed, that snowball becomes even stronger as the golden age eras become longer, while your 5 turn governor establishment time remains the same.

ps. Do you build GovPlaza somewhere - just to get an extra governor title - given the want to get Moksha to his 4th ASAP?
[I, typically, look for City2 to be "Chop City" for settler-spam... tons of woods/rainforest, put Gov-Plaza down immediately - clear it out with chops w/Magnus+50%policy... but that might not be the right play here. I usually try to get 4-5 settlers out on the chops, send first farthest... and with *ideal pace... have both Ancestral Hall AND Feudalism complete for the 5-builder when each hit their -location-.]

Yes, government plaza is very high on my priority list after the first holy site, and usually built in my capital.
Ideally you wanna get a cluster of holy sites around it (easy to do on desert and tundra), but it should not be delayed (to get "perfect" adjacencies on rainforest or so), because having 4x Moksha is more important than getting better adjacencies.
So place it whereever if you dont care to minmax.
There is a legitimate debate on whether Magnus first is better, and I wont discount the people who claim that they might be getting good results with that opener.
Personally I go hard on Moksha though, because while Magnus is initially better for chopping, his value falls off after a while, while Moksha stays relevant the whole game.
And since Moksha is also one of the best offensive governors to use (he instaheals your military units on his second promotion, which is very strong when you invade a neighbour and have a connecting border), I prefer him by far.
Faith buying districts is also something that stays relevant the entire game, as you can even faith buy multiple spaceports in the lategame that way (if going for a SV instead), which is rather strong.
That or just faith buy TS districts in late game settles to immediately start getting archaeologists (buying the museum with gold and ideally the archaeologist with faith).

Feudalism is a card that you want to slot when you start to mass improve your cities with builders.
It synergizes good with Ancestral Hall, but you cannot and should not delay city settling "just" for 2 free builder charges, as that delays the snowball.

Because 4x Moksha is a rather expensive investment of governor promotions however, that makes getting monuments (after holy sites) even more important, as culture is what you need to reach those governor promotions faster.
Fortunately all that culture also allows you to reach the Scripture card faster (+100% HS adjacency), so it synergizes well with what you're trying to do anyway.

 

[Pengwin7]

I'm so super excited about this.
I'm on my 5th start with Khmer.
Two went south on barb-horse camps I couldn't deal with...
Two... I actually didn't get a religion!!!

But I think I found a map I can work well on try#5.
Lots of Good News/Bad News.

Good News: Relic - first hut. So I had some early culture & faith to push me along.
Bad News: I got to the Pantheon fast - I had NOT yet discovered the huge swath of Tundra (I sent scouts South - meeting Gitarja at a pinched-off mount range.... and West, then North).
So there is no rainforest, desert, or tundra discovered. Religious settlements was gone. And... I went with the Builder one to get a builder just to secure two luxuries to sell. (I don't how effective the 10% city growth is... but I'm thinking that could help with Khmer. IDK. Given the rivers - probably should've gone with River Goddess - esp w/BOTH my first two cities being on rivers).

Good News: Secured a golden age. Barely. I'm rolling into Classic w/Monumentality 150+ faith, 300+ gold. I can buy settlers, builders... right now.
Bad News: FOUR barb camps meant I had to put investment into slingers and move them out ASAP. I cleared two barb camps on the final two turns of age, securing 4pts and getting my golden.

Good News: +5 and +4 holy cites due to mountains,rivers.
Bad News: Gitarja's religion is already in place... and she's super near. (*I need tips dealing with how to do this. There are two "pinch" points where I could place a missionary and keep her from getting into my land.

BEST NEWS: HUGE amount of land ALL.TO.MYSELF. Isolated 'continent', except for that pathway seen with Gitarja/Armagh either side of a mountain run.
One barb camp left to clear beyond top right of map screen. AND... Food/Science-Heavy Yosemite is up there near top left corner! (prob 15+ turns for a settler from Thom bc of mountains/lake).
re: Yosemite - I'm never sure how far is "too far" to run a Settler towards something like that.

Other Info: CS(3-found). Armagh(0/3), Kumasi(0/5-Gitarja), Fez(0/7-Canada*)
*Going to try to work the DiploFavor trading w/Canada best I can. With PS4, I don't have quick deals, but I try to buy the 20-for-1 from other AI and move them to Canada here/there.

re: Armagh. I have two available envoys now - I could send one to Armagh (Quest is Campus - bah, nope)... or wait out the 7-turns to Pol.Phil and then put in the 2-envoy card and suze it with other.
I assume that's the right play there.

I put Moksha in the capital, which'll have a shrine in 4.
City2 will have its holy site in 4.



Very interested in your thoughts for Classic Era moves.

Spoiler :

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Hats off to you for wanting to continue with the builder pantheon rather than reloading for an aurora pick, though I do think it was a mistake not to pick this one if you really wanted to experience how broken Khmer are.

A quick tip on scouting if you want to get more terrain information early on (to help make the pantheon decision) without seeing things directly (and im not sure if this works on the PS, though it works on the PC version):
You can know roughly how close you are to discover tundra and rainforest by the terrain you spawn on, by working out your latitude.
In your case you spawn on plains/grasslands, and no tundra or rainforest in sight.
Since rainforest is always around the "equator" in the game and tundra at the northern and southern "poles", having none of these spotted means that you are in either the northern or southern hemisphere.
You can work out whether or not you are in the northern or southern hemisphere (and also which latitude, telling you how far you are from the poles/tundra and the equator/rainforest) by placing a map tack as far north and as far south that you are able to (in the fog or war).
By doing that you allow the overhead map view to scroll a little bit further south and north.
Once you scroll further north and south respectively, rotate the map view so that you are looking from "east to west" instead of the usual "south to north".
This allows the edge of you screen to visually show the edge of the map, telling you roughly how far you are from the polar regions (and if you dont see the map edge that you are far from the polar regions or looking towards the rainforest equator).
Again, not sure if this works on the PS version, but using that trick I would probably have taken a chance on Dance of the Aurora seeing as you were so close the tundra (which also means that lands in the northern direction are likely much less contested due to how the game spreads out spawning AI).

In this case its a real shame that you didnt get Aurora, as it would have made your game a complete stomp right from the start (and much, much stronger than starting near Paititi or something similar). I dont think anyone would hold it against you if you decide to restart the game to pick Aurora here, at least if your intention is to abuse Khmer to the maximum for a fast win time. Not having Aurora here can delay your win time by a lot, probably several tens of turns as your snowball just becomes that much slower from the lack of good locations.

With terrain like this though (huge land all to yourself, and no intentions of declaring war), you can go all in on settling.
Try to secure high holy site adjacency spots first, as these locations will help snowball you faster for more settlers and faith purchasing (again, real shame you didnt get aurora here!).
I cant really tell all the details from the screenshot, but you seem to have more +4 holy site spots to the west, as well as using Yosemite for more adjacency (screw the native tile yields, you wanna pump those cities up with faith, food and production).
Have a couple of "police forces" (as I like to refer to them as) escorting settlers and clearing camps, and prioritize to clear out any camp that spawns near a city (or if further away, keep a military unit between the camp and the nearest city to scare off the barbarian scout before he discovers your city and runs back to start the invasion).

You can most likely just ignore Gitarja for the rest of the game.
Your entire landmass is as safe as it gets with that chokepoint, and with Moksha there is zero chance that she can ever invade you even if she tries (since you can just fortify in between the mountains, and instaheal to full every time, only making sure that you sit on rough terrain and dont get surrounded too much so that she can oneshot you before the heal kicks in).

Yes, always try to use the double envoy card before committing to envoys.
Personally I just try to max out double envoys everywhere (which is why I keep that card slotted most of the time in the diplomatic green slot), and hold my free envoys for when I want to decide what to suzerain.
It really sucks to commit to something like Armagh early on, just to have Gitarja dump 8 envoys into Armagh later and blocking you from ever suzeraining it.
Unless you get Kilwa and already have one other religious CS suzerained that is not Armagh, I wouldnt bother with it as the envoy bonuses are more important anyway.
Ideally though you wanna suzerain two culture city states and two religious city states for a 15% bonus to your main yields, culture and science, so I would save my envoys for those opportunities (though there is no hard and fast rule here, if Gitarja wants to dump 8 envoys or something stupid like that, its questionable to contest it since she will most likely just keep dumping more there).

Other than that this game should play itself.
Rush out the necessary techs for sailing and try to discover the map as fast as possible to start racking up visiting tourists, and establishing trade routes and open borders as soon as possible.
This really should be one hell of a smooth game with a location like that (real bummer that you didnt get Aurora though!).

 

[Pengwin7]

Sigh... yeah, Aurora would've been fantastic.
I'm still excited to give-it-a-go after work today.
I generally latch onto a leader for about a month - and slowly try to master their mechanics.

The whole "farms" around Holy and/or Aqueduct seems like a big task - but a good challenge.
Is there even a point of doing the Aqueduct in the tundra? Since no farm locations.

Some more photos in spoiler.
I took 10min work break to tack these photos and then label them on computer.
I think I'd settle them A,B,C...
then D,E (Yosemite)...
and - well, ignore F/G/H... I didn't set those up well. OneMountain+River is probably better holy-site than +3Mountain-alone.

[I added the letters to make 'discussion' simpler.]

Spoiler :

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

The farm around HS/aqueducts is a trap, and pretty much not worth it to play for.
Farms are a bad improvement in general in this game unless you REALLY need food, and as Khmer you never do.
The aqueducts are purely for getting more housing (to hit pop 10 for the prasat at flight) and passive faith, just focus on improving other worthwhile tiles and forget about the farm gimmick in general (unless you struggle on faith since you didn't get aurora, but it seems very dubious over just settling more cities).

If you finish your game I would keep a save where you have the relic and pick aurora, just for learning purposes.
This would really showcase how having aurora and not having it would be like night and day for snowball purposes, which translates for other leaders as well (apart from the food bonus).

 

[planetfall]

Again, very interesting thread. Another pointer I picked up, is if you are careful, a builder with 1 build can work as a scout. If discovered, don't lose much.

I tried the 2 city build but with small world map and was pinned between Inca and Peter. Inca had 3 cities and basically used the grab the nearest civ and wiped out British. Then having 4-5 cities and military of over 400 to my small 140, even a steady military build of warriors and archers couldn't withstand the combo of 4 cities pumping out military to my 2 cities.

I'm going to try again on a huge map to see the difference as I have only used that map size once. If weak, i.e. fails again. what data points should be selected? Just summary of key events, or full log: turn, builds, tech tree, etc, and game map image, or something else?

 

[planetfall]

Well bummer. I followed the plan and logged gameplay, but on gaining a religion, I realized that crusade would not work for me as none of my religious units can enter foreign city to convert. They can only convert after take over city. But it was a very interesting exercise. I haven't taken the time to log gameplay before and it is revealing to see the longer scope of gameplay. The other major learning was the game plays totally different with a huge map instead of a small map. There is much more time to develop. Anyway, just thought I would provide some feedback and thank you all again for ideas of different ways of playing civ.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Not sure if I understand the question.

Are you trying the 2 city fast religion aggressive opener vs the AI?
If so, the clue is that you convert the city before attacking with units, as you essentially can do so for "free".
After you declare war, missionaries lose all their movement points next to a city, and can be killed by military units (which also wipes out a lot of religious pressure in the area).
If you are gonna convert someone while at war, make sure that the missionary stands on top of your most tanky units that fortify outside the city walls, so that they can convert in relative safety (depending on your unit being tanky enough to withstand fire in the meantime).

If you are gonna rush, my typical build is:

1. Slinger/warrior first (you want military units for the attack, scouts suck for that).
2. Settler immediately after (assuming pop 2 in the capital), and then immediately start working on the holy site in the capital, same for the expansion (the second city might need a builder to chop it out fast enough, unless you got very productive lands).
3. Depending on how contested religions are, you can either settle one more city, get a shrine, or get holy site prayers running. If there is zero contest on GPPs a settler or shrine is fine (depending on how fast you want the religion). Similarly, if religions are hotly contested, you need to go straight into prayers to secure the second to last prophet (if huge map, the last prohpet is very expensive as its a renaissance prophet iirc, and thus costs more).

On slower speeds I recommend getting 3 cities (maybe epic, definitely marathon) as you can get away with it in most cases without being too far behind, for normal-epic 2 cities are usually enough to secure the religion asap.

Its hard to give a guide after this point because while the opener is almost always the same, what you do from here on out depends on a lot of factors.

• Terrain (how easy is it to invade, and how far are they)
• Tech level (how much science per turn do they have, relevant because you otherwise risk running into high tech units soon)
• How many strageically important settle spots do you have nearby that you need to secure first

The invasion itself however follows from pumping out units on 2-3 cities, ideally against someone who is relatively close (shorter time for them to get higher tech units, and more loyalty from your own cities once you take their first city).
Unless you play some sort of special civ with special units or abilities, you wanna get about 2-3 warriors per archer, plus one battering ram for the warriors.
The warriors are used for tanking and keeping the city sieged, and unless the target has gained high tech units you can usually mow down the walls in one turn as long as you get 1-2 warriors to attack the walls followed by archer shots.
After that you just fortify outside the city that is sieged, and whittle it down slowly with archers and warriors that can survive a counterattack (attacking with a warrior that is left at 20% health afterwards is asking to lose units, which is very bad, better to use archers in that case).
As long as you have crusade in that city, your warriors will generally be able to withstand counterattacks, and the archers should deal decent damage.

If you want to practice it I suggest getting an OP early game civ first and try it out, ideally something like Nubia, Gran Colombia, Gaul or similar.

 

[planetfall]

The frustrating part was for some reason my build will not allow missionaries/apostles/guru to cross city boundaries. I attached the log file. The 2 city build went well until I had to move a missionary to a city border and when tried to cross border, game would not let me move into the tile without a war declaration. So at that point I switched to another plan. If faith units can cross borders, then your plan works great.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Sounds like you have a mod enabled, under no circumstance should religious units ever be stopped from crossing a border.

 

[planetfall]

Found it, dale_unitabilities.xml deleted the religious border crossing ability. His file is an addendum to the standard unitabilities.xml file. Simple undo changes and now I can return to testing. Found in forum under civ6 mod downloads. Just in case someone else runs into the same issue. Installed because annoyed with missionary AI spawns, but now want to try my own so have to reenable.