Describe your most recent game

[RulerOfDaPeople]

I mostly decided to make this thread because I want to read about other players experiences... Especially for how many cities they build.

In my most recent current game, I managed to do something I've never done before and I've had Golden Ages in every Era since the Classical Era! Amazing! I think I might have broken my record for the most number of Cities. And that's saying alot because I play on Enormous maps with 33+ Civs and I usually end up with alot of cities after the colonization/exploration phase of discovering new continents first.

Currently I have 54 cities and counting. I'm in the early part of the 1900s and almost through the tech tree. I tried to rush strait for Computers to get Flood Barriers, but sadley with so many civs in the game I couldn't get all the flood barriers built in time in the younger cities to prevent tiles from flooding and eventually submerging. (I was also sidetracked with Culture Bombing neighbor's borders thanks the World Congress enabling that feature.)

I'm playing as Abraham Lincoln and I even managed to found a religion. (Protestantism). Pantheon is G-Of The Sea where fishing boats give produciton. I have Mosques and the belief where new cities start with religion. I also have Tithe and I managed to build the Hagia Sophia

Enormous 2:1 map
Continents and Islands
King difficulty
Earth 2020 Leaders & Civs mod is enabled, but a random lineup.
Leaders/Civs from the mod active this game: Trudeau (My best ally), Cyril (South Africa), Pakistan, Nigeria, Putin (plan on nuking him), Iran, North Korea Kim Jung Un, Turkey's Erdogan, Israel's Netanyahu, Emanual Macron, UK's Boris Johnson, and I think that's it.
33 Civs
28 City States
14 Religions
Heroes + Legends enabled, Heroes recuirted: Sinbad + Himiko
Secret Societies enabled
Wonders Built: Oracle, The Colosseum, Hagia Sophia, St Basil's Cathedral, Eiffel Tower, Statue of Liberty, Ruhr Valley

I was friendly with most other leaders, but announcing friendships caused some Civs to be angry and denounce me because they hated the other civ. Khmer and Kongo come to mind with this, and those 2 were warring against each other for most of the game. In the Ancient Era I vanquished Portugal off my home continent and took 1 City where they had built the Temple of Artemus. Ironically my allies are Montezuma (from the west) who has been nice to me, and stayed a loyal friend. I allowed Scotland to live dead center in the middle of my borders just because they weren't a threat and I liked the gold Robert could trade me. Canada is on my south eastern flank and from the beginning of the game has been another one of my most loyal allies. I have a science Alliance with Trudeau. I have a culture alliance with the Maori. I have had one with Montezuma but switched it to an Economic Alliance. (I thought about making an alliance to my most eastern neighbor with South Africa).

I could easily win a culture victory but it seems ever game that I win is either culture or Diplomatic, so I wanted to go for a Space Race Science victory. I've built enough culture to defend against another potential tourist powerhouse, but left my tourism low enough to hold off the end of the game.

I'm about to research Robotics to finish the last 2 techs of the original tech tree before it unlocks the hidden techs. I just completed the Satellites and the moon landing will go in the city I built Ruhr Valley in. I'm getting close to 80 production per turn with all the hill mines. I have 3 cities with Space Ports. I used Moksha and Reyna to plop them down in 2 of those cities just to save time. Especially because Turkey and Russia are both high up the tech tree along with me and Erdogan already has 3 phases of the space race about complete. I've decided to put some spies in his cities and try to stop the launching of another space mission while I get mine launched.

I've got Aerodrome districts set up around the globe and will have Airports available to transport units anywhere I need around the world. Putin was stupid enough to denounce me so that gives me a good excuse to send some mechanized Infantry and Stealth Bombers + Jet Fighters to my city that is closest to Russia's continent.

I'm about to build the Amundsen-Scott Research station in a new City all the way at the North Pole, thanks to having saved my Great Engineer who can use gold to build a wonder in 1 charge.

I'm about to complete the Estádio do Maracanã and solve all my amenities happiness problems from having so many cities. After that, I'll build the Biosphere.I thought about building the Sydney Opera House just for fun but at this point it's so late in the game I doubt it would be completed and it's not really worth it.

I just hope the game lasts long enough that I can get some action in against my enemies because I've played it peaceful and nice for generations.

 

[Miserable Old Git]

I play very differently. Always on Deity level; generally huge splintered fractal map, but now and then huge true start location earth; using Barbarian Clans, Monopolies & Corporations, and Tech and Civic Shuffle. Since the AI will normally win with all victory conditions open, I preset the victory condition, alternating science, culture, diplomatic, religious, and domination. For domination on Deity under these conditions, it is impossible to make serious military headway before the late gane and advent of GDRs. Apart from truestart earth, I set 9 AI opposition civs. I will always restart games till I get a tolerable starting location.

For all victory conditions, I aim at a core empire of between 6 and 8 prosperous cities, only expanding beyond these for domination or religious victories. My personal victory condition for domination is the total elimination of all cities of othe civs. For religious, it is to establish military control in 2 or 3 cities in each civ, and when the wars are over I then enter into religious "war" for the victory.

For these two victory types, since the AI never can win, the race is aganst time. For the three non-military victories, the race is against the AI.

Here is my current game, nearing the end with a victory in around turn 475.

 

[Disgustipated]

I'm surprised you got the enourmous map to work. Admittedly it's been a while since I tried, but I would always run into a permanent crashing problem at a certain point once enough cities and things were on the map, and my computer is no slouch. I have 32gigs of ram. As for number of cities, I have ran over 100 cities on huge maps before. It's a huge pain in the rear, I don't normally conquer the entire world these days anymore. I don't have patience for it.

My most recent game was Napoleon Bonaparte of France. I largely played a peaceful game. But I did spot an unescorted settler from Korea early in the game and declared. After noting his cities were undefended, I went after his cities which were quick takeovers with my extra movement units even though I didn't have many of them. I largely stayed peaceful after that. I culturally tookover nearly all of Scotland's cities and a few Cree cities and one Ottoman city. I did declare later in the game on the Inca mainly because they took a wonder I wanted (Alhambra). Sometimes I hold grudges against the AI even if they aren't human players, I still like to punish them sometimes. I'm not sure if anyone else ever does that or just me. I did manage to snag the other 3 policy card slot wonders on Emperor difficulty. I did knock out all of Inca's cities except 1, and burned down 2 Soviet Union cities because they were giving me loyalty pressure. Inca's last city was eventually culturally flipped, but I couldn't hold on to it so I burned down the free city and eventually put one of my own cities near it later on.

I've been playing large maps lately instead of huge because it allows me to finish a game in a weekend. I find if I don't finish a game in a weekend, I'll never finish it because I never pick it up the following weekend.

Large Continents and Islands map (my go to map type)
Emperor difficulty
Several mods enabled, but no real rules changes mods, mostly civs/leaders (like Soviet Union, Napoleon etc.), UI mods like policy cards, better screens, hillier hills etc.
I don't remember the number of civs enabled, it was 1 civ over the standard civs for a large map. And I did either 9 or 12 city states (I usually don't like too many). I tend to disable John Curtain, Kupe, and Hammurabi in my games. Kupe mainly because he never amounts to anything.
I did snag a religion, had to go with Protestant since Catholic was already taken.
I did enable Monopolies this game since I knew I would be building commercial hubs galore because of Napoleons unique district, also enabled the Sukritact's oceans mod. I tend to not like any of the other game modes offered.

edit: oh and I put disasters at 0. I tend to like this lately, at least the ice caps don't melt too early (although they still do melt). Although I don't think this setting affects how fast they melt, so it could be just my imagination.

 

[Bonyduck Campersang]

Sometimes I hold grudges against the AI even if they aren't human players, I still like to punish them sometimes. I'm not sure if anyone else ever does that or just me.

I do. It makes the game more interesting, because otherwise it's just a boring lovefest

 

[RulerOfDaPeople]

I'm surprised you got the enormous map to work. Admittedly it's been a while since I tried, but I would always run into a permanent crashing problem at a certain point once enough cities and things were on the map, and my computer is no slouch. I have 32gigs of ram. As for number of cities, I have ran over 100 cities on huge maps before. It's a huge pain in the rear, I don't normally conquer the entire world these days anymore. I don't have patience for it.

My most recent game was Napoleon Bonaparte of France. I largely played a peaceful game. But I did spot an unescorted settler from Korea early in the game and declared. After noting his cities were undefended, I went after his cities which were quick takeovers with my extra movement units even though I didn't have many of them. I largely stayed peaceful after that. I culturally took over nearly all of Scotland's cities and a few Cree cities and one Ottoman city. I did declare later in the game on the Inca mainly because they took a wonder I wanted (Alhambra). Sometimes I hold grudges against the AI even if they aren't human players, I still like to punish them sometimes. I'm not sure if anyone else ever does that or just me. I did manage to snag the other 3 policy card slot wonders on Emperor difficulty. I did knock out all of Inca's cities except 1, and burned down 2 Soviet Union cities because they were giving me loyalty pressure. Inca's last city was eventually culturally flipped, but I couldn't hold on to it so I burned down the free city and eventually put one of my own cities near it later on.

I've been playing large maps lately instead of huge because it allows me to finish a game in a weekend. I find if I don't finish a game in a weekend, I'll never finish it because I never pick it up the following weekend.

Large Continents and Islands map (my go to map type)
Emperor difficulty
Several mods enabled, but no real rules changes mods, mostly civs/leaders (like Soviet Union, Napoleon etc.), UI mods like policy cards, better screens, hillier hills etc.
I don't remember the number of civs enabled, it was 1 civ over the standard civs for a large map. And I did either 9 or 12 city states (I usually don't like too many). I tend to disable John Curtain, Kupe, and Hammurabi in my games. Kupe mainly because he never amounts to anything.
I did snag a religion, had to go with Protestant since Catholic was already taken.
I did enable Monopolies this game since I knew I would be building commercial hubs galore because of Napoleons unique district, also enabled the Sukritact's oceans mod. I tend to not like any of the other game modes offered.

edit: oh and I put disasters at 0. I tend to like this lately, at least the ice caps don't melt too early (although they still do melt). Although I don't think this setting affects how fast they melt, so it could be just my imagination.

Yeah I was just thinking the same thing earlier about the time it takes. There was another game from last year with the same settings as my current game that took me a month to play and I just stopped playing it because it became too much of a burden. I might go back and finish later if I feel so compelled. Playing on Enormous maps with a lot of civs and cities is epic and fun, but in small doses. Having 55 cities and a a small army of religious Apostles to micromanage like I do is a time suck and quite a pain in the (you know what). This might be why I enjoy the early game / ancient era so much.

I like seeing how you guys play because it gives me better ideas for future games on how to make it more efficient, less time consuming, and more fun.

I am 50/50 on holding grudges against the A.I. For example, I kept getting denounced by Khmer in my current game just because I was allies with on of his enemies, but then I saw a window of opportunity when his denouncement ended so I gifted him some gold and built and Embassy in his capital. Next turn we announced a decoration of friendship and then I was able to make some sweet trade deals to get a prophet of gold out of him as well as another amenity that I needed.

But I have no qualms about holding a grudge, especially if it's a Civ/Leader that is historically of questionable character or reputation in real life. (I tend to frown upon warmonger Leaders, which is why me being an ally with Montezuma in this current game is so ironic and... different.) With that said, I never had anything against Pericles until I played multiple games of Civ 6. I think Pericles has become my biggest grudge in Civ 6 thanks to multiple games where he's tried to sneak attack me. Ghandi was like that for me in previous versions of Civ. Some games I could be peaceful with him and some games Ghandi would go all Montezuma on me and try to sneak attack me. Not to mention the famous ironic programming of him loving to use nukes.

One other real life leader I forgot to mention that is in my current game is Modi of India. India/Modi and I are friends and have good trading partnerships. Just like in real life. He keeps asking me for a Military Alliance but I keep rejecting it because he's too far away on the game's map from Russia to be helpful militarily. I might sign a Military Alliance with Egypt (Ramses) or Sparta (if they're alliance with Russia ever expires) if possible, and if not, I could always switch my alliance with Monty to be a Military Alliance instead of economical.

 

[kaspergm]

Not going to write a novel, but short summary of current game:

Tiny Continents map, 6 players, I play China (Yongle)
Immortal difficulty, moderately modded gameplay
I swear I did no restart *that* many times in order to pull a start close to Mount Roraima (I started 2 or 3 hexes north, but tile yields showed me something was hiding down south) - but when it happens, you gotta play it.
Aztecs (Itzcoatl) were my nearest neighbors, suffer an early defeat when Mexico decides to lend me their army of 4 Swordsman and I spread my Crusader religion to his country. I wonder if he realized that building Eterminaki AND Great Bath in Tenochtitlan might have been a bad priority.
Arabia who is technically on my continent sits on his own little island divided by a narrow sound, so things develop peacefully from there. For some reason everybody loves me in spite of wiping Aztecs early game (does it work differently because he was modded leader?).
The combo of massive Great Wall and Mount Roraima as well as religion with Desert Folklore + Work Ethics + Crusades + Scripture + Hildegard from Bingen makes difficulty effectively one or two levels below. Just waiting for next diplo vote to hopefully end the "next turn" spamfest with Statue Of Liberty.

Spoiler :

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

For domination on Deity under these conditions, it is impossible to make serious military headway before the late gane and advent of GDRs

How so?

 

[Miserable Old Git]

How so? Because at Deity on huge maps the AI is always ahead scientifically until at least the Atomic era (normally Information) , so it takes a great deal of military building to make headway, which in turn means you fall even further behind scientifically because you can't develop the campuses with research labs you need to advance scientifically because you're building military, so you fall back.... etc, etc. Also, without GDRs you need multiple siege units to take down city defences, and just try marching siege units all the way across a huge map. I don't even attempt to start the wars till I have the GDRs with at least Advanced Power Cells and Advances AI; my ideal aim is to get to this point by turn 350.

 

[Navelgazer]

Holding grudges against AI is one of the fun parts of the game, as far as I'm concerned. For me these days it's Peter. Because I really like having a religion, and as much as the AI normally seems to cheat when it comes to pumping out missionaries, Russia pumps out way, way more, and they will always be coming in waves right towards you, the player, which there's not a lot of counterplay for. So my grudge serves two purposes: 1. Remind me that, if it turns out that Russia is in my game, then my game is about making that no longer be the case, and 2. lets me get out my anger about how much I hate Peter.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

How so? Because at Deity on huge maps the AI is always ahead scientifically until at least the Atomic era (normally Information) , so it takes a great deal of military building to make headway, which in turn means you fall even further behind scientifically because you can't develop the campuses with research labs you need to advance scientifically because you're building military, so you fall back.... etc, etc. Also, without GDRs you need multiple siege units to take down city defences, and just try marching siege units all the way across a huge map. I don't even attempt to start the wars till I have the GDRs with at least Advanced Power Cells and Advances AI; my ideal aim is to get to this point by turn 350.

I was wondering since you specified restricting win conditions, and I was wondering if that was affecting the difficulty as I usually never restrict the win conditions.

That being said, it's by no means impossible to beat the AI on deity without GDRs. I honestly can't even remember the last time I ever built a GDR, because the game tends to be over quite quickly once bombers/jet bombers are unlocked (those are the real OP units in civ 6).
If you struggle to beat the game without restricting victory conditions and waiting for GDRs, I would recommend that you try to snowball earlier.
You mention having to choose between building science buildings and military, and that suggests to me that you are not setting up a domination snowball early.
The reason I mention this is because you generally don't have to build much science related, provided you start conquering early (late ancient, early classical era).
This is because your science will scale naturally from the science infrastructure that is built by the AI in your conquered cities, as well as from an increased population count and other modifiers (envoy bonuses, kilwa etc.).
And as long as you keep military losses to a minimum (which does require a tactical sense and (ab)using combat modifiers to ensure that you survive on favourable terrain etc.), you can generally play fully peaceful behind your military conquests.
One big help is to also get the Grand Master's Chapel built in the govt plaza as soon as you can, because as long as you pillage for faith along the way (even if just a bit), you can generally instantly buy new units at the front for faith, without it actually costing you anything (since you got that faith from pillaging anyway).

I recommend trying some strong rushing civs to get the hang of subjugating your neighbours early, as the hardest part is usually to take your first (and occasionally second) target out before they tech too far ahead (as city defences scale with their highest tech level unit strength, and walls make it worse). Nubia for instance is a very strong civ for this (and easy to set up), where you can just get 2-3 cities settled straight away, rush straight for archery and pump out pitati archers.
Generally the AI is terrible at handling this early on, as long as you strike fast and hard enough.

 

[vorlon_mi]

I do. It makes the game more interesting, because otherwise it's just a boring lovefest

I definitely hold grudges within a game. I try not to beat up on an AI leader *this game* for how much of a pain the leader was *last game.*

 

[vorlon_mi]

My most recent completed game was playing Gaul, standard continents map, still Prince difficulty.

On my land mass, I started near the northeast corner, with a nice rivered capital. My neighbors on my land mass were Khmer, Arabs {Saladin Vizier}, Korea {Seondeok}, and Hungary. I wanted to try an earlier military breakout, even though my supply lines were relatively long. My troops found vulnerable Khmer cities including Medina, which looked like a forward settle attempt that may have loyalty flipped. I ended up destroying the Khmer, taking several Arabian cities, and spreading out into the southwest, where the Khmer would have been. All of the religions were founded by civs on my landmass: I got Protestantism, Khmer got Buddhism (which died with them), Korea got Shinto, and Hungary took Catholicism.
When I finally met the tribes on the other landmass, they had no religious preference. This gave me the idea of going for a religious victory. I could overwhelm the few remaining Arab and Korean cities with my apostles; if you destroy a civ, it makes it ineligible for the criteria for an RV. I spread my religion on the other land mass, where I found Vietnam, Ottomans {Suleiman Magnificent} and Norway {Harald King}.
Some religious sparring with Hungary indicated that converting the last civ would be challenging. Then I realized -- if I raze Hungarian cities, it will reduce the number I have to convert as well as hinder his ability to produce more apostles/missionaries to spread his religion. In the late game, Ba Trieu was starting to build spaceports when I launched a two-pronged (from the west and east) invasion of the Hungarian homeland. Reduced Corvinus to one city, then pelted it with apostles.... victory movie.

Because of southern polar ice, my coastal cities along the southern coast refrained from building ships. They couldn't leave! My navy was mostly purchased in my western coastal cities. My northern coastal cities were more productive, but it took ~10 turns sailing / steaming from my land mass eastward halfway around the world to get to the battlefront in the west. I chose not to invade Vietnam, who was clearly the dominant power on her landmass.

 

[RulerOfDaPeople]

I'm up to 65 Cities now. Erdogan just launched the Exoplanet Expedition. I'm about to finish the Mars Colony launch and I have just earned a Great Engineer that can speed rush Space Projects in 1 turn. I also have 2 other Spaceport cities standing by and I'm through the tech tree.

Is there anything I can still do to beat Turkey in this Space Race to win the game? I don't think I can raze their city because we are declared friends.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I'm up to 65 Cities now. Erdogan just launched the Exoplanet Expedition. I'm about to finish the Mars Colony launch and I have just earned a Great Engineer that can speed rush Space Projects in 1 turn. I also have 2 other Spaceport cities standing by and I'm through the tech tree.

Is there anything I can still do to beat Turkey in this Space Race to win the game? I don't think I can raze their city because we are declared friends.

I dont know what speed you're playing on, whether there are special rules in your mod or when you can expect to finish your own exoplanet expedition in relation to when he launched his, but the answer is lasers (ground or lagrange, doesnt matter).
If you play on standard speed, and Turkey has only launched the exoplanet expedition without any lasers behind it, you need to pump out as many lasers as you can to boost your exoplanet expedition win time (ideally from multiple spaceports, and feeding tons of builders into finishing them either by the Royal Society or by chopping forests).
On standard speed, just one laser cuts the exoplanet expedition time down from 50 to 25 turns, 4 lasers cut it down to 10 turns, etc.
Save your engineer for the exoplanet expedition itself, and then just pump lasers as much as you can.
The more the merrier, as long as you dont over-consume power (if you build ground based lasers, power doesnt apply to lagrange lasers).

 

[vorlon_mi]

Totally agree with @Oberinspektor Derrick about lasers. My limited experience shows that the AI rarely build lasers to accelerate, so it becomes a math problem. My comments below are standard speed.

Each laser, whether lagrange or ground, adds one unit of speed to your ship, that is, 1 light year per turn. Once you have 3 lasers running, your ship will be covering 4 LY per turn. Using Royal Society enabled workers, you can pump out 3 more (total of 7) and you should be able to make up the head start that Turkey has. The ship needs to travel 50 LY to win; getting your ship up to 7 LY / turn will dramatically reduce the turns to victory.

I try to start building the Royal Society as soon as it unlocks. While I may or may not get the GS and GE to boost projects, I will always have builders. Other cities without spaceports can make builders and send them to the spaceport cities, especially on railroads.

 

[RulerOfDaPeople]

I dont know what speed you're playing on, whether there are special rules in your mod or when you can expect to finish your own exoplanet expedition in relation to when he launched his, but the answer is lasers (ground or lagrange, doesnt matter).
If you play on standard speed, and Turkey has only launched the exoplanet expedition without any lasers behind it, you need to pump out as many lasers as you can to boost your exoplanet expedition win time (ideally from multiple spaceports, and feeding tons of builders into finishing them either by the Royal Society or by chopping forests).
On standard speed, just one laser cuts the exoplanet expedition time down from 50 to 25 turns, 4 lasers cut it down to 10 turns, etc.
Save your engineer for the exoplanet expedition itself, and then just pump lasers as much as you can.
The more the merrier, as long as you dont over-consume power (if you build ground based lasers, power doesnt apply to lagrange lasers).

Totally agree with @Oberinspektor Derrick about lasers. My limited experience shows that the AI rarely build lasers to accelerate, so it becomes a math problem. My comments below are standard speed.

Each laser, whether lagrange or ground, adds one unit of speed to your ship, that is, 1 light year per turn. Once you have 3 lasers running, your ship will be covering 4 LY per turn. Using Royal Society enabled workers, you can pump out 3 more (total of 7) and you should be able to make up the head start that Turkey has. The ship needs to travel 50 LY to win; getting your ship up to 7 LY / turn will dramatically reduce the turns to victory.

I try to start building the Royal Society as soon as it unlocks. While I may or may not get the GS and GE to boost projects, I will always have builders. Other cities without spaceports can make builders and send them to the spaceport cities, especially on railroads.

Thanks for the advice! I am playing on standard speed. I used to the Great Engineer at first chance to build the Exo Expedition, and it cut the production in half. I managed to launch it probably about 8-10 turns behind Turkey, and instantly began the lasers project in the same city. Build time was only 2 turns because it's my Ruhr Valley City getting 120 production per turn with all the mines I've built. But then my counterspy agent failed and another Civ's spy sabotaged my SpacePort and production so I had to stop to fix the Spaceport. What I did was I switched production to my other Spaceport cities (at the expense of finishing my first Thermonuclear device with 2 turns remaining) and it looks to be about 4 and 5 turns before each laser is built and the Ruhr Valley Space port is back online.

I had been having success protecting my Ruhr City Spaceport from spies but they still sometimes sneak one in and get me. If I add more spies in the city to counterspy, would that improve my chances of protecting it?

As a side note, I hit my first non-Golden Era and I'm not stuck in a Dark Era on top of being hit with a World Congress enactment that is causing me an extra -5 loyalty per turn. It's causing all types of loyalty issues even with a full roster of Governors and I've had to pull my massive military to keep getting those cities back under control until the dumb World Congress penalty expires. (It's the one where you get a bump in city growth at the expense of loyalty).

I've also been holding off on switching out of Democracy because I like purchasing all the stuff with it and the boost on my trade routes, although I could really use the extra policy cards.

As for Erdogan, our Declaration of Friendship expired and in a couple turns, he turned on me and denounced me for having a different Government. I could officially DoW or Cassus Belli on him, but he's so far away and his Neighbors are so far behind him militarily that I don't think it would do any good to win the game. Probably just cost me Apostles and unprotected builders.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Thanks for the advice! I am playing on standard speed. I used to the Great Engineer at first chance to build the Exo Expedition, and it cut the production in half. I managed to launch it probably about 8-10 turns behind Turkey, and instantly began the lasers project in the same city. Build time was only 2 turns because it's my Ruhr Valley City getting 120 production per turn with all the mines I've built. But then my counterspy agent failed and another Civ's spy sabotaged my SpacePort and production so I had to stop to fix the Spaceport. What I did was I switched production to my other Spaceport cities (at the expense of finishing my first Thermonuclear device with 2 turns remaining) and it looks to be about 4 and 5 turns before each laser is built and the Ruhr Valley Space port is back online.

I had been having success protecting my Ruhr City Spaceport from spies but they still sometimes sneak one in and get me. If I add more spies in the city to counterspy, would that improve my chances of protecting it?

As a side note, I hit my first non-Golden Era and I'm not stuck in a Dark Era on top of being hit with a World Congress enactment that is causing me an extra -5 loyalty per turn. It's causing all types of loyalty issues even with a full roster of Governors and I've had to pull my massive military to keep getting those cities back under control until the dumb World Congress penalty expires. (It's the one where you get a bump in city growth at the expense of loyalty).

I've also been holding off on switching out of Democracy because I like purchasing all the stuff with it and the boost on my trade routes, although I could really use the extra policy cards.

As for Erdogan, our Declaration of Friendship expired and in a couple turns, he turned on me and denounced me for having a different Government. I could officially DoW or Cassus Belli on him, but he's so far away and his Neighbors are so far behind him militarily that I don't think it would do any good to win the game. Probably just cost me Apostles and unprotected builders.

Not sure whether or not multiple defensive spies help for the same city, but there are certain promotions (and even a policy card) that you can pick to decrease the likelihood that enemy spies are successful.

As running Democracy, you should switch over to Synthetic Technocracy immediately if you have it available.
At this stage in the game (where you are competing neck to neck with Turkey in the space race), Synthetic Technocracy has all the necessary bonuses you need to help win the space race (as well as providing extra policy cards).
The extra energy can allow you to squeeze in an extra ground based laser in each of your pace port cities, but the real kicker is the extra 30% production to projects.
All of the space related stuff (apart from actually building the spaceport) are projects - including lasers.
Since you are trying to get ahead of Turkey at this point, an extra 30% production on laser production can work out to save you a few turns on the win time, which is important now that you are both approaching the finish line.
The boost on trade routes that democracy offers (which is a great effect indeed) is made available to you as a legacy policy card if you have the T3 government plaza building constructed while democracy was active, so there's little need to worry about losing that one when you switch into Synthetic Technocracy (or any other T4 government for that matter).

 

[RulerOfDaPeople]

Not sure whether or not multiple defensive spies help for the same city, but there are certain promotions (and even a policy card) that you can pick to decrease the likelihood that enemy spies are successful.

As running Democracy, you should switch over to Synthetic Technocracy immediately if you have it available.
At this stage in the game (where you are competing neck to neck with Turkey in the space race), Synthetic Technocracy has all the necessary bonuses you need to help win the space race (as well as providing extra policy cards).
The extra energy can allow you to squeeze in an extra ground based laser in each of your pace port cities, but the real kicker is the extra 30% production to projects.
All of the space related stuff (apart from actually building the spaceport) are projects - including lasers.
Since you are trying to get ahead of Turkey at this point, an extra 30% production on laser production can work out to save you a few turns on the win time, which is important now that you are both approaching the finish line.
The boost on trade routes that democracy offers (which is a great effect indeed) is made available to you as a legacy policy card if you have the T3 government plaza building constructed while democracy was active, so there's little need to worry about losing that one when you switch into Synthetic Technocracy (or any other T4 government for that matter).

I won! Thanks for your advice!! Not a moment too soon either. It was literally neck and neck and if it went a few more Turns, Turkey probably would have won. Maybe even just 1 turn. By the end I was hitting 11-12 Light years per turn after taking your advice. Turkey had a early lead on me but they were only getting 1 light year per turn. It was like a photo finish. The little icon in the Science Victory report was all the way to the right for both of us on the Expedition reaching Alpha Centari.

I ended up with a total score about 6500. The entire game was peacefully played on my part with exception to capturing one city in the Ancient era that was encroaching on my continent. And I kept getting denounced by the AI anyway just because of different governments and friendships. I had also never used nukes in Civ 6 before either.

Thus, I used my "Wait One More Turn" to Declare War on Putin after he denounced me and I nuked Moscow and St. Petersburg. I cannot begin to describe the thorough satisfaction and amusement that I got out of that.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

I won! Thanks for your advice!! Not a moment too soon either. It was literally neck and neck and if it went a few more Turns, Turkey probably would have won. Maybe even just 1 turn. By the end I was hitting 11-12 Light years per turn after taking your advice. Turkey had a early lead on me but they were only getting 1 light year per turn. It was like a photo finish. The little icon in the Science Victory report was all the way to the right for both of us on the Expedition reaching Alpha Centari.

I ended up with a total score about 6500. The entire game was peacefully played on my part with exception to capturing one city in the Ancient era that was encroaching on my continent. And I kept getting denounced by the AI anyway just because of different governments and friendships. I had also never used nukes in Civ 6 before either.

Thus, I used my "Wait One More Turn" to Declare War on Putin after he denounced me and I nuked Moscow and St. Petersburg. I cannot begin to describe the thorough satisfaction and amusement that I got out of that.

Happy to hear it worked out for you!
Those tight games really are the best ones, make you feel like you really earned it.

Nice score by the way, think the most I ever got was somewhere south of 3000.