Father/Son bonding

[Ksupirates]

Yesterday I asked my son, who is in college, on a whim if he would play a game of Civ VI with me. I've been playing Civ since Civ II in grad school, but almost never play online. This was probably the best Civ game I'd ever been involved in. He got a buddy to play as well. We did a random Pangea map. I selected Mongols, he did Rome, and his friend was Australia. I was stuck on a horrid penninsula, not too far from Rome, although it took us a while to find each other. My son's friend left, so I found out soon it was just us (Mongolia and Rome) along with The Netherlands, France, England, and Australia. France seemed to take the early lead. I usually like to play for a cultural victory, but I figured I would be more inclined to go with a domination victory. I wasn't even planning on founding a religion. However, I noticed that none of the AI was particularly religious and so with my third city I finally decided to found a Holy site next to the red lake National Wonder and I ended up founding Buddhism as the world's third religion right about the end of the Ancient Era. At this point France was in the lead, so I wanted to cut her down to size, so I levied Kabul and I attacked Paris which still a distance to the North and West of me. It was a brutal campaign, but Kabul took the brunt of the losses (and a particularly pesky barbarian encampment to the far north). I was pretty sure that my son playing Rome was going to for a science victory. We allied and eventually he claimed he would attack the Southern part of the French. He attacked just as I finally took Paris. Deferring to his dad he ceded me two more French cities. When I saw him roll in with cavalry I knew that I had no hope of any kind of cultural or domination, and certainly science victory. By this point I was just barely avoiding the Dark ages. We kept re-upping a science based alliance and I wondered what to do, only continuing to play because it was my son and he was excited to pursue a science victory. Then I started building up Buddhism. It spread dramatically into the Roman Empire and I thought maybe I could go for a religious victory--not saying anything to him and thinking it would be too much of a theological slog. I sent a series of apostles to the far western part of the map and convert Nijigmen--holy city of the Jews. This triggered an emergency and I succesfully held on to the city. My son was oblivious, because he was building up his science and getting ready to crush Elizabethan England. Once England--founder of the Protestants fell, I realized that I actually had a legitimate chance at a religious victory. With Yerevan as a suzerain I started to spam as many apostles as possible. We had 11 turns left in our scientific alliance and I tried to decide if I should start the religous war with him and Australia--founder of Eastern Orthodox but essential secular. I knew if I started too early he'd crush me in a conventional war, but I wasn't sure if he'd be willing to sign up for another alliance. He was completely oblivious to the religious game, so finally with about 4 turns left in our alliance I began a mass apostolic and occasional missionary attack on Rome--and less on Australia. Rome succumbed to Buddhism quickly, but unfortunately I had not allocated enough of my apostles to the Australian front. I had converted 3 of the remaining 4 civs. He suddenly realized what was happenind and began to panic, knowing that he couldn't do anything until our alliance expired. I tried to wheel enough of my remaining apostles toward the Australians before our alliance ran out. Then he began nuking my cities about 2 AM in about 1880 AD. 'Where is your god now' he messaged me as I desperately set to convert Australia. Ultimately I was two Australian cities short and couldn't quite pull it off as he nuked me and occupied my capital about 7 turns from his own science victory. It was a great game that, even though he totally dominated me, I still had a chance to win with religion had I played it just a bit differently. He told me later that he would have renewed the alliance had I held off on the religious attack, which would have definitely meant a Mongolian Buddhist victory despite being many many techs and many civics behind. Or if I had sent more of my religous units initally towards Australia rather than Rome, I could have actually pulled it off. It was a fun game that would have never turned out like that vs. a computer and gave me a great memory with my adult son.

 

[BruceMri]

That was a lot of fun to read. (Though in the future, I recommend paragraph breaks every few sentences.) That sense of things being possible even when they don't work out is so crucial to satisfaction, for me.