From King to Emperor - ouch

[Deadly Dog]

Really nice of you playing this map through. However, as this is a thread (kind of) intended to provide tips for overcoming harder difficulties, I feel the need to argue your initial point as it sets the players on a more difficult path.

It might be that I am missing the point with your "meme" joke, but suggesting to not do Aurora is a head-scratcher for me. I mean, I do go for Religious Settlements in 90% of my games, but in this game, there's really no point of doing so. I checked your T115 save to confirm that you have subpar Holy Sites - you even have some that have 0 adjacencies. If you go Aurora, you can easily have six +7 Holy Sites that will make you drown in faith - and that's what a player trying to beat a new difficulty would prefer. Obviously, you can expand to even more cities as you did and try to accumulate faith via brute force, but I would tend to suggest the more laid-back approach (you can stop at seven cities) for learning players.

I would even counter that initial production at St. Petersburg is not that bad if you don't wander off with your settler that much. Also, you can buy as many settlers as you want right after hitting the Classical Golden Age using Monumentality - if you have Aurora, you can easily afford it.

I agree. I just played into the classical with this map and I had no trouble getting a Monumentality GA. I played this one bold after suspecting an isolated start, scout-lavra-settler-prayers-settler, using the 4fpt rice tile across the bay from turn 2 (settled on marsh). Extremely lucky with a relic from a goody hut but then Armagh and Kumasi free envoys should be repeatable.

Dance of the Aurora and Armagh ensured I could ignore shrines and 2 lavras was enough to get me first prophet, (turns out Saladin is devout so now we're friends), and Classical era saw me buy 5 settlers with faith, I can probably get 2 more when I go back to that one. Expecting a lot of homeless writers soon with 4 lavras in +6 tundra sites.

I have not decided for sure on a victory condition, decided to have some fun instead and took warrior monks and Wats for religion. All I know is 200fpt is not far away with temples and Scripture and that can be used multiple ways. Jesuit Education would be a smart way to set up a CV, at least if you're not trying to break any speed records, but I've done that before and have never ever had any luck making warrior monks into viable armies, so gonna give it a go for kicks.

Attached the Turn 40 save, with first pick of religious beliefs available.

 

[Vizurok]

It's much easier for a struggling player (or not struggling player) to have 2 cities @t10 and produce more stuff so they can survive the early game as opposed to managing a tertiary resource which won't help them until classical. If they fail to get a Classical Golden Age, it will be even worse. What the heck is 100 faith going to do at t100 when they get hosed by horse barbs at t30? (and yes, there were horse barbs)

We're already established that we're trying to give advice to struggling players-- assuming beforehand they'll get a GA is not something I would count on.

It is much better for a newer player to get established with some defending units and a quick religion to do w/e they need. Sure you can faith buy great people or spread religion if you're going RV but these are more dedicated strategies and I simply know for a fact that OP can't handle it yet. They even outright said they didn't like RV (I don't either), so I didn't do it. I would even say that I can't handle it myself. So why not just get Religious Settlements and go for a much more straightforward gain, instead of waiting for it?

Moscow's Holy Site was indeed randomly placed and a bad flex because I couldn't afford the mountain tile. Is 2-12 faith going to break the game? Not really. It was placed solely for choral music. It may have made more sense to build a theater district but as Russia I don't really worry about competing for early writers.



Brute force is the best way to teach beginners. You don't need to know about district placements or maximizing yields-- nobody loses games on Emperor because of that. But they do lose because they don't defend themselves, build useless things, or pursue long term projects that never pay off. People also lose games because they chase religion with a non-religious civ or prioritize silly districts like IZs or trade districts. Just toss all that noise out. They don't mean a thing.

You don't get people improving by focusing on things that will speed their win by 10 turns if they can't win at all. Instead, it's better to inspire confidence, that if they do grasp a few basic concepts that they will crush the game regardless of anything else.

That is how you have chill games. You basically know that you will always win if you stick to the basics.

Also, I'm pretty sure most people would consider me to having seriously underexpanded (seems like 10 cities @ t100 is the norm and I usually have 1/2 that). I built Artemis (not needed with so little resources) and went Audience Chamber because I think that's more fun, not because it's more efficient.

So yes, I would never recommend anyone to take anything but RS if it's available. If you're good enough to not listen to me, then that problem fixes itself.

Well, thanks for the thorough explanation. I guess I can say that I understand your reasoning, but sadly, I strongly disagree with it on two levels: I do not agree with that approach and I do not agree with your presented facts.

So, first of all, the approach. This is more of a philosophy thing, obviously, there are multiple different strategies that can lead to winning a game. The one-size-fits-all, everything-is-a-nail-with-a-hammer strategy is not wrong at all, you can pretty much do well even on Deity with city spamming. However, we are now talking about the 6th hardest difficulty option in Civ, and I really don't believe that we should be advocating the quantity-over-quality strategy for anyone. I mean, using this approach, you are basically forfeiting any advantages that playing Russia in a tundra map would offer and you are actually making the game harder for you as you are playing with a civ that has no bonuses but a lot of tundra. And we are not even talking about strict min-maxing, the Aurora strategy is really not rocket science: you just need to make sure that new cities have a tile with 6 surrounding tundra tiles, and care to remember to place your Holy Site there.

Also, city spamming is not even that useful. Although there are certainly players who would advocate for always expanding, truly good players would argue for efficiency. As you create more and more Settlers, they become progressively more expensive, and you eventually get to the cutoff point when it's not worth spending more resources on new cities. Players doing fast victories would stop at the fewest number of cities that are required for a win and would not waste resources on cities that can't even provide decent adjacency bonuses. Obviously, this is not a speed race, but the idea remains the same: why would you need to spend huge amounts of resources and micromanage 10+ cities if 6 well-placed cities will provide you with more than enough ammo for your victory type?

And now, the factual considerations, one-by-one:

• Barbarians / Military: You don't need more than 2 Warriors (and maybe 1 Slinger, if you really want to be safe) throughout the game. Sea protects you from east and south, CSs protect the western flank, so you will need to be aware of the northern tundra. Don't go too far away with the Warriors and you're golden. You can friend all the AIs without effort, therefore no need for any additional army units at all.
• Faith: Calling Faith a tertiary resource in a RV game sounds strange to me. Okay, you can't use it until Classical, but after that, it's basically the only thing that matters. If you start to accumulate Faith in the Ancient Age, that's even better as you can start to mass buy Settlers / Religious Units as soon as possible.
• Classical Golden Age: While it's obviously not always easy to gather 24 points in the Ancient Era, on this map, you are practically guaranteed to do so if you want it The basics are founding St Peters: 6; Lavra: 4; Founding first religion: 6; meeting two civs: 2. You can easily get the remaining 6 points via Barbarian camps and tribal villages, but if you need a boost, you can just install Amani in any of the three city states for first suzerain points. Yes, you need to keep an eye on the era score, but you really don't have to do anything extraordinary.
• Religion focus: You are stating that buying religious units with faith is a strategy that OP can't handle. Well, in that case, both of our time spent on writing these posts was an enormous waste of time, as this is the only real way to win a RV. Maybe, super maybe you can passively spread your religion on extremely low difficulties, but that's out of the question on Emperor. (Also, you can spread your religion with your military, but that's not a RV in my book.) But actually, focusing on religion provides you with an extremely simple game plan: you basically do not need anything but religion. Get a few basic units, explore the map with a Scout, immediately befriend AIs, and build Holy Sites and its building in all of your cities and use the faith output to purchase Religious units - that's all. Also, it's not like that you are sacrificing your early game on getting the religion: this is Emperor, you will miss nothing if you go Scout-Settler-Lavra-Shrine-(Warrior)-Settler.

I don't think that we can consolidate our opinions, but that's not problem at all, Civ is such a complex game that there are lots of different approaches that be considered right from a certain viewpoint. However, I firmly believe that beating the 6th difficulty level should require a tiny bit of focusing on your victory type and civilization abilities.

 

[Archon_Wing]

However, we are now talking about the 6th hardest difficulty option in Civ, and I really don't believe that we should be advocating the quantity-over-quality strategy for anyone. I mean, using this approach, you are basically forfeiting any advantages that playing Russia in a tundra map would offer and you are actually making the game harder for you as you are playing with a civ that has no bonuses but a lot of tundra.

I think that is pretty false to say that I would forfeit any advantage as Russia, simply without taking Aurora. Russia has many advantages that I used and is not merely just a faith machine. Furthermore, while it's true Russia's Holy Sites are half off and nice, all civs can use Aurora to generate faith. It's not specific to Russia and wouldn't be the best choice for them earlier.

If anything I made a mistake in settling the initial capital because I forgot Russia grabs more tiles at the start.

And we are not even talking about strict min-maxing, the Aurora strategy is really not rocket science: you just need to make sure that new cities have a tile with 6 surrounding tundra tiles, and care to remember to place your Holy Site there.

I never said anything about it being hard to put Holy Sites for Aurora-- I was talking about when and how to use said faith.

Also, city spamming is not even that useful. Although there are certainly players who would advocate for always expanding, truly good players would argue for efficiency. As you create more and more Settlers, they become progressively more expensive, and you eventually get to the cutoff point when it's not worth spending more resources on new cities.

Which is true, but it certainly is nowhere near 10 settlers. And of course if you are not city spamming that kinda defeats the purpose of a lot of monumentality....

Players doing fast victories would stop at the fewest number of cities that are required for a win and would not waste resources on cities that can't even provide decent adjacency bonuses. Obviously, this is not a speed race, but the idea remains the same: why would you need to spend huge amounts of resources and micromanage 10+ cities if 6 well-placed cities will provide you with more than enough ammo for your victory type?

Which is true, but do you think anyone that actually needs help because they build too many cities? The losing games in this very thread have a very low amount of cities. Better too much than too little I say.

I also didn't "city spam" at all. I think it was like maybe 12 cities and most of them were bought because I had too much faith. If I really wanted to brute force, Arabia wouldn't even be here, but I wanted to entertain the idea of building some cities.

Heck, even Deadly_Dog's save above has more cities than me at that point. =p

Barbarians / Military: You don't need more than 2 Warriors (and maybe 1 Slinger, if you really want to be safe) throughout the game. Sea protects you from east and south, CSs protect the western flank, so you will need to be aware of the northern tundra. Don't go too far away with the Warriors and you're golden. You can friend all the AIs without effort, therefore no need for any additional army units at all.

This is fine for more advanced players which know how to spawn bust, ahem min-maxing but newer players have more trouble. Especially as Russia which spawns more.

We're also lucky that this map has no close or aggressive neighbors.

Faith: Calling Faith a tertiary resource in a RV game sounds strange to me. Okay, you can't use it until Classical, but after that, it's basically the only thing that matters. If you start to accumulate Faith in the Ancient Age, that's even better as you can start to mass buy Settlers / Religious Units as soon as possible.

Only for a religious victory. I went for a cultural victory. I thought we were against one sized fits all approach. With a cultural victory, OP doesn't need to manage a lot of units aside from some Rock Bands.

I think faith is just a harder resource to use early on as opposed to gold, production, science, or culture.

My point is usually a learning player needs help in the Ancient Era.

Classical Golden Age: While it's obviously not always easy to gather 24 points in the Ancient Era, on this map, you are practically guaranteed to do so if you want it The basics are founding St Peters: 6; Lavra: 4; Founding first religion: 6; meeting two civs: 2. You can easily get the remaining 6 points via Barbarian camps and tribal villages, but if you need a boost, you can just install Amani in any of the three city states for first suzerain points. Yes, you need to keep an eye on the era score, but you really don't have to do anything extraordinary.

Which is another step of instructions subject to RNG and more things to go wrong.

There's a reason why my advice initially was just to say to work the faith tile asap, get Religious Settlements (or Aurora if failed) and get a quick 2nd city. Because there's no way to tell how the rest of the map turns out. Telling someone to do 2 things total is more foolproof than telling people to do a lot of things.

Religion focus: You are stating that buying religious units with faith is a strategy that OP can't handle.

Again, there's more than one victory condition.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Also, city spamming is not even that useful. Although there are certainly players who would advocate for always expanding, truly good players would argue for efficiency. As you create more and more Settlers, they become progressively more expensive, and you eventually get to the cutoff point when it's not worth spending more resources on new cities. Players doing fast victories would stop at the fewest number of cities that are required for a win and would not waste resources on cities that can't even provide decent adjacency bonuses. Obviously, this is not a speed race, but the idea remains the same: why would you need to spend huge amounts of resources and micromanage 10+ cities if 6 well-placed cities will provide you with more than enough ammo for your victory type?

Very much Agree here. Not only do settlers get more and more expensive but each time you build one you are giving up something else, like a district. So if you spam settlers instead of builiding up campuses and such you can actually fall far behind, getting a campus 10 turns later can be a loss of something like 50 science and 10 great scientist Points, which could mean getting Techs way later. This can quickly put the expander so far behind they never Catch up as the techer will use their Tech advantage to conquer cities which is far more efficient than building settlers.

I think civilization VI trick people to think that more cities = better as cities don't have any cost to own them, but it is easy to forget about the opportunity cost of investing your resources into settlers rather than infrastructure or military.

Even a single city empire can be rather productive, more so than the ai, so how built up your cities are make a massive difference. Having alot of cities but most of them without districts, tile improvements and so on will probably set you back rather than make your empire stronger.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Very much Agree here. Not only do settlers get more and more expensive but each time you build one you are giving up something else, like a district. So if you spam settlers instead of builiding up campuses and such you can actually fall far behind, getting a campus 10 turns later can be a loss of something like 50 science and 10 great scientist Points, which could mean getting Techs way later. This can quickly put the expander so far behind they never Catch up as the techer will use their Tech advantage to conquer cities which is far more efficient than building settlers.

I think civilization VI trick people to think that more cities = better as cities don't have any cost to own them, but it is easy to forget about the opportunity cost of investing your resources into settlers rather than infrastructure or military.

Even a single city empire can be rather productive, more so than the ai, so how built up your cities are make a massive difference. Having alot of cities but most of them without districts, tile improvements and so on will probably set you back rather than make your empire stronger.

That is indeed very true if someone were to interpret mass settling as settling every blank space without regard to where you settle but it is very easy to get value out of most locations with Magnus and Ancestral Hall-- it is very easy to chop in a district and its t1 building because it is so cheap.

No matter how tall your cities are, they cannot hold another campus. You also have to take into account that there are polciies that make settlers build faster (and also the aforementioned ancestral hall) but only 1 card that makes districts build faster. It is also much easier to buy settlers with faith and districts. Granted I tend to aim for cultural victory and that requires more GW space which can only be gotten through more cities or wonders.

On many typical maps and especially the one I played on, there is plenty of space with lots of good land. Heck, I even expanded too slow and lost 2 spots because I was busy building 2 wonders. It doesn't matter in the end, but for less experience players, they could be in some heap of trouble.

You can take a look at some of the games posted in this very thread that have severe underexpansion. You can argue that they're built neither tall and wide but one should come first. We're not talking about 20 vs 40 cities, but sometimes dealing with only 3-4 cities. By grabbing RS, they will have build like half to a third of the cities they will usually build.

And with that in mind, learning that bigger is usually better takes us for less experience players to take advantage of the most efficient tactic in the game-- war-- which lets you acquire cities at a pretty low cost. And besides that, there's a lot of resource concerns, such as strategical resources such as niter, coal, and oil that may just not happen to be in your immediate area.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

The question is not really if expansion is good or bad because we know that answer. The question is should I build settlers or military units to expand with? Military units have similar production boost cards as settlers but don't increase in cost, can raid and also take multiple cities and these cities tend to be developed and often you start with someone nearby to conquer and by conquering them you remove a rival and make your position much better. Resources don't really matter since all ancient units are resourceless and likely the ones you would use in your first war. Archer and spearmen upgrades are also resourceless.

Before Ancestral Hall you wont get free builders to chop with and the settler production card comes later than the production card for military units. The gap between the start and ancestral hall is quite significant and alot can be done in that time.

Also military units provide defence, both against barbarians and other civilizations which is important in many cases. Ignoring military and warfare, which I think is one of the most important areas of the game. An early raid of a single district can get something like 60 resources per pillage which can be several turns Worth of production of that resource.

 

[Archon_Wing]

The question is should I build settlers or military units to expand with?

Well, that's usually a mix of both isn't it?

I mean tbh I'm not even sure what we're discussing here. There are of course practical limits to settler building such as available land, population and of course being able to hold them, or, of course, military conquest.

However, this doesn't seem to have much to do with the basic concept of inexperienced players underexpanding. Nobody is saying that you should make nothing but settlers so that you lose cities because you can't hold them. Obviously if you take everything to its literal extreme (eg expanding 1 turn before victory) it is bad, but I see no point in discussing that.

 

[Deadly Dog]

Well, that's usually a mix of both isn't it?

I mean tbh I'm not even sure what we're discussing here. There are of course practical limits to settler building such as available land, population and of course being able to hold them, or, of course, military conquest.

However, this doesn't seem to have much to do with the basic concept of inexperienced players underexpanding. Nobody is saying that you should make nothing but settlers so that you lose cities because you can't hold them. Obviously if you take everything to its literal extreme (eg expanding 1 turn before victory) it is bad, but I see no point in discussing that.

Think there was a discussion about pantheon choice and how RS is key to expanding. I'd just like to say I pretty much agree with what you say about the importance of early expansion, and am glad you emphasize this doesn't have to be OCS, and how you still take time to build wonders. But I have to say as good as RS is sometimes a faith pantheon will give you more. Honestly, I turned that Russia game(Dance of the Aurora) into a mess (big unfocused empire) trying to see if the AI could win with that start (took Warrior Monks).

Nonetheless my game classical era provided 7 settlers and several builders with faith. Plus missionaries. But take that turn 40 save I posted, take Jesuit Education and Cathedrals, but spend the entire classical faith purchasing settlers and builders as before, and promote Moksha, the ME could be spent setting up a culture and tourism behemoth, with many TS and their buildings faith purchased 4 Tundra lavras and the faith just keeps on coming, followed by hungry writers and artists. I never feel like I have too much faith, but many a game even with RS its just a struggle to get settlers out.

I've also had games where I was able to make a very decent settler factory without even bothering with Magnus(Provision). Once with God of the Sea (Kupe had 5 turtle reefs in capital), and more than a few times with Goddess of the Hunt (at least 4 camps in capital). The fact that these instances are rare doesn't dissuade me from pursuing them. Had enough times where RS got me out of an early pickle to know that it really was the best choice but I find one settler is never enough I want to make 4-5 immediately after that.

Great thing about Russia is all you need is some tundra and a classical GA you have a route to fast settling. The OP's start gives you a quick +6 era score, so it seems to me that is exactly the time to try to make a faith monster. RS may be the low hanging fruit but Dance of the Aurora is the bumper crop. And by no means should this be assumed to be a religious victory strategy. I'm sure it could work with most VC's.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Nonetheless my game classical era provided 7 settlers and several builders with faith. Plus missionaries. But take that turn 40 save I posted, take Jesuit Education and Cathedrals, but spend the entire classical faith purchasing settlers and builders as before, and promote Moksha, the ME could be spent setting up a culture and tourism behemoth, with many TS and their buildings faith purchased 4 Tundra lavras and the faith just keeps on coming, followed by hungry writers and artists. I never feel like I have too much faith, but many a game even with RS its just a struggle to get settlers out.

Well, started a new game so not going to play that one again plus I don't really like that particular strategy. Feel free to post a later save.

 

[Deadly Dog]

Well I didn't actually play it this way and I'd be too embarrassed to post a later save (took the game to about turn 190) because I was really playing like an AI. Not only did I take Warrior Monks (which helped annex Arabia nicely), I acccidentally made Dido happy by failing utterly to make a decent coastal city. I even built Mausoleum in the right spot but in the wrong city, with only 3 sea tiles and no harbor.

Jesuit Education has worked well for me when I have a civ with high faith (earth goddess, eg, or Russia or Mali) but not pursuing a RV. So I consider my religion a huge domestic asset, not trying to spread it across the globe, and pick beliefs accordingly. After the Monumentallity GA but before you can build parks the accumulation of faith can be impressive. I don't really use Moksha the way I suggested but it seemed doable in that particlar game at turn 40, as a long term strategy.

I confess I never play at standard speed (always play Epic) so my benchmarks for evalutaing progress are way off. 3 settlers at turn 40 feels really good to me, as getting a pantheon by turn 40 is hard to do on epic speed.

 

[Horizons]

What; that Russia map is faceroll; it's like custom built for them because

What victory type did you obtain?

 

[Horizons]

The more they build, the more you can kill and gain additional pressure

I fended off Cree's initial 'apostle invasion' then sent half a dozen of my own over to convert his capital. When I saw he had it surrounded with even more apostles and that I would need to spam dozens more of my own I gave up. It just isn't fun to win a RV!

 

[Leucarum]

I fended off Cree's initial 'apostle invasion' then sent half a dozen of my own over to convert his capital. When I saw he had it surrounded with even more apostles and that I would need to spam dozens more of my own I gave up. It just isn't fun to win a RV!

Faith isn't just useful for an RV. Especially if you're Russia. You can use faith in other ways.

Rock bands are so good they can single handedly win you a culture victory and they need faith to buy. Mix in theatre squares, claim cultural city states, take choral music and use this culture to beeline rock bands on the civics tree. Russia is arguably the best civ at this approach thanks to their Lavras also upping their culture game.

Or grab grandmasters chapel/theocracy and turn faith into a domination push midgame.

And if you're lucky enough to grab an early golden age, you can take monumentality and expand like crazy. As people are noting, you can never have too many cities.

 

[MrRadar]

I fended off Cree's initial 'apostle invasion' then sent half a dozen of my own over to convert his capital. When I saw he had it surrounded with even more apostles and that I would need to spam dozens more of my own I gave up. It just isn't fun to win a RV!

Could you upload your save at that point? It would be more practical to take a look and see what's what. Also, this way you may also get more specific advice from community about how to improve your gameplay.

 

[Kouvb593kdnuewnd]

Faith is much like gold in its flexibility and use with addition being required for a number of important stuff like naturalist, rock band and all religious units which make it not only pretty much a requirement for a religious victory but a very important resource for a Culture victory and still useful for any sort of victory, like units for a domination victory.

Holy site buildings comes early and are very cheap and can be buffed by religions so even if they don't produce great people Point they are probably still decent for their production cost.

 

[Archon_Wing]

Not only did I take Warrior Monks (which helped annex Arabia nicely)

I've never used warrior monks; much less took cities with them so that alone should be worth the experience.

I even built Mausoleum in the right spot but in the wrong city, with only 3 sea tiles and no harbor.

Well, the extra charge on engineers is nice.

What victory type did you obtain?

A t195 cultural victory; the saves are back there.

 

[Archon_Wing]

For those of you that want to try out another game, you can check out this start. I recorded this time and will probably uploading soon.

I'll post the t1 save and also t75.

For this game I did one of my favorite meme strats which is early merchants with Cree. Since they get an early trader, it's easy to get a boost to currency fast.

No, this isn't exactly the best strat and most would suggest the opposite of expanding first and then districts (2 cities @ t75 RIP) and first trader got pillaged., but it is fun to see all that merchant spam

Spoiler :

Edit: Uploaded Part 1+ 2
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLIdfwcYam8SgqIChJhHQLU8Pcn8XtqpDq

 

[Horizons]

Hooray! I reinstalled Civ6 and finished my Emperor game as Peter with a religious victory. Turn 365 or so. Trajan had already launched his spaceship

 

[OmegaDestroyer]

I fended off Cree's initial 'apostle invasion' then sent half a dozen of my own over to convert his capital. When I saw he had it surrounded with even more apostles and that I would need to spam dozens more of my own I gave up. It just isn't fun to win a RV!

That's why I usually go for a domination push before trying to convert the smaller civs to secure a religious victory. It's just too tedious trying to out-convert the AI with its absurd faith generation.

 

[newbie2]

I probably already commented something similar but here it goes. The struggle for me, especially coming from civ V, is building wide empires , and build your citiesquickly. I usually wait or the Ancestrall hall - colonization-magnus on provision combo to really start spamming the settlers (by that point I already have 2-3 build before), but from what I'm watching a lot of players just ignore the AC and prioritize chopping out their settlers?

I also tend to aim for a golden/heroic medievall age to buy them, but I guess this is too late as well?