[GS] Keeping loyalty in an ancient rush?

[Freaky]

I'm new to Civ6, but could beat Deity more ofthen than not on 4, 5, and 5+Vox Populi. I beat a Prince game with Pericles to learn the mechanics. I looked at the leader list, and Gilgamesh looked broken, so I tried him out on Emperor and ROFLstomped my 2 nearest neighbors on my first try, so I figured I'd try it on Deity. I made a spreadsheet to try different permutations on build order and strategy in a very flexible starting location. Playing on Epic speed. Growing to 3 and then pumping war carts led to the defenders getting walls up in 2700BCE. Going immediately for 3 chariots allowed me to stomp my neighbor, but cities would flip after 3-5 turns of ownership, and letting them all turn Free, and then re-conquering didn't help. Next, I tried settling a city nearby first, and was able to take and keep 1 city, but the delay meant walls were up after 1 conquered city. I tried conquering the capital and closest city on the same turn - 3-5 turn flip still. I used a ziggurat+inspirations combo to get Victor and put him in a city while conquering 2 cities simultaneously. Even with Victor in there, the loyalty when from -28 per turn to -20 per turn, and the city always flipped. I love starting with an ancient war, but it seems unusable with such insanely massive loyalty drops. Is there no way to just ram your troops into an enemy and steal their land in Civ6 Deity without having to guild a huge infrastructure first?

 

[Chefofrats]

-20 loyalty per turn with Victor, and after conquering the original capital and another city sounds like the capital must have moved to another large, nearby city.

Did you keep a unit garrisoned in the conquered cities? Did you buy a monument? Did you chop some food resource to instantly increase the population? Did you establish an internal traderoute with high food yields to grow population quickly? Those things make a difference.

Also, if your target founded a religion (did they?) it will be hard for you to keep their cities loyal without converting them to your religion, which I guess you do not have, having invested everything into your army.

I think we are missing some details from your story, too. If you "stomped your neighbor" (which I interpret as wiping the civ out completely), and their cities still flipped, then they must be under loyalty pressure from yet another nearby civ with huge cities - in which case your conquest must continue.

 

[Noble Zarkon]

Gilgamesh looked broken, so I tried him out on Emperor and ROFLstomped my 2 nearest neighbors on my first try, so I figured I'd try it on Deity

Gilgamesh is awesome on lower levels but sucks mightily on Deity where the AIs start with 3 Settlers and get walls up very quickly. He is easily S tier on King and below but most streamers have him as a D or even an F on Deity.

 

[Freaky]

-20 loyalty per turn with Victor, and after conquering the original capital and another city sounds like the capital must have moved to another large, nearby city.

Did you keep a unit garrisoned in the conquered cities? Did you buy a monument? Did you chop some food resource to instantly increase the population? Did you establish an internal traderoute with high food yields to grow population quickly? Those things make a difference.

Also, if your target founded a religion (did they?) it will be hard for you to keep their cities loyal without converting them to your religion, which I guess you do not have, having invested everything into your army.

I think we are missing some details from your story, too. If you "stomped your neighbor" (which I interpret as wiping the civ out completely), and their cities still flipped, then they must be under loyalty pressure from yet another nearby civ with huge cities - in which case your conquest must continue.

I figured out how to see the breakdown (like I said, very new to Civ VI). Going down by 16 per turn after Vic and a garrison. Looks like having more amenities would save me 3, and having waited for them to attack first by exploring to meet them earlier and going slinger->builder would have saved me 6 (I just checked a different save on a defensive conquest, and was losing 0 from this). At first I didn't think there were any food resources to harvest, but there are cattle nearby, which seems ideal since you only need Animal Husbandry to harvest them. That would still leave -4 per turn or so, probably enough to buy me some time to take over her other cities and domino. But even then, that would not save this scenario, since it was a surprise war.

Other conclusions I've learned since then:
- T70 is way too late to be starting a WC rush on Epic (most have walls by 2700)
- Barbs will take out on on T20 if you have no slinger. AI will DoW by T30 if you don't have more than a slinger. This can be used to your advantage to "start" a defensive war with a powerful unit 1 turn from comp[letion in store.
- If you're having insurmountable loyalty problems while conquering, rest up for the 4 turns you have loyalty, and move on. After you take out other cities, there will be no pressure from the "Free" cities, allowing you to re-conquer them.
- 2 archers have good enough siege capacity to allow you to take a walled capitol city with your WC, as long as you have 5+ to rotate as they get bombarded (I took out Cyrus with this after reload, with only 3 land tiles around the city)
- Ziggurats rock for spamming in your newly conquered cities. They'll all start with 1 pop, but as you're just starting the classical era, you can work 2 zigs and have +4 science each in the 5 newly conquered cities you have, putting your pace ahead of the AI in order to catch up in the medieval era
- Magnus + harvesting non-triable food resources and rainforest is insaaaaaaane to kickstart a 1-pop city. Seriously 30 turns ahead.