dthompson32
Warlord
I took a year off from Civ 6 and am getting back into it, learning things that have changed. I got fascinated by the idea of peaceful domination using Eleanor and started up a game to give it a try.
I will upfront admit that I will save checkpoints at major spots, and will go back and replay if things go horrendously wrong. I am trying to learn new techniques, which I learn better from seeing what can go wrong.
Woah boy, did things go wrong in this game.
Playing Emperor level on a large continents map with high water level. After a few restarts, I got a start position I felt I could work with with a mountain range nearby.
The mistakes started early in the game, though they didn't seem like it at the time. I chopped out Stonehenge, had the first religion for choral culture bonus (since the AI always takes it, you have to be first). Then I kept playing carefully to stay in golden ages and have Monumentality. This is where things started to slip. My last GA I couldn't use the perk to buy settlers at all, because I was using all my faith just to get enough apostles to get era points and avoid a dark age.
When I finally moved to the next age it was time to see about trying to flip some cities. The problem was Korea was just north of me and who I needed to flip, but she had a huge tech lead on me. I had crossbows while she had her UU field cannons. She was also moving to take over Jerusalem, my only allied CS and a big source of faith for me. I tried to protect the CS using units to block, but in the end I couldn't do it.
While this was going on, I had forward settled two cities on some really terrible land north of a desert. The only value was they were close enough to Korea to let me get Great Works affecting her. I purchased a GA with faith, got theater districts up and started using spies.
What worked for me to flip a city was to send a spy in to establish contacts, then neutralize the governor and foment unrest. For a long time, I didn't even know if it would work. Her cities seemed to shrug it all off. But then a couple unexpected cities flipped to me and things started to steamroll. Finally all of Korea cities were mine, even the last one that I had left for her.
From here I started working NE to flip Indonesia, who turned out to be a tough nut to crack. The city position was such that it was hard to get enough pressure on loyalty. I probably took 150 turns to get the capital while I worked on the rest of the world. I also started flipping Canada's cities, even though they were my trading ally. I flipped one city while it was building the moon landing.
So my continent was well under control, but the other continent was a problem. How to get a toe hold over there? I needed to have 2 or 3 solid cities with theater districts and preferable with entertainment too to run bread and circuses.
I had build a large fleet with 4 carriers. 6 bombers and 2 fighters. Aluminum was a huge problem, I had one mine, one of the reasons I needed to get Canada was for his aluminum resources. I ended up taking advantage of Grand Columbia taking a CS, and got an emergency going. Then I swooped in and took 5 of his cities.
The good was I now had 5 cities just south of the tech leader, Inca. The bad was I was fighting to keep them with low loyalty and they didn't have my religion. I also couldn't move all the governors I wanted, especially Reyna because I still needed to buy Theater districts in my quest to get Indonesia. This turned into a 3 front "war" and I just didn't have enough governors. Another huge mistake was I didn't have Moska fully promoted, so I couldn't faith buy districts. I had tons of faith, toward the end I was generating 500 fpt with over 10K banked. I was buying great people left and right. But I couldn't get the districts up fast enough.
Finally around turn 335 I made my fatal mistake. I saw that Inca was building the Exoplanet and I had a spy in the capital that was building it. I didn't disrupt rocketry, instead I went for unrest. Bad bad move and he got the exoplanet into space. I figured I would try to stop him from getting the boosts and I would have 50 turns to flip him, after all I was only 2 cities away from his capital.
Meanwhile the turns and techs went by. I ended up with every tech and every culture. I even got 2 more governor promotions from future culture.
At the end of the game I got desperate. I used another emergency as pretext to send fully promoted robots into Netherlands to get her capital. I just outright declared on Saladin to took his capital with bombers and robots. I had even cash bought more robots and I was going to use them to take Inca capital, even though he was fielding fully promoted robots too.
And that is where I realized by final, fatal mistake. I was now allied with the Inca. I couldn't get into a war with him.
At the end I had every capital but 1. I had 58 cities, having taken over 52 of them. I had two Inca cities flipped, and his capital was 8 turns from rebellion.
But it didn't matter, he had managed to build enough boosters to get the exoplanet moving 5 light years per turn, and I ran out of time.
I spent 5 days playing this one game, it was pretty intense.
I will upfront admit that I will save checkpoints at major spots, and will go back and replay if things go horrendously wrong. I am trying to learn new techniques, which I learn better from seeing what can go wrong.
Woah boy, did things go wrong in this game.
Playing Emperor level on a large continents map with high water level. After a few restarts, I got a start position I felt I could work with with a mountain range nearby.
The mistakes started early in the game, though they didn't seem like it at the time. I chopped out Stonehenge, had the first religion for choral culture bonus (since the AI always takes it, you have to be first). Then I kept playing carefully to stay in golden ages and have Monumentality. This is where things started to slip. My last GA I couldn't use the perk to buy settlers at all, because I was using all my faith just to get enough apostles to get era points and avoid a dark age.
When I finally moved to the next age it was time to see about trying to flip some cities. The problem was Korea was just north of me and who I needed to flip, but she had a huge tech lead on me. I had crossbows while she had her UU field cannons. She was also moving to take over Jerusalem, my only allied CS and a big source of faith for me. I tried to protect the CS using units to block, but in the end I couldn't do it.
While this was going on, I had forward settled two cities on some really terrible land north of a desert. The only value was they were close enough to Korea to let me get Great Works affecting her. I purchased a GA with faith, got theater districts up and started using spies.
What worked for me to flip a city was to send a spy in to establish contacts, then neutralize the governor and foment unrest. For a long time, I didn't even know if it would work. Her cities seemed to shrug it all off. But then a couple unexpected cities flipped to me and things started to steamroll. Finally all of Korea cities were mine, even the last one that I had left for her.
From here I started working NE to flip Indonesia, who turned out to be a tough nut to crack. The city position was such that it was hard to get enough pressure on loyalty. I probably took 150 turns to get the capital while I worked on the rest of the world. I also started flipping Canada's cities, even though they were my trading ally. I flipped one city while it was building the moon landing.
So my continent was well under control, but the other continent was a problem. How to get a toe hold over there? I needed to have 2 or 3 solid cities with theater districts and preferable with entertainment too to run bread and circuses.
I had build a large fleet with 4 carriers. 6 bombers and 2 fighters. Aluminum was a huge problem, I had one mine, one of the reasons I needed to get Canada was for his aluminum resources. I ended up taking advantage of Grand Columbia taking a CS, and got an emergency going. Then I swooped in and took 5 of his cities.
The good was I now had 5 cities just south of the tech leader, Inca. The bad was I was fighting to keep them with low loyalty and they didn't have my religion. I also couldn't move all the governors I wanted, especially Reyna because I still needed to buy Theater districts in my quest to get Indonesia. This turned into a 3 front "war" and I just didn't have enough governors. Another huge mistake was I didn't have Moska fully promoted, so I couldn't faith buy districts. I had tons of faith, toward the end I was generating 500 fpt with over 10K banked. I was buying great people left and right. But I couldn't get the districts up fast enough.
Finally around turn 335 I made my fatal mistake. I saw that Inca was building the Exoplanet and I had a spy in the capital that was building it. I didn't disrupt rocketry, instead I went for unrest. Bad bad move and he got the exoplanet into space. I figured I would try to stop him from getting the boosts and I would have 50 turns to flip him, after all I was only 2 cities away from his capital.
Meanwhile the turns and techs went by. I ended up with every tech and every culture. I even got 2 more governor promotions from future culture.
At the end of the game I got desperate. I used another emergency as pretext to send fully promoted robots into Netherlands to get her capital. I just outright declared on Saladin to took his capital with bombers and robots. I had even cash bought more robots and I was going to use them to take Inca capital, even though he was fielding fully promoted robots too.
And that is where I realized by final, fatal mistake. I was now allied with the Inca. I couldn't get into a war with him.
At the end I had every capital but 1. I had 58 cities, having taken over 52 of them. I had two Inca cities flipped, and his capital was 8 turns from rebellion.
But it didn't matter, he had managed to build enough boosters to get the exoplanet moving 5 light years per turn, and I ran out of time.
I spent 5 days playing this one game, it was pretty intense.
