Vidfamne
Banned
The August patch has arrived (v1.3.3 I believe), so it's time to win Deity/Small/Continents/Standard, no DLC. I forgot to turn off tribal villages, but it turned out not to matter.
Played 70 turns so far, spoiler contains the report.
Played 70 turns so far, spoiler contains the report.
Picked Catherine because she's bad at this game but I wish she wasn't, and maybe the advantage in information would turn out interesting to play, certainly more so than rainforest guy or "+4 strength vs different religion". Besides, with her Medieval-or-later wonder production bonus, she might be able to compete for Ruhr (will I ever build it anyhow) or Venetian Arsenal, which are the best wonders in the game, as far as I can tell.
The clear choice, I think, is to move SW: this gets the 3-food tile (marsh) into the initial borders, allows for a stone harvest later and might even free up space for a city on the eastern coast. I moved the warrior first and found nothing that would have changed my decision. As in Civ4, settling on a (riverside) plains hill for a strong city centre yield is usually the play.
I want a builder first this time, as both diamonds and horses are such strong tiles when improved, and horses at the capital favour a "settler rush" to find a second source: horsemen are the best Classical unit, IMHO.
What's faster to work, the 3/0/0 marsh or the 2/2/0 horse? It turns out to be intuitive enough:
Marsh: 5t growth (5f, 4.2 cpt) -> 4t (4f, 8.4 cpt)
Horse: 7t growth (4f, 6.3 cpt) -> 1t (with any second tile)
Mining first, since I want to mine both the diamonds and the ordinary plains hill. Animal Husbandry just has one target plot.
On T2, walking the warrior NW immediately reveals Hattusa (quest: recruit a Great General), see map below. The free envoy almost doubles my science at this point (2.8 from capital, 2 from envoy bonus), which makes early bee-lines attractive.
I meet Gandhi on T3, and he settles towards me, blocking any sensible site upstream from the capital. That means war, even if it's cold at this stage. With Hattusa on hand, researching Archery without the eureka seems viable.
Here's the situation on T23. I have just founded my second city close to an innately cultured rainforest. It doesn't bring much food to the table, but with the purchased 1/3/0 tile, it can grab a fast builder freeing up the capital's production. Afterwards, it will make a decent helper city in between the capital and the second horse site to the east (which is rather marginal), even pass the diamonds to it. Two chops on hand for horsemen, too. I thought of harvesting the wheat, but I decided it wouldn't pay off -- this city can get to size4 fast enough with wheat and stagnate on ~10 cogs per turn.
With the current schedule, the micro is pleasant: the worker will farm the wheat just in time to speed up size2.
On T24, I meet Hojo. I don't get vision on any of his cities. He has some cool luxuries (oranges, sugar), another reason to mine the diamonds at Ambracie.
I probably won't settle a fourth city. The warrior has just vanquished a spearman defending a barbarian camp, though, so perhaps boosted Bronze Working can activate a rainforest chop city in the north. Will have to see what Gandhi does. He grabs a pantheon that isn't God of the Forge, which makes that tobacco look interesting. Hojo soon gets working on his early Holy Site according to rumours, though, and Stonehenge is BIDAL (built in a distant land) T31, so I might have competition, and working the tobacco would itself carry an opportunity cost in settler/builder cogs.
Civic research moves onto boosted Military Science, of course, since we need the policy that grants 50% Classical cavalry production as soon as possible. I'm using Agoge while I can to produce cheap archers, though; they'll serve well to bolster the horsemen.
A scout had spotted Antioche earlier, but I'm not concerned about my cities falling here (there was another, healthy warrior following behind, but still no matter), and barbarian pillaging isn't such a threat in Civ6. Builds still finish and builders can easily repair improvements. I'll likely need a builder at the capital before the horses can reach critical mass, anyhow.
The builder at Ambracie has just finished the wheat farm, and will move on to improve horses, then either improve fish or Ilkum-chop a builder, at city #3.
The capital's pasture did end up getting pillaged, but this hardly delayed the plan. There were some food micro pure-profit opportunities because I want all my cities to stagnate on size3 building horsemen anyway; Alexandrette (city #3) went builder first to improve tobacco and chop a horseman:
Plan is to hit Gandhi (whose military score I already surpass by 50% on this turn) in 5t. I denounced India right after taking this picture. Gandhi had gone to friendly because I had "managed" to fulfill his hidden agenda (Paranoid, which is effectively free on Deity). Hopefully he won't have put up walls yet, but I can grab a battering ram if I need it, thus the Masonry research. He has a spear wandering around somewhere south of Antioche, and that barbarian swordsman might force me to divert an archer.
The biggest question is whether I should hit Mumbai at all instead of running straight for the core, but Mumbai contains a heavy chariot and could likely add another, forcing me to keep two horsemen around the capital. I only need three horses to take Mumbai.
OTOH, if I get a steady supply of horsemen going, nothing says that the two horses must be the same units every turn, so I might not actually be forced to keep any reserve if production is high enough.
Imagine if I'd picked the utterly broken Scythians here. Or at least Teddy Roosevelt: +5 strength to all units is much better than +10 strength on one unit that you won't see before T150.
Civic research is set to State Workforce, since it unlocks Conscription. I'm not sure that I can grab a district from Gandhi in time, but I can always set it to Early Empire later. I don't particularly need any civic or policy right now, save for Conscription.
Both Hojo and Gandhi proposed to trade luxuries/gold/Open Borders for my "spare" horses. But something told me not to do that.
It seems that the swordsman has brought friends. This is part of why the Sumerian war-cart excels; it has no prerequisites and can reasonably kill barbarian scouts spotting your cities. Of course, the greater part is that Sumeria can rush anyone in the Ancient Age.
I avoid engaging with the horsemen, as I don't want them injured or displaced right now. This also solves the question of where to attack Gandhi: probably can't hurt the core without archers or a battering ram now (which will be enqueued at Antioche, not least because rams move slowly, but also because it has good production even in Conscription).
I reconfigured Antioche to grow to size4 a bit faster, in exchange for a 1t delay on the next horseman. Gandhi still lacks power, and I'm confident that three horses + one archer will easily capture Mumbai.
Indeed, they did. Gandhi has smartly evacuated the heavy chariot defending the city, and only one of the horses gets to promo-heal at this point, but we'll need a breather anyway to wait for the battering ram and additional horses. I expect the core to offer decent resistance, varu are on the table.
I've seen a single swordsman retreat to Madurai, if nothing else. Pillaging the iron will not be sensibly possible, given its location, but swords don't fare well against horsemen anyway.
The premier Zelda fan does not want to share his oranges, so I take this deal instead. It pays for two more horsemen. He researches at 40 bpt, but I think I can catch up by absorbing India.
Further bad news: somebody else already has an encampment and will probably get the first Great General. A leader such as Hojo (cheap encampments) or Gorgo (wildcard policy slot) could likely have competed. I'm tempted to design a balance mod for my personal enjoyment after this game, because no choice deserves to be effectively blank. There is a range of genuinely enjoyable, but not overpowered abilities in the top rung; it's just that everything below isn't "niche", but unviable. Gandhi isn't accomplishing much by his special traits, either, beyond building stepwells that mysteriously vanish when I take his cities.
The swordsman and chariot presumably had comprised his entire army. The battering ram proves useless, because Gandhi hasn't even thrown up walls yet. Catherine, in turn, throws up her hands and opens another bottle of Chardonnay as she watches the "Deity" AI fail to defend its clustered size7 cities.
Domestically, the watermill should eventually pay off in this game (surely I won't have won by T145, and it's also an advance investment into later production-boosting policy cards). All my cities are rather hopeless for districts except for harbours, which are great for trade capacity, but trade routes get stronger with districts.
The Apprenticeship +1 cog upgrade to mines is clearly the best technology to grab here. Indeed, fast Apprenticeship is usually worth it, because production is always the bottleneck in Civ6.
Gandhi does, in fact, have some decent units around his capital. Why these didn't participate in the defense of the obvious target Madurai is anyone's guess.
Don't underestimate varu, they are deadly to horsemen, particularly in such close quarters (the -5 malus stacks). The watermill ought to be judged a mistake, another archer or horseman would have been much more useful at this point. On the other hand, I've already managed to dislodge an Indian spearman and my cavalry can easily pivot around to Calcutta while the varu are blocking Delhi. Time is on my side here, I think, not Gandhi's.
Hojo, of course, seizes the opportunity to sneak in a settler. I might just declare a surprise war on him right afterwards -- his power is considerable (255 to my 295), but as can be seen from Gandhi's failure to defend Madurai with these varu, or the earlier barbarian invasion, the computer is so terrible at tactical play that I expect to win at parity.
The most pressing concern is that I still lack the Political Philosophy eureka (meeting 3 city-states). If Gandhi blunders his varu easily, I might be able to dispatch a horseman to that task, but varu get great odds vs horsemen and archers in the field, so this isn't looking likely.
Gandhi's first varu tears through a horseman and archer, but I can whittle it down with my copious units, and they provide great XP returns to boot. I don't expect a lone varu to cause much damage at this point. Calcutta is doomed; I know that Gandhi has another city yet unseen (Chennai) and expect it to be west of Delhi. Calcutta has terrible tiles, so I'll raze it.
Note the barbarian xbow approaching Antioche from the south, and the warrior about to pillage the horses (again). I had moved the guarding archer towards Madurai.
Delhi has fallen without resistance from any units, although overcoming the city itself has cost me another (badly-injured) horseman. Gandhi still has an archer and I believe that's it, but these barbarians are giving him a lifeline by keeping a sizable part of my remaining troops pinned down, and every turn that Gandhi lives is one where all my captured cities are doing nothing. There is the piñata option, but I don't have much immediate use for gold and I could only extort about 750 in total (150 upfront, 20 per turn for 30t). I'd also rather not attack into varu again.
The double punishment for a lack of scouting: constant barbarian incursions and slow progress towards the most important early civic (largely due to Classical Republic). Of course, I didn't find much opportunity to scout / fogbust with a turn-3 Deity AI contact boxing off my north and west early and a settler/builder-heavy start, but I'm sure I could have done better -- unit placement wasn't ideal, and some unneeded forces at Mumbai / Madurai could have been sent into the southern waste instead. That said, getting T5 scout-spotted from the deepest tundra snowballs more than anything else one does about barbarians.
I'm not worried yet by Hojo being the requisite seven-techs-ahead AI, because for all I care he's only showing swordsmen and building junk wonders like the Mahabodhi, and I remember how Teddy Roosevelt's Immortal AI didn't manage to finish two of three spaceports in 700 years, and thought to cover its entire core with one mech infantry army. Rumour also has it that Hojo has another neighbor, Qin Shi Huang, who might be keeping him in check. He has five cities in any event.
The builder at Ambracie is meant to chop Mumbai into productivity. I wish Mumbai was placed sensibly on the river (same goes for Madurai) and wonder if I should have razed and resettled. The riverlessness of this map is amusing: a 4-food tile (oranges) close to my capital, and yet that site would be junk in practice, at least before the farm adjacency upgrades.
More to come later. Certainly not considering this game won yet. Scythia probably would have, though, I doubt Hojo and Qin could defend against it.
The clear choice, I think, is to move SW: this gets the 3-food tile (marsh) into the initial borders, allows for a stone harvest later and might even free up space for a city on the eastern coast. I moved the warrior first and found nothing that would have changed my decision. As in Civ4, settling on a (riverside) plains hill for a strong city centre yield is usually the play.
I want a builder first this time, as both diamonds and horses are such strong tiles when improved, and horses at the capital favour a "settler rush" to find a second source: horsemen are the best Classical unit, IMHO.
What's faster to work, the 3/0/0 marsh or the 2/2/0 horse? It turns out to be intuitive enough:
Marsh: 5t growth (5f, 4.2 cpt) -> 4t (4f, 8.4 cpt)
Horse: 7t growth (4f, 6.3 cpt) -> 1t (with any second tile)
Mining first, since I want to mine both the diamonds and the ordinary plains hill. Animal Husbandry just has one target plot.
On T2, walking the warrior NW immediately reveals Hattusa (quest: recruit a Great General), see map below. The free envoy almost doubles my science at this point (2.8 from capital, 2 from envoy bonus), which makes early bee-lines attractive.
I meet Gandhi on T3, and he settles towards me, blocking any sensible site upstream from the capital. That means war, even if it's cold at this stage. With Hattusa on hand, researching Archery without the eureka seems viable.
Here's the situation on T23. I have just founded my second city close to an innately cultured rainforest. It doesn't bring much food to the table, but with the purchased 1/3/0 tile, it can grab a fast builder freeing up the capital's production. Afterwards, it will make a decent helper city in between the capital and the second horse site to the east (which is rather marginal), even pass the diamonds to it. Two chops on hand for horsemen, too. I thought of harvesting the wheat, but I decided it wouldn't pay off -- this city can get to size4 fast enough with wheat and stagnate on ~10 cogs per turn.
With the current schedule, the micro is pleasant: the worker will farm the wheat just in time to speed up size2.
On T24, I meet Hojo. I don't get vision on any of his cities. He has some cool luxuries (oranges, sugar), another reason to mine the diamonds at Ambracie.
I probably won't settle a fourth city. The warrior has just vanquished a spearman defending a barbarian camp, though, so perhaps boosted Bronze Working can activate a rainforest chop city in the north. Will have to see what Gandhi does. He grabs a pantheon that isn't God of the Forge, which makes that tobacco look interesting. Hojo soon gets working on his early Holy Site according to rumours, though, and Stonehenge is BIDAL (built in a distant land) T31, so I might have competition, and working the tobacco would itself carry an opportunity cost in settler/builder cogs.
Civic research moves onto boosted Military Science, of course, since we need the policy that grants 50% Classical cavalry production as soon as possible. I'm using Agoge while I can to produce cheap archers, though; they'll serve well to bolster the horsemen.
A scout had spotted Antioche earlier, but I'm not concerned about my cities falling here (there was another, healthy warrior following behind, but still no matter), and barbarian pillaging isn't such a threat in Civ6. Builds still finish and builders can easily repair improvements. I'll likely need a builder at the capital before the horses can reach critical mass, anyhow.
The builder at Ambracie has just finished the wheat farm, and will move on to improve horses, then either improve fish or Ilkum-chop a builder, at city #3.
The capital's pasture did end up getting pillaged, but this hardly delayed the plan. There were some food micro pure-profit opportunities because I want all my cities to stagnate on size3 building horsemen anyway; Alexandrette (city #3) went builder first to improve tobacco and chop a horseman:
Plan is to hit Gandhi (whose military score I already surpass by 50% on this turn) in 5t. I denounced India right after taking this picture. Gandhi had gone to friendly because I had "managed" to fulfill his hidden agenda (Paranoid, which is effectively free on Deity). Hopefully he won't have put up walls yet, but I can grab a battering ram if I need it, thus the Masonry research. He has a spear wandering around somewhere south of Antioche, and that barbarian swordsman might force me to divert an archer.
The biggest question is whether I should hit Mumbai at all instead of running straight for the core, but Mumbai contains a heavy chariot and could likely add another, forcing me to keep two horsemen around the capital. I only need three horses to take Mumbai.
OTOH, if I get a steady supply of horsemen going, nothing says that the two horses must be the same units every turn, so I might not actually be forced to keep any reserve if production is high enough.
Imagine if I'd picked the utterly broken Scythians here. Or at least Teddy Roosevelt: +5 strength to all units is much better than +10 strength on one unit that you won't see before T150.
Civic research is set to State Workforce, since it unlocks Conscription. I'm not sure that I can grab a district from Gandhi in time, but I can always set it to Early Empire later. I don't particularly need any civic or policy right now, save for Conscription.
Both Hojo and Gandhi proposed to trade luxuries/gold/Open Borders for my "spare" horses. But something told me not to do that.
It seems that the swordsman has brought friends. This is part of why the Sumerian war-cart excels; it has no prerequisites and can reasonably kill barbarian scouts spotting your cities. Of course, the greater part is that Sumeria can rush anyone in the Ancient Age.
I avoid engaging with the horsemen, as I don't want them injured or displaced right now. This also solves the question of where to attack Gandhi: probably can't hurt the core without archers or a battering ram now (which will be enqueued at Antioche, not least because rams move slowly, but also because it has good production even in Conscription).
I reconfigured Antioche to grow to size4 a bit faster, in exchange for a 1t delay on the next horseman. Gandhi still lacks power, and I'm confident that three horses + one archer will easily capture Mumbai.
Indeed, they did. Gandhi has smartly evacuated the heavy chariot defending the city, and only one of the horses gets to promo-heal at this point, but we'll need a breather anyway to wait for the battering ram and additional horses. I expect the core to offer decent resistance, varu are on the table.
I've seen a single swordsman retreat to Madurai, if nothing else. Pillaging the iron will not be sensibly possible, given its location, but swords don't fare well against horsemen anyway.
The premier Zelda fan does not want to share his oranges, so I take this deal instead. It pays for two more horsemen. He researches at 40 bpt, but I think I can catch up by absorbing India.
Further bad news: somebody else already has an encampment and will probably get the first Great General. A leader such as Hojo (cheap encampments) or Gorgo (wildcard policy slot) could likely have competed. I'm tempted to design a balance mod for my personal enjoyment after this game, because no choice deserves to be effectively blank. There is a range of genuinely enjoyable, but not overpowered abilities in the top rung; it's just that everything below isn't "niche", but unviable. Gandhi isn't accomplishing much by his special traits, either, beyond building stepwells that mysteriously vanish when I take his cities.
The swordsman and chariot presumably had comprised his entire army. The battering ram proves useless, because Gandhi hasn't even thrown up walls yet. Catherine, in turn, throws up her hands and opens another bottle of Chardonnay as she watches the "Deity" AI fail to defend its clustered size7 cities.
Domestically, the watermill should eventually pay off in this game (surely I won't have won by T145, and it's also an advance investment into later production-boosting policy cards). All my cities are rather hopeless for districts except for harbours, which are great for trade capacity, but trade routes get stronger with districts.
The Apprenticeship +1 cog upgrade to mines is clearly the best technology to grab here. Indeed, fast Apprenticeship is usually worth it, because production is always the bottleneck in Civ6.
Gandhi does, in fact, have some decent units around his capital. Why these didn't participate in the defense of the obvious target Madurai is anyone's guess.
Don't underestimate varu, they are deadly to horsemen, particularly in such close quarters (the -5 malus stacks). The watermill ought to be judged a mistake, another archer or horseman would have been much more useful at this point. On the other hand, I've already managed to dislodge an Indian spearman and my cavalry can easily pivot around to Calcutta while the varu are blocking Delhi. Time is on my side here, I think, not Gandhi's.
Hojo, of course, seizes the opportunity to sneak in a settler. I might just declare a surprise war on him right afterwards -- his power is considerable (255 to my 295), but as can be seen from Gandhi's failure to defend Madurai with these varu, or the earlier barbarian invasion, the computer is so terrible at tactical play that I expect to win at parity.
The most pressing concern is that I still lack the Political Philosophy eureka (meeting 3 city-states). If Gandhi blunders his varu easily, I might be able to dispatch a horseman to that task, but varu get great odds vs horsemen and archers in the field, so this isn't looking likely.
Gandhi's first varu tears through a horseman and archer, but I can whittle it down with my copious units, and they provide great XP returns to boot. I don't expect a lone varu to cause much damage at this point. Calcutta is doomed; I know that Gandhi has another city yet unseen (Chennai) and expect it to be west of Delhi. Calcutta has terrible tiles, so I'll raze it.
Note the barbarian xbow approaching Antioche from the south, and the warrior about to pillage the horses (again). I had moved the guarding archer towards Madurai.
Delhi has fallen without resistance from any units, although overcoming the city itself has cost me another (badly-injured) horseman. Gandhi still has an archer and I believe that's it, but these barbarians are giving him a lifeline by keeping a sizable part of my remaining troops pinned down, and every turn that Gandhi lives is one where all my captured cities are doing nothing. There is the piñata option, but I don't have much immediate use for gold and I could only extort about 750 in total (150 upfront, 20 per turn for 30t). I'd also rather not attack into varu again.
The double punishment for a lack of scouting: constant barbarian incursions and slow progress towards the most important early civic (largely due to Classical Republic). Of course, I didn't find much opportunity to scout / fogbust with a turn-3 Deity AI contact boxing off my north and west early and a settler/builder-heavy start, but I'm sure I could have done better -- unit placement wasn't ideal, and some unneeded forces at Mumbai / Madurai could have been sent into the southern waste instead. That said, getting T5 scout-spotted from the deepest tundra snowballs more than anything else one does about barbarians.
I'm not worried yet by Hojo being the requisite seven-techs-ahead AI, because for all I care he's only showing swordsmen and building junk wonders like the Mahabodhi, and I remember how Teddy Roosevelt's Immortal AI didn't manage to finish two of three spaceports in 700 years, and thought to cover its entire core with one mech infantry army. Rumour also has it that Hojo has another neighbor, Qin Shi Huang, who might be keeping him in check. He has five cities in any event.
The builder at Ambracie is meant to chop Mumbai into productivity. I wish Mumbai was placed sensibly on the river (same goes for Madurai) and wonder if I should have razed and resettled. The riverlessness of this map is amusing: a 4-food tile (oranges) close to my capital, and yet that site would be junk in practice, at least before the farm adjacency upgrades.
More to come later. Certainly not considering this game won yet. Scythia probably would have, though, I doubt Hojo and Qin could defend against it.
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and I'm confident about his inability to conquer America.
