Goodjers Rise & Fall 2018-02 (please tag spoilers)

Godzilla Blitz suggested in the Civ VI topic that we try something we'd attempted before, but not with this version of Civ. We're all going to start with the same save and see where it takes us. All are welcome to join! There is no time limit. We're just going to see how this goes.

I disabled all add-ons except the Rise & Fall expansion. I chose Prince difficulty, Small Continents map, Standard speed, and the standard number of civs and city states, all random with no duplicates. All the settings are default. You can see the settings screen here.

I believe you can turn on some add-ons after starting a game, but please don't enable anything that might affect game mechanics. Personally, I plan on turning on this one (Alternative Fog of War). I much prefer the look of this fog of war to the color-mangling parchment fog of war (Is that desert or grassland or plains under there? Who knows!).

You can download the turn 1 save here. Put it in your [Documents]\My Games\Sid Meier's Civilization VI\Saves\Single directory for easy loading. No idea where that is on a Mac.

The game gave us Chandragupta (Indian). He is a middle-of-the-road leader, no victory-specific strengths, but his special ability that gives bonuses for each religion in a city means a religious victory might be a challenge. The early War of Territorial Expansion ability might be good for going wide, but probably won't help much with a domination victory.

IMAGE(https://s26.postimg.org/4q8aisijt/indian_empire.jpg)

I have not played ahead to look at at the area surrounding the starting position to see if it is good or bad, but the "settle in place" spot looks pretty good:

IMAGE(https://i.imgur.com/eAdIOmQl.jpg)

(click to mapbiggen)

Good luck!

Please post progress in this thread, but spoiler tag anything that might give away map layout or enemy locations.

Nice, a civ I havent played. Guess I'll give it a try then.
And the 'achievement' is to launch a nuke! Poor Gandhi got competition.

Thanks for setting this up. I hope to be able to start tomorrow evening!

I'm in... once I finish my Cree run; hopefully in the next few days. Thanks for setting this up!

I'm about 50 turns in and doing terrible. Had some barbarian related troubles that set me back a bit.

Tagging as interested.

Are you going to make me buy this just so I can get in on this. I loved when we did it earlier.

Zaque wrote:

Are you going to make me buy this just so I can get in on this. I loved when we did it earlier.

No kidding, I love this idea. And missed it before, apparently.

I will probably jump on in the next few days as well? Is there a preset victory condition for this one that we are all aiming for?

I started tonight and have played about 50 turns so far. It's an interesting starting position! I'm trying a much different starting strategy than I have in previous games. So far I feel like it's going pretty well, but we'll see how things play out over the next 50 turns or so.

Some big giveaways in here if you're not past turn 50...

Spoiler:

Gosh, this is in the middle of things! Horseback barbarians, Scotland to the south, Vikings somewhere close by as well.

I'm going with a much more militaristic start, spamming slingers, converting them to archers as soon as possible, and going on the warpath. I get lucky and stumble into a Scottish settler all alone. I declare war and manage to steal both a settler and a builder from them. With that, we start our second city.

I had hoped to go right after Scotland with our handful of units, but barbarians show up again, so I divert my attack to knock out their settlement. By the time we get around to attacking Scotland, it looks like we'll be in for a longer fight, so I sue for peace. We now have three cities to their one, so I'm hopeful I've put enough of a dent in their growth to be able to build faster and eventually return and kill them off.

With that done, I hope to turn my army towards one of the two nearby city states, but I haven't decided which one yet.

This is the most violent I've been at the start of a game. Definitely fun!

Finished my game today. Seemed like a crazy good starting position with lots of resources everywhere. And lots of, uhm, other stuff too.

No preset victory condition, just do whatever you feel like (but keep in mind the caveats in the OP).

I decided to finish a game I had started before this one first, but I'm almost done with that one and will shift to this one next.

Awesome. Been playing nothing but Civ6 for the past week, only just caught up to the point in the main thread where this was mentioned. I'll put my other game with the Greeks on hold, and get stuck into this one tonight!

I just passed turn 100 and things are going quite well. Starting my sixth settler. Just successfully defended a friendly city state from invasion, after building up a sizeable army of archers and swordsmen and one heffalump. Am suzerain of two city states.

My galley is slowly circumnavigating the continent looking for a passage elsewhere, and my scouts have pretty much revealed all of the homeland. My army is big enough that I could probably take any enemy city I wanted, but I don't think I'll go warmongering until I can do the Territorial Expansion thing (SOON...).

I'm all done with my other game now, and will start digging in to this one for real.

I'm starting to turn a corner in this game now that we've hit Medieval era and I'm pumping out elephants.

Spoiler:

Scotland gave me a free Casus Belli when they declared war on my protectorate, Carthage. They have six cities in a tight little ball (two can even bombard the same spot). I'm probably going to burn three and keep three and then turn my attention to finish of Scandanavia. I really want Stockholm too, but they're probably the strongest power on the continent (myself included).

So I am now around 200 turns in, and things have not gone how I wanted.

Spoiler:

Scotland quickly aggressively settled towards me, but I was willing to let it go and settled further north. My quick finding of the Dead Sea led to me rushing Stonehenge and founding a religion. I was going tot ry and run a religious victory since I had such an early lead on it, but Scotland kept expanding near me and Norway decided they hated my tiny (non-existent) navy and declared Joint War with Scotland on me. I took a city from Scotland right as he finished the Pyramids there (sweet), but he then got walls in his other cities and sued for peace so I let him off easily. I turned my attention to Norway who stupidly did not build any walls so I burned his second city and took his capital. I was pretty tired of war at this point, so I let him live. Things kept chugging along, Scotland continuing to aggressively settle around me, which eventually lead to another Joint War against me. This time I was ready and burned 3 of Scotland's cities and captured a 4th. He was then very generous in his peace offering. Norway peaced out pretty quickly when I killed a single unit. Unfortuntely they were able to tell the rest of the world about my Warmongering way so the Zulu hate me (really?). Peter seems pretty chill, but as a strong religious civ, he's a competitor for my primary victory condition. If Scotland keeps being a butt, he will need to be expunged completely. I now have gunpowder, which means cities fall quickly to my Bombards. Maybe I will be the grand warmongerer this time around.

So, I just suffered a rather embarrassing defeat on this game, considering I usually play at King. I just couldn't get to grips with any of this Civs' strengths. It went something like this:

Spoiler:

Any time I've played and spawned near Scotland, they're pretty aggressive with founding cities, and still forward-settle quite a bit, so I made it my priority to get shot of them, as much as it pained me, them being Scotland and all..

I spotted the site I wanted for City 2, just a little south-east of the starting position, but 1 turn before my settler was ready, I spotted one of theirs. I quickly used a cheese tactic of shepherding their settler away from that area with my own units that they couldn't cross. Both my settler and theirs ended up 1 square from where I, and presumably they, wanted to settle, so I had to snap down the city just shy of the target, but stopped them getting there first. This seemed to set them back a bit, and it was quite a few turns before they finally settled their second city, right between Stirling and my capital.

I quickly got on with a settler for City 3, and cranked out as many archers as I could in the mean time. When I was ready to attack, they'd settled their third city, but i had 8 archers surrounding Stirling. I declared war, no matter the penalty, and just kept on hammering their cities with archers. Nobody had walls yet, so it wasn't so bad. They finally ceased to exist in 1400BC.

Meanwhile the Vikings up north were.... well, I've no idea what they were doing really, they had 2 cities, miles apart, and had lost a settler to barbarians. It took me longer to move my archers up to their capital, than it did to wipe them off the planet, too. They vanished around 200BC. On the other island, (I didn't know who at the time) were picking off city states, and another Civ went pop around 300AD - I never did work out who it was, as I didn't end up looking at the graphs due to the forthcoming events.

Now, I tend to ignore religion unless I'm going for a Religious victory. Stirling had been the foundation of a religion, but that was that. I think I minced the Vikings before they got a chance, considering what a state they were in. I couldn't even reach the other island, because there was no shallow water to make the trip across, so I spent most of my time settling a few more cities myself, and trying to get production and economy boosted enough. Because I'd already wiped out 2, and another 1 had been defeated, I was aiming for a Domination victory, something I rarely achieve (mostly because of the P.I.T.A long range conflict are - I miss the days of using transport ships that would carry 4-5units each, load 'em up on your shores, then Armada their brains out across the seas.

Finally unlocking Caravels, I could also get embarked scouts across the gap, so I finally met the remaining foes. Shaka's empire was already massive, ridiculously large, a huge number of cities, although not much else to show for it. He'd obviously taken a few of Peter's cities too. St Petersberg was on the outskirts of the Russian territory in the north, so that would be my attack area - no points wading through the rest of their land, taking casualties.

Because I had the whole landmass to myself back home, I had a never-ending problem with barbarians spawning. I got it under control by placing my troops around the place to clear the fog of war, but as I was about to embark the lot of them over to Ol' Pete's, I'd collected all my troops for the invasion, and the barb camps started springing up everywhere, and with greater and greater tech'd units, a mechanism that pisses me off slightly. These kept me busy playing whack-a-barb, and delayed my amassing of forces.When I finally had the majority of my troops in position, the wonder-move by Peter happened. There was a giant outpouring of Apostles and Missionaries from all corners of my island, all Pete's. It seems that while I was playing soldiers, he had already converted Shaka's monstrous number of cities (seriously, where did he get all those religious units??). The obvious was coming. My complete ignorace of all things religious had left me with zero defence against his conversion, and it became a race against time for me to wipe him out, before he converted all of my cities - my cities didn't even have a religion to expel first, so it was going to be pretty easy for him.

It was close, but ultimately, I failed.

I just couldn't push through his cossacks quickly enough to get to his last city, and he converted the remaining city he needed to snatch a Religious victory. Gah! I was so angry with myself! The vastly reduced number of Civs remaining played right into his hands, as neither of his two competitors were aiming for Religion. So, moral of the story - don't totally ignore Religion, folks, even if you're not planning to try for a Religious victory.

I really didn't enjoy playing as India with that leader, but did enjoy being more war-focused than I normally am!

Really hope you're planning on doing another of these soon, it was a lot of fun!

It is turn 209, 1480 AD. I'm about to come out of a Dark Age Renaissance (er... whatever that means), and into a Heroic Industiral Era!

I have 9 cities, one of which flipped my way because the curry was so tasty. They are all 100% loyal, but only Happy, not Ecstatic. I think I currently have all the luxuries I can get my hands on, and Professional Sports are quite a ways off, so I guess I'll have to be happy with happy. I think I'm going to squeeze in one more city. I'm the first circumnavigator, and my soon-to-be-rangers are scouring the second continent. I've met and befriended everyone, even that one very grumpy fellow.

I'm #1 in Science, but in the interest of achievement, I think maybe I'll just nuke everyone when I get the chance. Pity to lose all that alliance gold and science from my six trade routes, but priorities.

The pathetic losers on the home continent are not doing a very good job of spreading their religions, so I'm not getting much of the Dharma bonus. Maybe before I nuke them, some overseas zealots will show up and help speed up the process.

BTW, I'd love to keep organizing these games. I want to make sure to give everyone enough time to finish this one. I think monthly is a good pace, as long as we don't try any epic time scales or huge maps.

If we can stick to monthly I'm definitely in. I posted in the other thread that I finally wrapped up my Cree game and have started in on this one. Still very early on (only just founded a second city). Had horseman barbs coming out of the woodwork almost immediately, and they caught a couple of my units (a warrior and an explorer) in impossible spots (the latter got trapped in a mountain pass south of the starting location). Brutal beginning for me.

When are we supposed to be done with our first game? I hit it hard the first weekend and then life got in the way. I'm still in the Medieval era...

I'm taking it slow for the first game, just to see how long it takes everyone. There's no rush. The game's not going anywhere. We may start another game in March, maybe not. Take your time.

I spent some more time with my game this evening. I too am on a slow journey with this one. I'm only up to turn 65 at the moment, but I should be able to plod along more regularly now.

Spoiler:

I rolled over a City State, and am up to four cities. Somehow I managed to spiral into a Dark Age though in the process. Oops.

Seems like I've got a huge continent with lots of room to explore, so I'm trying to get a few settlers in the production pipeline.

With the early emphasis on war, I'm behind a bit with districts and buildings.

I'm not quite sure what to do with my armies, now that I've wiped out one City State. I'm tempted to go right after Scotland and try to take them out of the game. But there are some juicy City States nearby as well. Decisions, decisions.

I'm not progressing as fast as I'd like, either, things keep coming up!

Today I turned the corner from a Dark Modern Era to a Heroic Atomic Era. I am building atomic bombs and nukeular submarines and equipping my infantry with hazmat suits. Everybody loves me and I have 3 alliances going. It's just going to break my heart to stab all those nice people in the back.

One very peaceful leader keeps seizing suzerainty from my city-states. I think he'll be going down first.

Woot! Snow day tomorrow, so I should have some time to move things along some.

I'm now up around turn 200 and moving towards industrial era stuff. I got into a significant land grab battle (not war) with Norway and Scotland. I haven't liked the layout in this map at all for city placement--feels like a constant battle between placing for resources and placing for water (not to mention avoiding loyalty issues with Scotland).

I managed to carve out space for six total cities in my little chunk of the continent before the other two could lay claim to them, but any future expansion is going to require going to war, I think (which I'm not at all equipped for... yet). I'm not optimistic about my prospects for winning, but we'll see. This is the era in the game where, usually, I'm well behind at least a couple of AI players, but finally have a fair number of cities punching out districts that eventually start swinging the balance. We'll see how it goes from here!

(When I'm not playing Into the Breach, that is.)

I solved the sandwich problem by slapping down my southern neighbor very early on and stealing some of his best expansion areas. The guy in the northeast never really got in the way, and by the time he settled near me, I had enough cities pumping out enough loyalty to get his city to turn. I'll get into more details of how I expanded when I'm done and can open up a spoiler thread.

For now, I went from a Heroic Industrial era to a Dark Modern era, and then to a normal Information Era. My armies are sailing, my submarines are loaded, and I'm about to turn the other continent into a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland.

I played another 40 turns or so this evening, just crossed the 100 turn mark. Fun times!

Spoiler:

These 40 turns can best be summed up as our "Age of Expansion". I decided not to attack another City State with my military reserves. Instead, I focused on settlers, builders, and science. I used my military to escort settlers and fortify new cities.

I think I'm up to eight cities now, with plans for 2-3 more. This is some pretty hectic expansion, but I'm trying to isolate a Norwegian city on the southeast tip of the continent that I hope to flip later in the game, and with one more city up north near their borders I can deny them some valuable Iron reserves. I'm also trying to bottle up Scotland to my southwest. They have only two cities at the moment, but if I wedge one more in between us, I should be able to limit them to 3-4 cities, which should make things very tough for them.

Once I get 10-11 cities in place, I'm hopeful that I can sustain peace long enough to get industry, commerce, and science up to speed. With enemies on both sides, war would be a bear now, but if I can run another 50 turns or so of peace, I think I can pull away from the pack.

Hilariously, two civs betrayed me right before I was about to start my Nuclear Winter campaign. Emergencies were declared against each of them and I was able to easily decimate them, my share of the proceeds being about 20k. That let me buy even more army.

So now, I'm up to turn 400, steamrolling my opponents, and the game has become incredibly tedious. I'm two projects away from a tech victory and two capitals away from a domination victory. I have been nuking the sh*t out of everything. I have one city dedicated to thermonuclear bombs and it can produce one every six turns. My army can conquer a city in 3 or 4 turns. Even with builders boosting production, the tech victory is going to take a couple dozen turns.

The biggest problem I have on the war front right now is the mess of green goo my glorious mushroom clouds leave behind. It's hard to hold a capital that is full of radioactive zombies!

So... I'm thinking I should just call this one rather than play it out, so I can start a spoiler thread for us.

...

Okay, forget all that, it only took me 5 more turns. I got a great scientist that increased space race production, then my governor ranked up so he increased space race production, too.

Whee! Turn 405, and my end game score was #7, Ashsoka.