[Civ VI] Long Live the Queen! – Turns (101-110)

Naithin had the idea to start a Civ VI succession game and I jumped at the chance to participate!

The rules, short and sweet (you can read all of them here): We’re playing the Civ VI base game without expansions or DLCs, so all participants can play. We have a player order which determines who gets to play after whom. When it’s your turn, you play for 10 turns and then the next person takes over the game and continues.

The participants are:

1. Naithin
2. Rakuno
3. Paeroka
4. Tessa (aka Endalia)
5. Krikket
6. UnwiseOwl
7. Rambling Redshirt
8. Kanter

You can follow the game progression in each of our blogs! Please see Naithin’s post about the game for the links to all previous blog posts as he seems to be keeping track there.

Previously in Long Live the Queen…

We now have four cities and are at war with France and Brazil. But that wasn’t our fault! They just declared war and we didn’t do anything to them in the first place. We’d even accepted the Open Borders request from France. However, Brazil is already begging to be at peace with us again. But they’re offering a measly 5 gold which we refused twice already. Catherine is sulking far up north and stays out of this dispute which seems a bit unfair. She’s so far away, she basically has no war going on and Brazil is much weaker than she is, but they are getting to feel our wrath now! Oh, Rakuno was also wondering if we can still found a religion or if all available ones are already founded. I have no idea how to check for that… so we’ll see.

I’m taking over the game where Rakuno left off. So the first thing I do is check for the religions. We’re good. Only one out of four possible religions have been founded. We’re also told that we fulfilled our promise not to settle close to Cleopatra. Perfect. So, from here on, we can do it again, right?

I like annoying countries when they started a war by pillaging tiles, destroying units that come too close to me – but once they come begging for peace, I try to take what I can get from them and usually accept. Brazil is rather weak. However, the units we have stationed there don’t seem strong enough to do anything but annoy him slightly… I’d like to keep my head high and acknowledge that THEY came to us twice offering 5 gold before I accepted peace – for 4 gold per turn for 30 turns. That’s more than half of their current treasury which seems bad enough. Of course, this is over a course of 30 turns, so it may not be that bad for them. It still seems like the smarter move right now, because we already did some damage to them and since our units aren’t strong enough to conquer their city, I’d rather focus on something else. I’m moving the ram up there, though, and will leave the units right at Brazil’s borders. Just so when they decide to do something dumb again, we can threaten them right away!

Let’s also take a look at what’s going on with the rest of the world now: Catherine is still at war with us and likes Teddy, Gilgamesh and Pedro… Cleopatra… not so much. But she’s only at war with us. Pedro is unhappy with us and with Cleopatra now. The others he’s happy with. Gilgamesh is happy with Pedro and with us. However, he’s unhappy with Catherine – and at war with Teddy and Cleopatra. This is good for us! Let them fight and make themselves weaker while we’re growing in strength.

I’ve founded exactly one religion in all of the Civ VI games I’ve played before. So I have no idea how exactly it works. Is one Holy Site enough to earn points for the Great Prophet? Birmingham wants to build something new and I’m not sure which direction to go from here on. Do we want even more military (our strength is at 293, the second one after us is Cleopatra with only 146) or do we want to continue our expansion? Let’s check the current situation: Gilgamesh is at war with two other nations. Would he really bother to declare war with a third one? Cleopatra is friends with us for several more rounds. We just made peace with Brazil. So, other than Catherine, we should be fine for a while. Let’s focus on growing our empire! Engineering research is finished. We actually do not have access to the open sea yet as the water part in the south is closed off. Machinery looks like a good option as it’s boosted and will complete in 7 turns. It will give us the Crossbowman with 40 ranged strength. We need to continue showing the world who they’re dealing with, after all. We will also get access to building the Lumber Mill which increases production.

Next turn and our scouts are yelling for attention. I hadn’t even seen them until now – they’re near the USA – but they discovered a natural wonder. Nothing else can be done this turn. Next turn lets us promote the scouts – they’re really crying for our attention now! It seemed like a good idea to make them as strong as they can be in scouting, so they can now see through woods and jungle. There’s also a trader between Stoke-Upon-Trent and London now which isn’t giving us as many resources as other routes, but it’s building a road between Stoke-Upon-Trent, Birmingham and London, isn’t it? I admit, I’ve never paid attention to this before and usually chose what gives me the most resources.

As we’re just barely ahead of Teddy in our science progress, I started building another library. And then we’ll also have a monument in Stoke-Upon-Trent soon to help it grow a little faster. Also, more culture lets us research civics faster. We’re not a very cultured empire yet, But I’d hate for our neighbours to see us as barbarians!

Preslav got an envoy from us which counts as two. The thought behind it was to try to make us souzerains as we’d have two city-states with us then right next to Brazil – just in case we want to turn our attention back to them. We found Stockholm, another city-state. The ones we met so far were all militaristic, but these ones are scientific. Cleopatra is their souzerain, but it’d be nice if we could change that in the future, I guess.

Gilgamesh and Teddy declared peace. We eliminated a French scout – and discovered a French Great General in front of our Heavy Chariot. When did they get here? We stomped over the unit but there’s no animation or anything. It’s just… gone. Was it a halluzination maybe? NOW Catherine shows up and offers us 5 gold for peace. Didn’t Pedro tell her already that this isn’t good enough for us? Of course, we decline. Five gold is a ridiculous offer and an insult!

We can switch civics and I’m getting experimental here: We only have one Barbarian scout unit to deal with right now (I’m ignoring the camp further south for now…). Other than that, it seems to be smarter to increase our pressure for one of the two remaining religions, so I decided for the civic that gives us two Great Prophet points per turn now. Further Civic research is towards the Great Library. Maybe we’re lucky and can get it? I wasn’t sure what to research next. The choice that’s boosted already is a bit of a waste, but it leads to another boosted choice which gives us a strong melee unit.

To finis this off: My idea was to have the newly promoted Crossbowman and the Heavy Chariot stand by north of London and Birmingham, in case France returns. The archer should get back to London to help against barbarians from the south. But this is all up to what the player after me, Tessa, decides to do. After all, I probably went a completely different route to what Rakuno had had in mind when he handed the game to me. You can find the game here.