[SSLP] Let's have a Touhou Party in Sid Meier's Civilization VI! (Completed!)

[Gesh86]

Should you be wary of Kaguya or Mamizou getting upset at this point? How much would it matter if they did?

Kaguya likes us better than Mamizou, but hasn't offered friendship to us yet. Even Mamizou's opinion of us isn't exactly bad, just neutral. Were one of them to suddenly invade us, I'm fairly confident we could muster the defense to repel them.

Update nr. 13 - More embark than bite

Turn 58 - 1.720 B.C.

On miscellaneous news, a few more Touhou civs have cropped up on the Steam Workshop that will unfortunately not be a part of this Let's Play. For one, there's Cirno and her fairy empire. And here's Remilia...other, slightly different Remilia, I guess. Good for the creator of the mod, but I don't see myself making a campaign with double, not quite identical Remilias.

Shining Needle Castle has created the builder meant for Blefuscu. We send him on his way there and finally set production towards a campus. I'm really looking forward to finishing our first district. Like I said, they matter. Only 8 turns is what it will take from now.

We discover a potential danger this turn:



Baja California is in the hands of barbarians. They might never scout our direction the way we are now, but should we indeed expand towards Yosemite, their camp is on our hitlist.

It was also at about this point that I doubted beelining for the iron working technology was a smart move. Beelining of course, tends to give your empire an unnatural, often unhealthy kind of one-sided growth. If we were to get iron working, we'd have a new, strong unit available, but our economy would not have the gold to afford them. Currency would help with that. Apart from that, we must pick up a few older, simpler technologies. For now and the next 4 turns, we switch to sailing. We wouldn't be able to improve the whales at Blefuscu if we didn't have it.

We move our war party closer to our capital again, whereas our scout stays down south and grabs the goody hut:



Not a bad result I'd say. Sometimes, the villagers will leave their rural lives behind and move to your civilization. If they do, the free population point will always be added to the closest of your cities, Shining Needle Castle in this case. It has a size of 5 now.

Turn 59 - 1.680 B.C.

The shrine maidens of Gensokyo would be interested in us now that we have a certain new civic:



Robert Holmes Bell Jr. is a former pastor and author. A religious civic deserves a quote from a religious person, and he seems to be a very successful and influential one among those.
Both policies gained from mysticism are Wildcards:



Even ancient and classical folk had their scientific geniuses. Maybe this card will help us find our very own Archimedes?



This is a card I often put in as soon as I'm allowed to. There's a race among civilizations for Great Prophets especially, as they are limited. If we do too poor in religion, we may not even get our own state religion and will have to stay with just a pantheon forever.



The Oracle of Delphi. This wonder I guess is less about the temple building and more about having a world-renowned divinator like the people of Delphi did. The wonder helps immensely with Great People generation, something we have yet to dive into. If you gain enough points of a certain Great Person kind, you can recruit a civilian unit with powerful abilities. These are game changers, and you are always competing with the other civilizations on who gets the next Great Person of a certain field. The general strategy to creating a lot of Great Person points consists of getting a lot of districts, getting them early and making the buildings that are situated in those districts.

We do a minor policy adjustment: There will be fewer battles with barbarians in the near future, so we swap Discipline for Agoge. It may lower the time to make our spearman in Lilliput. As for the next civic, there are but two choices: State workforce, which we still don't want to develop anymore and...



Oh the drama and the poetry! The tragedy! Woe is us! Not a civic I would prioritize over many otheres. But we'll take it for now.



Mamizou's scout is still spectacularly in the way of our archer and he's getting on my nerves. Move it, girl! There are recordings of multiplayer games out there where this kind of trolling ended in declarations of war I tell you...

Yet this is not nearly as much of a problem as this:



It's hard to say what camp this barbarian archer belonged to, but he's bad news for our scout. When we uncovered his position, we already used up all our scout's movement point and now the turn ends with him in firing range. On the barbarians' turn, he therefore has to endure 40 points of damage. Phew, I wasn't sure he would even survive the attack.
Remember the scout sandwich in the northwest? Our scout destroyed the barbarian with 27 damage, took 34 in return and is now done with fighting. Also, praise be! Mamizou moves her troll scout past in the south. Finally, the path is clear. But do we even want to retreat, knowing there's a hostile archer endangering our scout?

Turn 60 - 1.640 B.C.

Let's get that very scout out of there before he turns into a pincushion! We move one tile to the northwest into a valley between hills. If the archer follows us, he won't be able to move and shoot us in the same turn. With the remaining movement points, we pick him a level 1 promotion, Ranger (for his future trip to the Brazilian rainforest), healing him through this to a condition where he will likely be able to take another barrage of arrows. Our other units, the warrior and archer, move closer to our capital again.

There were a few negligible tiles uncovered by our other scouts in the west. All in all, the 60th turn was nothing special despite its even number.

Turn 61 - 1.600 B.C.

Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Make him research this technology, and you'll feed him for a lifetime:



Sir Francis Drake, known for being a privateer (a nice way of calling someone a state-bought pirate), circumnavigator of the world and a fairly successfull vice admiral. Unlike Nathan Drake, he actually existed.



A galley is the most primitive ship you can build in this game. I very rarely do and if ever, not too many of them. Maybe one so that I could technically conquer a damaged coastal city with it. Like it says, it attacks in melee and can't really defeat any ships that are more advanced than they are. It could make the life of embarked land units miserable though...
The sentence about being confined to shallow waters is pretty important: Even with ships, we could not sail the Atlantic or Pacific at the moment. Until the late medieval times, players can't discover the new, or in our case, old world.



We didn't need a navy actually, the fishing boats improvement is what we took sailing for. It will enable us to claim the riches of the sea. View it as a farm/plantation on water.



Embarkation. If this were not possible for us now, our builders couldn't actually reach the sea resources to put fishing boats on. You embark by simply sending a land unit onto a water tile. There they will turn into little transport boats. When embarking, a unit uses all of its remaining movement points. It also does this when disembarking, as in, returning to land.
Notice that we only gain this for builders. A later technology enables embarkation for all other civilian and military units. All of them will have to stay land-lubbers for now.

With such a large number of technologies to choose from, I'd much rather give you a screenshot than to just list them:



Shipbuilding is a new choice. The main idea with sea-centric technologies is that each is the prerequisite to the next and that they're a little more detached from the more standard scientific discoveries. The oceans of the world are not too interesting for us right now. I was tempted to return to iron working for a moment, but what we're taking is the already boosted currency. It allows us to make a new district, and it's one considered to be among the most vital in the game's meta...



How easily my mind is swayed. This is about the time where I decided to only send the warrior back to Shining Needle Castle and have our archer aid our scout against this single barbarian unit. Central America is so thin that you just can't avoid an enemy unit well, let alone one that can shoot you. If we don't take out that barbarian, we will never get around to exploring South America. And we do want to know what's there. For now, the scout retreats further northwest, to the safe embrace of an actual combat unit.



I was wondering: It was so long ago that we discovered Kaguya's second settler, I thought she had somehow lost it to barbarians. It was unescorted, after all. In early patches, the AI was notorious for having their settlers stolen out of their own hubris. Supposedly, that has been improved.
Every one of the three North American empires has 3 cities now. The city "Kaguya" makes a bridge between Eientei and the remote, icy city of Eirin. Mamizou's New York is west of her capital Futatsuiwa of Sado. In my opinion, both are probably the most sensible places they could have expanded to.

Turn 62 - 1.560 B.C.

On training our spearman in Lilliput, we receive an instant eureka:



"Mercenaries" is boosted when you have at least 8 military units on the field. I believe scouts are viable for this count. This is a combat focused civic from I believe the medieval era, so it won't be relevant too soon. What it does prove is that our army isn't too shabby.
The very spearman that was just born is moved towards Shining Needle Castle. Lilliput should now do something for its infrastructure and starts making a builder. 7 turns to pack their toolboxes and make their sandwiches.

Firaxis seems to love the natural sights of the U.S.'s west. We reveal this landmark on our scouting turn and it's only 3 tiles from Yosemite:



Crater Lake I could not have told you much about on the fly, but apparently, this is one of the purest, least polluted lakes in the world. It's this way mainly because no rivers connect to it. Knowing this, it's easy to see why John Griffith London, novelist and journalist from the 19th and 20th century was so enamoured with it.
Crater Lake, when talking game mechanics, is an especially valuable lake tile, with a science bonus of 1 and a faith bonus of 4. The high faith bonus is easily explained, as it's a place of legend for the Klamath people of Oregon. Lake tiles are already quite juicy in their yields, so having Crater Lake within your borders can be very helpful.

In the south, we shuffle our units around like this:



Looks like the two archers are going to have a ranged duel, with the barbarians getting the first hail of arrows off. Such a situation is a little unpleasant, as usually the first shooter wins. Maybe being on a hill and the volley promotion are going to have enough impact to turn the odds for us? Our archer takes 41 points of damage on the barbarians turn. I don't like that number. Not at all.

Turn 63 - 1.520 B.C.

We can't let that go unpunished. We return fire with our archer for exactly 41 points as well. Cute coincidence. By the way, there's always a small random adjustment to the damage you deal of +-10%, compared to the combat outcome prediction. This is still so predictable that dice will never be a factor in the long run, which I think is good. Earlier installments than Civ 5 felt very random.

Our builder starts his turn on the tile with the whales he made his way to:



Blubber for everyone! The tiny boats represent that the tile has been improved by fishing boats. The large boat is the embarked builder himself. That's the second amenity in our possession. Our empire should be very happy, given how small and few our cities still are.

After our discovery of Crater Lake, the two scouts in North America have uncovered the continent very thoroughly. It's not worth going all around to check out a few straggler spaces I'd say. We're going to pull them back to Lilliput and think from there on what to do with them. It's pretty common to think after a while: "What am I going to do with these scouts now?"



Our archer suffers another 41 points of damage. What is it with that number? Anyway, he will certainly die on the next attack, so we shouldn't just shoot again out of stubborness. This is looking pretty bad...
Know what, we shall stop on such a cliffhanger. Find out next time if our unit will survive and what that so very awesome district is we're about to finish research on. Seeya!

[Gesh86]

Update nr. 14 - Governments explained to you by someone who lives in a country currently without a government

Turn 64 - 1.480 B.C.

Last time, we learned how to make sailboats that would tip over at the slightest breeze. The oceans are still an age or three away from us. We were also in the middle of losing a unit:



The tobacco being highlighted has no relevance here, that's just because the tooltip timer can't be set any higher. We are retreating to a spot out of our enemy's reach. The barbarian can neither get to our scout nor that wounded archer in a single turn. Not all is lost yet!

As expected, the barbarian archer steps on the hill to the northwest of him, hoping to pursue the enemy he thinks he's almost defeated. All our other units are following their set routes: The 2 scouts in North America are approaching Lilliput, the builder at Blefuscu seeks the sugar fields next to the city, and Lilliput's spearman and the warrior of the south are now within Shining Needle Castle's borders. It's a turn where little is absolutely achieved, but it's a good step towards getting something done.

Turn 65 - 1.440 B.C.

And out of the blue, we turn the whole thing around:

   

Only 37 damage from our archer, but that's enough to soften him up for our scout to destroy him. He takes 32 damage in return. Archers when on defense are not that much more powerful than scouts themselves. Disaster has been averted. The road to South America should be open to us now.

We had the choice of making either the warrior or the spearman our garrison for our capital. We give the most boring job to the warrior. Since all other cities have units in them as well, the spearman stays on standby close to Shining Needle Castle. On demand, he will travel to wherever he's needed.

Turn 66 - 1.400 B.C.

The campus district in Shining Needle Castle is finished. The inhabitants can now matriculate and stay eternal students if they want to avoid growing up. Despite these people, our science output still increases from 10.9 to a flat 12. We also get something else that's pleasant for this:





Vern Dosch does not seem to have a wikipedia page. He either was or still is CEO and President of the National Information Solutions Cooperative, Inc. (NISC). Through his quote he tells us how important employee satisfaction is. A good thing to say that I don't think as many businessmen follow as would be ideal.



Making a wonder or two that you don't want to get snatched in the last few turns before completion? You definitely need this. Corv?e is a form of unpaid, octruated labor of olden times, typical for such monumental building projects.



We need this. At our current level of technology, no unit costs more than 1 gold of maintenance. Selecting Conscription makes any army right now completely free. And we do have an army of formidable size...

With what I just said, is it any surprise we're swapping Conscription in for Agoge? We're not building a military unit at the moment anyway. As soon as we confirm the policy change, gold per turn rises from 3.3 to 6.3; we're actually having some kind of income now.

Shining Needle Castle needs a new construction plan. Here I was undecided for a good while. We could make an encampment district, but I feel it's too early. The oracle would take 22 turns, but I don't think it's the most important ingredient to our playstyle. Plus, I fear someone could beat us half-way. We could also continue making more science by adding a library onto the campus so that our students could, you know, actually study for something. But that too costs maintenance in gold. In the end, we pick a granary. The city has always had a mediocre growth, and it'll be done in 5 turns. It's a conservative plan, but those can be good plans.

Also, for the sake of immersion, here's a close-up of the campus:



It looks very barren right now. Districts fill up with their specific buildings when you construct them and will be much more bustling then. A cute detail that made it in here by coincidence: The trade caravan dude on the right has a carrot on a fishing rod, to steer and motivate his camel/dromedar.

As for our next civic, this one is part of the selection now:



Its prerequisites are state workforce and early empire. When you see this civic, shoot for it! It unbinds a huge potential your empire didn't use before. We have no chance to get the inspiration, we've somehow not met a single city-state, let alone three. But who cares. Political philosophy it is.

One of our scouts recovers hitpoints at Lilliput (it's not the one who knocked out the archer in the south). But the most important deed our units do this turn should be this one:



The third luxury we spoil our citizens with is sugar! Blefuscu is really benefitting the Kobito empire as a whole.



No news escape our fishy friend. This means Kaguya has just developed that very civic of political philosophy we're also striving for. Her empire is now comparable to classical Carthage and pre-dictatorial Rome.

Turn 67 - 1.360 B.C.



That's our first era transition. It happened because the just finished technology of currency counts as the first to be considered classical instead of ancient. In the upcoming expansion, era transitions are supposed to not happen for each civilization individually, but globally and depending what everyone does I guess. Just a rumor I heard, wonder if it'll be so in practice.
Anyway, I've already hinted at it: Currency.



Slave-born Epictetus probably had a tough time making his stoic philosophy heard, but he did in the end. Assuming he meant his quote in earnest, he was more content than you would have thought him to be. It makes sense that your own wealth and poverty are to a degree, very subjective. You're only as rich and happy as you allow yourself to be.



Markets get you money. Notice that unlike most buildings, there is no maintenance cost for this, as it would be silly to have it on something that is really just supposed to make more gold for you. It requires a "commercial hub" and that would be...



...this district. Building these on a river tile, especially one that curves around several sides of the space, is very lucrative. Huh, I never knew it had increased synergy with harbor districts. Got to keep that in mind for the future. Anyway, apart from the flat gold bonus and the buildings you can make in a commercial hub, the real kicker is an increase in trade route capacity. Commercial districts are considered among the most valuable to build and I think it's because traders are so good. Build commercial hubs, and you'll get more of those.

During play, I was utterly confused on what happened here by the way:



Somehow, political philosophy shrunk from being developed in 13 turns to a single one! Only after I was done recording did I remember this had to do with the Kobito's civ ability: "Gain gold and culture on transitioning to a new era". BoringDuck did not specify a sum, but it's apparently buttloads. Gold did increase by 400! We do not want to spend all of that in one place.

At last, we switch our technology focus back to iron working. Only 8 turns are left now for our scientists.

I thought of something else at this point: We should do something about the barbarian camp in Baja California while there's still no other and more pressing conflict around. We move our spearman near Shining Needle Castle and the archer in Lilliput in the general direction of that menacing outpost. It's a decent distance, so we won't hear from them for a few turns.



Well, this is really frustrating. We discovered a goody hut, but guess what: Unless he's totally stupid, Mamizou's scout, yes, that same troll of a scout, is going to snatch it before we do. Nothing we can do about that. What happened here was
instigated while we took care of that barbarian archer earlier. Mamizou somehow snuck past the conflict and gained a lead. She let us do all the work and stole the spoils for herself. That wily bake-danuki! All we can do is try to take a different route than her through South America so that this doesn't repeat. Mamizou by the way has also gained the political philosophy civic in her turn (Raiko again drummed this message to us).

Turn 68 - 1.320 B.C.



Otto Eduard Leopold was the very first German chancellor and counts as a legend among statesmen. Of course I heard about him in my history classes, but because those were never at all interesting, I forgot most about him until I recently saw Extra History's season on him. What I always remembered about Bismarck was that he was the earliest uniter of Germany. Before 1871, that what is nowadays Germany consisted of many sovereign states. The area could almost be considered an amassment of squabbling, feudal mini-states. Bismarck led an incredibly successful campaign against the French with the other German states as Prussia's allies and afterwards pretty much everyone said: "This alliance worked so well, let's just become one country."

      

What exactly are these "governments" and how do you use them? We'll find out in a moment.

   

These are our first two diplomatic policies. This type of policy typically has something to do with getting in the good graces of city-states or gaining more from those already on your side. These policies are generally considered the weakest in meta-gaming, but if we had to pick one now, Diplomatic League would likely be more useful.



The Apadana of Persepolis was the audience hall for the emperor of old Persia and has been kept somewhat intact even today from what I heard. It is an excellent wonder to build for a generally wonder-centric and city-state-centric play and only then really. We will likely not make it. Not sure I've ever bothered getting it to be honest.

Now the button to switch policy cards reads "Government Unlocked" this time. Once we click it...



Those three governments (the "Tier 1 governments") we saw in the civic have now appeared in this menu. Like policy cards, governments can be switched for free whenever a new civic is developed, and for some money at all other times. We need to make our choice between those 3 we unlocked, as everything is better than being a chiefdom. All of them have more card slots, four to be exact. "Classical Republic" is a great choice during times of peace, but we wouldn't get as much use out of it as we could the way we are now. "Oligarchy" can be considered the opposite of it: Great when you're in a conflict due to having stronger units. "Autocracy" is somewhat balanced between those two, but poor at dealing with city-states. This disadvantage towards those city-states we haven't even met needn't worry us, so I guess we're now a bunch of inhumane autocrats.

Our card collection, after adding a few, looks like this:



We combine the benefits of Conscription and Agoge. Our slot of economic policies stays untouched and we set our first wildcard policy: Revelation. Some could say we shouldn't bother with getting a religion at all. But it would be nice to have one...some day at least. So let's accumulate a few Great Prophet points.

Our next civic to pick is games and recreation, something that political philosophy just unlocked. I guess in a crummy chiefdom, you're not allowed to have fun. Soon we can. In 10 turns in case we don't get the inspiration for it.

The troops we have deployed do very little this turn. Our bruised and battered archer in the south has reached Shining Needle Castle's borders and he's going to heal back to full over the next few turns. Otherwise, he'd be incredibly useless in an emergency. Our builder uses his last charge to make a plantation on another sugar field at Blefuscu. We now have 2 copies of the same luxury. More sugar doesn't make your people any happier, you need different resources, not more of the same. But what you can do with these duplicates is you could trade them to someone...



Don't misunderstand: We did not end up finalizing this trade! I basically just checked if Kaguya would agree to this kind of deal. Indeed, the princess of the moon would start a joint war against Mamizou with us at this very moment if we just gave her some sweet, sweet sugar and a small amount of gold on top of that. Yes, she actually gets along really well with Mamizou. Interesting how small this bribe needs to be to change that.

Turn 69 - 1.280 B.C.



Before we forget about it, we pre-placed two commercial hubs, one a turn ago in Lilliput and one right now in Shining Needle Castle. Both of them will create +2 gold through adjacency bonuses, partially because of rivers but also for being next to a campus in Shining Needle Castle. By the way, we had to buy the tile in the south for 80 gold. For increasing adjacency bonuses, this is very much worth it. Shining Needle Castle continues building its granary, but Lilliput works towards that commercial hub starting now. It's no small undertaking, 12 turns.
The reason we're even making that hub in Lilliput is because our next builder is ready for the job. Lilliput has two unimproved horse resources, so that should be his most urgent focus:



I think it was in both Civ 4 and Civ 5 where animal husbandry had to be researched to simply reveal horses. People often joke about how until then, your people wouldn't know what a horse is or be unable to see them. The idea was of course that they simply didn't know their special relevance and saw them as mostly just another type of hunting game in the wilds.

Turn 69 passes with little else that is interesting, and that will be it for this update. Next time, a unit brave enough to kill an oni and save a princess. Not Kaguya, a different princess.

[Golbez]

Is Classical Republic like the Roman Republic? I feel it should be a higher tier then Monarchy.

[Gesh86]

Is Classical Republic like the Roman Republic? I feel it should be a higher tier then Monarchy.

I'd say that's what they had in mind. Monarchy here I think is supposed to be the less centralized medieval type of monarchy with a feudal system of lordships under the highest ranking ruler. It's indeed debatable whether that's more advanced than the republic the Romans had, but for Civ 6, I suppose it is.

Update nr. 15 - Don't underestimate me just because I don't need resources to be built!

Turn 70 - 1.240 B.C.

Last time, we threw out the chief and praised the new emperor! It's still the same person though, immortal and already over 2.500 year old Shinmyoumaru.
Our builder at Lilliput has reached the resource and tries his hand at horse whispering. The result is us getting a hold on our first strategic resource:



Up on top is where materials like horses and iron will appear. With 1 horse, we could make the respective units so long as the producing city had an encampment district. If we got 2 horses, we wouldn't even need that. Breeding our own little ponies at last, we send the builder towards Shining Needle Castle, see if there's anything he needs to put some muscle into.

It's important in this game to always keep an eye on what is going on next to your borders. I spotted a hint of danger that could have been much bigger than it was:



Mamizou's archer was visible to us, as anything right next to your cultural borders is. We happened to have a scout in the area, so I peeked if there were other units next to it. Had there been maybe three or four foreign units there, an invasion would have been imminent. As it was: False alarm. That archer simply lost his way.

As we end our turn, a message pops up to inform us of something we can pat us on our backs for:



How honest we were! I think we got our second city 30 turns ago? That's how long these promises last apparently. Through sincerity, the respect we've gained from Kaguya negates settling too close to her in the first place.

Turn 71 - 1.200 B.C.

The granary in Shining Needle Castle was built very quickly and got made this turn. We had already pre-placed a commercial hub, so let's imitate Lilliput and work on that for 9 turns. If their production stays the same, both commercial hubs will finish on the same turn. That is pretty unlikely however, they might speed up from natural city growth during that time.

We've got some combat again! Out of the blue? You might have forgotten about these guys:



These were the archers we sent westward from Lilliput a while ago. They're meant to be in a war party with the spearman to the east, with the mission to destroy that very barbarian outpost. The inhabitants of it get substantial defensive bonuses from guarding their tile for several turns, that's why the combat odds aren't too great. 27 points of damage are calculated.
What is pretty funny about this situation is that we are sniping from the coast over the ocean onto the Californian peninsula. I'd estimate the body of water in between to be at least a hundred miles wide. Those are some powerful bowstrings and some powerful arms pulling them...

Like last turn, we scout our northern border...



Two archers of Kaguya and one archer and warrior each of Mamizou. Worrisome. Yet it needn't mean anything. It most likely doesn't. If they all belonged to a single leader like Kaguya for example, then it's a sign of a siege. Mamizou might also get ready to attack Kaguya and not us, who can tell? Just to be safe, we order the warrior garrisoned in Shining Needle Castle up towards Lilliput now, rather than when it's sure to be too late.

As our neighbours make their turn, we see no other troops arriving at least, and a gossip message we can be jealous of:



This tells us that Mamizou puts decent effort into her religious game and reached the threshold of 60 Great Prophet points. I can see the outlines of a holy site near her capital, that's how she must have gotten those. With the founding of Zoroastrianism, Mamizou can pick perks to give those cities of her with a religious majority some advantages. Her quickness in this matter has also made the next Great Prophet costlier for all other players unfortunately.
The name "Zoroastrianism" is that of a real-life religion from classical Persia. The AI will always pick one of the default names, it could have also been Catholicism or Islam for example. In terms of the game though, this is really just the name which you can pick freely. Since Civilization introduced religious play in its 4th installment, it made sure not to give stats, attributes and specializations to specific real religions.

Turn 72 - 1.160 B.C.

We begin by reading a friendly warning the game is giving us:



Blefuscu is nearing its housing cap. This is not something we need to be exceptionally concerned about. I can't imagine playing Civ 6 in a way that you would never have housing problems, it is just so hard to raise it without neglecting so many other building possibilities. If the housing in use is too close to the limit of a city, you'll make less food. If you don't take care of the housing problem by for example making farms and granaries, growth may stagnate completely. Stagnate, yes, but your people won't starve from this.

It seems Mamizou's and Kaguya's units in the north are dispersing. What a relief. No longer needing to monitor the situation, it was at this point where I got an idea on what to do with the two scouts that have little other function at the moment: One will go to South America, joining the one that is already exploring in the region. It will take him long to get there, but I'm sure there will be enough left to uncover. The second scout will go to Florida, to the coast of the Atlantic and park himself there until we reach a certain milestone in our research.

Our archer in the west shoots the confused and helpless barbarians again, this time for 29 points of damage. The pressure on them is rising...

Turn 73 - 1.120 B.C.

We garrison a warrior in Lilliput and an archer in Shining Needle Castle this turn. With a warrior already present in Blefuscu, all of our cities are at least protected by a unit. I like that, gives us a feeling of security!



The screenshot shows how we deal with the barbarians we've been softening up for the last few turns. We have the option to keep shooting them from the shore until the spearman can clean up the camp itself (destroying the unit protecting the camp isn't enough, someone needs to walk in). There would usually be no reason not to do this, but we'll be keeping the bows still this turn and for the next two. I have an idea.



What a pleasant sight that is. It seems Mamizou's scout made a wrong turn and went up to the Yucatan peninsula instead of going through Guatemala. That means we're further ahead now. Otherwise he could have monopolized on all the goody huts along the way.

Turn 74 - 1.080 B.C.

We've been waiting on this discovery for a while. It's finally here:



Olive Marie Osmond gets to speak about a classical technology and is no long-passed philosopher or economist, but a singer of recent (among taking part in other creative professions). I made double sure I linked you the right Marie Osmond because of how peculiar that choice is...



The Jebel Barkal would seem more like a natural wonder to you, being actually the name of a mountain in what is now Sudan. The wonder you build however refers to the old Nubian temple city around that mountain. This wonder will only be available if you've purchased the Nubian DLC. It comes with a decent scenario, so I don't regret getting it.
We do not have any iron, but this wonder would provide it. However, we are not obligated to get iron because instead of the swordsman unit we get...



...the Shining Needle Swordsman. Shinmyoumaru's special variant of a swordsman needs no iron to be built. Oh, we're going to get some of those! They're not actually too much weaker than normal swordsmen and the combat bonus from coming in groups more than neutralizes the difference.
I've had the idea on this occasion to introduce the civilopedia to you:

   

By clicking on the question mark in the top right, you've got an instruction and lore booklet always available to you if you need to know something. Even modders usually put entries of their special units, leaders and buildings in there as you can see. Because of the civilopedia, this game is not actually too confusing and overbearing to learn. Perhaps the size of our Let's Play might make you think it's complicated now, but Civilization is even considered to be "the strategy game your dad could play" among fans, believe it or not.



Many of these techs could be helpful. Mathematics is new I believe, and shipbuilding became available after sailing. What I think would be best now is masonry, a means to bolster your empire's defense and offense. I don't see any way we could be making a quarry anywhere, so we'll live with ignoring its eureka bonus.

Argh, it'll take several turns to make ourselves a little Shining Needle swordsman. I can't wait that long. Let's just do this instead with both of our warriors:

   

We spend 200 of our 474 gold on this, but if anything, the icon artwork is very cute...anyway, I forgot to zoom in on the unit graphics themselves. I'm sure we'll get around to that at some point. For now, we've got two really powerful units under our command.
After this spending spree, we gain 40 gold from the goody hut we discovered last turn. Some coinage is a common gift of the villagers and while it won't make you squeal from joy, more money is always welcome.

As the last thing we do on this most eventful turn, we decide to put another farm near Shining Needle Castle. It is our prime city after all:



The builder just happened to be in that spot and will go further on his way towards Blefuscu, where the earth is full of jade.

Oh wow, something scary happens on the AI's turn...



It says an "unmet player" was defeated. This might not mean a full-fledged civilization, but possibly a puny city-state. If it was indeed a competing player, oh boy. It is very untypical of the computer to be this murderous this early. Out of all the Touhous in play, my money is on Remilia being the culprit.

Turn 75 - 1.040 B.C.

A unit we haven't heard from for a long time wants a prompt:



When a trader survives two trips and return trips to and from its destination, it becomes possible to reassign him to somewhere else. Not only that, but on route completion, he constructs "trading posts" at both cities which will work as waypoints to refresh his range and that of all other traders that pass the location. If you make sure to get trading posts in as many cities as you can, you'll be able to weave even very distant cities into your trade network. I've emphasized the importance of roads already, so let's make the next route Shining Needle Castle -> Blefuscu.

Little else of interest happens this turn, but you'll be happy to hear our spearman is now in attack range of the barbarian camp. Its days are so numbered! In fact, I think the next update will be the death of it. Apart from that, we'll learn what a true friend is. See you then!

[Gesh86]

Update nr. 16 - Those countries that lose soccer matches 0:10, but are always really excited to take part

Turn 76 - 1.000 B.C.

I think this is about the time where historians place the bronze age collapse? No such collapse is in sight for us. Last time, we received the military unit the Kobito are famous for. Our battle plan for them: We're going to have our foes eat us and poke them with needles from inside their belly.

Blefuscu has finally managed to make a monument, just about one of the cheapest buildings you can make. Even nowadays, their production doesn't look too great with 4.2 cogs a turn. Hoping that some tile improvements may change that, we pick a builder, ready in 16 turns. The disappointing build times motivate us to pre-place a campus district with +1 adjacency one tile to the southeast of the city, but not before purchasing the rainforest tile next to that one for 80 gold. We somewhat had to do that: We would have lost some more of our already low production had we just sacrificed one of the few tiles with production yields for the district without getting a replacement for it into our borders.

I promised you some action for this update and here it is:

   

The already displayed 32 damage from our archer is followed by a final blow from our spearman. He takes a respectable 30 damage in return, our foes didn't die without a fight it seems. For our effort, we get not only 45 gold, but...



a eureka for this technology! The condition was to kill at least one enemy with a spearman. That's why we waited for him and not our archer to destroy the barbarian. Military tactics is a medieval technology and will give us access to the unit spearmen upgrade into. Let's leave it a surprise what that unit is.

Turn 77 - 975 B.C.

That's right, we've reached the point where the sands of time dwindle slower. 25 years instead of 40 years from now on. Upon this weird temporal distortion, we finish a helpful little civic:



Ever played Mahjongg on MS-DOS? Then you know those play pieces well. They were of course not invented only in the 80s, but have a much older history to them.
Do you know those people who say that any game of any kind is for children and a waste of time and you should only do productive things? Postmaster General John Wanamaker didn't like these killjoys either. He was a merchant earlier and eventually broadened his horizon with his entry into politics.



Policy cards are another good way to deal with housing problems. At the moment, none of our 3 cities fulfill the condition of having two districts, but in the later game, this is by all means a relevant bonus.



Civics don't just get you cards, but sometimes buildings as well. Arena's are built fairly quickly and the bread and games will keep your folk a little happier in times of hardship. We'll learn what the neccessary entertainment complex is in a moment.



If the arena won't cut it and you have a really bad lack of amenities, the Flavian Amphitheatre is for you. That's the most famous of old Roman circuses and what is meant to be constructable here. But before that you need...



...the district for anything amenities. This is one of the few that gets no adjacency bonuses for what it does. If you think this means you can be rather mindless in its placement, it's not so simple. Try to set it up in a way that as many cities as possible are in a 6 tile range of it. There are buildings for it later that can spread happiness over to cities that don't own the district itself.

Policy cards are kept mostly as they were, with Conscription, Urban Planning and Revelation untouched. Just temporarily, we want to swap Survey in for Agoge. I get a feeling there will be a bunch of goody huts in South America and the extra experience for the scouts would be nice. As for the next civic to take, we continue working towards drama and poetry again. It's more than half way done and has 4 turns left. We will not be building a wonder for its eureka any time soon.

It's been driving me mad that we haven't met any city-states for such a long time. Today's the day, it finally happened:



The foreign archer fell into our sight range. Spot but one of its units and you'll learn of the location of the city-state itself. These are initially neutral settlements that can't compete for any victory conditions or use settlers to further expand themselves. On the Greatest Earth map, city-states needn't spawn where they are located in the real world. Hattusa would be in Columbia, possibly Venezuela, on our map, but it was historically a city of the Hittites, now in modern day Turkey. City-states have certain specializations and Hattusa will always be a scientific type.
It's telling us to "send envoys". If we click on the lower right, we discover the city-state menu:



Over turns, you'll earn influence points. With more advanced governments, you'll gain them quicker. Once you have enough, you'll gather envoys that you can assign to whatever city-states you've met by clicking on the arrow to the right of the current envoy number. The more envoys you've placed, the more bonuses you get from a city-state. If you have at least 3 envoys somewhere and no other civilization has as many envoys than you in the same city-state, you become their "suzerain". This effectively means you'll be allies. What are the benefits of that? Let's have the game tell us:



That's a pretty big list of priviliges. You can also just conquer city-states if you want their land, but in most cases, I'd rather buddy-up with them and have them strengthen my empire. There are of course times where somebody else is on much better terms than you with a city-state, and destroying said city-state would weaken your rival. You have to weigh what is the most sensible in your approach to these tiniest of countries.
We get our first envoy with Hattusa simply because we're the first civilization they have met. We do not put any more envoys there right now, as 1 or 2 envoys have the exact same bonuses. Never forget that even if the game prompts you, you don't have to spend available envoys. Hoarding them is an option.

As our last action of the turn, we exploit the treasures of the earth with a final builder charge:



With our fourth luxury item, we have become a Jade Empire. Our Kobito are ready to kung-fu fight ghosts, ogres and elephant demons. At that moment where we put down a mine, an inspiration hits at least me by complete surprise:



I didn't have that in the back of my head at all. I do like the explanation here: An axle, as a part of a wheel. I would not have thought of that connection. Maybe we'll soon start research on that very tech.



Kaguya tells us on her turn that we are fulfilling her main agenda "Neet Princess". Our culture gain isn't too bad at the moment, so we earn even more reputation with the lunarians. Pleasant, but seeing this also gave me an idea that we'll jump on next turn.

Turn 78 - 950 B.C.

We get right back to contacting a very cordial Kaguya:



"Erm...would you...maybe...go to the p-p-p-prom with me...? I mean...only if you've got nothing better to do! You probably have, how silly of me to ask, hahaha! But...would you?"



KCucumber's first language isn't English, so some of the civilizations can have somewhat odd diplomatic responses. But nonetheless, "it's the best!" means YES! we are now in Kaguya's friendzone. A declaration of friendship is basically a non-aggression pact. Formal wars are no longer possible against us from her side, neither from ours. Surprise wars still are I believe, but try not to do those. Having a history of declaring those doesn't sit well in international affairs with the other empires.
Overall, this was a great achievement: The chance of Mamizou and Kaguya teaming up against us at the same time is practically zero now.

Our diplomatic success cushions the disappointment of this discovery:



A goody hut inhabits a tiny island just off the coast. Our scout cannot embark yet, we should think of picking up the shipbuilding technology sometime soon. We could also walk a builder down there and pick it up with him, but that takes too long and is too unsafe. I'm all in all fairly confident that this goody hut will still be available for us until a later time. We know where it is, our rivals probably don't. I actually put a map pin on it, just so we don't forget.



Huh? Would this be a Deja v? according to Keanu Reeves? I think what happened here was no bug or anything, but Kaguya's hidden agenda may be Neet Princess as well, meaning she's double impressed by a high culture output. We sure got a friend in her.

Turn 79 - 925 B.C.

We now have what it takes to build a great wall, a terrific wall:



Adrienne Louise Clarkson is a Hong Kong-born Canadian, fleeing to there during World War II. She worked as a journalist and even became the 26th Governor General of Canada. I'm sure she didn't have much to do with masonry herself, her quote is not to be taken too literally. Let's take it to heart and have our Kobito carve figurative and literal stones to become taller than they are...I mean bigger.



Any city that constructs walls will get a second, blue healthbar above the green one that stands for their hitpoints. This "defense layer" will pull most of the dealt damage onto itself and also reduce it greatly if the attack is not made by a siege unit or supported by a battering ram. The ranged strike is also nice, it's what all cities had in Civ 5 by default. While building walls in that game was a nice-to-have, the difference between cities with and without walls in Civ 6 is immense. Get these if you're feeling threatened or just if you don't want to fall to your own hubris. I've hinted at it before: Walls are one of the very few buildings you can't instantly buyout with gold.



There are several ancient Egyptian and Nubian pyramids, but it's safe to assume the Cheops pyramid in Giza is meant here. The instant gratification of a single builder may seem meager, but with how many builders you are likely to make in a campaign, the additional charges should pay off. It's also not a too costly wonder to make, but right now, we're lacking any desert or floodplain tiles.



Battering rams are the earliest way to counter an opponent that has had the foresight to build walls. A support unit is a special subtype of civilian unit that has no inherent combat strength, will simply be destroyed upon getting into an encounter and can sit on the same tile as your military units. Their purpose unlike builders and settlers is not at all civilian: They will give special abilities to military units if escorted with them.



Not much to say about this one. If you feel you don't need a quarry, just cash in all the production from a stone resource immediately and make something better on that tile.

Masonry is pre-requisite to a few technologies, but not on its own it seems. Nothing new is unlocked in our science tree, but if anything, we get the confirmation how much better our research potential has become:



We've been ignoring astrology for a long time, it was never too urgent to pick up, but the remaining science of it would be produced in a single turn. You know, if it's just one puny, measly turn, we might as well get it now. Astrology it is.

Both Lilliput and Shining Needle Castle finished their commercial hub, raising our gold per turn to 13.8 and our trade route maximum to 3. We'll soon get the traders to fill this potential. Now that our commerce is established and stable, we will make Shining Needle Swordsmen in both cities. Trust me when I say we absolutely need more of those little guys. 7 turns in Lilliput, 6 in Shining Needle Castle.

We also raised our free envoy count from 1 to 2 this turn. Apart from a few key civics that award them, you will just get these over time through the accumulation of points with your government. We stick both of envoys into Hattusa, become their suzerain and the shared sight range with them makes our camera zoom south:



That's one way to discover a natural wonder far away from your scouts...the pantanal comes from the Portuguese word for swamp and wetland, and there's one in southern Brazil that is so large and brimming with life under its waters that Civilization 6 justly categorized it as wonderous. The tiles of it are very valuable with the base yields of a marsh +2 food and culture, yet due to how far away it is and how low I'm estimating the strategic worth of South America for us right now, it's unlikely we'll ever settle there.
Aziz Ab'S?ber is a prize-winning Brazilian scientist. Ecology being one of his fields, it's no wonder he was all over what the pantanal had to offer.



Suddenly, we can see a huge chunk more of South America, with two goody huts revealed and more visible on unmonitored portions of the map. We also automatically made first contact with another city-state, Granada, located in southern Brazil. We'll take a look at what type it is in the next update, I forgot for this one.

As we are shuffling our units around, our spearman has landed in a sort of traffic jam:



Tsk, tsk. Always Mamizou trolling around with her units. On that hill, the warrior is an impassable object. I guess we're just going to have the spearman rest for a turn. He's slightly injured, so healing 10 hitpoints will be good for him. Hopefully Mamizou won't be too stubborn and move away from there this century.

Today's update has reached a decent size I think, so we'll stop upon reaching turn 80 here. Next time, we get a small army. So small and stealthy, nobody will see them before it's too late!

[Gesh86]

Update nr. 17 - Don't worry, it's just a drill! Ignore the army that's gathering there

Turn 80 - 900 B.C.

Last time, we met Hattusa and quickly became their sworn friend. We also shook hands with Kaguya on not getting at each others' throats any time soon.
The Kobito have just figured out how the stars worked in record speed. Apparently, all it took was a quick look up into the night sky:



Hippocrates of Kos is considered the Father of Western Medicine. From his name is where the "hippocratic oath" comes from. You know, I think he'd be grateful never learning that  astrology is considered a pseudo-science nowadays, he'd spin in his grave. For an unbelievably long time, the signs of the stars were highly respected. In fact, Hippocrates was renowned for dismissing common superstitions and never believed in the idea of illnesses being the work of the gods. But astrology was true and cool in his book it seems.



Shrines are the cheapest faith buildings made in your holy sites and missionaries are the weakest of religious units, simply meant to spread your religion to a target city.



Somebody already built this wonder, so this will not even appear in our build options. I've said most about what the mystical and mysterious Stonehenge does in this game back then. To recap: The idea is getting your religion through it without the need of building any holy sites. What's a holy site you ask?



A district of course. If you're working for a religious victory, you're going to want as many of them as you can, so that you produce lots of faith for the purpose of making many religious units and making your state religion dominant in the world. This districts has something in common with the campus: They are great to build next to mountain ranges for big adjacency bonuses.

What's next on the research list? A few promising ideas:



Shipbuilding would be good for the embarkation of every unit. Horseback riding might also be valuable, but we'd still need another horse resource to build cavalry. In the end, we pick the wheel, not just because it will get us a decent city center building, but mostly because it's quick to snatch. 2 turns is something we can spare.

We learned there was another city-state we uncovered last time. Here's Granada:



The Spanish are a playable vanilla civilization, but Granada is considered independent in Civilization 6. That's because as Andalusians, they have a lot of autonomy from Madrid. The red-brownish text means this is a militaristic city-state. Placing envoys here increases your production, but solely while you make military units. With encampments, this production bonus will rise even more.
The unique suzerain bonus of Granada is the ability to have your builders put down Alc?zar improvements. This is a fort in the style of the Moorish Muslims, dominant in that region for a very long time.
I think it's neccessary to have the Vikings DLC to have Granada appear in any game. We obviously have it.

For the rest of the turn, we have a couple of unspectacular troop movements, but we also pre-place a holy site for our capital. Yes, we haven't yet given up on that tiny bit of religion we want:



125 gold to buy that tile is no small amount of money, but we gladly pay it for a +3 faith adjacency. Since districts can also give each other adjacency, know that this will strengthen our campus and commercial hub once the holy site is finished. Of course, that will be for the future: We return to building a Shining Needle Swordsman as we have been.

Turn 81 - 875 B.C.

We're just racing towards discovery after discovery today:



Do I really have to tell you who William Shakespeare is? When you think of the playwright before all other medieval playwrights, the one who made it popular, you think of him. I do like that there are theories and speculations that someone as important as him might have just been a made-up personality, an alias for possibly even a queen. For such, it would have been viewed as "improper" to do something such as writing plays. Who can say 100% sure who he was so long after his life ended? The quote here was already used in Civilization 4 by the way. Back then, the late Leonard Nimoy read it to you.



Another wildcard policy. Great Writers are an important ingredient for a cultural victory, if you are going for that. I can guarantee to you now that this card is never going to occupy a slot of ours.



"Amphi" in amphitheatre simply describes the enveloping, half-circle shape of the audience range and stage of these classical theatres. Like the card we just had, you need these to attract Great Writers, but also to travel through the culture tree quicker. To build an amphitheatre you must first construct...



...the theatre square. Probably the one district that we will mostly neglect in favour of others. Cultural play goes well with building many world wonders, as it's otherwise difficult to gain adjacency bonuses for these. Great Artists and Great Musicians are important for raising your tourism, but you likely won't see them until the later eras. It takes long to get the buildings unlocked that can really attract these types of Great People.

For our culture cards, we basically revert what we changed on the previous civic completion: Survey gets thrown out, Agoge back in. We didn't make any other changes. We've actually got a decent amount of possibilities for the further development of our culture:



Warrior culture is a kind of culture, that's what I'm getting from this. Defensive tactics and military training look very tempting, so does recorded history. Due to it having a lower time to finish with 7 turns, we pick military training.

One of our units in the west, the archer, has arrived back at his homeland. We decide to reposition him to Blefuscu, which only takes 4 turns, thanks to our network of roads. His brother in arms, the spearman, is still blockaded by Mamizou's warrior.

Turn 82 - 850 B.C.

Stop...please stop. My inner granpa can't take all these new-fangled technologies. "The wheel?" Who ever heard of something like a round object being better at gaining speed?



Lorne David Lipowitz is the producer of Saturday Night Life. Can you imagine a world without people randomly shooting each other in ?Dear Sister? or Sean Connery roasting Alex Trebek? I can't.



The generally high base housing isn't the only reason why riverside settling is ideal. You need to do it just so that a water mill is available. The urgency in building one depends on how much wheat and rice is around a city, but even without them, the flat food and production bonuses aren't exactly bad to get for a relatively low build cost.



Heavy cavalry units tend to be more powerful but not as speedy as light cavalry. Chariots are not too shabby to rush out for an early-game war, for which you would try to research the wheel as quick as you can. By now they'd probably be pretty mediocre, not able to match our unique swordsmen in power.
Although these chariots were usually pulled by horses, you do not require the horse resource to make them. This is another funny little oddity of this game. What pulls the cart if you don't have horses? The variant unique unit of the Sumerians actually uses donkeys instead, so maybe those?

As our next technology, we pick something very unusual that seems like it only solves a small problem: Shipbuilding, for the next 9 turns. We do not have a use for a navy right now, but I really want our units to be able to embark. One reason is the unreachable goody hut in South America, another is that Mamizou is still pinning our spearman in the west and I'd like him to return and defend our lands. If he could embark, it would be possible to go around her unit.

By sheer chance, we learn of something slightly disappointing:



We are able to see this goody hut thanks to Hattusa's allegiance to us. We do not have any units near it, but Mamizou's formerly lost scout has undoubtedly spotted it. Seems like she has it secured and there's nothing we can do about it. There will be others meant for us, I'm sure.

Turn 83 ? 825 B.C.

Shining Needle Castle has trained a Shining Needle Swordsman, the third in our possession. As we let him leave town, we do a close-up. As close as the pixelation allows to not make it look completely horrible at least...



They look like Samurai and the each soldier wears a different helmet. I like the cone-shaped one of the southernmost. Torii Mototada's fanatic set from Nioh looks like that.
The Japanese are a playable vanilla civ in this game, but I think their Samurai unit uses a different graphic. I heard that the ones used for the Shining Needle Swordsman are an asset made by the modding community of Civilization, but I can't say for certain.
For variety's sake, Shining Needle Castle should go for a building or a district next, but I think not. We will construct a battering ram over the next 3 turns. There's a chance we may not need it anytime soon, but if we do and we end up not having one, that could be a wrench in our plans. What are those plans? Well, let's just say such a battering ram has little worth when you just think about defending...

Our bravest, probably most homesick scout approaches another goody hut:



Inside is something that doesn't really benefit our empire, but only its discoverer: "Your unit has earned experience". Expecting maybe gold or a technology, our scout got a free trip to an army boot camp I guess. The additional 20 EXP level him up to rank 2. We cash in the promotion this very turn. We have the choices of "Sentry" (Can see through woods and jungle) and "Guerilla" (Can move after attacking). We could also take Alpine if we don't value heading further down the promotion tree, but let's not. We don't plan to use our scout as a fighter, so the improved sight of Sentry it is.
When you reach rank 2 for any military unit, a special symbol appears:



You can give more experienced units a more prestigious name. The game will give you a random combination from one of its pre-set pool. "The Revolutionary Watch" is what they suggest to us. If you think these names are too silly or missing individuality, you can also just type in one of your own. A scout, finder of truths and his faithful canine companion can only have one name in my opinion:



By far the best name! That will be the one permanently displayed for them, or until someone kills them. Scouts often don't live too long.

Turn 84 - 800 B.C.

Lilliput can do everything our capital can do as well! Its very own Shining Needle Swordsman is finished and we move him east past our border...



Hmm what could be there that I would want to send a powerful military unit? What or who could it possibly be?  :3 Anyway, new build option for Lilliput. Being a very productive city, I see its future as somewhat of a military provider. We pre-place an encampment district on a hill 2 tiles northwest of it, but we make another archer for the next 3 turns now. Here's a screenshot to show exactly where we put the camp:



While we have little to fear from our dear friend Kaguya, we don't know what the future holds. The encampment will create sort of a buffer zone telling her not to amass troops next to Lilliput. That would be the city of ours she could attack with the least difficulties after all. About the need of a third archer: While our defenses aren't too terrible and it's not too much of an emergency to improve, there's an inspiration for owning exactly three archers. You'll learn which one it is once we do.
We also send the Shining Needle Swordsman that was already stationed in Lilliput eastward, the one down south from Shining Needle Castle also follows our eastern road towards Blefuscu. Lots of tiny Samurai on the march, aren't there?

On the calculation of someone else's turn, this message pops up:



Drat, this means someone either has more envoys there or just as many as we do. When multiple civilizations are tied for first place on a city-state, no one gets a suzerain status. The higher-ups are just too undecided on who to cuddle with, so they stay neutral to everyone. The screen for city-states says that Hattusa currently has no suzerain, so I'm thinking Mamizou must have tied with us for 3 envoys each.

As for where those swordsmen are marching to: You will find out in the next update, although I won't guarantee that they'll do more than just get into the right formation for what we're planning. Bis bald!

[Gesh86]

Update nr. 18 - All the swords we're carrying? Oh, those are just props

Turn 85 - 775 B.C.

Last time, we bolstered our military might considerably. We continue with that in so far that we set up the archer we sent to Blefuscu as a defender and dismiss the swordsman that was already there towards the north. Marked on the screenshot are the positions of all our little fighters at the end of this turn:



All four of them have been deployed out of their cities and seem to be ready to meet up somewhere. Where? Hmm...well, we'll see later.

Turn 86 - 750 B.C.

The battering ram has been constructed in our capital. Like the majority of units, it has 2 movement points, which it will use to go in pursuit of our two swordsmen east of Lilliput. It should catch up soon if we let it. Before we choose a new build option, I got really uncertain about further researching the military training civic. It currently has two turns worth of culture left. It is still unboosted, we've unfortunately developed it a little past the halfway point. Rather than losing all chances to get this eureka, we switch our focus to recorded history and the 12 turns that one will take.
Enough getting sidetracked. We need a new build option in Shining Needle Castle. Many things would be helpful at this point, but most of all, I feel like we're behind with the number of cities we have. It feels like it's been a long time since Blefuscu was made and I see two spots where a city would be vital: One next to Yosemite and another to the south where there's cocoa and truffles. The settler will be born in 9 turns.

During this turn, I was very impressed by what Mamizou was doing, but only briefly before I double-checked:



I assumed Mamizou had made a horseman, a classical era cavalry unit that is only slightly weaker than a swordsman. When we hovered over, it said "Barbarian Horseman". See, barbarians can get riders much earlier than the players do and these will actually be much weaker than the player-built horsemen unlocked at the horseback riding technology. The barbarian horseman is about equal in his strength as a warrior.
Mamizou and the Tanuki have a special ability that allows them to build barbarian units and even other civilizations' unique units. Which of these they get is determined by a random chance. But oh, why would we care what units our fuzzy neighbour has? We won't get into a conflict, right?...Right?  :3

Turn 87 - 725 B.C.

We haven't had an inspiration for a while, have we? This turn greets us with one:



We get this from having three archers in the field, I've already foreshadowed towards it in the last update. You'll likely wonder: "What does machinery have to do with archers?" Simple, it's about modernizing bows. What is the evolution of a bow and requires a more intricate construction? The crossbow of course. Machinery is a medieval technology and mostly grants you the ability to make the next more powerful ranged unit: The crossbowman. I'm already looking forward to upgrading into those.

Lilliput sends the newly trained archer south to our currently unprotected capital. I would have loved to start work on its encampment, but alas, I noticed the housing problem it had. 5 out of 6 housing used means it's creating considerably less food than it could. A builder to make farms could be an idea, but we're taking a quicker route: 5 turns to make a granary. That would raise the housing cap to 8 and normalize it for a while there.

It is looking just as grim with Blefuscu when it comes to housing. They use up all 6 of their current limit. It would be logical to also make a granary here, but the difference is that this city just finished a builder. He's going to put some farms down in the vicinity, raising the available housing that way. He immediately starts by expending his first charge one tile west of the city. All the while, Blefuscu tries to get its first district, a campus. It'll be finished in 17 turns, but will also give a boost to the recorded history civic as a nice bonus. We needed at least one city to build another campus some time soon, and it's this one.

Turn 88 - 700 B.C.

I'll definitely give you another status report of our troops when everyone has moved this turn. Aya and Momiji (yeah, that's what we will address our most experienced scout as now) are currently wading through the swampy pantanal. I don't think they can appreciate its biotope as much as Ab'S?ber did. But they make the trek anyway to get to a goody hut:



They won't be able to reach it this turn unfortunately, but its collection is still somewhat imminent. The newest builder puts down a second farm on the tile northwest of Blefuscu. With his last charge, I think we might be sending him to Lilliput to improve the other horse resource. Soooo...about our soldiers:



At the Mississippi, our swordsmen are already forming a three-division-line. If you remember the Shining Needle Swordsman's ability, vicinity to each other gives them huge bonuses. The one further east is still a bit of a loner, but I'm sure we'll be able to remedy that at some point and link him up. This screenshot also shows us that Mamizou hasn't been lazy in recruiting soldiers: 2 budget horsemen and an archer are within sight range. It's good to be informed about the minimum of strength your neighbours have. You know, for reasons. It's not visible here, but another archer of hers is overlooking the western flank of Lilliput and a warrior is still not budging for our spearman in Baja California. A troll until the end, that Mamizou.

Also a trader by profession it seems. Mamizou makes us an offer as her turn comes:



Our excess sugar and the right for her armies to walk through our lands in exchange for cotton and 1 coin per turn (30 coins over the duration of the trade in total). This would not be a bad deal. I might negotiate the opening of our borders for somewhat more than a small amount of gold, but generally, trading one luxury for another luxury is considered a very fair offer. It is possible to take away items and add others when the AI approaches you with a deal, you don't have to take it the way they first put it on the table. However, I have the feeling that we don't want to give Mamizou anything at all momentarily. I've got a hunch that events will take place that would nullify any agreements we have, so we kindly refuse Ms. Futatsuiwa. She responds: "I must say, I'm a bit disappointed." Were it Kaguya, we might be interested.

Turn 89 - 675 B.C.

We received another message that someone was defeated. Perhaps a city-state again? Actually, let's check the score table for the "Domination Victory":



It turns out, someone has conquered a foreign capital and not just that. One of the seven Touhous taking part in our campaign has indeed been wiped out completely before we ever got to meet them. I'm glad we're not sharing a continent with that warmonger. Who says we wouldn't have been the target?

Oh Hattusa, why do you do this to me?



Just so you know, city-state units cannot collect goody huts for their motherland, but they sure can thoughtlessly step on them to keep others from claiming the spoils. Ignore the combat prediction, of course we're not going to do anything against them. We're just going to wait another turn until they've hopefully moved.
None of our military units in North America change their position, we're waiting for the battering ram to catch up to the swordsman-trio. That should happen on the next turn.

Turn 90 - 650 B.C.

Our battering ram moves on the same tile as the central swordsman of the trio and is linked up with a click on the escort command. Like settlers and builder, you don't want support units to ever be unprotected when danger's afoot. In the south...



The currently unnamed scout has made his way down to the lonely island with a goody hut. Notice that shipbuilding is but a single turn away, that's when he'll be able to embark. He should reach his prize in exactly 2 turns then. Interestingly, I couldn't find this tiny island anywhere on my globe and therefore don't know what to really call it. I wish I knew. As for the more experienced scout:



Aya and Momiji teleport villagers all the way across the continent to their new homes, where they'll help our cause. The closer city in this case was actually Blefuscu, which isn't the most positive as it already had housing troubles. Shining Needle Castle would have had more space. Blefuscu is at 7 population points now.
I never mentioned that Brazil has a lot of bananas. Bananas have been luxuries in Civ 4, but became a bonus resource in 5 and stayed that way. They help a lot with growing food, but overall they're not quite as effective as wheat and rice. The biggest difference should be that they do not have any synergies with water mills, but they also need plantations to be improved rather than farms. Real bananas I can't stand nowadays. It's so often that you freshly open them and they have black spots on the inside. Supposedly a wide-spreading banana fungus. Maybe that's why they lost their luxury-status?

Turn 91 - 625 B.C.

We get a new technology. During the last turn, some of Mamizou's units started embarking, so I think they just got it as well:



There are several Thomas Gibbonses this quote could be attributed to, but I think the one it belongs to must have been the 19th century politician and steamboat owner who has no wikipedia page. A search got me no certainty.



The long destroyed Colossus has been a returning wonder in Civilization and has always had something to do with trade, seafaring and/or money. It is a good wonder to make, but we would need to make a harbor. We do not even know how to make harbors right now!



A quadrireme describes a warship with four oars on each flank, the way I understand it. This is a ranged ship attacking with a reach of 1 tile, view it like a slinger on water. The problem with quadriremes and early naval warfare in this game is that when shooting a coastal city with them, you can only damage it with as many ships simultaneously as the city has coastal openings next to it. In the worst case, this may even just be a single tile. The issue lessens in the later era thanks to ships gaining a longer shooting range.
Like galleys, the quadrireme does not yet allow us to sail the oceans of the world and discover Europe, Africa, Australia or East Asia. That will have to wait.



This is what we really wanted. Embarkation can be risky, but could help us travel quicker if the terrain on land is unfavourable. Maybe it'll finally enable us to rescue our spearman in the west?

I only wanted to cover the new technology of turn 91 this update, the rest of it has to be in the next one. My reasoning: This is going to be the one, most important turn of the Let's Play yet I assure you. A lot of you could see miles away what was coming, for the rest it's going to be quite a shock. Look forward to it!

[niektory]

Looking forward to the

Spoiler:

tea party at Mamizou's

!

[CyberAngel]

Looks like our brave little swordsmen

Spoiler:

will be wearing coonskin caps real soon!

[AzyWng]

While I'm not too big into 4X games, I'm gonna give this LP a read...

Sometime...
Soon... I promise.

[Gesh86]

Looking forward to the

Spoiler:

tea party at Mamizou's

!

Looks like our brave little swordsmen

Spoiler:

will be wearing coonskin caps real soon!

No way the just and true Kobito would ever disturb the peace. Our evil twins have taken control and are responsible for eveything that happens at this point 

While I'm not too big into 4X games, I'm gonna give this LP a read...

Sometime...
Soon... I promise.

I get you. SSLPs are very daunting, even just for the consumer. I've read far less to the end than I wish I had.

Update nr. 19 - Ok, we lied in those last two updates

Turn 91 - 625 B.C.

Last time, we did not stop at the end of a turn, but at its very beginning. We had not even chosen a new tech, so we start thinking now. There are a bunch of good options, among them cartography. We could indeed start the age of discovery and venture onto the oceans, but as scientifically underdeveloped as we are, it would take 23 turns. Let's not do that for now. Horseback riding is a leftover we should be picking up. It'll only take 3 turns.

At this moment, it suddenly hit me that a change of government is going to be appropriate. We switch our civic development from recorded history to military training, which has been mostly finished except for its final 2 turns. This wasn't planned ahead by me, but it was quite fortunate for us. If you want to be flexible for all eventualities, it's smart to keep a civic lying around you can pick up in a few or even one turn. That way, you can change governments and civic cards on short notice if you need to.

I mentioned something big was going to happen and it's finally here. First we contact Kaguya, and suggest the most despicable of all trade items:



I hate when Joint Wars are declared against me. It happens a lot. But there are times where I'm the one declaring and that is a lot more pleasant. When you click the Joint War, the game forces you to pick a target both you and the addressed know. "Mamizou Futatsuiwa" is the only option. We negotiate a little back and forth with Kaguya and here's a setup that she would agree to:



Just asking her out to a war wouldn't have worked. She wanted something on top, so we gave her sweet tooth some sugar and she gave out the pocket change of 35 gold. We accept the deal...



This is the obligatory "are you sure you want to be an asshole?" warning message. A joint war counts as a formal war and is seen as less heinous by other powers than a surprise war. The difference between a regular formal war is that the target needn't have been denounced by or have denounced you from their side at least five turns ago. It's not uncommon that people declare joint wars that have good opinions of each other and the ensuing diplomatic randomness is a typical point of critique against Civ 6. We click to confirm and Kaguya responds "excited!" A sound effect like a sword pulled quickly from its sheath is heard. Know what this means?

This means War!

You know, our army was already too big to use only for defense. There's little sense in just having our soldiers standing around, waiting and getting paid for nothing. Besides, when your unique unit is the most advanced to use, your civilization tends to be at its strongest military-wise. We don't want to waste such an opportunity.



As always, Wakasagihime has some sharp fish ears. Mamizou's relationship symbol has changed to red with two swords crossed on top. This means all of her units are now hostile. Once started, a war must run at least 10 turns until a peace treaty is even possible to negotiate. Let's begin:



All of Mamizou's units that were roaming around our borders believing they were next to someone docile are now in a predicament. Since we have ranged units in all cities, none of them are defenseless. The embarked horseman takes 43 damage, the embarkation made him a good deal more vulnerable.



Each of our three west-wing swordsmen advanced 1 tile northeast onto the plains. Their goal is New York, which will take a little longer to reach due to the region being full of forests. We had the option of attacking the marked archer to the south, but I think it was more important to get a move on. He can't both give chase and fire in the next turn, so I'm not too worried about having him in the back of our army.



Our spearman in the west will try to slip back into the lands owned by us. Poor guy, it was disadvantagous that he was stuck in no man's land for so long. Yet it would have been ridiculous to delay the war just for him. The embarked warrior of Mamizou could move onto his tile and attack, but the fact that he would do this from the sea onto land would cost him a lot of combat strength.
A few troops move, but Mamizou initiates no combat in her action phase.

Turn 92 - 600 B.C.

We start this one with what might be the first "misclick" of the campaign:



I sent the archer on the tile with the sugar thinking we'd still have a movement point left to fire at the barbarian horseman, but I was wrong. I think the tile might have still counted as marsh, taking 2 movement points. Or was it on a hill? Can the sugar resources even appear on a hill? No matter, the lesson to learn is that when in doubt, it helps to hover over a tile, wait for the tool tip to appear and see what the terrain is. Hopefully the horseman won't use this opportunity to retaliate.

In this time of war, the battles are what counts. We're going to keep information about our build options to a slim, pragmatic minimum.. Lilliput's granary was finished, making lots of room for housing. We start working on the pre-placed encampment, 11 turns.

Someone's in trouble:



This is a situation where any bravery would be foolhardy. Our isolated spearman is facing a warrior backed up by an archer. The confrontation, if accepted, would even be hopeless if he were just up against the warrior. Remember, rock beats scissors. There's the idea of trying to stall these two units through the spearman's sacrifice, but no thank you. Everyone's far away from the main battlefield, these two units of Mamizou will likely not play a factor in the war.
Saying it simply: The spearman will FLEE FOR HIS LIFE! We move him onto the hill in the southwest. The most promising idea should be to embark into the pacific and somehow lose our enemies.



That's how everyone's supposed to march: The west-wing of our swordsmen advanced again and the single, eastmost one moves northwest to build a complete chain with his companions. The fake New York the Tanuki have made at the place where there's not even real New York has a population of 5 and strength value of 22. That's relatively low. The typical strength of your cities depends on the most powerful unit you've ever constructed in your empire. Mamizou doesn't seem to have anything too powerful, but a larger amount of her units have been revealed in our sight range than I had expected: 2 barbarian horsemen and an archer. It is some kind of defense at the very least...

One of our scouts throws himself onto the lonely goody hut of the unknown South American island. It was 40 gold, some pocket money isn't too bad.
During Mamizou's turn, our spearman gets fired at by her archer for 31 damage. It was to be expected, I could see him still being in firing range. Funny that it was a barrage from the mainland over water, just in the same manner as we softened up the barbarian camp of that corner many turns ago.

Turn 93 - 575 B.C.

Yes, please let us modify our culture. It's not even important what we got:



John Gay has a name that I would make fun of and feel oh so clever and proud about it, were I ten years old. I'm not. He was an English poet and playwright of the 18th century. I've seen the quote also being attributed to Benjamin Franklin. From the looks of it, that last one is a misconception.



Flat-out conquest isn't the only reason you might want to fight a war. Assume yourselves more as bandits and pillage a plantation for example, you'll generate a considerable amount of gold.



This card would help Lilliput right now, but I'd say it's only really worth equipping if you time it so that several cities create encampment-related projects at the same time. It can be a boon a good while before a war starts, if you want the units you build later to not just be plentiful, but of good quality.

Anyway, here's why we wanted to be able to change civics early in our conflict:



We're throwing out our Roman emperor and replacing him with a Spartan council. That, or perhaps the Japanese Samurai caste could be considered an oligarchy, a "reign of the few". While we are losing a military policy slot, the +4 combat strength and the quicker experience gain makes this government much more suited for being at war than autocracy.
Our units will be stronger now. Mamizou I think also reigns in a oligarchy right now as Wakasagihime once told us, so our bonuses cancel each other out. Going equal is still better than being at a natural disadvantage.
Our policy cards have to change due to the different layout of slots. Conscription, Urban Planning and Revelation stay, but Agoge has to move for the arguably less valuable Charismatic Leader. We set our civic to Defensive Tactics, unboosted and an expensive one with 11 turns.

Perfecting our military tactics has earned us an envoy to send to Hattusa, and once we do...



We become suerain and automatically pull them into the war. It's technically a 3 on 1 now. The Hattusans will not turn any tides, but I think I saw a scout of Mamizou bumbling about down there. He's now up to be hunted by them.

Our archer at Blefuscu was approached by a barbarian horseman of Mamizou, but not attacked. We retreat him back to the safety of the city and shoot from there: 45 points of damage, the enemy is in the red now:



More important than anything else: We're in attack range against New York now:



The calculation pits a combat strength of 23 to 44 in our favour. While the barbarian horseman inside the city will not take part in the fight itself, his presence gives the city itself a considerable passive bonus. I like that the game lists all those modifying factors, it makes the battle system very logical and understandable. We commence the siege and deal 61 damage to the city while taking only 15 in return. That's the power of the Shining Needle Swordsman for you!

At the very end of the turn, my eyes darted to our treasury and I thought it was time to take out 260 of those 456 gold we have and quick-purchase a trader in Shining Needle Castle. It was annoying me that we were still using only 1 of our 3 trade route slots, just not finding the time to build those traders anywhere. When we eventually set a route, we have to be careful of Mamizou's units: She may be able to destroy the caravan.

On the bake-danuki's turn, she did attack again: A greatly injured barbarian horseman was thrown onto our northermost swordsman. The horseman was completely crushed of course, but did deal 8 points of damage to us for his sacrifice.

Turn 94 - 550 B.C.

We can also get on horses now, and we don't even have to be called "barbarians" for it:



John Steinbeck was an American author and also a winner of Nobel- and Pulitzer prizes. I get a feeling the quote might be from his novella "The Red Pony".



The stable has much in common with the barracks, but only one of them can be built in an encampment. You will have to decide if that city owning the encampment should specialize in building infantry or cavalry and, unless you want to waste potential, stick to that specialization.



Horsemen are not only very powerful (almost as strong as our unique swordsmen) but also very swift with a movement score of 4. Churning these out is a strategy for dominating the classical era. They do get a lot worse in the following eras, as it takes very long to reach their next evolution.
We set our technology focus to the 23-turn-taking cartography, but before this one even ends, I spoil that we reconsider to the much quicker mathematics (8 turns).

Blefuscu's guarding archer has no one to shoot at this time and uses this short break to pick his promotion, Garrison, for +10 strength in a city center.

Shining Needle Castle has finished its settler and we now discover our pious side and start making the pre-placed holy site. 9 turns. While it might be smart during wartime to keep building units, they would take a long time to get into Mamizou's turf. Hopefully, the four swordsmen will be alright without further backup. I also feel like it's a little too dangerous right now to send out our settler anywhere, even if escorted. We're going to leave him in town until the coast is clear.
Meanwhile, Aya's and Momiji's heightened senses see another goody hut in South America. We should find out what was inside in another 2 turns. The trader we bought last turn gets a destination by the way, Shining Needle Castle -> Eientei, raking in 6 gold per turn. This trade route runs northward over the Great Plains and should be difficult to reach and destroy for Mamizou.

So finally, what's new at the siege?



Unit 2 advances on New York, dealing 83 damage and suffering 13. City hitpoints always start at 200 by the way and regenerate 20 each turn unless the city in question is completely surrounded by enemy units. Then a symbol will appear on it signifying that its cut off from outward supplies. Unit 3 follows up with their own attack for 73 damage and 11 onto themselves. Now New York has but a tiny sliver of resistance left and is looking as if struck by a natural disaster:



We could call ourselves a natural disaster if we want to. Unit 1 goes in, takes 12 points of damage and puts the city in our grasp. Cities will only be conquered if a melee unit reduces the hitpoints to 0. Archers, catapults or other ranged units can only reduce them to 1.



3 different districts needed to be in our empire to trigger this eureka, our commercial hubs didn't count double. Apart from already having a campus as well, the reason this happened now is because there was a holy site in false New York. We're currently its owner. Emphasis on "currently":



This window demands a decision whenever you take over a city. "Keep City" will make it one of your own, but the city will be in occupation mode as long as your war lasts. Occupied cities are in a state of martial law and will not grow. Furthermore, if you don't negotiate a so called "ceding" of the city when the war ends, it will still feel as a foreign city and create additional war weariness should you ever go to war with the original owner again.
"Raze City" is a very nuclear option. Pick this, and the conquered city will be immediately deleted, as if it never existed in the first place. In Civ 5, cities were only gradually razed and the razing process could be aborted at any point before the city vanished. Your opponent also had the chance to conquer it back before this happened. Capital cities cannot be raised, neither can city-states.
In this case, we raze bootleg New York to ashes! The idea behind this is that any city you keep, you kind of have to take responsibity for. It'll want some of our amenities shared and getting too large and bloated is bad for your whole empire. I don't think the placement of this one is too beneficial and while it would be decent as a base of operations for the current war, we shouldn't commit to keeping it. With a click, it is gone.
Razing a city will count as cruel and will create additional warmonger penalties, tarnishing your international reputation. Since Kaguya is our ally in this war, she should tolerate anything we do. I hope. We'll see.

No longer needing to help with city conquest, unit 4 steps on the tile to his northeast where the enemy builder is. He gets enslaved and is now under our control. He has but one charge left, yet that's better than nothing.



Ah, forgot to mention: City-states hand out one quest per era. You check on the city-state overview what they want you to do and if you comply, you gain a free envoy fixed to the respective city. Granada wanted us to build a holy site. Temporarily stealing the one from Mamizou was close enough to "building" I guess...

Within Mamizou's turn, our offense takes a bunch of chip damage. Unit 4 is first shot by an archer for 9 damage, then charged by horsemen for another 9. Those horsemen are punished with 84 points of damage by our automatic retaliation. Unit 1 also gets pelted by arrows from the north for 14 damage. Everyone's still fairly healthy after all that.
As you can see, the game gets really intricate when a conflict breaks out. There's so much micromanagement when you're commanding your troops and choosing your attacks. That's why we're stopping for today after only 4 very eventful turns. Next time, more of this carnage. Will Mamizou's capital hold?

[CyberAngel]

No way the just and true Kobito would ever disturb the peace. Our evil twins have taken control and are responsible for eveything that happens at this point 

So... Little Green Men, huh? Ancient Kobito myths will be interesting

[Gesh86]

So... Little Green Men, huh? Ancient Kobito myths will be interesting

Already developed through the civic of mysticism. Our scholars know they are totally real!  :3

Update nr. 20 - When did the Civilization 6 AI actually get somewhat decent?

Turn 95 - 525 B.C.

Last time, we dealt Mamizou a huge blow: It's a huge setback to completely lose a 5 population point city when you only have 3 in total and none of them are that much bigger. The frontline now looks like this:



Know that for the duration of this war, I will always keep referring to the numbers given to our Shining Needle Swordsmen in the most recent screenshot. It would otherwise be too difficult to describe what unit I mean at what time. Anyway, that's a lot more archers defending the Tanuki lands than I was ever expecting. This campaign might not be so one-sided as we thought. Unit 3 is the only one of ours able to promote this turn. We do, taking the Tortoise perk for additional cover from arrows, but only after having units 3 and 2 swap places. That is indeed possible to do in the same turn. Just tell one unit to move on the spot of the other. Both need enough movement points for it to work. That way, unit 3 won't be in the way with 0 movement points.
Unit 1 attacks the archer adjacent to it, who loses 76 hitpoints and only defends himself for 13 damage. Had we not needed to cross the river between those units, the result would have been even more in our favour. Next up, the builder we stole leaves the care of unit 4 and goes on the tile of unit 2. We do this because 2 is much less threatened than 4 and it would be a shame if Mamizou somehow regained her kidnapped builder. Unit 4 then goes onto the tile northwest of itself. We should rather deal with the enemies up north first, as there's too many in the east to quickly break through.

That's all the attacks we instigated this turn. Two minor things happened: At South America's eastern coast, we uncovere a tile with a new luxury resource, citrus:



Citrus is symbolized by an orange. You can imagine that it also encompasses other tropical fruits that are neither bananas nor oranges. Lemons, limes, grapefruits...I think I'm the only person in the world who somewhat likes grapefruits. It's unlikely we'll settle there anytime soon, but a city there could potentially get ships or units to Africa fairly quickly...



Our own, self-recruited builder did not run into trouble and can expend his last charge on another horse resource. Now any city could make horsemen, should we want some. That's however not the greatest significance of that screenshot: For Kaguya, the call to war came pretty suddenly, she did not have a force in the right place as we did. It's reassuring to see that she mustered at least something and is sending it east as our backup.

Damage we took during Mamizou's round was:

- Unit 1 was bombarded by an archer 2 tiles northeast of it for 10 damage, then charged at by the adjacent horseman for 11 damage, dealing a whopping 91 back to him.
- Unit 4 was bombarded by an archer 2 tiles east for 9 damage.

I think it's the least confusing if I summarize our enemy's actions in this format, as they might not always happen in a unit by unit order.

Turn 96 - 500 B.C.

Goddamn, when did that wily tanuki make this plethora of units? That is more than untypical...



Granted, her units are so much wimpier than ours, but still. This will not actually be the easy war I would have bet it would be. Destroying archers should be a priority, as horsemen are likely to shatter themselves onto us on their own for embarrassing combat results. Unit 1 destroys the damaged archer next to him and crosses the river. This only cost the little swordsman 9 hitpoints. He's at roughly 50% health now. Unit 4 leaps at the archer inhabiting the tile with the cotton, 60 damage for 14 in retaliation. Unit 3 has nothing better to do than targeting the horseman to its east for 64 damage and 16 in return. Unit 2 just treks 1 tile to the east, as not enough movement points are left to go after the third archer on the screenshot.

That's it for our offense again. Our experienced scout, Aya and Momiji, opens another goody hut so that another flock of villagers gets teleported to Blefuscu. The housing space is so low there now, a symbol indicating the city's crampedness has appeared on it.

The phase where we're the ones getting clobbered goes somewhat like this:

- Unit 1 endures ranged fire for 12 damage
- Unit 3 is shot by an archer for 15 damage, then some more join in for 14. Lastly, the horseman on the tile east of him charges and dies easily, but not without 12 points of damage dealt. This swordsman of ours was an attractive target, as the flat land he was on didn't give him any defensive bonuses.
- Unit 4 suffers some arrows for 9 damage, then is attacked over the river by a mostly intact horseman. The numbers are so against said horseman that he is instantly destroyed, hitting only for 9 damage.

Turn 97 - 475 B.C.

Oh boy, this is looking bad, really bad...



Many units are close to death, but we needn't despair just yet. Unit 2 for example is eligible for a promotion, taking Tortoise and feeling so much better after healing those 50 hitpoints. The rest will have to hold out a little longer and gain some more experience so that they can gain their own level ups. Unit 1 finishes off the injured archer to the northeast, it does so with 11 damage to itself. The very healthy Unit 3 takes the fight to the archer hiding in the silken woods. The damage dealt is 59 and 14 gets thrown back at it. Unit 4 simply holds its position, as always, it'll regenerate a little for keeping all his movements points.



Rather than helping with fending off our front, another enemy horseman has lost his way and ended up at Blefuscu. We shoot him for 38 damage, just a few hitpoints short of destroying him.



Our stalwart little spearman has made it: He sailed around Mexico and has left his pursuers behind. It's fairly certain he'll make it to the safety of Shining Needle Castle and unless you'll hear from me otherwise in the next few turns, you can assume he did.

Here comes the part we like least about these turns. What casualties did that sneaky Mamizou cause this time?

- See the archer behind Lake Erie? He shoots unit 1 for 15 damage, almost killing it. Ouch!
- Unit 2 gets punctured for 10 points of damage by the archer playing with the silkworms. The horseman just next to it enters the fray and is happy to deal 12 damage to our unit in exchange for 68 on himself.
- Unit 4 is shot somewhere from the east for 13 points of damage. After that, it also has to fend off the horseman to its immediate east. It inflict 66 points of damage to that attacker and suffers 13. A little later still, our swordsman is shot by another archer within Mamizou's border for 13 damage, bringing him extremely close to death, just like unit 1.

Turn 98 - 450 B.C.

Our troops are in absolutely dreadful shape now...



Luckily, the devotion of units 1 and 2 pays off: They are both allowed to take promotions and heal up through this. They already made it to the second rank so they can both take:



The pre-requisite of this promotion is Tortoise and it's not a bad one to pick. It's especially good in this case, as Mamizou indeed has a river at her capital that gives its southern flank additional cover. Not against those two anymore!

Unit 4 easily slays the archer to its east, taking only 9 damage in the process. Unit 3 makes similarly short work with the horseman right in front of it. Now the map looks more like this:



It's not looking so grim at all anymore! There are still some more enemy units we revealed, but if that is all that stands between us and conquering the capital, we might manage.

The opposing horseman that Blefuscu's archer attacked last turn used his own promotion to heal up. It helped him only a little, as he is still where he was last turn and is now shot again for 35 damage. He still healed for a net gain of 15, but it won't be enough to take another attack like that.

In her own action phase, Mamizou advances more archers into our sight range at her capital. Where did she get all of these?

- Unit 1 again gets a barrage from the other side of Lake Erie. Again, they sure have strong arms and bowstrings. These ones hurt for 12 damage.
- Unit 3 is shot by a whole three nearby archers! First goes for 11, then again for another 11 points of damage, and lastly, another 12. Have mercy!
- Unit 4 has it a little easier with only a horseman attacking it. We lose but 9 hitpoints, the horseman took a whole 79.

Turn 99 - 425 B.C.

Distracting us from the somewhat disastrous progression of our campaign is this technology:



"The human computer? Shakuntala Devi was from India and a mathematical genius, Guinness World Record holder and also an author. There's a lot of merit to her quote: Even in this very game, you've got numbers and decimals to our science, culture and gold gains. You may not think about it, but so much in life is indeed numbers.



The last act of The Last Crusade requires Indiana Jones to visit the Petra in Jordan. This is potentially a very powerful wonder. Cities that have the misfortune of having many desert tiles around them can end up pretty mediocre, if not bad. If they're the one getting the Petra, they'll be a powerhouse! You know, if we make a city near Yosemite, we should indeed blitz for the Petra if we can.



Embarked units and also ships get additional movement points at key technologies. Here's the first of these we encounter.

Understanding mathematics unlocks a lot of new technologies. Here's the shortlist:



We're nearing the end of the classical era. Some of those are medieval technologies, like cartography, military tactics and stirrups. I think apprenticeship might be as well? I'll have to double check. That very technology is what we're setting for now, likely not for its whole duration, as the inspiration should be obtainable.

Before we think about what to do with our swordsmen in foreign lands, another symbol has appeared above Blefuscu:



The red house shows our housing troubles, that's understandable, but the red circus tent means that we're also in negative amenities. The cause for this isn't primarily a lack of luxuries, but the accumulating war weariness. The Kobito's ability reduces the war weariness we receive, but it's still starting to show with currently a -3 to happiness, all concentrated on Blefuscu. However, we needn't expect insurgents unless this goes on for many more turns and war weariness heightens further.

So...the following screenshot made me quite annoyed, as I realized here we had to change our plans:



I thought four Shining Needle Swordsmen would surely be able to overrun a completely unprepared Mamizou. I really did. Looking at the 4 archers and 2 horsemen in front of us, as well as the poor condition our elite warriors have been reduced to, this cannot possibly work. If we continue to ram our units into the enemy, we're going to lose at least one each turn. We simply have to retreat and rather than keeping the war going, make a truce as soon as we're allowed. Turn 101 should be when the 10-turn countdown is up to make peace.

After our movement points are used up, the situation looks like this:



I'm foreseeing that unit 3 will be destroyed. Even if Mamizou's units from the east don't catch up, the archer to the west should deal the final blow. The AI has a mostly sensible bias to making moves with the best combat predictions, and attacking this highly wounded unit stationed in flat terrain should be a magnet to their attacks.

Knowing that the war should end soon, we link the settler in Shining Needle Castle to the garrisoned archer and move both westward. Maybe we'll be in time to settle at Yosemite before Kaguya does?

Mamizou has the stealthiest warrior under her command:



This enemy somehow made it past the borders of Lilliput without me noticing. Did I accidentally order the archer to fortify instead of setting him on alert? Better late than never, we shoot him for a mediocre 26 damage. Apparently, the oligarchy combat bonus doesn't take effect for ranged units, only for melee, anti-cavalry and both types of cavalry. Who knew?

And we knew it would happen: Mamizou sicks a barbarian horseman onto unit 3 and destroys it. Rest in peace...they depart with 57 damage to their killer.

That should do it for today. This must have been the least uplifting update yet. Our original plans have mostly failed. I think we should make peace, lick our wounds, build up very dedicatedly to a much more formidable army and try again soon. If so, that will be for another day. Until next time!

[CyberAngel]

Tortoise? Amphibian troops? Did you just hire Nitori and co into your army?

Also, holy crap, that amount of enemy units! What do you think, was Mami building them up all her turns, or spent all of her gold buying them, or what?

[Gesh86]

Tortoise? Amphibian troops? Did you just hire Nitori and co into your army?

Also, holy crap, that amount of enemy units! What do you think, was Mami building them up all her turns, or spent all of her gold buying them, or what?

You know, if we get another melee unit with exactly that constellation of perks to level 2, it will be named Nitori  :3. (The ones in this update had already gotten their titles before you posted)
The archer spam is likely a combination of both. They aren't too expensive to buy, and the average capital city should be able to produce archers in 3 turns each before the clock hits turn 100. Units of the mid- and end-game will never be this quick to build.

Update nr. 21 - Let's shake hands now so that I can destroy you at a later time

Turn 100 - 400 B.C.

Last time, we had to admit to the futility of this war. How is it looking over there now?



Unit 3 can hopefully lose the archer and horseman right behind it through the hills and forests. We can also see that Kaguya's archers have arrived. Or at least one of them. He's not unlikely to take care of the greatly damaged horseman two tiles east of himself. After we move each unit one tile southwest...



...the marked archer is revealed. Our forces may have been too bruised and battered to continue their siege, but that doesn't mean we can't inflict some more casualties on the way back. We may be able to overrun such an isolated unit.

The hostile warrior at Lilliput did not decide to pillage the pasture he was standing on last turn, as I would have bet he'd do. He instead decided to move onto the cattle pasture in the northeast of the sheep. This time, we hit him a little harder for 39 damage. If he's so stubborn to stay, the next turn could be his last.

Between turns, we see more units of Kaguya arriving and taking action in this war. Our ally and foe hit each other equally often through ranged attacks, but no units are destroyed. Mamizou's archer and horseman around unit 1 and 2 take promotions to heal up. Our own soldiers are not assaulted at all this round.

Turn 101 - 375 B.C.

This is the turn where Mamizou is technically open for talks. But first, how's the overall situation?



The warrior you see in the west apparently hoped to reach and destroy the pastures we made around our horses. We fire at him for a third time and completely wipe him out.
Before we do any more fighting, I noticed that two of our swordsmen, unit 1 and 2, were eligible for custom names. Remember, level 2 is when you can whip out your creativity.

   

I think these two names are appropriate for tiny swordsmen. I have heard that Youmu is supposed to be somewhat challenged in her height, the only thing tall about her would be her pride. And wasn't it just through Antinomy of Common Flowers that we're supposed to think of Tenshi as much, much younger? If she has the physique of a grade schooler, she should fit right in with the little Kobito.

The combat predictions of unit 1 against the adjacent archer foresees a major victory, but it might not be enough to destroy them completely. We still take the gamble and it was one worth taking: The archer is gone. Our swordsman takes 13 damage in return. Unit 2 and 3 head another tile southwest, the latter is now right next to another horseman. He is, until...



...we get rid of that one by a bombardment from within our city. The archer's Garrison promotion makes for really amazing combat odds here.
So we have used this turn to mop up three more units of Mamizou. We have in total lost 1, she on the other hand had to say goodbye to 10 or so. She will likely lose a few more due to Kaguya. With a razed city on her side as well, this would be a successful war on paper, but it doesn't feel like it to me. I actually hoped to also take her capital, then raze Washington and completely kick the bake-danuki out of the game. It just wasn't meant to be. Let's finally contact her for peace negotiations. You do this like you would make any other trade, except that the option to make peace is now a mandatory trade item:



This default deal would be a "white peace". If both sides were human players, this would probably be something sensible to agree upon. After all, the player on Mamizou's side would have understood that we're evacuating our troops. Unless the underdog defender mustered a strong offense in the meantime, both parties wouldn't be interested in keeping this war going. The computer however is a little more...gullible. Just because we have done so much better statistics-wise, Mamizou will be happy to agree to a somewhat unfair deal, to paying reparations on top. We barter a little, hoping for a moment that she would just give us control of Washington if threatened maybe, but that would be too bold. In the end, here's something that she's willing to part with:



Our bluffing is worth 104 gold, the total number of coins Mamizou currently has in her still growing treasury, and more importantly: The warm, fluffy furs of Ran Yakumo to cuddle ourselves into. We tried to extort furs as well as cotton, but she wouldn't have that. All in all, we haggled out some good riches here, our swordsman did not die in vain. Yet I still would have loved this war to be more successful. It might also be because more than even in my own games, I wanted to do well in this very first war of the Let's Play. But what's done is done. I'm confident we'll get our revenge in the future.
Mamizou says to the peace deal "Thank you, I think this will benefit each of us". Uh-huh. Don't any of you tell her that we totally ripped her off!

Turn 102 - 350 B.C.

Before we do anything of the usual sort, I want to show you the Great People tab:

   

The marked icon will open some statistics about how well everyone is doing in their recruitment of Great People. Remember, you're competing for these with all other civilizations! To make this race more interesting, notice that there are buyout options with gold and faith for all Great People. Don't assume you will get one of these just because you're far in the lead: Someone with a lower recruitment progress might have bunkered enough cash or prayers to take them from you at the last second. You can of course do the very same yourself.
Out of all of these, the Great Prophet is still the most interesting one right now. We are in the lead, and with the displayed 3 points per turn, we would snatch O No Yasumaro in a mere 18 turns. This might be a little too long, as our unknown competitor makes 3.5 points per turn now. Perhaps building a shrine in Shining Needle Castle's holy site would be an idea. Alternatively, we need to keep an eye on the possibility of a buyout. The fee for this gets cheaper the closer you are to recruitment.

Next up, the thought came to me that we will hit the medieval era very soon. Let's give ourselves a preview of its technologies:



We will most likely make the shift to the medieval times through the technology of military tactics. In fact, let's switch our technology focus from apprenticeship to just that right now! We should time the era transition so that we can achieve the culture bonus from Kobito's ability while on a very expensive civic, but more on that later. Machinery is one of the most attractive technologies to get at the moment, but we still need construction and engineering before it gets unlocked.

It would be unfair to look at medieval technologies and completely forget about the medieval civics:



I botched giving you a good overview at that point in time, this screenshot is actually from a later recording. Feudalism is one of the key civics of that era and will increase the effectiveness of your farms, leading to somewhat of a snowballing effect in your growth if you play it right. Divine Right is equally important, as it holds the quickest to reach of the Tier 2 governments.

Onto our build options: Shining Needle Castle and Lilliput have finished their last projects (a holy site and an encampment). I mentioned that a shrine would be good but honestly, we need to take care of Mamizou. The longer the game goes on, the more likely she is to recover from the strike we last delivered. We need to work on building that army and we need to do it now. Both cities will create a Shining Needle Swordsman, our capital can do it in 4 turns, Lilliput takes 5.

While adventuring in Argentina, Aya and Momiji spot a tall, breathtakingly imposing structure:



Torres del Paine I believe means something along the lines of "comb of towers". The national park of the same name in Chile has indeed almost comical mountains that shoot up from the ground like the teeth of a comb. This natural wonder is among the strongest in the game, as it doubles yields of adjacent tiles. This can lead to a truly mighty city if built nearby.
Howard Hillman writes books on travelling, wine and cooking. The Torres del Paine is a big magnet for tourists, it's no wonder he'd have featured it.

Ah, the first turn where out swordsmen are not getting beaten up. All of them stay where they are, regenerating the high amount of hitpoints they've lost. We let the captured builder out of the swordsman's escort formation and send him into the borders of Blefuscu.

Turn 103 - 325 B.C.

Aya and Momiji are on a roll today! They discover another goody hut, nestled between the icy mountains of southern Chile, as remote as you can be. Closer towards home, one of our traders has made his laps and would like new orders:



We were in a way waiting for this, but it would have been ever better if it came in, say, 5 turns or so. One of the available trade routes is highlighted: That's the previous one. It's a nice function of convenience: If you tend to priorize trade routes with a lot of yields, it enables you to quickly repeat the same ones you have been using. Although, in this case we don't want to copy the same plan for our trader, nor pick the one with the better yields to Lilliput. Nope, we want to make a route to a place that at this moment doesn't exist. Just like all other units, traders have the option to wait and do nothing on their turn. That's what we pick. It will ask us for a route each turn, and I'll get back to you when we don't postpone sending out our trader anymore.

Just like on the previous turn, our swordsmen needn't do anything else but treat their injured. They also have no reason to fully retreat back to our borders, as I've got a feeling they'll be needed at roughly the same place they once fought at.
Our builder at Blefuscu embarks onto the tile with the whales. Now why would he do that. You'll see in a bit.



In the north, we see several archer regiments of Kaguya blasting a barbarian horseman of Mamizou, eventually destroying him. That puts a smile on my face. Any units destroyed on her side we will not have to deal with in the future. People have criticized Joint Wars in so far as that the allies called in never have an army in place and tend to stay passive until they make peace, but Kaguya here is actually helping. It was absolutely worth bribing the princess.

Turn 104 - 300 B.C.

We're in about that age where classical cultures like the Persians, the Macedonians and the Romans really became relevant and powerful. Given how our campaign has gone so far, we shouldn't be so bold as to say we're on their level, but we're getting there.
What none of these mighty civilizations did was getting to a point so far south on the globe:



The dwellers of that village were likely happy to leave their life in the tundra behind. They settled in Shining Needle Castle, which is fine by me. It's up to 9 population points now, not a bad score. Reaching 10 will trigger a eureka, but because of suboptimal housing it's currently 42 turns off from there.

Over the last few turns, we've also been sending our newest settler towards Yosemite. It's really looking like we're going to be the first ones to make a city there...



...if we can navigate around Kaguya's many troops that is. We have no reason to believe she will become hostile of course, it's just that they're blocking our path a little. Hopefully this won't be too bad of a traffic jam.

The turn ends without any AI combat. In fact, we can assume the next few turns will be some of peace and quiet:



Yeah, this was to be expected at some point. The AI doesn't like to have wars drag on. Those two would've just uselessly shattered units against one another and produced war weariness without anyone coming out as a real victor. With all evidence of this brutal war disappearing, we shall stop for today. Next time, we will make a flying island and rule over the realm below. Bis bald!

[CyberAngel]

Sheesh, even Kagu has a boatload of archers. Did Eirin give Tewi's bunnies some express ranged combat lessons?

[Gesh86]

Sheesh, even Kagu has a boatload of archers. Did Eirin give Tewi's bunnies some express ranged combat lessons?

They learn from the best  :3. There's something called a "leader bias" in Civ, which makes the AI more likely to build certain things. You cannot learn of them in the game regularly, but modders can fiddle with them. KCucumber probably gave those leaders a very high bias for ranged units.

Update nr. 22 - We're going medieval on their asses

Turn 105 - 275 B.C.

Last time, we buried the hatchet so that we can one day dig it back out and throw it at our neighbour when she isn't looking. This turn is off to a great start:



We've already developed this civic a little and the eureka gets most of it done. It was awarded for having two campus districts in our empire, the second being the one Blefuscu just finished. But the good news don't stop coming...



We had Adam Smith already. By all means a man clever enough to use for several quotes. Civ players who have neglected defense to get a wonder, the next wonder, and also the one over there and have paid for these decisions will agree with his wisdom.



A ranged city strike is only possible if you have built walls, but even without them this policy will make your cities a little tougher to crack.



"Limes" is latin and means "border", typically used to describe the extent of the Roman empire's conquest. I really like this card. I usually wait for a good opportunity to switch it in and once I do, put the production of every single city on ancient walls. Maybe such a chance will happen soon?



Halicarnassus was a city of the old greeks at what is today the southwest of Turkey. It is another of the seven wonders of the world and was already featured in Civilization 5 where it had a completely different effect: You would gain gold through it whenever you used a Great Person's ability. This time, it's more about utilizing the Great Persons themselves, Great Admirals in particular. We are a harborless empire, it's therefore not very interesting so far, but can be decent.

No changes are made to our policies, we see no particular need at the moment. As for the next civic, the recently boosted Recorded History needs just one turn of investment. Yes, please.

As for who boosted that civic: Blefuscu has been clamoring over their housing problems for long enough. They need to have a granary and they'll get it in 9 turns. Hopefully they won't feed themselves plump so that even less Kobito can fit into their houses...
Something else is up at Blefuscu. We sent our enslaved Tanuki builder down there and he's now on a very specific, unclaimed tile:



We purchase said tile for 140 of our 522 gold pieces and expend his last charge to send fishing boats after those yummy, yummy crabs...



You get inspired on how to achieve celestial navigation by improving your second sea-resource. As a reminder, our first were the whales, also at Blefuscu. This isn't an especially expensive tech, but it's still nice to get it a little quicker.

In case you forgot about city-states: We've also gained another freely distributable envoy this turn. We decide to send it to Granada and become its suzerain as well. Now both city-states of South America have become our lapdog-I mean respected friends! Dearest of friends of course...

Turn 106 - 250 B.C.



I think one day, people will decide to agree upon that the Tanuki were villains and that it was just of us to kick them out of North America.
There shouldn't be anyone who hasn't yet heard of Napoleon Bonaparte. Despite causing something barely short of a world war, he is mostly considered positive nowadays, as he did reform and not just subjugate those he conquered. Napoleon was also a playable leader for the French in most of the Civilization games. Our sixth installment here instead chose Catherine de' Medici for them, possibly one of the...least appreciated decisions of Firaxis to say it carefully.



This is a worthwhile policy for science powerhouses with many campuses. At our current situation, I would estimate an increase of 3 or 4 points of science per turn, were we to equip it. I don't think it's quite worth it, but we should at least keep it in mind.



The Great Library of Alexandria was the first really large storage of the world's knowledge and a powerful world wonder especially in Civilization 5. It was the absolute meta behaviour to rush towards building it. And I mean as fast as you can, squeezing every turn to the maximum. In Civilization 6, it's become an almost shockingly weak wonder. At the time you can build it, you should be deep into the classical era, meaning you won't be getting many eurekas from it once it's completed. The secondary effects are also very meager.

As before, we still have no real reason to change policies. Replacing Urban Planning through Natural Philosophy is an option, but we're setting production over science for now. The next civic we pick is Feudalism with a total time of 17 turns, but this is a very temporary one. We won't develop it to the end yet.

Hardworking Shining Needle Castle has finished a Shining Needle Swordsman and he gets sent on the road to Blefuscu. If the one being drilled in Lilliput finishes, we'd have five of them on the field. Quite a few...and not nearly enough. We make another one in our capital right away, 4 turns.

There's little else to say about this turn, except that all the units damaged in the war are now at full health again. Like I once said, they will not return home, but stay in the unpopulated wilderness between our lands and Mamizou's.

Turn 107 - 225 B.C.

The boot camp at Lilliput is also over, the resulting Shining Needle Swordsman is sent east. In a city with an encampment, new units appear in that district unless it's occupied by a unit already, which it is by our garrisoned archer. The new unit appearing in the city center saves us a turn of walking. I think we are about to have enough swordsmen. Should we make a building instead now? Nope, just a different unit that is a little more versatile: A horseman! They're also a little quicker to produce, 4 turns.

I've got to admit, I was very worried for the last few turns that an Eientei city would crop up at Yosemite:



I do not see a settler of Kaguya anywhere, no one will take this away from us! I've marked the desired settling spot with a map pin. It is within 3 tiles of all silver resources, Crater Lake, Yosemite of course and even some iron. Not of the cotton on the west coast unfortunately, but I think we'll take that resource from someone else sooner or later.

Just before we end the turn, we switch our civic development from Feudalism to the 13 turns of Naval Tradition. It might be confusing how often we're changing our focus here, but we have a plan. And you're about to see what it is.

Turn 108 - 200 B.C.

   

The first medieval technology is in our possession and transfers to an era some will say was worse to live in than the classical one. We won't have such a dark age, as we do not play with the expansion releasing in a day or so. The quote here could be from another military man, couldn't it? Machgielis Euwe was not that, but a chess grandmaster and in his own way, a general for his pieces. Notice that the symbol for this technology is also a chesspiece.



The Huey Teocalli was the main temple building of the Aztec City of Tenochtitlan. The Aztecs under Montezuma are by the way playable in this game. What we have here is the one wonder to immensely power up lakeside cities. If we were to put down a settler at the Great Lakes, we would need to build it there, definitely. The requirement of being built in both a lake and on coast just means you can't have it in the center of a lake with no land access.



The pikeman is the next evolution of the spearman and would be the unit with the highest combat strength we could make right now. Know that these will still be weaker than swordsmen due to their vulnerability to them, but anything on horse will shatter against these guys. Unfortunately, the pikeman will take ages to evolve into the next tier of anti-cavalry unit, which is why this type of unit is so ungrateful to produce in large numbers.

Would you look at that...



The era transition we just had gave Naval Tradition 7 turns worth of culture thanks to the Kobitos' ability. I didn't want to have a civic in development that was too close to being finished, so that none of that culture bomb would go to waste. Well timed, I would say.
Our treasury also shot up by 420 gold to now 843 for the same reason. We should buy something with all that money. Maybe as the turn goes on. For now, a new scientific focus is needed. Military Tactics was a dead-end technology, so nothing really new has appeared. We switch back to the already started apprenticeship, 7 turns are left. We will likely change again soon and get the technology through its eureka when it's done halfway. We also take our culture focus off from Naval Tradition later in the turn and put it to a very religious civic: Theology for 8 turns.

All that aside, the most long-awaited event of this turn must have been the settling of our new city in Nevada/Utah. We click the usual button and there appears...



...Laputa. A very naughty word in Spanish, but it doesn't have anything to do with that! Once again, BoringDuck references Gulliver's Travels. Laputa is the name of a flying island soaring above the realm of Balnibarbi. The king there considers himself the ruler of the lands below. The spot we chose doesn't look too fertile at first, but know that the tile east of the city center is floodplains, giving +3 to food. The very first thing we do in Laputa is quick-purchasing a builder for 280 gold. This is something I do very often. When I don't find the time to produce a builder to quickly send to a fresh city shortly after it's placed, I tend to get one in the new city itself. It's very recommended to get a few basic tile improvements done for a city as soon as you can. Laputa's production is then set to the typically first build option: A monument for 15 turns. We've got to expand onto those natural wonders as soon as we can!

   

We did have a spearman sitting in Shining Needle Castle and through our newest technology, have transformed him into a pikeman. Apart from a gain of 16 combat strength, he also instantly grew a rugged beard. Boys become men...



Training (or just upgrading into a pikeman) was also a city-state quest for Granada. You can check which ones you have, but I didn't and it was another pleasant surprise. We have 4 envoys at Granada now and are even more distinctly fortified as its suzerain. The upgrading brought us down to 353 gold by the way.

I think Laputa needs a little more done for it than just that instant builder. We need a road connection to it and we need it fast:



That's what we were saving that trader for. Our young city is somewhat isolated from the rest of our empire due to mountains, hills and rivers now, but that will change quickly.

Last but not least: Troop movement. More Shining Needle Swordsmen are on their way to the original surviving three at the eastern front. I'll show you what it looks like once everyone's properly gathered there. Aya and Momiji...



...are at the coast of Brazil. I think that's roughly where Rio de Janeiro would be! We set the Tengu duo on "Alert" on that very spot. They'll actually stay idle right there from now on, distracting themselves with the Carnival I guess. When the time is right and we have a certain technology, we'll wake them up for a new adventure.

Turn 109 - 175 B.C.

What a sad day. We've lost a friend:



Our declaration of friendship to Kaguya happened exactly 30 turns ago and that's how long they will always last. No worries, it is possible to renew them and we shall try now. It should work, looking at this:



The +5 relationship was the main reason I invited her into the previous war by the way. If we hadn't, there would also be negatives for declaring the war on Mamizou and razing fake New York. Because Kaguya was an accomplice in that war, she completely forgave us our sins. That's how you make war without diplomatic repercussions in this game.
We ask the big question of friendship again. Do you like us, princess? (Purely platonically of course)



Rejected! The prom queen laughs at us. KCucumber uses "haha" as negative responses or generally negative diplomatic events. Another example would be denunciations. I think it might actually be a bug that declarations of friendship are never accepted on the turn the old one expires. In my experience, it is not unlikely Kaguya will ask us for friendship on her turn.

There's but a small amount of relevant unit movement in turn 109. Rather than having our new and mighty pikeman stay in Shining Needle Castle as a garrison, we also send him east to fight at some point. The new builder walks onto the tile with sheep northwest of Laputa. A pasture is always a great early choice. He'll put it down next turn.

It's as if I predicted it. Kaguya must have been in a strange mood. Now she tells us that she likes us:



"I agree"...so to what do you agree to?
The answers give us context to this very confusing diplomacy line. Kaguya is asking from her side to make a declaration of friendship with us. The first option accepts, the second and third don't. I'm honestly unsure if there is any difference between option 2 and 3. The second sounds a little as if to add a "please don't ask me again anytime soon". We are very grateful to accept of course and become friendzoned once again. She replies "Wonderful".

Just like Kaguya came to us in delight, we have a very grumpy Mamizou knocking on our door:

   

Argh, we've been found out. How careless. The screenshot on the right is for context: We positioned the three veteran swordsmen two tiles away from Mamizou's borders. This was supposed to be their position to wait for the rest of our army. When enough of your units are in the sight range of another civilization's borders, they might call you out on it and demand an explanation. The first option "my troops are merely passing by" is to actually make a binding promise to move your units away. This promise will be broken either by following with a declaration of war or simple inaction: Don't actually move the units for a few turns like you said you would and you will also be seen as a liar. The second option is self-explanatory: You'll instantly have that war you were likely wanting to go to. As mean as it sounds, this is actually considered the "honest" option. Your opponent will be the least mad at you for not trying to deceive them with false promises. After you've had the war and they're still alive I mean. There's also the possibility to not care and ignore this admonition. It's the best option for those who are undecided, but doesn't exactly sit well with the other leader no matter if you end up going to war or not.
In our case, we do want to go to war but not at this very moment. We also know it will happen before any promises would be considered kept. Therefore, we simply ignore what the bake-danuki had to say to us.

The post has inflated to a pretty big size, so we will stop here for today. Next time, we'll learn to believe in something greater than ourselves (if everything goes right).

[Golbez]

Could Mamizou have copied Kaguya's love for archers?

[Gesh86]

Could Mamizou have copied Kaguya's love for archers?

I'd like to think that she copies biases, but nah, it's supposedly only agendas, unique units/buildings/improvements and country- and leader-abilities.

I have some very bad news: The update files Firaxis sent to everyone on the 8th of February have made some mods incompatible. I'm affected, so the save (all saves I've ever made in this campaign, really) is corrupted at the moment. It needn't stay like this. If the maker of the mod edits it to work again, the Let's Play should be able to continue, but as it is, the campaign is currently on ice and somewhat jeopardized. I'm extremely hesitant to declare it cancelled, but this might happen, too.
There's unfortunately no easy way to load the game with outdated patches. I've seen that function for games by Paradox (those frequently break mods), it isn't there for Civ 6. I've written to the creator of the incompatible mod, but I can't know how active he is and if he'll work on it again.

[CyberAngel]

Oh well. Not gonna hold my breath, but would be cool if things got fixed before long.

[Gesh86]

Oh well. Not gonna hold my breath, but would be cool if things got fixed before long.

The modder responded and he was pretty confident about knowing what the problem is and what to do about it. He's currently in military service and will only be able to address the issue starting March.
The LP is therefore on hiatus, but chances are now very high that it can continue  :].

[Golbez]

Nice, I have been enjoying this a lot.

[Gesh86]

Update nr. 23 - That's us in the spot...light, gaining our religion

Turn 110 - 150 B.C.

I'm detecting vital signs...it lives. IT LIVES! We are back, and last time...what did we do last time? It's been so long, I actually had to skim the previous update myself to know.
It seems we entered the early middle ages, renewed our friendship with Kaguya and showed off some cold war behaviour towards Mamizou. The turn starts with the setting of a new build option in our capital. We have a lot of choices, so many of them very sensible, but the one we're setting our eyes on is among the least expected. If we scroll very far down the list, we get to the "city projects".



These projects will appear whenever you have the respective district present in your city. They are somewhat of an emergency plan to quickly recruit the Great People associated with the district. Very rarely do I even remember that I have them as an option, but this time I did! We are currently leading the race to the next Great Prophet 92 to 81.1, but our pursuer has a slightly higher output than us. I fear we might get caught and the next Great Prophet will be more expensive. So let's look at the project "Holy Site Prayers":



The project takes 5 turns to complete for Shining Needle Castle. The faith bonuses are nothing too valuable, but we should get enough Great Prophet points to instantly recruit one afterwards. I think you get around 30? It might increase the further you've advanced in the game. Anyway, this is our plan to "rush" the last stretch towards a religion. Fingers crossed that our unknown rival doesn't have a similar idea or buys out the prophet.

A lot less daring of a move is our next: We expend a builder charge northwest of newly built Laputa to construct a pasture on some sheep. It'll need this to get anywhere with its relatively barren but strategically viable lands.

Like the capital, Lilliput had also finished construction on a unit before the hiatus. It had trained a horseman we're now sending east.  We octruate the city to make another horseman right after. Only 4 turns. It makes little sense to make anything other than riders at this point, as slower units would just postpone the start of our planned war with how long it would take them to reach the frontlines. Before we're done with our second, so very proud city in the Great Plains, we pre-place its next district, which will be a campus:



Before I forget: We had to quick-purchase the tile for 100 gold. No worry, we have the money. 291 pieces are still in our coffers. Naturally, production is again switched to that horseman who we are in dire need of.



Between turns, something very strange happens. We get a leader scene with Mamizou where the text box is completely empty. This has to be an oversight in the mod. Did we go against one of her agendas? I don't know. Did we make a good impression by acting within her interests? I don't know. Did she denounce us? I checked afterwards and she did not. It will have to stay a mystery.

Turn 111 - 125 B.C.

Laputa's hard-working builder is sent in the direction of the valuable silver deposits just northeast of the city. We do not yet have that luxury in our empire, but the baubles we could make with it would go well with the confidence we're displaying towards our rivals. We shall pay Mamizou a most arrogant visit:

   

"I denounceth thee, wretch, thee and thine detestably fluffy tail!" We do this in wise preparation: If we cannot call Kaguya into another Joint War, we would fight Mamizou on our own in a few turns. Being able to declare a formal war instead of a surprise war would remove a not too small amount of warmonger penalty. Do not forget to denounce the victims of your conquests on time, it is an easy oversight to make.
What I don't like is how well Kaguya and Mamizou are getting along again despite the past war. There's a smiling green face between the two. Hopefully the two won't get any more cordial in the next few turns.

Between turns, the only noteworthy news are that we are once again at an envoy-draw with Mamizou for Hattusa, losing us the suzerain status. She is as determined a paramour for their favour as we are, isn't she?

Turn 112 - 100 B.C.

A not too costly tech is discovered, one that will help us find opportunities in the seas:



John Masefield was an English poet and writer. The quote here is the second line in "Sea-fever" included in the collection "Salt-Water Poems and Ballads". The overhanging subject of these should be obvious.



Lighthouses are a pleasant hybrid between population growth, naval veterancy and monetary income source and make the placing of coastal cities more viable. But why stop at thinking small when you could follow up with...?



Oh, those posh Alexandrians. If having the best library in the world wasn't enough, they also made one of the tallest building in the world, their Great Lighthouse. It doesn't stand anymore, but must have been a sight to behold at the time. It is a recurring wonder of the Civ-series. In the 5th installment, it would count as a no-maintenance lighthouse on construction if you didn't have one in the city yet. This time, you need to already have a lighthouse to even start working on it. It would then become the second, tiny lighthouse no one cares about next to the new, big and cool one. Very strange.
The biggest boon of this wonder is by all means the additional naval movement. Very valuable if you are a fighter at sea.



Before you can dream of getting any lighthouse, let alone an admirable one, you need to make this district. The harbor district fulfils roughly the same role as your commercial hub: Making money and increasing trade route capacity. It is of course also useful for giving a non-coastal city the ability to build any ships at all. Usually, you're not motivated to get both of these districts in the same city, as the one you build second does not give you another trade route slot. We might do so, at least in our capital, at some point.



Having traders embark at all is a great convenience of Civ 6. In 5, you had to decide whether to build land caravans or trade boats, and they stayed confined to their element.
I don't think I've ever harvested fish for an emergency feast. You want to be especially careful about this because sea-resources do grant adjacency bonuses to harbors. Unless you know you won't build a harbor next to that fish, better refrain.

The next technology we'll be working towards is Construction, a remnant of the few classical ones we have not yet discovered. Therefore, it's not too expensive with an unboosted 7 turns. It's also one that we'll need for the very juicy knowledge of machinery later.
We also switch up our cultural focus from Theology to Feudalism, 16 turns. I'm confident we'll get Theology boosted and this is another one of those swaps that'll avoid any culture unneccessarily spent after developing a civic to the 50% mark.

Whenever you get access to a new district as we just did, you should ask yourself: "Can I pre-place it somewhere?"



Blefuscu needs such a harbor and being already so poor in its construction speed, should really avoid any rising build costs. We gladly spend the 100 gold of tile-purchasing for a potential +2 adjacency and further adjacency for our campus. For now, it goes back to making the granary it has almost finished anyway.

Here's the most exciting thing to happen between turns and that's not saying a lot:



Eientei had been an oligarchy before. Should we pull them into war against Mamizou, they will not be quite as effective, but that's ok. They seem to be interested in getting defenses up for their cities. If Kaguya's smart, she'll follow the switch to "Limes" with an all-out construction of ancient walls. We do not need to be worried about a fortified Kaguya, we don't plan to go against her. I'd be happy to share the continent with one other civilization for the remainder of the campaign, so long as the relationship from her side stays as well as it has so far. It's just Mamizou who will have to go.

Turn 113 - 75 B.C.

Previously, we backed our troops off of Mamizou's borders. With our warband assembling in the east over the last few turns, I think it is time we established our frontline once again. After all movement of turn 113, it's looking like this:



We have 7 combat units gathered in the large circle. One little Shining Needle Swordsman is still somewhat left behind in the south, catching up to the rest. In the northwest, one horseman is at our flank. Fast units like him are good at taking these positions and flying to whereever they are needed. 4 swordsmen make up the centerpiece. The battering ram is being escorted by the one furthest back of these. The eastmost flank is protected by another swordsman and our only pikeman right behind it. It's an already good formation that will be expanded and shuffled to be ideal before we declare any war.

In Laputa, we need to once again spend some gold to get what we want. No profit without investment:



For 100 gold of our 238, we make the marked silver deposit part of our cultural borders. The builder who needs to improve it is already on site, so he promptly puts a mine where it's needed. Once again, we have a new luxury. Additional amenities that will keep our citizens content against any war weariness they may soon have to go through.

Mamizou seems scared by what she must have noticed at her borders, and while she does not contact us again, retreats some of her units towards her capital. This is actually not so bad for us: We'll have more room for us to arrange our final troop formation.

Turn 114 - 50 B.C.

We've arrived at the time of which the Asterix comics are set in. Mamizou could be like the small Gaul village resisting the Roman Empire. Let's hope she doesn't have any potions that'll give her troops super-human powers.

Lilliput has produced another horseman. We will not be waiting for him specifically before starting any campaigns. After all, that horsemen are fast enough to quickly make it to where combat is taking place is one of their greatest appeals. Our next building plan should not be war-focused any more, Lilliput at least has done its share of the effort. There are so many good things we could be making at our second most important city. Traders, builders, a market or a water mill. Due to the eureka of our current research being tied to having at least one water mill in your empire, our decision goes for the latest. 5 turns.

The issue even more pressing on my mind than a war with Mamizou is our Great Prophet. The Holy Site Prayers at our capital will finish next turn. What does the Great People chart say?



It's looking like we have this in the bag. Unless the unmet zealot behind us has a lot of money, faith, or a similar project just about to finish, prophet O no Yasumaro should become a Kobito. Said historical person wrote the Kojiki, making him the founding father of Shinto.

Laputa's single-charge builder moves northwest right onto the next silver deposit. Between turns, Kaguya once again fawns over our cultural output as she has done several times.

Turn 115 - 25 B.C.

Welcome to what may be the most bloated turn of the Let's Play yet. I hope you brought enough time. But first of all: Ta-da!



We've done it. For comparison, we got our religion earlier than even Christianity formed. Actually, O No Yasumaro himself is about 700 years too early. The finished project put us at 135 of the 120 Great Prophet points. On the Great People screen, we have a button to "recruit" and one to "pass". There's no reason you would ever pass on a Great Prophet. For other types, this might be a sensible thing to do if the specific ability of a Great Person is so useless to you that you would rather have your points preserved and have another player pick the undesirable one.

O No Yasumaro is born in Shining Needle Castle, where we use 3 of his 4 movement points to send him to our holy site. That's where Great Prophets must use their ability. It's a good thing we have such a fine road network, or he would have used additional turns getting where he's needed:



All Great Prophets will have the appearence of a robed, long-bearded senior citizen equipped with a staff. Anyway, the prophet disappears, whereas a new button appears:



As we click there...

   

We're prompted to pick a symbol from a list. Many of these you will recognize as the emblems of real world religions. Starting from the top left, we have Buddhism, Confuscianism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Protestantism. Then in the next line Sikhism and Taoism. Huh, Tengrism is not in an unmodded list? It was in Civ 5. The symbols beyond that are miscellaneous, I think they simply reference the Zodiac. At the top of the whole list, we see that Shinto, Catholicism and Zoroastrianism were already picked by other civilizations. There can be no duplicate symbols.
Anyway, we select one of the Zodiac symbols, as those are the only ones where you can also pick a custom name. Our choice is the one marked in the screenshot on the right, Libra I think. The reason to pick this? I thought it looked the closest to Aya's fan. Looking at it now, I missed opportunities: There's also leo which would have literally been Aunn Komano. Pisces is Wakasagihime. There's a butterfly (virgo maybe?) like Etarnity Larva. And capricorn looks far too much like a cow, that would be Keine Kamishirasawa!
I was thinking long and hard at what the custom name of our religion would be. I considered taking suggestions from you folks, but that would have delayed the update for a purpose of extremely little consequence. After already taking such a long, involuntary break from this project, I couldn't have stomached that. Instead, I think I have something that all of you will be A-OK with...



Fun fact: With this very, most sympathetic name, I once somewhat tricked a friend into not stopping my religious spreading in multiplayer when he could still do something about it and ended up winning that way  .
Upon creating your religion, you must pick religious perks for 2 slots. Here's the selection for the first of them:



For these beliefs to be applied to a city of yours, the city must have it as a majority religion. Other players may overwrite it if they spread their faith to you. This can be a difficult choice, as many of these are quite potent. "Work Ethic" could be fitting for our devices. "Religious Community" helps with growth and "Zen Meditation" keeps your civilization a little happier. "Warrior Monks" is something introduced relatively recently, in the last content patch before the Rise & Fall launch. I'd be tempted to try it one day, but it's completely non-sensical to pick for a civilization with an overall meager faith output. I actually told myself beforehand that we would pick Jesuit Education if it is still available at the time we get a religion. Yes, you do also compete for these beliefs, again, there can be no duplicates. Said perk was still left alone and it can greatly help in the later game when you are able to faith-buy these buildings.

   



That's...a lot of options. We have to also pick one of these. Yes, just one. Notice that the perks are divided into three subgroups: Folded hands, open book and burning candle. This may be important later, for now it means only a loose common theme. Folded hands are special religious buildings. Due to their high faith cost, these are not too interesting right now. The book has to do with a passive gain of ressources. The candle is mostly about religious units or religious spread. Many of these perks are quite delicious. I was thinking of picking either Tithe, Holy Order or Church Property. While Holy Order might have been a choice for longevity and efficiency, the lure of swift income won, so we picked Church Property. It's on the first screenshot, left column, fourth from top, and it's all about the money.

"The Touhou Fandom" gives education like the Jesuits and has property belonging to its church. So that's our religion, currently only present with 7 religious citizens in Shining Needle Castle. There are ways to unlock more perks for it and spread its influence to other cities. How? You'll see when we get there some day. Just having a religion triggers...



And that's all the inspiration our pious wannabe theologists needed to become bonafied theologist:



Alan Wilson Watts wrote and spoke about eastern philosophies, for example, Zen and Taoism. He brought these subjects closer to his western readers and listeners at a time when they were considered extremely obscure.



A card mostly for religious play that we will likely never need to draw. Right now, this would maybe give us a meager +2 faith per turn?



The temple is the next religious building following the shrine. While not the most urgent of our needs, we do want a temple or two at some point because of apostles. Apostles are a big deal, even for our playstyle, believe me.



One of the most important sites for all of Buddhism, Mahabodhi Temple has been kept in shape to this day and stands in India. For game purposes, one could easily dismiss it as a religious wonder, only important for religious play. But that is a little hasty. In fact, it is quite a challenge for someone with our faith output to scrape together two apostles and this would be a comfy shortcut to just that. From that angle, you can view it somewhat like Stonehenge, a "mediumish-religious wonder". Maybe we'll get around to this one before someone robs it?

Phew, we're done with religion for now. Back to worldly matters: Shining Needle Castle sets its production to making one last horseman. 3 turns, I swear this is the last we'll need. Enough is enough at some point, but who knows, maybe he will be the one to make a difference.
Blefuscu needs to do something about its lack of districts, and works on the pre-placed harbor. If you think this will be a quick job to finish, you have not paid close enough attention to Blefuscu's performance. 25 turns.
We've also gained another envoy through the Theology civic, putting him into Hattusa and taking back indirect control. What an annoying back and forth...
Finally, we spend, for a fourth time, 100 gold on a new tile. We're down to a poor 70 coins now. Who are we? Shion? But nevertheless, this gets us a hold of the second silver deposit at Laputa. The builder digs up his mine and with his final charge spent, disappears.



This inspiration was not achieved by getting more silver, but by constructing mines, 3 in total were needed. And now we have the respective technology as well:



You might have thought Lemony Snicket was just the narrator of a novel that Jude Law later played in a movie. But it is also the pen name of Daniel Handler who wrote that novel. I can't say for sure if that quote is attributed to the narrator or Mr. Handler, but we can say that it came out of the latter's mind.



The workshop is a building you spend production on so that you'll have a net gain of production once the production bonuses pay for themselves. How productive!



Here we have the last of the eight basic districts, which are all the ones counting towards your district limit. There's an 9th one coming in the modern era, but that's still so far away. What I said about the previous building also applies here: You make industrial zones so that later endeavors will be quicker to construct. The district it rivals most should be the encampment, although that one helps you most with making units, not as much with anything else. The industrial zone's use is more broad you could say.



An excellent passive bonus comes with researching apprenticeship. We have three mines within our empire, that's potentially three bonus cogs.

It's now time to switch policy cards. We have to get rid of "Revelation". No, we really have to. In fact, the game would throw this card out automatically on the next turn, as you cannot make any more Great Prophet points once you have a religion. For now, we put the economic card Caravanseries into the open wildcard slot, giving us 2 gold, times our 2 trade-routes, 4 gold per turn in total. Interesting to know: Don't feel obligated to always put wildcard-exclusive cards into the wildcard slots. Most of them are not actually considered that useful.

We set our next cultural focus back onto the already started civic of Feudalism, taking 12 turns from now. That decision finally ends a monumentally long and eventful 115th turn, as well as an update much bigger than planned. Boy, this one has to be my biggest forum post so far. I think it's only fair though, this project has been paused for far too long. Next time, the third Punic War. We're hoping to skip the second one that was still very arduous.

[Gesh86]

Update nr. 24 - If at first you don't succeed...

Turn 116 - 1 A.D.

Year of the Lord. Somewhere, there must have been a Jesus, who is, by the way, not a recruitable Great Prophet in this game. Reasons of sensitivity I assume. Simon Peter is the one who comes closest.

Last time, someone poorly drew girls in funny hats and we turned it into a religion. Right as the turn starts, we receive a warning icon that one of our cities is supposedly starving. It is Laputa it seems and the cause is simply the city automation getting a little greedy: The rich silver mines were so beautiful and tempting that the game calculated it as too lucrative to ignore, despite Laputa only having 2 citizens who can work for yields. We set things right by locking work on the only two plots for food our settlement has:



The city is now forced to always use those tiles with the padlocks and that should solve the supposed starvation until population grows too big. It's very rare that the automation for cities gets so silly that you need to correct it manually.

Next up: Our current research for Construction has made it past 50% completion and is still missing its active boost. You know the drill by now, we switch to something else so as to not waste any science output. Engineering it is, also a slightly outdated classical technology we've refused to get until now. 7 turns.

There is also some minor unit shuffling at our frontline, so that less experienced units will go ahead and get their battle-hardening. Time is running our for Mamizou.

Showing Laputans that they can't eat jewelry isn't the only thing we should do for them this turn. I remembered, Turn 115 got us a brand new type of district. Let's pre-place one in that remote desert refuge...



Industrial zone adjacency comes from mines, mostly. Such a cluster of ores is predestined to have one on site. We won't say no to those 2 additional production cogs. For now we're finishing the monument, though.

One of our trade routes needs new orders again. The one going from Shining Needle Castle to Eientei expired. The next one we'll make from Shining Needle Castle to Kaguya. The city Kaguya, not the person Kaguya. The person that also happens to rule that city Kaguya, so both ways to understand that sentence are true, really.
With +9 gold, that trade route is a little less lucrative than the previous of +11 gold, but it'll also construct us a new trading post over there.



Speaking of Kaguya, she is incredibly lazy when it comes to religion, even worse than we are. She's only just made it to her own pantheon. "Dance of the Aurora" helps any tundra-dwellers in gaining faith. A good choice for our Canadian Moon Princess I'd say.

Turn 117 - 25 A.D.

All this turn was good for is giving you an update on the situation for our army:



Looks fierce and organized, doesn't it? That straggler horseman will catch up with this turn. It is almost the time to strike. One of Mamizou's units, the northwestern-most, has a strange symbol. That means it's a war cart that our bake-danuki has copied from the Sumerians. Their leader Gilgamesh has this unit at his disposal at the very start of the game, no technologies or resources needed (it runs on donkeys, not horses). It is a slightly stronger heavy chariot and one of the best units one could use in an ancient era Blitzkrieg. Since we are not in that earliest of eras any more, it is now a solid, but not overwhelmingly mighty unit. Our swordsmen can more than match it.

Except for a few more shuffling of units, nothing else happens. I was tempted to declare war already, but it might be better to wait just a tiny bit. Maybe Mamizou will move the war cart and the archer back a little, as I'd like to win ground as the war starts. And wouldn't you know it, she does.

We do unfortunately lose the favour of Hattusa again due to a reinforcement of foreign envoys. Oh well, it's not like they would have helped with the war all the way down there in Brazil. Suzerains do formally call city-states into any war, even the ones they declare.

Turn 118 - 50 A.D.

Ok, let's start with something that we would definitely lose track of once combat starts:



We switch our cultural development from Feudalism to this. Why? Well, it will take a while to reach Civil Service's midpoint. Less damage will be done if we don't switch again in time. We will get the boost for this, no problem. Feudalism's as well, which is making 6 farms.

Shining Needle Castle spits out the horseman we told it to make and he immediately races east. As promised, that will be all the units for now. A market for 6 turns is what we need in our capital next. The bonus gold it produces should counter the maintenance our impressive standing army costs. Our income is 19.5 coins per turn at the moment.

Now we could do the formal war against the Tanuki, that's what we denounced them a few turns ago, after all. But let's first speak to our most dearest of friends:



My first suggestion was to just give her the silver for Eientei's participation in our second Joint War, but she insisted on those few coins of pocket change. It is nonetheless, a deal we want to make.

This means war! Again!

We move all of our footsoldiers one tile northeast. It is only the horseman on our western flank that we allow to make the first engagement:



With a base strength of 30, those war-carts really are respectable. Imagine if all they're up against are warriors and slingers, and you know why people play Sumeria. We deal 37 damage and receive about half of that, 18.

For Mamizou's counter-attack, we're going to need those unit numbers again:



- Horseman unit 1 has a bad time: It's shot by an archer for 20 damage, then for another 24 by the archer in the back of our troops you can see all the way west!
- One archer shoots unit 2 for 14 damage, then another for 16. It is only that much thanks to the forest we're in.
- A second war-cart rides from the fog of war onto the enemy holy site and charges into unit 4. 11 damage for us, 78 for them.
- Finally unit 8 gets pricked by some arrows for 13 damage.

The war cart we attacked ourselves by the way goes after some units of Kaguya instead. She is already helping in the very beginning of the siege this time. Thanks, your highness!

Turn 119 - 75 A.D.

Upon reaching this turn, the water mill in Lilliput was constructed. This means...



and in conclusion...



There are too many well known Dave Barrys! After looking around I'm very sure it's Dave McAlister Barry, an author and humor columnist. He won a Pulitzer of the category Commentary in 1988 and gave the Talk-Like-a-Pirate-Day a lot of publicity. I'd say the latter is more important, Yargh!



The Terracotta Army was issued by Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huangdi as a sort of funeral gift for himself. They were symbolic for his military forces and meant to protect his spirit even after death. It is very fitting that this is a world wonder for mostly militaristic use. While perhaps not as big a deal as it was with its effect in Civ 5 (a free copy of any unit you have at the time of completion), free promotions for as many units as we have would be quite helpful. Perhaps Lilliput can come around to making it one day, seeing as it has the neccessary encampment.



The siege tower is another support unit and a strategic alternative to the battering ram. While the ram is meant to multiply damage done to walls to tear them down with ease, the tower will make it possible to swiftly take the city itself by just bypassing the defensive layer. It can be helpful to destroy the wall to take a city's ability to shoot at you, but if you have a large enough army to take the town in a single turn, the tower may be the wiser choice. It's hard to say which I prefer. Uhm...both? The negative maintenance by the way is likely a typo.

Our current research of Engineering is getting too close to the 50% mark. We switch to Cartography. Oh would I love to explore the oceans after this war. 17 turns is what it takes from now unfortunately.

But enough about that nerdy science. How badly did Mamizou wound us?



In most places, not very. Only the horseman on the western flank had to endure a lot of pain. Looks like our armies are properly clashing now. So let's bash into them with all we have!
The slightly wounded unit 2 starts the assault by attacking the archer east of him. As expected from engaging with a ranged unit, the results are wonderful: 10 damage to us, 66 to them.
Next up, we're having a very reckless move. So reckless, I'm in hindsight surprised I did it. Horseman unit 1 attacks the war cart next to it again for 34 damage, 22 to itself. Both are close to death after this, but if nothing were to attack unit 1, it could heal through a promotion on the next turn.
Unit 4, nicknamed Tenshi Hinanawi after reaching rank 2, brings the wrath of the heavens to the same archers unit 2 attacked. Needless to say, they are no more, only 8 damage on the Eldest Daughter, who automatically advances onto the hill the archers were occupying.
Unit 6 is next and naturally goes for the heavily injured war cart next to it. Rest assured that at least the donkeys ran away from that carnage. We only took 12 damage for that total victory.
Unit 8 may have drawn the hardest lot this turn. The combat predictions were not as positive against the barbarian horseman northeast of it, mainly due to a river crossing that cuts our combat power severely. I was hesitant to take the attack, but did in the end for 44 damage on them, 22 on us.
That's it for what we did. All units in the second row moved ahead if they could. You'll see the new formation next turn.

Last but not least, Lilliput sets a new production after the water mill, and it's the campus we pre-placed in the previous update. 10 turns from now, relatively fast for any district, I'd say.
Laputa also got done with its monument and for it as well, we work on a pre-placed district, the industrial zone for...oh dang, 34 turns. No matter, as the city is growing rapidly and increasing its yields, I'm sure build time will correct itself to a much lower number throughout. We're sticking with it.

How will that mean Mamizou punish us this time?

- Unit 2 is taking arrow fire for 16 damage, then once more for 14. Their condition is in the red, but fret not, a pop-up says they're ready for promotion.
- Pikeman unit 7 somehow becomes a target for 13 damage. Yeah, we moved them further ahead, where unit 6 was originally.
- Remember how unit 8 wasn't doing so well? Their bad luck continues, as they take arrows for 23 damage. Strange how high that is.

That's it this time, not too bad. Several of Mamizou's units attacked Kaguya's instead of us. How good it is to have allies.

Turn 120 - 100 A.D.

Soldiers! Report!



Ah, that's why the war cart didn't massacre our horseman in the northwest, he took his own promotion. I guess that means we haven't really won any ground against him. That's alright. It's more important that units 3 and 6 have put a dent in the enemy lines.



Here we see the promotion tree for light cavalry units. Unit 1 is taking its right now. Both sides can be useful, but I usually take the right one, mainly for the reason that if you attack anti-cavalry units with cavalry or allow them to hit you, you didn't strategize as well as you could have. Since Mamizou doesn't even seem to build anti-cavalry, we take Coursers.
Unit 2 also takes a promotion to regain their strength. For them, like many of our swordsmen, it's Tortoise for that additional defense against arrows. There's just too many cowards with bows and arrows here...
You know, pikeman unit 7 has a barbarian horseman next to it. Let's play on our advantages and take the attack. Combat strengths are 23 for them against 58 of us. A difference of 35 points in performance is about the threshold where the weaker unit will be killed even if at full health, that's how uneven that matchup is. You guessed it, the pikeman skewers the enemy rider and he is no more. His own damage? A measly 8.
We're keeping up the offense. The vanguard unit 6 goes after the archer east of it and hits for a devastating 99 damage. So close! 9 damage goes to itself.
Unit 3 (Tenshi) tries to do the same for their own victim archer. 91 damage to the enemy, 12 to us. Hopefully we can follow up on that soon.

Good numbers, but since only one enemy fell, not much progress is made towards the gates of Futatsuiwa of Sado. Between turns, we see that Kaguya loosens two arrow barrages against a Tanuki archer far west of our armies. That's too much for him. Had she not done the work for us, our youngest horseman in the area would have had to mop him up.

We do of course need to take some hits again, whether we like it or not. Of course we don't:

- It's a good thing horseman unit 1 got most of its health back this turn, as it gets 22 damage by an archer next to it.
- Unit 5, protector of our battering ram is shot for 9 damage, the first excitement he's having in this war.
- Horseman unit 8 is a tempting arrow target and takes 19 damage. Overall, they're a little more vulnerable than our unique swordsmen, as you must have noticed.
- The most punished swordsman unit 9 is taking 17 damage. He's in the red for hitpoints without a promotion in sight. Maybe he should hold back and rest a little?

Turn 121 - 125 A.D.



I would say neither we nor Mamizou are coming out on top yet. There's still a never-ending slew of defenders around the Tanuki capital. Let's change that.

Unit 2 is the one leading the offense this round with a very secure win over the injured archer northeast of it. We take only 11 damage despite a river-crossing from that. The archer gets destroyed of course. Unit 4 fills the vacant sport 2 just had. Unit 1 attacks the archer northeast of it for 75 damage against them and 9 damage upon itself. It is another bold move for that horseman who has been close to death just a few turns ago. Hopefully he won't be killed off in response. We next demand unit 3 (Tenshi) to fight, and she does so against the barbarian horseman just east of hert. 54 damage is dealt, 16 received, a solid outcome. Solid enough for unit 6 to attack that very same horseman and destroy it! It takes 15 damage for this and has a vitality-restoring promotion ready now. Due to easily accessible terrain, unit 5 can attack the archer 2 tiles east of itself. The difference in combat strength is a whopping 32 in this encounter, dealing 94 damage and taking only 7 in the process.
Now pikeman unit 8 is an interesting case: He has a promotion available that, if cashed in, would lose us all movement points. We do not want that, instead we just throw ourselves onto the near-dead archer just east, he is gone for a measly 6 damage on us. If you decide not to take a promotion when available, know that you discard any experience points you would get until you finally take the promotion. It needn't be a mistake however to keep such a unit fighting, if you think taking a proper action is more urgent. It might also be smart to keep passing if the +50 hp on choosing a promotion would overheal you. That's what would have happened here.
Horseman unit 7 has enough room to mingle in the action now. He attacks the same archer unit 6 did so effectively and removes it from life.
All other units either pass to heal (unit 9 for example) or advance to close formation gaps. We actually have two units, 3 and 7, directly next to Futatsuiwado of Sado. The heat is on! That is, if Mamizou doesn't kill any of them...

- Mamizou can smell the danger unit 3 poses and intervenes with a barbarian horseman. The result is poor, with the horseman instantly killed despite full health and only 9 damage on us. Was that sacrifice worth it?
- Unit 7 needn't be surprised that it invoked the ire of an archer for 19 damage with how threatening it is. That's luckily all that happens to it.
- All unit 9 wanted to do is catch its breath, but the horseman south of it leads a charge, 15 damage on us, 52 on them. This was not as smart a move of Mamizou as you would think. Now that swordsman has enough experience to promote.

I would have expected more this time. No idea why at least two of the archers didn't decide to fire. They also didn't take promotions or anything. You'll see the condition of our armies and theirs' in the next update. I can tell you one thing about the overall situation: If Futatsuiwa no Sado doesn't fall in the next few turns, it would be considered an even greater failure for the Kobito than their last campaign against the Tanuki. Will we wipe away that shameful memory? See you then when we find out!

[Gesh86]

Update nr. 25 - Hear ye, hear ye: You have a new liege

Turn 122 - 150 A.D.

Last time, the second Kobito/Eientei - Tanuki war broke out and it's starting to pick up speed:



Through a graphical glitch, the battering ram is actually displayed at the false position: In reality, it sits where unit 7 is. This sometimes happens with escorted support units, don't ask me why. We start by promoting unit 0 with Tortoise and restoring much of its lost health. There are also more ways to quickly heal units apart from just promoting them, as unit 8 is going to show us:



When you're sitting on a tile improvement that belongs to someone hostile, you can pillage it just like barbarians can. You will need to have either full movement points or at least 3 to do this. The horseman here is standing on a farm, which will always heal the pillager. Other tile improvements or districts may award different spoils, such as science, culture, faith or money. An important tip: Before you pillage overenthusiastically, always highlight what you are pillaging. Notice that there is another symbol to pillage next to the one our cursor is on: That one is for pillaging the road. Pillaging road grants you nothing, it only destroys the road.



Pillaged improvements will appear blackened and smoking. Having a lot of prosperous farmland around your city may actually help your invader against you. Try to protect your improvements. It's a lesson that Mamizou has learned too late.

After recently refusing, we promote our pikeman: Here's the anti-cavalry promotion tree:



Both branches can be very helpful. "Echelon" increases your effectiveness against those you should be poking and goes further down to grant you a stronger offense. "Thrust" makes you less vulnerable to those you shouldn't try to poke and bolsters your defense later. Mamizou uses no melee units, but she does have her occasional rider and cart, so Echelon it is.
We need to promote even more people, they are just too valiant. Unit 5 is next, who has previously selected Tortoise, now picks Amphibious and, as suggested by CyberAngel, will be called...



...from now on! On to our attacks for this round. The terror of the Tanuki peasantry, horseman unit 8, uses its last movement point after pillaging to go after the archer east of it. 64 damage to them, 11 to us. And to top it off, he's now eligible for promotion. Next up, unit 4 (Tenshi) storms at the archer northeast of her for 76 damage dealt, 12 on us. It's solid for the fact that our foes are on a hill with forest to hide in. Softened up, unit 1 utterly overruns that same archer. They take but 10 points of damage in return. Finally, horseman unit 2 cleans up the injured archer next to it, inhabiting the cotton fields. This attack cost it another 12 hitpoints.

Mamizou utilizes her right to defend in the following fashion:

- Unit 1 gets opposed by barbarian horsemen coming from the east. 9 damage to us, 87 to them. They're standing strong.
- Unit 5, now known as the crafty Nitori, gets some free arrows for another 9 damage.
- Unit 8 gets shot from the most unlikely of places: It's the archer sitting on the peninsula with the sheep in the southeast. He deals 18 damage. After that, it's horseman versus barbarian horseman, as Mamizou sends them in from the northeast. 13 damage to us, 71 to them. Not bad. Much worse is another barrage of arrows. 31 damage on us. Yikes! They're in the red again.
- The lonesome unit 0 is attacked by a suicidally stubborn barbarian horseman south of it. For only 10 damage on us, it was fine with completely destroying itself through its attack.

Turn 123 - 175 A.D.

Can I say how glad I am that Mamizou still hasn't gotten around to building city walls? That would make this so much harder. Their ranks are also lessening by now I'd say...



The screenshot foreshadows it, unit 8 beginst by taking its promotion, it is once again, Coursers. Afterwards, unit 9 shows no mercy to the injured riders northeast of it. Only 5 damage to our pikeman. That's another unit we now have adjacent to the besieged city.
Unit 5, which is Nitori, shows that defeating the severely hurt horseman northeast of her is well within her Kappabilities. She too takes very little damage from this manuever, 8. Nitori's previous position is then taken by the very inexperienced unit 7 and our battering ram. The battering ram that still has no relevance for this campaign because like I said, no walls to tear down.
You probably wouldn't have thought that unit 6 would see a fight this turn, would you? With its 4 movement points, it can get all the way to unit 9's earlier position and rush at the archer on the peninsula with the sheep. 14 damage to us, 72 to them. They didn't see that coming!

Can Mamizou dispatch at least one of the units encircling her capital? I highly doubt it:

- Unit 6 has only entered the battle, but learns that the front is dangerous: 15 damage by an archer in the north.
- Unit 7, with its extremely opportunous position, has some arrows flying at it. They fall from the sky for 13 damage.
- Unit 8 proves once again that horses are like magnets for arrows: The peninsulan archer shoots for 14 damage, then a second, more capable one from the northeast for 29 damage. If this keeps up, he'll have to pillage some more of the common folks' lands.

Turn 124 - 200 A.D.

I really like the look of this:



Yeah, some of our forces are a little bruised, but most of them can still fight. We begin with our pikeman, unit nr. 8. He is the one to first lay hands on the Tanuki capital itself. Above it, a combat strength of 25 is shown for it. That is not much by this point of the game, it is overall a very vulnerable city...



Its defenders are only symbolicly shown as swordsmen. This changes depending on the era they're in. The city takes 41 points of damage, we lose 22 hitpoints. Just as a reminder, we need to deplete 200 hitpoints of any city.
It's not an attack, but units 7 and 0 switch positions, as the latter has enough health to survive his own assault on the city. 27 damage on the city, 29 on our horseman. Actually an exchange where we didn't do better than our enemies for once. But what matters most is to take the capital as quickly as we can.
Unit 7, now next to the archer guarding the peninsula, chases towards them. It's not an attack like any other, as we see a strange sight:



That sure is a sea-worthy horse he's riding there. This is less of a bug and more of a quirk: Battle animations don't neccessarily keep to the tiles. Especially cavalry likes to give itself a little room to gallop and may overshoot into terrain not actually involved. That a combat is taking place on such a peninsulan tile where this can happen is very rare and all in all, just a funny little oddity. Anyway, the archer is toast, horseman is back on dry land having lost only 11 hitpoints.
Futatsuiwa no Sado has more coming its way. Unit 4 (Nitori) has all kinds of bonuses, like adjacency to other Shining Needle Swordsmen, dealing a colossal 69 damage and only taking 13 in return. Fires are raging across the city to show how damaged it is.
You thought Nitori was doing well? Unit 6 is up next with even better combat predictions. We do the fateful click...



Only 14 damage to our own unit. The tiles around the city and the city itself change colour to a very soft purple...



How did we get that inspiration? To boost Feudalism, 6 farms have to be within your empire. Since we just took a city that had farms around it, we got a few more. Nobody said a builder had to make them! Uhm...swords to ploughshares?



There's a special pop-up for capturing a player's original capital. This is significant as it's the object of the Domination victory to hold all players' capitals. Do that, you win. Unless you specifically turned that victory type off.



Capitals can never be razed, you must keep them. The button is a little obscured by a tooltip, but you can see that "Raze City" is blackened out. We get a small amount of warmonger penalty now and Futatsuiwa of Sado will not grow in population while we're oppressing its people. Obviously, the residents won't greet us with open arms, it's logical that they'd see us as invaders and not be very cooperative. Once you make peace and negotiate to keep the city, it will grow normally. Will we make peace? Depends on whether there will be someone left to make peace with.

Back home, Shining Needle Castle created a market, making us some future dough. Yes, our civilization operates normally over the war, it's just that there have been bigger projects with longer construction times everywhere so we didn't notice much of them. What should be emphasized is that especially our science output has been declining, mostly due to accumulating war weariness. Don't worry, we can keep going like this for a lot longer without terrible consequences. Let's do something for said neglected science: Next building to make in our capital is a library, 5 turns.
Futatsuiwa no Sado may not grow, but we can also tell the Tanuki there to make something. They'll do it, probably reluctantly...



When a city changes owner by force, the city center buildings it had may come in a damaged state. Repairing them is a process much quicker than the building's construction from scratch, as the low repair times for the monument and granary make clear. Repairing the monument is also what we'll do.

With the new city came a few new luxuries, 2 copies of cotton and 1 load of fox-furs. Ran is finally in our care!...And I guess we're skinning her just like she always has been  :blush:. Kaguya notices the abundance of cotton and asks for it in exchange for 33 gold and a right of passage through her borders. We deny that trade for now, as I honestly didn't have the nerve to go into trade negotiations with the war still so hot. We'll do that once we have less to be worried about. Who says the Tanuki won't conquer the city and all its luxuries back? Mamizou's forces are still at its gates!

- Unit 0 gets some arrows with 20 damage attached to them. They're pretty drained now after losing a lot of health from their attack on the city, too. No attacks other than that. I guess Mamizou is busy being shocked by how poorly everything's developing.

Turn 125 - 225 A.D.

Our main objective of making Mamizou's most valuable city our own may have been achieved, but our war is far from over:



Know that it's our own borders we are in now, meaning that healing is accelerated. We should have some of the more injured units rest over the next few turns. The ones that are still fresh however can continue the fight: Unit 8 targets the archer northeast of it and defeats it with a couple of pokes. 10 damage is what it gets for that action.
Unit 6, the little big hero who took Futatsuiwa of Sado last turn has a promotion. We've got enough swordsmen with Tortoise, so this one is getting Battlecry to have a better offense against units.
We have too many soldiers too far up north I'd say. They won't attack this round, instead, unit 4 climbs on the hill southwest of it, and unit 1 takes unit 4's previous position. Rather than making exclusively those units a target, this should provoke Mamizou's archers to advance further south where it'll be easier to fight them. I was hoping unit 1 might have enough movement points left to attack the archer northeast of the city, but they are on a hill themselves. That's alright.
Unit 7 desperately needed the promotion it can now take. It is the third of our horsemen who decides to pick Coursers. There's really no reason right now to go down the other lane.
Anyone who hasn't been mentioned either waited and healed or moved closer to the core of our troops.

The bake-danuki is eager to conduct vengeance on us:
- Unit 1 is first shot from the north for 8 damage, then confronted by a barbarian horseman. 11 more damage on us, 99 on them. Come on, couldn't it have been just a teeny-tiny bit more? It's good we retreated this unit, I don't want to imagine how much more fire it would have concentrated on itself if we didn't.
- Unit 7 is shot for 27 by the surviving archer on the hill 2 tiles northeast. Too bad, he only just healed up, now his health is in the yellow again.
- Pikeman unit 8 is attacked by the only heavy chariot you can see on the screenshot. Really, Mamizou? You're really going to use that against a pikeman? 8 damage to us, 95 to them. It is so deserved! A much smarter approach follows: The same pikeman is hit by the archer two tiles up north for 23 damage. That's actually respectable in contrast.

Turn 126 - 250 A.D.

She's not giving up. No, not at all:



Before we do anything hasty, we set our cultural development from Civil Service to Feudalism. Due to the recent eureka, it has exactly 1 turn left.
On to our units: We switch positions of units 7 and 0. There's no reason to lose that pikeman out of sloppiness, and we certainly would this turn if we didn't push it out of the action. We analyze how well unit 6 would do against the archer next to Futatsuiwa of Sado: 36 points of difference in combat strength, a decisive victory is foretold. Thank you very much, Battlecry promotion! We take the action and the archer is crushed, as expected.
Unit 3 (a very short Youmu) didn't have much to do in this war yet it seems. She goes after the single-hitpoint horseman northeast of her and takes its misery away. We now see Washington is surrounded by archers. Despite having just one more city, Mamizou still seems able to churn them out at record speed. For the sake of regaining health for the rest of our forces, we pick no more skirmishes this time around.

The same can't be said for the Tanuki. They're raging:

- A very short Youmu unit 3 is bombarded for 10 damage, a while later for another 12 points.
- Having forfeited their cover of the city, unit 6 is first hit for 13 damage, then once more for 20. That last one packed a punch. Don't exactly know how, but could it have something to do with the improvement the archer was standing on?



It looks like a French Ch?teau, actually. Didn't think those had any military value. Am I wrong and is it an Alc?zar? This might be a mystery we'll solve next time. For today, that will be it. This was an update the Kobito can rejoice over. We have gained a 6-population city and our biggest rival will likely never be relevant for the campaign as a whole, even if the war ended like it is now. Next time, will we go home or go broke? Or maybe we'll hit the jackpot? Bis bald!

[CyberAngel]

That sure is a sea-worthy horse he's riding there. This is less of a bug and more of a quirk: Battle animations don't neccessarily keep to the tiles. Especially cavalry likes to give itself a little room to gallop and may overshoot into terrain not actually involved. That a combat is taking place on such a peninsulan tile where this can happen is very rare and all in all, just a funny little oddity. Anyway, the archer is toast, horseman is back on dry land having lost only 11 hitpoints.

Or Kobito managed to breed a Pegasus.

[Gesh86]

Or Kobito managed to breed a Pegasus.

I must inform you that only the Bakusen Nyan Nyan civilization lead by Seiga and Kasen can train the unique unit, Pegasus Snatchers. Now if only that mod actually existed...

Updtae nr. 26 - When you've scrubbed all the floors of Lilliput, then we can talk about mercy

Turn 127 - 275 A.D.

Last time, we tried out a different way of getting a new city other than making a settler. Why set down a new one when you can just grab what's already there? Before our regularly scheduled violent content, we welcome a new civic we have just finished:



Mogens Jallberg has no wikipedia page, but seems to be a Danish entrepreneur. I like his quote very much. Oh those naughty counts and dukes! It does however shed a somewhat negative light on the cultural advancement we just earned for ourselves. Many believe that feudal systems have no place in our current times and are often looked back at with distate. Yet here in Civ 6, the moment you get it, it will be a great triumph for your empire. Let's see why:



I have to emphasize "Medieval and Renaissance era" for this card. The only unit we can make that is encompassed here is the Pikemen. Future ones that fit the category will be musketmen and crossbowmen.



With this policy, you can have depressing inequality in your lands where personal merit will only keep the low-born alive and never really improve their situation. When you decide to put the card in, try to set many cities to the production of builders so that you can get the most out of it. 5 charges are so much better than 3. The moment you get feudalism, an older policy card that gave you 30% to all builder construction is permanently removed. Serfdom is its upgrade so to say.



The always-applicable passive bonus of feudalism is the grand winner here. Basically, it wants you to build your farms in triangles to make even more food. Make a habit of this in general! Just like you try to have district bulks in this game, think in farmland clusters. This can of course be difficult, since you can't put them on tundra, desert and only on hills if you've reached later eras.

New cards often means changing what we have. We swap Caravanseries with Limes. To avoid confusion, let's see what our setup is. We haven't looked at it in a long time:



An unexpected boost also happened in this turn:



What do you associate with barons, counts, dukes and kings? Valiant knights of course. Just having Feudalism boosts Stirrups. A freebie among eurekas I argue.



We currently have a choice of four helpful civics. All of them are quite helpful, but the old rule of thumb helps us decide quickly: When in doubt, pick the one where you already have the inspiration, and that only applies to Mercenaries. Remember how we got that ages ago? 8 units, pah! I think we have 13 or so now.

In reaction to putting Limes in our policy card setup, we switch the production of several of our cities to ancient walls. The ones who will be working on the protection of their residents are Laputa (8 turns), Blefuscu (5 turns) and Futatsuiwa of Sado (8 turns). I imagine the Tanuki there would rather wall in their captors than themselves right now. Tough luck!

Finally, on to our battle plans:



Between turns, the heavy chariot next to unit 7 pillaged the farm it's standing on. However, if it thinks that the 50 hitpoints from that will avoid getting wiped out by that very unit this turn, they are absolutely wrong. 16 damage on us.
Unit 4 goes next. With a 32 point difference in power, there was a chance for it to eliminate the archer to the northeast. In the end, it was but 90 damage and 10 to us.
I thought of giving pikeman unit 0 a well deserved break this turn. But the barbarian horseman that disembarked next to it was just asking for it. We might have been heavily injured, but the incredibly uneven matchup still made it an instant death for the riders. The pikeman took 8 damage.
Unit 2 is determined to finish what unit 4 started and stomps the archer east of it. 9 damage for the swordsman.
Unit 1 is utilizing the fact that archers don't exert zone of control: Without a care in the world, they walk onto the spot where unit 2 previously was and attack the archer northeast from there. That one has a very low defensive strength, due to sitting on flat farmland. The result is 79 damage to them, 8 to us in return.
Finally, unit 9 does something against the barbarian horseman 2 tiles to the east of the city. We ride into them for 51 damage and only 15 on our own. More important than the attack itself is that we closed a defensive gap this way: That rider could have raided the farmlands in the area, we don't want that. Not now that they belong to us!

Mamizou is losing units fast, but she does what she can with those she has:

- Unit 1 takes the first hail of arrows for 10 damage.
- Unit 4 is getting into dangerously poor condition after being shot for 17 damage first, then again for 18 damage. This one's done for if it doesn't retreat next round.
- The barbarian horseman that unit 9 had battled with is of the stubborn sort. He attacks the very same and suicides himself that way, dealing 14 damage to us. This is another funny occasion where much of the combat takes place in the water.

Turn 128 - 300 A.D.

In contrast to last round, there's no real administrative work to do this turn, so let's go straight to the frontlines:



Unit 2 (a very short Youmu) isn't exactly in the best condition. Here we go still risking her life and 2 promotion ranks by sending her northeast to mop up the injured archer. On the very same tile, there is a civilian unit of the Tanuki with an unknown symbol: It's a Great Writer. In Civ 5, you could kill hostile Great People through military means. This is no longer possible in this installment. The Great Writer is teleported into the nearest city (Washington) on his contact with us.
Unit 5 retreats into Futatsuiwa no Sado, where it will be safe from further harm. That's really all it needs to do for now. Let's hope the angry Tanuki in there don't rebel and take it out their anger on it (that's not a mechanic in the game, don't worry).
Unit 1 still has archers to the northeast of it, not the same ones it attacked there last time, but fit and fresh ones. This doesn't help them at all. Combat strength difference is 30 points, and through benevolent variance, an instant kill against them succeeds.
Unit 3 utilizes its many movement points, rides onto the cotton fields and attacks the archer northwest of it, the one manning the Alc?zar. I do think that is it, as there is a bonus the unit receives "+7 static fortifications". Because of that advantage, the result isn't the greatest, but good enough to take: 46 damage on them, 16 to our horseman.

As always, the rest of the units advance or heal when they're too injured. Before we go to the mean things Mamizou does to us, let's choose a different research:



We do this as Cartography is over the 50% mark. I'm unsure at this moment if we should actually work towards the inspiration for this tech (2 harbors) or if it's just too much of a hassle and we'll finish it soon without the boost. We'll see, it's not superbly urgent. Parents and teachers have been telling you and me for so long how important Education is, so let's make that available to the Kobito populace as well as the annexed Tanuki.



Just wanted to show you that piece of gossip so you know that some of the modded leaders, for example Kaguya and Remilia, even have custom categories of Great People. I'm unsure what Reisen will do for Kaguya, I think she might be a Great General.

So what are the Tanukis' actions now that they're dangerously close to destruction? With only 2 archers visible, it can't be many:

Unit 3 is not subject to just one, but two ranged attacks: First for 23, second for a mystery amount. How could I not know how much that second one did? Well, Mamizou interrupted with a diplomatic message and I never saw the numbers. All you need to know is that unit 3 is now incredibly close to death, we must extract it.

Here's what Mamizou contacted us for:



She proposes a peace-deal. The Great Work of Iliad was also included, just so you know. It's not exactly ideal. First of all, she doesn't seem to suggest a ceding of her capital. "Ceding" is a trade item that allows possession of a conquered city to be viewed as just and right. You do not need to have a city ceded to you to keep it, but it's better as they will not create additional war weariness in future wars against the original owner. Nonetheless, this deal would not be bad to take. We'd get rid of our war weariness. And do we really need false Washington? We somewhat don't, we would just raze it. At this point though, I had already set my mind on kicking Mamizou out of the game. North America is too small for 3 civilizations. We reject her peace and stay at war.

Turn 129 - 325 A.D.

I didn't zoom all the way out while recording, so we're only seeing the area north of Futatsuiwa of Sado:



Only 8 of our usually 10 unit-strong attack squad are easily visible, but all you need to know about the two hidden ones is that they're regenerating further south. Unit 3 begins by storming towards the archer defending the Alc?zar. Luckily, he had been attacked before, or else it wouldn't have been enough to beat him like we did. 9 damage to our own. I do not believe this Alc?zar will give us the fortification bonus while the cultural borders still belong to Washington. Yet it is good that no Tanuki unit can inhabit it now that we're standing on it.
Only a single archer in the screenshot is alive now, and that one just west of Washington gets attacked by unit 1. 63 damage to our enemy, 12 to us. I was expecting a bit more, but he won't survive a similar attack.
Those were all offensive actions we are taking this turn, but that doesn't mean all units stayed idle: The horseman of the number 4 retreats to the destroyed farm southwest of Futatsuiwa of Sado. There he should be safe for the next few turns. Also, since unit 2 is at such poor health, they swiftly swap positions with unit 5.

Our two largest cities are reporting in that they're in need of new construction plans: Shining Needle Castle has opened up a library, not the great one in Alexandria, more like a high school library. Lilliput on the other hand has a campus district now. Both cities now work on the same building and will need the same amount of time for it: Ancient walls in but 2 turns. We're really squeezing the most out of our "Limes" policy card (Every single city is now making ancient walls).

Mamizou gets her turn and decides to have just a single unit attack us: Barbarian horsemen are racing towards unit 5 and deal only 10 damage for the price of 77 on themselves. As we are about to gain control again, another message informs us of something not too positive:



The Oracle was something that I was tempted to try and build. It wouldn't have taken terribly long in Shining Needle Castle for example, but the danger was too high that someone would beat us to it. I have a feeling that it's Alice Margatroid building many of those wonders, whereever she may be. Alice is good at that due to her unique industrial zone.

Turn 130 - 350 A.D.

Same as before: Units missing in that screenshot are too far away from the action to be relevant and will spend their turn licking their wounds.



With a squeezed frontline, we'll need to be careful what attacks we pick. Unit 2 begins by taking a promotion, it becomes another one of the Tortoise-Amphibious archetypes. At rank 2, it was formidable enough to deserve a name:



You know, I was pretty nervous while typing out this one. Two reasons:
- I wasn't sure if I'd made a mistake in her name. Once you hit "confirm" the name's set and can't ever be edited. It would have been embarassing if that swordsman had to carry a botched name til the day it died.
- I don't know the manga-only characters too well. Was Yorihime the one with the sword, or was it the moon sister with the hat? Shining Needle Swordsmen should be named after Touhous with swords. Nitori could probably craft a lightsaber...
All was well in the end, I was anxious for nothing.

Unit 1 was considering several options: Attacking the adjacent war cart, pillaging the Alc?zar for 25 culture points, or slaying the injured archer to the northwest. It ended up being option 3, for only 8 damage suffered. Unit 4 doesn't attack anyone, instead it takes unit 1's previous position on the enemy Alc?zar. Unit 3, even though you wouldn't think so, simply heals. There's little sense in going after the adjacent horseman, I've got a hunch he'll suicide himself on us anyway.

Mamizou makes two attacks, one semi-smart, one not so smart, both probably futile in the end:

- Unit 1 has to deal with the war cart to the east. It takes away 14 of our hitpoints, while losing 53 itself. That's why you shouldn't attack onto hills over rivers.
- I was absolutely right that the barbarian horseman east of Washington would choose a warrior's death by going after unit 3. He did, dealing only 10 points of damage.

Turn 131 - 375 A.D.

Upon entering this turn, one of our cities was the first to hit 10 population points. Think it was Shining Needle Castle? Nope, it's Blefuscu, the city growing almost too quickly for its own good. This means...



And in conclusion...



No matter what you do, you can't avoid working for the federal government, unless you don't work at all. Most of you will know more about the 40th President of the United States, Ronald Reagan, than I do. I know he was Republican and a former film actor. According to the Wikipedia article, he seemed to do a somewhat good job over his presidency with high approval ratings at its end? Then again, it's Wikipedia. Just to be safe: Please do not discuss whether Reagan was a good president in response to this post  :3.



Civ 5 had a similar cultural perk in the specialization "honor" to keep cities happy that had a garrison. This policy card can get you some use out of units while they don't need to fight a war, rather than just siphoning your money for maintenance. I have used this one in the past, we most likely will at some point.



While that would be no insubstantial gain in culture, this is rather a card for heavy cultural play, not the medium amount we're making. The medium amount that makes us Kaguya's worshipped hero.



An Alliance is what you'll form when a Declaration of Friendship just isn't committing enough. Even the surprise war during a friendship gets removed here. This generic alliance of the base game supposedly doesn't exist with Rise & Fall any more. There are several types of alliance introduced there. I still haven't tried out the expansion, so I can't say how it's looking exactly. I just know that Firaxis felt it neccessary to review the relatively under-utilized function of forming alliances.

After a quick review, there was no need to change any policy cards. Still profiting from Limes, still profiting from everything, really.

At least one of the many walls the Kobito are laying bricks for has been finished this turn. The following inspiration proves this:



We'll check what city needs new orders, but first, we're taking care of our soldiers:



I think the time has come to aim a few attacks towards the city, all the while we should aim at arranging even more units around it. So unit 2 does what needs to be done and destroys the war cart to the northeast. War carts are no joke, even this injured one sent 14 damage back to us.
Unit 3 (Yorihime) on the other hand could either take no action at all, or direct its strength at Washington. Fake Washington that is too far north to be real Washington D.C., let alone in the state of Washington at the west coast, takes 41 damage from the raid, gives 20 back to the attackers.
Unit 4 is up next, and while it might have been an option to go northeast and make room for unit 6 to advance, this squad of swordsmen also takes a shot at the city itself. 38 damage to the target, 27 to us. Looking back at this plan of action, it was a somewhat arrogant plan.
Unit 1 (Nitori) could either heal or take care of the barbarian horseman northeast of it. I don't like them blocking our way, so we take the confrontation, deal 56 damage for 13. The hills are to blame for the outcome, not the river crossing. Remember, she's amphibious.

That will do it for our military. The cities that are no longer building walls are the two most ancient of the Kobito. Shining Needle Castle is in a pious mood today and chooses to erect a shrine for the next 3 turns. We really should get a small amount of religious structures going these days. Lilliput on the other hand teaches a new builder his craft for 3 turns. There are still no farms in the Great Plains, we can't have that.

How much longer will we even talk about what Mamizou does?

- The just wounded barbarian horseman dies for his losing homeland by crashing into unit 1, causing only 8 damage.
- On the screenshot showing our frontlines, you may have noticed a single archer sneaking in sight, just behind Washington. This lone survivor shoots unit 3 for 11 damage.

   

I'm suddenly feeling very bad for Mamizou. This peace-deal she's proposing again is really just a plea for mercy now. Who voted for us to play Mamizou again?...Golbez. I'm really sorry, dude. I hope you can forgive me for wiping out your pick and won't boycott reading the LP. Really, we must do this, for the sake of pragmatism. We've invested too much into the war to stop here and again, reject all offers.

That should be enough for today. Washington is turning out to be quite resilient. Will it be enough? Hopefully not. I mean, why would we want to root for our opponents? Until next time!

[Golbez]

Oh well. At least she put up a good fight.

[Gesh86]

Update nr. 27 - The stone tablet contained but one mysterious phrase: "Mamizou will return!"

Turn 132 - 400 A.D.

Last time, we said no to a lucrative peace. Our cruelty knows no bounds. Someone else showed more kindness:



We'll have to go the home stretch of this conflict alone. The AI rarely fights wars much longer than the minimum runtime of 10 turns. It's been 14 since we declared, how are we holding up after such a long time?



There are no more units left that would be sensible to attack, so let's concentrate everything on the city center. It has a combat strength of 35 thanks to a war cart acting as a garrison. That is much more impressive than what the capital had. Tenshi Hinanawi as unit 2 makes the first charge for an impressive 49 damage, taking 25 on the flipside. The recently named Watatsuki no Yorihime is unit 4 and continues for a strong 46 damage and 21 on herself. The city is in the red now. Finally, we have a heavily injured rank 1 swordsman in range, unit 5...



The combat predictions show that we would survive, whereas Washington's healthbar is getting darkened out completely. But I've said it before, the predictions are never 100% accurate. In my experience, this could be a close call. If the dice are with us, the city will be gone, if not, we may even lose our swordsman due to the last archer taking point behind the city. Should we take the risk? I say we shall...



Drat! You can tell a raid wasn't a total conquest beforehand when the symbolic city units are left standing. 38 damage dealt, we were off by what must be but a puny amount of hitpoints. Our unsuccessful unit takes 17 damage. We are pretty certain to lose it, as there is no one else with enough movement points to finish off the city this round.

At this high point of thrills, one of our cities needs building instructions:



There's a second blue bar above a green one over Blefuscu. That symbolizes wall durability and shows that a city has walls to begin with. To the right, the harbor is marked to have already been worked on before, so we select it once more. Amenities in this settlement are at negative 1 by the way, undoubtedly because of the long conflict. We need to wrap it up as soon as we can!

Control goes over to Mamizou and I was right, the archer knows who he is most likely to kill. Unit 5 takes a hail of arrows and...



...our precious swordsman survives by a hair! 13 damage, and I don't understand why Mamizou didn't grab the war cart in her city and go in for the kill. I guess that's what I would do, an attack out of spite, but not our emotionless computer with his bits and bytes.

Turn 133 - 425 A.D.

I think at this point, it is no longer really neccessary to mark units for you. The war is decided, pretty much. But wait, we notice a Tanuki trade unit:



This is another thing barbarians can do and so can we when we are at war with the target. Plundering a trade route will deplete all movement points of that unit, but can be done so long as you have at least one left. "+140 gold" pops up and floats to the sky as we click, that's how much we enriched ourselves. It may seem odd, but this never gets deducted from the victim civilization. All plundered wealth is newly created for the brigand. I guess it was the private belongings of the trade unit, not state property, that we stole.
Tenshi Hinanawi draws her Sword of Hisou, steps in front of Washington and...



It was to be expected. Just as the scene ends, Mamizou appears in a diplomatic message:



This tells us that Washington was her final city and that the Tanuki are officially eliminated as a player! This should be the last time we hear of our fuzzy nemesis. For all of you who are sad over the loss, know that the Tanuki as a people are now integrated into Kobito society and live on as equal citizens.
All Tanuki units disappear with the elimination and Futatsuiwa of Sado loses its oppression status. As for bootleg Washington...



I thought briefly whether we should keep it. Then again, it has a little too much tundra nearby, no luxuries we don't already have, is generally squished in a little too close towards Futatsuiwa of Sado and is overall far away from the core of our empire. No, we raze it until no one can see it had ever been there!

Thus, the war is over. Not a single Kobito unit was lost, I am very happy how it went. Had it been as disastrous as the first war, that would have marked the Let's Play as the probably worst, most inept Civilization 6 campaign I've ever played. Now that this load is off our shoulders, the future of the Kobito is looking much brighter. As our next action, we promote the Shining Needle Swordsman who almost died last round. Honestly, he probably should have died, just to punish us for our hubris of trying to take the city with him. He, like many of his kind, becomes Amphibious. We do not yet give him a custom name, I couldn't think of a good one.

The soldiers who are now out of enemies gradually move back home. It'll take no small amount of time. We will try and divide them up equally on our cities, now 5 in total, for guard duty.

As our last action for this historical turn, we set our research from the fairly far advanced Education to Engineering. That one has exactly 1 turn left, it'd be a sin not to grab it.

Turn 134 - 450 A.D.

It'd have been weird if I wrote that last sentence and this didn't pop up:



Robert Anson Heinlein is one of America's most prominent science-fiction authors. For example, he wrote Starship Troopers. An influential work: The concept of a "space marine" was apparently not thought of until then.



The aqueduct is something the Romans were famous for, a sort of bridge to direct water away from its natural flow and over obstacles. Funny about this it that the Romans in Civilization 6 cannot build aqueducts. No, you did not misread that. They instead construct a unique aqueduct, called the bathhouse.
This district is the first to not count towards your district limit. While it does take considerable time to make, it isn't a direct competitor to other districts. If you ever decide to set down a city where there's no water access: Build an aqueduct before anything else! Your dusty and dry city will be absolutely worthless and stay tiny if you don't.
I catch myself very rarely building aqueducts. Most of the time I only settle where there's fresh water access, and the flat +2 housing you'd then get for it is very meager, hardly worth the build time or the sacrificed tile.



The catapult is the very first siege unit, a subtype of ranged units. If you attack a city with a standard ranged unit like an archer, it will get a harsh malus in combat strength. The siege unit will not. In perfect contrast, the malus will be against attacking other units.
Escorting a few regiments of catapults is an alternative to bringing battering rams or siege towers. In the late game, siege units become far more effective and will become the intended way of taking enemy cities. We'll probably not make catapults too soon, not after our recent, successful war. Their evolutions may become more attractive to us.
The -1 gold maintenance seems to be a lasting bug stuck to this campaign. Most likely, the real cost is still applied. I've checked, it's supposed to be 2 gold.

Not just our science, but our culture also made a step forward this turn! We invent a trade that a lot of people will tell you is most deplorable:



Those mercenaries will be a lot of trouble if you don't give them a war to fight. Niccol? Bernardo dei Machiavelli is often called the father of political science. He is somewhat controversial though, as "Machiavellianism" describes a very ruthless but arguably effective style of politics.



This card is only applied to the pillaging of districts, not farms, mines, plantations or pastures. When districts get pillaged, the lowest ranking building constructed in it will always be disabled first. If you keep pillaging until none are left, the district itself will become ineffective until repaired.



My tip: If you get an evolution for a unit you have especially many of, don't upgrade. Wait until you get a new civic, swap in this card and upgrade every single one of them. You will save loads of gold, especially in the late game! Just don't forget to throw the card out as soon as you can afterwards.



Helpful if you have a significant number of foreign trade routes. I tend to have more internal than international ones and with just one neighbour, this should stay true for this game as well.

With just a single city still building walls, the Limes policy has done its due and is mostly a dead weight now. We swap the economic policy Insulae in our wildcard slot. To remind you, this card gives +1 housing to all cities with at least 2 districts. Two of our cities do and those that don't soon will. With us always so close to our housing limits, I think this is a great choice.

Time to set up a new research as well as cultural development. We have loads of options:

   

On the science side, the choice is easy. We've recently worked on Engineering and Construction, both of which were prerequisites for Machinery. See the crossbow among its two advancements? We absolutely need those. The low time of only 3 turns is excellent news. When it comes to culture, our pick follows a different logic than usual: We're not going to get the inspiration for Divine Right too soon. 2 temples is just too much to ask. Know what? That doesn't matter at all. One of the advancements is a new form of government and we need to switch to that as soon as we can. We will spend those 12 turns crowning ourselves a god king, and we're not going to switch away from it. Every turn we can leave our soon-to-be-outdated Oligarchy behind earlier will strengthen us.

We are then alerted to pick a Great Person. Is it a Great Scientist? I really hope so. Let's check:



Aww, well a Great Merchant is still decent enough. Irene Sarantapechaina was a Byzantine empress. Not really a merchant, is she? At least not literally. She restored the worship of Christian icons, making her an enemy of the "iconoclasts" of the time. Wonder what she would think about the video game Iconoclasts...
As we recruit her, the following happens...



It will be a while until we unlock Mercantilism. I believe that is a cultural civic from the Renaissance. Irene spawned in Shining Needle Castle and we will give her an order later on in the turn. First, let's set production. A shrine is ready for worship in our capital, and Lilliput prepared a builder.
I would love to set down a harbor in Shining Needle Castle as soon as possible. Unfortunately, we are at our district limit there. The maximum amount of districts in a city increases by 1 each at 1, 4, 7 and 10 population. From there, it keeps increasing by 1 every 3 population. Our capital is currently at 9 population with 3 turns left until it reaches 10. We should pick a very short, uncommitting project until then. A trader is exactly what that is, we need only 4 turns for one.
Lilliput is also at its district limit of 3. It still has the ability to make buildings in its campus, encampment or commercial hub. My tendency was to make stables at first, but somehow, the market for 6 turns seemed wiser in the end. We're not poor, but more cash is always healthy. Furthermore, having a second market is tied to an inspiration.



I wanted to give you a close-up of our youngest, non-annexed city, Laputa, mostly because it's growing surprisingly well now! It seemed to have completely gotten over its food shortages and is expanding its borders onto some very delicious tiles. It was still the last one to finish its ancient walls, but that's ok. The most obvious plan of action would be to continue the half-built industrial zone. Here's what we'll do instead: A scout over the next 2 turns. That may seem odd. We already have 3 scouts, all of them idle. Why a fourth? There's something coming up in perhaps a dozen turns that'll make exploration relevant again. I'm so looking forward to it!
Before we forget, Laputa also quick-purchases another builder for 310 gold. The fields of sugar, the second flock of sheep nearby...we can't leave those uncultivated.

Last but not least, Futatsuiwa of Sado, now as loyal as any other city of the Kobito Empire, also needs an order. I don't like that it has but a single district, so let's change that. We want our first Entertainment Complex and we want it here:



12 turns. Entertainment complexes, I think I said it before, have no adjacency mechanics for themselves. Instead, you should ask yourselves: "Is there another city within the range of 6 tiles?" Entertainment complexes will receive something later that influences your cities positively when they're within that radius. Right now, the answer would be "no" for that spot, but I'm already planning to make a city somewhere that will be in said vicinity.

Finally, we have some units to take care of. Not one of those overwhelming siege-screenshots we've had over the war, just a few loose ends. Tenshi Hinanawi is the first unit to make it to rank 3! The promotion tree opens up a little more then: She could learn Battlecry, Commando, but also the two newcomers...



"Zweih?nder" is German for "two-hander". I guess Greatswords and the like are something spear- and pikeman have to fear especially. Urban Wafare sounds very niche, until you remember that city centers are also considered a district. Units with that promotion will be significantly better at conquering cities. We do want that. Tenshi is now a Tortoise-Amphibious-Urban Warfarer archetype.
Moving on, there's also a rank 2 swordsman we refused to name last turn. Since this was a new play session for me on turn 134, I had time to think of a good one...



Sakuya's knives may be short, but so are the Shining Needle Swordsmens' needle swords. The warband from our Kobito/Eientei-Tanuki war will soon rest to heal and after that, hike home. Expect to not hear much of them for a while, as their indiviual treks are really not going to be exciting at all. Barbarians are very unlikely to be encountered, the U.S./Canadian region is too populated by players.

It's empress Irene's turn. What exactly can she do?



The good lady is special in that unlike most Great People, you do not cash her in at the respective district. In fact, you don't send her to any district whatsoever, but onto a luxury. The luxury you trigger her on will create a duplicate of itself permanently in your capital. This requires more thought than you would think. What would be a bad spot, and what would be a good place for this? Bad and lazy would be something you already have cultivated in your borders, say sugar in our case. The absolute ideal would be a resource that is somewhat far away, at a place too unstrategic to make a city nearby. I think I've got what we're looking for:



Eastern Brazil is far away from our other settlements. A city there would be confined to making trade routes with Hattusa and Granada. The citrus would be this spot's main appeal. Let's decide to not ever send a settler there and just copy the citrus. A great plan of action. Irene needs 20 turns to get there. A lot, but what can you do? Runner up to the citrus were the pearls located in the Great Lakes, but we could theoretically make a city there with decent value.

Turn 135 - 475 A.D.

This shouldn't be nearly as much an over-bloated super-turn as the last. No input is required for city production, but I do want to say hello to our best friend forever, Kaguya. Is the feeling still mutual?



If you do the math, the positives far outway the negatives. However, I'm a little worried that a warmonger penalty is visible at all. Since Kaguya had already withdrawn her combat effort before Untrue Washington fell, she no longer viewed the razing of the city as something she had a part in, hence she saw us warmongering. Any player of Civ 6 who has ever razed a city knows that it can forever tarnish a reputation. I think we'll be ok in this case, we are on extremely good terms with Kaguya. Still, it won't be a given for her to take our next Declaration of Friendship. We can only hope.
Actually, we can do a little more: We can make trade deals to her that are more generous on our part than a greedy barterer would normally be. Here's one of them:



On the question what she was willing to spend, she originally added another coin per turn as well as right of passage through her borders. We took those away.



It seems that was very effective. We shouldn't let a couple atrocities come between Kobito and Eientei, should we?

Lilliput has had its newest builder assess its surroundings. Here's where we want a farm. It was about time...



The improvement the AI highlights for recommendation is an Alc?zar. Yup, we are still Granada's suzerain, so we could make one. While I briefly thought about having a snazzy Moorish fort (they also give +2 culture apart from defensive bonuses), it would disrupt any posibility of getting farm-triangles here. Only a most strategic position should be used for them, somewhere that enemy units could be not too unlikely to invade from. This is not such a position. A farm it is.

Speaking of builders and farms:



The quick-bought Laputan builder from last turn also tends to the soils at the adjacent floodplains. With the improvement, the respective tile is worth +4 food. That's extremely fertile, yes please!

The turn concludes for us after this, but not for those we're sharing the continent with. Eientei seems to be in dire need of amenities and asks for a replenishment of their sugar reserves:



I do not actuall like this deal. But what have we learned? We don't have to take or reject it as it is. First off, we completely take the open borders out of the equation. I don't actually want Kaguya to park her over-abundance of archers in our lands. She would totally do that I tell you. After asking the princess's new opinion, her offer becomes sugar for 4 gold a turn. We proceed to give her a super-special friend discount of 25%, cutting it to 3 gold a turn. Again, this should keep cementing the relationship.

After only 4 turns, I think we should call this an update. They were turns of great contrasts, after all. A new era of peace is upon us after so much intrigue and strife. I think the consolidatory efforts we'll be having soon should make our empire so much more prosperous. We'll see how everything keeps developing. Next time: Bolts that nobody needs to fire. Yet.

[Gesh86]

Update nr. 28 - Skull and crossbows

Turn 136 - 500 A.D.

Last time, the bake-danuki of Sado was banished from the world. Maybe she'll find the place where she belongs in a mystical, isolated land of fantasy.
A scout was born in Laputa. A revolutionary event! Nah, not really. It is literally the unit with the least value, but what matters is what you do with that value. We send him towards the west-coast and let Laputa resume construction of its industrial zone. 14 turns.
The builder of Lilliput moves closer to Shining Needle Castle, the one from Laputa aims towards the sugar fields. That's basically all I can report to you on this turn of relatively little significance. One more thing maybe:



I can confirm that the Great Bunny Reisen that has recently joined Kaguya is indeed a military general. She is travelling in the sight radius of our trade unit within the borders of Eientei.

Turn 137 - 520 A.D.

Well, what do you know?Time is advancing only 20 years per turn since the calendar turned to 500 A.D. Expect the years to keep passing slower and slower.
Primitive machinery did exist in the middle ages. We're not talking engines and pistons here, but more like a castle's drawbridge:



That's the second science-fiction author in a short amount of time. Gregory Benford is also an astrophysicist. Most well known is his Galactic Center Saga. While Heinlein thought of the concept of a space marine, this fellow was the first to predict the possibility of a computer virus.



Going from an archer to crossbowman, melee combat strength gets doubled! The ranged combat strength is not quite doubled, but still tremendously increased. Just so you know: If a swordsman clashed with this unit, 1 on 1 without interference, even if our melee enthusiast were to get the first strike, the crossbowman would win after a few turns. We want to upgrade the archers that we have soon, just to show some more muscle.
Between this and the last update, a patch was applied in early March, and that fixed the erroneously displayed maintenance costs. Apparently, the February patch not only meddled with our save file, it was a really crappy patch in other regards as well.



Lumber mills do not destroy the forests they are built on and are especially helpful near rivers. Perhaps cities with few hills, like Blefuscu, could profit from them in the future. Try to build at least one lumber mill somewhat soon upon learning to make them, as they are tied to a eureka.

Machinery was a prerequisite for the technology of Printing, which we do not need too urgently. Instead, let's start figuring out how Stirrups function. 4 turns. You'd think something like a stirrup would be an incredibly simple invention, but it took humanity surprisingly long to perfect.



Lilliput's builder does not belong to its city of birth exclusively. That kind of selfishness wouldn't be in the interest of our empire, so he sets down another farm for Shining Needle Castle. Oh, how I wish we could stomp the hill on the tile southwest of the builder so that it's flat and smooth. We could then complete our first farm-triangle, but for now it's sticking out like a sore thumb. Some day, when we can make farms on uneven land, we'll do that.

Huh, the game didn't remind us of our envoys when it should have. I wonder what went wrong...



I noticed only then that we had two of them free and idle. Even worse: Kaguya is rivaling us as suzerain of Hattusa now. Let's send one envoy there for a total of 6. Thus, the alliance with Hattusa is restored and another +2 science for each of our three campuses is gained.

Last but not least, we're getting ourselves some of these new-fashioned crossbowmen...

   

Somewhere between the two must have been the technology of wearing coats. This was the archer garrisoned in Lilliput's encampment. 190 per unit, yikes, that's a lot. In fact, it is so much, we cannot even upgrade all three archers that we have. We modernize two of them and are left with a measly 70 coins. But...



Just like you're rewarded for having three archers in your empire, you also get an extra treat for the second crossbowman you own. Metal Casting is a technology from the Renaissance, semi-far away from where we are.



Another builder made it to his destination this turn. We have him set down a plantation for our third copy of sugar. That's too much sugar even for us as and Kaguya to sprinkle on our cakes. Should we ever find one of the other outer-continental players, we could present it to them as a welcoming gift.
The tile itself has unbelievably good yields by the way: 5 food and 2 gold (post-cultivation). That must be why Laputa is growing so fast now.

Turn 137 - 540 A.D.

Our third trader was completed, he's awaiting orders at Shining Needle Castle. As foreshadowed on the last update, our capital needs a harbor. But upon choosing a place for it, I'm spotting some difficulties:



The marked tile has the highest adjacency thanks to some fish and crabs. Darn it though, our cultural borders have not yet claimed it. Worse still, we only have 108 coins and therefore cannot buy the tile. It's all my fault of going for those really expensive crossbowman upgrades.
Tell you what, Shining Needle Castle will not make a harbor yet. Instead, we'll start working on a temple. 5 turns, but I can already tell you that we won't do it in one go. The moment our treasury reaches 170, we'll give the harbor priority. Hopefully we won't forget to do so in the heat of the game.

The builder that was helping out Shining Needle Castle is being sent en route to Blefuscu. Looks like he'll be donating 1 builder charge each to our oldest, most venerable cities.

The newest trader of ours is asking us to give him a lucrative or otherwise productive route, but he is not getting one yet. Instead, we use the order to transfer him to another city. The city in question is our acquired province, Futatsuiwa of Sado. Next turn I'll tell you why we chose to do this and what options we have from there.

The turn ends with new orders for Laputa's builder. Unlike his brother at Lilliput, this one keeps focusing on his home town: He'll make his way to a newly annexed sheep resource northwest of our desert city.

Turn 139 - 560 A.D.

Our knowledge about Stirrups and Divine Right keeps advancing. So do all the building projects. The highlight for this turn would probably be the assigning of a new trade route:



Futatsuiwa of Sado is not at all connected to our main empire. Neither we nor Mamizou were ever interested to send traders to each other, so no roads have ever been constructed. That is our main goal here: We should start by creating a way westward, a route from Futatsuiwa of Sado -> Lilliput. Notice the following:



That symbol stands for Mamizou's old religion, Zoroastrianism. The traders starting from Futatsuiwa of Sado will do word of mouth on it at their destination. Religion is indeed carried by trade routes, although only marginally ("+1" is a very weak amount of influence). This is good, as Zoroastrianism is something we don't want our people to adopt too strongly. The Touhou Fandom shall stay the one true faith for us, we will likely spread it actively at some point and thwart Zoroastrianism through inquisitors later on.



It's nothing world-shaking, but this spot right here is where we'll put our fourth scout on alert for perhaps 10 or so turns. We'll know when to reactivate him. Until then, he'll be sun-bathing at the Californian beaches.

Turn 140 - 580 A.D.



If something works, why should it expire? Doesn't make any sense to me! I hope we can renew our peaceful togetherness with Kaguya. We know it won't work to ask now, but we will approach her again soon.



Before anything else, we switch Shining Needle Castle's production from the unfinished foundations of a temple to the promised harbor. The tile is bought, leaving us with a pitiful 18 coins. Don't worry, the district will be paying for itself in due time. It will be finished in only 6 turns! That's faster than I would have imagined. Since our capital didn't have a natural access to the sea, the harbor tile is where any constructed warships will spawn at.

Blefuscu has apparently also just completed such a harbor. Our settlement at Florida has always been growing a little faster than I would have liked. It's practically impossible to keep it well below the housing limit. You know what? It's going to make a settler for us. 17 turns. A settler always deducts a population point, which we're going to cry over much less here than if it were at Lilliput or Shining Needle Castle.

Turn 141 - 600 A.D.

Many people do not want to get off their high horse. At least for us, it'll be easier to get on a horse, be it high or low:



We're going far into the past with William Camden. He was an English topographer and historian of the 16th century. In a time where last rites were considered extremely important to the faithful, the quote actually describes the general fear of one's sudden death and is not just about falling off a horse like a dummy. Which can still be lethal or have lasting effects...



If we were to gear up for a war now, the knight would be the most effective unit to mass-produce. The combat strength of 48 exceeds even that of a Shining Needle Swordsman supported by multiple companions. Do however know that the knight will have pretty bad combat predictions against pikemen. Better ride around those if you can.
Horsemen DO NOT upgrade into knights as you would expect, heavy chariots do instead. We don't have any, so at least we needn't open our wallets to upgrade.



Neat. This has nothing to do with the technology of Stirrups, it popped up because Lilliput constructed a market, the second one within our empire.

So what is next after armored people on horses? First of all, we should view how far we've come to recruiting a Great Scientist...



We're leading, but it is still many turns from now. I'm undecided if we should go for Education as the next technology now, or wait for its eureka (which would trigger upon getting Mr. Gallilei as a Kobito). In the end, we settle for research on Military Engineering. 7 turns. Completing that one would reveal all sources of niter on the map, a strategic resource needed for some units. It would be good to know where any niter is as soon as possible.

Lilliput bolsters our commerce, having completed a market. You know, I'm really interested in finally making a wonder, and one I've set my eyes on is the Terracotta Army. To start on it, barracks or stables are a prerequisite. Let's get this obstacle out of the way and make the latter. 6 turns will be needed for it.



The last charge of Lilliput's builder is spent in a way we have not yet employed: We must make mother nature cry and just chop down a forest. For the sake of getting a farm-triangle done at some point, the trees would have had to make room there anyway. Removing features is smart in such cases, as you can really speed up production on a short notice. With all the extra lumber, building time for Blefuscu's settler shrinks from 16 turns to a mere 8.

Turn 142 - 620 A.D.

We're making such satisfying progress now, let's pack another turn into this update.



I said it wasn't too important what our recent warband was doing, but I simply needed to point out that archer queen Kaguya is causing a traffic jam. It's annoying, but I assure you that we will not conduct vengeance on her for such a trifle. My plan is to instead settle the area roughly where Fake New York once was, then our borders will keep her troops out automatically.



Say goodbye to Laputa's builder: He disappears after making the suggested pasture.  I can't stress it enough: It makes me happy how well Laputa's doing. It has an amazing infrastructure now with respectable growth and production.



I'm feeling daring now. Let's ask Kaguya for friendship once more. The relationship table now says that she completely forgave the destruction of Mamizou. That's already a good sign. We're also getting many points for having been her friend in the past. First time's always the hardest.
Will this work? Fingers crossed!



Excellent. That's another 30 turns of harmony between the Kobito and Eientei.

Alright. Turn 142 ends without spectacle and so does this update. After all the military commandeering, I'm greatly enjoying these current times of peace. A lot of Civ-players love the economic side of the game and hate waging war, saying that it slows the pace of the game and battles consist of too much micro-management. My own opinion is somewhat in the, there's good in both and I appreciate what I haven't had in a long time. Next time, the ocean roars again!