stoutfellow

I've finished the initialization stage of constructing my Civ VI database; all the basic data is in - civilizations, leaders, techs and civics, wonders, and all the rest. It's spread over no less than thirty tables; about half are basic, and most of the rest linking tables - which leaders go with which civilizations, which buildings can be built in which districts, and so on.

The next step is setting up the game selection mechanism. As I envision it, this will culminate in a form with list boxes for Difficulty (for now, defaulting to Prince), Teams (civilization + leader), Map Size (from Duel to Huge), Map Type (Continents, Island Plates, Archipelago, Pangaea, and various other configurations), and Starting Era (from Ancient to Information). Each of these except Difficulty will have a Select button, which will randomly select one of the options. The distributions won't necessarily be uniform; each Team will have the same probability, but Map Size should usually land on the middle options, Small and Standard, and other biases will be built into the others. Also, I'll be able to manually override - I'm not playing Genghis Khan on an Archipelago map - and nothing will be final until I hit the Confirm button. (I've figured out a nice general way of handling the probability distributions. I'll have to tweak some of the tables to make it work.)

After *that* comes the hard part: the game play forms. I think I know what-all I need to do for those, but it'll be a fair bit of work.

:cracks knuckles:

I have always been a fiend for organizing things. On the intellectual level, that is, not the physical; anyone who's seen the inside of my office or my house knows that.

Back when I was playing Skyrim, I took the time to construct a database to help me track my achievements in the game. It wasn't quite to my satisfaction; there are too many exceptions and special cases in the various quest-lines and such, but it did help me organize my game play.

As might be expected, I'm now doing the same with Civ VI: Gathering Storm. I'm still in the initialization stage, working out how to organize the data and entering it into the database. Eventually, I'll have it set up to choose the parameters of a game - civilization and leader, map size and configuration, and a few others - and to keep track of what I am able to do and what would be advisable to do. It'll also contain some tweaks to the scoring system (which I've complained about before), to include speed of victory, difficulty of the setup, and so forth.

The job is much easier for Civ VI than it was for Skyrim; the former seems more tightly organized than the latter. But then, Skyrim is much more free-form; there are many ways to play a satisfying game, where Civilization offers only half a dozen kinds of victory. I enjoy both, but my love of system is better filled by the latter.

Yesterday, I broke down and downloaded the Gathering Storm extension of Civ VI. I've been playing the Rise and Fall extension, and am very happy with it; I was uncertain about GS. Some of the changes sounded interesting, but others were less appetizing. When I realized that, when starting a game, I could choose R&F or GS (or plain vanilla, if I want), that broke down what remained of my resistance. (Also, hilzoy said she enjoyed GS, and I trust her.)

Today, I completed my first game of Gathering Storm. I was playing as Peter the Great, and it was a race to see whether I'd win a Religious victory - my original plan - or a Cultural one. (As it happened, I got the Religious win.) The new features... The Natural Disaster stuff seemed gimmicky, but working around eruptions of a volcano near one of my cities was interesting. I won before Industrialization got going, so pollution and climate change didn't come up. And the World Congress stuff... I'll have to go over the rules some more, but it didn't have too much effect on my gameplay.

I'm still not completely sold on GS, but I do want to play a game as Eleanor of Aquitaine (one of the new Leaders). Her special bonuses look intriguing. So do Suleiman and Matthias Corvinus. Going back to R&F for my next game, though.

I'm currently playing Civ VI as Qin Shi Huang, and I'm going for a Religious victory. One of my early successes was in Arabia, whose cities I converted from Islam to Confucianism. When I converted the Islamic Holy City of Sana'a, an Emergency was declared: I would strive to keep Sana'a Confucian, while Saladin would work to restore Islam, during the next thirty turns.

Conversion is primarily carried out by training Missionaries and Apostles, which takes place at Holy Sites of cities where the desired religion is predominant. *There were no cities in which Islam was dominant* - I had converted them all. And yet Islamic Apostles kept showing up, and I had to struggle to keep the city in line.

My guess is that, when a religious Emergency is in effect, the threatened religion can still generate evangelical units even without usable Holy Sites. I managed to hold them off, but had to use up a high-powered Apostle who was really needed elsewhere.

I was just playing Civ 6; playing as Harald Hardrada, I was driving towards a Domination victory. I had already conquered the Scythians, the Zulu, and Macedon, and Sumeria was down to its last city. I had already begun moving my mighty navy towards the Khmer cities; they, and Wilhelmina's Dutch were all that remained.

Gilgamesh's city of Kish had had its walls blasted to rubble by a naval bombardment, and as soon as my land forces got there, they waltzed right in... at which point the game ended, in a Religious victory. I had already converted most of the cities in each of my remaining rivals.

Dammit, I was looking forward to grinding the entire world under my heel!

In setting up a game of Civ VI, you're allowed to choose (among other things) the general configuration of the map. The default is Continents, with two large continents and a scattering of islands. Other options include Pangaea, Archipelago, and Inland Sea (which should be self-explanatory), plus Fractal (which has landforms generated pretty much at random) and Shuffle (the description of which is a coy "Who knows?").

For my current game, I decided to try a Fractal map. (All of my previous games have been on Continents.) I'm playing as Cleopatra. Montezuma is to my southeast, limiting expansion there. I've pushed as far to the northeast as I can without risking war with Seondeok of Korea. There are a couple of city-states to my west, so I have a bit more room to maneuver there, but they block off the further west from my Scouts. I spotted a narrow isthmus which would allow me access to those areas by sea, once I acquired Shipbuilding, and I planted a colony there, on a one-tile-wide part of the isthmus. Ho ho, now I can pass between the seas on either side! I build a couple of Galleys and set sail.

Both of them are inland seas, dammit.

The following will probably only be of interest to Civ VI aficionados.

I'm currently playing as Seondeok of Korea. I'm planning a fairly peaceful stance, aiming at an eventual Scientific Victory. In my initial period of exploration, I discovered that Pedro II of Brazil is uncomfortably close by. When I spotted an iron deposit in the no-man's-land between us, I decided I had to grab the area (which would also have the advantage of cutting Pedro off from the region to my south). So I built a Settler and sent it, escorted by an Archer, to a tile adjacent to the iron. Unfortunately (so it seemed), I chose the "go here" option rather than controlling the Settler directly, and the AI sent it off the long way around. (There was a road it could have taken that would have gotten it there faster, but who knows how a game AI thinks, other than its coder?)

It turned out to be fortunate, though, because it ran smack into a Brazilian Settler headed to the same area. Now, motive: I had to keep it from beating my Settler to the spot. Method: the Brazilian Settler was unescorted, a sitting duck for any military unit. Opportunity: my Archer, escorting my own Settler, was right on top of it.

I swear, I wanted to be peaceful, but when someone drops a temptation like that in front of you, you have to take it. I sent Pedro a declaration of war and grabbed his Settler. He did have some Warriors nearby, and I had to pull the garrisoned Archers from two nearby cities to stop them and provide another escort. (One Archer can't escort two Settlers at the same time!)

The war was brief; I drove off his Warriors, sent my new acquisition northward, and established my new iron-rich colony on schedule. (I had a Builder positioned to start mining the iron immediately.)

I still intend to be peaceful, but some temptations are irresistible.

Another situation in which it's a good idea to bail on a Civ 6 game: when you're playing as the pacifistic Khmer emperor Jayavarman VII, and your nearest neighbors turn out to be Shaka and Genghis Khan....

I enjoy Civilization 6. I really do. I downloaded the Rise and Fall expansion a week or so ago, and that made it even better. But...,

In my current game, I have a Warrior unit which has just completed some R&R after cleaning out a barbarian outpost. The tile he's on has mountains to the north and ocean cliffs to the south and east; even though I have Shipbuilding, he can't move out onto the water, because of the cliffs. Immediately to his west is a Zulu Scout, blocking the only way he could move by land. Moving in that direction would trigger war with the Zulus, which I (playing as Harald Hardrada) really don't want to do.

The game refuses to let me have the Warrior stand pat. It will not let me end turn. It insists that he *absolutely must* move.

This happens from time to time, for reasons I've yet to discover. Usually I just move to an adjacent tile and immediately move back. *I can't do that!*

I called up the menu, hit Quick Save and then Exit to Desktop. If it still won't let me end turn when I resume play, I'll have to start over. (Not too big a deal; Harald isn't one of my favorite Leaders, but I hit "Random Leader" in the opening menu and felt obliged to go along with the choice.)

It's a good game, but if I still had my winter fur I'd be tearing it out at this point.

When I played Civilization IV, I was often frustrated when one of the competing civilizations (run by the computer) was Isabella of Spain. My usual strategy involved founding as many of the seven religions as possible, and she always interfered with that. She was my nemesis.

Now I play Civilization VI, and I have discovered who my nemesis is in this game: Gorgo of Sparta. She always seems to spurt ahead in science, culture, and tourism, impossibly fast - and I'm playing at the Warlord level, before the other civilizations start to cheat. I guess the only solution is to try to find her and knock her out as quickly as possible, but, dammit, she's the Queen of Sparta!