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Sid Meier’s Civilization


Celery Man

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I’ve played this on and off for a decade or so, which probably just means 5 and 6. But I’ve been playing it a lot lately - it’s one of the few games I can play on my Mac in my office where I spend a lot of time. And I am uncovering how little I actually know about this game. I’m trying to get better and understand the different mechanics, trying to become more flexible in molding my strategy to fit the approach and victory type that makes sense for my situation. But man I keep wanting to rush tanks and bombers, fuck you Trajan. It’s currently a challenge for me playing on Emporer - last game I started rolling and thought I had it, but didn’t realize that the last step in science victory in the latest version progresses even if all your spaceports have been nuked (if you’ve launched the exoplanet mission, as both Robert and Alexander had before I began conquering their empires). 
 

I’m not a YouTube gaming channel guy, but I’ve started watching this guy’s explainers and it has helpful. Makes me realize obvious strategies like… if you’re getting attacked by robots, take out your opponents supply of uranium.


Anyone else play?

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1 hour ago, Celery Man said:

 

Anyone else play?

Wellyeah.gif

I played the original civ on the 486 that I bought from my cousin in early mid 90s. He didn’t have his manual, so I had to guess at the questions to keep playing. I don’t know how many months of my life I’ve spent on “just one more turn” and then “oh look the sun is coming up.”  Pretty sure we have a thread around here. 
 

The thing that always drove me nuts was the time between turns by about the industrial revolution. Even recently for 6 (maybe it was 5) I had a computer that was decently over spec for that version and it’d still take WAY too long g on big maps near the end game. I still waited and drank my coffee at 4 AM waiting for that next turn. 

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6 minutes ago, UT_OB1 said:

Pretty sure we have a thread around here. 

I don't think there is one. I was going to start one at one point. 

I played 6 for a bit but like 5 better. 6 just felt too bloated to me. Felt like there was too much shit to keep track of every turn. 

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11 minutes ago, ztejas said:

I don't think there is one. I was going to start one at one point. 

I played 6 for a bit but like 5 better. 6 just felt too bloated to me. Felt like there was too much shit to keep track of every turn. 

Crazy we don’t have one. This is it then. 
 

Either of Civ 6 or Civ Revolutions 2 on iPhone worth it?

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I bought the expansion for Civ VI and the new stuff (global warming, environmental catastrophes, the United Nations type deal that starts happening, CITY LOYALTY felt overwhelming to the point of anxiety inducing. But after getting my head wrapped around it, I think it does add a lot to the game. Especially having to manage city loyalty - being able to flip a city that an opponent settles near your empire, needing to use perks to enable loyalty boosts by posting governors and troops in cities, having to think more strategically before throwing up a city way out past the edge of your territory. Certainly more realistic. But it is such a massive pain in the ass if you're trying to conquer someone else and not just raze their cities (if you take a city even on the border of someone else's empire, if you don't have enough pressure from your own nearby cities you'll realistically need to try and conquer several at once and post governors/troops there or the city will likely revolt and become a free state before swapping back... which gets tiresome and sucks the energy out of your crusade).

 

I run the game on a Macbook Pro, which isn't... a dinky laptop but is also not a capable gaming machine independent of OS. It runs fine, the fan is loud AF but I think on the macbooks with the newer chips that's not as much of a problem. I wish I could go back and play Civ V, but it won't run on this version of OSX (at least not in Steam). At any rate - that's interesting about the turn time. I'd say it takes.... a good 15 seconds - 30 seconds between when I click "next turn" and when it's time for me to start executing my next moves. Did it used to be more like "go do something else for a while" type of a delay?

Also, I didn't play Civ back in the "answer questions from the manual" days, but I can still remember memorizing answers like "Spiro Agnew" and "The Tijuana Brass" from when I would sneak into my dad's office and run Leisure Suit Larry on his PC.

I'm curious about this iPhone version. Surely it's incredibly dumbed down. I would smash my phone 30 turns into one game when every unit kept getting annihilated by going to the wrong tile.

The complexity of this game makes it great, IMO. I've recently started to get a more subtle (or at least much less rudimentary) understanding of a lot of the different mechanics. My current game for instance.....

civjapan.thumb.jpg.cf9f7fe624288c78d4fac0b476db2cef.jpg

my first game as Japan, playing Emporer. Always tough because the AI gets two settlers off the bat and it's hard to catch up. I think there might still be enough time left for me to turn the tide, but it didn't help that I had fucking Mapuche right below me and of course they went surprise war in the first 100 turns, with units that are way more advanced than mine. But since I've come to understand basic stuff like "attacking across a river is not effective", I was able to maneuver my guys to bait his invasion forces into attacking me in good defensive positions. I think I may have lost one knight, and then lost my first bombard when it was one shot killed by one of his cities, which was frustrating. This is the moment when I completed research on Oil and discovered that I do have that resource (and of course snagged up that neutral tile), which means Lautaro is toast, and if I can do that quickly enough I'll be able to catch up with everyone else on the map. Robert the Bruce is a little bitch and has been no help at all.

I think I'm still too locked into "I'm going to get siege and cavalry units and roll" - I probably should've tried to sue for peace with Lautaro and pivoted to a culture victory approach. One thing I also realized only recently is the power of the city state bonuses - I used to look at those just like "I want to be suzerain of nearby city states so that they aren't a problem", and I didn't even realize that you get different bonuses for having different numbers of envoys at different types of city states. I also wanted to play Japan here to work more on district planning - I still don't quite get how the bonuses work here, but I think for Japan having a cluster of districts levels them all up, and you can see if H ave 103.5 production out of a Kyoto that's not even all that big yet. That's a lot, for me at least.

I still don't know what the fuck to do with faith, and should learn how to at least level up that tree enough to be able to spend it on shit.

Biggest "I'm a fucking idiot" moment i had recently - I've been producing suicide squads to run into an enemy territory and scope out whatever city or tile it is that I want to nuke. Not that I'm always nuke happy, but sometimes. How stupid to have to do that, since of course your unit gets vaporized by the nuke. But of course I then realized... you... don't have to be able to see through the fog of war when you're nuking. Which.. why the fuck is that any different from a conventional bombing run? Either way.

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I bought the expansion for Civ VI and the new stuff (global warming, environmental catastrophes, the United Nations type deal that starts happening, CITY LOYALTY felt overwhelming to the point of anxiety inducing. But after getting my head wrapped around it, I think it does add a lot to the game. Especially having to manage city loyalty - being able to flip a city that an opponent settles near your empire, needing to use perks to enable loyalty boosts by posting governors and troops in cities, having to think more strategically before throwing up a city way out past the edge of your territory. Certainly more realistic. But it is such a massive pain in the ass if you're trying to conquer someone else and not just raze their cities (if you take a city even on the border of someone else's empire, if you don't have enough pressure from your own nearby cities you'll realistically need to try and conquer several at once and post governors/troops there or the city will likely revolt and become a free state before swapping back... which gets tiresome and sucks the energy out of your crusade).

 

I run the game on a Macbook Pro, which isn't... a dinky laptop but is also not a capable gaming machine independent of OS. It runs fine, the fan is loud AF but I think on the macbooks with the newer chips that's not as much of a problem. I wish I could go back and play Civ V, but it won't run on this version of OSX (at least not in Steam). At any rate - that's interesting about the turn time. I'd say it takes.... a good 15 seconds - 30 seconds between when I click "next turn" and when it's time for me to start executing my next moves. Did it used to be more like "go do something else for a while" type of a delay?

Also, I didn't play Civ back in the "answer questions from the manual" days, but I can still remember memorizing answers like "Spiro Agnew" and "The Tijuana Brass" from when I would sneak into my dad's office and run Leisure Suit Larry on his PC.

I'm curious about this iPhone version. Surely it's incredibly dumbed down. I would smash my phone 30 turns into one game when every unit kept getting annihilated by going to the wrong tile.

The complexity of this game makes it great, IMO. I've recently started to get a more subtle (or at least much less rudimentary) understanding of a lot of the different mechanics. My current game for instance.....

civjapan.thumb.jpg.cf9f7fe624288c78d4fac0b476db2cef.jpg

my first game as Japan, playing Emperor. Always tough because the AI gets two settlers off the bat and it's hard to catch up. I think there might still be enough time left for me to turn the tide, but it didn't help that I had fucking Mapuche right below me and of course they went surprise war in the first 100 turns, with units that are way more advanced than mine. But since I've come to understand basic stuff like "attacking across a river is not effective", I was able to maneuver my guys to bait his invasion forces into attacking me in good defensive positions. I think I may have lost one knight, and then lost my first bombard when it was one shot killed by one of his cities, which was frustrating. This is the moment when I completed research on Oil and discovered that I do have that resource (and of course snagged up that neutral tile), which means Lautaro is toast, and if I can do that quickly enough I'll be able to catch up with everyone else on the map. Robert the Bruce is a little bitch and has been no help at all.

I think I'm still too locked into "I'm going to get siege and cavalry units and roll" - I probably should've tried to sue for peace with Lautaro and pivoted to a culture victory approach. One thing I also realized only recently is the power of the city state bonuses - I used to look at those just like "I want to be suzerain of nearby city states so that they aren't a problem", and I didn't even realize that you get different bonuses for having different numbers of envoys at different types of city states. I also wanted to play Japan here to work more on district planning - I still don't quite get how the bonuses work here, but I think for Japan having a cluster of districts levels them all up, and you can see if H ave 103.5 production out of a Kyoto that's not even all that big yet. That's a lot, for me at least.

I still don't know what the fuck to do with faith, and should learn how to at least level up that tree enough to be able to spend it on shit.

Biggest "I'm a fucking idiot" moment i had recently - I've been producing suicide squads to run into an enemy territory and scope out whatever city or tile it is that I want to nuke. Not that I'm always nuke happy, but sometimes. How stupid to have to do that, since of course your unit gets vaporized by the nuke. But of course I then realized... you... don't have to be able to see through the fog of war when you're nuking. Which.. why the fuck is that any different from a conventional bombing run? Either way.

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1 hour ago, Celery Man said:

This is the moment when I completed research on Oil and discovered that I do have that resource (and of course snagged up that neutral tile), which means Lautaro is toast, 

 

lol nope, he's still able to kill my artillery with two shots from his city, and dido is going to secure a diplomacy victory before I'll be able to figure out how to break through

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2 hours ago, Celery Man said:

lol nope, he's still able to kill my artillery with two shots from his city, and dido is going to secure a diplomacy victory before I'll be able to figure out how to break through

It’s been a while, but i think I remember not dealing with artillery unless they had enough movement to move and shoot or I had enough to roll them in and out of city bombardment range.  
 

If you didn’t know attacking across rivers is bad - did you know you get a bonus defending from a hill?   I think trees provide some bonus as well, and maybe it’s wooded hills that provide the highest. 

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yeah I think you might get some bonus from defending out of districts as well. Also, I think for some ranged units trees/hills prevent you from being able to see/hit your target (catapult can't lob over a forest to get to an enemy unit). zone of control is also a concept I didn't begin to understand very well until recently

the thing that's working for me in that scenario (that I only really appreciated in my most recent game) is the observation balloon. Once I unlocked that, I was able to build two of those (which get replaced by drones later on) which increases the range, damage, and visibility of artillery. So my artillery was able to sit in those encampments and wear down the defenses of the city that's right there, which I just took.

one of the other newer mechanics is the dark/normal/golden age thing. If you haven't played 6 (with the expansions) you may not be familiar with that. You get era score for certain actions (and can decide at the beginning of each ancient/classical/etc era what some of those actions are) and if you exceeded the right scores your next era is a normal era (rather than a dark era with less loyalty) or a golden era. Golden era gets some cool bonuses, and I just got uranium and a giant death robot for the information era, so I'm back to thinking I have a path to victory if I can hold off dido's diplomacy win.

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Artillery needs support of a balloon or drone to let it out range the city. And a general that gives it extra movement allows it to fire on the turn it moves even without the promotion.

City state bonuses are huge. Don't ignore them. 

Decide a victory condition by turn 100 and then focus on that. Check the AI victory progress every 15-20 turns to make sure you spot someone threatening a win in time to deal with them.

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1 hour ago, Celery Man said:

yeah I think you might get some bonus from defending out of districts as well. Also, I think for some ranged units trees/hills prevent you from being able to see/hit your target (catapult can't lob over a forest to get to an enemy unit). zone of control is also a concept I didn't begin to understand very well until recently

the thing that's working for me in that scenario (that I only really appreciated in my most recent game) is the observation balloon. Once I unlocked that, I was able to build two of those (which get replaced by drones later on) which increases the range, damage, and visibility of artillery. So my artillery was able to sit in those encampments and wear down the defenses of the city that's right there, which I just took.

one of the other newer mechanics is the dark/normal/golden age thing. If you haven't played 6 (with the expansions) you may not be familiar with that. You get era score for certain actions (and can decide at the beginning of each ancient/classical/etc era what some of those actions are) and if you exceeded the right scores your next era is a normal era (rather than a dark era with less loyalty) or a golden era. Golden era gets some cool bonuses, and I just got uranium and a giant death robot for the information era, so I'm back to thinking I have a path to victory if I can hold off dido's diplomacy win.

You're way behind in culture in that screenshot. Is no one threatening a culture victory? I think I was playing the base civ 6 when I played it but found culture victories to be really easy. Like my 3rd game I won in ~270 turns or something. May have gone back to 5 after that. 

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I tend to neglect culture for science, commerce, and production. Another basic thing I didn't fully realize is how important culture is to expanding your cities, but I also always have the struggle of, if I'm going for a domination victory wanting to both race through the tech trees and be able to pay for a large standing army. So far in this game, nobody is really threatening a culture victory - right now it's Mapuche but scoring the death robot and attaching observation balloons to the artillery turned the tide, he's done for. The problem is going to be Dido/Phoenicia with the diplomacy victory. But i have a metric fuck ton of production, so I've been able to keep her from winning diplomacy points from aid requests/olympics/etc.

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10 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

I tend to neglect culture for science, commerce, and production. Another basic thing I didn't fully realize is how important culture is to expanding your cities, but I also always have the struggle of, if I'm going for a domination victory wanting to both race through the tech trees and be able to pay for a large standing army. So far in this game, nobody is really threatening a culture victory - right now it's Mapuche but scoring the death robot and attaching observation balloons to the artillery turned the tide, he's done for. The problem is going to be Dido/Phoenicia with the diplomacy victory. But i have a metric fuck ton of production, so I've been able to keep her from winning diplomacy points from aid requests/olympics/etc.

I mean it's obviously always a balancing act. Some of the policy cards can be fairly game changing though, iirc. Same with the policy trees in civ 5 - but probably to a higher degree. Your faith is really high - faith is pretty meh in civ 5 but more powerful I think in civ6? 

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Faith is high because I never pay attention to it or spend it, so it just stacks up until at some point I realize i have the ability to buy some theater districts or whatever with it. I need to sit down at some point and try and complete a faith victory, just to get a better handle on how that is even supposed to work.

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8 minutes ago, Celery Man said:

Faith is high because I never pay attention to it or spend it, so it just stacks up until at some point I realize i have the ability to buy some theater districts or whatever with it. I need to sit down at some point and try and complete a faith victory, just to get a better handle on how that is even supposed to work.

Oh okay. It's showing your cumulative total. Gotcha. 

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civjapan377.thumb.jpg.f8ee11dec3e6eafcb91c85126394a3d7.jpg

 

Messy game but I still think I can win. I'm basically on a countdown until the next UN meeting to take the Phoenician (purple), Arabic (yellow), and Scottish capitals. I had to wipe out most of Montezuma's empire to take his spaceports and prevent his science victory, and meanwhile Phoenicia is danger close on diplomacy. Was having real issues with aluminum and uranium as well.

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1 hour ago, Hawndoh said:

With that much faith you really should have built the grand masters chapel as your second tier government plaza building. Let's you purchase land military units with faith.

I’m surprised I missed that - with how I currently (don’t) use faith, that would really make a difference.

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He's not as big of a YouTube personality as Potato, but there is another Brit that goes by Ursa Ryan that makes edited Civ videos in a similar style to Potato. He also will highlight various mods and things.

He's pretty good and he isn't quite as over the top as Potato can get. I don't mind most of Potato's videos but he could dial back the "giga yields!" "Sweet Jesus!" Etc exclamations about 1000%. He can becomes a little too much of a cartoon or leans on memes a little too hard for my taste.

Ursa Ryan isn't as big, and I think he isn't technically a full time YouTuber but he does upload videos very frequently.

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The game mechanic is my favorite watch for civ 6. He's a bit inconsistent on schedule though. 

Potato is the most well known, and I do enjoy him as well. Ursa Ryan I tend to watch the first two or so in the series but the light jazz background annoys me. 

I legitimately watch like 10+ hours of civ6 a week but have only played like 2 games in the last 5 years. 

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17 minutes ago, seven said:

The game mechanic is my favorite watch for civ 6. He's a bit inconsistent on schedule though. 

Potato is the most well known, and I do enjoy him as well. Ursa Ryan I tend to watch the first two or so in the series but the light jazz background annoys me. 

I legitimately watch like 10+ hours of civ6 a week but have only played like 2 games in the last 5 years. 

I'd been watching a lot of aoe2 and finally booted it up yesterday and holy shit I was rusty (obv civ is turn based so you don't really "lose it" in the same fashion). Still won the first campaign mission on hard I started but it was a fucking grind and a bitch of a mission to try and get back into as it had a few unorthodox elements. 

I had a ton of fun though - sometimes you just gotta fire it back up.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Man, I had a whole plan to use it for units, but didn’t realize I wouldn’t be able to buy bombers/ships/giant death robots with faith and then also… at some point I was bumping up against how much military I could afford per turn and so the faith just started stacking. I’m probably losing this game and at this point was just racing to knock Canada out before they get the last diplomacy point they need to win.

 Understanding how to buy great people (apart from being prompted) and what all needs to be done to use faith in different ways would definitely up my game. In this game at this point as far as I can tell I can mostly spend it on units that aren’t much help or on naturalists/rock bands. I never even founded a religion so I don’t think I converting cities would help either.

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  • 2 weeks later...
On 5/17/2022 at 11:44 PM, Celery Man said:

343878600_ScreenShot2022-05-17at10_56_14PM.thumb.png.9a52e3a074b2f2c77d3844cd75cbf920.png

fuck you canada

-gandhi

I did end up losing. There was a minute I thought I'd be able to mop up before anyone else could hit victory conditions, but Rome launched the mars colony and had it going 4 light years a turn.

I swear I played a game once where I managed to halt the travel of the Greek mars colony and have it moving 0 light years per turn. I could probably find the save file for that game with that condition. but I nuked the roman spaceports and it still kept moving. Not quite enough time to capture them all or defeat the Romans entirely.

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Man I would love to play this more, and I can still play it just fine on PC, but my kids are always wanting on the PC as well.

I have it on XBox X and ideally would love to play it on that with my comfortable living room chair. The Xbox can load a game faster than my PC.

But the port to Xbox is awful. It crashes so much as to be unplayable. Sometimes it will crash every 2-4 turns.

The company that did the port doesn't seem interested in fixing anything either.

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(civ 5) Hadn't played in awhile but just wrapped up a game that I was about halfway through the last time I played. Came in under 400 turns by the skin of my teeth - my last game was a culture win after 450ish turns - think this will be my last go on emperor difficulty as once I get over the hump it turns into a snowball that the AI can't do anything about. And even this game there was some stuff I fucked up. This was definitely the "tallest" I've played so far with just 6 cities. Managing happiness is way easier with fewer cities and after about 350 turns my happiness was well into the 30s (finished at 50). Couple of pics (if you click it should blow it up to full res so you can read everything) - 2nd is my absolutely absurd capital city. Never had a city like that. 

spacevic1.thumb.png.ca33f6c0b07b839cd125c5f6c07642ba.png

spacevic2.thumb.png.cae073f6230654e2b91bc3e93756d9af.png

 

Time to get my ass beat on immortal I guess. 

Edited by ztejas
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On 4/28/2022 at 12:34 PM, vtaenz said:

Love Civ. Yes Potato is a great streamer for Civ info and strategies. I also like SaxyGamer.

My Port A trip got cancelled due to the rona so I was sitting there with 4 days to burn.

Flipped open the laptop and stared at my cursor hovering over that Civ6 shortcut like an alcoholic staring at a full bottle of whiskey.

Finally clicked, turned off all the victory markers and the time limit, picked the largest map with decent oceans, and began as the Germans.

It was gonna be total domination or nothing. 

I conquered everything but one Malaysia like island with 2 civs on it comprised of about 5 cities each. 

Germany had become fucking huge It was unmanageable,  and I went insane trying to organize a marine assault of that island. 

I'd always get too impatient and go in with too small a force and then the turn would take so fucking long all while cities I couldn't even locate were forming their own republics and staging rebellion.

And now my laptop sits closed on the bar where I left it in a fit of fury... there it sits.. mocking my failure....

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1 hour ago, UT_OB1 said:

What size map?  I’m assuming if it is one of the two larger maps and you go tall like that, space and culture are your only victories right?  You can’t win domination that way can you?

Standard 8 player map. For domination you only have to capture everyone's capital. With the tech advantage I had it would have been straightforward but obviously more tedious than a science vic. It maybe would have taken 20-30 more turns.

If you're going tall the best way to do domination is get to a huge tech advantage and then rush all the capitals. But... by that point science win is just so much easier. I had policy treed to where I could buy space station parts with gold and the other parts only took like 5 turns to make. I also had a huge bank of faith that I could purchase great scientists with. I won in like 20 turns after completing Apollo program. If I wasn't burning the gold and production on the SS I could have just gone nuclear missile/nuclear sub/carrier/paratrooper and wrapped things up fairly quickly. Maybe throw in some giant death robots. 

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  • 3 weeks later...
On 6/24/2022 at 2:38 PM, Felix said:

I kind of hate to admit it but I usually revert to Civ IV if I want to play.  V I just couldn't quite figure out and it pissed me off so I just stick with what I know.

I've done this, plus Civ IV runs fast as shit on any of the older PCs we have.

Civ IV plus expansions plus the Colonization version are all available for $6 on the Steam sale.

https://store.steampowered.com/sub/4323/

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Over the last two weeks, I played my first game of civ6 in years. I picked Japan with my first time on emporer difficulty. I watch a lot of civ6 content so I'm fairly knowledgeable on the game but it's so different actually making the decisions yourself. Anyway, turn 242 science victory. 

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