Long Live the Queen! Turns 51-60

What's This?

I'm taking part in a collaborative game of vanilla Civilization VI with some of the other Blaugustines. The eight of us (so far) are taking turns playing 10 turns each of a fledgling Britain under the guidance of good Queen Victoria, doing the best we can to not burn the whole thing down, and then passing the game on to the next player. 

The Story So Far…

Turns 01-10: Naithin Gets Us Started
Turns 11-20: Rakuno Does Some Exploring
Turns 21-30: Paeroka Has an Eye Towards Expansion
Turns 31-40: Tessa Founds Leeds
Turns 41-50: Krikket Builds a Boat

Let's Do It!

I've inherited a pretty healthy looking realm from my predecessors here. Plenty of military close by to defend the homeland with no obvious threats that we're not already set up to face, so it's time to set London to building another settler unit. Meanwhile we'll send our armies out to take care of these bandit camps; the archers and scouts will head west and our slingers will try to take out the nest to the south-east of Leeds. This new builder could have done good work here in London setting up another fishing fleet, but I'm sending it over over to Leeds instead to try and give our new city a bit of an early boost. Unfortunately we've just been informed that someone has just finished Stonehenge, so that puts a bit of a dampener on any hopes we might have entertained of getting off to a good start for a religious victory. That's quick work, we haven't even researched Mysticism yet. 

It's turn 52 and we're going to pick up the Irrigation technology. Usually I'd be reluctant to grab something that we hadn't hit the eureka moment for yet, but I'm about to build a rice paddy in Leeds that will trigger this one, which should then set us up nicely to build a sugar plantation for another much-needed luxury good. Potentially down the track the Hanging Gardens might make for a good first wonder, too. In the west a barbarian scout has wandered within range of our archers, so that should make for some easy experience points.

We have a visitor, and it's the Americans, bearing hot apple pies. I wonder if they're the ones who built Stonehenge?  Teddy Roosevelt seems like the sort of outdoorsy bloke who really enjoys a good stone circle every now and then with the guys.

Hot on his heels, Cleo pops by to borrow a cup of sugar and to let us know that she likes the cut of our jib, which  I'm not inclined to take to heart all that much considering that she was rude to Tessa just a few turns ago. No idea what we did to trigger this, perhaps she just likes it when folks beat up the barbarians?

It's now turn 54, and our slinger-cum-archers have headed further south and discovered a natural wonder just outside our borders. Handy! I prefer the cartoony style of the strategy view for almost everything in this game, but for discovering wonders if leaves a lot to be desired in comparison to the default view's flying camera and fancy lighting effects.

Our newly-acquired fleet has also found that there's not much of a future to be found in sailing east, though they did find this friendly village down by the South Pole. Hopefully we'll able to get some soldiers down here to claim it for the Empire eventually, but for now all that the pride of the Royal Navy can do is sail back home and hope that there's a clear path out to the open ocean somewhere out west.

Speaking of the west, the spearmen tasked with defending the barbarian camp that's been disturbing the sleep of all of London has foolishly decided to march out to attack our archers, allowing the scout to sneak in, ransack the camp and stab them in the back, and resulting in promotions for both of our units. I hadn't realised that the archer/scout combination force was so very powerful, but these two are really synergising over here.

Our southeastern archers have a bit of a job ahead of them clearing out this barbarian camp, but if they can manage it, the space around the wonder here is starting to look like a half-decent place for another city. All that tundra means that it's not great, but there's a lot of food around as long as the citizens like fish, and with the extra bonuses from the wonder it could turn out to be a real powerhouse. After we complete Irrigation, I set te boffins to look into Bronze Working, as the discovery of iron could help us plan our future growth and because one of the near-by city states wants us to build a unit of spearmen and it's always a good policy to make friends with the smaller nations.

This is looking hopeful. As our super-barbarian-countering force heads further west, they find the border with another continent just over this river. Since Victoria gets a free units in any new cities built on other continents (and another for building harbours there), expanding this way could be a great way to build our army up quickly without compromising on fast growth back home. If we can just find some luxury resources out here things are looking good for a rapid expansion west. Unlimited access to a tea supply would make us a true British Empire, after all.

It's the French, bearing champagne and cheese and a lot of eye shadow! Catherine is one of my favourite Civ VI leaders even if I always end up fighting her in the end, because she's just so darn smug. Thankfully it looks like their capital is a decent distance away to the North, so we don't need to worry about her for a while. 

With all these potential spots to build new cities out west, I've gone ahead and shelled out gold to build another new settler unit in Leeds. If our western exploration doesn't turn out enough good spots I guess they can settle here on this rice field, giving us access to a good looking spot with high production and access to gypsum, another new luxury resource to feed our people's insatiable need for exotic goods. I'm figuring expanding in this direction seems to be a priority, since that's where the other countries mostly seem to be, and that we can head back and grab the wonder in the southeast at our leisure later. The final place that either of our new settlers end up won't be up to me, though, as my reign is quickly coming to an end. I wonder if I'll even recognise the place when I see it again at 80 (or more turns down the track)? 

Having completed our exploration into Early Empire, the next thing that we look into will be a State Workforce. This will give us a boost to early-game Wonders if we decide to work on any, and should be pretty fast to complete, giving my successor a chance to change my dogma choices if they want to. I've also gone for the option of increased production across the empire instead of our previous God King choice, as we have multiple cities to get the benefit now, and more on the way soon.

Excellent news! There's a sea or a lake or something out here to the west. Hopefully it joins up to the Southern Ocean which will give out fleet something to do, but even if it doesn't it provides an even better chance to build new cities with harbours out here in order to flood the place with British colonial troops. There's also some furs, so that will help on the luxury front too. I am more and more convinced that this is an excellent location for our new expansion, so I'm sending the scouts south-west to look for perfect city sites and keeping the archers close to the Egyptian border to ensure that Cleo doesn't try to expand in this direction before our settlers get a chance to get over here.

All in all, a short but sweet reign, building on the foundations of my predecessors but not doing anything world-shaking. All good things must come to an end, though, so now I'll pass the reigns over to the Rambling Redshirt, who is presumably a Rambling Redcoat for this one. May your people bathe in luxuries and your armies meet with no-one in particular! 

The game file can be found here.

This is my nineteenth post for Blapril 2020, the latest incarnation of the annual Blaugust blogging festival that the Leaflocker has been a proud member of the last few years (when I started this post it was still April somewhere in the world, so it counts...). Shoutouts to The Ancient Gaming Noob, who has been blogging about games seemingly forever and whose in-depth AAR and analysis posts constantly make me, possibly the person least suited to EVE:Online in the universe, want to install EVE:Online.