The Project Explained

Long Live the Queen is a collaborative Civilization VI base game play through and blogging project conceived of by Naithin at Time to Loot. We have 8 players, and each player is responsible for taking 10 turns and writing about our progress. I drew fifth in the randomly generated line-up.

The Story So Far…

If you need to know how we got to where we are, just pop on over to Time to Loot, where Naithan has kept track of all of our shenanigans in a really nifty list of links. Tessa had to sit this round out due to an injury, so I’m taking over from Paeroka this time around.

Turns 351-360

Holy cow, there’s a lot going on here. I’m not sure how much of that has to do with just being late game, and how much has to do with England maybe not having the most cohesive growth plan ever.

I, however, have decided to put as much focus as possible during my turns on the Space Race. During turn 352, I am able to start the Earth Satellite Launch in Stoke-Upon-Trent, and then send Carl Sagan right over to finish it off. I then set them to working on the Moon Landing. Research into Sufferage completes, and I start us on Totalitarianism, despite the fact we’re still rocking a Monarch, more options are good, right?

We also have not one, but two great Admirals in London. I have no idea what we’re supposed to do with them, because I don’t think we have a single naval military unit on the map. Perhaps UnwiseOwl will be able to find some use for them.

Despite not focusing so much on Culture, I gave Roosevelt 30 turns worth of resources for an Edgar Allen Poe story. Which Pedro then immediately demanded I give him. Sorry Pedro, you have nothing to offer me – and I do mean nothing. Two turns later, Gilgamesh also asks us for the book, but I turn him down as well. Apparently, this is an exciting book, and I made a good trade getting my hands on it.

Once we finished our research into Robotics, I took a small detour into Plastics, in order to open up both more oil access and some extra food from fishing. I also started production on some additional builders (one in Ur, and one in Bristol) as our population seems to be stagnating, and having a little extra food never hurts.

We built three new farms near Ur and sent a builder in the general direction of the unimproved tiles between Stoke-Upon-Trent and Adab. I’m concerned we might be more restricted by space than food, but I’m going to be honest – there’s a lot going on and being away from the game for weeks to months at a time, I’m not feeling like I really have a handle on all the mechanics.

I also started up a few new wonders. I bought a tile near Ur to start work on Petra, and the Hermitage in Leeds. It seems like we have a pretty beefy military we’re not using, so if a particular city didn’t seem to have something critical to build, I set it to improving the infrastructure that was there already.

On my last turn this round, we finished our research into Plastics, and I wanted to make sure our research path was on track for what we were going to need for our science victory. We’ve researched most of the required technologies already, with just Nanotechnology outstanding, Unfortunately, there’s two steps in the tech tree we haven’t researched that are required for Nanotechnology, so I started us on the first step, Synthetic Materials.

With that, I turn over the crown to UnwiseOwl. Save file can be found here.

The Project Explained

Long Live the Queen is a collaborative Civilization VI base game play through and blogging project conceived of by Naithin at Time to Loot. We have 8 players, and each player is responsible for taking 10 turns and writing about our progress. I drew fifth in the randomly generated line-up.

The Story So Far…

If you need to know how we got to where we are, just pop on over to Time to Loot, where Naithan has kept track of all of our shenanigans in a really nifty list of links.

Turns 201-210

I’ve been given England in a fairly solid state – we seem to have a strong military, a good friend in Cleopatra, for a change, no one is at war with us, and our cities seem to be mostly growing at a good clip.

Let’s see what kind of mess I can make of this, eh?

The first thing of note that happens is that I get my hands on a couple of new envoys. I decide to send them both to Toronto – this bumps our production in all of our cities, and makes us their Suzerain. We have nothing more to gain from Stockholm, and this seems to be the best choice for immediate rewards.

I find a bored builder loitering about, and set him to work building a farm in Sheffield, and start an amphitheater in Leeds. Then Pedro pops up with a rather odd demand for money, which I am disinclined to give into.

We finish researching Astronomy, and I get us started on Scientific Theory. Our heavy chariot takes out some lingering barbarians to the east of Stoke-Upon-Trent and earns itself a promotion. After much debate, I start construction of an aqueduct in Birmingham, hoping to encourage growth with additional housing (and hoping I don’t short them on food in the meantime).

We finish up guilds and start working on Reform Church

Charles Darwin decides to come hang out with us, and I speedily send him off to Sheffield to take advantage of that Natural Wonder Tessa picked up during her turns. An extra 500 science finishes up Scientific Theory (thanks Chuck!), and let’s us start researching Military Science.

And then Pedro and his now-legendary shade-throwing makes another appearance. He’s so grumpy.

At least Cleopatra still likes us – even though we wouldn’t help with her war – and she asks to renew our declaration of friendship. I oblige. I’d much rather have her as a friend than an enemy, at least for the time being.

We’ve been really focused on military might and scientific advancement, and now, our city leaders are starting to complain. Leeds needs housing. Stoke-on-Trent needs food. Everybody wants something. I queue up some builders in a couple of cities with high production – I won’t get to do much with them, but they’ll be available for UnwiseOwl to start whittling away at our citizens’ issues during the next 10 turns.

I do send a crossbowman to the southwest just to make sure we won’t have any uninvited guests creeping up on our newest city of Sheffield – the barbarian scout I encounter down there, I take out with ease. I start building a Caravel in Bristol, which turns out to not only be very on brand (I like boats, ok?), but somewhat prescient, because we earn ourselves a Great Admiral on the very next turn.

I decide he can hang out in Bristol until our boat is ready there, since all of our other naval vessels are pretty much landlocked.

The last thing I managed to do during my reign is unlock a new form of government (Theocracy), but I decide to stick with Monarchy for the time being, but the option is available. I turned our attention to researching Exploration, which will unlock yet another form of government and allow us a couple additional trade routes to boot.

Next up, UnwiseOwl! Save file is here.

Check out the Story So Far on Time To Loot!

Although I am beyond relieved that all that pesky war stuff was done with before the game came back around to me, I found myself kind of flailing and clueless about what needs to be done now.

Both Pedro and Catherine are still pretty miffed with us, but there’s not much I can do to keep them from just sulking. I do try to send a delegation to Catherine to improve relations since our new, oh-so-tiny city is just outside her territory, but she shuts me down.

There’s a few other outstanding issues that I want to deal with – the first, a settler slowly making his way to somewhere, and the second, the barbarian camp to the southeast of Leeds.

On turn 124, the settler arrives at his destination. I’m not entirely sure what it is about this spot that made this a city-building destination, but I don’t question the monarchs that came before, and settle Bradford. Although production here is low, I figure the best way to boost that is with some improvements, so I start the very very long process of summoning a builder.

Things don’t go as well with the barbarians. All of my troops in the area are pretty early game units, and they have spearmen and swordsmen and although I’m sure it’s going to get pretty ugly over here, I’m going with what I’ve got handy before they get even bigger. I manage to lose a unit of warriors before even getting close to their base, but kept working away at their units with my remaining warriors and my closest archers, while some of my other troops mosey their way across the tundra.

I do briefly wonder if I’m dropping too many resources into this, when barbarians also spring up near Bristol and Stoke-Upon-Trent. I manage to defend both cities with nearby troops without losing anyone, but for the moment, those military units are just going to hang out nearby and heal up – I decide it’s more important to keep some protection for my cities than to find out where the barbarians are coming from.

In the meantime, I focus primarily in improving our scientific studies. When Construction finishes up, I elect to go with Printing as our next tech. We get a boost to Military Engineering, so I work on that after Theology. I manage to send multiple envoys to Sweden to take advantage of the science boosts available from them.

On turn 129, we receive a Great Scientist, who I activate for a random Eureka moment. We got a boost to Stirrups, which was a boost we didn’t have, so ok, I guess?

Although I feel like I didn’t make a lot of progress, we are in the lead for both Scientific and Domination victories, so we have to be doing something right. There is a rogue builder somewhere around London – I couldn’t figure out how best to use him, but there is iron nearby that I’m fairly certain we’ll want to improve as soon as its available to us, so I was fine with leaving him on an extended coffee break for the time being.

I’ve uploaded the save game here & hopefully UnwiseOwl will be able to clean up the mess I feel like I’ve made.