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My hope when I write these threads is someone will pick it up because of it, and then discuss it. I wish that there were folks who wanted to discuss the finer points of the games I play, but it isn't really a thing any more. Your comments are appreciated.

I started a new run as Sweden. I've not gotten a Diplomatic victory in over 400 hours playing this game. Usually I disable that condition. But I'd like to get one and it's all rather boring quite frankly. I like plotting invasions and stuff. Subterfuge and screwing civs over in the most dastardly ways I can conjure up. But if you want to win diplomatically you have to be friendly dammit. It's about earning diplo points though emergencies and World Fairs and World Congress, which we've talked about before and it's not very well done in Civ 6 compared to 5. Building wonders and generating favor. Oh well, it's a one-off and I doubt I'll go for it again if I get it across the line.

I only tried this once before, I think as one of the Teddys. The AI kept voting to take one of my diplo points each time there was a congress and I gave up. Hopefully as Sweden I can overcome that.

We've had some good discussions in the past on games we were playing...Subnautica springs to mind...I do kinda miss those but I've got a little suck happening right now, so I just can't get my head into gaming. Pity, because it would be nice escape.

I managed to get the Sweden diplo win across the line. You have to secure 20 diplomatic victory points, which I did through wonders, competitions and the world congress. The WC votes are actually for two points each, and each civ can vote to grant or take away two points to one civ. And they all vote against me as I near victory, trying to shave two points off my total every so many turns. So I had to focus generating diplo favor so I could have enough to outvote every other civ all ganging up. It's a good path for Kristina's Sweden, as she get some great synergy with this victory type. I didn't fight any wars, only combat was with barbs. Was suzerain of every city state as that's a key to generating the favor (and consequently denying it to others). Not sure I've had a run where I built this many wonders.

All in all a good run, even if the pacifist route lacks panache. I set the map up to be the sort of setup that I've been talking about. It was a large inland sea map with just six civs and eight city states, which left a lot of room for expansion by every faction, and I only had a close neighbor on one border by the end. Perfect for this sort of victory, no need to worry about border invasions and therefore no need to keep a big standing army. Of course the AI is terrible at this, and I still had the strongest armed forces without doing much at all really.

Got achievements for winning with Kristina, on an inland sea map, with a renaissance start and a diplomatic victory.

Yeah JC, Subnautica was one of my favorite games, one that took me by surprise, and I rarely play that type of game. But I had a good time with that one. Played through twice. I've given a look at the Below Zero one but never have pulled the trigger for some reason.

Pacifist victory? Seems oxymoronic!
I think I tend to need more blood in my games!
I agree, Subnautica really snuck up on me. You should give it a go in VR, it will knock y our socks off.
Somehow I aquired Below Zero, and there is a VR mod to it. I should give it a whirl, or at least give the original another run through.

The pen is mightier I guess. But yeah, aside from the other civs trying to take victory points off me it was pretty simple. 20 points are needed. Statue of Liberty is a key build, as that wonder awards four diplo points on its own. For the longest time I was level with the AI, we all had five points. Then a WC happened and before long I had 16 while they had 6. then it was just a matter of getting four more while trying not to lose any.

After finishing and posting about it I was looking through the achievements and saw there is one for winning all three Nobel prize competitions. Since these only appear in the game when Sweden is on the map I fired it back up. I had won the first two (easy as Sweden) and was winning the third when I called time. So I played another 20+ turns to get that over the line. Having already won I started doing the space race projects and when I launched the satellite I discovered five more city states that I hadn't even known about. So I was wrong when I said I was suzerain of all city states. Only all I actually knew about!

If you ever get back in to gaming and play Below Zero let me know what you think of it.

Interesting. In Civ V I had science and conquest victories, and I think one cultural victory. I never really looked in to attempting any of the others.

I'm one step closer to starting Below Zero - I actually installed it the other day! I did a little poking around, and apparently the story isn't as good as in the first game. It's also shorter as well. I did enjoy the experience though, so who knows....

That is a key milestone

I said before I didn't think I had ever built so many wonders. Having looked at the score breakdown I saw I had 255 points for wonders. I believe you get 15 per example, so that means it was 17 wonders built. Doesn't seem such a big number now. But maybe that is a lot? Don't know that I've ever counted them before.

I'm kicking around another run, and maybe I'll do one of the scenarios, like Outback Tycoon or Vikings, Traders, and Raiders. I have yet to do one of these.

Religious is difficult. To get one I gamed the game and made a duel map against a civ who cannot have a religion. Shameful.

I haven't gotten a score victory, but I've now got all the others -- diplo, cutlural, science, domination and religious. Cultural is probably the easiest, or at least the easiest to get with the most civs. I could have won that way in this Sweden run easily. Kristina gets several strong cultural bonuses. One of the best is called Minerva of the North, With Kristina, every wonder with 2 or more slots and building with 3 or more slots automatically themes when filled, meaning she will always receive double culture and tourism out of her Great Works. You can just activate all 3 charges of a great artist in the same museum, and voila, it is now themed, just as easy as that; hence this is not only a great ability but also a great quality of life aspect when playing for a cultural victory. Not to mention it gives you the ability to theme the previously non-themeable buildings (including Wonders).

The themes are hard, like one might be three portraits, all from different artists and different eras and that's hard to do unless you get really active with trading with other civs. With Kristina none of that matters, any three would do to get the theming bonus.

A very strong culture and tourism game with Sweden.

Seventeen sounds like a lot to me. I was always pretty skimpy with my wonder building. So many useful things can be built in the time it takes to build one wonder, unless it's a key to your strategy, I pretty much just didn't bother.
Of course, I would wind up with a bunch after conquering other civs, but that doesn't count!

Yeah, I usually don't build very many. At higher difficulties wonders are highly competitive and you run the risk of another civ completing it when you had one turn to go, and all that was wasted. But some wonders are key to your victory path and should be built. But then, some civs are just really good at it, or have exceptional synergy with wonders. In the Sweden run I think it was down to suitability, but maybe more so that I didn't pursue science (and need to build all that stuff) or needed much of a standing army, so my production queues were free to chase these down.

In the Sweden run I played it on King, since I didn't know how competitive the AI would be in a Diplomatic game. That made the wonders race easier for me. On Emperor which I usually play it is more competitive. Like getting the Great Library is quite difficult indeed. Depends too on which civs you get.

I started another run, but with a little less enthusiasm so I'll see how far I get. this is with the new Japan leader Togukawa. He was introduced in the recent leader pass updates.

His leader ability is Bakuhan. His international trade routes receive 25% penalties to all yields and tourism, but his domestic trade routes provide +1 Culture, +1 Science, and +2 Gold for every specialty district at the destination. Additionally, cities within 6 tiles of his Capital receive +4 Amenities and, after researching Flight, receive +1 Tourism for every specialty district. From Civilization VI: Rise and Fall onward, cities within 6 tiles of his Capital stay 100% loyal instead of receiving +4 Amenities.

I'm big on internal trade routes, so this all dovetails nicely with my style. Playing this one on Emperor, large shuffle map, abundant resources, societies mode and corporations mode on. Let's see if I see it through. Many runs I start, get a feel for which way the wind is blowing, which path my land suggests I pursue. But this run I plan to go straight for science. Japan has a neat ability centered around their districts.

There are six types of district that can gain adjacency bonuses in the game: Campus, Theater Square, Commercial Hub, Harbor, Industrial Zone and Holy Site. These districts usually gain +1 bonus for every two adjacent districts, but now they will receive +1 bonus per adjacent district instead. With good city planning, this allows you to create massive district clusters between nearby cities that feed each other adjacency bonuses. This bonus is actually better than just doubling the regular adjacency bonuses. For example, a campus adjacent to 3 other district will gain only 1 more Science, because every 0.5 adjacency bonus will get rounded down if the number is odd, a Japanese Campus in this situation will receive 3 Science. For this reason, while other civilizations can be a little haphazard in their placement of districts, effective play as Japan requires a very good knowledge of available districts and future planning. This ability pairs very well with policy cards that double adjacency bonuses or boost buildings' yields by 50% if the districts they are in have high starting adjacency.

This is potentially amazing. I've been eyeing up a Japan run for a long time, but I didn't really care for Tokimune, the first Japanese leader.

His leader ability is Divine Wind. His land and naval units receive +5 Strength Combat Strength when fighting on coastal and shallow water tiles, and he builds Encampment, Holy Site, and Theater Square districts in half the usual time. Additionally, in Gathering Storm, Hurricanes cause no damage to Hojo Tokimune's units, buildings, and tile improvements and double damage to units in his territory that belong to a civilization with which he is at war.

That's pretty good for conquest I guess, albeit a bit situational depending on where the fights take place. But in this run I will play defensively and go for the space race.

I sat down to play the Japan run for a bit and ended up playing for hours. This game.

Japan is a great civ for me, since I like maximizing stuff through planning. And Japan's districts adjacency bonus bonus is a shining example of this. The thing is, it's a slow burn. It takes a long time to set districts down. Not only do they take a while to build, but how many a city can have is limited by the city's population. It's a fantastic ability/bonus, but does not help much in the early stages. It's a snowball sort of bonus.

And since I opted for Togukawa with his internal trade routes that earn bonuses based on how many districts are at the destination, it's a very neat interlaced mechanic that really ramps up the longer you play. This sort of stuff is right in my wheelhouse and I find it compelling. So that really pulls me in and where does the time go?

And I've had a war declared on me! This is really rare. I had a scout rolling back the map fog somewhere far off, and suddenly a unit emerged from that fog and struck the unit down. Dammit. Poland had launched a surprise war against me. Well, isn't that interesting? That happened just before I shut it down so I have yet to respond. But you could have knocked me over when this happened. I plan to make her regret it. Jadwiga, the woman King, shall rue the day!

I seem to recall one of your gripes with the game is that the AI is a bit docile, so a wardec is definitely an interesting surprise. Could some of that have been tweaked since the last time you played it?

Yeah, exactly. It's very rare that war is declared on me, but in this case it's been very good. Poland is the leading civ, and this war is hurting them, even though I've fought it entirely defensively thus far. Their initial attack was pretty good, one trebuchet, several cavalry and knights, plus several infantry (pikes and men-at-arms). I had most of my army well to the south taking on the barbs there. But I was able to shift enough forces to meet the enemy and destroy him. So now Poland needs to tie up their queues building replacements and all of this should help to slow them down and let me close the gap. After cleaning up their invasion, I can now intercept them with frigates at sea. Poland miscalculated

On Emperor difficulty it's tough at the start. I was next to last on the score chart for over 150 turns, and only now am starting to climb the table. I've yet to even meet several civs. But I'm now at the point where things should start to snowball. When I hit electricity I expect to really start moving. I'll hope I get some oil too. It's interesting how this mirrors real life wars. I rarely go to war for expansion, but I often do to obtain strategic resources. Oil, aluminum and uranium are usually why I start a war.

Japan has an achievement called Meiji Restoration, which requires the player to have a district with six unpillaged adjacent districts. It's not easy because first, you have to have enough contiguous land to do it, and without mountains or luxuries which cannot be built over. And then second, you need a city large enough to have seven districts. But with Japan's adjacency bonuses, this cluster will have amazing yields once it is finished. I read the achievement is bugged, and you must place the center district last, so that is what I am doing, and I'll make the government plaza the one in the middle. But all this means I will get minimal adjacency bonus until then, as I form the ring.

Japan's UB is the Electronics Factory

+3 Production to all City Centers within 6 tiles of the Electronics Factory's Industrial Zone
+5 Production additionally when Powered
Base Load: 2 Power
+1 Citizen slot
+1 Great Engineer point per turn
+4 Culture (with Electricity)
+2 Production with Great Engineer James Watt activated.

So I'm building these everywhere and once the power is on these will be amazing.

That's a pretty powerful UB!
What kind of maps do you prefer to use? I'd go between pangaea and continental. I did an island map once on Civ V and had a lot of fun with it for a while too.

Island plates and small continents are my favorites I'd say. Archipelago is a little stringy, I like more meat on the bones. Pangea is not for me, just one big mass that makes interacting with half the civs problematic

For this run I am playing a shuffle map for the achievement. It has produced a nice one for me, at least where I am. I have not seen it all yet.

But generally I like the island plates and small continents because I enjoy the naval aspect and exploration possibilities on these maps. Harbors, sea trade, sea-borne invasion, battleships and submarines. Carriers. I like to have this.

Of course you can change sea level to get more or less of a land/sea ratio on most of them.

Fractal can be interesting, but it can also be really bad.

Shuffle is the last of the achievement map types I have yet to win on, so once this one is done I can start just picking my favorites, or tilt the game to favor my civ with a suitable map type.

I think I tried a fractal map once, it was an absolute mess. I guess that was one of the really bad ones. Very little contiguous land, very difficult to move and establish any kind of territory.

I agree about archipelago, they can give you very little to work with.

I kinda prefer pangaea myself. While I don't mind the naval aspect, and at times I rather enjoy it, I do like having large invading forces and just crushing the opposition. Pangea lends itself to that a little more readily IMHO.

Yeah, many players prefer pangea. I can see the appeal, but not for me.

Fractal is random tiles everywhere it seems. Volcanos next to tundra next to four tiny one-tile islands surrounded by desert I did do one run on a fractal map to get the achievement.

This Japan run is a pretty fun one. The other civs are Poland, Netherlands, the new Kongo chick, Brazil and a couple others, which I forget at the mo. Poland has been running wild. In my effort to give myself elbow room for early game expansion, I set the map variables to achieve it. But it also works that way for the AI. I set the map size and then reduce the civs and city states. A large map has ten civs I think, so I'll knock that down to six, and now everyone has more space. Poland had really taken advantage and are a massive, sprawling empire. We've been at war most of the game (she started it). Poland keeps asking for peace but I refuse.

I want to go for a science win. Once I launched my satellite I looked to see how that race was going and saw that not only had Poland done this already, they had launched the Mars expedition or whatever is next. So I was losing!

War through most of the game is rather difficult in the sense that up until the modern age taking cities is hard. Your units don't really do enough damage to city walls. Your units take more punishment sitting there chipping away at the defenses. So I waited until I had all of the following

Jet bombers (absolute key)
Rocket artillery
Drones
Modern armor
Giant Death Robot

Putting the bombers on a carrier I launched a sea-borne invasion and took their capital in a few turns. That'll knock her back a bit. Poland was smart enough to build several spaceports, so they aren't out of it yet, but losing such a massive city is a big setback. And if I need to I can continue the attack now that I have a foothold on her continent. Things are really rolling now, and my closest competitor has been wounded. My capital Tokyo has completed the Meiji Restoration and the big district cluster. We are generating over 1,500 gold per turn. I can just buy whatever I need. Not sure I've ever been this rich in a civ run. Over 30k in the bank and I'm spending it freely too. Need a worker, or a tank? Just pay cash.

In April of 2021 I posted a screen of my Ethiopia run because I was generating good numbers and posting it preserved it for posterity and I can use it to compare my current games. I'm not close in science, culture or faith. But I'm making triple the money. That shot is also 100 turns later in the game.

https://simhq.com/forum/ubbthreads.php/ubb/download/Number/30924/filename/Ethiopia465.jpg

Japan is an excellent civ, especially Hogukawa I think. The synergy of his district adjacency bonuses and internal trade routes is really strong and suits my style. Now I just have to see it over the line, and if I need to smack a few of them down now and then I have the means to do it.

Finished the Japan run. Once I had invaded Poland it was essentially over, and my exoplanet expedition was done before anyone else had even landed on Mars. I was behind, then way ahead. The AI is good early, bad late. On Emperor they get more settlers than the player (just one more I think) so they get a big headstart and it takes a while to reel them in. I was not first for over 200 turns. But eventually the snowball comes for all.