December 14, 2024

The Giant Civ 6 AAR: Nubia, Part One

Kicking off another giant after-action report for a long-running Civilization game

civ6-Nubia

click images to enlarge

The Start.

I’m playing as Amanitore, the Queen of the Nubians.  There’s some interesting city-building effects that she has, particularly with the Nubian Pyramids.  The combination of cheaper city district builds, and an early-game unique unit, should keep things interesting until we can really get a solid set of borders established, and some territory & resources under control.

As always, there’s going to be a lot of pictures, and the captions will vary in length from whimsical aphorisms to longer explanations of what I’m thinking1.  This probably won’t look great on a mobile device, either, but YMMV.  On with the game!

 

civ6-Nubia
Find the coastline.

Yes, the Nubians are an inherently desert-based civ, but I always want to find the coastlines early so I have a good lay of the land.  It also tells me how early I need to research sailing/shipbuilding – if I’m on a small rock with no one else around, I gotta set sail much sooner.

 

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My Queen.

Here’s the lowdown on her special abilities.  As mentioned above, I’ve very interested in using the pyramids to boost the building of districts in the cities and see how quickly I can build up some robust urban areas.

 

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Early Science.

Mining is a pre-req to masonry, which I need for the pyramids.  I’m not going straight there, but I want to be ready for when the tech boosts come along.

For those that don’t know, the tech boosts (below each of the techs above) are certain events in the game that accelerate your research & knowledge, presumably because your peeps learn something valuable from those events toward the development of that technology.

 

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Start Walking.

I’m just going to send my only land unit walking off in a straight line to get a sense of what’s in my immediate vicinity.

 

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Singapore.

Hey look, a city-state already!  Yes, I have personal reasons for really detesting Singapore2 but I’m going to not let those spill over into the game, where I might need these guys later.

 

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City-State “Quest”.

See the right side of the screen for where the city-state info (and other alerts) will pop up, and mouse over the alerts to read the captions.

 

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A wondrous sight/site to behold!

I found one of the natural wonders of the world, which are actually useful/meaningful things in the Civ 6 world.

 

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More alerts.

Look to the right and you’ll see that I am picking up a couple of tech boosts.

 

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The Official Records.

There’s a scroll that records key moments in your civ’s history throughout the game, like this one – discovering our first natural wonder.

 

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Zoomed In.

There it is all zoomed in.  I prefer to play on the strategic view of the game, which is slightly cartoony-looking in its graphics, but gives me more of a board-game feel3 and doesn’t choke the processor on my laptop too much.

 

civ6-Nubia
Scouts out!.

I got my first recon unit, so I’m going to send him the other direction and see what’s to the North.  Besides The Wall.

 

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Tundra!.

Huh, so I guess the Nubians are going to be further North on this globe than they were in real life. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

 

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Mouseover Tips.

On one hand, the pop-up info is useful when planning future locations.  On the other hand, a mouseover that tells you it’s a lake kind of cuts out some of the discovery that comes in a 4X game, since you just know “body of water” until you’ve fully explored around it.

 

civ6-Nubia
Coast.

Compare the last pop-up box to this one, that clearly tells me this is the ocean.

 

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Neighbors.

The first local tribe we’ve found so far; we’ll make contact next turn.

 

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Researched.

I’ve finishing research on mining, and will now work towards my next technology.

 

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Contact.

I made contact with the locals, and I was granted +1 envoy; they are the mechanism by which you curry favor with city-states.  You don’t bribe them in Civ 6.  Instead, you send envoys, and whoever has the most there has them under their sway.  Quests, certain techs/policies, passage of time… all ways you can gain envoys to send to city-states to try to take control of them.

 

civ6-Nubia
Next tech.

What will I choose to research next?

Next Sunday? A little more exploring, making new friends, picking some fights…. y’know, “civ stuff”

 


CIVILIZATION 6 NUBIA AAR
links will only work as each episode goes live, but yes, we’re going to tease you with them all in the meantime
PART ONE ~ PART TWO ~ PART THREE ~ PART FOUR ~ PART FIVE ~ PART SIX ~ PART SEVEN ~ PART EIGHT ~ PART NINE ~ PART TEN
PART XI ~ PART XII ~ PART XIII ~ PART XIV ~ PART XV ~ PART XVI ~ PART XVII ~ PART XVIII ~ PART XIX ~ PART XX
PART XXI ~ PART XXII ~ PART XXIII ~ PART XXIV ~ PART XXV ~ PART XXVI ~ PART XXVII ~ PART XXVIII ~ PART XXIX ~ PART XXX


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WELL YOU SEE, SIR… IT STARTED OUT AS A GOAT-SCREW
AND THEN WE KEPT ADDING MORE GOATS

Footnotes

  1. don’t say it, Rocky!
  2. whatevs, hire your own lapdog to replace me in the job I’ve had for 18 months, and then praise him for doing exactly what I was already doing but cutting the content by 75% and then making a pretty set of slides for the proposal you ripped off from me…  suuuuuure…
  3. hexes!

Brant G

Editor-in-chief at Armchair Dragoons

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