Back of Beyond

Figure 1. Outback Stations in the Australian desert... and no wars!

 Rules are Meant to be Broken! Every summer I take a computer gaming vacation. Three years ago, I was particularly pleased when the game Beyond Earth inspired me to write a fun science fiction story. This summer, I've been blogging about Civilization VI and my efforts to break the rules and defy the militaristic spirit of Civ VI, a quest taking me to the Back of Beyond.

Figure 2. My eight cities in Australia: Perth, Pearls, Sucrose, Northport, Goldy, Whales, Silverado and York.

Figure 3. Commercial district (lower left) triggered a culture bomb.

 Go for the Gold. In this blog post, I comment on the Outback Tycoon scenario. I was tempted to play this particular game scenario because it includes no military units; the goal is to make money. 💰 When I began playing Civilization VI, I was appalled by the silly barbarians that harass players starting from turn 1 of the game. I was so annoyed by the barbarians that I played a game with the barbarians feature turned off. What a relief that was!

Figure 4. I never had any contact with the three other players that were in the game the first time I played the Outback Tycoon scenario. Lower left: a fisher unit belonging to another player. Upper right: my city of  York.

My city of Pearls, north of the New South Wales City-state.

Even with no barbarians and no military units, the Outback Tycoon scenario is not without dangers and even death. At the start of the game, all I had was an explorer near the one City-state that is included in the Outback Tycoon scenario (New South Wales). While exploring northeast Australia, my explorer suffered multiple injuries and setbacks such as snake bites. Eventually, my explorer died in one of these "accidents". 

Right at the start of the game, there was a message saying that a natural wonder had been discovered. Previously, I had seen the Great Barrier Reef in northeast Australia (see Figure 1 in the first blog post of this series). I sent my explorer in that direction, but the Reef was actually located on the opposite side of the continent. Boo!

During the 60 turns of game play in the Outback Tycoon scenario, the City-state of New South Wales grew slowly from size 3 to size 6. I sent a few gold-producing traders to New South Wales, but other than that, I had no interactions with it.

Figure 5. Location of the Great Barrier Reef in western Australia (upper left). Images from the victory movie.

Perth's bonus resources: wheat, coal, iron and many fish resources.
I founded Perth close to the real world location of the Great Barrier Reef,
but in the game the Reef was on the opposite side of the continent!

 The first big surprise in the Outback Tycoon scenario is how far the explorer can move in one turn, particularly along coast tiles. You don't get a settler until after the explorer has had 4 turns to find a good location for a city. I founded my first city (Perth) at a location along the coast where there were many food resources. 

The most precious luxury resource: gold.

Perth grew rapidly and it was not long before I needed to find some luxury resources in order to provide amenities to Perth and allow it to continue growing. I obtained pearls, sugar, gypsum, gold, silver and whales. By 1956, Perth had grown to size 13. 

Farmers & fishers.

The second big surprise came when looking at the list of units and buildings that could be made in the Perth city center. There are no builders. Instead, there are specialists including farmers and fishers.

I was particularly lucky that there was a gold resource not too far inland from Perth. Finding gold helps trigger a Gold Rush, which provides two settler units. Players only get a carefully defined number of settlers while playing the Outback Tycoon scenario. The gold rush gives the biggest population boost.

Part of the civics tree for the Outback Tycoon scenario. Settlers arrive when some civics are earned (red).

 

Game 2. Another gold resource in southern Australia.

There were not many gold resources on this map of Australia. The scarcity of such an important resource makes the Outback Tycoon scenario feel more like gambling than playing a game. If you don't get lucky, you won't find a gold resource early in the game and you will be delayed in building your cities.

The blank map in 1814.

The the Outback Tycoon scenario begins in 1814. I don't feel that it is fair to have the map of the continent be a complete blank (see the image to the left) until your explorer begins to move around. Unlike the first time I played this scenario, the second time playing the Outback Tycoon scenario I quickly ran into another player. This time, I founded Perth in western Australia near the Great Barrier Reef. However, I found no gold in all of western Australia. 🙁

Second game; no trade deal.

You can try to make trades with other players in the Outback Tycoon scenario, but the trading system is often a source of frustration. As shown to the right, a computer player would not make an even trade for luxury resources. 

The market for whales.

As soon as I got two whales resources, an offer came in to buy whales from me (see the image to the left). I thought the offered amount of gold was too low, so I refused the deal.

Spread out.
I think the Outback Tycoon scenario is designed to reward human players who move their explorer a long distance from New South Wales and build their cities in the most remote parts of Australia. However, towards the end of the game you can earn a significant amount of money by sending traders to foreign cities.

Great Barrier Reef National Park (game #2).

In my second game, with Perth located in western Australia near the Great Barrier Reef (see Figure 5, above, and the image to the right), I was able to create a national park. However, the ability to obtain a naturalist and found a park only comes late in the game and is not worth the effort. I had better luck colonizing the northeast where no other players got in my way.

Game #2; north Australian gold.

The one good thing that happened to me during the second playing of the Outback Tycoon scenario was that rather than watch my explorer die, I actually was rewarded with a second explorer. In retrospect, it is easy to see that I should not have methodically explored all the barren wastes of western Australia with my two explorers. Early in the game, I should have sent my second explorer along the coast to north central Australia and gone inland from there to find gold, as illustrated in the image to the left. 

Time Travel Game. A Balloon, traders from two eras and a medic.

It is these kinds of frustrations that encourage me to become a "time traveler" and replay the game, making use of my knowledge of the "secret" map features that I learned about in the "future". I'm always left wishing that time travel was an official part of the game, not a way of cheating.

Figure 6. Replaying the game can feel like time travel. I traveled into the past and moved my city two spaces.

With better city planning (more farms and Outback Stations), Goldy reaches size 12.

As shown in the figure above (Figure 6), there was no need to position the city Goldy right next to the gold resource. By shifting the position of my other city, I was able to include two luxury resources, sugar and gypsum, within the borders of one city. Compare the positions of these two cites in Figure 6 to what is shown in Figure 2. 

This city was moved south (and re-named from Figure 2) to access food resources.

The first time I played the Outback Tycoon scenario, the two cities shown in Figure 6, above, grew to size 6 and 8, respectively. By moving the city centers slightly, I was able to better utilize nearby food resources and grow both cities to a larger size by the end of the game (size 12 and 11; Goldy was founded earlier the second time).

Natural wonder: Uluru.

In my second game playing the Outback Tycoon scenario, all my fruitless exploring of the western half of Australia did reveal a second natural wonder: Uluru.

The third time I played the Outback Tycoon scenario, I was able to reach a gold resource by the fourth turn of the game, just before I got my first settler unit. In that game, my explorer quickly traveled from New South Wales to northern Australia, then went inland to the gold resource. 

Game 3: Gold discovered on turn #4.

The image to the left shows my explorer near the beginning of my 3rd played game of the Outback Tycoon scenario, having found gold on the 4th turn of that game. You don't need to discover gold quite that early, but it can be done.

My trade routes. Tourists? No.

The trader unit system is similar in the Outback Tycoon scenario and the regular Civ VI game. However, you can't get a trader from a commercial district if your city has already built a harbor.

There is no tourism in the Outback Tycoon scenario, but there are remnants of tourism visible while you play such as the brown suitcase 🛄 +25% tourism shown in the image to the right. When you meet another player in the Outback Tycoon scenario, you automatically have ally status with them.

Unlucky event; explorer is injured.

The most unique part of the Outback Tycoon scenario arises from the seeming random events that are inflicted upon your long-suffering explorer units. Many of these events are bad (see the image to the left), including the possible death of the unit. 

Lucky event; you get money.

However, some of the events are beneficial (see the image to the right), even including the possibility of being rewarded with a free unit.

Bottom Line. For anyone who grows tired of barbarians and wars against other players, the Outback Tycoon scenario provides a nice relaxing break from the usual Civ VI mayhem. When playing the Outback Tycoon scenario, the games are quick (limited to 60 turns) and allow you to focus most of your attention on exploration and making wise decisions for how best to utilize the scarce resources of the Australian desert. 

Outback Stations synergize with pastures.

While exploring Australia you'll find some wooded areas breaking up the monotony of the desert and the coastal waters are rich in resources, so you don't always have to build outback stations in order for a city to prosper. By themselves, sheep and cattle pastures do not provide many resources. However, when pastures are adjacent to Outback Stations then there are additional bonus resources. The two Outback Stations shown in the image to the left get a bonus food resource from each of two adjacent pastures. One of the Outback Stations happened to have a trade unit on that map tile when I made the screenshot.

By the end of my third time playing the Outback Tycoon scenario, I had explored almost all of Australia and had found a third natural wonder called Kakadu...

The Kakadu natural wonder; south of my city of Gypsum (top) and near Geelong (bottom left).

the game programmers crippled the scenario

Complaints. The greatest frustration that I experience with the Outback Tycoon scenario is that it is not possible to continue playing after the turn limit is reached. I can't imagine why the programmers disabled the normal game feature of allowing players to continue playing after a game has been won. It is rather amazing how much effort the Civilization VI game programmers have put into finding ways to annoy players of the game. During my third game, when one settler was almost to the site of a new city, the settler was sent back to its starting point. Another settler was crippled and could only move at half speed. Imagine if it had taken ten years to travel the Oregon Trail. This is the type of silly travel speed limitation that has always been a source of player frustration and has long made Civilization games completely unrealistic. Civilization mascot: 🐌

image source: DALL-E 3

 Related Reading: I chat with Bard about including space aliens and time travel in an imagined version of "Civilization 7".

Next: eye candy from the Outback Tycoon scenario.