Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[shinghand]

ASM - that is hilarious!

[Sullla]

Athmos: legions can use their builder action to chop forests/jungle too? Wow, that's very nice indeed. I don't have an immediate use for that right now, but I'll keep that in mind for the future. The documentation for those units only states that they can build fortifications, so I never thought to try that before. (This is also my first game playing as Rome.) I think that's worth the higher cost of the legion all by itself, never mind the extra strength they get over regular swords and the lack of a need for iron.

Regarding Rome's overall strength in Civ6: I think Rome is overpowered compared to the civs in the standard game, although not so much compared to the downloadable extra civs. Australia and Persia are both ridiculous, and even Poland is quite good too. Poland seems to have been overshadowed recently because the last batch of extra civs was even more absurd. As far as the Aztecs go, I don't think they're quite on the same level, even though the ability to construct districts using builder charges can be very nice. I'd likely put them on the same tier as Germany, a strong civ that falls short of the top group. This is something that we'll figure out over time as we have the chance to play more games.

Antisocialmunky: those are some awesome pictures! Thanks for sharing them in the thread. Anyway, I did have the chance to play another groggy turn this morning, since I certainly wasn't waiting 12 hours to see how things would play out around TheArchduke's capital. Here's what I found at the start of the turn:



There was now a warrior present in the capital, and no possibility for this unit to have moved into the city between turns. For that matter, I know that TheArchduke had two warriors before this conflict started, and both of them were on the eastern borders of his territory, much too far away to reach this location. So that raises the question: did he build this warrior or cash-rush it to completion? I'm leaning towards the latter option; TheArchduke had 220 gold in hand and was making about 10 gold/turn before this war started. He should have had enough money to upgrade one slinger to an archer (30g) and then enough left over to cash-rush the warrior in his capital, at the cost of essentially all of his treasury of course. I believe warriors cost a little bit less than 200 gold to purchase; I have a screenshot somewhere that I can pull later today to get the exact number when I'm at my home computer. This certainly seems more likely than completing a warrior in a single turn of production, which I doubt that his capital can pull even with the Agoge bonus. And if TheArchduke was building a warrior already by total coincidence, I will eat my hat. This was not a player gearing up for war.

So I think that TheArchduke just blew through his whole treasury on slinger to archer upgrades and a cash-rushed warrior. You guys can find out for sure by checking out what TheArchduke has posted in his spoiler thread; any screenshot will show the gold total on the top bar. In the immediate context here, the warrior raised the defensive strength of the enemy capital from 13 to 23, and that did make the city slightly harder to take. I lined up my attacks:



First I attacked with the battering ram legion to the east of the city. With no walls in place, the battering ram appears to have had no effect at all on the attack. Oh well, that's not a big deal. The battering ram will remain relevant for the rest of the game, and I had to assume that I'd face city walls in this attack, because if I didn't plan for them and they were there, I'd have been in some serious trouble. I will decouple the legion from the ram next turn to get the 3 movement points back. That legion took all of 11 damage in the first attack and knocked out about 45% of the city's health. The second legion attacked from the northeast tile; it took 8 damage and knocked the city down to a sliver. I wanted to use the horseman attacking from the sea to capture the city, since that would allow the two western legions to start moving on to the next city already. However, at only 10 strength it wasn't quite enough to get the job done. So I used the highlighted legion to strike the fatal blow:



Of course there was only one name possible for the newly taken city, as the second capital of the Roman Empire. Say hello to Constantinople. For that matter, check out the pop-up message over there in the corner: the capital of Rome has been captured by Rome! Heh. Well, we're in the process of unifying southern and northern Rome together into one polity here. Think of this as another one of the endless intercine succession struggles that took place during the late Roman imperial era.

Constantinople lost two population points upon capture, dropping from size 6 to size 4. The only infrastructure that survived capture was the city monument, which is sitting at 45/60 production and will need to be repaired. Too bad TheArchduke didn't construct any districts here; the ones that were in-progress actually disappeared off the map when I took the place. I ended up replacing the Commercial district in the same spot, at the mouth of the river one tile west of the city. I'll put the bath district northeast of the city once it becomes available. This way, if I build a Harbor district later, it can be next to the Commercial district and the crab resource for a huge adjacency bonus.

I realize that I forgot to take an overview picture of my units following the capture of Constantinople. There's not too much to report here overall; I landed the horseman unit west of the city, and moved the one legion that didn't attack to the northwest, towards the city of Cumae. It's size 1 and has 10 defensive strength, so I think I can take it pretty easily. I will likely heal the three units that took damage next turn, restoring all of them to full strength, and use the legion and horseman to attack Cumae. I think I can capture that little city on Turn 78.



Here's the center of the map, where teh moved up a slinger next to me for inexplicable reasons. I hope he's not planning anything aggressive here; while I very much doubt he could take Aquileia, he might be able to get in some pillaging if he were to declare war. I'm not defenseless though, as Aquileia's walls can fire with the strength of an archer, and my Oligarchy-boosted warrior has a combat strength of 24. That German slinger has a melee strength of 5, so it would die almost instantly in a fight. I will continue to upgrade these slingers into archers as I save up the 30 gold needed for each.

It turns out that I miscounted on the number of farms that I have in my territory. I only had 2 of them at the start of my turn, not 3, and that leaves me one farm short of the Feudalism bonus. I did use the builder near Hispalis to build one farm, and this builder out of Aquileia built another one. With the captured farm at Constantinople, I now have 5 of them. As a result, the builder here in the center of the map will add another farm next turn to trigger the Feudalism bonus, then go over to chop the grassland hill forest. But that means that I need yet another builder here, albeit one with the Serfdom bonus +2 charges, or else the hill tile will only have 2/1 yield instead of the 2/3 yield from a mine. The need for an additional builder will slow down Aquileia slightly, but I'll be able to avoid creating a builder at Arretium as a result, and so the overall effect will be about the same. I also swapped off of Feudalism civic after taking this screenshot to avoid wasting this turn's culture.



Arretium is nearly done its Commercial district, and I rolled lucky on the cultural tile picker. The second floodplains tile should be grabbed next turn, and that's exactly what I need for growth. I'll be able to farm this tile soon enough (the one place I really do need a farm, heh) and have another 4/1 tile to help this city surge upwards in population. Once the Bath district is in place, this city will grow very rapidly indeed. Now I just need the cultural tile picker to grab the jungle tile to the southwest, and I'll have my Feudalism farming triangle set up.

By the way, Apprenticeship tech finished this turn too. It was virtually an afterthought with everything else going on right now. Note that the mines now have an additional production yield, and after taking these pictures, I went ahead and added Industrial districts at Arretium and Aquileia. I couldn't add one at the capital yet because it's not size 7 (although it will be in a few more turns).



Unfortunately Constantinople is in "occupied" status right now, which means that all of the yields are cut in half and the city can't grow. This will persist until TheArchduke formally cedes the city to me in a peace treaty (which he certainly won't do) or until he's eliminated. Because food in this city is basically useless right now, I went ahead and rearranged tiles to maximize production and gold, such as working that 1/0/3 crabs tile to help solve my income woes. The addition of Constantinople took me from 6 gold/turn to 9 gold/turn, and that was indeed a big help. Anyway, the net result is that I didn't get a huge increase in beakers or culture from capturing this city, and I won't until I'm able to eliminate my northern rival. But even though I didn't get a big increase, that didn't stop TheArchduke from suffering a huge decrease:



His science fell from 14.5 beakers to 9.7 beakers, and his culture fell from 17.6 to 11.8. If TheArchduke was planning on heading for Iron Working tech, hopefully this will slow his progress there. For reference purposes, Yuris is in second place on science at 19.1 beakers/turn (teh 17.2 beakers/turn), and teh is in second place for culture at 17.0 per turn (Yuris 15.9 per turn). I should be able to open up huge leads in both categories if I'm able to eliminate TheArchduke.

The biggest news internationally was teh completing what appears to be two districts on the same turn, his first two districts of the game. I can't tell if they're Commercial districts or Hansas yet; I'll know next turn when he starts getting Great Person points from them. As I suspected a long time ago, teh is emerging as my biggest competitor right now. He's going to land the first Great Scientist in a couple turns, he has the Hansas to give him lots of production, and he's going to have more territory than Yuris (who is stuck on four cities and seemingly has no options for expansion). I need to get a move on with capturing the other four cities in northern Rome so that I can bring my army back to defend against anything teh might be planning. He has two horse resources, and horsemen in numbers backed by archers would be dangerous.

Overall then, a very good turn indeed. I can't get complacent though, since I won't reap the full benefits of this war until after TheArchduke is eliminated. I don't think it's a question of "if" he gets eliminated at this point, more so an issue of "when". I'll aim to wrap this up in a dozen turns and see if it works out that way.

[fahbs]

I had no idea yields were halved for occupied cities. Thought it was just growth. I think that whole mechanic could be handled a lot better. It's not too bad for single player since it's easy to get the AI to cede them, but multiplayer it seems like a losing player can decide to just be a pain and drag it out. Possibly opening up more kingmaker options more subtle than the usual gifting cities option.

Isn't it not worth it now to build both a harbor and commercial district? You only get a trade route from one of them, and a commercial district without the trade route doesn't seem worth it.

[unaghy]

Regarding putting city under siege and related zone of control, I was made to believe and also seen it in my games frequently, that zone control applies on tile you stand on and tiles left and right hand to your units. This means that your east Legion has zone of control of coast tile southeast and west legion of cost tile southwest of the city and horseman is not needed here. Normally, three units positioned in even sides triangel stance (or even in sharp shaped one) around the city without rivers are able to put it under siege.

However, why I dont see future Constantinople under the siege, while there is exactly only one tile not occupied by your unit??

Btw. good job on the execution of you planning, as often is much easier to plan something, than executing it, while here it seems you are actually "over-prepared"

[Athmos]

(...)

Isn't it not worth it now to build both a harbor and commercial district? You only get a trade route from one of them, and a commercial district without the trade route doesn't seem worth it.

Harbors got buffed and they provide many other benefits : food, housing...
Commercial district would often be justified by the gold income they provide, specially with the excellent "double gold from commercial hub building" policy they eventually benefit from. The trade routes are super good, but the other bonuses are quite good as well.
Markets are +3, Banks are +5 and Stock exchanges are +13 from memory, not counting adjacency bonus for the district itself for which you can usually at least get +2. Great merchants are also often among the most desirable Great peoples (I wouldn't say the same of admirals, tho...).

In civ 6, from unit upgrades to cash buying to tiles purchase (and patronage too, although I rarely use money for that), money is pretty good to have.


Anyway, if possible you want at least one city with encampment, commercial hub, harbor and industrial zone since they all give a +1 bonus to production to trade routes targeting the city, so that's your go to city for trade routes aiming to provide mainly production (which is usually the most important aspect, even more so for Rome for which the roads are not as important since you always get one to the capital anyway).

Sulla explained that it was part of the reason why he chose to get these district as a priority in Rome.

[Athmos]

Regarding putting city under siege and related zone of control, I was made to believe and also seen it in my games frequently, that zone control applies on tile you stand on and tiles left and right hand to your units. This means that your east Legion has zone of control of coast tile southeast and west legion of cost tile southwest of the city and horseman is not needed here. Normally, three units positioned in even sides triangel stance (or even in sharp shaped one) around the city without rivers are able to put it under siege.

However, why I dont see future Constantinople under the siege, while there is exactly only one tile not occupied by your unit??

Btw. good job on the execution of you planning, as often is much easier to plan something, than executing it, while here it seems you are actually "over-prepared"

You have to get all the tiles surrounding the city into your Zone Of Control to put it under siege. Unit ZoC extend one tile in all direction, but doesn't cross rivers. I'm pretty sure embarked land unit don't get a ZoC at all, so if you want to control water tiles you have to use naval units.

If there are no rivers or if there are 3 tiles on each side of the river around the city, you can put it under siege using only 2 units. Since ZoC extend one tile, you can siege a city using units that are not in contact with it but one tile remote. It sometime come in handy when you want to press the attack but some of your units are too far, or to use the actually quite good lvl3 promotion giving a ZoC to archer line units.

[Sullla]

Fahbs: I agree that the greatly reduced yields for cities that are captured but not ceded could be a problem for Multiplayer. If a city isn't formally ceded, it can't grow, at all, ever. This works fine in Single Player because the AI will happily cede cities after losing a war, but I doubt human players would be interested in doing the same thing. Why would TheArchduke ever agree to cede one of his cities when it will be nearly useless to me so long as he refuses? It's ridiculous to expect players to capture every single city of their opponents to get out from under the occupation penalty. This is something we might need to address down the road.

Athmos did a fine job explaining why it may be worthwhile to have a Commercial district and a Harbor in the same city, I have nothing to add there. For the specific case of Constantinople, I will definitely want Commercial, Industrial, and Campus districts. The odds that the city will reach size 10 for another district beyond that are probably slim, but I can reevaluate then and see how things look. By the way, thanks unaghy and Athmos for explaining a bit more about the sieging rules. It definitely looks like Constantinople failed to be under an official siege because my horseman couldn't execute a zone of control why embarked. Makes sense (and it is a change from earlier patches).



Here was the tactical situation at the beginning of the turn. No new military units in view, no additional defensive strength in Cumae. That means no legions for TheArchduke, at least not yet. I decided that I would continue my plans from last turn, resting the three legions on the east side of Constantinople to get them all back to full strength while moving the western legion and horseman against Cumae. Unfortunately the hose unit couldn't quite move far enough to reach Cumae due to a series of hills up there in the fog (even with 5 movement points), which meant it was just the one legion able to attack this turn. So just how much damage does one of my super buff legions do against a city with zero defenses?



A lot. I pasted the information from mousing over the attack down there at the bottom to display the strength differential, strength 49 against strength 10. That's enough to one-shot a unit (since units only have 100 HP), and the city took 115 damage from this assault. My legion took 8 damage. Yikes. Well, barring some kind of drastic change, Cumae will fall next turn.

The only changes I made after taking this screenshot were to move the horseman northwest next to the city, and to move the Great General back onto the rice tile. I figure it's better to have the horseman ready to attack in case the legion comes up short on the city capture; remember, Cumae is not under siege so it will heal back 20 HP between turns. The horse also has enough movement that it won't be inconvenienced much if it turns out not to be needed. I moved the Great General back to the rice tile so that the three eastern legions will get the +1 movement next turn. The movement point is determined by where the Great General is located when the turn begins; I can move the Great General back onto the horses tile so that the western legion and horseman will get the +5 combat strength when they attack, even if they won't get the +1 movement point. It's more important for me to have the movement on the three eastern legions; I think I can take Cumae next turn (Turn 78) and the currently invisible Lugdunum on the north coast on Turn 79. Depends on what I find out there in the fog, of course, but that's the plan.

Also: Hong Kong has a lot of units walking around. Glad that TheArchduke isn't their suzerain!



In the center of the map, I threw down another farm at Aquileia and triggered the boost for Feudalism. Apparently I am really good at leaving these things 1% away from being completed, which means that Feudalism will have to wait another turn. The alternative was wasting a turn of culture though, so I'm OK with how this played out. The second farm actually gets Aquileia out of the housing penalty for the moment, and this will form a nice farming triangle later on when the city claims the tile southeast of the horses. Next up: chop the forest on the hill, finish another builder, and overflow into either the Commercial district or Bath district. Engineering tech is now only 5 turns away.

Arretium did grab that floodplains tile with a cultural expansion this turn, and it's only one turn away from finishing its Commercial district. The slinger that I upgraded to an archer was moving around over here, and amazingly I spotted this:



What the heck?! A half-strength warrior was randomly located east of Mediolanum. I guess this confirms that Stockholm has been clashing with TheArchduke over in this part of the map, since no one else is at war with TheArchduke. I certainly wasn't the one who damaged this warrior. Well, I wasn't the one who damaged it prior to this turn. Naturally I went ahead and took the hovered potshot with my archer. The warrior survived in the red zone, with about the amount of health indicated the picture, about 10% overall. Note that this unit would have died if TheArchduke hadn't been in Oligarchy government; the +4 strength gave this warrior just enough power to pull through. At 25 strength against 13 strength, that's a dead unit.



Here is the overview picture of my core. The capital should be able to complete the Commercial district and then go straight into its Bath district. Arretium likely has time to get out a trader (following the Commercial district) and then construct its own Bath district. Ravenna has its own builder 1 turn away from finishing, which I'll complete after swapping into Serfdom policy next turn. I will probably keep working on the Campus district for the moment and then swap over to a Bath there as well once it's available. Similar story at Hispalis: some combination of Commercial district and Bath district. I need to get 4 total trade routes in the near future, since that's the boost for Medieval Faires civic. I already have one trade route active, I'll get two more from the Commercial districts at Roma and Arretium, and then either Aquileia or Hispalis can supply the last one. Perhaps Hispalis because Aquileia has been forced to turn out all these builders, heh.

Internationally, teh has finished his first Hansa already. Yeah, he's going to claim that first Great Engineer; those Hansas are just too cheap for me to compete with him there. Maybe I'll get one of the later ones; I'm going to be working on Commercial districts and Baths next, not Industrial districts. TheArchduke did complete a tech this turn, and it wasn't Apprenticeship since his mining yields didn't increase. It's been 9 turns since his last tech completed; my best guess is that he was researching Apprenticeship tech, then changed his mind and started going for Iron Working. He might have the tech now, although I don't think he has the gold available for warrior -> legion upgrades. Unfortunately, I really don't know what tech he picked up. Hopefully nothing that will come back to surprise me.

Maybe if we get in our usual 2 turns tomorrow, I'll be able to claim 2 more cities. Here's hoping.

[fahbs]

Can great people ever be killed by enemy military? As far as I can tell, "capturing" them just causes them to teleport to the nearest friendly city.

[gunnerxtr]

I found that too, fahbs. It is really annoying.... seems like the owner should have something to lose.

[Athmos]

(...) By the way, thanks unaghy and Athmos for explaining a bit more about the sieging rules. It definitely looks like Constantinople failed to be under an official siege because my horseman couldn't execute a zone of control why embarked. Makes sense (and it is a change from earlier patches).  (...)

You're welcome ! I tested it a bit more yesterday evening and found that embarked units still control the tile they're one, but their ZoC doesn't extend around them, so in this case you could have set up siege upon the false Rome (soon to become Constantinople) by using 2 embarked land units on the two adjacent coast tiles. With such superiority however, it's a waste of movement points since you will most probably take the city in one turn anyway (of course, It could have been a different story if  your opponent suddenly finished a wall and upgraded a Legion somewhere).