Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[Athmos]

I think I agree on the tactical part. I also think Civ4 is stronger on the strategic side of military operations (in 6, it's mostly coordinating/timing your policy swapping and production, just like a lot of your economic balance).

The main issue with civ 5/6 combat system is that the AI doesn't know how to handle it at all. With stacks, at least it can use the units it builds, which makes it production bonuses more relevant.

[kjn]

Old Harry: I've posted it (as Strategy, Operations, and Tactics) over in the Off Topic forum now.

[Sullla]

Kjn, I would be interested in reading that article as well, if you're willing to post it. I'm going to avoid getting into a larger discussion of Civ4 versus Civ6 combat here to avoid derailing this thread.

Fahbs: I'm not sure how conflict would change if it was clear that there wasn't enough force to defeat an opponent completely. The simple answer would be razing and replacing cities, but that's also problematic due to the way that settlers scale up in cost in Civ6. They are significantly more expensive than they were in Civ4 after the early stages of the game. There's also the issue of losing the borders that come with a captured city; that's one of the underrated perks of taking a city in Civ5/Civ6, the way that all of the borders suddenly flip over to your control instantly. I dunno, I don't have an easy answer here. Given the difficulty of capturing cities from other human players, I don't like the idea of forcing someone to raze and replace everything, or else mandate that the entire civ must be wiped out to gain a legitimate advantage. I think the gameplay would be much better off by removing the occupation concept altogether, assuming it's possible to do that somehow. I'll have to look at what the No Quitters mod has done in that respect, the one that a lot of the online MP community uses for Civ6.

Anyway, back to this morning's turn:



It looks like teh has earned another envoy, and he chose to drop it into Vilnius to end the war against his civ. We are now tied for number of envoys in the city state at 3, which means that neither of us qualify as the suzerain. I was curious why I still had vision down here, at least until I figured out that my trader unit is granting vision. I think that's what's happening. Vilnius must have been bothering teh a fair amount; that archer and warrior from the city state have been taking damage and apparently shooting back at his units. Thanks for taking the heat off me there, Vilnius. I'll actually feel bad when my military comes down here and captures the city state in a dozen turns or so. There's no avoiding it though: that city state will be a potential threat to Aquileia as long as it remains on my southern flank. It will have to go, and it'll be a nice city to control too. The plan of action is therefore finishing off northern Rome, then taking Stockholm, then Vilnius.



No significant changes up here in northern Rome. This was more of a staging and preparation turn than one that led to much combat. I hovered over the potential combat with TheArchduke's remaining legion, and ended up with the battle odds displayed below. Strength 58 on my guy, not bad at all. However, TheArchduke's legion managed to reach strength 50 himself, and that caused this battle to have only "good" odds instead of excellent odds. I was surprised to find that the legion had the full fortify bonus of 6 strength, which means this unit has been sitting in the same spot for the last 3 turns. It's a pretty decent spot since it's hard to get archers into position to shoot against this unit, plus it's blocking the road through the mountains, although if TheArchduke had this unit available I wonder why he didn't use it over in the Mediolanum theatre.

I thought about making this attack and ultimately decided against it. What's the rush on killing this unit anyway? I don't need to fight this legion on ground of its choosing with full fortify bonus. If he wants to sit there, then I'll just go around the legion and capture Arpinum from the south, thus ending his civ regardless. More importantly, I wanted to use my healthy legions to push against Durocortorum instead. That led to this series of moves:



The injured legion northeast of Mediolanum moved another tile northeast into the marsh and promoted for the +50 health. The horseman moved into a staging position, and the promoted legion on the desert tile moved up and attacked Durocortorum itself for 53 damage. The city will heal back 20 HP of that between turns, of course, but I should be able to take the city next turn with the two legions and one horseman all combining their damage. If I held my attack this turn, I likely wouldn't have enough next turn, and continuing to capture these cities as quickly as possible remains the goal. From here, this group of units will push east over the iron hill tile and surround TheArchduke's legion, then head for Arpinum.

Meanwhile, I have more units pushing up from the south. The full health upgraded legion can move next to Arpinum next turn, and there's a pair of archers trailing in its wake that can shoot at TheArchduke's legion if it remains out in the open like that. I'm maneuvering a third archer (the one southeast of Mediolanum) into position as well. TheArchduke's legion will be forced to give up its position or else get surrounded and shot to death. Again, there's not really much he can do here in terms of tactical maneuvering. I have enormously more force than him at this point, and so it's only a matter of time before I can take the remaining objectives on the map. (The military power rating for TheArchduke is now 40, which means this is his only unit remaining on the map.)



My builder mined the second grassland hill tile this turn, and I'm preparing to fix the horse pasture next turn. My horseman will move four tiles onto the horse tile (thematically appropriate!), to cover the builder as it repairs the tile. I'll also move up my archers and fire away at teh's own archers, because why not. I'm not interested in trying to make a move on his territory or anything like that, however if I need to put my horseman into danger to cover the builder while it repairs that pillaging, I might as well get in a few potshots. There was another exchange of cities between turns, with teh capturing Frankfurt and then Yuris retaking it yet again. By all means, keep up that fighting while I go on quietly absorbing northern Rome. (Frankfurt is very important strategically because it controls a second horse resource; whichever one of teh/Yuris holds it can build horsemen while whoever lacks it cannot.)

Aquileia managed to grow to size 5 this turn where it became unhappy due to lack of amenities. This was not war weariness as I initially thought it might be. I'll need to go connect the furs in TheArchduke's territory once this war ends; he never connected his second luxury resource, and only connected the tea three turns before my attack. There is a Bath district completing in Arretium next turn, my first of the game, and then a second Bath district finishing in the capital in 2 turns. Since Baths provide +1 amenity, that extra happiness should theoretically shuffle around to cover Aquileia, which of course has its own Bath under production as well. I think this builder will head off to northern Rome to improve some tiles up there next. It still has 4 charges left, enough to make some nice improvements.



Finally, here's a score overview since we haven't had one of these in a while. I've opened up a pretty dominant lead, although teh and Yuris are keeping up better than expected. Of course, I do have 4 cities under the occupation penalty that can't grow or produce much of anything, and if you exclude them we're comparing 5 cities for me against 5 for Yuris (one of them the occupied Frankfurt) and 4 for teh. Occupied cities do count for score, they just don't do much to add further points after being taken. Both Yuris and teh are starting to pile up a lot of districts; although I don't have the exact number in front of me right now, I think they have about 4 or 5 districts each, compared to my 2 districts. This makes sense, since both of them have abilities that allow their civs to build taller with districts, between teh's cheap Hansas and Yuris' Aztec builder charges.

The crippling problem for both of them is that they have no more room for expansion, while I'm still conquering TheArchduke's remaining cities, and will then have free run on the city states in the middle of the map after that. I already have 9 cities with my current conquests, and TheArchduke's remaining pair of cities gets me to 11. Add in Stockholm, Vilnius, and Yerevan, and that gets me to 14 cities. Then I have at least two more offshore islands to settle, and potentially another one off to the west. In 25 turns, I could legitimately be looking at 17 cities while they are stuck on roughly 5 apiece. Oh, and there's also the little fact that they're both sitting at roughly 130 military power while I'm over 400 power. Without wanting to jinx anything, I'm struggling to see much chance for teh or Yuris to win this game going forward.

First things first though. Let's continue grinding down what remains of TheArchduke and go from there.

[fahbs]

There's a way to tell how close a unit is to promotion? I missed that.

[Alhambram]

There's a way to tell how close a unit is to promotion? I missed that.

Look at second picture where Sulla's legion and Archduke's legion are staring into each other eyes.
You see Sulla's legion listed bonuses from oligarchy, great general etc. Notice a very little white beam under that listed bonuses, with minuscule letters XP next it at left?
By hovering the mouse over the minuscule white beam, you can check how many XP is left until next promotion.

[fahbs]

Oh, good thing they didn't waste any of that empty space elsewhere on the unit screen for that

[Sullla]

Yeah, the interface design for unit experience possibly takes the cake for awfulness in Civ6. Why they thought putting the experience amount on a bar 10 pixels wide was a good idea is mind boggling. I snapped one picture of the bar later on in this turn report, and I'll highlight it for those who haven't seen it before. Let's get to Turn 86:



On the northern Rome front, TheArchduke used his legion to build a fortification on that tile. I'm a little surprised that he hadn't done so earlier. In any case though, his unit now has an even stronger defensive bonus, and perhaps TheArchduke is expecting me to attack him there. No such deal though; he can sit there forever, and I'm happy to go around that unit. The real action this turn was at Durocortorum:



Three attacks were once again sufficient to take the place. I actually came up 3 HP short of capturing it on the second attack, bah. Not a big deal, although my horseman took 12 additional damage in that last attack, and since the unit is already at full XP, it didn't even gain anything from it. Aside from actually taking the city, of course. This has become pretty routine by now, as I took my fifth city in less than a dozen turns of war. Durocortorum threw down a Bath district on the desert tile southwest of the city, and then began repairing its monument damaged in the city capturing.

Here's a picture of that XP bar:



Why is that experience bar so small? What were they thinking?! Anyway, I moved up my units from Arretium, pushing towards the unguarded underbelly of Arpinum. I also moved up the damaged legion in Mediolanum so that I could move the full strength legion southeast into the jungle. We're just going to keep heading for the city and ignore that legion completely. If TheArchduke doesn't move it back into the city on his next turn, I'll have it cut off completely. Either way, I'm not going to waste time attacking that unit in its little fortified camp. My units are pushing forward aggressively now that this campaign is nearly concluded. I should be able to surround the city next turn, and hopefully finish the last city capture on Turn 88. Then it's on to Stockholm, Vilnius, and potentially teh after that.



On the German front, I moved up my builder to repair the pillaged horses and spotted four of teh's archers clustering around Frankfurt. That's quite a few archers, and it's easy to see why Yuris is struggling over here. His military power dropped significantly this turn, down to just 83 power compared to 150 power for teh. It seems the Germans are winning the war between their civs at the moment.

I went ahead and repaired the tile, moving my horseman up to cover the unit. Two of my archers combined to shoot one of teh's archers, crippling the unit:



Just barely short of enough damage to kill it, although I had better than average combat luck here so I can't really complain. Now my units are in an exposed position, and after playing the turn, I have to say I'm not happy at all with these moves. Putting my units at risk like this to fix a single pillaged tile is very much not worth it, especially while most of my army is engaged elsewhere on the map. Remember how my big picture strategy was to defend over here while my main army finished chewing through northern Rome? There was no reason to take on this level of danger.

I'll be curious to see how teh plays this. He can very likely kill one of my archers by combining fire against it, although that will open him up to a deadly counterattack on my next turn. He might even be able to kill the horseman if he concentrates all four shots of his archers against it, which would be an especially foolish loss on my part if that takes place. I'm crossing my fingers that the Vilnius city state will keep a unit on the tile where the injured warrior is currently standing, since that blocks the eastern-most archer from reaching the horseman unit or the northern archer. Again, trading units here in a small-scale engagement is just dumb on my part. I should be defending and waiting for the vastly superior army to get over here before doing anything aggressive. Sigh. That's my fault for being too eager to repair the horses tile. At least this takes a little pressure off Yuris, and I suppose that's worth something.



Arretium finished my first Bath district of the game, immediately going from 5 housing to 10 housing. We won't be needing granaries any time soon here. I'll work the high food tiles and grow upwards onto the hills; I traded the northern copper back to Mediolanum for the time being so that at least one city was working it, even at the occupation penalty. Next up, I need trader units to boost Medieval Faires civic, although given the cost of this one (about 70 production) that could take a little while. Roma and Hispalis almost have the Commercial districts themselves done, it's just a matter of building those traders. (I'll likely be returning to Caravansaries soon to boost those trade routes, as each one will be worth 3 gold/turn, and my number of trade routes is going to explode upwards in the next 25 or so turns. Plus, the Triangle Trade policy isn't really that far away either for even more trade route income goodness.)



My capital is rocking the production of this Bath district. 27 production/turn is pretty sweet. The Bath will solve the housing issue here, then I'll finish the Commercial district and build a trader. I still need to work on the Industrial district here too, which will allow me to send +1 food / +4 production trade routes back to Roma from every other part of the empire. The Harbor district is a little bit further away - I'm not likely to hit size 10 for ages, if ever. Meanwhile, Hispalis will finish its own Commercial district next turn and then join most of the rest of the cities in my empire in constructing a Bath district. (FYI they do not count for score points like specialty districts do. Probably a good thing to avoid any further metagaming based on my score total.)



Finally, here's the Great Person screen with the current Great Person points/turn edited in by me. I'm currently getting 2 Great General points and that's all, since my Commercial district was pillaged by TheArchduke. Yuris has 5 total districts: 2 Industrial, 2 Commercial, and 1 Scientific. Meanwhile, teh has 3 Hansas (his unique Industrial district) and 1 Campus district. Teh's numbers are all inflated by being the suzerain of Stockholm, which doubles Great Person points from districts (not the buildings in them, only the districts themselves). So teh's 3 Hansas are doubled to 6 Great Engineer points/turn, and his one Campus gets double to 2 Great Scientist points/turn, then he gets 1 extra Great Scientist point from the library that his previous Great Scientist insta-constructed in there.

Here's what this means: I'm going to get the next Great General. Teh will get the first Great Engineer. I will almost certainly get the first Great Merchant since I have three Commercial districts about to complete, and enough faith saved up to win a tiebreaker with Yuris. Teh is the favorite at this point to get the next Great Scientist as well, although that's far enough away that there's no guarantees there. It's another extremely useful Great Scientist, more's the pity for me. It's very easy to roll crummy Great Scientists; why couldn't that happen in a game where I'm ignoring them?

In total, I think this was the worst turn I played from a tactical standpoint in a long time, maybe the whole game. We'll see how bad the damage proves to be when I get the save back tomorrow. Don't get me wrong, I'm still cruising comfortably, but this was not my best work.

[fahbs]

I think the biggest interface blunder was the city screen(s) in general. 4 had all the useful info you could ever need in one screen. Here it's needlessly spread out to 4 tabs.

Not to mention how much worse the city summary screen is. Why is it buried under a tiny & vague "view reports" button? Why is the screen itself full of so much useless information clogging it up? Why can't you sort by categories? Why can't you issue build orders from there?

Why is it so hard to rename cities? You have to click on the city, click on a specific tab, then click on the tiny pencil icon hidden to the right of the name. What was wrong with the instant, easy name edit option in 4?

[Athmos]

There's a way to tell how close a unit is to promotion? I missed that.

Look at second picture where Sulla's legion and Archduke's legion are staring into each other eyes.
You see Sulla's legion listed bonuses from oligarchy, great general etc. Notice a very little white beam under that listed bonuses, with minuscule letters XP next it at left?
By hovering the mouse over the minuscule white beam, you can check how many XP is left until next promotion.

Wow ! I knew about the XP bar, but I never realised that you could have an exact number display by hovering over it

[Sullla]

The interface for Civ6 is such a shame. I hate that we have to put up with this sloppy and amateurish design to play a game that's otherwise pretty darn good. It's like the user interface was designed by someone who had never played a strategy game before, and wanted everything to look aesthetically appealing, without even the slighest consideration for what would be functional during actual gameplay. I agree that the city screen design in particular needs to go die in a fire. Having four separate submenus for a screen that the player will be using constantly is the worst design I've seen since Master of Orion 3's planetary screen (and that was *BAD*). Anyway, let's move on to this morning's turn. We're still burning through two turns a day, and it's part of what makes this game so much fun.



Teh did surprisingly little on his turn. I had fears all evening yesterday that my units were too exposed over here and that he was going to punish me for stretching out my neck to repair that horses pasture. Instead teh seems to be the one who's pulled back, taking one potshot against my horseman and otherwise retreating his units. I think he doesn't realize that I'm bluffing here; for all he knows, I have a huge force lurking in the fog about to come out and jump on him. Either that or he's worried about being caught out between my forces and the ones from Yuris. Anyway, the German archers seem to have pulled back for the time being, and that's exactly what I wanted to see.

I went ahead and retreated that horseman and builder. Of course, I couldn't let that 1 HP archer get away, so I finished it off with my forward-most archer:



This guy will likely take a shot in return but he should survive, and then I'll retreat back to my territory next turn. Note that although teh can shoot me with an archer from the tile southeast of Frankfurt, he can't get two archers into position to shoot my guy from the northeast, since that's the only eligible tile. Archers can't move twice and then fire. So I can get shot from that tile, and then potentially from the tile 3 east of Aquileia, but two shots shouldn't be enough to kill my archer unless teh rolls high on the damage both times. And teh also lacks vision on that archer right now, plus he has Yuris to worry about, so I'm crossing my fingers that this archer will be OK. I couldn't let teh retreat an archer with one hit point left, even if it was arguably a silly move to put an archer at risk here again.

Note that I also occupied the hill tile west of the horses with an archer, which should give me another firing platform in the event of future skirmishes. I had a bit of an issue with my archers clogging up on one another, and this helps to alleviate that problem. The horseman retreated back to a safe place to heal, and the builder is likely going to head up to Arpinum next to chop out a Bath district from that grassland hill forest. Arpinum will be a nice city as soon as it can solve its housing problem, and a forest chop should essentially complete a Bath.

Speaking of Arpinum:



TheArchduke did not move his legion, which means that his city is forfeit next turn. I guess that legion is never going to see combat, not unless TheArchduke attacks with it himself. When you only have one unit, you can't stop someone else from simply going around, zone of control or no zone of control.

I took the legion southwest of Arpinum in this screenshot and moved a tile to the northwest, blocking access back into the city. My archer south of the city then took a potshot at the defenses for 12 damage (hey, beats nothing!) and then the legion west of the city attacked it for another 48 damage. I moved up the rest of my forces, resulting in this ending tactical situation:



I can hit Arpinum with 3 legions and the horseman next turn, which means that it's very very dead. (Horses ignore zone of control, which means it can reach the desert tile northeast of Arpinum and still attack.) Even if TheArchduke builds a legion in there on his interturn, I still have enough force to finish it off. I'm hoping that 2 legions and the horseman will be enough to take the city - which it should - so that I can pillage the horses pasture with my archer before capturing the city. That would give me another 50 gold, and I could use a legion to immediately repair the damaged tile. Regardless though, this should be the end of the war and the final unification of northern and southern Rome. It won't be the end of the fighting entirely though: Stockholm awaits next up to the north. After chewing through all of these Roman cities, that defensive rating of 31 doesn't seem too impressive.

The injured galley has been exploring to the west since Mediolanum was captured, and this turn proved my hunch correct:



I thought that I saw a shoreline peeking out from under the fog when I moved my legions north in that initial invasion. This spot is also very much worth settling, since it has yet another unique luxury in the form of pearls. So I'll need three settlers in total: one for the island south of Vilnius, one for the island north of Stockholm (which has to be there since this map is mirrored everywhere), and one for this island. I suppose there's another similar island east of teh and Yuris, although I'll never reach it. Let's see if I can swap into Colonization policy soon and get three settlers out for these locations. I will have an open policy available in the Wildcard slot since I can drop Professional Army for the time being. Maybe Arretium, Aquileia, and Constantinople can produce the settlers after I finish my current Baths/Commercial districts/traders push?



Roma finished its Bath district this turn, and suddenly I don't have to worry about housing anymore. The extra amenity is also nice, since I'm going to need some more happiness once the occupation penalty ends and the northern Roman cities start growing upwards. Now it's back to the Commercial district again, followed by a trader unit after that. I also need to increase the food output here; I'll likely build a water mill in the near future, which will grant +2 food thanks to the rice tile. Oh, and if I take Yerevan, I can run a +2 food / +1 production trade route from the capital down there since it has a Holy Site district, and that adds 1 food to a trade route destination. Still need to get the Industrial district done here as well, which will be worth 5 production/turn from adjacency bonuses and the Hong Kong city state. And yes, Civ6's cultural picker grabs a mountain tile in the second ring over resources in the third ring. What a system.



The builder who had cleared the jungle and farmed the floodplains in the Ravenna/Arretium area made its way down to Hispalis and reconnected my extra source of spices with its last charge. I made this move with the intention of offering a spices trade to Yuris; while he probably doesn't need additional happiness for his cities, all his Aztec units get +1 strength for each luxury resource he possesses, and that has to be useful for him right now. I don't think this luxury is actually worth 5 gold/turn, but I wanted to come out with a high initial offer. If Yuris bargains this down to 2 or 3 gold/turn, I'll happilly accept. I need money for my next unit upgrades into crossbows and (eventually) muskets. The sooner I can start stockpiling gold, the better. (I did finish a Commercial district in Hispalis this turn, although it didn't increase my gold/turn amount since it wasn't placed on a river. Hispalis will get its Bath district next, then perhaps complete a market for the very nice +3 gold/turn benefit, and the Merchant specialist slot.)



And finally, in the anti-suspenseful category, here's a stiched-together picture of the military power ranking of the four players in this game. It's hard to emphasize how far ahead I am in terms of military strength, and with the occupation penalty finally about to end in all those northern Roman cities, my civ will be unleashed in pretty much every Demographics category. With teh and Yuris throwing units against one another, this has the potential to get ugly. I'll go right ahead and keep playing as usual, but going forward I think it's going to be more of a sandbox exercise. This game looks like it's mostly in the bag, and a matter of waiting until the other players decide to concede.