Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[Singaboy]

Great warfare so far Sullla!
Masterfully executed, don't dwell over some minor moves that you are not happy about. You have almost taken over Archduke's land with lightning speed. As a self professed warmonger, I wouldn't know a thing I could have done better.

[Rowain]

Great Work in both playing and explaining so far .

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*).

Firaxis doesn't want the players to have easy information. They don't want the player to know and min/max everything thus showing the weakness of the AI. In the eyes of the powers that are Civ4 gave too much information to the player (including Diplo) . They first tried to hide everything (civ5 - diplo-information at release was completely worthless for example) but after getting some serious anger for this they moved to hide as much info by placing it on hard to find locations. I also think that the majority of players care more about eye-candy than information.

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.

Come on don't be boring . I fully demand you continue on the war-path and try to win by Domination ASAP

[kjn]

Nice report as usual. I know you intend to take over Stockholm and Vilnius next, but how are your plans after that? Further warfare against teh, or focus on expansion to the islands, or growing vertically?

I did post the article on the relation between tactics, operations, and strategy over in the Off Topic forum, you might have missed it between everything else.

[shinghand]

Agreed, well done Sullla! I too feel that you have more or less reached a dominant position. Your meticulous play has also sparked some considerable interest from the lurkers in Civ 6 MP. So it's a mission accomplished on that front too! 

[Sullla]

Thanks all for the kind words! Kjn, I did see your article in the Off Topic forum, and it's very well written. I'm not sure that I have anything useful to add as a response, since it's fairly high level / big picture stuff. With regards to the question on what to do next... well, a lot depends on what teh ends up doing himself. Immediately I'll finish off TheArchduke and then take the city states in the middle of the map. If teh is still running around with archers and warriors, then of course I'll continue to press my military advantage against him. However, I think he's heading for Machinery tech and crossbows, one of the easiest medieval-era units to beeline on the tech tree. I saw that teh finished city walls in Mainz last turn, for example, and that's the boost for Engineering tech. So I expect that teh will have crossbows before I can manage to get my army in position to launch a major attack, and that will deter me from getting too aggressive. Legions and horses shrug off archer shots, but not crossbow bolts.

Long story short: if teh doesn't manage to upgrade his military, then I'll continue attacking and see how far I can get. If he does though, then we sit back and develop the northern Roman lands, settle the islands, and come back around roughly Turn 115-120 when I have my second Great General and can upgrade everything to muskets and crossbows. I expect that the latter case will be more likely, but we'll see what happens. I'm also pleased to hear that there's some growing interest in Civ6 MP as a result of this game. Now let's get to Turn 88:



I logged in to see that Yuris accepted my resource trade offer from last turn. What?! I didn't really expect that to work! LOL, ok then, fine with me. I'll take another 5 gold/turn for a resource that I can't even use. Time to start saving up for the next round of unit upgrades.

TheArchduke did not move his legion, not even to attack one of my units. I thought he would at least try to do a little extra damage on this final turn to one of my units. Oh well, I never needed to attack that legion in the end. My units surrounded the city:



First I attacked with the legion west of the city, then scampered the horseman through the enemy legion's zone of control to attack from the northeast of the city. It looked like I was going to come up just short of capturing Arpinum, so I shot the city with my archer and then made one final attack with the legion northwest of the city. Looking at this screenshot now, I realize that the Great General wasn't boosting the last two attacks - argh! What was I thinking here? If I had just moved the darn Great General, I'm sure that I could have pillaged the horses tile with my archer and still had enough damage to finish off the city. Or alternately, last turn I could have moved another archer up from the south instead of that half strength legion that never actually engaged in combat. Anyway, this is nitpicking for sure, but I want to point out that my tactics could have been better here. Another 50 gold certainly would have been nice.

That said, Arpinum fell to the third attack and brought an end to the independent existence of northern Rome:



I then spent 10 minutes microing the northern Roman cities now that the occupation penalty was over, which is why it's night in this screenshot. Arpinum is going to be a nice city once I can get the Bath district finished; the builder who just repaired the horse resource at Aquileia is on the way up here to chop and mine the grassland hill tile, which will knock out most of the Bath district's cost. (Is that how TheArchduke built one of those legions? The chopped forest?) Arpinum is crippled at present due to lack of housing, however once the Bath district fixes that, it will have lots of production and a sky-high housing cap. I'll probably run a trade route here as well to get a little extra food and production incoming.

In the bigger picture, my science and culture output both went up by a lot. Science went from 24 beakers/turn to 31 beakers/turn, and culture from 25 per turn to 31 per turn. The occupation penalty is -50% to production and gold output, but a brutal -75% to science and culture. I've now passed teh again (who is still at 26 beakers/turn) and that gap should only grow over time as all of the northern Roman cities begin to grow upwards. Taking Stockholm will also cause a sizable shift, since it will cost teh 4 beakers and grant me at least 4 beakers in turn. That city at size 7 is a very tasty prize. There's already a Stockholm warrior next to my units; I hope the poor thing is dumb enough to attack my 49 strength legion.



Aquileia was pretty quiet this turn. My archer was shot by one of teh's archers and that was all. I happily retreated my archer back into the city for healing, and that marked the end of this little adventure. If teh wanders within range of my city, I'll be in position to exert a price with my forces. The horseman is healing behind Aquileia and will be available for scouting duty starting next turn. I'll probably move 2 tiles out of the city, then 2 tiles back into the city each turn to give me vision of the Frankfurt area without exposing my archers to danger. And hey, the Bath district is getting close to completion here as well, after which housing won't be a problem anymore.



This is the overview of northern Rome after coming out of the occupation penalty. Apparently that starts every city with zero food in the box, which is a bit annoying. Northern Rome is significantly underdeveloped compared to southern Rome, with relatively few tile improvements. I'm going to need some serious builder attention up here, one reason why I already have a builder queued up for production in Constantinople. Naturally I won't complete a builder without being in Serfdom policy; some of my core cities can turn out a builder or two to help out up here. Constantinople, Lugdunum, and Arpinum seem to be the strongest cities here, and I'll likely invest the most effort into building them up. Mediolanum is OK and it does have a lot of food; it's essentially another version of Ravenna, just a population growth sink without much production. Durocortorum has a couple good tiles in the furs and iron, otherwise there's not much to write home about. Cumae is very weak and will likely give its shared tiles over to Constantinople. Those wasted grassland hill tiles north of Constantinople are a missed opportunity for sure.

Also: Hong Kong REALLY likes archers. I am now their suzerain with TheArchduke's elimination from the game, for what that's worth. The suzerain bonus for Hong Kong (20% bonus production on city projects) is less likely to be useful in this game.



Here's my original core in southern Rome. Another Commercial district finishes next turn in the capital, and I'll go trader into water mill (then Industrial district?) after that. I need a water mill somewhere for the boost on Construction tech, and the capital is by far the best place to put it. I'm also going to run a trade route from the capital to Stockholm for the +2 food bonus after it's captured (since the city state already has a Campus district). Another +4 food in the capital will keep it growing nicely. Ravenna and Hispalis are working on their Bath districts now, and will probably work on more builders next. I need a lot of them as every city keeps growing upwards in the post-Bath era.

Now that things are starting to settle down on the combat front, I'll have the chance to post in upcoming turns about my tech and civic path heading forward. Keep an eye out for that in the upcoming days.

[Sullla]

One more thing I wanted to split off into a separate post. I wanted to thank TheArchduke for joining the rest of us in this PBEM game. He's been speedy at playing the turns, polite without fail in our forum interactions planning this game, and he was an excellent neighbor in-game. I genuinely feel bad at having to attack someone who is such a pleasant individual, and I very much doubt that he had any plans to attack me. So cheers to you TheArchduke, and thanks again for taking part in this endeavor. Good luck and best wishes!

[unaghy]

Well done Sullla. My personal expectations were not that high for first Civ6 MP game. I was expecting to see lot of sub-optimal plays as result of playing against human opponent and thus trying something new, maybe even to see some mechanic that dont work in SP or is not efficient there. However, I did not expect that detail level of play starting with expansion, city economy, city states handling and if this was not yet enough, seeing well planned and executed military campain was very pleasing to read about. Does not matter if opponent(s) skill and experience is lower than yours, as you have prepared yourself for same level skilled opponent regardles (prepared for worst, hoped for best). I would change position with TheArchduke anytime to get opportunity to defend against such attack as a change over the AI dog pilling surprise, but futile attacks.

[Sullla]

Thanks unaghy. This is the first Civ6 MP game, and I'm sure that everyone is learning as they go along. If you go back and read the initial Civ4 MP games here at Realms Beyond, they don't look very much like the ones being played right now (although that's partly because they were played with tech trading and full diplomacy). For me, figuring out what works and what doesn't work is hugely entertaining. I always have more fun trying something new and different rather than trying to optimize the last 1% of a strategy where the initial 99% has already been determined. Anyway, with the campaign against northern Rome completed, the turns should be a bit less stressful for me, and I'll have more liberty to discuss bigger picture strategy for Civ6. There's still plenty of action going on as well, since I remain at war with teh and his city state allies.



That includes Stockholm, which attacked my horseman with one of its warriors on the interturn. That... did not go particularly well, with the horseman taking about 10 damage against 90 damage for the warrior. At least the AI was smart enough not to attack the legion, which would have resulted in a one-hit kill. There wasn't anything too crazy to report here in terms of tactical moves, as I rested the three units in yellow health and moved up the rest towards Stockholm, including attacking that unfortunate warrior with the legion east of Arpinum:



I pasted the combat mouseover into the bottom of this screenshot and, yeah, it was just as one-sided as you would expect. Difference of 42 strength? Heh. My legion took 6 damage in the combat, and I think it would have done something like 150 damage if that were possible. Moving up these units revealed a bit more of the surrounding area, including the fact that Stockholm has a half-health sword and an archer in defensive position on the forested hill tile. Next turn, I'm planning to shoot the archer with my archer and then attack it with the horseman, which gets 5 movement from the Great General and can actually reach that hill tile even under Civ6's movement restrictions. Obviously that will change if the archer moves somewhere else on its turn. Stockholm is up to 37 defense rating, but that shouldn't pose too much of a problem for my army. While I can't put it under formal siege since I lack a naval unit in the northern waters, I can surround the city from the four land tiles, plus shoot it with archers from behind the melee units. It will probably take about 3 more turns, so expect this city to fall around roughly Turn 92.

I also spotted two Aztec Eagle Warriors to the north of Frankfurt, although only one of them is visible in that screenshot. (The other one is on the tile northeast of the one you can see.) They look to be healing in neutral territory, then preparing to recapture Frankfurt after the next time that it falls. Perhaps this is the continuation of the war that teh and Yuris have been fighting for the last few turns, with Frankfurt as the hot potato tossed between them. I'll try to get some more vision over here after Stockholm falls.



All's quiet on the Aquileia front for now. Damaged archer is healing inside the city, other archers are waiting in defensive positions, and the horseman is prepared to do the move forward / move back scouting starting next turn. If Yuris is unable to hold onto Frankfurt himself, perhaps I'll just occupy it for myself down the road. We'll see. I also highlighted the potential archer to crossbow upgrade in this screenshot now that I completed research into Machinery tech. The base cost is 200 gold for the upgrade, which is discounted to 100 gold with the Professional Army policy that I'm currently running. I definitely want to upgrade one archer into a crossbow because the city walls at Aquileia use the ranged strength of my best unit when firing. I'll probably hold off on any further upgrades, however, since archers cost nothing for me to maintain in upkeep while crossbows cost 2 gold/turn. (It's actually 1 gold and 3 gold each, but I'm running Conscription policy and will be for essentially forever.) Better to save up my money for the moment and then do a big upgrade all at once, if I don't need the military force immediately.

By the way, note that Vilnius has completed city walls and has a defensive strength of 46 at the moment. I'll definitely want to capture that city as well, and my battering ram might see some real use for the first time all game. It's up at Stockholm for the moment in case that city state would complete walls too. Taking Vilnius shouldn't be too bad though since I have a galley in the southern waters to put it under a formal siege, and if it can't heal back health it's relatively simple to capture the city. Speaking of that galley:



Just doing a little bit of scouting near teh's coastal city of Ulm. He's about to mine that iron resource, which will be the first iron teh has connected to his trade network. Perhaps teh will look to upgrade his warriors to swords as a result. I don't think teh has a lot of warriors though; his force has been archer-heavy throughout. Teh has about 80 gold in the bank right now, and he made 12 gold last turn. (It's been ten turns since teh initially attacked me, which means that we could now sign peace if desired and I have access to the diplomacy screen again. Needless to say, neither of us are suggesting a treaty.) Teh's income has dropped from earlier in the game, down from about 18 gold/turn to 12 gold/turn. I'm sure that's due to having to support his military and those districts that he's constructed. Teh hasn't completed any Commercial districts yet, just three Hansas and one Campus. If his income remains relatively low, that will limit how much military power he's able to support.

I completed a Commercial district at the capital this turn, boosting my own income to 20 gold/turn. Roma will now produce a trader, which will finish in 3 turns at the same time as the one under construction in Arretium. I need to think about where to send those trade routes. One is slated to run from Aquileia to Hispalis, which will finally give me another road over the mountains near Ravenna. The other one I'll probably use to boost an existing city's production by running it back to Roma for the +3 production benefit (since Roma has an Encampment and Commercial district). Arretium could be a good choice, since that would speed up how fast I produce the remaining traders. I'll give it a bit more thought and figure it out.

Seeing that iron resource that teh is connecting also prompted me to think about my own iron resources. I don't really need them at the moment since the only unit that requires iron right now would be swords, and I get legions regardless of resource status by virtue of being Rome. I think I'll try to sell one of my irons to Yuris next turn and see if he's willing to pay again. That would let him upgrade Eagle Warriors to swords, and he has enough gold (200+) to make that happen. Worth a shot at the very least.



Finally, here's a picture of my upcoming tech tree after a cut and paste job. (Civ6 has these massive gaps on the tech/civics trees that make taking screenshots difficult.) Right now I'm picking up the very cheap Astrology tech followed by the one immediately behind it that opens up Harbor districts (can't remember the name, sorry). Then I want Construction tech followed by Military Engineering, Stirrups, and then Gunpowder, which is off screen to the right. That's the tech that unlocks muskets, and I can probably get there in about two dozen turns, long before anyone else is even remotely close. The timing would sync up reasonably well with the arrival of the second Great General, a Medieval one that will boost Medieval and Renaissance units. Muskets are 55 strength units, and so that would be 60 strength with the Great General to boost them. (No Oligarchy bonus though, since I'll be leaving it for Merchant Republic.) I think a few upgraded legions turned into muskets would do very nicely for running over Germany, crossbows or no crossbows on their part.

That's more or less the long term plan for the moment. Take the city states in the middle of the map (and Yerevan when my units can get back down there), save gold and work on pumping up my income, tech up to muskets and then hit with another timing push based on Great General + mass muskets. I expect that would be enough to force a concession from the other players, and if it didn't, then I would just capture Yuris' capital and win by outright Domination. Still, one step at a time. The first task is taking Stockholm and boosting my science output while simultaneously cutting into teh's research. Should be fun.

[fahbs]

Now that you have machinery, what are your thoughts on forest chopping vs building a lumber mill there?

My approach has been to always chop, unless it's a forest on a river then I always build a lumber mill (unless it's an emergency or I need to clear that spot for a district/wonder) since that provides +2 production. Although if it's a hill I always chop because a mine will give the same production bonus plus the chop bonus, the only downside being that takes 2 worker charges instead of 1.

[Sullla]

Fahbs, I'm not convinced that chopping non-river forests is automatically the way to go. Since both actions require 1 builder charge, the cost in builder labor is the same in both cases. That means it's just a matter of weighing the immediate benefit of the forest chop against the longer benefit of working the lumbermill tile. Right now, chopping provides about 60 immediate production while the lumber mill will result in 2 production/turn over the tile without the forest present. For hill tiles, yes, it's pretty much always worth it to do the chop, since adding a mine gains back the lost production right away. On non-hill tiles though, I'm not sure that it's a good idea. 30 turns isn't that long to pay back an initial investment. I think it depends on how many good tiles there are for a city to work. If there's an excess of tiles, then sure, go ahead and chop the forests that you don't need. In a situation like my city of Ravenna though, chopping down the forests would just leave the city with a bunch of 2/0 flatground grassland tiles, which are pretty useless. Now maybe you can chop forests into buildings and then run specialists with your population, although that would mean giving up any chance to continue growing to a larger city size.

Anyway, I think this isn't a straightforward answer in any direction. That's unlike in Civ4, where chopping was pretty much always the right answer, since working cottages and whipping was virtually always better than working forested tiles. In Civ6, if you take out all your forests and there aren't hill tiles around, you're making the city in question fairly useless from a production standpoint. Anyway, let's get to the current turn, Turn 90:



My forward legion was attacked by both the enemy sword and the archer. Together they did about 30 damage, and the sword took heavy damage in return. Yeah, I could live with that exchange, and those city state units were about to pay a heavy price in response. Let's do some tactical diagramming, shall we:



I started by having my promoted archer shoot at the Stockholm archer up on the hill, and wow, look at that damage! I wasn't expecting to get 44 damage in one shot against an archer that had the hill defensive bonus. Those promotions definitely make a difference (my archer has "Volley" which grants +5 ranged strength against land units). Then I had the horseman finish off the damaged archer, using all five of its movement points to scale the forested hill tile. The horseman even made use of its own promotion (Coursers: +5 strength against ranged and siege units). After taking this screenshot, I did realize that I failed to move up the Great General before attacking though, which would have added another +5 strength to the horseman's attack. How do I keep forgetting this?!

Well, at least I had the Great General in position for my other attack. The damaged legion moved onto the forested hill tile to clear a path for my legion to the northwest of Arpinum to move 3 tiles and attack, finishing off the sword. I swear, having that extra movement point from the Great General is so very, very nice. Going from 2 moves to 3 moves on most units makes a world of difference. Here's the endturn tactical situation:



These six units are going to lead the assault on Stockholm. Next turn I'm going to have the injured legion in the yellow pillage the farm southwest of Stockholm, which will heal it back up to full again, while everything else shuffles forward into position. I'll also upgrade the promoted archer into a crossbow when I cross the 100 gold threshhold. Then on Turn 92, the actual attack will begin with 1 crossbow, 1 archer, 3 legions, and 1 horseman. It will probably take two turns of fighting to capture the city itself, but Stockholm's days are numbered and the city should fall on Turn 93.

I'm thinking about sending the other three legions down to capture Yerevan in my back lines, which has only 1 envoy invested in it and virtually no defenses to speak of. I could probably have the horsemen join in that attack as well due to their superior speed. That would slightly delay the attack against Vilnius, but I have a useful trade route going to that city state right now, and if I don't spend a little time detouring to take Yerevan now, it's never going to happen. This seems like a good time while this northern force heals up following the assault on Stockholm.



The standoff between teh and Yuris continues at Frankfurt. It looks like neither side wants to capture the 0 HP city, or at least teh lacks a melee unit in position to do so. He has an iron resource connected now, and I wonder if we'll see any swords out of him. It takes 2 iron to build swords, but he can upgrade from warriors into swords with only 1 iron. No idea if he built any warriors with the intention of doing that. Teh can also build horseman if he so desires. He still hasn't built a unit better than an archer; I can tell from watching his city defensive ratings. My own horseman moved out two steps to take this picture, then moved two steps back. No action from me over here at the moment.

On that note, I offered Yuris an iron resource for 5 gold/turn deal. I have 2 iron resources and can easily connect another one, so this doesn't affect me at all from a resource standpoint. Yuris has zero iron resources, and there's a good chance he'll snap this deal up. The Aztecs seem to be losing this war right now, and therefore propping them up with resource trades works to my strategic advantage. Selling resources I'm not using for extra cash also helps advance me towards my next mass upgrade tactic. It's win-win all around.

Oh, and unlike teh, Yuris has built at least 1 horseman, or else Frankfurt wouldn't have 26 defense rating. (Horseman = 36 strength and cities have a base defense of 10 less than the melee strength of your best unit.)



Since I talked about tech paths last turn, I'll discuss civics this turn. I'm significantly ahead in this category right now (14 civics researched to 11 for teh and 9 for Yuris) and likely to get further ahead as time passes. With repaired monuments completing in northern Rome, my culture has ballooned up to 37 points/turn. That's more than double my rivals, who are both making 16 culture/turn. What was it that I keep saying about Rome in this game? Yeah, this civ is pretty strong. I have Medieval Faires civic nearly done now, just waiting on the 4 trade routes to boost it to completion, so now I'll backtrack and work on Recorded History and Civil Service. I won't be landing either of these boosts, and therefore it doesn't matter if I research them to completion. Recorded History holds Natural Philosophy policy, which doubles the adjacency bonus of Campus districts. That can be awesome on some mountain-heavy maps (or if playing as Australia), but it's not very helpful here. Civil Service has the excellent Meritocracy policy: +1 culture per specialty district. Sadly, Baths don't count there. Nonetheless, it's a powerful policy that I will likely run as soon as I reach Merchant Republic government and gain additional Economic policy slots.



Here's the next part of the civics tree; it seemed easier to post two separate screenshots here. (So much wasted interface space!) The civic I completed at the top of the tree is Mercenaries, which unlocked Professional Army policy for those half cost upgrades. Very useful policy that you'll only use situationally, but get a lot of use from. Medieval Faires is then sitting at half completion below it, and typically that's useful for Medina Quarter: +2 housing in cities with 3 specialty districts. It's not useful here though due to my Bath districts. Instead, Medieval Faires gives me a decent Diplomatic policy in the form of Merchant Confederation: +1 gold/turn for each envoy at any city state. Right now, that would be worth about 8 gold/turn, and certainly would be better than the other crummy options I'm getting in the Diplo policy realm. I'll slot that in when I finish the civic.

The real prize though is Merchant Republic government at Exploration civic, easily the best of the three midgame governments. It has 1 Military, 2 Economic, 1 Diplomatic, and 2 Wildcard policies - a very strong mixture of policy cards. The innate government bonuses are also sweet: 2 additional trade routes and 15% cheaper rush buy costs. Awesome stuff all around. I can't wait to reach that government and open up 7 useful (i.e. non-Diplomatic) policy slots compared to 3 at present. Compared to everyone else mucking around in Oligarchy, that's going to be a massive advantage. There are two more extremely powerful civics just off further to the right in the form of Mercantilism and The Enlightenment, both of which will be easily boostable by me. I'll discuss them further when we get closer to reaching them. They aren't really that far away though, maybe 35 turns or something along those lines.



Finally, here's the current scoreboard. I've opened up a commanding lead here, and it's likely to keep growing as my cities grow upwards. Take population, for example. On Turn 71, Yuris had a total population of 22 across his empire. Here on Turn 90, he has a population of... 24. His cities have all run up against the housing limit and they can't grow upwards any more, not without adding granaries or aqueducts or whatever. Teh is in slightly better shape, but his population has been stagnating in recent turns too. Both of them are growing upwards with districts, and that does make a difference. However, I can also grow upwards with districts, and I have much, much more room for further population expansion than either of them. I'm already at 40 population and the northern Roman cities have a ton of growing to do. And that's not even counting my core cities, which are mostly in the process of finishing their Bath districts and thus will be able to avoid the housing penalty until roughly size 10.

Long story short: my rivals are getting capped out while I still have plenty of room to grow. And that's not even counting the three city states to absorb, or the three offshore islands that I plan to settle. I like where this is going.