Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[shinghand]

Do you think you are in an position where winning is guaranteed?

If not, what do you think teh/yuris can do to stop your win?

[antisocialmunky]

How do you feel about not getting dogpiled/needing to dogpile someone for a change?

[Sullla]

Shinghand: "guaranteed" might be too strong of a word for this position. I don't want to suggest that there's nothing teh or Yuris could do to stop me from winning, since that would be an invitation for exactly the worst possible scenario to arise in some fashion. However, I do think it's far-fetched to imagine a scenario where either one of them would be able to conquer enough of my cities to emerge on top. I always have the option to stop peaceful development and swap everything over to military production, which would result in a lot of units in a hurry. It's always going to be difficult for players with 5 cities and 4 cities to stop a player who has 12 cities. At the very least, teh and Yuris would need to gang up together against me, which fortunately hasn't happened yet. That would be the necessary first step before anything else.

Antisocialmunky: to be fair, I did get attacked by teh when I was in the process of fighting TheArchduke. I wouldn't call that a proper dogpile but it certainly was a targeted strike against the player who was winning. It was also complete the right move; Yuris honestly should have attacked me too from a pure metagaming perspective. I'm certainly happy that I've largely been able to control the diplomatic landscape of the conflicts in this game so far. Part of the motivation for continuing to attack teh right now is in the hopes of crippling him before Yuris can realize that he likely needs to ally with teh against me. If I can break teh's power here, then the game is simply over, since Yuris will never be strong enough to compete with me. Yuris may have already reached the point of mailing things in (he's playing the turns quickly and not updating his spoiler thread) which would be excellent news for me if true. I don't want to assume anything though; I have to approach things from the perspective that Yuris will go hostile eventually.

We played a turn last night and then another one this morning. I'll cover Turn 97 first:



This was what I saw when I opened up the save file. Teh pulled his heavy chariot on the horses pasture back into the fog and shot at my legion with his archer on the jungle tile. That was more or less what I expected, although I thought he might keep the chariot in place to potentially harass my units as they moved up. Now I had a decision to make on how hard I wanted to push forward this turn. I was going to push in aggressively, and then I noticed two things. First of all, the city defensive strength of Mainz increased from 22 to 40 between turns. Second, teh's treasury went from 188 gold to this:



A mere 4 gold in the bank. OK, that can only mean one thing: teh now has at least one crossbow on the field. I knew it was inevitable since Machinery is not a difficult tech to get, but I was hoping I had a little bit more time. This meant that I would have to be very careful about making an advance. Teh upgraded at least one archer into a crossbow, and potentially two of them, depending on whether he was able to reach Mercenaries civic for Professional Army policy. He just discovered a civic on this very turn, so it's possible that he reached Mercenaries on Turn 97 and swapped into the new policy for a pair of archer -> crossbow upgrades. Or if not, then he spent 200 gold for a single non-discounted upgrade. But in either case, he definitely now had at least one such unit out on the field.

The good news is all this is that researching Machinery tech means that teh can no longer build archers and upgrade them into crossbows. And crossbows are very expensive units when they appear on the field; archers cost 50 production while crossbows cost 180 production. A crossbow costs about the same amount of production as a district! Of course, crossbows can be discounted with the +50% production card for medieval and renaissance units (Feudal Contract), but that doesn't change the fact that crossbows are still very pricey units. Teh won't be able to crank them out quickly even with his Hansas. And it also means that his current archers are very important units, as each one can be turned into a crossbow down the road with enough gold spent. Killing archers was therefore an important tactical goal for me.

That clarified how to play this turn for me. Rather than move in everywhere and potentially get shot by crossbow fire, I would look to kill the forwardmost German archer while continuing to stage in position. This would also give me another turn's worth of income towards my own crossbow upgrades; it didn't seem prudent to attack in the north unless I could also move forward with crossbows in the south.



As a result, I trained my crossbow fire on that exposed archer. The initial crossbow mouseover looked like the attack would fall just barely short of getting the one-hit kill, and I set things up so that both of them could shoot. This worked out as planned, with the archer surviving with 6 HP left after the first shot and dying to the second one. After shuffling my units around, I ended up with this formation:



With this picture taken at the end of my turn, and therefore slightly out of sequence with the other ones in this post. (This is more apparent in Civ6 with the day/night cycle that takes place in the background constantly.) My eastern legion kind of got stuck over there in the east; since there's a jungle tile between him and that second row of tiles in the fog, I think that he can't be hit. Maybe? The rules about when archers/crossbows can shoot over hills and jungle tiles are somewhat unclear to me. In any case, I would find out next turn.



Down in the south, I found this builder about to mine the iron resource south of Mainz. Unfortunately I didn't have enough moves with the horseman to capture it, since I had started my turn on the desert tile south of Aquileia. I positioned the horse unit on the Bath district tile after moving on this turn, which would allow me to move and capture that builder on Turn 98 after it finished mining the iron. Everything else in Aquileia continued to hold in position waiting. On the next turn, I would crest the 200 gold mark and revolt back into Professional Army civic, then turn two of those archers into crossbows. And once I had crossbows on both sides of teh, that would be the signal to move out in force on Frankfurt.



Here's Medieval Faires civic getting boosted to near-completion with the establishment of my fourth trade route. I ran this one from Arretium to Roma for the +3 production bonus, and the +3 gold was a very nice addition. I had Arretium start another trader after this one finished, intended for Arpinum to help it get up and running. I already have trade routes boosting my other core cities: Roma, Aquileia, and Arretium. Next up with be the best cities that I captured from TheArchduke and Stockholm.



And here's an overview of the north just so that the readers can see how it's developing. Constantinople is 1-turn away from completing a builder, which I'm holding off on completing until I can get back into Serfdom policy. That will happen when I reach Merchant Republic in about 10 turns; I'll have about three or four builders ready to go then, and pop them out all at once with Serfdom in place. In the meantime, this region is mostly working on Bath districts to remove the housing cap, since TheArchduke only placed two of his cities on fresh water.

Next turn to follow shortly...

[Sullla]

Turn 98 looked to be a setup turn, and that ended up being how it played out. First, the news on the northern front:



My eastern legion was shot by some kind of German unit; there's a good chance it took a crossbow bolt based on the amount of damage received. I don't think an archer would have done that much damage against a unit with the Tortoise promotion. That also told me that the tile where my legion was standing clearly wasn't a "safe" place to be. I guess that because the tiles behind the jungle are hill tiles, that grants the ability to fire over the intervening jungle. Useful to know for the future. I still didn't want to move in this turn, and therefore I needed to move this legion to safety before it was shot again. After shuffling unit, I ended up with this formation:



This is the beauty of having that Great General for the extra movement point. I can position my crossbow a tile further back and still be able to move up 2 tiles and attack the city of Frankfurt or that archer on the hill tile next turn. The easternmost of my two crossbows also gained enough experience to promote again last turn, and I used this staging turn to take that promotion, since otherwise the unit wouldn't gain any further experience. The second archer promotion down the same line is "Arrow Storm": +7 ranged strength against land and naval units. With Volley already in hand, that means that this crossbow fires at 57 strength (!!!) with the Great General nearby against other land units. Sheesh. We're getting close to the point where that could one-shot enemy crossbows, much less archers. When I move forward next turn, I'll see if I can find a juicy target for this guy to hit. (Not the city center tile; all that bonus strength only works against units, not city defenses.)

The injured legion can move into Arpinum next turn and then begin healing there at +20 HP per turn. It can be full strength again by Turn 102. Meanwhile, the legion and horseman back at Stockholm rested again this turn, and both will begin moving back to the front next turn. I've had good luck this game in resting units and returning them to combat once again; due to the cost of units in Civ6, it's very important to finish them off wherever possible. Obviously you don't want them limping away with 5 HP, promoting, and then attacking you again in a couple of turns.



Medieval Faires civic completed this turn, and I made the expected policy swap back into Professional Army again. I did have to give up Urban Planning, sadly, since I wanted to maintain Caravansaries. With four trade routes already and a fifth one on the way, that policy is simply too useful right now to pass up. I still have two more archers to upgrade into crossbows, and then the legions to turn into muskets after that. Gold is honestly more important right now than +1 production in all cities.

The other new policy this turn is Merchant Confederation in the Diplomacy policy slot, and this one is definitely more useful than Charismatic Leader. I have an envoy in hand in case teh tries to do something with the Vilnius city state, and what I need right now is additional gold, not +2 envoy points each turn.



Here is the south following my two crossbow upgrades. My horseman went to capture that builder, only to find that it disappeared - it must have been on its last builder charge last turn. Oh well. I will consider pillaging the iron resource, although I held off for this turn because I want that horseman available for combat next turn as necessary. Everything is now set up for an advance in force next turn. I will move forward from both sides and see how many units I can kill by getting in the first shot with four separate crossbows. In particular, I want to kill those archers before they can be upgraded into crossbows. With any luck, this will be a major bloodbath for teh next turn.

Note one other thing in this picture: an Encampment district under initial construction off to the east. I definitely need to keep pushing before teh can dig in here and put up more formidable defenses. In particular, I want Frankfurt captured before it can put up city walls. After that Mainz will be trickier since it has those walls, but I'll be able to approach it more deliberately. Next turn should be a fun one for the lurkers to read, one way or the other.



Finally, just so it's not all war stuff, here's a picture of Arpinum as it develops. In TheArchduke's defense, this is a better city than I gave him credit for. The one crippling weakness was a lack of fresh water, but with the Bath district in place, this is now an excellent city. It has the horses tile and will shortly have three of those grassland hill tiles with the faith bonus, excellent production capacity. The main thing it lacks is food; I'm going to run the next trade route here for the modest food bonus and then invest some serious builder labor in improving the city. I need 7 total builder charges: chop/mine the grassland hill to the south, harvest the bananas, chop the jungle, and then put a Feudalism farming triangle on the three plains tiles to the west of the city. Harvesting the bananas and clearing the jungle will add a lot of food to Arpnium, and that's exactly what the city most needs. If I can jump this up to about size 6 and then work the horses and all the hill tiles, this is going to be a monster of a city.

Military Engineering tech is almost done, which will reveal niter sources and let the capital build an armory. Exploration civic and Merchant Republic government is only 9 turns away. Gold income is approaching 50/turn despite maintaining a huge army. I like where my civilization stands right now.

[Sullla]

OK, Turn 99. Time to move in and see what we can do against teh. Here's what I spotted after moving up a legion and a horseman:



Teh's units are absolutely packed together in the Frankfurt area; there's a unit on basically every tile here. The legion that I moved forward revealed a crossbow just to the east of the city, and that was the unit that became priority #1. Unfortunately, that crossbow can shoot over the jungle terrain by virtue of being on a hill tile, but I can't do the same from the plains north of the city. That forced me to take this move:



This was not the move I wanted to make, forcing my promoted crossbow up onto the horse tile right next to Frankfurt itself. I much would have preferred to put a legion on this tile. But what alternative did I have? If I moved the crossbows onto the plains tiles northeast or northwest of the city, then my crossbows wouldn't be able to shoot teh's unit, while being subjected to damage from a near-full strength crossbow with a promotion (almost certainly Volley) already in hand. That was a losing measure for sure. Sadly, I could not kill this crossbow in a single bolt, so I did the best I could and redlined it down to near-death status. This would have been a kill without the fortification bonus and the hill bonus, argh.



Next I moved up my southern crossbow and fired at the archer in the jungle tile, taking out over half its health. That left the archer easy pickings for my horseman unit... or so I thought, anyway. Look at this total +13 strength bonus that the archer is getting: +3 from the jungle, +6 from multiple turns of fortification, and +4 from support bonus due to surrounding units. That left me with a strength differential of only +14, and then I rolled poorly on the damage and didn't kill the archer at all, leaving it with 1 HP left or something like that. WTF game?!

More seriously though, this is a good example of how difficult it is to break a fortified position in Civ6. As I was mentioning during the earlier campaign, don't be fooled by the rapid successes against northern Rome. It is very difficult to attack an entrenched opponent in this game. Even with a numerical advantage, the Great General, and somewhat of a technological edge, I was still having my hands full here against teh. Grouping a bunch of units together on defensive terrain makes them hard to remove.

From here, I moved forward the promoted crossbow in Aquileia and got in a shot against the exposed archer southwest of Frankfurt... which again left that archer alive at something like 5 HP. And then my northern crossbow moved up and fired on teh's archer up on the hill west of Frankfurt, although I knew that attack wasn't going to result in a kill. After shuffling up the legions, this was the final result:



Three crippled archers and a crippled crossbow, but no actual unit kills. I can't say that I'm terribly pleased with this outcome, but by the same token, I also can't see how I would have played the turn differently. Shooting at the spears or chariots or whatever would not have given me a better result, and by getting in the first strike against every visible ranged unit, I've done what I could to mitigate counterattacks on teh's turn. With that said, dang this would be such a better position if I could have finished off some of those units! Three units under 10 HP, two of them at 5 HP or less, and one of them literally on a single hit point. All of them will still be able to move and fire and potentially promote-heal on their upcoming turn. So even though I think I did the best that I could here with the initial first strike, I was just the tiniest bit of dice luck away from turning this into an absolute rout.

I think I'm in good position to take Frankfurt from here, at least based on what I can currently see of the map. Teh can't save all of these units; there simply isn't anywhere for most of them to retreat to. I do think he'll kill at least one of my units on his turn though, possibly multiple units depending on what he chooses to do. The crossbow next to Frankfurt is obviously very vulnerable, and I expect him to concentrate on that guy. The horseman is also pretty exposed, since the spearman and teh's own horseman and multiple archers can all fire on it. However, the key unit for me is the easternmost legion, the one with 2 promotions. That unit is in prime position to occupy the hill east of Frankfurt, which will allow me to start encircling it and cut off the flow of reinforcements to the city. And no matter what teh focuses on, I'll be able to train a ton of firepower against his units next turn, between the 4 crossbows and 2 archers now in position, plus the 4 legions and 2 horseman closing in. I'm really curious to see how he plays this, and which units of mine he wants to go after first.

The other reason why capturing Frankfurt is critical is apparent right in this screenshot: that horseman unit off to the right. Frankfurt controls a second source of horses, and that means teh can build the things. I want to remove that resource from his grasp ASAP. His power has been skyrocketing in recent turns too; from 117 military rating on Turn 89 to a rating of 323 this turn (Turn 99). And that's despite the fact that I've killed two archers in that span! I have a current power rating of 555, for the curious. Germany really is the Meklars of this game, just insane production capacity once the Hansas are up and running. I may try to sign peace if I can capture Frankfurt and pull back to tech and develop upwards. This is really a slog right now.



One small additional note this turn: Arretium popped up with a notice of "0 turns until next growth" message. What the heck?! It must have something like 0.1 food required to grow, and rounded that down to 0 turns left instead of up to 1 turn left. That's what you get when tracking fractional food amounts, I suppose. This will probably be sorted out next turn.

[Athmos]

(...) I may try to sign peace if I can capture Frankfurt and pull back to tech and develop upwards. This is really a slog right now.

I think it would be a good idea to kill as many units as you could right now, to leverage your advantage. Once he reaches professional army, you know how fast these archers will trigger a huge power spike, and how much costlier it is to actually build them.

(...)
One small additional note this turn: Arretium popped up with a notice of "0 turns until next growth" message. What the heck?!   It must have something like 0.1 food required to grow, and rounded that down to 0 turns left instead of up to 1 turn left. That's what you get when tracking fractional food amounts, I suppose. This will probably be sorted out next turn.

Yes, these displays are often buggy, I've often had buggy negative display when the city grows twice due to chopping a jungle or removing a swamp, for example.

[fahbs]

Hey Vegeta, what does the scouter say about teh and Sulla's power rating?

This isn't even his final form!

[Sullla]

Fahbs: well, I think I walked into that one.

Last turn, I ended up being rather unsatisfied since I was able to redline but not kill teh's ranged units. There were a lot of different things that he could choose to do on his turn, and I spent last night worrying about how things could go wrong for me here. I moved a lot of units forward and put an awful lot of them at risk. I've mentioned before that I tend to gravitate to the worst-case scenarios, which may be part of the reason why one of my weaknesses in these online Multiplayer games can be excessive passivity at times. What if teh had a whole bunch more units waiting in the fog? What if he cleaned up my army and then counterattacked? Not fun thinking overnight while waiting for the turn to get back to me.

Here's what I spotted at the start of the new turn, the even-numbered Turn 100. (Maybe you guys will even get an update from Yuris this turn, heh.)



OK, this wasn't bad at all. I did lose my first unit of the game in the form of that horseman in the south, but otherwise my forces were mostly untouched. I didn't even lose my crossbow to the northwest of Frankfurt, which I had put in terrible risk last turn and had thought was probably a goner. Some of teh's other decisions look to have been odd from a tactical standpoint; he did not move his own crossbow even though I moved a legion right up next to it. I guess he used it to fire on my crossbow, then attacked it with his horseman in Frankfurt, or something like that? The archer on the hill west of Frankfurt also didn't move, and appears to have spent the turn healing instead of shooting at anything. Ditto for the archer on the bananas tile; see how both of them have more health this turn than last turn? That must mean that they spent the turn resting and healing.

The problem for teh is that both of those archers were very much in range of my own units. Healing them for 10 or 15 health was rather pointless, since I could do a whole lot more than that on my turn. He would have been better off shooting something and getting even minimal damage versus healing in place and then dying pointlessly. Still, maybe I'm not seeing something and teh had a good reason for acting as he did. Maybe.

If last turn didn't go the way that I wanted, this one very much did. A lot of my units couldn't attack last turn because they were still moving into position. Now everything was in place, and it was time to let loose.



I started in the south by having the city of Aquileia take a big chunk out of that horseman unit. The speed of that unit (4 movement) made it dangerous, and its attack rating of 36 was also greater than anything else in this theatre. Since Aquileia could only hit the horse or the spear, it was an easy call to damage the horseman. Then my crossbow to the east of the city fired on that archer and eliminated it. No fooling around, no bad damage rolls this time. Scratch one unit.



Next, I had my archer in the back take a potshot at the only unit it could reach, the spearman next to the bananas tile. I think it did about 25 damage, nothing much but still a helpful bit of chip damage. I followed that up by having the other crossbow in the south fire on the horseman unit. This crossbow was the one with a promotion, and I had seen that the other crossbow wouldn't quite be able to kill the horse unit, while this one would do just enough damage to finish it off. That +5 strength from the Volley promotion made the difference. The dice roll held true this time without any shenanigans, and I had another German unit removed in the south.



I moved next to start carving up those crippled archers from last turn. The archer that I positioned up in the hills last turn could now reach the redlined German archer southwest of Frankfurt, and easily finished it off. Then the other archer west of Frankfurt that spent the turn healing was easy prey for the legion next to it, which was barely even scratched while attacking at a ridiculous +40 strength differential. Again, I'm not sure why teh had that unit heal in place last turn. He had to see the legion moving up next to it, right (?) Archers are just roadkill for swords/legions if you can close the distance and get on top of them with melee units. Add in the Battlecry promotion plus a Great General and it becomes a massacre.



I still wasn't done yet. Teh surprisingly did not move his crossbow last turn and therefore it was right next to my two-promotion legion, where I was able to terminate it with extreme prejudice. Even with +11 strength from terrain and support bonuses, that crossbow had no chance against my legion with its gazillion bonuses of its own. Scratch the most dangerous unit currently on the field for teh. Then in the south, I had my legion attack that poor unfortunate spearman with another ridiculous +30 strength differential of its own. The legion cleaned up that kill and earned a promotion at the expense of about 10 damage taken. Two more units off the board for teh.



With my turn starting to wind down, I went ahead and swapped the position of my two northern crossbows. This moved the damaged two-promotion unit back a tile into a safe position, where I took a potshot at the city of Frankfurt. Note that the city was now under siege, so even getting minimal chip damage like that was worthwhile (and hey, more experience on that crossbow too!) The healthy crossbow now on the horse pasture then took a nice shot at the German horseman unit southeast of Frankfurt, resulting in major chunk damage; it lost about 60% of its health and will be easy prey for another followup crossbow shot next turn if it stays in range. Then I had the legion northeast of Frankfurt attack the city itself, which dropped it down to about 2/3 health remaining. I think officially it's something like 119/200 HP right now, and it shouldn't be able to heal between turns due to the siege. Finally, taking advantage of the 5 movement points granted by the Great General, my horseman unit in the backlines was able to scamper all the way over to that jungle tile in the east and occupy it to prevent any shenanigans by teh's new full-health horseman in his own backlines.

Here was the final result:



Teh's army is in bad shape. I killed six total units this turn: 3 archers, 1 crossbow, 1 horseman, and 1 spearman. I also did some serious damage to the city of Frankfurt and chunked one of his new horseman units into the red. I think that was an appropriate measure of revenge for losing my own horseman between turns. Out of all the units on the field, that was probably the least valuable one. Horses only cost 80 production and don't immediately upgrade into something useful (they upgrade into cavalry, not knights). I would prefer to keep my legions and archers alive for upgrading into muskets and crossbows respectively. I think that I'm going to delay Stirrups tech slightly so that I can build a couple of chariots and then upgrade them into knights. 2 or 3 knights would be very nice indeed at continuing to break through teh's defenses, and would be useful against the city states too.

Frankfurt should fall next turn barring something unexpected happening. I'm curious again how teh will play this; he can kill my southern legion if he wants to do so, but it will likely cost him all of the units in the area if he chooses to do so, and I don't know if that's a good trade for him. Retreating might be the best option, although he might not be able to retreat either. He's in a very tough spot here. Without patting myself on the back too much here, I think this pincer attack has gone off almost perfectly thus far. I was able to hit teh in time before he had city walls in Frankfurt or more than a single crossbow in this region. Another 5 turns and it likely would have been multiple crossbows and much heavier losses for me. Chalk this up to good timing again.



In your non-tactical news for this turn, I discovered Military Engineering tech and revealed the niter resource. It turns out that there is a source at each of the city states in the four corners of the map, and then the other four sources are all located in the center. Arpinum has one within its borders, while Aquileia narrowly misses out on a source. If we would ever reach a point where the other players need to have access to niter, Yuris will have it by virtue of having taken out his city state early in the game, while teh will be out of luck unless he's able to conquer his own city state. Obviously I control all four sources in the center of the map, heh. This means Arpinum will be an even better city than I expected.

Overall then, a very good turn to commemorate the big Turn 100. For now, I'll continue pushing against teh and see how far I can go.

[fahbs]

That reminds me of another tech gap in this game: the completely pointless splitting up of cavalry into light and heavy. Each one spends a generation obsolete before leapfrogging two generations up. Heavy chariots are useless once horsemen show up and have to sit around doing nothing until you reach knights, horsemen are useless once knights show up but can't be upgraded until you hit cavalry, etc.

Then for some reason at the end, armor comes way before helicopters so light cavalry has a HUGE obsolescence period, which they really don't ever make up because who would ever choose light cavalry over heavy of the same generation?

Considering how they condensed the melee category from Civ 4, I have no clue why they decided to split cavalry into two categories.

[Eysteinthewise]

Oh this is great. Sulla active and PBEM with civ6. Hoping I can join a game in the future