Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[fahbs]

Are there any rules or restrictions you would implement for future multiplayer games?

[Sullla]

Fahbs: I suggested one potential house rule for the PBEM2 game in the planning stages, which would be that any peace treaty between two players must include the cessation of any captured cities. As someone who has captured a lot of cities in this game, I can tell you how much the occupation penalty sucks in Civ6. Occupied cities that are not formally ceded cannot grow in size (they cannot accumulate any food at all), and they suffer penalties of -50% to production/gold and -75% to beakers/culture. Basically, they are virtually worthless until ceded in a peace treaty. You're only denying the other player the benefit of controlling them, not getting anything yourself.

Under the default rules, there is no incentive to cede a city to another human player, and every incentive to make their lives miserable. After all, they just conquered one of your cities - why would anyone cede it to them? This sets up a lot of metagaming stuff that I think leads to poor gameplay outcomes, like players with one or two cities playing kingmaker roles by ceding or not ceding cities to other players. Imagine that Player A is attacked by Player B, and Player A loses three of their five cities. Then Player C attacks Player B, and there's a desire on both sides to end the initial war. Player A can play kingmaker and refuse to sign peace unless all of the captured cities are ceded back, and unlike in Civ4, tie them up endlessly in useless occupied status indefinitely. That's not fun for anyone, and considering how difficult it is to take cities in Civ6, it sucks to invest lots of effort into city captures and get nothing out of them. Having a community-wide norm that captured cities are handed over any time an official peace treaty is signed feels like the best way of addressing this subject to me. It allows for limited wars, rather than forcing every conflict to be a battle to the death, and avoids the sense that occupied cities become "poison pills" for the rest of the game.

Anyway, we'll see what the experience is of the players in the upcoming PBEM2 game. More data will be useful here, and I could prove to be wrong as well depending on what happens. In the meantime, we do have a new turn this morning:



Teh did not do what I was expecting. My guess was that he would go after the horseman in the exposed position on the hill to the south, but I think he came up with a better tactical response. Instead, he went after the legion with the battering ram by attacking out of the city with a horseman and shooting it with his archer. Then he had his city fire on one of my crossbows. That was a smart response, as the battering ram was the biggest danger to him since it held the potential to take down the city walls instantly at Mainz. Teh did make one mistake though: I don't know why he had the city of Mainz fire on a full health crossbow. He should have had the city also fire at the legion with the battering ram, which might have been enough to kill it when the horseman attacked. If the horseman was able to kill the legion, that would have also destroyed the battering ram, and slowed this siege down significantly. That would certainly be worth the price of the horseman making a suicide attack.

Overall then, this was a good response that almost came up deadly. With none of my units actually getting killed though, I could begin formulating my response. First of all, I went ahead and attacked with the legion/battering ram combo, instantly taking out what remained of the city walls:



This redlined the legion in question though, and essentially left that unit (and its accompanying battering ram) dead meat if I couldn't find some way to capture Mainz this turn. Taking the city was going to be a tall order, and I had no idea if I would be able to manage it. Still, eliminating the city walls at Mainz was the critical first goal. Frankfurt and Mainz are teh's powerfully defended border cities, and if I could take them, his core would be completely open to attack. A sacrifice might be necessary here for success.

Regardless though, the walls of Mainz were now officially down. Next I wanted to get the northeast legion in position to attack Mainz this turn, and I needed to eliminate the damaged horseman northeast of the city to occupy that tile. I moved my injured crossbow a tile northeast (onto a hill - thanks Great General!) and took the hovered shot in the hopes that this would result in a kill. It was very close on the expected damage, and I guessed that this was about 50/50 on whether the horseman would actually die. Much to my relief, the horse unit fell and I was able to shuffle the northeast legion into position.



With the walls down, now my crossbows fired away for as much chip damage as possible against the city. Unfortunately they had to work through that -17 penalty against cities and their promotions did nothing here. Still, the Great General made a noticeable difference, and every bit of health that they could chip away would help my legions in their upcoming attacks. I also moved the healthy crossbow in the south a tile to the east, then couldn't shoot against Mainz because the tile directly west of the city was a hill tile. Archers/crossbows can't shoot over hills unless they themselves are standing on a hill. So that was a bit frustrating, two crossbows down in the south that were unable to take part in this fight due to terrain. If it required another turn to take Mainz, I'd be able to get them into the fight next turn by continuing to rotate my whole force slowly in a clockwise direction.



Then it came time for the moment of truth. Were my legions strong enough to capture the city? I wasn't worried about attacking that archer; it was irrelevant if I took the city, and if I fell short, that legion with the battering ram was going to die regardless. So first I attacked with the legion northeast of the city, and I did pretty much the expected damage there, knocking Mainz down into the red. If you look at the other combat hover at the bottom of the screenshot, this one said that I would come up just barely short of capturing the city. Argh! So very close indeed. But crippling the city would still be the best option here so that it would be weaker next turn, and there's always a chance for attacks to do slightly more or slightly less damage than indicated. With that in mind, I went ahead and attacked anyway with the legion west of the city, and...



Holy crap, that actually worked?! Yep, I rolled on the high end of damage and had just enough to capture Mainz. It had to have been by the slimmest of margins, just a few HP either way. Needless to say, this was a FANTASTIC result for me, with the cultural borders flipping around in my favor and Mainz now under my control. Teh just lost his second-best city and none of my units ended up dying in the attack. Wow.

Tactically speaking for next turn, that poor German archer is completely doomed. The only tile it can reach is the one southeast of Mainz, where it will easily die to crossbow bolts or a legion attack or whatever. I feel sorry for that poor guy. It can shoot my damaged legion, but I don't think it can do enough damage to kill my unit. The legion has 21 HP remaining, and the -8 strength penalty is countered by standing on defensive terrain and having a Great General nearby. I think the archer will come up just short on enough damage to kill it (barring a good dice roll on teh's part). Then there are two full strength German horses and a half-strength one sitting to the south; we'll see what teh decides to do about them. He was really cranking out the horses while he had the resource connected. I did check and Yuris is not trading him a horse resource, which means no more horsemen for him. I'm going to try to pillage his iron resource off to the south next to stop him from training swords. (One other smaller question: why is teh healing that damaged horseman on the one tile outside his culture? Surely he could move into Cologne to the southeast and heal at double the rate. I don't understand that move.)

Note as well that Aquileia finished its chariot this turn, and I actually picked up another envoy at Yerevan for that. "Build a chariot" was the quest that city state gave me about 100 turns ago, and it was still active. Nice. I will upgrade it to a knight in two turns when Stirrups research completes, right before hopping out of Professional Army policy. I also should have pillaged that mine tile where my horseman is standing which inexplicably remains inside German culture; oh well.



In addition, I met the final city state of the game this turn in Kumasi, which I will drop an envoy into after my next policy swap. I'll go back into the 2-for-1 Diplomatic policy, and then potentially get a third envoy from somewhere on the civics tree to suzerain them and bring them into the war against teh. That would be a total jerk move, and so of course I'll look to pull it off if possible.



Here is my core with the capital's Commercial district project highlighted. Arretium is about to finish my other chariot/proto-knight, and both Ravenna and offscreen Arpinum are one turn away from finishing their builders, awaiting that change into Serfdom policy again. The Commercial district project should allow me to land this Great Merchant:



Yuris currently gets 3 Great Merchant points per turn. He is therefore two turns away from landing the Merchant, and ordinarily I would fall short of being able to recruit this fellow with faith. However, that project will either give me enough faith to recruit Zhang Qian or potentially land me the Merchant outright. I'm not exactly sure how many Merchant points it will award; the amount is not fixed from what I understand. I believe it scales up over time in the same way that districts scale up in cost. Either way, I should be able to recruit this Merchant next turn unless Yuris does a last-minute snipe with his own gold. (I don't think he's watching this screen very closely though, given how checked out Yuris appears to be on this game.)

This was a very good turn for me overall. While I think I played it well tactically, I also had some good dice luck that ended up making a huge difference in the tight contest for Mainz. Teh is now down to three cities remaining, and I've been killing his army in huge numbers over the last half dozen turns. Even with Hansas and favorable unit production policies, he can't keep this up forever. His power rating is back down to about 115 again, and I think the four remaining units I can see are about all that's left of his current military. I've tried to avoid getting ahead of myself and falling afoul of overconfidence, but if I'm being honest, the capture of Frankfurt and Mainz feels like the beginning of the end for teh. I don't see how he can stop my army at this point, and the conquest of Germany now feels like a foregone conclusion.

That makes the larger game an effective done deal as well, which it probably has been ever since I completed the conquest of northern Rome. But if there was any doubt, it's basically over now. Teh was the only one who had any potential chance of challenging me, and he's in the process of being grinded down into the dust. I'm enjoying this game and I'm happy to play on as long as the other players are interested; I don't think lurkers should start messaging the other players and asking them to resign. It's just that one way or another, this game is going to end shortly. I should be able to eliminate teh in about a dozen turns, and then it's just a matter of sailing north and taking out Yuris' capital for the outright Domination victory. Even if no one concedes, this game shouldn't see Turn 125.

[Rowain]

Fahbs: I suggested one potential house rule for the PBEM2 game in the planning stages, which would be that any peace treaty between two players must include the cessation of any captured cities. As someone who has captured a lot of cities in this game, I can tell you how much the occupation penalty sucks in Civ6. Occupied cities that are not formally ceded cannot grow in size (they cannot accumulate any food at all), and they suffer penalties of -50% to production/gold and -75% to beakers/culture. Basically, they are virtually worthless until ceded in a peace treaty. You're only denying the other player the benefit of controlling them, not getting anything yourself.

I disagree with your proposed houserule. It makes it hard for the attacker to get a peacedeal by giving up part of his spoil.
The defender doesn't have any incentive to make peace and strengthen you if he has no chance of getting anything back in return. In realworld powers might be happy to lose some territory in exchange for peace but in Civ people have little to no interest in playing a crippled minor-power at all.
For example (in a slightly parallel-universe) why should archduke ever sign peace with you and cede his capital? He is far better off staying at war and hoping he can get it back (if say the other 2 players field a strong attack against you ) or getting killed.

The plakos of PB2 are rare and civ6 lacks a GL .

[antisocialmunky]

Ideally, cities in resistance should automatically come out after 10 turns or some finite amount of time.

[Athmos]

(...)

Teh did not do what I was expecting. My guess was that he would go after the horseman in the exposed position on the hill to the south, but I think he came up with a better tactical response. Instead, he went after the legion with the battering ram by attacking out of the city with a horseman and shooting it with his archer. Then he had his city fire on one of my crossbows. That was a smart response, as the battering ram was the biggest danger to him since it held the potential to take down the city walls instantly at Mainz. Teh did make one mistake though: I don't know why he had the city of Mainz fire on a full health crossbow. He should have had the city also fire at the legion with the battering ram, which might have been enough to kill it when the horseman attacked. If the horseman was able to kill the legion, that would have also destroyed the battering ram, and slowed this siege down significantly. That would certainly be worth the price of the horseman making a suicide attack.

Overall then, this was a good response that almost came up deadly. With none of my units actually getting killed though, I could begin formulating my response. First of all, I went ahead and attacked with the legion/battering ram combo, instantly taking out what remained of the city walls:
(...)

I might be interpreting wrongly (and I haven't read your whole turn report yet), but you seem to assume that you have to attack with the legion "linked" to the battering ram : this is not the case.
This linking is actually just an interface convenience to move both unit at once, but as soon as you have a battering ram in contact with the city, all melee units will do full damage to city walls, not only the one "linked" to it or occupying the same tile.
Sometime I even had uncovered battering ram on their own tile because there was no unit in the city and I was willing to take the risk of a new one appearing for some short term positional advantage. Same for siege towers as well.
In this specific case, you could have attacked with any other healthier legion to take down the wall rather than this injured unit.

[Sullla]

Athmos: wow, that is not how I thought the mechanic worked at all. I thought that battering rams had to be linked with a unit to work, and that only a linked pair would get the bonus. If all that it takes to reduce city walls is getting a single battering ram next to a city, without even needing to be linked together with a unit... that feels wrong, to say nothing of making no intuitive sense. I'll test it out if I run into another city with walls present, which is likely at some point.

Today there was a new turn waiting when I returned home from work. Here's Turn 105:



For starters, note the Great Person popup - ha! Looks like that Commercial district project was enough to claim the Great Merchant without even needing to spend faith on patronage. I'll get to that in a minute. First, the tactical aspects of this turn. Teh managed to come up with yet another horseman, which I guess he completed in his capital just before I captured Frankfurt. I honestly have no idea how he managed to produce this many horses in the brief time that he had a second horse resource connected. Perhaps you can still finish a queued horseman build if you lose the resource, you just can't start another new one (?) I'll be curious to find out what he was doing when this game is over. Anyway, teh has built a lot of them. An archer and four horsemen barred my path forward.

That poor archer... I legitimately did feel sorry for him this turn. Teh did not opt to take a potshot at me, instead using the archer's turn to move across the river. This was probably not the best decision. Might as well get some free damage out of a doomed unit rather than shuffling it to no purpose. After moving my injured legion back to Frankfurt for safety and healing, I took my damaged crossbow and moved southeast to set up this shot:



I was trying to redline this unit so that the legion inside Mainz could attack and finish it off. Well, either I underestimated the damage of my crossbow or I rolled slightly high on damage, because this crossbow successfully pulled off the one-hit kill. I'll take it! In fairness, a strength differential of 31 suggests that the losing side will take about 95 damage on average, making this a fairly reasonable outcome. And I did have the promotion advantage, the Great General, and the floodplains defensive penalty for the archer working in my favor. It was just a shock to see a defending unit go from 100 to 0 in a single blow like that. A pleasant shock, heh. Even better, this crossbow now earned enough XP to qualify for a second promotion; it won't even have to stop for healing, just promote back to full health and keep on trucking.



Next, I took my legion east of Mainz and moved it to the tile that the archer vacated. That allowed two more of my crossbows to get into the fight, and I opted to have each one fire against a horseman. I had the unpromoted one hit the weaker horseman on the jungle tile, while the highlighted promoted crossbow went for the full strength horseman and got in some good chunk damage. Interestingly, that horseman had the maximum possible fortify bonus of +6 strength, which means three full turns sitting on this tile without moving. Very interesting. Was teh simply trying to block my path forward with a wall of units (?) I'll have to ask him after the game what he was trying to pull off here.

Then with the horses injured, the legions went in for the kill:



First I used this legion to finish off the weaker horseman in the jungles, as killing this unit would remove a support bonus from the healthier horseman to the west. I attacked again with a damaged legion and did score the kill, although I took further damage in the process. I was really pushing my advantage here, looking to get those horses off the map as quickly as possible while I had the advantage. As I've said a couple times before, finishing off kills is a huge deal in Civ6, since individual units are much more valuable than in Civ4 and it's relatively easy for injured units to limp away, heal, and then get back into the fight later. I wanted to remove these irreplaceable horsemen from the battlefield while I had them on the run, before teh could regroup and supplement them with something else. My legions will have plenty of time to heal later after Germany is gone. (For that matter, I have fresh legions rotating up from the back and chariots about to upgrade to knights and join the battle. I should be OK.)



Finally, using that vacated tile southeast of Mainz again, I attacked with another legion to weaken the horseman, and then finished it off with the legion that moved onto the desert hill tile at the start of the turn. (My own horseman who had started on that tile moved down to teh's iron, which I will pillage next turn.) The net result of all this was an archer and two more horsemen killed without losses, and with no units lost or in danger of being lost on my side. Here was the tactical map after moving everything:



I have a crossbow on the front lines now. Ordinarily that would be worrying, but I think the unit should be fine. It can only be attacked by a single German unit, and the crossbow will get the Great General bonus and hill bonus and unit support bonus. I think the crossbow will actually have a melee strength of 44 here to the 36 strength of the horseman. Similarly, my horseman on the iron tile can also only be attacked by a single German horseman. I've successfully managed to push over the rough terrain where the peninsula connects to the main part of the continent, and my units control both of the one-tile choke points. Now I just need to cross through the belt of jungle and cross that river, then I'll be in teh's heartland. His second city (Cologne) is on the tile southwest of the bananas, in the identical location as my Ravenna. I will probably try to surround the city next turn and then attack it on Turn 107, but we'll see what happens.

Teh also has to be running low on horsemen now. Right?



Here's a better picture of city state Kumasi and its unique suzerain bonus. Kumasi gives a minor boost to trade routes to other city states, which makes it one of the weakest suzerain bonuses in the game. This is probably the worst of the four Cultural city states in the base game. That's a break for me, as the other two Cultural city states that teh could have rolled over here are both much better. Mohenjo-Daro grants all your cities the housing benefit of being on fresh water regardless of location, and Nan Madol grants all districts placed on the coast +2 culture/turn. Both are enormously better than poor Kumasi. Maybe teh should have tried to kill this city state and annex it to his empire; I would have taken Yerevan ages ago if I wasn't, you know, attacking everyone else on the map.



Finally, here's the Great Merchant recruitment from the beginning of the turn. I would have had 41 Merchant points if I hadn't done anything, which means that the district project paid out 32 points this turn. Considering I only invested four turns of production into that project... wow. Now granted, I am the suzerain of Hong Kong, and that grants me +20% production towards district projects, so this wouldn't be quite as effective ordinarily. Still, I'm glad I was able to highlight the usefulness of district projects in this game. If there's a critical Great Person, those projects can be very worthwhile. Here's the official numbers on how these things work:

Project yields (GPP, other yields, etc.)..from Lord Yanaek and elitetroops
Cost=25*(1+14*Larger of [100*(Number of Techs/67 OR Number of Civics/50)]/100)

GPP yield=10 ....[5 for Theater+Carnival projects... they give multiple types of GPP]
=10or5*(1+7*Larger of [100*(Number of Techs/67 OR Number of Civics/50)]/100)

others are per turn yields 15% of production as
Industrial, Harbor, Encampment=gold
Theater=culture
Holy site=Faith
Campus=Science
Carnival gives 1 Amenity
Commercial Hub gives 30% gold as production

I immediately burned the Great Merchant for an additional trade route, which Arretium began working on a trader for. I'll have three new trade routes next turn after swapping into Merchant Republic, and Constantinople is getting close to finishing another Commercial district. Speaking on that, I have to think about what policies I want to adopt next turn. I'll actually be sad to lose the Oligarchy strength bonus on my legions, but hopefully teh's army is mostly finished off at this point. Techwise, I finished my second chariot this turn and Stirrups will finish next turn for those chariot to knight upgrades. Gunpowder is next, due in about 5 turns or so, and then I'll be able to convert my legions into muskets with 55 strength. Yeah. The pain train keeps rolling on.

Teh actually also finished a Great Person this turn, claiming a Great Engineer that will essentially give him a free early game wonder of his choice. Perhaps a bit late to matter now... We'll see when he chooses to build, if anything. The next Great Engineer is another very useful wonder-building one. We've actually had excellent Great People throughout this game, none of the early dud candidates appearing. I'm also not too far away from recruiting the next Great General with faith patronage, which I'll take as soon as it's available. No sense waiting with this game almost over, and there's nothing else for me to spend faith on at the moment.

Poor Yuris. He was one turn away from the Great Merchant, and now the next one costs 240 Merchant points. District projects for the win.

[Dp101]

Where did you find that formula for district projects? I googled for info and checked the wiki, but couldn't find anything like that. Maybe you should put it in the thread in civ general that is meant to store info like that?

[Zero_1627]

Hi Sulla!
I have returned to reading RB games threads, and I chose this forum - thank You for providing excellent thread . Also, excellent game, and well played on Your part (teh seems to to have a good game plan too, but just fell short of Your Rome)!

I have not played Civ6 (yet at least), from descriptions here I think I prefer ideas of Civ4... But - Civ4 is an old game now (and well played!) while Civ6 is new, and if indeed it can be made to provide good multiplayer games - it would be a much needed refresher
I hope to see more of such games here!

As for tactical approach: from battle descriptions here it seems to me that very slow unit movement kind of reduces tactical choices available, to the point where Civ4 stacks aren't that far away... About the only point that satnds outs is vulnerability of units after combat (damaged unit is exposed to retaliation in opponents' turn, and it's difficult to protect it - in Civ4 You just needed to place fresh units in stack).

I don't know if it's worth the price of peacetime roadblocks caused by a stray unit...

Edit: in fact I like the idea of Endless Legends' armies and tactical battles best, although not necessarily actual execution there. Also, it doesn't fit PBEM format at all! Maybe if it was coupled with combat automation from Stars! ...

[Zero_1627]

also, a thought on occupation penalty: What if 'cultural integration' was incorporated, kind of taking a page from Civ4? (antisocialmunky proposed something like that, too...)
Let's say occupation penalty stays in place, but if city stays occupied long enough (I'd say 15-25 turns, maybe depending on size a t the moment of capture?), that simply becomes Your city as if it was ceded. Possibly allow partial lifting of restrictions, too (eg. 10 turns of very harsh restrictions, then 10 turns of lesser restrictions, then city fully integrates).

I think this would limit productivity of contested cities all right, but also would allow to make them useful cities after victorious war without forcing player to rely on opponents' good will or assuming his complete annihilation.

Actual numbers are just a rough idea of course.

[Zero_1627]

as for districts cost: I'd expect that basing it on total number of districts built (possibly this kind of district), like with settlers or builders (and as You suggested previously in this thread), would be more natural than abstract basing on techs discovered...

Although increasing cost of the same thing that doesn't stack isn't something I like either... I understand the reason and have to admit the solution works, but I don't like it!