Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[Sullla]

Ha, too true RefSteel! Yuris actually held the save for about 14 hours today, and so we ended up being locked into the evening turn slot anyway. Here's what I found when I finally had a chance to play the save:



Yuris decided to throw three units against my knight in order to kill it, using both of the yellow health Aztec knights and his horseman. While that's a sad fate for my boys in armor, this is still very much a winning result for me. Yuris has just admitted defeat: by going after my units instead of my cities, he's admitting that he doesn't have enough force to capture anything. And that reveals this little war for exactly what it's been all along - completely pointless.

OK, so none of my cities are going to fall anymore. No more worrying about that. Now it's just a matter of cleaning up the Aztec army, and I should have a mop and bucket handy. I had seven total units in this theatre of war, and six of them were in position to make attacks this turn. (The legion by Frankfurt only has 2 movement points and can't reach anything to attack. If I'd positioned it a tile east last turn like I wanted, I could have played this turn differently and better with another attack available.) I started by using my crossbows behind the city to get in some free damage:



With Mainz in no danger, I could move into the city with my crossbows and fire freely. The two promo crossbow went after the knight northwest of Mainz, after I hovered over the the northern Aztec knight and realized that it wouldn't do enough damage to get the kill. The other crossbow attacked the weakened horseman in the east for lack of other targets to hit. That redlined the horseman but wasn't quite enough to finish it off, so I attacked and killed it with my legion on the tile east of Mainz:



Unfortunately that revealed another full health knight across the river to the north, and that likely means my poor legion is dead next turn. It will cost Yuris both of his knights to get the kill, but he can terminate that legion if he wants to. I did know there was a fourth knight out there somewhere from power tracking. Well, if Yuris opts to kill that unit using his two knights, I will claim it was a cunning bait, or something like that. I mean, I can afford to lose units right now. He can't.

Off to the west of Mainz, I moved my third crossbow onto the desert hill tile and fired another bolt into that Aztec horseman, then attacked it with the two-promotion legion in the area. That allowed me to set up this final hovered attack with my knight to finish off the redlined Aztec knight:



Here's the situation after moving everything. I killed a knight and horseman this turn, as well as crippling that remaining horseman in the red. That poor unit cannot escape now, and will likely either launch a suicide attack or just pillage that mine. Looking at this again, my northern legion might be able to survive attacks from those two knights; I do have the support bonus from two units plus the Great General, and it does have about 70 HP remaining. I'll cross my fingers and hope for good luck. Regardless, I've lost only one unit so far and Yuris has lost close to half his army. And that's with half my army off still cleaning up the remnants of German territory. This war is over for all intents and purposes.

If you look over at Aquileia, I had a builder connect a source of niter this turn. This will allow me to upgrade legions to muskets as soon as Gunpowder tech finishes researching, which will be... next turn! Heh. Well, I actually need to wait two more turns for the civics swap so that I can use the Professional Army discount, but you get the idea. Very soon my highly promoted legions will all be sporting firearms and a base strength of 55.



Over in German territory, I did not capture Aachen, although I did set myself up to take it next turn. If I'd had the Great General down here, I might have been able to capture it. Instead, I decided that it was more important to keep Boudica up in Mainz to try and keep that exposed legion alive, and since I wasn't going to be able to take teh's capital, I opted to pillage another trade with my three promo legion. That cashed in for a sweet 100 gold - worth it! I should be able to take the city next turn even if it does pop out city walls on the interturn.

Teh also invested his remaining envoys into Kumasi, and it is now at war with me. That will disappear as soon as I kill off Germany, and so I'm not exactly sweating this threat.



My galley found one of Yuris' four cities, his mirrored version of my Hispalis. There's an archer inside so I backed off to safety for the time being. I don't need to capture this city to win; once I clean up this current Aztec force, I plan to push straight for the Aztec capital. Yuris has this city, the captured Commercial city state of Lisbon (so in his back lines), his mirrored Ravenna/Cologne location, and then his capital. I can ignore all but the last two destinations and head straight for the goal.



I'll close by showing off some of my cities. Here's my size 9 capital after finishing an armory this turn. I'm going to produce this market next for the Guilds civic boost, and then... I'm not really sure. Maybe some more traders to keep filling out these trade routes of mine. I'm not too far away from hitting size 10 and being able to add a Harbor district either.



And this is Aquileia, another one of my best cities. The desert region near Mount Everest proved to be one of the most crucial parts of the map in this game. This map is very production-poor, and all those grassland hill tiles surrounding the natural wonder have been extremely valuable. Then add in the nitre resource for another 2/4 tile, plus my pantheon bonus on the oasis and a lucrative trade route back to the capital, and you have one heck of a city for this point in the game. (Side note: I was actually wrong about Mount Everest, and it DOES count as a mountain for aqueduct/Bath purposes. I don't know if that was a hidden stealth change in a patch or if it was always like that.) I'm going to build a catapult here next in the hopes of upgrading it into a bombard. I want to chase after the boost for Siege Tactics (own two bombards) en route to Military Science tech. That's the one that unlocks cavalry, and I could get there in another 20-25 turns of research. Now granted, this game isn't going to last that long, but I might as well keep preparing just in case.

Next turn should see the fall of teh's capital. I'm looking forward to playing that out, as well as either cleaning up the remnants of Yuris' military or watching them turn tail and run away. Either result will be highly satisfying.

[Alhambram]

I am wondering what you do think about rate which tech and civics do progress? Since I see that you are already getting muskets in BC age, do tech and civics progress too fast?

[Sullla]

Alhambram: the tech and civic pace moves just about right in Civ6. There's no point in looking at the calendar date, which only exists for historical flavor purposes anyway. Ideally, skilled players should be able to complete the entire tech/civics tree in roughly 250-300 turns, and that's about what we have in Civ6. If you want to go faster or slower, there are four additional game speeds to cater to those preferences.

There was no turn waiting this morning when I woke up, then 15 minutes later it arrived while I was eating breakfast. That allowed me to get in an additional turn before being unavailable all day, and I'm very glad that I did. This turn was pretty much the definition of fun in a Civilization context. Let's start with the Aztec front:



My legion lives! It was attacked by both knights and survived with 2 HP left. Having the Great General here and the support bonus from the adjacent knight and crossbow was just barely enough to let this guy survive. And look at the tactical positioning here. Yuris has exposed himself badly to try and claim this kill, and he wound up falling just short. Now his two knights are deep in my territory, seriously injured, and have no chance of retreating. Uh oh. What was that I said last turn about grabbing a mop and bucket? It's cleanup time on the northern front.



I started by shuffling the two promotion crossbow a tile east and shooting the yellow health Aztec knight, then moved the one promo crossbow into Mainz to set up this shot against the knight in the jungle tile. I wanted to avoid finishing off that knight with a melee attack, due to the rough terrain and the awkward positioning for future turns. (Not to mention it requires 2 movement points to enter the jungle with a melee attack; much simpler to use a crossbow to finish this guy off.) In case you're wondering why all the shuffling with the crossbows, I wanted to open up the tile southeast of Mainz. That allowed me to move the redlined legion there using two movement points, and take a promotion with the third movement point for the 50 HP heal. I'll outfit that legion with a gun next turn and after a couple turns of healing, he'll return to the front lines for more action, with both Battlecry and Tortoise promotions in hand.



With the crossbows done, it was time for the melee attackers. I had the western legion at full health in the previous picture move two tiles and then attack the crippled Aztec horseman with the third movement point. That was an easy victory, and it set up my knight to make the hovered attack against the one remaining Aztec knight. This was another easy victory that scratched another Yuris unit off the playing field. After moving everythig in this theatre, here was the final overview:



The Aztec army has been completely routed. I lost one knight to kill four knights, two horsemen, and an Eagle Warrior. The path has now been opened to move forward and begin advancing on Yuris' cities. And that was despite something like half my army being off fighting the remnants of teh's empire during this whole process. Yuris didn't even pillage any tiles or districts, unless you count the one desert hill mine that he pillaged with his backlines Eagle Warrior last turn. I think this illustrates a couple points that I've made throughout this game:

* Attacking is much harder than defending. It's genuinely tough to capture cities unless the attacker has a significant edge in units or technology.
* A balanced army is the key to success. Yuris had zero ranged units along for this invasion, and his inability to get free ranged damage has been a major drawback.
* Great Generals are really awesome. Having that +5 strength bonus in nearly every combat does so much to swing the outcome of these fights.

I also don't think Yuris played this too well from a tactical standpoint. His initial move across the border threatened two different cities at once instead of concentrating on a single target. He ended up losing a lot of health on critical units by attacking the city of Mainz, then suddenly changed tactics and began attacking units instead, then failed to get a kill and lost more health on his core of knights. Yuris was also unable to put any of my cities under siege, and the inability to surround a target clearly hurt him. Now to be fair I don't think this attack ever had much chance of success, and I'm sure that Yuris knows that too. He probably just wanted to make things interesting here in the final turns of the game. But here in my own spoiler thread, I'll take the moment to enjoy crushing this attack so thoroughly, and with barely a pause in my ongoing conquest of Germany.

Speaking of Germany:



There were no city walls again this turn in Aachen, and that meant that the conquest of the city was a foregone conclusion. I honestly thought that teh would finish them before I could complete this siege; whatever he was building here, it didn't manage to finish. I shot the city with both crossbows (after moving down the Great General to boost their strength) and then used this horseman to finish off the capture. Why the horseman? Taking the city gave it enough XP to earn a second promotion, and that allowed the yellow health legion to spend a turn healing in what was now friendly territory. It will be close to full strength now and ready for more action. I also moved the three promotion legion and the battering ram towards Ulm, which I will begin attacking next turn.

The new overview after taking Aachen:



I will probably come up a bit short of being able to take Ulm next turn, as the legion is the only melee unit that can attack. Both crossbows can shoot of course, and the galley will allow me to put the city under formal siege so it won't heal. Teh should be eliminated on Turn 113. The city state of Kumasi has some units wandering around, but since they're all warriors I think I can safely ignore them. There's also that Great Engineer skirting around, which I've been totally ignoring. I can't capture the unit and that makes it pointless to chase after.

Aachen itself is a fantastic city, size 6 with hills galore and three completed districts: Campus, Commercial, and Industrial. Once I get rid of the occupation penalty, this will immediately be one of the best cities in my empire. I will have to waste one of the hill tiles to put down a Bath district, otherwise this looks just about perfect. Too bad the game will be over before I get to enjoy much of this.



Yeah, I didn't forget about you, random wandering Eagle Warrior! This guy pillaged my iron mine last turn, which would have been a lot scarier if I didn't have three other sources of iron. And if I were building anything that required iron right now, which I'm not. I cornered this Aztec unit with a pair of horsemen, the western one coming out of Ravenna via that forest chop a couple turns ago and the eastern horseman newly produced from Arpinum this turn. Minor tactics note: I moved my horses next to one another for the modest +2 strength bonus. Every bit counts after all. While this pair of attacks wasn't enough to kill the Eagle Warrior, it did cripple the thing down into the red health area, and there's literally nowhere for it to go next. Although now that I look at this, I should have attacked from the fort tile off to the west, to prevent the Eagle Warrior from moving in there on its turn. It's still going to die regardless, but that was sloppy tactics on my part. Ah well.



I also finally had enough Great Person points to recruit my long-awaited second Great General via faith patronage. Genghis Khan Temujin will be arriving at a perfect time, just as I upgrade legions into muskets, since the muskets will no longer get the era bonus from Boudica. Great Generals in Civ6 work on units from the same era and one era later on the tech tree. Boudica is a Classical era General, and thus her bonus works on Classical and Medieval units. This includes legions, horses, crossbows, and knights - but not archers or warriors or muskets. Temujin is a Medieval era General, and his bonus will work on Medieval and Renaissance era units. No good for legions or horses anymore, but opening up usefulness on muskets and bombards. I actually recruited this Great General at the start of my turn, hoping I could transfer it to Mainz and make use of the bonus right away. However, when you recruit Great People via Patronage they start out unavailable to move on that initial turn. Well, I'll reposition to Mainz next turn and Temujin will be in the field soon enough.

Also: the benefits of Great Generals do stack for units in the appropriate eras. Yep. Do you want to see crossbows and knights with +10 strength and +2 movement points? Knights with 58 strength and SIX movement points? Because I know that I do.



Just for kicks, here's a builder at Ravenna chopping out another horseman with the +50% to mounted units policy card. This was enough to finish the current horseman instantly, and then overflow into another horseman that will complete the following turn. I'm actually finishing three more horses next turn: at Ravenna, Arretium, and Aquileia. That will be 7 total horsemen since Yuris declared war on me. As I said several times, this is almost certainly overkill, but let's not take any chances.

This turn was extremely satisfying to play out. It was almost like a Civilization fan fiction, with my competitors collapsing and all of my decisions working out exactly the way I intended. I've been waiting for the other shoe to drop and for something bad to happen the last few turns, and it keeps failing to materialize. This almost feels too good to be true. Anyway, I was originally going to finish the conquest of Germany and then post in the Organizing thread an offer to Yuris that we should call the game. Since Yuris decided to attack me though, I'm not going to do that now. I will accept a concession from him if he wants to stop, but otherwise we push on and try to win the outright Domination victory. I want my muskets and my new Great General to have a chance to taste the blood of their enemies.

[Sullla]

Teh: you have one city left and zero units to move. There's no need to hold the save for 18 hours. Two more turns and it won't be an issue any more - I promise.

[fahbs]

Curious what your thoughts are on siege towers. I see you make no move to build one. Do you think they're not better than rams?


I just realized something. I swear that Civ 6 got its district idea from Endless Legend. It uses a very similar system of adding on "boroughs" to the city center, with adjacency bonuses that make you plan out the pattern of adding them (do you spread out a borough here to harvest sweet resource tiles, or do you cluster them up for bonuses?). It was kind of interesting because it had the empire wide happiness system of Civ 5 with every city center and borough counting as 1 population each. It was overall better to found another city (center) than to build a borough onto an existing city, but boroughs were a good option when you ran out of room to expand and empires that did expand didn't have the happiness for boroughs. It was an interesting approach to "tall vs wide".

Unfortunately the game as a whole just didn't work too well . Civ 6 does it a lot better. But if anyone was curious and wanted to kill an afternoon, Endless Legend is often on sale for $5.

[antisocialmunky]

This is the best review of EL I've ever seen: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Gq_1NWIsj0k

The game has a solid economy, its too bad the only interesting thing you can do with your economy is economy more because the unit combat is boring.

[Zero_1627]

(...)I swear that Civ 6 got its district idea from Endless Legend.(...)It was an interesting approach to "tall vs wide"(...)Unfortunately the game as a whole just didn't work too well . 

I haven't played, but I watched videos of playing Endless Legends. And yes I do see similarities
Many intriguing ideas are present in that game  (armies, tactical fights (I like idea but implementation seems flawed), fixed technology levels (this one I like very much and I think actually works well), accumulated influence that restricts/allows political and economic actions (this one I like much less but is certainly intriguing),  and many others ),
but overall effect is somewhat disappointing. Much like Age of Wonders from long ago  .

[fahbs]

I don't mean to derail the thread with Endless Legend talk, I'll just end it on this quick note. The flaw with EL was that it tried to seem like it had a deep economic game like Civ, but in practice it didn't matter (all that mattered was rushing tech to tier 2 weapons, equipping your army with them, then wipe everyone else out instantly). So that just left the tactical combat which tried to be Age of Wonders, but fell even shorter at that than the economy did at trying to be Civ. The asymmetrical factions were also a nice approach, but they were terribly balanced. (good lord was the art beautiful though, maps and cities like the Game of Thrones opening credit sequence).

Back to Civ 6, do you think there will be any kind of interest in team games against AIs? Or is even the most stacked AI team still too weak to stand up against a team of humans?

[Zero_1627]

what I saw in Sulla's single player videos wasn't good... Although AI is supposed to be improved since then.
Civ4 in early incarnation I considered boring too (once You got a serious army it rolled over AIs pretty easily and that was it), but it was much improved later.

Still - 'improved' doesn't immediately mean 'able to provide serious opposition for agroup of high-level human players'.

[Sullla]

I'm happy to concede. Or are you still kicking teh?

And there's the concession message, right on cue. Much as I would like to take the last German city and then push into Yuris' core, it's clear that this game has been over for some time now, and the dramatic slowdown in turn speed in the last week indicates that teh and Yuris aren't having fun any longer. I'll post in the Organizing thread that I'm fine with calling the game.