PBEM Duels Lurker Thread

[suboptimal]

It's occurred to me that with the larger city-state land area I could go back in and make all of the salt water lakes fresh water again since there's still time to edit the map. That'd just involve shaving a tile or two off them (mostly tundra/snow tile additions) and avoid an obvious tip-off that something "different" is in the area. Or I could leave them as salt water to discourage settling nearby. Thoughts?

[Kaiser]

make them fresh water, that will make them stand out less and they will likely quickly figure out that this is a lakes script.

[suboptimal]

Yeah, I'll shrink them down and I think a couple can actually be broken up to fit in better.

The standard lakes script actually generates very large (15-20+ tile) saltwater lakes - I edited that out of the script to make room for more smaller lakes. It's gonna be interesting to watch, for sure.

[suboptimal]

I've edited the lakes to all be fresh water. Some were split, some were shrunk. Random.org has made Ichabod player #1. Just waiting on Ichabod now.

[suboptimal]

Thrawn definitely takes analysis to a different level. As he says, though, I don't know how that information is useful to him, particularly since map wrap is on. He might be expecting not much in the way of anything to his east as they're both likely to expect a pangea-type landmass surrounded by ocean. Wonder if Thrawn starts out looking for his backline coast, finds none, sneaks up on Ichabod and attempts to take him from the "wrong" direction?

[suboptimal]

In creating the save I couldn't access the city-state picker as that seemed to be part of one of the disabled DLCs. I used Random.org and set all the start positions for city-states as follows:

Top Left: Auckland
Top Right: Zanzibar
Bottom Right: Buenos Aires
Bottom Left: Muscat

Save is created. Let's see how this goes....

[Sullla]

Out of all the civs that Ichabod could have picked, I certainly wouldn't have taken Japan. The combat strength bonus on coastal tiles doesn't look very useful here (even making a decision just from the information available in the starting screenshot) and Japan's cheap districts has never felt very good to me. Three districts at half cost sounds great except that all three are districts that you don't want to build! Holy Sites have marginal utility for a civ with no other faith abilities, Encampments are typically built only to defend key locations, and Theatre districts are simply bad. District slots need to be used for Campuses and either Commercial or Harbor districts depending on the map setup, there's no room for Japan's cheap districts until reaching higher city sizes and by then the game is probably already over. I wish that Ichabod had picked Korea which has been criminally underplayed in our MP games.

I think that thrawn has significantly out-picked Ichabod for their duel, I guess we'll see what happens.

[civac2]

Why are Theater Squares not good? Isn't culture just a different form of research currency in Civ6?

[williams482]

I'm pretty sure Japan's coastal combat bonus also includes lakes and tiles adjacent to lakes, which is going to be a significant help on this map. Also useful but unknown to him, he'll have a much easier time getting decent adjacency on commercial hubs than any other civ would due to the lack of rivers.

Regarding the cheap districts, encampments are definitely nothing to write home about, but theater squares are much less bad than they would be in the hands of other civs because they actually can get good adjacencies from other districts. Likewise for holy sites, which get at least slightly better adjacencies than for any other civ except arguably Brazil, before any terrain-based pantheons come into play (which aren't likely to matter much on this map). In singleplayer at least (I know, I know) Japan is one of the better civs at an early religion into monumentality play, and I imagine that's what Ichabod has in mind here.

I can't argue with Korea as a stronger civ for these kinds of games, but if Thrawn and Ichabod do play a relatively peaceful early game as they apparently intend to, I think Japan will do pretty well for itself.

[suboptimal]

The game has done a better job of defining "lakes" v "coast" (look at some of the wonders that are coastal and can't be built on lake). I don't know if Japan's bonuses apply on fresh water or not. If they do then Ichabod's got an advantage. If they don't then that entire ability doesn't apply. Japan will get the bonuses for Harbors and I think we'll see more Harbors than Commercial Hubs once they figure out there's not much in the way of rivers.

@civac2: I think the issue with Theater Squares is that getting good adjacency bonuses usually requires a lot of work (wonders or other districts) and the cost vs. benefit is perceived as "not good". The district comes later than the Campus so costs more, the buildings are marginally more expensive for less return (tier 2 buildings are 4 vs. 2) and they really require a long game and large investment to be effective.

@Sulla: Since it appears that the MP meta you've based your comments on revolves around and generation is your take on the game that civics advancement isn't as important or that monuments, population and providing luxuries are enough to get through the tree on?