Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[Sullla]

Well, we didn't manage to get in another turn yesterday. Turn 71 eventually rolled around to me this morning:



First things first: I was indeed able to upload the warrior embarked in the water into a legion. That means everything remains on schedule as before, and after the upgrade I was left with... exactly 1 gold coin in the treasury. You could say that this is effectively an "all-in" play, to use a poker term, at least from a monetary perspective. (Even if this backfires horribly, I can always build upwards with Bath districts and probably be OK, although investing so many resources into this early attack would certainly be wasteful if it fails). My income is also down to just 8.5 gold/turn right now, and that's with the 1 gold/turn from Autocracy and 2 gold/turn from Caravansaries with my one trade route. I'm going to have to build some Commercial districts in the near future just to solve my monetary woes. Fortunately, Commercial/Industrial/Bath districts are the next target for my civ once this war concludes.



Here's everything at sea as it begins heading north. Note that I've positioned the Great General so that all of the military units are within the two-tile range so that they pick up an additional movement point. Embarked units are only supposed to have 2 movement points right now, and that's very slow indeed. The Great General is already helping a lot by bumping these units up to 3 moves while they're swimming to the north. Unfortunately, the Great General doesn't work on itself, and Boudica can only move 2 tiles right now. (This is actually a change in one of the most recent patches; when I simmed this out weeks ago, the Great General retained its 4 movement points while embarked.) The good news is that I didn't have to waste a turn upgrading the Great General, which means that it's effectively "one turn ahead" and won't be left behind as everything moves. The battering ram also doesn't get the extra movement point since it's a support unit. I also have to be careful: once I attach the battering ram to a legion, it drops from 3 movement down to 2 movement, because the ram can't get the Great General bonus and they have to move together. I was playing around with the tactics this morning and I don't think that will pose an issue, largely because the battering ram is also effectively a turn ahead of the rest of the military units.

Note one another thing: see the Roman border peeking out from under the fog 1 northwest + 3 west of Mediolanum? If the terrain is mirrored up there, that's a fish resource held by TheArchduke's capital city. It's the same tile that my western most legion is sitting on down at the bottom of the screenshot. This pretty much confirms that TheArchduke has a coastal capital city, since his borders wouldn't have expanded to that tile otherwise. Unless he purchased the tile, which is possible, but the fact that he selected God of the Sea for his pantheon rather strongly suggests that his capital is located on the water. I'm proceeding on the assumption of a coastal capital for the moment. All tiles in your borders in Civ6 can see 1 tile away, which means that I need to avoid anything 1 away from that fish resource. I'll move my units carefully to avoid revealing them until I'm ready to attack.



Remember how I built two galleys for the Shipbuilding tech boost? I may as well use those units. The first one is slowly circling my peninsula in clockwise fashion, heading over to assist in the attack against TheArchduke. It won't arrive until after the initial strike, but it can help me siege Mediolanum and any later coastal cities. The other galley is heading east, as I'd like to make contact with the Cultural city state in teh's backlines if possible. I also spotted this fish resource to the south of Vilnius - is there another island down there? I never played out any of my simulation games long enough to explore if there were offshore islands on this map. We should have a better sense of what's out there in a turn or two.

There were some minor score updates this turn. Yuris added a population point and researched a civic, while TheArchduke researched a civic. I don't know what either one of them were; Yuris' culture went up by 2 points, so perhaps he finished Mysticism and dropped the free envoy into teh's Cultural city state. I thought he had put his envoy into Vilnius but nope, I checked and that wasn't the case. Population growth is starting to stagnate for everyone as our cities collectively hit size 4-5 and beginning running into the housing/happiness caps. And the cities that weren't founded on fresh water are really hurting for growth; TheArchduke has 5 cities but only two of them are on fresh water, and therefore his 5 cities have a total population of 14 right now. (My five cities have 23 pop, with all but one of them on fresh water.)

Finally, in terms of military power, no one appears to be building anything. TheArchduke remains sitting on 80 power score, no change for the last 15 turns. Either he's not watching my power rating or doesn't think he's a target. My power actually went DOWN this turn, which appears to have been caused by my units embarking. Technically their power rating does decrease when they're in the water; does Civ6 really just count up the numerical power rating of all your units (?) If so, this could be an effective way to disguise power in the later portions of the game. I'll check to see if the rating changes when these guys land again in a few turns.

[fahbs]

With this new patch, I've seen the AI do something I've never seen it do before: attempt an amphibious assault like this one. It was out of the blue and I did not see it coming.

Unfortunately, it was with a force half the size of mine, an entire tech generation behind, and landing right next to my walled capital + encampment.

Baby steps though, I guess.

[Sullla]

Yeah, one step at a time indeed. I saw that Singaboy was posting in the General Forum about how the AI has improved enough that winning on Always War + Immortal difficult is now a legitimate challenge instead of a cakewalk. The AI in the release version was an absolute joke, so it's encouraging to see steady progress with each patch.

We cycled through another turn incredibly fast this afternoon, maybe six hours in total. Here's Turn 72:



Now this is interesting. There's an island south of Vilnius with the Great Barier reef natural wonder located offshore. That's a lot of science there, and with one of those new Harbor districts, this would be an excellent place to add a city. Since this map seems to be mirrored on every side, there must be a similar island located north of Stockholm too. Hmmm. This means that the path forward is going to shift a little bit. Ideally, I will be able to conquer TheArchduke with this upcoming attack, and then I'll take the various city states scattered around the map: Yerevan (Religious) in my back lines, Vilnius (Cultural) here, and whatever the city state next to TheArchduke's territory happens to be. It must be either Military or Industrial, and neither one is likely worth keeping around. Stockholm I may decide to keep if I can remain the suzerain, since the bonus is very strong indeed with those extra Great Person points. We'll see how that plays out.

Anyway, in a perfect scenario, I would have my current 5 cities, TheArchduke's 5 cities, 3 captured city states, and then 2 island cities. That gets me roughly triple the territory of anyone else on the map, which would be enough to force a concession from the other players. Let's see if we can do that in practice.



Units continue to sail north on their seafaring adventure. Everything remains within the radius of Boudica for the moment. Borders in Civ6 see exactly 1 tile away in every direction, while units see 2 tiles away, so everything here should remain hidden for the moment. If I get the sight rules wrong and spoil this attack before it's ready to land, I will be one sad puppy. Still no reaction yet from TheArchduke, so I think it remains in the fog right now.



The biggest news for the turn didn't come from my civ at all, but rather from teh. He reached Apprenticeship tech and tossed down Hansas next to all of his Commercial districts, and this is the result. Hansas are extremely strong and the main reason why anyone would pick Germany. Aside from being half cost compared to a normal district, they also get +2 production for each adjacent Commercial district, and stacking them together like this is the result. The Hansa at Mainz is next to two Commercial districts plus two mines, and thus gets the massive +6 production bonus. Now as bad as this might be right now, the really terrifying thing is when teh reaches the Craftsmen policy at Guilds civic: +100% Industrial district adjacency bonuses. Yep, that would be +12 production from a single (cheap) Hansa district. Teh is still a long way away from Guilds civic though. Of course, building the Hansa eats up a district slot now instead of being "free" as in earlier patches... except Germany gets an extra district above the population limit as one of its other abilities, so it's effectively still free to build everywhere. Germany just doesn't get *TWO* free districts in every city they way that they did in earlier patches.

Germany is a seriously strong pick in Civ6. I'd compare them to a Darius pick in Civ4, or perhaps even more accurately to the Meklar in Master of Orion with their extra factories. The original Master of Orion, none of the remakes. The Meklar are slow-starting and have nothing to boost their growth curve, but they max out stronger than anyone else. Germany plays a lot like that here. I need to counter teh's very strong production cities by having more total cities and cities at higher population sizes via my Baths. It's enough to question my decision to attack TheArchduke in the first place; wouldn't I be better off by just attacking teh, and not fooling around with all this naval stuff? It's an excellent question, and one that I went back and forth on many times. Not letting teh sit back and build up those Hansas would seem like a wise decision. However, teh has 5 archers at the moment and a strong defensive position; he could crank out a lot of units from his capital if he wanted to. Ultimately, the main reason for my decision to attack TheArchduke was a metagaming one: he seems much more checked out on the game and less likely to put up a strong fight. We know the path to success in these online PBEM games: find the weaker player and take over their territory. I think teh would be harder to attack than TheArchduke, and that was enough to swing this for me. Frankly, if TheArchduke were playing anyone other than Rome, this would already be a done deal. Stupid Rome - so overpowered as a civ.



Here's a screenshot of the World Rankings screen showing how my power decreased when my units embarked. My actual power rating is 330 once everything gets out of the water. This is a strange way to do a power rating... No new units from anyone else, TheArchduke still hasn't spent any gold recently. Come on and buy something dude, you know you want to. That's the last piece I need to make this whole thing a done deal.

[T-hawk]

Is it normal for coastal (rather than ocean) spaces to extend out so far from the land, or is that a quirk of this particular map script? Seems that configuration is really what's enabling this surprise attack.

[fahbs]

So is there just some sort of honor system going on for the other players not to be reading this?

It's hilarious viewing this game as "baths vs factories".

[Bobchillingworth]

The Hansa at Mainz is next to two Commercial districts plus two mines, and thus gets the massive +6 production bonus.

IIRC Hansas do not receive an adjacency bonus from mines- it's based on resources instead. Typically this is a better deal, but on very hilly maps a regular Industrial Center can come out ahead.

So is there just some sort of honor system going on for the other players not to be reading this?

Yes.

[fahbs]

I always thought the Hansas more Klackon than Meklar: quicker to set up industry rather than a higher max.

[rho21]

So is there just some sort of honor system going on for the other players not to be reading this?

Yes.

Indeed, and it seems to work. Which is perhaps a bit surprising in the context of the internet as a whole. Scroll down and have a look at the "About Us" section at the bottom of the page for more information on the ethos that leads to this.

[Sullla]

No turn this morning; aside from the one very fast turn yesterday, we seem to have been slowing down a bit lately. The overall pace has been excellent, and I hope that it stays that way. Let me respond to some of the posts in the thread.

T-Hawk: It definitely is not normal for coastal tiles to extend so far out into the water. I suspect that the creator of this map script did this deliberately, to allow for exactly the kind of attack that I'm planning here. The normal configuration of coastal tiles is exactly the same in this game as in past Civilization games: coastal tiles within one tile of land, then ocean tiles further out. I noticed that there was an excess of coastal tiles back when I was doing my planning against against the AI, and I'd been thinking about carrying out an attack like this ever since. Otherwise, I would be attacking over land like normal.

Fahbs: Yes, as Bobchillingworth mentioned, we do operate on the honor system here with our games. It tends to work because there are no rewards or prizes given out for winning, and the type of person willing to spend 6 months playing an online Civilization game tends to be the type of person who isn't interested in instant gratification. This is pretty far removed from the Call of Duty crowd.

On the Master of Orion comparisons: I stand by my earlier assertion that Civ6 Germany plays more like the Meklar than the Klackons. The key advantage of the Klackons is that they do everything so fast; they have the quickest growth curve of anyone, and they're sending off colony ships a dozen turns faster than anyone else. In Civilization terms, that is not how Civ6 Germany plays at all, since the civ has zero bonuses in the early game. No early unique units, no early unique civ advantages, only the extra Military policy slot having much effect before roughly Turn 75. All of the power of Civ6 Germany is concentrated in their unique district, and that doesn't arrive until they reach a Medieval tech. (A cheap, easily-reachable Medieval tech but a Medieval tech nonetheless.) Civ6 Germany gets its advantage from building its existing cities "taller" than its rivals with bonus production and extra districts, and that makes them a Meklar-like setup. For a Klackons comparison, you want something like Civ4's Suryavarman (Creative/Expansive) or Joao (Imperialistic/Expansive). Spread out like the plague faster than anyone else and snowball from there. While none of these are perfect comparisons, I think that one hits closer to the mark.

Bobchillingworth: Thanks for the clarification. Since you usually want a Commercial district at every city, the Hansa does indeed come out ahead of the Industrial district in most situations. That's especially true on this map which isn't particularly hilly.

Since this is a quiet turn, feel free to check out the Google Docs C&D spreadsheet that I've been maintaining for this game. I put it online specifically so that lurkers could access it if they wanted: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1...Ow/pubhtml

[fahbs]

Speaking of Master of Orion comparisons, good lord Persia is ridiculous! Even setting aside their ludicrous +2 movement for TEN TURNS(!!!!!) after surprise war dec bonus (even civilian units get the bonus!), they get economy bonuses so out of control that it feels like playing as Psilons where the race alone lowers the difficulty by a level.

So basically you're getting the Psilon economy with the Mshrrn and Alkari combat bonuses O_O


Sulla: what are your thoughts on cavalry in general? If you got access to same generation melee, ranged, and cavalry units all at once, what kind of mix would you shoot for?

Followup: do you think anti-cavalry units are a waste of time?