Civ6 SG 3 - Stingy Hojo and his cheap districts

[Quagma Blast]

Seria gets a chop into a Wall to finish Engineering. Daisho gets a chop that finishes a Worker, and the overflow goes into a Holy Site. Can Do gets noticed by a barb scout, and I queue up a unit there.

   

The barbs around Durocortorium prove to be a nuisance.

Teddy declares war!

   

I was caught with my pants down and he takes our new builder. Defensive Tactics finishes, and I slot in Limes and Agoge and set research to Machinery while much of our army starts moving north and the swordsman moves in to boost city strength. The trade route is relocated to B&T -> Can Do. Boudicca is claimed and sent to the front lines. Teddy briefly sieges the city, but it is broken at the cost of exposing the swordsman to death by archers.  At the same time a bunch of barb horsemen in the south run out of the fog to kill a couple of archers in rough terrain.

We meet Victoria! We still have no idea where she is. She has a couple of other friendly contacts and is hated by Teddy. I forget to send her a delegation.

   

Seria finishes its Holy Site and start on archers. America is also apparently very close to finishing Petra.

   

My turnset ends and I pass it along. Status report:
Still have barbs running around in the South, still have the looming threat of barbs in the East, each area has a single swordsman, the southern one badly wounded.

A small force in the North currently suffices to hold the line against America, but we'll want more to strike back and pillage his lands.

Machinery is nearly done, but I've held off to finish some archers to replace the lost ones for upgrades. Research is currently on Military Engineering. The Aqueduct for the Eureka is being built.  If we finish one more district, we should be able to finally place a Campus somewhere.

Prophet should come midway through the next turnset. See my thoughts above at the bottom of the last page on religion. Daisho's holy site is about 4 or 5 turns off, you might want to swap from the walls there to get an extra free religious city as well as enable districts.

[Quagma Blast]

And the save:

Ichabod <- UP
TheArchduke <- On deck
Bacchus
Emperor K
Quagma Blast

[TheArchduke]

You gotta be kidding me, just as things calmed down.

Good turnset, we might be best off to just fight off Teddy, or just raze Petra (can´t imagine no district there but we will see.)

[Emperor K]

I don't think we need defenders like you mentioned. I would think church property and jesuit education are the primaries.

Well done so far.

[Emperor K]

I will attempt to clarify on my turns what the motive behind the choices I make are. I can see now that I sometime build things "just to build them" and that is were my skill is lacking. It only becomes evident when I read quama's posts that I notice this though.

Well I have never won via culture so this should be interesting.

[TheArchduke]

Ichabod <- Up
TheArchduke <- on Deck
Bacchus
Emperor K
Quagma Blast

How is everyone?

Seems like we wanted a peaceful builder game and not this war slugfest?

[Ichabod]

I'll be doing some initial thoughts today. Just haven't had a lot of time lately.

[Ichabod]

I'll play my turnset later today, here's some points that I would appreciate some opinions:




1. We have 2 envoys, we need to think what to do with them. Notice that the only suzerain bonus we can achieve is the Buenos Aires one (bonus resources count as amenities), but one that we don't need.

My opinion would be to wait until we can change policies and adopt the 2-in-1 envoy policy, so we can get 3 envoys in Yerevan. I basically want to get more faith, sicne we are planning to go with Jesuit Education. If I'm not mistaken, that would mean 6 faith right now.




2. We have loads of gold, and I think we need to invest it soon, to profit faster. We could even buy a settler, but usually I prefer buying things that doesn't have policies that make them faster to build (and settlers have a very good card at that). We could use the gold to buy some units to help the barb problems and to deter the American attack. And we could just save the gold to upgrade into XBows (bear in mind that Mercenaries and the half cost upgrades are still a bit away).

I think buying the iron tile near Daisho could be a good bet. It's a good tile for Daisho to work (it lacks decent tiles) and we would be able to build Iron units all around when we improve it.




We can perhaps build the last farm (we are at 5/6 for Feudalism) and go for Mercenaries, while we stockpile archers and gold to upgrade to XBows to murder Teddy. In that case, I'd try to do the old Ilkum-Feud trick to get some extra builder charges on the cheap. Since we are finishing Recorded History, that might be a good time to try for it.

We could use some gold to buy the Watermill in Can Do and shoot for the Civil Service Inspiration, but I don't think the culture is worth it...

Opinions?

3.







Church property and DotF are gone. Apart from Jesuit Education, what are our Religious goals?

[Quagma Blast]

3.







Church property and DotF are gone. Apart from Jesuit Education, what are our Religious goals?

I made a post about this last page, but...

For the Worship belief, we  have remaining the options of 2 Food (Gurdwara), 2 Production (Meetinghouse), 1 slot for religious art (Cathedral), +1 spread charge on missionaries/apostles (Mosque), +1 housing (Pagoda), +1 amenity (Stupa), or '+1 faith per era that has passed since last built' (Dar-e-Mehr).

I don't rate Cathedrals or Dar-e Mehr at all. As Jesuit Education Japan, we should be able to get all the art slots we want, and the faith on the Dar-e Mehr ramps up too slowly. The Mosque is better than nothing, since we are going to want to save faith for JE buys, but seems pretty minor unless we want to go full religious victory. The Pagoda and Gurdwara both have some merit in that we're planning on cramming our cities close together and using a bunch of tiles for districts, which makes it harder to get food and housing from tiles. Meeting Houses seem pretty nice, production is the big bottleneck in this game. I don't have enough experience with the game to have a firm statement of how good +1 Amenity is, so Stupas could float from Mosque-tier to above Meeting Houses, but instinctively I'd put them near to Meeting Houses.

For the Founder belief, fear not! I forsaw such an eventuality and there is a belief I'd like to try that should work well with our-
Lay Ministry got taken.

Okay, well, let's look at the other options. +50% yield from type bonuses if the city-state has the religion (Papal Primacy) (for example, if we get Yerevan to 3 envoys and convert it, we'd get 3 faith in capital and 3 from each holy site instead of just 2), +2 Faith from each foreign city which follows this religion (Pilgrimage), +1 Science/Gold from each city with a Campus/Commercial Hub that follows this religion (Stewardship), +1 Gold for every 4 followers of the religion (Tithe), +1 Culture for every 5 foreign followers (World Church), +1 Science for every 5 foreign followers (Cross-Cultural Dialogue), and +1 Envoy when a city-state first converts (Religious Unity)

Let's consider our position with respect to spread. America is right next to us and not bothering. Rome is right next to us and working on it but cut down to one city and likely to be easy to convert. England and Taoism Founder are both some distance away but within passive pressure range of each other (note the Taoists in Protestant cities). There's a fair number of city-states nearby that we might be able to convert. This says to me that we'd actually get value out of the city-state and foreign-follower beliefs. Of those, I like Papal Primacy and Pilgrimage the best; both will give us Faith to fuel the Jesuit Education machine. Tithe would be worthwhile as well as the backup Gold-generating option.

For Enhancer beliefs: Defender of the Faith is gone, but that's actually fine because this is against the Civ VI AI and we won't need the help. Remaining options are: Missionaries and Apostles are 30% cheaper (Holy Order), Religion passive spread reaches 30% farther (Itinerant Preachers), +10 Combat Strength near foreign cities following (Crusade), Religious pressure doesn't drop from Theological Combat (Monastic Isolation), Religion passive spread +25% strength (Scripture), Culture Bombs from Holy Sites (Burial Grounds), and newly-settled cities have the religion if their civilization does (Religious Colonization).

The passive spread options are probably not worth it. It's just too weak in this game. Similarly Monastic Isolation and Religious Colonization don't warrant much interest either. Crusade is good for warmongering but we're trying not to do that in this game (...we'll pivot.) That leaves Burial Grounds and Holy Order. We could use the culture bombs with our cheap Holy Sites, but I like taking Holy Order to save faith for Jesuit Education.

So, my suggestions: Jesuit Education and Holy Order on founding, evangelize Papal Primacy/Pilgrimage (depending on how successful we are at city-state vs. american spread) or Tithe once we've spread it a bit, Stupas or Meeting Houses for the eventual Worship belief.

[Emperor K]

1) I like the idea of getting more faith with envoys
2) Turning gold into production for our less productive cities is my vote. Monuments or maybe a granary in little city?
3) I like Jesuit Eductation, and the gold one for followers? Not sure we need to prioritize the tier 3 faith buildiong with an apostile. As far a spreading, the culture bomb with hs may save us some gold on tile buys?