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I Think I'm Gwangju Like It Here
A blog about my adventures in Korea, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
A blog about my adventures in Korea, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
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It's Chevalier's Thread and He Can Do What He Wants To
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June 1st, 2018, 22:00
(This post was last modified: July 31st, 2018, 11:50 by Chevalier Mal Fet.
Edit Reason: Using this page to hold formulae for reference
)
I'll start speculating, theorycrafting, and generally making a fool of myself (again) tomorrow, for now I just wanted the thread up. EDIT: also stashing my chop table here:  
Combat formula (quick 'n dirty): 30 * 1.041^StrengthDifference Combat formula (math nerd): Damage = 30 * e^(StrengthDifference / 25) * Random(0.75, 1.25)  GP purchase costs: For faith : 150+ 10*GP point remaining For gold : 200+ 15*GP point remaining. Gold costs: 4*hammer cost, rounded down to nearest 5 Gold upgrades: 10+0.75*(gold cost difference) minimum 30 = 10+.75(4*hammer cost new - 4*hammer cost old) = 10+3(hammer cost difference).
I Think I'm Gwangju Like It Here
A blog about my adventures in Korea, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
Let's run down my civs first. Then we'll do my opponent's, then I'll do player analysis, then if there's still more time to kill I'll maybe speculate about R&F wonders, since I didn't really explore those in PBEM8. My last resort is to start telling old baseball stories (or I could, I guess, not post in my thread 'til the game starts, buuuut...nah).
Anyway, Chevalier's civs: Germany  Germany is still really strong. Nothing new here. Holy Roman Emperor is a great bonus - +7 strength is not to be sneezed at, and makes conquering city-states a breeze. The current meta seems to be to eat every city state that isn't nailed down somewhere, and Germany's better at it than most. Just as good is the extra policy slot. I'm always cramped for military policies in particular - you want to basically always be running Conscription, for example, because gold is hard to come by. But you also need agoge/maneuver/maritime industries/limes to boost your chops, since that's the way the game is played. Other civs have to run either autocracy or give up a wildcard slot, but Germany can run both conscription and a chopping policy at the same time in any government. That's actually a hidden economic bonus, I think. Free Imperial Cities is straightforward and really nice - getting more districts early on when costs are low, and you have a good chance to enable the district discount, which I can never manage BUT I TOTALLY WILL THIS GAME I SWEAR. The U-boat I've never seen used, but if the game goes a long time (not likely, since the Archduke will gobble someone up at the first opportunity and that will be that) it could come in useful. Naval Raiders cost the same as Frigates in the Renaissance and Industrial eras, but Subs are REALLY expensive and the cheap sub policy won't unlock before the game is over (it's hidden behind the Cold War civic at the end of the tree D  , so the cheaper U-boat cost isn't too relevant, I think. The play there is probably similar to Quads -> Frigates, ie, build a bunch of privateers, then unlock electricity and do a mass upgrade. With +10 strength on ocean tiles, these guys would hit with strength 85 against 60 strength battleships - ouch. I doubt we'll see 'em in action, but if I took Germany this would obviously be my goal to play towards as my game-winning offensive unit.oh and Hansas are great. Two things, though: 1)It seems like native production is being de-emphasized in favor of chopping. In the short-term, then, Hansas aren't necessarily amazing, since the handful of extra cogs they provide pales in comparison to +150% stone harvests (Magnus is still around in this game, guys). Later on, as you exhaust choppable resources - we were nearing that point in PBEM7, part of why that game ended when it did - Hansas will shine more. 2)They like being next to Commercial Hubs, but on a naval map I'll really want to build Harbors instead. Building both is wasteful, since you don't get two trade routes, and the district buildings get REALLY expensive. Hansas are still 50% cheaper, insanely easy to boost, and will make even small cities productive even into the middle game. So it looks like the gameplan as Germany is patience - get your infrastructure up, research towards U-boats, and wait, wait, wait for your dense urban core to gradually come into its own. I might even have to out-wait the exhaustion of choppable resources on the map, something which has never happened but might be possible on an island map! Rome  Another power civ. Rome doesn't have too many naval advantages, though. Trajan's Column saves Rome early production and makes it an early cultural leader. If paired with a good pantheon or city-state, then they can lead in culture through the game. That's not to be sneezed at, since the right production cards and the right policy switches really boost a civ. Everyone loves Rome largely for this ability alone. All Roads Lead to Rome is a better ability in R&F, because traders are a lot harder to come by in the expansion - so it's hard to build roads everywhere you want. I would have loved this ability in my jungle-heavy Korea start, for example. However, on an island map this matters less - most travel will be over water, and the trade post ability doesn't matter as much since it'll be rare to have a trade route pass through multiple Roman cities. The legion is a great Classical unit that probably won't be too relevant (-knocks desperately on wood-) because judging by PBEM4, most serious invasions will begin around turn 100, just as legions start to become obsolete. The Bath, though, is a really good boost in naval maps. Fresh water will be thin on the ground, so a cheap aqueduct is a great thing to have. Rome can build larger, happier cities than other civs on this map, which means more science, culture, and production on the limited land we'll have. I struggled with growing coastal cities in PBEM7, so I'm not ignoring this as a serious leg-up. Rome will have to bank on the Bath and monument combo to stay ahead, though, because they'll get no boosts in the lategame at all. Khmer  A single-player focused faith civ, I think. Monasteries of the King will be basically irrelevant on the map type. How many rivers will I have? Can't count on many! And a culture bomb - while not totally useless, since border expansion is so slow and gold is precious - will be really situational and not all that useful on an island map. This is a much weaker ability than, say, Trajan's Column or Holy Roman Emperor. Grand Barays could be pretty solid, given the lack of freshwater likely to be available - more faith and food is never bad to have, especially not in R&F when faith can do so much. But wouldn't I be better off taking Rome's Baths, though? Trajan's Column is way better to have in my pocket than Monasteries of the King. The Domrey has never really been used before, I've never used it, but I hate building siege units. Why would I need it to take cities when I have Frigates available? Finally, I get a unique temple that lets my missionaries allahu ackbar themselves in return for relics. Not bad in a religion game, buuuut not so good in multiplayer, I think. Players will just murder my missionaries with swords rather than debate them to death, the uncouth wretches, and so I won't get my relics. Sorry if this is a little shallow, but everything Khmer can do either can be done better by another civ on my list or just isn't suited to an island map. I like their alternate take on stacking food and faith compared to India, and might be worth a single player exploration someday, but yeah obviously I'm not super enthusiastic about these guys. India (Chandragupta)  So if this were a different map - maybe Pangaea - I'd really be intrigued by taking Chandragupta. Mostly because he's a little more aggressive than Gandhi, and the Indian civ is a little under-utilized in our PBEMs at the moment, I think. However, I really don't think he's suited to an Island plates map. Let's run through him: Arthashastra: +2 movement and +5 strength to all units for 10 turns is really powerful. My war with Japper bogged down because my infantry's slow movement slowed my advance to a crawl through rough terrain, while he cranked out 5 turn horsemen to stop me. I was only able to hold the ground I took because of Defender of the Faith. This ability probably could have seen me win through. The trouble is triggering it. For a war of territorial expansion, you need a city within 10 squares of at least 2 of your opponent's cities. That would happen pretty easily on a Pangaea map, but on island plates, depending on the size of the sea, you will only rarely get it - I think oledavy in PBEM4 could have used this on Japper only, pretty much. Singaboy was more tightly packed and maybe could have triggered it on Archduke and Japper - but Woden was totally isolated, as I remember the map. So there's a good chance I'll only be able to use it once, if at all - no spamming it with alternating war decs like Alhambram did with Persia in PBEM6. plus everyone could just declare war on me from the start, so, y'know. Dharma is great in SP, when the AI loves to spread religion around, not so much in singleplayer - there's rarely a determined effort to spread the faith outside your borders, and with the quick games we play there's hardly any time for religion to spread passively outside your own borders. In PBEM8 I converted exactly 3 cities outside my holy city in the entire game, and 1 of those was with a missionary. So in THEORY you could combine Jesuit Education with Choral Music, maybe even a dash of Zen Meditation in a perfect world, but in practice that's extremely difficult to do, and in an Island Plates map almost impossible. (On another map, trying for the JE/CM combo as Gandhi would be fun - but it's way too dependent upon your opponents. You need to start next to or near the guy who lands the belief you want, then you need to hope that he converts at least one of your border cities. If you can pull both of those off, then you can build missionaries at that border city and spread the faith around your empire, while you handle the other half of your combo. If we ever do another team game, maybe India would be a strong contender to have a partner to accomplish this - but then it's dependent on both of you winning the religious race. So it'd need to be India+Russia/China to have a shot at it, and India would probably lose out on religion to the other of China/Russia on other teams, 'coz it's not like neither civ will be taken. ...this speculation is entirely irrelevant to the game at hand). The Varu is good if stacked, but will be on the way out by the time I can invade another island, and it's too slow anyway - it'll be blasted to hell by frigates. Stepwells are really nice, I think - the boosted housing alone is worth it, and if you sprinkle them around Holy Sites you get lots of faith, too - you can have tall cities with lots of faith, which can be used for a lot of stuff in R&F. Arabia  Arabia could be really strong, I think, and is certainly tempting to me. Righteousness of the Faith is really good, guys. We've only seen Arabia in depth in one PBEM so far, and Alhambram confessed after the game that he did a poor job utilizing this. But say you get Wats, for example - maybe even worth taking it with an early religion pick - then, in every city you have a Holy Site, you get +3 faith and +2 science for 19 cogs. But wait, there's more! If you order now, you also received our patented Veggie-o-matic absolutely free! You also get +10% science, culture, and faith in that city, too! Now, note that Korea ALSO got +10% science, culture, and faith for cities with an established governor. It takes 5 turns to establish a governor, you only get 7 total in the entire game, it takes most of the game to reach that number, and you have to move the damn things around, and when you do, you lose your bonus. Nevertheless, the devs thought this was overpowered for Korea and nerfed it to +3% per governor promotion, meaning you'll need 3x as many titles to reach the same bonus you used to be able to get - ie never. Oh, and it applies only to science and culture, not to faith. Arabia gets this ability for 19 cogs in every city with a holy site. On top of the benefits of the worship building itself. So yeah, I think you can build a really strong civ with RotF. The Last Prophet is not so good - it guarantees you don't get locked out of most of your civ abilities (Spain needs this), but in multiplayer you really want one of the first 2 religions - the third is okay - and by the fourth or fifth you're down to marginal beliefs. Plus, not everyone usually chases a religion, since those marginal beliefs aren't worth the cogs spent chasing them, so your ability never triggers. And they fixed the bug that counted Arabia's own cities as foreign, so you won't get as much science. D: Bummer. Mamluks are great and will be relevant at the right time - good unit to base an invasion around, and if other players neglect their army in favor of a navy, the Mamluks will be tough to dislodge once established on an enemy island (see what happened to Japper once Singaboy got his horses over the water in PBEM4). Finally, the Madrasa is really solid - your campuses now also provide faith! And as I've talked about before, I love faith. Faith is a wonderful currency to have in R&F, especially if you're lucky enough to have Valetta or Jesuit Education (you could even have both but then your stupid neighbors get eaten by stupid Genghis Khan and there's nothing you can do about it stupidbuttfacesstupid no I'm not bitter why do you ask). Arabia's definitely in the running for me. No naval boosts, but science+religion si strong and I might not have too much competition to get my pick of good religious beliefs. Mongolia  Thanks to Archduke's tour-de-force, everyone knows these guys now. They're tough, but they ain't invincible. I think I could have taken on a roughly equal-sized or even slightly larger Mongol army in a toe-to-toe fight in PBEM8 (while acknowledging that with the army Archduke ACTUALLY had I would have been squashed like the miserable insect all our civs were in comparison with the glory of Genghis Khan). They're not as strong on an island map, but they shouldn't be overlooked. Mongol horde is a nice boost, but nothing gamebreaking. +3 strength is enough to beat equivalent cavalry in a head-to-head fight, and capturing units is a fun novelty but rarely actually useful (since you get them redlined). Ortoo is the real strength of a civ. +6 combat strength per level of visibility you have, and you get a free trade post on the first turn you send a trader - which of course grants you visibility! Note that this applies to all units, not just to horsemen. So Mongolian frigates and battleships ALSO get +6 strength, which is as good as having a Great Admiral. This combat boost makes Mongol units really fearsome to face, and if I can land one GA, then I have +11 units to fling around - enough to overcome DotF if the defender has no other boosts. The trouble is everyone in this game except Japper knows this just as well as I do, and I probably won't be as lucky as the Archduke in having opponents who will cheerfully allow me to send traders wherever I want. No, they've probably wised up and will Always War me as soon as they make contact. They do that, and they have nothing to fear from horses (who have to get past the navy first) and a navy with no especial bonuses. Future levels of diplo visibility have to come from printing and spies, a long way down the tech tree. The Ordu is nice but hardly gamebreaking on an island map. A support for my land army, but the navy is the star of the show. The Keshiq isn't as cool as Japper's jongs, unfortunately. And you can't upgrade into it, but have to scratch build it. :  A nice novelty but nothing to write home about. The Mongols are entirely dependent upon their Ortoo bonus, but it's a really strong bonus indeed, and might be a surprise choice on a naval map - if no one else figures out what I'm up to, I might be able to get away with it and have a surprisingly strong navy. :D But I would also have to suffer from the inevitable comparisons to the Archduke when I don't do as well as he did with the same civ, or, if i win, then Mongolia will probably be deemed OP and then banned. It's on the list, but it's not my top choice at the moment. That's probably enough writing for today.
I Think I'm Gwangju Like It Here
A blog about my adventures in Korea, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
Would you mind a dedlurker? I think you got a rough draw on the civs but that just makes it more interesting to try and win.
Haha, if only.
 Well, welcome aboard everyone. Y'all know what you're in for - I will ramble, and I cannot guarantee results. and also I might make you play my turns at a moments' notice. Goal for this game: Don't lose a core city to a city-state. Secondary goal: Win.
I Think I'm Gwangju Like It Here
A blog about my adventures in Korea, and whatever else I feel like writing about. (June 2nd, 2018, 19:37)Chevalier Mal Fet Wrote: Haha, if only. I'm still up for backing you up if necessary. Only, let's not try to arrange for you to be gone when they release a patch nerfing a major element of gameplay combined with a long-term plan suddenly going off the rails?
If my vote for a civ counts, I say Arabia. Why? Well production is the bottle neck in civ 6. Faith and gold let you short circuit that. It also let's you save your chops, something that might be more limited on an island plate map for more important things like districts.
The only real contender would be Germany to me, but as you pointed out, Hansa in R&F conflict with the desire to build harbors. (As an aside it might have actually made more sense for harbors to boost Hansa districts since the Hanseatic league was primarily a Baltic and north sea organization but whatever). Use the faith building on either wats or on meeting houses ( 2 production will pay back the 19 invested in 10 turns). Then rocket ahead in science. With the VA banned having more advanced units will matter more. It would almost be interesting to see an Kongo Arbia team for max synergy on religion. As for what other people will pick? Archduke - Netherlands UU is nice and UA is not half bad either given how policy cards work in R&F Rowin - probably Brazil. Unless he is going for novelty and picks like Mapuche to try and hit hard on golden ages, no one else really helps him here. Japper I think Australia is the stronger pick but Indonesia would be quite good as well. Emperor k - pretty much has to go England. Norway might be ok, but England is simply fantasic on the water. (June 2nd, 2018, 22:10)Banzailizard Wrote: If my vote for a civ counts, I say Arabia. Why? Well production is the bottle neck in civ 6. Faith and gold let you short circuit that. It also let's you save your chops, something that might be more limited on an island plate map for more important things like districts. Arabia is probably the easiest of the civs to set up the district bonus on, since it wants to build Holy Sites and Campuses everywhere. It's much easier to set up the bonus if you want to build several of an early district. Germany on the other hand can be harder to set up the bonus on if you want to wait for Hansas, since you will probably have at least 7 districts unlocked by the time you get to Hansas. That means you can't build your half cost district as your "loss leader" unless you wait a heck of a long time to build districts, which is not a winning strategy. I suppose on a water map you could just use Harbors as your full cost district with any civ. It's just a lot easier for, say, England or Russia or Korea to set up the bonus since their cheap district is early. I also like Rome as a choice, simply because of the early culture and the Bath. Rome's the only one that compete with Australia and Indonesia on Housing when it comes to a sea map, and Magnus is still in this game and Rome will surely get him first. I'm not sure I like Germany here, except possibly to conquer early city-states, but with less competition for them I don't think it matters that you might be able to do it a few turns earlier with a weaker army. Everything else about Germany is simply too late. By the time Hansas and the extra district matter, teams with early bonuses will be ahead on the snowball, and nobody should be planning around U-Boats tipping a war one way or another. Worse, Germany seems to encourage passivity in the crucial Classical/Medieval eras. If Germany is chosen, you have to do something like Japan did in PBEM4 and get a bunch of overlapping bonuses, and we need to be willing to commit to a war in the late Classical/early Medieval era if it's appropriate, not wait around for all the bonuses to come online. Incidentally, either Australia or Indonesia is a real threat on this map. Australia loves the coast (bonus fresh water, coast has appeal so their districts will be ridiculous), and so does Indonesia. If Archduke had rolled those picks I would have been very scared. I'm less scared of Japper, who is getting better but still needs to demonstrate he can get a civ economy off of the ground as fast as the rest of the players here. This is his best chance, with little chance of an early invasion and two very strong economic choices available to him. Otherwise, I agree with Banzailizard about the other players' choices. There's some slight possibility Emperor K takes China and tries to build some wonders, since again early invasion will be hard. Maybe Rowain takes America (as a reminder, in R&F all their diplo slots turn into wildcard slots, which seems really powerful but maybe not until Tier 2 governments) or Russia (for the cheap religious/cultural game). The Archduke has a lot of nice early military civs but the wrong kind of map for them, and Georgia just feels weak in a game with no goodie huts to earn easy Era score. I mean, maybe he tries something interesting with Scotland and happiness, but it just seems like Netherlands is the clear choice there. Japper should select one of the 2 builder powerhouses (and even can fall back on Japan if he wants a still fairly good builder with some combat bonuses in coast). The interesting thing is that it looks fairly likely that we might get a lot of early builder play just based on likely civ choice, which means this game might go past the medieval era. England's the one obviously positioned to pose an early threat, and I suppose it's possible that they just stomp one civ after another in a reprise of PBEM8, but a) It's not The Archduke at the helm, and b) It's not really a huge threat until frigates, which will give people plenty of time to prepare. I'd add c) hopefully people learned from that one, but my belief in the rationalism of people is not terribly high at the moment. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
