So we balanced early game/rush strategies around the concept that they are good early, but weak late, so you either manage to win early, or your strategy gets outdated and you are at a disadvantage in the generic gameplay.

But Nelphine's last post claims the opposite, that rush strategies are at an advantage in the late game.

What is your experience? 

In theory, the game has several mechanics that should work against rush in the late game. Their home race cities are significantly less economic, conquered cities suffer heavy damage, and cities are expected to switch sides more often and get razed more often than in a "normal" game due to overextension, so they should be behind in economic potential due to damaged buildings. Furthermore, as rush generally prefers fewer books and more retorts, they should have significantly less high tier spells than other players, so once the game reaches high tier spells, they should be at a disadvantage. Interracial unrest should also be a larger burden, late game races should generally dislike being ruled by rush races.
But this is all theory, it might not work that way in practice. Spells and books can be found, looted or traded for, unrest can be eliminated by spells, and damage to cities can be compensated by investing gold to rebuild them. So I'd like to know if it works as intended or not, and if not, why.

Edit: Sorry to the Civ 4 folks, gotta find your own thread now
Civ 6 PBEM 13
Rules:

* Pangaea map
* AI Diplo
* City-States may not be captured - any conquered must be razed.
* No Venetian Arsenal
* No Defender of the Faith
* CQUI Allowed

Players:
1. Grotsnot (2400-0400) - Japan
2. Alhazard (0400-0800) - Greece (Gorgo)
3. Alhambram (1700-2200) - Rome
4. The Black Sword (2000-2200) - Russia
5. marcopolothefraud (2030-2200) - Arabia
6. Chevalier Mal Fet (2200 - 0400) - England

See Life thread for start of discussion.

Basically, we think we should firs discuss what our intended role is for having 2 planes and then adjust the game to match that, instead of the opposite.

My view :
Planes are a game mechanic to separate travel between locations, similarly to continents, and distance between star systems in space games, but on a larger scale. Continents are very easy to navigate in this game, no research of technology or high tier buildings are needed - ships are the lowest tier unit, and several realms have waterwalking or even flying creatures at the lowest tier, so continents do fill this role in the game.
However this separation is necessary to ensure proper pacing of the game - making it possible to have strong late game enemies without the possibility of the other players to run into that enemy and lose the game (or beat it and literally win the game through that immediately).
Thus, the "other" plane should be richer in resources, not accessible until the late game, and contain fewer but stronger players than the original plane, if and only if the human player starts on the original plane.
If the human does start there, they should still be richer in resources (they paid in picks for this), but the "fewer and stronger" players should happen on the Arcanus plane instead.
On flavor side, planar travel should be a big deal that's hard to access and difficult to achieve, but what promises vast riches to those successful at doing so. Thus towers need to be heavily defended, the lairs and nodes on the other side need to be stronger and more rewarding, and planar travel spells should be expensive to research and use.

Just making sure that people know about Artificer + Runemaster exploit where if you create an artifact and then convert to mana you get 200% mana back of the cost of creating it...  Enjoy~!

We had that discussion about minerals last month.

Current system generates this many minerals per 100 map tiles (note that this includes ocean tiles - Ores placed on water or other invalid tiles are simply skipped and don't appear) :

Poor Arcanus :2.77 (1 in a 6x6)
Fair Arcanus : 6.25 (1 in a 4x4)
Rich Arcanus : 11.11 (1 in a 3x3)
Poor Myrror : 4 (1 in a 5x5)
Fair Myrror : 11.11 (1 in a 3x3)
Rich Myrror : 25 (1 in a 2x2)

Easy to see what's the problem.

I'll redesign the code to allow replacing these numbers freely.

I think we should use these new numbers :

Poor Arcanus :2
Fair Arcanus : 5
Rich Arcanus : 8
Poor Myrror : 3
Fair Myrror : 7.5
Rich Myrror : 12

And here we are, round two between myself, superjm, Auro, and DaveV. 

First things first, my picks:
1st: Beeri Bawl of the Luchuirp
2nd: Perpentach of the Balseraphs
3rd: Auric Ulvin of the Illians
4th: Rhoanna of the Hippus
5th: Valledia the Even of the Amurites
I actually originally had Auric first and Berri third, but I changed my mind at the last minute. I've played a lot of SP games as the Illians, and I wanted to give the golems a try.

So, Beeri Bawl of the Luchuirp.
Beeri is Industrious (+50% wonder production, +25% Mud Golem production, +100% Forge Production), and Financial (+25% Gold, +100% Market and Money Changer production)
The Luchiurp are one of the two dwarven Civs in the game, and I think the better one for MP. The Khazad have the Dwarven Vault thing that requires you to maintain a decent sum of cash or you get penalties, you do get bonuses if you have a lot, but in a MP game, it's just not feasible to keep that much gold unspent.

As far as unique units, both dwarven civs share some unique units which are only slightly different from their 'normal' counterparts, mainly in that they have the 'Dwarven' trait/promotion, which provides the followings:
Double movement in hills, +25% resistence to poison damage, +25% work rate (not really relevant to me). They give access to the 'repair' spell (which requires Enchantment 1) to heal damaged golem, naval, and siege units. There are some other changes to these units as well:

Dwarven Shadow (Shadow): +50% collateral damage
Dwarven Druid (Druid): +1 affinity for Earth mana instead of Nature, and has the 'Crush' ability instead of the 'Entangle'
Boar Rider (Horseman): -1 movement, +40% vs Mounted units
Dwarven Slinger (Archer): no change other than Dwarven trait
Dwarven Hornguard (Knight): -1 movement, +1 attack & defense

The Luchuirp also get a bunch more unique units that are Golems. The Golem trait is a racial one like Drawven and provides the following:
Heals 5% slower in neutral lands, 10% slower in friendly lands (which is why the repair spell is so useful)
Immune to death damage, poison damage, and fear.
This unit is not alive.

The Golem units are as follows:

Mud Golem (Worker): Has 2 defense strength, and works faster than a regular worker. I'm not sure what the actual difference is, but from what I can tell, a Mud Golem takes 1 turn less to do stuff than a Worker. It also doesn't use food when being built, so cities can grow while building them, but this is a downside as well, as I'll get to later. Also, the fact they have a defensive value means they can't be captured and have to actually be killed in combat one at a time, which could be exploited later.
Wood Golem (Axeman): +2 strength, and vulnerable to fire.
Iron Golem (Champion): +4 strength, loses +25% vs melee units
Gargoyle (Longbowman): +1 strength, +1 movement, loses the first strike and defensive strike, gains the Defensive promotion, builds 25% faster with Marble
Clockwork Golem (Beserker): +4 strength 
Bone Golem (Immortal): +4 strength, gains the Cannibalize promotion.
Nullstone Golem (Phalanx): +1 strength, loses the city attack and vs. mounted units bonuses, gains the Magic Immune promotion.

So, while it may seem that these units are all much better than their regular counterparts, they come with a pair or drawbacks:
First of all, they can't use Bronze, Iron, or Mithril weapons, which makes up for their much increased regular strength.
Secondly, they cannot be upgraded to. Each one must be built, and once built, cannot be upgraded. This one is the more serious of the two.

There are also some units that are unavailable to the Luchuirp: the Marksmen, Beastmaster, Ranger, and Horse Archer.

The Luchuirp get a few unique buildings as well, only the first is a replacement:
Sculptors Studio (Training Yard): +1 culture, and 60 hammers instead of 67.
Blasting Workshop: Requires Sorcery and Fire mana, and gives all Golems produced in the city the ability to cast Fireball
Pallens Engine: Requires Divination and Sun mana, and gives all Golems produced in the city the Perfect Sight promotion, giving them the ability to see invisible units
Adularia Chamber: Requires Necromancy and Shadow mana, and gives all Golems produced in the city the Hidden promotion, making them invisible until they attack or cast a spell.

The first of those three Golem ones is obviously the best, and I'm unlikely to build any of the others. It does require sorcery tech, which is a ways into the game, but considering how important the repair spell is going to be, I think I'll be going for magic a lot more than I did in the previous game.

Final thing here, my starting situation this game:


And the first major decision to make with regards to the Mud Golem. Do I grow the city then focus on hammers for the Golem, or do I focus on hammers from the get go, getting the Mud Golem as fast as possible. I actually did a sim to see which is better, and it turns out getting the Mud Golem as fast as possible is the better option.

Anyway, turn 2 has arrived so I'm going to play that then come back to do a report on my opponents civs.

So, Elohim! Naturally, a civilization focused on pacifism would have a unique trait centered around murdering everyone around you 

Beware of spoilers, as always.

It's actually quite interesting how people chose civs this time. 3 out of 4 picks  were on my list too that I sent to Bob. Cairo stole my 1st pick! So my picks were:

1. Beeri Bawl of Luchuirp
2. Perpentach of Balseraphs
3. Rhoanna of Hippus
4. Jonas of Clan

I'm happy that I got my 2nd pick. I'd have liked to played Luch though, their golems are slow but on a watery map with ships that's not so bad.

Players keep out, yadda yadda.








Performed minimal editing on the map, which I had to generate about 40 times before finding one that looked roughly satisfactory. In the end, I added one or two food resources, one wine each to two player's starts to make up for having minimal river commerce, and moved some mana around. I also replaced horses with gems on a curious 1-tile island at Beeri's start.


Interesting mix of leaders, I think Dave may be underestimating the advantages that Spiritual gives the Elohim; 2-move, 6/8, auto-healing Paramanders are nothing to sneer at, especially when an early Reliquary guarantees the Elohim can bulb the Runes. Thessalonica would have been my first pick, had I joined the game.


A shame nobody went with the Bannor, I suspect that in 50 games you could count their total number of appearances on one hand. I suppose these games are too fast-paced for them to get their advantages into play.

First of all, the good news : it seems like I was successful at making DIPLOMSG.LBX have additional entries. That means we can have additional message types the AI can use.
I've added one so far : When you ask for a treaty, roll a "success, but must pay gold/spell", and don't have gold or spell to pay, instead of getting the usual refusal text, the AI will say they were expecting a better offer. This effect won't appear if the AI was planning to refer to your previous misdeeds such as "I refuse to deal with someone who casts Armageddon.".

Any ideas on what else the AI should be able to say is welcome (but text space doesn't necessarily mean I can add anything I want of course.)

Also, while doing this I found a few bugs in treaty offers, it seems the AI wasn't doing the "yes but I want a spell for it" result correctly. It had a chance to not recognize this result at all and reject the offer, or ask for gold if the player had no available spell. I fixed both of these problems, while asking for gold should be possible to replace by a spell (which is the higher value in diplomacy), it shouldn't happen in the opposite direction.