Some thoughts and comments after reading through teh's thread:
* Our opening moves were almost suspiciously mirrored. Same spot for the capital, same opening builds, same research path, same tiles improved. We even both went settler after builder and founded our second city on the exact same tile. I guess great minds think alike and all that.
* Here's where the first divergence took place in our build orders. We both went for a slinger after the settler in the capital, but then I went onto a second settler while you went for the early trader unit instead. Your second city also opened with a monument while I was able to open with a builder there because I had the free monument by virtue of being Rome. This is a good example of the early game power of Rome; since I could skip the monument in Ravenna, I turned out that necessary second builder from the second city, while you had to pause the capital to build it following the trader. I think this is the main reason why I seemed to wind up about 10 turns ahead of your expansion pace, largely due to the inbuilt early game advantages that my civ offered.
* Another minor micro note: you used the second builder to improve three tiles at Cologne: the coffee at the capital, the stone quarry, and the truffles. I wonder if it wouldn't have been better to mine one of the grassland hills at the capital with one of those three charges. You wrote at one point "Recall that [Aachen] is working the rice hex (5f), the horse pasture (2f3p 1culture), plains hill mine (1f3p) and the unimproved grassland hill (2f1p) at size 4, picking up the coffee plantation (2f1g 1culture) whenever it's at size 5." If you were working the grassland hill so consistently, I think it would have been more useful to mine that tile than to add +1 gold on the truffles by putting a plantation there, since you didn't need the second amenity yet. A small point, I know.
* A second divergence in build orders: you went monument into granary at Cologne, while I went builder into trader at the mirrored Ravenna. I would argue that this is another function of Rome's early game advantages, as I could skip the monument (since it appears for free) and then skip the granary in anticipation of building a Bath district later. This allowed me to have the second city work on empire-wide stuff (like the builder and trader) and therefore free up the capital to keep churning out settlers at a faster date. I don't think you did anything wrong here, only pointing out places where the early game advantage of Rome rears its head.
* I think you did an excellent job of watching what the other players were doing via the World Rankings (Demographics) screen and adjusting accordingly. This thread was a stark contrast to reading through the threads from TheArchduke and Yuris, who often seemed surprised or off balance by what other civs were doing. When I started chasing after my Great General, you immediately noticed it on the next turn and shifted to add more military to counter. I was actually thinking about attacking you, but then I saw your power rising in turn as you churned out slingers and archers, which then prompted me to ago after TheArchduke instead. I wanted to compliment this as an example of some fine gameplay - very nicely done.
You also did an excellent job of pushing back Yuris' probe with his Eagle Warrior by upgrading a couple slingers to archers. He would have lost if he attacked, and he knew it too.
* The use of the Great Scientist policy card to land Hypatia was a nice move. If this game had ended up going for a longer period of time, you would have had a major science edge over the other players, especially with the later control over Stockholm. I had thought of doing the same move, but gambled that I could use the Great General to conquer enough territory to make it irrelevant, and fortunately for me it worked.
* Your Hansa district placements were excellent and showcased exactly how to use them. This is Germany's big strength in Civ6, the huge production surge that comes online as soon as those districts complete. If we had all remained bottled up in our starting peninsulas, your position would have been excellent between the Great Scientist and all those Hansas. I think this game turned into a competition between Rome's early game advantages versus Germany's midgame production spike, and I was able to cut the game short enough that your civ's power didn't have enough time to be effective.
teh Wrote:Next thing, I declare war on Sullla. He might run away with the game if he conquers Archduke without any interruptions from me or Yuris, so I had to do it.
* Yeah, as I wrote in my thread at the time, this was absolutely the correct move to make. You couldn't afford to sit back and let me conquer TheArchduke's territory or the game would be effectively over. I was hoping I could complete the conquest while you were still working on getting your Hansas up and running, and while I think that was partially true, your civ still moved fast enough to cause me some real issues. From your perspective, it's a shame that Yuris decided to intervene in this war, although I think he had solid reasons to do some from his point of view, since your civ had locked him out of the central part of the map with the Frankfurt settlement.
Did you know how the city strength defensive formula was calculated while playing? I had the feeling that you weren't familiar with this, as it might have affected how you chose to position in units in and around cities that were coming under attack. It's also really a shame that you weren't able to finish the city walls in Frankfurt before Yuris attacked. I see they were about 3 turns away from finishing, and if Frankfurt had managed to complete walls, this would have been a very different game entirely. In restrospect, maybe building them before the granary and monument might have been helpful. (Or chopping one of the forests on the grassland hill tiles; you never chopped any of them, and that would have been a major boost in completing some of that city infrastructure.)
* Just wanted to say well that these military diagrams you created are awesome!
What program did you use to create those arrows? Much better-looking than the ones that I drew in Paint.
* At that one moment where I used a horseman to cover a pasture I was repairing next to Aquileia, I was terrified that you were about to send a huge surge of units against me, while you were equally terrified that I was about to attack in force. Meanwhile, my army was still far off in northern Rome, and your army was heavily tied up trying to take Frankfurt back from Yuris. Fog of war has some fun effects at times.
I would have liked to see the ending turns from your perspective, but I know what a grind it is to play losing turns, much less report in detail on them. Overall, I want to state that I think this was an excellently played game, and that most of the reasons this turned into a defeat were due to things completely beyond your control. You couldn't control what happened on the western side of the map, and did everything possible (declaring war, sending gold gifts, etc.) to help TheArchduke survive. You did a fine job of building up your civ, and if TheArchduke hadn't been conquered so early on, would have been in a very strong position going forward. I also think that your reporting of this game was very high quality indeed, and made for a real pleasure to read afterwards. Thanks for taking part in this game, and I hope you'll jump into another one of these Civ6 MP games down the road.
