Chevalier Takes the Reins

[Rowain]

How do you feel about conceding the game to TBS?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

What? Concede? Why would I? 

I think players are usually far too quick to offer concession. It seems like they're willing to surrender just because someone has higher yields than them. But those yields have to be translated into concrete gains in a competent fashion before they count as a win. Someone having higher science than you doesn't mean you give up, all is hopeless, especially if your civ hasnt hit its power spike yet. 

I've conceded twice, in PBEM8 and PBEM13. In PBEM8, I conceded because my offensive into Cree lands was stalled, Archduke owned half the map, would be on my borders soon, and to add insult to injury a city-state razed one of my cities (that was, incidentally, when I learned city-states could raze cities). In PBEM13, I concede to TBS despite my empire being mostly intact, because I had lost total control of the seas and had no meaningful way to expand beyond Russia. Don't know what the other players were doing - Alhambram and Alhazard. 

Here, I see no reason why the game is over. TBS has high science, yes. But he only just got that high science a few turns ago. He hasn't hit key war-winning techs yet, and hasn't even really won his war. He can hit two Russian cities, sure, but Archduke has like 17 of those. He has Cossacks that can strike from the fog, pick off Cree units more or less at will, and then walk into the undefended cities once all of TBS's armies are dead. TBS also has to deal with Cornflakes' Rome, which as far as I know is intact. Kaiser declared war on Russia, so maybe that was discouraging, but again, Cossacks should be able to defend. For my part, I'm behind, but I have chances - slim chances, but not zero - to slip back into the game. 

It seems totally absurd to concede now. How is the game in any way decided? Outside of the single Khmer city that's been flipping back and forth, I don't know of a single city that's even changed hands! (I might have missed a war on the other continent, of course, but, hell, I can see the scores). We're going to call it 'coz TBS has high science? What nonsense!

Now, all that said, I am a replacement player, here to keep the game going, nothing more. I have terrible playing windows and it's a huge pain the butt to play. THus, all the above is my personal opinion only. I think no one should concede to TBS. But if the "real" players aren't having fun and want to call it, then let them do so. My own opinion, I think, should be totally irrelevant here. I'm just a seatwarmer, in the end.

[Rowain]

But if the "real" players aren't having fun and want to call it, then let them do so. My own opinion, I think, should be totally irrelevant here. I'm just a seatwarmer, in the end.

I disagree with that statement. Yes you did not lead the Australia in the beginning but you are leading it now. You are a "real" player now. At least if you play for the win which -how I understand the rest of your post- you really would like. So plain simple and for the record

You don't want to concede.

correct?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I do not believe that the game is decided, and that conceding right now would be incredibly premature. I think Russia and Rome are both in better positions to compete than I am, but I think all of us have a chance to win.

However, I also know that the players have been struggling with this game for 6 months now. I'm energetic and ready to go, but I have fresh plans and have only played 5 turns (in, like, 3 weeks, which is an admittedly concerning pace). If I am the lone holdout against ending it, then the game should end, if nothing else from pure exhaustion. So: If everyone except TBS concedes - specifically Archduke and Cornflakes, who are still contenders in my evaluation (no sense holding things up waiting for Kaiser to stir in his slumber) - then I concede also.

[Alhambram]

Since I did pass on my civ to Chevalier, I don't have right to talk about concession or not. But if I didn't stop and kept playing, I would have conceded right away due turn pace in this Snail-PBEM.
However if looking at scores, I argee with Chevalier that it is prematurely to concede right away.
TheArchduke and Cornflakes potentially could dogpile TBS and TheArchduke should be close or already got Cossacks judging his science. Or maybe situation is worse over there then Chevalier and I thinks.
I didn't look at others threads already because maybe Chevalier would have more questions about my decisions and I would like answer faithfully possible and not influenced by reading other threads.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Yeah, okay, the game was over.

It took me 40 turns to even catch Robo-TBS in science as my new cities were founded, and in those 40 turns he raced far ahead down the tech tree. It was impossible to get any golden ages since he ripped through the eras so quickly researching, and while I quickly expanded out to my target cities and those cities came online VERY fast in terms of pop and production, getting the districts, like I feared, took about 20 turns or so after the cities were founded, which w as just an incredible head start for Cree. I caught up to the robot because it can't build spaceports well, but TBS would have easily managed it.

Meanwhile, the war iwth Robo-Nubia was a disaster. He didn't reach Muskets, well, ever, as far as I can tell, but he DID reach Field Cannons/Cuirassiers very quickly. Compounding matters, the terrain in the north was a tangled mess of rivers, hills, and prepared Nubian defenses. I had a GG, a host of muskets, and field cannons, but it was a meatgrinder against the AI to burn two cities, and those were on my side of the river line. Beyond those, the remaining Nubian cities were well-ensconced behind rivers with defensive encampments.

I did make a mistake in that I didn't finish the Siege Tower before whatever tech obsoleted it, so it just vanished from the build queue and I had no means of attacking walls other than Bombards/Artillery, which dramatically slowed things down. And I was able to tech ahead to Artillery and Diggers and punch through there while the Robo-Amanitore was stuck at Field Cannons and Cuirassiers, but it was still a slog through the rough terrain. Human sub would 100% have bogged me down.

Compounding matters is the distance involved - it's just not possible ot launch an expeditionary force that far. You can't take an opponent's civ and profit by it, not in GS. The loyalty penalties made holding any city short of the capital extremely difficult. I had to burn the outer layer, and reshuffle policies to hold the capital suburbs - barely - long enough to take Mashed, after which Nubia tumbled into my hands. But that took until about turn 190 (my initial attack launched at turn 150, stalled, then I came back at turn 170 teched up and broke through). I still hadn't touched Khmer.

Maybe Archduke and Cornflakes would have outperformed their robotic counterparts in slowing down TBS, but I'm not confident. My chances of winning, which I put at about 10%, were in reality more like 1%. Lessons learned:

1)Push expansion early. Don't go tall.

2)Rushing is out. Buildering is new hotness, keep just enough of a force to deter someone else from invading and ruining your game. Unless you're Hungary. Loyalty, chops, and cheap ancient units make it tough to successfully rush early enough to matter. Attacks should come in the midgame and be designed to cripple an opponent, NOT benefit your own civ, which is tough to do. Capture city-states instead to profit from that military.

3)Settle near volcanoes! They blow shit up, sure, but MOST of the time they give fantastic yields that you don't have to improve! I experimented with improving and keeping a 1-charge builder around for repairs, but they often just wipe out the improvement entirely instead of pillaging it. NEvertheless, the improved yields mean volcanic tiles are as good as buildered tiles, with no effort. You can use your AH builder to slap down farms or lumber mills in other key areas and have a city ready to grow to size 4-5 with no effort on your part.

4)Internal trade routes beat the pants off external. Food and Production dramatically outweigh even lucrative gold, science, and culture yields, because their snowball effect is so much greater. Compounding returns. Avoid foreign routes nad run internal ones as much as possible. My cities took off much more quickly once I abandoned the fool's gold of Kumasi trade routes. Maybe run Kumasi early to get some key government civics, but culture drops off in value after the late Classical Era or so.

5)Australia is stupid good. I had over 800 science per turn by turn 180, mostly from the fantastic campuses - each one was 8 adjacency minimum with the doubling card, plus Rationalism, Fez, and Hattusa piling it on. I built the Eiffel Tower just for fun, too. If we'd pushed our settlers out about 20-30 turns earlier, so those campuses were coming online alongside TBS, we'd have been in a great spot. Not sure what the right play after that is - conquest of sub is hard, Khmer is more doable but loyalty pressure has to be carefully planned for, plus a fight with Nubia right after, but a punitive raid on the Cree is tough to do since TBS had mostly inland cities. I think peaceful expansion was the name of the game, with a push for probably a science win since domination seems all-but impossible to pull off on such a large map. I would stick to 4-5 player games in the future- 5 seems like the sweet spot, to be honest (PBEM2, PBEM5, PBEM4 after Japper died, PBEM12).

[Sullla]

Compounding matters is the distance involved - it's just not possible ot launch an expeditionary force that far. You can't take an opponent's civ and profit by it, not in GS. The loyalty penalties made holding any city short of the capital extremely difficult. I had to burn the outer layer, and reshuffle policies to hold the capital suburbs - barely - long enough to take Mashed, after which Nubia tumbled into my hands. But that took until about turn 190 (my initial attack launched at turn 150, stalled, then I came back at turn 170 teched up and broke through). I still hadn't touched Khmer.

I also think that this is a really serious problem for Civ6 Multiplayer that we haven't been seeing yet because none of the Gathering Storm games have lasted very long or had combat that extended past the early game: the loyalty mechanic basically makes it impossible to capture enemy cities, full stop. Capturing mature cities in the enemy core just causes them to revolt away in a few turns. It's one of the worst-designed mechanics that I can remember in the Civilization series, like bringing back Civ3 culture flips again. Combine this together with the fact that city defenses are *MUCH* stronger in Gathering Storm, with battering rams not working against anything but Ancient Walls, and you have a game that's set up to make conquests almost impossible. What that means for Civ6 MP is unclear but I doubt it's anything good. This is one of those places where Realms Beyond may have to think about implementing a mod to tone down or remove entirely the loyalty mechanic entirely. Again, we certainly need more data on this since the Gathering Storm games haven't made it too far yet, but there are real problems here thanks to an incredibly stupid gameplay mechanic.