I also still lean SIP. Moving any direction seems like a downgrade - south or east pushes the PFHs to 2nd ring, the PFH deer to 3rd, moving west loses fresh water, and moving north pushes the rice to second ring, plus we sacrifice a forest.
Oppo analysis -
The interesting thing to me is that everyone had at least GS and 1 R&F civ available, but three of the four chose base civs (and even base leaders, in the case of Cornflakes). If nothing else, it shows that Firaxis isn't powercreeping old content with new. They've actually done a pretty good job releasing mostly balanced civs, with a few exceptions. There are a lot more underpowered civs than overpowered ones, which is good in a primarily SP game.
The Archduke - Archduke is, simply put, the biggest warmonger in Civ 6. His preferred playstyle is to find a weak neighbor, eat him as soon as possible, and move on. He'll start with nearby city-states, then pounce on his nearest neighbor, and try to snowball from there. He has very good tactical skills, having thoroughly demolished several opponents in wars that seemed sort of evenly matched at the start. Where he can stall out, though, is if he CAN'T find that neighbor to eat. IF that happens, he'll grow indecisive and spend a long while wavering about his long-term strategic path, and start to slip behind. Then he'll build up and attack anyway, in all likelihood. So the main trick with facing the Archduke is
a)Be spiky enough that you can successfully resist an attack. If he neighbors us, assume he is going to rush us.
b)Hope your neighbors do the same.
If both these things happen, he should fall off.
Previous Civ 6 games:
PBEM1 - Rome, got famously "caught with his pants down" by Sullla, but put up an okayish fight in the face of overwhelming odds. Biggest thing is he learned a lot from this game. teh and yuris never played Civ 6 again, Archduke did, and learned.
PBEM2 - Pericles, got in on-again, off-again wars with his neighbors, fell behind in development and eventually devoured by Alhambram and oledavy.
PBEM4 - England, did a great job eating local city-states to catapult his civ ahead, and smashed Singaboy's navy. Neglected the VA, which allowed oledavy to outbuild all the other civs at sea combined.
PBEM6 - Macedon, crushed suboptimal's Australia in open battle and cruised to victory.
PBEM7 - Germany, surprisingly peaceful all game. Wavered between attacking Sullla/Singaboy and Woden/me, but probably his best job building. Still fell behind other civs, however, PBEM7 ended in a draw between the 3 surviving teams.
PBEM8 - Mongolia, chariot-rushed Emperor K, then did the same to Rowain. Rolled on to Alhambram and won via concession.
PBEM11 - Russia, initially stymied by Cornflakes, then successfully devoured Banzailizard, then came back to finish off Cornflakes. Lost because rho21 conquered his continent first and won control of the seas.
PBEM12 - Netherlands. Strong initial start after quickly conquering not only his but his neighbor's city-states. An early war that didn't end in conquest slowed him down, then he spent hte rest of the game wavering between attacking me and Emperor K until finally my Arabian faith-science economy was able to win out.
PBEM 14 - Scotland. This game ended quickly. It had a weird set up, Rowain rage-quitting, and things got personal between Rowain and Archduke. Main thing to note is even as Scotland Archduke was planning on devouring both Rowain and Alhazard.
Japan is honestly the most predictable choice for him. Mongolia and Nubia suit his warmongery preferences, but he's won as Mongolia before and is playing as Nubia. One thing he never does is repeat civs. He disparaged Mali in his duel with Alhambram, and he hates buildery civs like Kongo and Cree. Japan gets half-price Holy Sites, Encampments, and Theater Squares, which is a great bonus that helps with building all districts due to the discount formula. He also gets double adjacencies - from his thread title it looks like he's emulating oledavy's PBEM4 Japan, planning to pack a bunch of districts into a huge metropolitan area. With the government plaza things could get silly.
But that's ultimately a buildery game, and I don't see him having the patience (or his opponents allowing him) to do that. Otherwise, Japan is kind of bland. The Samurai is not a great UU. It has to be built from scratch, which means it's expensive and hard to mass a bunch of to surprise an opponent. Plus, it's a pike replacement (?), which makes it weak to your basic swords 'n muskets. The coastal bonus is good, so it'll depend on how much coast this map has. Try to avoid fighting him near the sea, if possible.
Bottom line, he could surprise us by attempting to build, but the main thing to do is not to neglect military and watch him like a hawk. In the long-term, if he can't conquer anyone, he should be manageable.
Alhambram - A slow starter who has strong lategames, usually. Alhambram has a hard time getting his civs off the ground initially, but he is patient and crafty and plays the metagame well. He monitors who's weak and who's strong, and has a knack for striking at the right moment to eat a weak neighbor and catapult himself ahead. His Cossack attack on Woden in PBEM2 is the stuff of legends - as is the sneak religious victory he pulled in the same game. The main weakness is the long time he takes to get started, which should let you pull ahead early. As long as you maintain that lead, you can probably stay safe.
Previous Civ 6 games -
PBEM2, Russia. Started really slow, got hemmed in to a few tundra cities by Woden. He conquered two nearby city-states and suddenly became competitive, then split the Archduke with oledavy and Singaboy. Finally, after 90 turns of peace with Woden (which I'm sure Woden regrets to this day), he reached Cossacks and unleashed an unstoppable attack. Woden even had Infantry and could do nothing, as his Chinese empire crumbled. Alhambram won outright via religious victory since apart from Woden (who was conquered) the other 3 players all neglected religion.
PBEM5, Arabia. Started slow again getting the faith economy going. Was able to successfully conquer Japper's Rome in a late Classic/early Medieval war, but half of Rome also fell to pindicator's America. Pin had snowballed too hard while Alhambram was getting up and running and pin won this game.
PBEM8, Netherlands. His start improved, as his Netherlands was one of the early contenders, however, by turn 100 I had significantly outexpanded him as Korea. It didn't matter in the end since Archduke conquered the entire other half of the map.
I think this is his first game since PBEM8, which ended more than a year ago.
Hungary - Hungary is a warmongery civ. I haven't played as Hungary, so I'll need to do some test games at a PC Bang this weekend, but the main strength of the civ is the ability to levy city-states and pair them with Hungary's UUs to conquer. There is builder stuff, too, around rivers - Hungary can build cheap trans-river districts, which synergizes well with Commercial Hubs to get lots of gold for city-state levies. I think we should consider investing early production in a military to conquer our nearest city-state neighbors with Hungary in the game. Otherwise, every CS is a sword of Damocles and their bonuses aren't worth the risk, to my mind.
I expect Alhambram to take some time to set things up, probably getting a few suzeraintys (or if he's sneaky, holding envoys until he's ready to strike) and building up a warchest of gold from Commercial Hubs, then when his UU comes online he'll strike and attempt to snowball to victory, since his UU alone can be upgraded into a SECOND UU.
Cornflakes - Cornflakes is the MVP of the forum, and seems like a really wonderful human being on the whole, but his Civ 6 experience is limited. He replaced Mike the Cheater in PBEM7, taking over a doomed Khmer civ and fighting Woden and I to the end, then played his own game in PBEM11.
I recommend his PBEM11 thread a lot. He played a fantastic early game as Brazil, rapidly building a huge lead in science and culture. I learned a lot from his thread (he prioritizes production above all, and recommends going warrior first, off the top of my head). However, his warfare seems like the weakest part of his game - he didn't fight a successful offensive war as Brazil, when he probably would have been advised to try to attack either of his neighbors. Asi t was, he allowed Archduke to conquer Banzai and then turn the united empires against him, driving him off the continent. He fought well, though, doing unconventional strikes with a navy even as he lost his landward empire, and survived to fight on in the islands.
India is a bit of an odd choice to me. He had Phoenicia, Zulu, Scotland, Macedonia, and Poland also to choose from (leaving off Brazil for obvious reasons). Phoenicia does seem more naval oriented, and continent-dependent, and has the goofy Loyalty mechanic, so I can see skipping that. Poland really only has the buffed Market going for it, everything else is kind of gimmicky (but I really want to try those gimmicks sometime). But Scotland, Zulu, and Macedon all seem like strong choices. Scotland monopolizes great people and gets really large production and science bonuses from its ability (10% empire-wide adds up). The highlander and golf course are weak, but when you have all the GS and GE you want your civ can do anything anyway.
Zulu is slow to start, but if it reaches Mercenaries (which is REALLY CLOSE) it gets sole access to corps. It has a half-cost district, which is a great economic bonus, and while the Impi is mediocre, it has a fantastic snowball mechanic - more corps/armies appearing as you conquer cities. Some Civ VI wars can devolve into traffic jams, where quality matters over quantity, and the Zulu, between Great Generals and Corps, will monopolize quality. I think they're a really intriguing civ. Maybe my own bias - Cornflakes wants to build and not warmonger? That would also explain giving Macedonia a miss. Macedonia let Archduke cruise to victory in a similar 4-player game.
India just doesn't seem like it has a lot going for it. Stepwells are fine, you never have housing issues. The Varu are slightly nerfed since their ability doesn't stack, but are still a strong UU that's relevant for a long time. The dharma bonus is weak, though - you need multiple religions to be founded AND you need them to spread to your cities. I think FIraxis balanced religion around the missionary spam the AI does, because passively, religion does not spread, like, at all. And humans don't fling missionaries at each other, they send armies instead.
So Cornflakes is a big ol' ? to me. He's smarter than I am, so I'm sure he's up to something. But I don't know what it is. I expect him to make my jaw-drop building as India and looking scary, but then he'll get stuck in a war with Alhambram or Archduke and fall behind. We have to hope they don't conquer him, which I don't think they will - he can defend himself, for certain.
Big Bottom Line: There are sharks in the water. Let's not fall for wonder-whoring and neglect our military.
Oppo analysis -
The interesting thing to me is that everyone had at least GS and 1 R&F civ available, but three of the four chose base civs (and even base leaders, in the case of Cornflakes). If nothing else, it shows that Firaxis isn't powercreeping old content with new. They've actually done a pretty good job releasing mostly balanced civs, with a few exceptions. There are a lot more underpowered civs than overpowered ones, which is good in a primarily SP game.
The Archduke - Archduke is, simply put, the biggest warmonger in Civ 6. His preferred playstyle is to find a weak neighbor, eat him as soon as possible, and move on. He'll start with nearby city-states, then pounce on his nearest neighbor, and try to snowball from there. He has very good tactical skills, having thoroughly demolished several opponents in wars that seemed sort of evenly matched at the start. Where he can stall out, though, is if he CAN'T find that neighbor to eat. IF that happens, he'll grow indecisive and spend a long while wavering about his long-term strategic path, and start to slip behind. Then he'll build up and attack anyway, in all likelihood. So the main trick with facing the Archduke is
a)Be spiky enough that you can successfully resist an attack. If he neighbors us, assume he is going to rush us.
b)Hope your neighbors do the same.
If both these things happen, he should fall off.
Previous Civ 6 games:
PBEM1 - Rome, got famously "caught with his pants down" by Sullla, but put up an okayish fight in the face of overwhelming odds. Biggest thing is he learned a lot from this game. teh and yuris never played Civ 6 again, Archduke did, and learned.
PBEM2 - Pericles, got in on-again, off-again wars with his neighbors, fell behind in development and eventually devoured by Alhambram and oledavy.
PBEM4 - England, did a great job eating local city-states to catapult his civ ahead, and smashed Singaboy's navy. Neglected the VA, which allowed oledavy to outbuild all the other civs at sea combined.
PBEM6 - Macedon, crushed suboptimal's Australia in open battle and cruised to victory.
PBEM7 - Germany, surprisingly peaceful all game. Wavered between attacking Sullla/Singaboy and Woden/me, but probably his best job building. Still fell behind other civs, however, PBEM7 ended in a draw between the 3 surviving teams.
PBEM8 - Mongolia, chariot-rushed Emperor K, then did the same to Rowain. Rolled on to Alhambram and won via concession.
PBEM11 - Russia, initially stymied by Cornflakes, then successfully devoured Banzailizard, then came back to finish off Cornflakes. Lost because rho21 conquered his continent first and won control of the seas.
PBEM12 - Netherlands. Strong initial start after quickly conquering not only his but his neighbor's city-states. An early war that didn't end in conquest slowed him down, then he spent hte rest of the game wavering between attacking me and Emperor K until finally my Arabian faith-science economy was able to win out.
PBEM 14 - Scotland. This game ended quickly. It had a weird set up, Rowain rage-quitting, and things got personal between Rowain and Archduke. Main thing to note is even as Scotland Archduke was planning on devouring both Rowain and Alhazard.
Japan is honestly the most predictable choice for him. Mongolia and Nubia suit his warmongery preferences, but he's won as Mongolia before and is playing as Nubia. One thing he never does is repeat civs. He disparaged Mali in his duel with Alhambram, and he hates buildery civs like Kongo and Cree. Japan gets half-price Holy Sites, Encampments, and Theater Squares, which is a great bonus that helps with building all districts due to the discount formula. He also gets double adjacencies - from his thread title it looks like he's emulating oledavy's PBEM4 Japan, planning to pack a bunch of districts into a huge metropolitan area. With the government plaza things could get silly.
But that's ultimately a buildery game, and I don't see him having the patience (or his opponents allowing him) to do that. Otherwise, Japan is kind of bland. The Samurai is not a great UU. It has to be built from scratch, which means it's expensive and hard to mass a bunch of to surprise an opponent. Plus, it's a pike replacement (?), which makes it weak to your basic swords 'n muskets. The coastal bonus is good, so it'll depend on how much coast this map has. Try to avoid fighting him near the sea, if possible.
Bottom line, he could surprise us by attempting to build, but the main thing to do is not to neglect military and watch him like a hawk. In the long-term, if he can't conquer anyone, he should be manageable.
Alhambram - A slow starter who has strong lategames, usually. Alhambram has a hard time getting his civs off the ground initially, but he is patient and crafty and plays the metagame well. He monitors who's weak and who's strong, and has a knack for striking at the right moment to eat a weak neighbor and catapult himself ahead. His Cossack attack on Woden in PBEM2 is the stuff of legends - as is the sneak religious victory he pulled in the same game. The main weakness is the long time he takes to get started, which should let you pull ahead early. As long as you maintain that lead, you can probably stay safe.
Previous Civ 6 games -
PBEM2, Russia. Started really slow, got hemmed in to a few tundra cities by Woden. He conquered two nearby city-states and suddenly became competitive, then split the Archduke with oledavy and Singaboy. Finally, after 90 turns of peace with Woden (which I'm sure Woden regrets to this day), he reached Cossacks and unleashed an unstoppable attack. Woden even had Infantry and could do nothing, as his Chinese empire crumbled. Alhambram won outright via religious victory since apart from Woden (who was conquered) the other 3 players all neglected religion.
PBEM5, Arabia. Started slow again getting the faith economy going. Was able to successfully conquer Japper's Rome in a late Classic/early Medieval war, but half of Rome also fell to pindicator's America. Pin had snowballed too hard while Alhambram was getting up and running and pin won this game.
PBEM8, Netherlands. His start improved, as his Netherlands was one of the early contenders, however, by turn 100 I had significantly outexpanded him as Korea. It didn't matter in the end since Archduke conquered the entire other half of the map.
I think this is his first game since PBEM8, which ended more than a year ago.
Hungary - Hungary is a warmongery civ. I haven't played as Hungary, so I'll need to do some test games at a PC Bang this weekend, but the main strength of the civ is the ability to levy city-states and pair them with Hungary's UUs to conquer. There is builder stuff, too, around rivers - Hungary can build cheap trans-river districts, which synergizes well with Commercial Hubs to get lots of gold for city-state levies. I think we should consider investing early production in a military to conquer our nearest city-state neighbors with Hungary in the game. Otherwise, every CS is a sword of Damocles and their bonuses aren't worth the risk, to my mind.
I expect Alhambram to take some time to set things up, probably getting a few suzeraintys (or if he's sneaky, holding envoys until he's ready to strike) and building up a warchest of gold from Commercial Hubs, then when his UU comes online he'll strike and attempt to snowball to victory, since his UU alone can be upgraded into a SECOND UU.
Cornflakes - Cornflakes is the MVP of the forum, and seems like a really wonderful human being on the whole, but his Civ 6 experience is limited. He replaced Mike the Cheater in PBEM7, taking over a doomed Khmer civ and fighting Woden and I to the end, then played his own game in PBEM11.
I recommend his PBEM11 thread a lot. He played a fantastic early game as Brazil, rapidly building a huge lead in science and culture. I learned a lot from his thread (he prioritizes production above all, and recommends going warrior first, off the top of my head). However, his warfare seems like the weakest part of his game - he didn't fight a successful offensive war as Brazil, when he probably would have been advised to try to attack either of his neighbors. Asi t was, he allowed Archduke to conquer Banzai and then turn the united empires against him, driving him off the continent. He fought well, though, doing unconventional strikes with a navy even as he lost his landward empire, and survived to fight on in the islands.
India is a bit of an odd choice to me. He had Phoenicia, Zulu, Scotland, Macedonia, and Poland also to choose from (leaving off Brazil for obvious reasons). Phoenicia does seem more naval oriented, and continent-dependent, and has the goofy Loyalty mechanic, so I can see skipping that. Poland really only has the buffed Market going for it, everything else is kind of gimmicky (but I really want to try those gimmicks sometime). But Scotland, Zulu, and Macedon all seem like strong choices. Scotland monopolizes great people and gets really large production and science bonuses from its ability (10% empire-wide adds up). The highlander and golf course are weak, but when you have all the GS and GE you want your civ can do anything anyway.
Zulu is slow to start, but if it reaches Mercenaries (which is REALLY CLOSE) it gets sole access to corps. It has a half-cost district, which is a great economic bonus, and while the Impi is mediocre, it has a fantastic snowball mechanic - more corps/armies appearing as you conquer cities. Some Civ VI wars can devolve into traffic jams, where quality matters over quantity, and the Zulu, between Great Generals and Corps, will monopolize quality. I think they're a really intriguing civ. Maybe my own bias - Cornflakes wants to build and not warmonger? That would also explain giving Macedonia a miss. Macedonia let Archduke cruise to victory in a similar 4-player game.
India just doesn't seem like it has a lot going for it. Stepwells are fine, you never have housing issues. The Varu are slightly nerfed since their ability doesn't stack, but are still a strong UU that's relevant for a long time. The dharma bonus is weak, though - you need multiple religions to be founded AND you need them to spread to your cities. I think FIraxis balanced religion around the missionary spam the AI does, because passively, religion does not spread, like, at all. And humans don't fling missionaries at each other, they send armies instead.
So Cornflakes is a big ol' ? to me. He's smarter than I am, so I'm sure he's up to something. But I don't know what it is. I expect him to make my jaw-drop building as India and looking scary, but then he'll get stuck in a war with Alhambram or Archduke and fall behind. We have to hope they don't conquer him, which I don't think they will - he can defend himself, for certain.
Big Bottom Line: There are sharks in the water. Let's not fall for wonder-whoring and neglect our military.
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.