Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

Turn 6:

Xian's borders grew as expected. The following turn, Xian will grow to pop 2 and we will work both spices and sugar. It is then, that I can judge when to buy the hill forest. I want to buy it at 50 gold. The city will most likely grow onto the citrus next anyway. I can buy the tile without a loan in 4 turns when I have 50 gold. That should be fine.

The barbarian scout is no longer visible, but there needs to be real caution, BRick. I suggest to send your current warrior east to check things out there. Also, you will need to find out whether there is a river to settle close to the cocoa. What a nice tile
I would send the warrior NE-E and then from there maybe southeasterly in the next few turns.



In the west, my warrior moves south to spot the coast as predicted. I will continue to move southeast to explore that area. My slinger will then head north from Xian to bust some fog.



As for scores, each team has one member with a city size 2 and one with size 1. I am hoping that thanks to the sugar tile, we will have a good run making up for my delayed settling.

There is one more thing we need and that is to find a natural wonder for the astrology boost. According to my spread sheet, I should reach 40% astrology research by turn 9 and then switch over to craftsmanship while BRick gets that civic with the help of the builder.

[Sullla]

Yeah, the one random thing that we need to find is a natural wonder for the Astrology boost. With two players and soon to be four units out exploring, hopefully we'll stumble across one soon. I would guess that there's one on each continent, and the natural wonders aren't located near any of the starts to prevent an early game boost from the natural wonder tile yields.

Brick, how close is your capital to finishing its warrior? I think the plan is to go Pottery and Craftsmanship research when the current Animal Husbandry/Code of Laws are finished, and to follow up the warrior with a builder. As Singaboy mentioned, he'll also have to remember to swap off Astrology for Pottery tech relatively soon. It's really easy when playing at China to forget that the boosts fill up 60% of the little circle instead of 50%.

[Singaboy]

It's really easy when playing at China to forget that the boosts fill up 60% of the little circle instead of 50%.

You are dead right and that's why I keep on reminding myself. Craftsmanship to 40% won't last that long either.

Ok, according to the spreadsheet,
Rome's warrior should only be done on T10, the builder by T19.
Xian's slinger T8, settler T17 or 18 (depending on amenities situation0

I am sure there should be another city state somewhere, as I assume each continent has three.

[BRickAstley]

Warrior is due in 2 turns.

   

Swapped into God King and the +5 vs Barbs policies. also noticed I wasn't on the sheep, moved my worked tile over there for the quicker size 3 growth.

Moved my warrior and I do believe I am about to stumble on a natural wonder. Piopiotahi by the yields. Sounds like a good one to settle towards to build up that cultural snowball.

   

I totally am going to research all of non-boost Craftsmanship before the builder comes out, so I'll probably be finishing both that and foreign trade around the same time.

[Singaboy]

Excellent! Some really juicy tiles over there and I will get the much needed astrology boost!

Let's hope there is some fresh water over there for a nice city spot

[BRickAstley]

Well I have the one fresh water tile in vision with the doubled bonus. I could just settle there, and my city center will get the +2 +2 right?

[Sullla]

Awesome news! Singaboy should be able to land the 60% boost for Astrology right and schedule and lock in a super cheap Holy Site district at his capital. Looks like it's Piopiotahi for the specific natural wonder: +1 culture and +1 gold for each adjacent tile. That suggests that the eastern ocean is probably over in that area too (note the two other tiles with the coastal housing boost). Brick, you are correct that settling on that tile will provide +2 culture and +2 gold on the center tile. I settled on top of a similar natural wonder in my current Single Player game and had the same effect. We obviously will keep scouting around to see if there's a better spot, but that looks like an ideal location for a second city.

[Singaboy]

Turn 7:

After hearing the great news of the Natural Wonder, my turn is somewhat boring I forgot to enable the UI Mod yet again. Anyway, Xian grew to size 2 and is working two tiles. Production remains at 6.3 hammers, science and culture have increased thanks to an additional citizen.

The slinger will be done next turn with a tiny overflow going into the settler that will be ready by T18. With the Eureka for Astrology around the corner, I should get the tech on T9 as well. I plan to switch to pottery too (no bonuses for the first tier non Eureka techs) to pave the way for Irrigation which is the tech to unlock my luxuries.

CoL will be done in 2 turns. As can be seen, bananas are next for tile expansion. I think, it might be better to buy the forest tile next turn, before I get my first tech as the cost shoots up. I did not realize this and did not send a trade deal

IMPORTANT: BRick, could you send me 10 gold during your coming turn, so I can buy the tile before the cost might go up due to Astrology being finished.




In other news, we are leading the score board which is great:

Rome is the only civ so far with a tech or civic. This means, that Rome is ahead of the others in the race for the Pantheon. Let's hope nobody else has found a faith based city state to nab a nice Pantheon bonus from us.

My score is 7 too due to the additional citizen. This means, that Woden's city has not grown yet, Archduke could still have a city growth this turn.
In fact, looking at the individual scores, we are leading in every single one of them. I guess many are tied, but surely, our culture output is the highest.



I am planning to move my warrior SW next to check the coastline before making a turn back towards Xian.

Question: Where should I drop down the Holy Site. I would go for the tile NW of the city as we can use the river tiles for other, more important stuff (like CH). Maybe, Sulla, you got a better plan?

[Singaboy]

By the way, now I spot that one of the players has a military value of 8 left (BRick's screenshots). This player is obviously involved in some barbarian skirmishes. Let's hope for the worst

@Sulla, I am currently working on the spreadsheet to estimate the production for
Settler -> Builder -> Holy Site

You were mentioning aiming for T40 for finishing Stonehenge. Let's see what I will work out.

Ok, I roughly went through the numbers (city size in Xian was kept at pop 3 for calculations, needs some fine tuning). The important dates:
T18: Settler in Xian done, move towards city #2 spot
T22: Settle city #2, starts builder working forest 2/2 tile
T24: Xian builder ready
T25: spices improved, T28 sugar improved
T30: Assuming a cost of 60, Holy Site finished in Xian, city#2 grows to pop 2 working forest tile + stones (total production of 5)
T33: Builder reaches Stonehenge for 2 charges on T33/34
T36: Builder city#2 is done, starts charging Stonehenge T36/37/38/39 -> wonder done

The only thing we need for that is corvee or the Pantheon. As the holy site is done by T30, state workforce should be implemented easily by T33. The Pantheon will come in on T35, resulting in additional boost for the charges.

I hope my spreadsheet stuff isn't wrong. In two turns, we will know the actual cost for the holy site. In addition, Xian will surely grow to pop 4 in the process and could work more productive tiles if necessary.

[Sullla]

Good to see that you guys are off to a strong start. While I agree we shouldn't put too much faith in very early numbers, it's always better to be in first than in last.

I agree with Singaboy that it's better to purchase the 1/3 forested plains hill tile for China right away before the costs scale up. Brick, if you have a chance to send 10 gold over to Singaboy, he should be able to grab that tile while it's still at the minimum cost of 50 gold. That gets three very powerful tiles for Xi'an: the 5/0 sugar, the 3/2 spices, and the 1/3 forested plains hill. We can see again the importance of that Cultural city state as the city will quickly grab the very good 3/1 bananas tile as well. Since Xi'an was settled on a plains hill tile, that city is going to have absolutely amazing early production: 9 production/turn at size 3 on Turn 11, without having Urban Planning done. And that's with +5 food surplus running as it grows towards size 4! Loving that capital city.

In the pantheon race, you can check everyone's position in terms of faith/turn on the world rankings. If someone is ahead of Rome, they've managed to hit a Religious city state. Singaboy, I completely agree with placing the Holy Site on the tile northwest of Xi'an. We can put much better stuff along the river later on; that reminds me to sit down and try to plan out where future districts will go sometime soon. The Holy Site on that tile does get +1 faith from the two nearby forests, and it's not worth trying to purchase over to a mountain or something for an extra +1 faith/turn. Here's one of the important lessons that the community hasn't fully learned yet: don't waste gold purchasing tiles for minimal adjacency bonuses. It's different if you're Australia or something, but in the vast majority of cases, purchasing tiles just to get +2 beakers instead of +1 beakers on your Campus district is a waste of money. Gold is better used for upgrading units, the single most powerful use of gold in Civ6. Long story short: do purchase tiles with much better yields in the early game so that your capital can work them, don't purchase tiles just to get a minimal adjacency bonus.

I look at the numbers in the online spreadsheet and they seem like they check out to me. If anything, I think Stonehenge will be a little easier to construct than what's listed here. We should be able to delay investing any charges until roughly Turn 35 when the pantheon (Monument to the Gods) and Corvee policy are in play for the +30% boost to builder charges. That puts China in this position:

Monument + Corvee: 19.5% per builder charge, 5.13 charges per wonder

So only five total charges needed. That means the builder coming out of Xian will have a free charge left over, or more accurately can use that charge before sinking the last three into the wonder. I'd suggest using that charge on the stone quarry, which would take it to 2/3 tile yield and also boost Masonry. I'd love to see China land the Pyramids by the Turn 55 range to hypercharge the wonder express train, but that's probably getting ahead of things. One other thing to remember: you can use two builder charges on the same turn if the first one comes from a builder with only a single charge remaining. Summing that together, I think the timetable could look something like this:

T18: Settler in Xian done, move towards city #2 spot
T22: Settle city #2, starts builder working forest 2/2 tile
T24: Xian builder ready
T25: spices improved, T28 sugar improved
T30: Assuming a cost of 60, Holy Site finished in Xian, city#2 grows to pop 2 working forest tile + stones (total production of 5)
T33: Builder reaches Stonehenge for 2 charges on T33/34 saves two charges for pantheon/Corvee combo
T36: Builder city#2 is done, starts charging Stonehenge T36/37/38 -> wonder done
T40: Use last builder charge to quarry stone for Masonry boost

We'll be able to see on the Great Person screen if anyone is getting close to a Great Prophet, so I don't think there's any great danger to worry about. I can't imagine any other team trying to race us to Stonehenge given the high cost (180 production) and the risk of losing everything with China in the game. Hopefully grabbing the first religion will be pretty safe... and then we screw everyone else by forcing them to get into the Medieval era and pay 120 Great Prophet points to get the second religion. Have fun with that everyone.