[Spoilers] Ichabod's spoiler thread

[Ichabod]

Question: anyone knows if harvest production is multiplied by your amenities bonus?

[The Black Sword]

Pretty sure it is not affected by amenities.

[Ichabod]

Pretty sure it is not affected by amenities.

So, amenity bonus, despite being a % bonus, is treated differently from the % bonus from cards. Interesting.

I think I missed on the district discount bonus in the Government Plaza due to that weird refresh rule (that the criteria for the discount only refresh after a new tech/civic). Well, at least is the best district to do it, since it's cheaper and gives a lower discount (.75 instead of .60).

I'm planning on getting the discount on the Theater Square, then on a Campus next.

   

I played the next turn and, as expected, I chose monumentality. In a stroke of good luck, I met a cultural CS in the interturn (Vilnius, whose suzerain bonus wording makes no sense for me), which gave me a very easy quest, to get the Eureka for HBR. Since I have a builder that is a couple of turns away from building a pasture, it'll be an easy one.

I need to decide where to place my next cities. The good thing about monumentality and the Ancestral Hall is that I can place cities far away from my core without much harm. I can buy the settlers in my distant cities, I'll get a free builder from start and I can buy new builders with faith. My current idea is to focus on cities that can leverage my planned religion, using the free builders to chop and get a head start.

   

From my opponents, Woden and Kaiser got GA's, while Suboptimal and CMF got normal ages. I think Woden will go for Free Inquiry, since he won't have enough faith to get a good use out of monumentality. He has discounted harbors, to get a really good deal out of Free Inquiry. In that regard, I need to watch out as to not fall behind in tech and get crushed. Science Pingala in my Cap will help for now, I'm a few turns from him (just need to finish the GP). Then, I have some choice Campus placements.

I now very little about my other opponents. All of them went for Campus as the first districts, this much the GP screen tells me. Kaiser seems to be having a good game based on empire score (which I think is the most relevant). Suboptimal ties my Empire score, but he only has 15 civic points, which I think means no PP yet. CMF is lagging a bit, I think. But most of this is guess work.

   

This is probably the general direction of my next city. I'm considering settling the next one on the marble near the Caravan. The city won't have any housing, but there's a +8 HS spot 2W of it. If I plan things right, I get 2 forest chops in there on the first turn, which will be about 70% of the district cost gone. When the HS is ready, I'll have a size 1 city with 16 free production. From there, I just build an aqueduct on the place of the second forest and the city is ready. I just can't wrap my head around how much I'll be getting with so little investment. +16 production is more than 5 citizens working grassland mines after apprenticeship.

There's likely so great spots on that river near the warrior. I'm exploring there and I'll see if I can fit one or two cities there. I think it makes sense to expand in this general direction right now, since I need to give some support to Belem and considering the other directions of my empire seem to be very safe backfill land.

Ah, Hattusa built a Campus, so I need to conquer the city when I can. I'll start accumulating horses soon enough and I'll likely get 2/3 HC from my Capital after the project.

Finally, I think advancing an age does something with techs from the previous age. I had a bunch of techs that were one turn from completion. Now, the graph in the tech tree shows the whole circle completed, as if I already finished the tech. Civ 5 had a stupid known tech bonus (techs got cheaper for each player that got them, so you should always wait for your opponents to finish their techs first), I'm guessing Civ 6 has somethng similar, that encourages you to never get techs you don't need right now.

[Banzailizard]

Looking forward to seeing how this production strategy turns out. Don't have much productive to add but I would not support getting aggressive with Woden right now. Wait until you have a solid base of production and leverage that. I like gold as a second belief. Your production will mean you have units but you will still need to upgrade them, and that cost scales now.

[Ichabod]

What is your opinion in the new Work Ethic belief? Do you all think it's as powerful as I'm making it up to be? Or do you think I'm suffering from some SP delusion? With the current changes to religion, do you think it's more powerful than before or is still a bad choice? 

On a different note, is there some point about my game that you want me to clarify?

My take is that I'm playing a passable game. I should be planning better, for sure, but the overall strategy feels decent. Just a micro detail that lost me a lot was that I ended a turn with a Caravan unit 1t from finishing. But, I finished a tech in the same turn (that I don't think I needed), which bumped up the cost of the Caravan and left it short of finishing when I received the next turn. That 1t delay lost me 1  production in my third city, which meant that I finised the HS a turn later (the HS actually ended something like 87.9/88).

I lost my exploring scout and 2 warriors to barbs. One of them was due to very bad rolls, I think, though I put it in a very dangerous spot to clear the barb camp in that turn, since I think the barb camp was activated for a raid (I don't really understand how barb scouts work - they seem to appear and disappear randomly and get alerted or not randomly as well). The other one I used to soften up the barb spear in a camp, but I got flanked by another warrior. When running from that other warrior, I ended the turn on the face of yet another warrior, that finished my poor guy. So, that's some hammers down the drain.

[Ichabod]

   

As suggested, Woden went for the + science on Harbor dedication. He also is up to 4 cities and, if I’m reading his population points right, he’s bound to found his fifth one. He has very high production land, and I think there were some chops involved. On the flipside, he is probably not getting much from Pingala.

   

This region is a bit troublesome for Woden to settle, since I can make La Venta declare war on him, if I want to.

   

Right now, I feel like Santa Claus was late to bring my gift and the other kids are already playing with theirs. The turns just before a big objective are the worst, it deels like you are not making any progress.

   

I changed my policies to get the +2 envoys for the first one sent, as building the pasture would give me the first envoy in Vilnius. I think I’ll use my next envoy (the one I’ll get from the points) in Vilnius as well, to become Suzerain. Their boost is not that good, but the city has a very central position and it’ll reveal a lot of land for me. Hattusa will be captured before I have libraries, só there’s no point in investing there. My next next envoy (Theology) will go for Suzerainty of Fez and the bonus science it gives for religion spreads.

My next district will be a Theater Square, discounted, in Belem. When WE is finally in, it’ll be finished shortly. After that, I think it’s Campus time.

       

Next turn (turn 62, this screenshots are from turn 60), I’ll buy my Great Prophet and I’ll finish the Government Plaza, which will give the science promotion for Pingala. If I land the ToA, Rio de Janeiro will grow very fast and Pingala will be worth a lot. I’m keeping up with science against Woden, even though he already have 2 science Harbors. On the culture side, I’m doing very, very well. After Monarchy, I think I’ll head towards Mercantilism, só I can build Lumber Mills in rainforests. Those will be my main improvements across the land.

[Banzailizard]

What does your long term tech path look like. I think the Work Ethic belief sounds good, so what will you do with that production? Build out more? Attack Woden? What units will you use?

[Ichabod]

What does your long term tech path look like.  I think the Work Ethic belief sounds good, so what will you do with that production?  Build out more? Attack Woden? What units will you use?

For now, I want to settle a lot more cities. This will be done is a combination of high production cities + faith buys. It's a great think to be able to buy a settler in a size 2 city and get the next city in just a few turns, instead of waiting for it to move all the way from my core.

So, the next lots of turns will be devoted to building. Woden has the ability to keep up with me in science for now (perhaps I should sactually say the other way around), so I don't think I'll get a tech lead to make a attack profitable. My trump card to break the stalemate is my UU. I can attack Woden's second city and his Capital with my UU. And Belem is in a really advantageous position for other Woden cities. So, if things keep going in a stalemate pace, I think the moment to strike is when I get my UU. Woden will have Great Admirals, but I don't think they'll be able to handle MG's, if I can get them soon enough.

Meanwhile, I'll use my extra production to get extra districts, wonders and buildings.

But that's just a loose plan. I want to be in a strong position, so that I can take advantage of any opportunity that arrives.

[Ichabod]

Turn 63:

   

Yay! My very own religion. I got some bonus era points from the deal as well. It's nice that I reached a GA with almost the bare minimum points, because it makes it easier to get the following GAs.

   

As planned, we went with + production from HS adjacency and +3 gold per city with our religon. Since we had 2 HS's when founding the religion, we currently have 2 cities following it. For now, the religion is giving us +15 hammers and +6 gold. Unfortunately, we missed the needed culture for Theology by a bit of culture, so we can't adopt the +100% HS adjacency card next turn. Anyway, we'll get there soon enough.

   

What a beautiful sight. The HS is doubling my production here. In a couple of turns, it'll be tripling it. I plan to build a lot of infrastructure here in the next few turns, to get some Eurekas going. My next settler can perhaps wait for the Ancestral Hall to be ready (13 turns in São Paulo), so it's a good time for it. I'm guessing I'll go granary --> discounted TS (I think it'll be done in 2/3 turns) --> Watermill --> Ancient walls --> Settler. I'm not sure yet.

   

The other big piece of news was finishing the GP for a new governor promotion. Science Pingala makes our science reach 29 bpt. That's the same as Woden, who has a dedication for science going. Pretty good. Rio de Janeiro is currently on ToA, 7 turns to go, but there's a chop incoming (perhaps with the Wonder card, but I don't think so). ToA will give +4 food, +3 housing and +5 amenities. Considering we have the ecstastic amenity bonus in Rio de Janeiro, which I think we'll be keeping until size 11, I think the city will grow pretty well. That'll take care of the size 10 city for the Civil Servoce inspiration, on the way to a 6-slot government. Also, with Pingala, each pop point in the city is worth 1.85 beakers and 1.5 culture, so growing it is really beneficial.

[Ichabod]

I'm thinking about doing a video update for my next turn. Anyone knows a good software for that? I'm using a windows laptop, which is far from the most powerful thing in the world. Also, would you all be interested in a video turn report?