Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

@Modo,

I always liked it when your powerful cities in Civ are really powerful because they were groomed for the entire game. Here, you have problems getting size 10 cities and yet, their production doesn't scale at all with all the costs that sky rocket.
It turns out to be a game of chopping and trade route exploits.

[Singaboy]

By the way, I played my next turn as my part in this war is pretty non-existent.

The important stuff: Woden decided to raze Genova but didn't kill any units (I think)

[Modo]

@Modo,

I always liked it when your powerful cities in Civ are really powerful because they were groomed for the entire game. Here, you have problems getting size 10 cities and yet, their production doesn't scale at all with all the costs that sky rocket.
It turns out to be a game of chopping and trade route exploits.

Agreed, Sullla again has that great article about the Civ franchise in general and how an empire building game should be about building an empire...although that seems to be too unclear for most modern game development efforts.

Still, at the end of the day Civ6 has a lot to offer and hopefully regulating the pitfalls would allow MP to thrive and the devs to get consistent feedback; I can think of no community better suited for this than the one here.

[Japper007]

The chopping thing is completely true: if you look at the sub-150 Science Victory community at CFC all they do seems to be chopping, only building improvements to satisfy Eureka's (just look at this turn 128 science victory to get an idea https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVMu7m-wHQw ). They don't look at tile yields or fresh water at all, just how much "choppables" there are in first ring This is not how this game should be at all or how it's intended to be. What other civ game has ever had the most efficient play be to have like 5 improvements and over 40 cities by the end-game, with everything chopped to flatlands?

It's also pretty hard to solve this balance without changing the mechanic entirely:

You could remove production scaling altogether, both on chops and builds, but then you'd probably have to nerf endgame production cost as you could otherwise never build anything post-Medieval era or so. But this would turn the game into basically civ 4 without any expansion penalties: the current amenity system just isn't strong enough to provide decent incentive to stagger expansion. It would just turn into "who can REX the fastest?".

[Brian Shanahan]

Sulla, great that you can put all this into words, that I fail to pin down. I am really annoyed that my carefully developed cities can't produce anything meaningful unless there is something to chop. If not for the faith drafting, I would have had a pretty hard time to get those field cannons and cavalry. This will only get worse.

I agree with you that the game is pretty much a stalemate. I do not mind you bringing this up in the general thread proposing a three way draw. I am pretty certain that most players must be pretty worn out.

This also means, that Civ6 needs pretty much an overhaul of its mechanics which work fine in the early to mid game but (as you rightly pointed out) fall apart from then.

Apologies for putting a rantish post in a game thread.

As with Civ 5 1UPT destroys the other mechanics of the game (you have to tone down production to avoid too many units, you've to tone down growth to avoid too much production, you've to tone down gpt to avoid too much production conversion and so on*). It's just with the experience of the last game, the developers of Civ6 were able to somewhat mask the issues arising from sticking with 1UPT (but not the dreadful AI, that's obviously gone from turn 0. I'm almost certain though that keeping an AI that can't even work the basics of the game is deliberate 2K/Firaxis policy) up to the medieval period. After that the problems cannot be masked or cheated around.

And that's the main reason why I stayed away from the game even after the early optimism on the site. I couldn't see a way past the problems generated by 1UPT.

*Of course by using chopping to fix the production problem what they ended up doing was fixing the problem and then crashing through the other side and creating a worse problem as Sullla has just shown.

[Sullla]

OK Singaboy, with your blessing I'm going to post in the general thread and see what happens. If there's a general consensus to continue, does anyone reading this thread want to consider taking the Rome spot? Maybe it could even be BrickAstley.

[Modo]

Don't want to jinx it but I expect your post in the general thread to open the flood gates and several more replacement requests to pop up. And having a baby is an even longer commitment than this game

Irrespective of it, I wanted to take this chance to thank you both for your performance. I came here expecting to be thoroughly schooled and you guys didn't fail to deliver, the amount of things learned and confirmed in practice during this game needs some sort of Sullla level documentation.

I'll keep lurking and hopefully get the pleasure to nag you on your future endeavors as well.

[Singaboy]

If no replacement can be found and the other two teams do want to continue, I can take over Rome for the time being until the game finally comes to a conclusion. However, I would appreciate some form of feedback on the actions Rome should take. Of course, as I would not be playing in sequence, it would slow down the game

[Singaboy]

Having thought about it, I think I am fine with playing on taking both Rome and China if Sulla is fine with me taking down his nice empire. I might need some advice here how things had been planned out though.



Ok for the remainder of my turn:

With Nationalism done, the marsh harvest has increased by 4. Hangzhou needs now 120 food to grow and would get 124. Next turn, with an additional civic, it should stand at 112 versus 128, an overflow of 16. It should be enough to carry the city to pop 15 with the rice harvest which should yield around 160 food by then. With the overflow of 16 and some more minor overflow, the required 165 food to grow from 14 to 15 should be there.

The knight that is currently being built might be important to stop that musket on the run to pillage some Roman trade routes in the east. I hope that Lisbon is helping out to hunt down England's musket as well.




Time to adopt a few new policies for a bit: This will drop my income for one turn, but I need public works for one turn to produce three builders. Professional army is dropped in favor of War of Religion. Even though, there is currently no clash of units, it might come in handy sooner than expected.

The overview. Look at my lousy income due to the missing 25 gold from trade routes. Well, let's hope that Colonial Taxes will more than make up for that next turn when Public Works is kicked out. Beijing has started a commercial project for more gpt. I expect to switch to a trader in 2 turns with Kashgar finally finishing its harbor by hand. Next turn, Pagan's campus will be sped up as well for some additional research. That has dropped too due to Hangzhou no longer running a research project.

Next turn, I will gain 4 envoys due to natural history and normal accumulation. I am planning to sink two of them into a commercial city state for some additional gpt. That should bring the income back to around 130.
In the east, I drafted yet another knight. I am hoping to get a few more through production and drafting. With tanks, we are going to go for a final attempted push I would suggest. Honestly, I can;t wait for Rome to get battleships and smash the England navy. Yes, it can produce some additional ships, but Rome's huge navy which is promoted and then consists of much better units, should be able to sink them all.
By the way, the odds for sea dogs to capture your ships are soon very small. It's basically the strength difference and the promoted battleships should be pretty safe.



Either Sulla is going to smack the English units where Geneva used to be or you can give me the access and I shall do it. I also would need some advice on your plans of course. Good luck.

[Singaboy]

By the way, Sulla, how about running native conquest as victories over units from earlier eras give 50% of the strength value in gold. A battleship killing a frigate would give 22.5 gold, killing a caravel would be 25 gold, same goes for muskets etc. Having seen you kill almost 20 ships, that would be be around 450 additional gold, something not to be underestimated. If England keeps on producing units and Rome can manage to kill them off with battleships and tanks, it could result in some nice additional income.

Unfortunately, War of religion doesn't work for England, hence, native conquest might be the better option.