[Spoilers] The games they are a changin' - Ichabod Civ 6 PBEM 3 as England

[Ichabod]

I have to say I'm amazed that we haven't found borders yet.  Could Japan be in one of the corners that we've gone by?  Or do we really have this much land to move into?  Either way it seems we want to focus our expansion efforts to the east.  (And want to get a unit out west eventually too!)

My bet is that Japan is east of Kumasi. There's a chance we'll find a neighbour to our west, but right now I doubt it. It's worth noticing that I haven't seen Japan's scout after he went west. Hopefully this means we have a lot of land in that direction.

After that 2nd settler is out I think we want to get the military builds done.  If you find a spot where you get good overflow then that would possibly a good turn to put that into something else, like the campus.  But I would like us to get an attack force for Yerevan to get built pretty quickly.  With the capital that is looking like ~11 turns to build 2 more warriors and 2 archers.  (If we build 2 slingers and upgrade them after Archery then it drops to about 9 turns.)  Then we can look at attacking Yerevan around turn 42-45 range. But we may need to use our current military for the Crater Lake city and spend a couple more turns building units at the capital...  As for the capital, I wouldn't buy any tiles until we can get both wheat and I wouldn't buy both wheat until we have a Water Mill in the capital so they can be 4 food tiles.  (And then 5 food when we get that nice farm triangle with Feudalism.)

I would like one of our new cities to build an Encampment, but I'm not sure which one.  Crater Lake city seems like a good spot to build a Royal Port, but that's probably not going to be until after it hits size 4.  It could also consider a Holy Site with the adjacency bonus from the natural wonder.  Banana city also looks like a good spot for a potential encampment; with all it's jungles it could also be a spot to plant a Campus early on.  

Agreed. Military is next. I think the crater lake city will start on a builder, because it has decent tiles to improve (horses and wheat, mainly). But the Bana City can also help the military builds. We get 7 hpt in that city while building military, at size 1. Pretty decent.

The Crater Lake city can probably get an encampment later in the game, but what speaks against it right now is that the medium term production potential from that city is low (no hills in the first and second rings). We can rush a district with chops, but the actual unit production won't have any forests left for it. I like the idea of getting a Holy Site there, even if it still takes a while.

Due to production needs, I think the encampment has to be on the Banana Site or the Capital. Probably on both, but as a first order of business, probably the banana site. We can chop forests to get it done and there's decent production avaiable, after some culture expansion.

Regarding buying tiles, lets save gold and due a massive buy up when we can revolt into Land Surveyors for a quick turn.

Side note:  Kumasi could be really good for us if we can get Suzerain status over that city state as well...  If we had to choose between Geneva and Kumasi which would you prefer?

I think Kumasi will be a very disputed CS, so my thoughts right now is that we should just conquer it. It seems like a nice border with Japan, if they are indeed to our East. Hopefully they are not that close to Kumasi themselves.

Anyone knows how City State technology acquisiton works in Civ 6? I think we could try making Yerevan build a Holy Site for us, before we conquer them. Probably a long shot, but who knows?

From my experience, it would seem that religious city states build their district the fastest.

Hey, Ilios!

That's useful to know. I wonder if it's connected to the number of envoys, like CS border expansion (in this game, both CSs that have someone with 2 envoys invested have had a border expansion, while no other CS had). Hopefully that's not the case and they end up building one for us. It would be massive (basically, a free religion from them).

Not getting my hopes up, because all tiles around Yerevan are jungle or coast. So they'd need both BW and Astrology to get a Holy Site up. I'm not sure how CSs acquire technology, but it's hard to believe they'll do it before we have enough units to conquer them. If I see them already building the HS when we are ready to attack, I might wait for them to finish it. Otherwise, I think is better to just go and capture the city.

[Ichabod]

New city. Building military, as explained above. I went for the warrior, because we need some protection right now and slingers are too fragile.



A visitor from the south. On the following turn, he went deeper into our borders, instead of running back. We'll finish a warrior 2 turns after the settler, combining overflow and natural production. I'll see if I can kill that scout, otherwise I'll plop the warrior on that narrow passage and keep him fortified on the hill/forest tile. Our south is very easy to defend from barbs, so i'm not that worried right now.

[pindicator]

Oh yeah, I completely forgot about the 2nd city being able to produce units as well! In that case I would expect us to be able to have enough gold to upgrade only 2 slingers into archers by the time we can build the slingers -- if that makes sense. In other words, it takes us 6 turns to save up the amount of gold needed to upgrade a slinger to an archer, but it is only 1 extra turn production at the capItal to build an archer over a slinger. Considering we only have 40g now, we could use all our gold in 8t to upgrade 3 slingers, or it might be better to just research archery and build the archers, saving the gold for other purposes. But that would probably mean not waiting for the eureka for killing a barb with a slinger.

So it's probably some combination of building archers and upgrading slingers, ideally also with the eureka

[Woden]

Looks like Victoria @ CivFanatics came through for you.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/a...ks.620084/

[Ichabod]

Looks like Victoria @ CivFanatics came through for you.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/a...ks.620084/

Yeah, it's pretty useful info. Hopefully we get to know even more after testing. 

Taking that info into account, it seems Yerevan may not been distant from starting a HS. Hopefully they decide to gor BW and Astronomy before Masonry and walls. Capturing the city between the HS finished and the walls only started would be the best outcome. 

[Ichabod]

New turn and we finished Foreign Trade. I kept the same civic cards, because we won't be building any builders in the short term (and the +1 hammer per city card is better when building a builder for third city). New civic is Early Empire. We'll likely need three cities up to get the inspiration, because we have a food poor start.



New settler is up and we didn't lose a size, as expected. Pretty nice.

Our little farmer's gambit is about to be punished, though. Hopefully we have defenses up before it happens. I looked for information about scout behaviour in the internet, and it seems they don't pillage tiles, only traders. So, our sheep tile is safe, and we can even work it, despite the enemy occupying the tile. The scout went deeper into our lands because they don't care about seeing borders, they only get the ! activation when they see a city center. Now, this little chap will go back to his camp and it'll start spawning units to kill us. It'll likely take a while, though, due to the harsh terrain.

Barb camps can spawn horses if there's a free horse tile at least 5 tiles from the camp. Hopefully this southern camp doesn't have one. But early horsemen have reduced strength, the barbs only start churning out full strength horses after 50% of the playres already teched HBR, it seems. I think a fully fortified warrior on the defensive terrain can keep us safe, and we'll have time to place him there.



There's also trouble up here. The horse archer is a range 1 unit, thankfully. It's worth noticing that, if I understand correctly, when we settle our third city, this camp will lose its access to horse units, because we'll be taking the source of horses for ourselves.

I see 2 options here. We can go for an attack on Yerevan ASAP, keeping perhaps just a warrior on the third city for defense, or we can take a bit longer with Yerevan and try to clear this camp for the Eurekas and extra safety. Better yet, I think the only question here is: do we tech archery by ourselves or do we wait for the Eureka (like Pindicator pointed out)? I'm starting to lean towards teching it by ourselves. We'd need to go out of our way to get a kill with the slinger, while having archers ready to be built would make killing the barbs quicker, allowing taking Yerevan earlier, while also clearing the camp.

I think it depends on how soon we want to start building archers/having them built to start an attack. That question is tied to how many warriors we'll need and what we expect to do with our units in the following turns. Looking at the current situation, I don't think there's any chance for us to kill a unit with the slinger in the next following turns, 10 turns is perhaps the best we can expect. Meanwhile, we can finish archery in 5 turns, allowing archers to kill the camp and preparing the attack on Yerevan.

Right now, I think we have good science and good hammer output for military. We lack gold. Our objective is to expand as fast as possible. All this considered, I think we should just tech archery and forget about the Eureka. In the long run, the 27 science from that Eureka will likely be meaningless and not help the snowball much (Civ 6 really doesn't pay off all that much for early science). But the faster access to archers can give us perhaps 2 turns ealier Yerevan + safety when clearing Camps. So, baring any changes, I think we should just bite the bullet and tech archery without the Eureka.

And here's a compliment to Civ 6 design. Eurekas don't change, and that led me to believe it would just make every early game play the same. But the thing about Eurekas is the timing of them. Identifying the situations where teching a tech/civic before the Eureka is avaiable is the right play, that leads to very interesting decisions. Pretty nice.



Scout found another CS, the commercial Zanzibar. An unmet player was the first to it, so there's likely someone's Capital around (Bacchus already has a second city, by the way, I think he founded on the same turn we did; no one else seems to have a second city yet).

About CSs, I think I'll declare war on Stockholm next turn. There's no way I'm going to complete their quest (Great Writer), so I think it's best to declare war, lose the quest, and be able to get peace in 10 turns, before we get into the new Era where the quest will refresh. What do you think, Pindicator?

[Ichabod]

Interesting development!



So, perhaps Japan is not to the east of Kumasi and we are not as isolated as we thought. This city seems pretty weak for a second city, with no power tiles to be seen (perhaps there are some on the hidden tiles). It requires worker turns and cultural expansions to get some decent tiles in. This leads me to believe Japan is also eyeing the horse city near Crater Lake. I'm confident we'll beat them to that spot, but things just became a lot more interesting. The other option is that this was the only avaiable city spot with water, considering how the city states really hurt the possible placements around.

Anyway, this city makes Japan our natural enemy and we need to start thinking about how to conquer them. The city is very, very difficult to defend, considering his reinforcements will have to cross the river and the flat terrain all around.

Do we go for it before Yerevan? Do we tech for Heavy Chariots? Horsemen are too far away, needing not only techs, but a district to get up. Archers and HC are probably the best way to go.

Anyway, pretty interesting, overall. Japan has a 2 turn lead for the third city spot, being first in turn order and considering the turn we spent moving the settler. But our city is production heavy, we used a chop to speed things up and we used overflow tricks as well. The only way we lose the spot is if the barbs really hinder our units movements to that spot. Hopefully, that won't happen. Anyway, speaking of barbs:



The barb spear attacked out and the horse archer moved closer. I decided to retreat the warrior. The camp is a lot easier to take now with the injured protector, but things might get a bit dicey with that annoying HA around. Luckily, the warrior from the Capital will be allowed to come help this defense, since the barbarian scout in the south seems to be blind.



No idea why it's behaving this way, but I'll take it. Getting some warriors up to fight the barbs + protect our third city is very important now. As easy as it is for us to take Japan's expansion, it's also easy for Japan to take ours. The terrain around our planned third city is a lot better for defense, though.

We have enough barbs around for all the Eurekas we want, so it's time for us to clear them.



Here's my moves for the turn. If I understand things correctly, the HA can't attack the warrior in this interturn, because it's a 3 move unit, with a range of only one tile. But depending on how it moves, things can start becoming complicated, since we need units to defend the settler (so units that can't attack) and promotions are still far away (so no healing in sight). I hope HA barbs don't have ZoC, but I'm not sure. There's also a chance that the HA goes for the city, that would be the best outcome (other than the HA beelining Japan's scout). In 3/4 turns we'll have two more warriors, and then everything is safe. But until then...

[pindicator]

Looks like Masonry just got a lot more important!

[pindicator]

Work kept me busy today but I've been giving this some more thought

Do we go for it before Yerevan? Do we tech for Heavy Chariots? Horsemen are too far away, needing not only techs, but a district to get up. Archers and HC are probably the best way to go.

I think we stay on plan for going after Yerevan. However, we'll want to have a unit or 2 over at the horse city in case Japan thinks he can make a move on us then. This shouldn't be too bad, actually. The capital can 2-turn slingers and almost 2-turn warriors. So we will have enough units by t38, assuming the barbs cooperate.

That brings up another point: we need to have Archery finished by t38, even if it means slipping the Eureka. That will get us 3 slingers to upgrade to archers and a 4th archer coming out of the capital t39.

Here's my moves for the turn. If I understand things correctly, the HA can't attack the warrior in this interturn, because it's a 3 move unit, with a range of only one tile. But depending on how it moves, things can start becoming complicated, since we need units to defend the settler (so units that can't attack) and promotions are still far away (so no healing in sight). I hope HA barbs don't have ZoC, but I'm not sure. There's also a chance that the HA goes for the city, that would be the best outcome (other than the HA beelining Japan's scout). In 3/4 turns we'll have two more warriors, and then everything is safe. But until then...

1st thing: I don't like that his scout continues to nose around. We need to get our scout back to scope out just where his capital is as soon as possible. There probably isn't any way to block his scout from seeing our settler so we need to just hope he misses us.

Assuming we do plant our city, it is going to be helpful to get a trade caravan built to road the hilly terrain northeast of the capital.

All the lands east of the natural wonder get flat. Heavy Chariots are going to be super useful there. And heavy chariots means getting that bronze mined for The Wheel eureka is important. Then again that's a lot of military techs e want soon and not a lot of time for non-military builds.

What is the best location for the 3rd city and encampment district? Do you keep everything on one side of the lake or split the two asking both sides to prevent him from moving past?

After the capital builds enough units for our attack on Yerevan we probably want 1 or 2 more units to explore southwest and southeast of the capital.

EDIT: I'd build slingers in the capital next so we can have a good number of units to upgrade to archers

[Ichabod]

Man, this game is getting interesting. I'll report the next two turns, than I'll think a bit and answer to your suggestions, Pindicator. It's worth noticing that my vacation is about to happen, I'll be out from August 15th to September, the 3rd. We'll have to think about how to make the saves reach you (and it's interesting that you'll likely be the commander during our war turns   ).

Anyway, here's the last 2 turns.



We met Rowain near Zanzibar. 



He founded his 2nd city on the following turn, and that's a hell of a city! Floodplains with LOTRAM, 2 gem tiles, horses, plains hill settle. Really great stuff. I think we can work with Rowain, he's pretty far and apparently, our luxuries are different. Looking at the diplo window, he's at war with someone that I haven't met, either suboptimal or Bacchus. Probably not a good idea to fight the Americans on their own continent, so early in the game. This leads me to believe it was Rowain that started the fight, but I'm not sure. Hopefully he doesn't mind my scout passing by, though I wouldn't ne surprised if he does.



There's two things worth noticing here: the road and the monument being built (ah, his pantheon is divine spark). That makes me a lot less worried about Kaiser, because he seems to be gearing for development, not war (hopefully divine spark means he'll be going for a religion early). If he has a Caravan, there's no way he has a second settler on the way, so it seems our third city spot is very safe. 

That road is really weird, by the way. I don't think it's going to Kumasi, because Kaiser has only 1 envoy there and I can't see why you would send a TR to a CS this early, if not for a quest reward. But if that road leads to Kaiser's Capital... Where is it, exactly? The minimum distance to Kumasi makes a lot of spots unsettleable in that direction... So, is his Capital east of Kumasi, as I previously thought? In that case, how on earth does he think he'll defend that city? And building a monument, of all things? Anyway, that's all good news for us. Capturing a city with a monument is better than capturing one without it, after all.   

This might very well come to bite me when Kaiser takes my Crater Lake city, right?   But I really think a well timed attack with Heavy Chariots can take that city. The terrain is perfect and I doubt he'll have stronger units than HC avaiable if we play our timings right. After all, it has been established in the first 2 games that spears suck, and I'm positive he's going to follow that advice (which is really not a good one). When I say I'm positive about it, that's because this is Kaiser's first game here, so I believe he's a MP newbie. In that spot, I think most people follow the successful strategies they've seen somewhere else.

The main action right now is the northern barbs. You can see that I decided to switch research to The Wheel. That's because I'm confident we can get the archery and BW Eurekas, so I put those techs on hold.



My moves on turn 32. The HA came forward and didn't attack. Here, I'm more worried that the HA will weaken our warrior to the point he's at a risk of dying while guarding the settler. 



The HA ended up going for the slinger, which is good, I think. The problem is that the spear also moved forward. This creates two risks here. First, that Kaiser scout will reach the unguarded barb camp and steal it from us before we can get to it. Second, that these two barb units can capture hard rain before reinforcements come.

I don't think 2nd is very likely, since there won't be any siege happening and a HA and damaged spear aren't heavy hitters, but I don't have much experience here (I hope the fact that the city is on hills help its defense strength, though it's not showing right now). Anyway, I moved the slinger to the city and the settler into the warrior, that fortified for the turn. I'm hoping the spear attacks the city and gets further damaged, while the HA goes for the warrior, or perhaps south.



Southern warrior is coming for the rescue, while there's one almost ready from Hard Rain. Next turn, the settler + warrior will move 1E, 1NE, which will make a gamble possible the next turn. I can move the settler to the 1E forest, and if there's no units around, I can move the warrior 1NW, to allow the capturing of the unguarded camp before Kaiser scout can reach it. It's a gamble, but perhaps it can work... The Inspiration for clearing a camp is very valuable, because the 50% to ancient heavy cavalry is on that tech. I think it might be worth the detour to that civic, even before PP.