[SPOILERS] ljubljana embraces the dark side

[marcopolothefraud]

I would go for HBR. It seems like Masonry/HBR will come too late to "turn the tide" against thrawn, and they'll both come early enough to stop a Classical Era attack. You shouldn't worry about era score either, because settling the Matterhorn will be +3 era score. Unless, of course, someone from the north settles it before we get the chance.

However, you want to safely settle your fourth city to the west or northwest. To do that, you'll need a Horseman escort. After this settler, Scythia could squeeze in another archer, and then probably a Trader, Builder, or even a Settler to speed up our snowball. I guess it all depends on thrawn's war.

[ljubljana]

I would go for HBR. It seems like Masonry/HBR will come too late to "turn the tide" against thrawn, and they'll both come early enough to stop a Classical Era attack. You shouldn't worry about era score either, because settling the Matterhorn will be +3 era score. Unless, of course, someone from the north settles it before we get the chance.

However, you want to safely settle your fourth city to the west or northwest. To do that, you'll need a Horseman escort. After this settler, Scythia could squeeze in another archer, and then probably a Trader, Builder, or even a Settler to speed up our snowball. I guess it all depends on thrawn's war.

Hmm... I do think they'll come too late to turn the tide against thrawn if the rush has the typical timing for this sort of thing, in which case we'd expect units to have already showed up or to do so in the next 1-3 turns. But...I'm not sure I'm willing to rule out an atypical timing here, especially since it now looks like their recent milpower drop was due to a camp clear and not a war with Unmet Player. It'd be a little unorthodox, but thrawn could have just been waiting for 7-8 Pítati before moving out - that might be a little late, but it'd still be a strong attack, strong enough that I still think it could be thrawn's plan, and strong enough that, if it came our way, we'd probably be knocked out of contention, if not killed. That is, unless we can get walls up before or shortly after they get here, in which case I think we'd turn it back and still be competitive - indeed, that's probably the biggest reason why mid t50s is considered late for an archer-based rush like this in the first place, because good players who neighbor Nubia will have walls already built or at least available by that point. A horseman would also help, but I don't think it'd be the kind of full stop that we'd get from walls in Scythia, since we can't mass them to any appreciable degree.

As for ES, the reason I'm worried about it is not that I think we can somehow miss Monumentality (which should actually be impossible now, since PoliPhil's also worth +3), but because I'm worried we'll get too many ES points for a Medieval Dark Age, and so am trying to waste as many as I can now. This is the main reason why I've still been making sacrifices to push for things like the Matterhorn settlement, the +3 campus, and PoliPhil before the era change in the last 10-15 turns - because we want or need all of those things sometime in the next 50 turns, and it'd give us much more flexibility in the medium term to take the ES hit from them now.

You're right that we'd like a horseman escort before settling N or W, and this is a good and relevant point that I've been somewhat overlooking thus far. That said, I don't think it's too dangerous to use 3-4 archers as the escort instead, especially if we have the AH up and thus can quickly chop walls in the new city if needed. Also, by the time we'd be thinking of settling that way, I imagine we'll either be in a hot war with thrawn (in which case I'm not sure we'd want to settle W anyways) or have confirmation that they're in a hot war with someone else (in which case we shouldn't run into their whole army while doing so).

Yeah, I could definitely be still swayed towards HBR. But, man, it would sure be a shame to have survived this deadly continent for as long as we have, to have clawed our way to DoTF while pulling out multiple near-miraculous barb saves to keep the unlikely dream of competitiveness alive, and then to lose to a late Pítati attack because we procrastinated on building walls on the assumption that we were safe until t70 . I don't really know what the right move here is, but that'd be just about the biggest buzzkill I can think of, and unfortunately I do think it's plausible, though of course a little less inevitable than it seemed 10t ago. Feel free to call me out for being paranoid though, which I definitely am - though, given our neighbors, I think some amount of that is probably justified .

[ljubljana]

Turn 48



Oh, hello! I proactively offer 1 gold for 1 gold this time, to avoid repeating the same faux pas that may well have contributed to the ongoing poisoning of our relations with thrawn . So we'll be forward-settling Rome, then...well, it's not like we really had any less dangerous neighbors this could have been. At least Ioan's milpower score is small (I'm jealous) and they're not some terrifying veteran. Maybe I'll offer a DoF sometime between now and when our settler arrives - something like t55-t85 would really mess up a Legion timing attack, and we're in a narrow window now where our milpower is higher than theirs by enough that we might actually have a chance of it being accepted.

You'll also see that I swapped onto Mysticism this turn?! This is for two reasons: one, because it's safe to delay PoliPhil (still no era change warning this turn) and two, because it allows us to swap into the builder policy on the turn Scythia finishes this settler and starts what I now think will probably be another builder. This, in turn, is because the era changeover is getting late enough that we might now actually have an outside chance at getting Masonry (7 turns away pre-boost) and HBR (11 turns away pre-boost) by the time it occurs, especially since we can leave Masonry a turn from completion if need be while still effectively retaining walls access.

...okay, also three, because I kinda want to switch back into Agoge just to make thrawn think we're still building troops . That might be very silly, but I am very paranoid, and so am willing to do some occasional silly things in the name of excessive caution. Thrawn seems to have cleared another camp this turn (50 gold + 3 ES can be little else), which means they still haven't reached their target...what's going on there? There's no way they really built all those Pítati just to wander around killing barbarians...they must be running into barb problems on the way to their rush, and being slightly slowed by them as a result. Uh, and, as much as it scares me to admit this, we do know that there are barb camps to the W and SW of Scythia that we've never felt safe enough to try clearing...

After the builder, Scythia should probably follow with a shrine, because the third city will get its Lavra up very quickly following our planned chop and will need a missionary present when that happens. Following that, we can probably proceed directly onto the AH while Hungary builds the fourth city's settler. That means delaying the trader even longer...but you know what, I may actually just faith-buy it at the era change. Is that a ridiculous idea? It's not a settler, but traders should nonetheless be fairly efficient to faith-buy due to not being boostable by any policy card (by the same logic by which they're efficient to cash-rush). Also, what do folks think about the possibility of an early Apostle purchase for Tithe? That'd require a ton of advance planning, and would of course give up significant ground expansion-wise, but we may actually be able to swing it - temples unlock at Theology, not too far from now, and nobody else has any holy sites or has made a Stonehenge play. Hmm...

Also, I belatedly realize that we are due for a significant upgrade in our fogbusting abilities soon, since our first Great Writer is just 8 turns away . Barbarians aren't any better at killing those than players are, right?

[marcopolothefraud]

Does Ioan have any iron? If we keep track of their horse/iron stockpiles, we can anticipate Ioan's military growth.
It might be a lot better to faith-buy a trader than to build it, because it should get the 30% discount on faith buys. At this stage in the game, traders should only get a +2f/1p boost, which isn't a very good rate of return if you built it.

I don't have anything to say about tech/civic, a Great Writer, or thrawn. It seems like you're making the right choices there.

I think an early Apostle could work - you might want to spend one charge, because you only need 3 charges to evangelize a belief, I think. Are you *sure* you want Tithe? Cross-Cultural Dialogue (+1 science for every 4 followers) seems stronger to me. There are other ways of getting money, such as Commercial Hubs, the card that gives +1 gold per Envoy (I tend to have a lot in single-player), etc. I guess it depends whether our cities will have low population or not.

[ljubljana]

Does Ioan have any iron? If we keep track of their horse/iron stockpiles, we can anticipate Ioan's military growth.
It might be a lot better to faith-buy a trader than to build it, because it should get the 30% discount on faith buys. At this stage in the game, traders should only get a +2f/1p boost, which isn't a very good rate of return if you built it.

I don't have anything to say about tech/civic, a Great Writer, or thrawn. It seems like you're making the right choices there.

I think an early Apostle could work - you might want to spend one charge, because you only need 3 charges to evangelize a belief, I think. Are you *sure* you want Tithe? Cross-Cultural Dialogue (+1 science for every 4 followers) seems stronger to me. There are other ways of getting money, such as Commercial Hubs, the card that gives +1 gold per Envoy (I tend to have a lot in single-player), etc. I guess it depends whether our cities will have low population or not.

Ioan has horses connected (34 of them IIRC?) but no iron as of yet, which is a good sign. I'll definitely keep an eye on that, though. I think the trader routed to Scythia should be up to 3f/2h due to the districts there, but I think I agree about faith-buying being a better ROI there. I know usually it's best to focus on settlers in Monumentality, since we can save on the food cost and travel time by buying them in new cities, but without any new cities to do that in yet, I think hard-building the next settler in Scythia under Hungary while faith-buying the trader probably makes sense.

I feel like they patched it such that you have to spend the whole apostle on evangelizing the belief, and that doing so is disallowed if you've spent a charge on anything else. I'm actually not too sure about Tithe/CCD, that's a good point. I don't hear CCD talked about that much, but it does seem fairly strong - you'd think ~2 beakers/city at t100 would be stronger than 3 gpt/city. That said, our gameplan clearly involves cossack upgrades at some point (I plan to use gold for literally nothing else between now and when that happens, if possible), and unit upgrades are a very important mechanic in Civ6 MP in general, so maybe that's why Tithe is so consistently recommended. 400 faith is a pretty steep cost for us too, though, being equivalent to 3ish Monumentality settlers, so I'm not sure this is really worth it even if we do manage to land one of those beliefs. Well, it would cleanly be worth it in the Medieval era, but I doubt Tithe at least will still be in play that late; surely someone will take advantage of the very high ROI that Stonehenge is now worth since we had to take DoTF. Hmm...

Huh, I've been assuming the map's a Pangaea for a while now, but the appearance of Ioan makes me rethink that a bit. I wonder if we've been divided into a "noob continent" and an "expert continent"? I'll try to remember to check a) whether Ioan is Unmet Player and b) whether they've met anyone else, which should go some way towards clearing this up.

[ljubljana]

Turn 49

Oh man, y'all, I am such a noob. I finally check the diplo screen this turn to answer our Pangaea question and...



Not only is thrawn also in contact with Ioan, but they are at war with Unmet Player!! They also lost a bunch of military power this turn, too, all-but-confirming that we are, astonishingly, not the Pítati rush target! Wow! That's beyond turn 9 me's wildest dreams, if so .

In other news, I go on something of a diplo-screen-checking binge upon realizing how much sooner I probably could have figured that out:



So Ioan knows everyone, which certainly fits with the 5 ES they got from contacting us. It also confirms that this is indeed a Pangaea, with us firmly wedged in its most noobish corner. Ioan was also willing to sign DoFs with both Archduke and CMF, hmm...I go ahead and offer one up as well, since t50-t80 still skips a decent chunk of the scariest period for Legions and, critically, our settler's going to start moving up next turn, and I highly doubt Ioan will be willing to sign a DoF upon scouting our planned Matterhorn plant. There's no loyalty pressure up there that I can see, though, so hopefully it's close enough to Russia and far enough away from Rome to not be considered too egregiously aggressive a settlement...

Meanwhile, I finally spend our builder on the horse pasture, since now that we're probably safe from thrawn, I think I'll keep Masonry a turn or two from completion if needed to make sure we can waste the ES from HBR. Given that we're going to eureka both in the next 10 turns, we may as well do the pasture first to start building up a horse stockpile while giving Scythia another good tile to work while regrowing to size 5. Actually, to be honest, if thrawn's really not going to attack us, maybe HBR-BW is actually the right play, such that we won't be constrained to Lavra over the woods at the third city. But, anyways, here's what that looks like:



We're alive! We're increasingly behind on expansion (Archduke has a third city now, too) and still in a precarious geopolitical situation, but for the first time in this game, it really feels like we're alive and have a real chance to compete. I can't believe we're alive! Now to see for how long we can remain so .

[ljubljana]

Man, I think I'm getting a little too into this game. The following are dreams that I had last night about PBEM19:

- Ioan rejected our DoF, but proposed a counteroffer whereby they would DoF us if we made an in-game endorsement of environmentalist policies, as enforced by some fictional SP-centric mechanic I had never used before and didn't understand. Luckily for us, this was just a dream and didn't really happen, as, if true, that'd present a wrenching strategic tradeoff between our need to forestall a legion attack and my planned rush to lumbermills after we finish cleaning up these essential military techs.
- I opened the t50 save to a huge invasion of...German archer UUs, controlled by a player listed in-game as "The Mapmaker". Thankfully, this was only a dream and does not reflect reality, as we could be in some trouble if Kaiser decided to take advantage of our false sense of security induced by the thrawn/UP war by joining the game and attacking us.
- Fast-forward to t100-ish, by which point, according to my subconscious, thrawn will have completely conquered CMF and Archduke will have likewise run over Ioan, while our peaceful expansion in the meantime will have left us the smallest and weakest of the three remaining powers. This one might have been just a dream, but I have to admit that even awake me is a little nervous that it might prove prophetic .

[ljubljana]

Turn 50

We send a desperate peace offering to Kaiser, offering to cede Hungary in return for 10 turns of peace. That won't catapult us into contention or anything, but it'll buy us time to get to walls, and holding out in Fortress Scythia for as long as possible seems like the way to make them pay for their treachery as dearly as possible. We won't win this game, but future mapmakers will think twice before crossing us!

...oh wait, wrong reality. Thank goodness .



So there's two relevant pieces of information here. One, a confirmation that CMF's Zulu were the targets of thrawn's war declaration...which I'm not sure the interface should be so willing to reveal to us like this, but apparently it is. Two, desert folklore?! I'm jealous . Jealous, but also now very glad we took Work Ethic for what was indeed partially denial value in case someone out there had the perfect setup to pull off our original plan.

More foreign policy: we open the turn to a popup indicating that Ioan "accepted our deal", which I assume refers to the DoF...but the diplomacy screen has not yet updated to reflect this, if so. In general, I'm inclined to trust the popups more than the perfidious interface, so, for now, I'm assuming that this went through.



BW's back up to 5 turns due to the bpt hit from our new settler, and HBR's at 7. This means getting both is probably a bridge too far, so a woods chop will indeed be in order at the third city unless our warrior reveals some significant information about the Matterhorn's north face soon. That's fine - the resulting city will be slightly weaker than if we'd settled on the woods, but that's still a +3 Lavra, +4 with another district adjacency. That should be enough to keep this city from becoming too stagnant, while fulfilling its primary purpose of locking down the awesome Matterhorn promotion for a substantial and permanent boost to our defensive and offensive capabilities . Ideally, we can find some way to block Ioan from achieving the same (and settling the woods would be one way of doing this, since the tiles adjacent to the Matterhorn would then be entirely within our borders), but I'm not sure how much I'm willing to invest in that primarily denialist mission.

[ljubljana]

Turn 51



Another blissfully quiet pastoral turn spent peacefully making builders instead of desperately trying to cobble together defenses . Scythia's builder is planning to go stone quarry (Masonry eureka) - sugar plantation - copper mine (Wheel eureka), and Hungary's will likely go chop + double plantation at the third city, though, depending on actual third city site, I could be swayed towards a mine instead. We finally get the 10-turn era change warning this turn, the latest allowable. I'm putting a few turns of research into Masonry in case something goes horribly wrong between now and t61, but I'll swap onto HBR quickly enough to finish before the changeover. All told, we are on pace to successfully waste fully 10 ES points in the next few turns (3 from PoliPhil, 3 from the campus, 3 from the Matterhorn, and 1 from HBR) - not bad given where we were 10-20 turns ago .

I also didn't mention this last turn, but I'm saving the Mysticism envoy for now - the MD suzereignty bonus is incredibly strong in generic circumstances (all cities have the fresh water housing bonus regardless of location!) but completely blank for us (all our cities are already on fresh water!). I suppose I could consider leveraging this to secure a slightly stronger third city spot in terms of production, but I'm not sure the difference is significant enough to be worth the envoy and opening ourselves up to the risk of someone else sniping suzereignty. I'll take a closer look at the area during the next few turns, though, and try to come to a more reasoned conclusion than that one.

This is an incredibly noobish question, but, uh...does the fact that Ioan's diplo portrait still lacks the green smiley face mean that I was wrong earlier and they rejected our DoF, or that they've delayed a decision on it somehow? The diplo screen doesn't give me the option of offering another, but perhaps there's some kind of cooldown period in MP after rejection. Well, hopefully that's not the case, but it shouldn't be disastrous if it is; we should be able to get walls and horses up in time to at least stand a chance against a legion attack given our current military lead.

[suboptimal]

IIRC the green and yellow smiley faces are based upon grievances (or lack thereof) plus some other hidden factors - they don't mean much in MP. Red = denounced, blue = declared friend.