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

[Ichabod]

Question to the lurkers: 

New patch increased archer cost by 10 hammers. That means at least one, perhaps the two archers I was about to finish next turn will not be finished. This, in turn, will delay my attack on Kaiser.

I think I'll play my turn in offline mode, so I can still keep the lower cost of archers, without the patch, for this next turn only. Do you guys think this is a legit move?

My reasoning:

*I'm 4th in turn order, so the first 3 players didn't get the archer penalty when they played their turns (including Kaiser, the person I want to attack). Being later in the turn order is already a massive disadvantage, so I don't want to be further penalized about it.

I'm asking the lurkers because asking on the tech thread will just tip my hand to Kaiser. It'd be fairly obvious what change in the patch is the one I want to avoid. 

What do the lurkers think? If there's an understanding that doing this wouldn't be fair play, I have no problem avoiding it.

[Woden]

IMO, I think it is fair that you play without the patch since it is the middle of a round but I would post something in the organizing thread that you did to allow the next player to do the same and then have the patched game at the start of a turn round.

Edit: There was mention in the organizing thread of having the patch at the start of a new turn round.

[Cornflakes]

Give you are 4th and the only one not to play pre-patch I think it is fair to play this turn pre-patch as well.

[pindicator]

Well, silver lining is that archers will also be more difficult for Kaiser to build. However they will still only cost 30g to upgrade

[Ichabod]

Even though I patched the game, the archers were still showing only 1t to be ready. Not sure what's happening, between the game's rules changing and Civ 6 confusing UI, but lets see what happens next turn, if we get our archers or not.



Kaiser sent me a warning!

I had a good laugh at it, because I didn't know you could send these messages in a MP game. I think it was a good try for him, I'd probably respect that if I wasn't planning on attacking him. Going further east right now doesn't make much sense, but we needed to secure that one source of horses to ourselves. Of course, this is all moot considering we are about to go to war.

Anyway, this gives us an actual excuse to justify our military numbers and the units moving to Watchtower. We are scared of this threat and we know we need to defend. Not sure if Kaiser is going to believe that, but there's a chance. For us, it's indifferent, since our moves will remain the same, but perhaps we get some advantage from a bit of false expectations from our opponent.

But there's a bit of a disadvantage too, that I found this turn. Trying to fog read using unit movements, I think the unrevealed tile near Shido is either a forest or a hill. That makes moving around there slightly worse, and will make taking the city more difficult/slower. It means the archers will have to move a bit more to the east and the third warrior will be a bit late to the wanted tile (or he'll have to reveal our plans a bit earlier. But who knows, perhaps it's a marsh and we can shoot arrows over it anyway (very unlikely).




Kaiser's military score is currently 39, up from 32. His Empire score is up to 18, from 17, which is likely the extra pop point on Shido.

I'm moving our units to their places and it seems Kaiser's scout will leave the barb camp for us, which is great. You can notice that I changed techs to HBR. That's mainly not to lose science to Eurekas. But, actually, teching HBR might be a good idea. I'm considering going for a builder in Hard Rain next, and if we capture Shido, we can use that builder to improve the two horse tiles and chop a horseman. Than, we'll have a unit that Kaiser has absolutely no chance of countering (I hardly doubt he'll go for a spearman), and we can most likely take his Capital with it. There's really not much else for us to tech now that BW and The Wheel are waiting for Eurekas. Perhaps finishing The Wheel without the Eureka, considering we'll want the builder to do better things than improve a copper tile? Perhaps, but in this case, I think we should wait for BW (likely done in 2 turns), to see if we don't get an iron tile to improve.

So, builder in Hard Rain and another archer in the Capital? Archers will be useful for a long time and I think there's no better investment for us than just taking cities, City States and Kaiser's. When going for war, better to be safe than sorry.

Ah, I think there's actually a good chance we can capture Kaiser's Capital before he has his religion up. We'll see what happens, but right now I'm pretty confident about this invasion (well, I wouldn't be doing it if I wasn't confident).



Suboptimal might end up losing that warrior/settler if he's not careful. Suboptimal lands looks very green and great, but from what I've seen so far, he's really lacking in production. I don't envy his central position with mostly flatland tiles, it's going to be difficult to survive in that spot. I think he should go straight into his UU Knights. He can get Feudalism Inspiration very easily, to help with that.

[pindicator]

That warning in MP is awesome. We are going to have to use that later on ourselves!

That all sounds good. As much as I want to push military I agree that we need to get a builder out, even if we don't go with the horse chopping plan. Another unit I want to try and squeeze in a build for (or buy) is a trader., but I think that can still wait a little. I still wish we had more archers; if our attack was coming in with 4 archers I don't think he'd have any chance at stopping us. Anyway, do the builder and at worst we use it to mine the copper and chop out heavy chariots or archers.

If Kaiser keeps playing the opportunist with his scout he's going to miss the invasion force headed straight for his city! And we will be able to capture the camp eanyway asy enough when the archer finishes. It can take a shot while it's on its way east.

[Ichabod]

Played 3 turns since the last update. It will be a bit confusing to report, since I have tons of screenshots uploaded to steam because of my Epic 4 report. Please, don't visit my steam gallery if you don't want to get spoiled by that.



I realized where the trader roads from Kaiser are going. It's straight east, going past Kumasi. This indicates that Kaiser's plant was indeed a pink dot, because that city has to be the full 2 cities distance from his Capital, considering the minimum settling distance from Kumasi.



I got the BW Eureka in between turns and it seems that a barb suicided against my scout, of all things. It's the only thing that makes sense. That was a big deal. Kaiser's scout was still being annoying by camping the barb camp trying to get the last hit. So, I decided to just move my warrior out of there and move him to the battlefield against Kaiser. I will get a barb camp clear sooner or later and I think another unit will be better than flanking and support bonus (I'm pretty sure you can't flank a city and I don't think Kaiser will be attacking much).

We are leaving that barb camp unguarded for now, but we can always finish a warrior in 4 turns in Hard Rain. I also positioned the warrior from Capital in a way that he can get there faster, if needed.



Here's the movement I could make with my southern warrior the last turn I played. I could kept hugging Geneva, which would make me hidden from Kaiser, and circle that warrior until I could put him in a position of sieging the city. This would make it harder for Kaiser to realize he's our target. But, like Pindicator said before, we don't want to outsmart ourselves. Kaiser knows something is up. Even if he wouldn't be our target, he should be making more units and moving them here. So, I went for this move instead:



Notice that I also upgraded the northern archer this turn. What's the idea here. If possible, I want to block Kaiser's warrior from getting into Shido. He is fortified on that forest tile for a bit, which is a very defensible position. Next turn, I can move both wrriors into Kaiser's borders, blocking his route (and I can attack him with my archer). I don't have all my needed units for the attack right here, right now, but if I can get some 2/3 turns of attack on a city without a warrior inside, that's huge. 10 defense or 20 defense is a huge gap and makes a lot of difference. It's a long shot, but I think it's a big deal, if Kaiser doesn't act. Notice that the southern warrior can't attack Kaiser next turn, so his fortified warrior is not at risk. He might make the mistake of thinking this and don't realize we are fighting for positioning, not actually killing the units right now.

Anyway, about the patch, my archers indeed costed 60 production, that updtaed in between turns, so the archer from Hard Rain took an extra turn. But, there's a catch. Archer upgrades are now 45 gold (my archer upgraded costed this, at least). Kaiser only has 72 gold, so he needs a bit more turns to upgrade 2 slingers, which perhaps make up for it a bit.



In other fronts, Suboptimal is really feeling lucky here. Perhaps he can't spare the unit to defend the worker, considering his bout with Rowain (which I think he is losing badly, seeing by military score), but this is a bit reckless. If he moves next turn to the cows, without proper defenses, I think I'll nab that builder.

Note: Roosevelt bonus is not as neglegible as I thought. If I was playing America, Kaiser would be absolutely dead. Of course, it's all very situational. If we were in different continents, I would have nothing to show for it.

Finally, there's a decision to kake next turn: we reach a new civic, so we can change policies. We are also completing an archer in the Capital, so we can start a new build: what do we do? Do we go for a third settler, coupled with the settler card? Do we keep pumping units in the Capital? Perhaps a trader? We could even send the Trader to Geneva, to get their quest and a quick road towards Kaiser (better than a road to Watchtower, I guess). Ah, and that would likely steal the horse tile from Kaiser too. I think I should have saved that civic switch for a bit later (perhaps for when we want the settler), but I didn't realize that and now I've done it.

We could also finish the Campus for the science boost and the Inspiration for building a district. Or go straight for a monument.

Anyway, I think we don't actually need more military now. Next turn we'll have 4 archers ready, with a 5th coming from Watchtower in 3 turns. That's basically all our gpt already gone. And we also have 4 warriors on the Kaiser front. If we want something more on the military side, better to make it a more powerful unit.

I quite like the Trader idea, actually. Trader are 40 hammers, right? Considering the overflow we'll get from the archer, I think it's a 3 turn build in the Capital. We send it to Geneva and we get another envoy + geneva steals horses from Kaiser. We then tech HBR and Mysticism, Mysticism for the envoy. In this way, we can get 3 envoys in Geneva, the Suzerainity bonus and, the best part, the second copy of horses for horseman. Does the resource needs to be improved in the CS for you to get it? That's actually a problem, because Geneva already wasted 2 builders... Another question, can you use your own builder to improve a tile for a City State?

The other idea is going for The Wheel without the Eureka and try to get a HC up. If we want a bonus when building it, though, we need Military Tradition, and that means clearing that camp. In that case, getting another warrior in the Capital might be best.

Finally, we get to see where iron is next turn.

[Ichabod]

By the way, considering what has been posted in PBEM 4 tech thread, can lurkers check if the costs in this game are the same between players?

What I've seen so far is that archers cost 60 hammers and upgrading slingers -> archers cost 45 gold.

[Ichabod]

I fear that, since I've completed two settlers before the patch (being the only one, as far as I can see), I'll have less expensive settlers for the rest of the game. It depends on how they coded things, but I can see that happening.

[pindicator]

Too bad we don't have State Workforce because it sounds like conscription would be a great military policy for us now. Don't have access to look things up but I think we might want to swap over to +30% builder production if we aren't planning on more military. I think builders are a little more important than settlers, and I also like getting that trader out for Geneva. Keep in mind that a trader cost scales with tech/civic level so it will probably be around 50-60 cogs by now.

I like the moves against Kaiser. Agree that keeping him out of Shido is the top priority. If he delays with his warrior we'll be able to cut it off and kill it.

I'm a little astonished about how far away he planned that 2nd city. Maybe it's just beyond Kumasi and he was hoping to lock down that border early. If so Shido would actually be on his "half" of a split. We may not want to press on to his capital if we have to take 5 turns to get there. If he doesn't give peace we may not get a choice. But this is getting ahead of ourselves a bit.