[SPOILERS] scooter tries Civ6

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Truffle City would be a really strong city #4, and even more so with the ToA. Archery will be a good tech to follow up Masonry with, since it leads to Horseback Riding and we can make use of our surplus equine population for defensive purposes if necessary.

I also don't like delaying Pingala for 20-30 turns. These games only last 150 turns or so, so we're talking delaying him for potentially 20% of the length of the entire game! That's actually quite a long time when his beaker output alone can make up a pretty significant fraction of total empire research. Liang and Magnus's promotions are nice, but there's quite a few governor titles we want and sadly not enough promotions to go around. We have to prioritize, and I think Pingala's boosted research rates are more impactful long-term than Liang's district discount or Magnus's population protection. There's enough food lying around to consistently regrow the capital, and now Longxi too with all its boosted fertility could be a nice settler pump in the future.

Other map-gazing related things:
1)I really like the appeal-radar to scout for natural wonders! I've never thought about that before.
2)Similarly Banzai's map-naming revelation was new to me.
3)Speaking of, are you using settler radar while scouting, looking for forbidden city-sites indicating a foreign city present in the fog?

[scooter]

Great feedback all over, much appreciated. I definitely see the point on Pingala, especially given how we’re pretty science-starved compared to everything else. Addressing a few things.

* I like the tile southwest of the bananas up to the northeast of Longxi for your fourth city. Amazing terrain, opportunities for more Earth Goddess faith bonuses, and a great place to build (hopefully discounted) Harbor district. Coastal cities with a Harbor district + lighthouse actually get lots of housing now in Gathering Storm, enough that you could grow up to size 8-9 no problem and take advantage of all those awesome resources.

Oh yeah, I like that quite a bit. Especially combined with your second post about Temple of Artemis. I think we can get a ton of value out of these things combined.

3)Speaking of, are you using settler radar while scouting, looking for forbidden city-sites indicating a foreign city present in the fog?

Yeah, I’ve been doing this every turn, but no luck. We’re definitely pretty isolated, and/or have abysmal scouting.


Turn 43

Completed both State Workforce and Mysticism between turns as expected. I redlined that barbarian spear down to almost nothing, and then I made the civic swap.








Also assigned Pingala to Longxi as discussed. Good call for sure Sullla and Chevalier. Also to answer the other question - definitely interested in Magnus, but I agree with the consensus that Pingala seems more pressing at this time.





Anyone have any idea what’s up with this fur yield? It’s the exact same tile as the other fur, except it has +2 food. That’s gotta be some sort of natural wonder propping that up, right? Especially with the high appeal score. Just thought that was odd.

* Is it worthwhile to purchase the tile for your Holy Site district at the capital? The cost to purchase the tile will only go up over time, and locking in the district cost sooner as opposed to later would make it cheaper to build as well. What are you planning on having the capital create after it finishes its current path of settler -> builder?

So this is a good spot to discuss this. There’s a couple issues. I did check, but the cost to purchase that tile is 100g right now, so we don’t have the money yet. We don’t want to give up Ilkum, so swapping into the tile purchasing civic seems not plausible either. This also conflicts with another purchase - we’d like to purchase a tile to stick down a government plaza here soon, but that costs 60-70ish gold (depending on which spot we go with). Any strong feelings on gold prioritization? I’m of half a mind to give up and place the government plaza in a suboptimal spot (maybe 1E of our new city?) that doesn’t require gold expenditure and just purchase the holy site tile. I’d just like to lock in the cost of both of those asap.


If we can find a third city-state in the next 9-10 turns, we’ll finish Political Philosophy around then. I’m hopeful that’s doable now that we have more units out scouting. Also, our active builder will be able to place a charge into the Pyramids on T48, and our new 5-charge builder will be able to place charges starting T50. I could theoretically speed that by a turn by not working the rice for a few turns, but that doesn’t feel worth it at all. So we’re a shade over 10T from Pyramids barring anything unusual.


One other note: just realized while looking at these screenshots that I neglected to send the envoy to the scientific CS that I got from State Workforce. For some reason I never got a notification for it. So I set a couple beakers on fire. Next turn I’ll send it.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

If we're only ten turns from Political philosophy, is it worth waiting for the 2 for 1 envoy card to send the envoy? It'd make the envoy cost about 18-20 beakers, but if you get the third envoy (that boosts libraries) 9-10 turns earlier that more than pays for itself.

[Alhazard]

the holy site costs a lot because it's 3rd ring. I think it's better to grab the govt plaza site first then campus at capital. You will get the money needed for both sites after clearing the camp.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

the holy site costs a lot because it's 3rd ring. I think it's better to grab the govt plaza site first then campus at capital. You will get the money needed for both sites after clearing the camp.

If he builds a holy site and a plaza first without unlocking any more districts, he should be able to trigger the discount for the campus and get 40% off. If he goes campus first, he'll need to build both at full price.

ETA: I was poking through the NW wonder list to try and pin down that fur tile and I'm pretty sure we're about to discover Mount Kilimanjaro: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Mou...aro_(Civ6)

+2 food and +2 appeal sounds just about right.

[scooter]

I’ll think about the envoy thing, although in terms of getting to +3, the galley would get us there too (combined with the envoy that’s coming up). That said, after Political Philosophy we’re going to have the ability to backfill a couple cheap civics, which would give us some free policy swaps. I think we’re hurting for science more right now though, so I’m slightly inclined to just send the envoy ASAP. There’s so many techs we need at the moment…

What are you planning on having the capital create after it finishes its current path of settler -> builder?

I was thinking about this a bit. A big part of me would like to get another settler going and get that Truffles/Banana site online asap. It’s a bit bold, but pushing expansion hard when there’s high quality land to be had feels right. We may want to wait until Political Philosophy to get back into Colonization. In that case, a trader may be a decent stopgap to get a yield bonus and begin laying some roads.


Looks like it’s time I learn the discount formula. The campus likewise would require picking up a tile, so we’re definitely going to need to purchase some tiles here soon either way.

[Alhazard]

Well is it worth it to wait until he gets enough gold to buy the 3rd ring tile? Right now I don't like the science output of the civ.

[Sullla]

I'm not too terribly concerned about science at this point in the game. Scooter's science is low because 1) he just produced a settler from his capital and 2) he was hit with a silly event at the second city that cost a population point. Once that envoy gets invested into the Scientific city state next turn, scooter will be up to 7 beakers/turn and that's pretty ordinary for Turn 40ish. Science feels a bit slow because scooter had to research Astrology without getting the boost, which was unfortunate but also unavoidable. At this early stage of the game, the best way to gain science is to keep pushing expansion via the 1 pop = 0.7 beakers formula. Yes, there will be a real need for Campus districts in time, but scooter hasn't met anyone yet so he hasn't picked up the boost for Writing, and in order to land the first religion there was no realistic way to head for early Campuses. If scooter can use his cultural edge to pick up early Pingala 2 (worth about 7 beakers alone), that should cover science research output pretty well.

The three things that I'd suggest thinking about are how to spend the accumulating gold bank, what to build in the capital after the builder, and how to gain more era score points. These three factors are related to one another:

1) Where and how to spend gold is a huge concern in the early turns. We saw how purchasing a builder basically equated to a free wonder for China, and there's always the possibility to do that again, especially with Liang + Pyramids in place (although note that the gold cost will keep going up with each new builder). I generally don't like spending money on tile purchases, but there are times where it's warranted and that Holy Site near the capital may be one of those times. You definitely do want a Holy Site at the capital, that spot is worth +3 faith from the adjacency bonuses, and Holy Site + marsh clearance opens up another Earth Goddess bonus on the horses tile. Faith is *REALLY* important for your setup, as I'll talk more about in a minute. But again, that gold could also be another builder eventually, or it could be saved for upgrading warriors into swords (although that's probably further down the road). Always something to spend money on. The key thing is having your gold in mind ahead of time so that you can work towards it.

2) Similarly, what you build next in the capital dictates where to spend your money. If you want to go Holy Site or Government Plaza districts next, that's going to suggest purchasing the requisite tiles. If you want to go for an early fourth settler, that would suggest spending money somewhere else. (You would also need to get back into Colonization policy for that plan, which might not line up with your civics research at the moment.) Think about where you want to go next here.

3) I also mentioned era score as something important to focus on. You probably have about 15-20 turns remaining in the Ancient Age, and it would be huge to line up a Golden Age for the Classical era to accelerate your snowball. The main reason for this is the Monumentality dedication for the Golden Age. Here's the official description:

+2 Movement for Builders. Civilian Units may be Purchased with Faith. Settlers and Builders' Purchases are 30% cheaper.

Everything about this dedication is amazing. +2 movement for builders is like getting Indian Fast Workers, allowing your builders to improve tiles much faster. But it's the latter two aspects that combine together to make this so strong. Monumentality opens up faith purchasing of builders/settlers/traders, and furthermore makes the settlers and builders 30% cheaper to purchase. Normally units cost 4x their production cost to purchase with gold. Faith is always cheaper as a currency and only costs 2x production cost to purchase... then Monumentality discounts that by another 30%!

Let's math this out for a second. The first builder costs 50 production and then they go up by 4 production with each additional unit. The third builder would be 58 production = 232 gold, but only 116 faith cost and then discounted again by 30% comes out as 80 faith cost (!) Similarly, settlers start at 80 production cost and go up by 30 production each time. Your current 110 production settler would only cost 220 * 0.7 = 154 faith to purchase. That's out of reach right now but your faith will increase quickly as the turns ramp up, especially once Holy Site districts and associated buildings come into play, not to mention tiles picking up Earth Goddess for more free faith. Heck, you should be able to set up a 5 or 6 city Jebel Barkal for 20 faith/turn all on its lonesome. Or you could use faith to purchase traders, which don't get a discount on the purchase but also don't get any policy cards that boost their production.

I see Monumentality as the big way for China to snowball a game ahead of its competitors. Early game faith turns into more settlers and builders than the other players can match, which translates into more faith via Earth Goddess, which translates into more cities... You get the idea. I had a weak early game in my Livestream Mansa Musa effort and then just blew past all of the AI leaders with the power of Monumentality. I didn't even have any faith to speak of, just took advantage of the 30% cheaper gold purchases of settlers. Now yes, that was a Single Player game with a different leader, but I still think that Monumentality is really, REALLY powerful. This is an absolute textbook place to take advantage of it.

But, uh, you need to get into a Golden Age first. With era points incoming for a barb camp clear and the Pyramids (and at least one natural wonder about to be discovered), I think that you'll likely hit the target. Probably a good idea to keep that list of era score things in mind though. Ideally you'll be able to land a Golden Age in both the Classical and Medieval eras, which would get you 60ish turns of Monumentality during the most decisive turns of the game. Shouldn't be too hard for China since you'll be able to crank out a whole bunch of wonders for era score. The only bad thing is the metagaming aspects - you're going to have a ton of "score points" and put a target on your back. No way to avoid that, unfortunately.

[Sullla]

One other thing ™: I just remembered that the Government Plaza grants a governor promotion. That could be your early Pingala 2 to address the lack of an early Campus district for science research. With the Government Plaza being a half cost district, that could be a good option for next in the capital. Have to think carefully about where to put it though, and whether it's worth spending gold to purchase a tile for it.

[scooter]

I’ll go ahead and write up the turn first as it’ll address a couple things mentioned here.


Turn 44




I finished off the barbarian camp up to the northwest and got ~50 gold and a few more era points. Let’s get more era points?





+2 points to Chevalier for figuring out that it’s Kilimanjaro. And +1 era point for me. So, I had a map thought.





We’re on a big map for 4 players. What do you wanna bet this mountain is roughly the “center” of this big weird land mass? There are no signs of other players to our east, but we keep picking up signs of players in this direction. Someone else met that city-state first, and now someone found Kilimanjaro first too (otherwise I would have gotten 3 era points rather than 1). It would make sense as a natural center, especially as this map seems to be very heavily edited/hand-crafted. Anyway, just a thought. The entire section of land south of this is all very high appeal, so I’m hopeful we can contest this area, but it’ll depend a ton on how far away everyone is located.





Alright, let’s take another look at Era Score. Sullla mentioned it, and it was on my mind as we picked up 4 more points. We don’t have a ton of time left, and we need to get 8 points. That said, I think it might be doable. Here’s what I see:

* +4 Points: Pyramids - obvious
* +3 Points: First Tier-1 Government - I’m comfortable predicting we’ll get to Political Philosophy first given our culture rate. We really need to meet another city-state to make this happen in time, though. Fingers crossed.

That gets us 1 point away. I’m not quite sure where to get that last point. Political Philosophy is listed as a classical civic, so I think that would get me the +2 for being first to research a new era civic, right? If so, we’ll have a golden age. If all this is true, it’s crucial that we find a third city-state to boost Political Philosophy in the next 10-17 turns. Fingers crossed?





Wanted to highlight tile costs given that we’re talking about purchasing a tile or two in order to place some districts. We’ve got a 50/50 chance of unlocking our campus spot in 2T. It’s been toggling between this tile and the one 1NE of it. Either tile would be good, really, as the 1NE tile is Breathtaking, and would therefore be a solid tile in its own right. Either way, it would be the next tile unlocked, so I don’t see as much value in purchasing it when we’re going to get it fairly soon anyway.

More importantly though, the Holy Site tile costs 100g, and the Government Plaza location (either the one marked or 1SW) are both 65g as second ring tiles of their respective cities. We can actually afford both pretty soon here, as the two active camps means we have a pretty healthy gold income at this time. I wish we could line this up with the civic discounting tile purchases, but I’m not sure that’s realistic at this time. I kinda like the idea of getting the government plaza in particular, partly because of this:

One other thing ™: I just remembered that the Government Plaza grants a governor promotion. That could be your early Pingala 2 to address the lack of an early Campus district for science research. With the Government Plaza being a half cost district, that could be a good option for next in the capital. Have to think carefully about where to put it though, and whether it's worth spending gold to purchase a tile for it.

Yeah, this makes it not such a bad deal. I give up 65 gold (part of a builder in terms of opportunity cost) and a fairly small amount of production in exchange for pretty much doubling my science rate. That sounds like a quicker payback than the Holy Site only because it’s significantly cheaper in both gold and production, and the return comes quicker.

That said, we still want that Holy Site too, obviously. Completion of that Holy Site gets us +3 faith immediately from adjacency, and then assuming the marsh gets cleared, another +2 faith from the horse tile that will be worked every turn. That would also more than double our faith output, which is especially good if we can in fact lock down this golden age. So I’m leaning towards purchasing both tiles to be honest. I agree it’s normally not the best use of gold, but in this case I think the payoff for both is really strong. Practically, 165 gold is what, 3/4 of a builder? So call it 4 builder charges. I don’t think 4 builder charges could give us quite as good of a return, especially since those are fundamentally easier to acquire (you can just build them discounted, after all). So I’m on team purchase 2 tiles. Does this reasoning seem sound? I suppose one flaw is it’s not a 1-to-1 comparison as a purchased builder works immediately, while a purchased tile still requires production investment to build the thing before we get a return.





Settler is in place and ready to go in 2T. The builder coming out of Xian will head straight for the Pyramids, as will our builder that just placed the plantation on the silks. You can’t quite see here, but there’s a barbarian slinger next to our northwest warrior that killed the barb camp. That’s an annoyance since we won’t be able to promote again anytime soon, but it’s fine. Also, our northeastern exploring warrior did not find a natural wonder, so it seems I was wrong on the appeal. It seems to just be a basic combo of mountains and forests causing that. Maybe the volcano is better than a mountain, not sure. Score update below.

Stray notes:

* Uh, hopefully nobody puts too much stock in score. I’ve taken the lead in era score, and combine that with wonders, religion, and great people… and my score is very high. Underscores the value of Defenders of the Faith I think.
* Confirmed that I’m way ahead in culture output right now. I’ve completed 6 civics, and nobody else has more than 4. TheArchduke has only 3. So yes, we will easily get to Political Philosophy first.
* Tech on the other hand I’m slightly behind. One tech to each of them I think, which honestly is fine.
* TheArchduke and Alhambram have quite a jump on Empire Score. I’m less sure on what all goes into that. Apparently districts factor into this? I’ll skip speculating, but I am last in this one for now.