[SPOILERS] swans will bite u

[TheArchduke]

The more the merrier.

[ljubljana]

Very happy to have you, Ginger!!! Please feel free to talk about literally anything and everything, I'm pretty nooby too and would love to noob together w another of my kind

re: Steam session, your time zone is GMT +2, right? One option is that I could stay up late tonight and we could do something like 12 AM for me = 9 AM tomorrow morning for you (so roughly 12 hours after this post)? It's a little awkward but I'm down if you are

I could also do 5 PM my time but that's 2 AM for you, so I doubt that's better on your end. That also gives me less time to learn how to stream (although I can't promise I'll have it figured out by tonight in either case...)

We'll take 1 and 8.

TAD and Ljubljana to choose next between 2/7 and 3/6, and the remaining one goes to Woden and Banzai.

Thoughts on this? I think the answer may depend on which civs are allowed, and we don't have a clear answer to that yet... My metric for tiering the civs post-PBEM20 is essentially "which civ can produce the strongest combined frigate + caravel fleet the fastest", which I think places three civs from PBEM20 in the top tier: Indonesia, England, and Phoenicia. Luckily we are guaranteed one of these if we want it, and of the latter two I think England is a bit stronger, as the free ships from RNDs are about as impactful as Phoenicia's shipbuilding buff in the pre-frigates era and the total dominance England gets over Great Admirals is crazy good. Even the extra niter storage from lighthouses is surprisingly impactful since it translates to more total frigate upgrades the turn you hit Square Rigging. Meanwhile the Cothon settler buff is a bit overrated as it only takes you from +100% to +150% in the AH city in Colonization, and most of the other cities will want to be on ships + gold most of the time anyways. Of the other civs, I think China is the closest to breaking into this tier as well, with a mass-upgrade fueled by Stonehenge -> Tithe, Petra, and the Colossus TR, and (more importantly) big combat boosts to all the ships with Terracotta Army and the Great Lighthouse. I don't know how PBEM20 China never landed that combo, but I'm certainly thankful that they didn't...

I think Indonesia is a cut above the other three though...nothing really compares with a 20-turn window of Jongs when nobody else has frigates, and if the other player is diligent about trade routes and funnels cash to the Indo civ I'd guess something in the 10-to-15-ish upgrades range is possible on the turn Mercenaries hits. They also get the first pantheon for free to accelerate them to Mercenaries (t13 God of the Open Sky + worker first is almost a mini-Rome) and, while faith-buying ships is kind of a trap at 600 faith per Jong, what they can do is faith-buy a Classical Great Admiral to boost the Jongs (the only Medieval era ship afaik). If we can snag them and pair them with an enabler civ like the new Spain, that could be an amazing combo. I will be surprised if thrawn does not take them first (indeed, I imagine they took the first pick specifically with this in mind), but...maybe they will have some off-the-wall idea percolating in their brain that requires a different civ and will let them drop to 2nd pick. It's very unlikely they'll still be on the board at 3rd though IMO.

I think Portugal messes things up though and is probably a top-2 civ with Indonesia, 7 free +50% trade routes just for contacting everyone is unmatched in terms of gold generation, and the Nau is actually pretty spectacular in its own right just as a caravel with a free Embolon promotion. Spam Naus out of a city with Victor 3 and it gets really crazy as you should be able to take Embolon + Reinforced Hull for +17 defensive CS vs. frigates right out of the gate. I haven't tested whether this actually works, though, and I also haven't tested whether Naus get the free promotion + Feitoria charges when upgraded from a galley, which will have a very substantial impact on their viability.

If NFP civs are not allowed, I think there are 4 very strong naval civs in the ones I mentioned and another 5 (Norway, Japan, Australia, Netherlands, Korea) that are varying levels of viable according to the above frigavel spam criterion. I'd be a little worried about a 7th pick semi-going to waste on something slow like Australia, win-more-y like Norway, or overly prone to bankruptcy like Japan, but I think a 6th pick should be fairly safe. But if NFP civs are allowed I think new Spain and Portugal (at least) cleanly break into the top 8 and we'll all get two very strong civs, so the negative impact of pick 7 is reduced compared to the benefit we can gain from pick 2.

I think with NFP civs allowed, I favor 2 + 7 for a guaranteed shot at either Portugal or Indonesia. With them disallowed, I'm not sure and am probably weakly in favor of 3 + 6 for one of England/Phoenicia + the best of the rest. Awkward...

edit: ps, i'm gonna go on record and make a prediction for thrawn's evil plan with 1st + 8th pick - Indonesia for Krill, and then thrawn taking a gold-generation civ if they're still available like Spain, Germany again, or (drumroll please) Mali, who will definitely be on the board at 8th, and if anyone can make them work it's thrawn and their spreadsheet...

Would you be down to try Portugal + Indonesia for our first practice opening? It's not at all a realistic combo but I just wanna see how crazy it is Plus it would be nice to test some of the Nau upgrading + Victor 3 stuff mentioned above.

[Amicalola]

Also a big fan of the thread title. I have no idea what I'm talking about re: Civ 6 (literally have never played it), but I'll dedlurk here as well please.

[ljubljana]

YES hiiiiii sorry i'm such a bad dedlurker LMAO

you are a great civ4 player and our community's experience has shown that to be a strong predictor of rapid acquisition of Civ6 skills (woe betide those who get on the bad side of the thrawn/krill team ) so please please comment or suggest anything you feel warrants commenting or suggesting

and that goes for ginger too ofc. this is already a pretty darn scary roster of dedlurkers imo

[Amicalola]

YES hiiiiii sorry i'm such a bad dedlurker LMAO

you are a great civ4 player and our community's experience has shown that to be a strong predictor of rapid acquisition of Civ6 skills (woe betide those who get on the bad side of the thrawn/krill team ) so please please comment or suggest anything you feel warrants commenting or suggesting

and that goes for ginger too ofc. this is already a pretty darn scary roster of dedlurkers imo

I can't say I blame you - my game took a pretty weird turn after a certain point. Looking forward to it!

[williams482]

Thrawn and Chevalier always have wonderfully entertaining threads (for TOTALLY different reasons), I've never had the privilege of dedlurking Woden (who does very nice reports in his own right), the most useful thing I have to offer is probably tactical advice which the two of you seem very unlikely to need... ah, what the hell.



I'm in. Let's wreck somebody. 

(and you can totally change the tread title if you feel it best, just make sure you retain the spirit!)

[williams482]

From what I can tell, free promotions on units never stack, for the same reason that no experience is gained when units are promotion eligible. So Victor 3 isn't going to give double promoted Naus. However the wiki suggests that Naus get the promotion even when upgraded, which leaves me wondering what happens when you upgrade a promoted galley...

Assuming Portugal is even allowed, that is. My cranky old man opinion is that there should be no NFP civs for this or any future PBEM and also that nobody should stoop to financially supporting that misdirected hatchet job of an expansion for a game in desperate need of polishing up the fundamentals, but I suppose that's not the most fun or open-minded take one could have.

[ljubljana]

YES hiiii omg

ok, if the free promotions don't stack, i suppose the Gameplan would be to stick Victor 3 somewhere that can one-turn galleys, promote them all to Embolon, then upgrade those en masse once we hit Cartography? I have also been toying lately with the idea of a SUPER early Victor 3 in general, like, going Pingala opener - Pingala culture - 3 Victor promotions right at the start of the game. This yields the third Victor at Defensive Tactics, giving usually 20-30 turns to spam Embolon galleys or LoB quads before upgrade time, though missing out on science Pingala definitely hurts the Square Rigging ETA. It's probably best done with a Free Inquiry civ or someone like Korea who needs the promotions more than shaving 2-3t off the Square Rigging time

but whether to spam galleys or quads in said Victor city is an open question IMO. A LoB frigate is more impactful than an Embolon caravel but you can crank out twice as many of the latter in the same amount of time, plus melee ships have a more useful SECOND promotion in Reinforced Hull than frigates do...

and yeah, i think there's no way Portugal SHOULD be allowed. But it's looking increasingly likely that they WILL be, and if so I think we'd better jump at them... Ideally we'd pair them with a strong science civ from the 7th pick that can race to SR but typically lacks the funds for a mass-upgrade - Korea should be available and would do quite nicely

[ljubljana]

i also wanna do a test game where i go for 3 victors before ANYTHING else and just go crazy w the promoted galley spam. China would be a natural choice for this since they can easily make up the culture elsewhere (Great Wall) and will likely be blocked more by Square Rigging than mercs anyhow + we can presume most of their Classical Era science will come from Free Inquiry. ohyeahand Terracotta Army turns all those Embolon galleys into double-promoted ones AND it's at least feasible to faith-buy a GA if you're diligent abt saving......

edit: wrong, GW culture comes online at castles. hmm...

[Ginger()]

If you don’t want NFP civs just say you don’t have the expansion and therefore it’s unfair that you can’t pick one of those civs

Since Civ6 has no cottages, Amicalola will feel right at home :D

Personally Indonesia is my favorite civ full stop, but does the extra gold from England’s dockyards count as adjacency bonus? Idk how big a deal Shipyards are as it seems the meta is not to build the units you want but rather upgrade them. I think Japan might be better than Korea as the science pick, but that depends on the world age of the map (young earth more mountains/geothermals=more campus adjacency)