Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

This turn didn't quite go how I wanted.



Here was the situation at the start of the turn. For some unknown reason the barb scout to the north of Roma only moved one tile west and stopped there in the forest instead of moving another tile north. In the east, the barbarian spear attacked my warrior on the hill as expected. That dropped it low on health, with what looked to be about 25 HP remaining. (I still hate the fact that Civ6's interface won't tell you the exact health remaining on enemy units for no good reason whatsoever.) Unfortunately this was just the "wrong" amount of health left. The slinger, attacking at -8 strength disadvantage, would never kill the barb spear no matter what I happened to roll. The warrior, attacking at +11 strength advantage, would always kill the barb spearman no matter what happened with the dice roll. The numbers just lined up wrong here, unfortunately. As I said last turn, what I should have done was attack one more time with the warrior on Turn 30, the turn that I moved up with the slinger, which would have dealt about 20 damage and left the barb spear on near death this turn, easy pickings for the slinger. I was throw off by the barb spearman charging out of the camp to attack my slinger, not what I thought it would do. The sad thing is that if I had like 0.5 more culture I would have unlocked a civics change this turn and I could have slotted in Discipline for one turn, then changed back to Agoge the following turn when Early Empire completed. The +5 strength from Discpline likely would have been enough to get the kill with the slinger this turn, and I'm kicking myself for not swapping over to Early Empire last turn. Oh well, I didn't know what the exact math would look like last turn and that my units would be in exactly the wrong spots for the combat luck.

Given no options to have the slinger take the kill, I attacked instead with the warrior so that it would pick up enough experience for a promotion:



I'll have that warrior explore the southeast corner of the continent next, promoting whenever I have a turn that the unit can only move one tile. The injured slinger will retreat back to my territory to heal up. As for my other slinger, it flung a stone at the barb scout in the north and crippled the unit; one more shot will land the kill there. Unfortunately the barb scout will likely be able to move out of range of future shots, although perhaps we can use Singaboy's warrior to pin it somewhere for one last slinger shot. Here's a better picture of the north:



We need to try and cut this unit off before it makes it back to its camp, wherever that might be. Maybe the random city warrior in the area will help out in some way via its zone of control, I dunno. If I can't kill this barb scout, another possibility for landing the Archery boost would be killing the barb spear in the hidden northern camp with this slinger. Singaboy could redline that unit and get it in position whereby this slinger would kill it. Obviously we have no vision up there right now but that's one thing that could potentially happen.

My capital is about to finish a third slinger and grow to size 4. I'll be running one turn of Urban Planning while finishing Early Empire, then swap into Colonization. A fourth slinger should finish in 2 turns and then it's time for a settler with the Colonization boost.



Meanwhile in the south, the barbarian camp that we spotted last turn apparently already had a scout out and it's about to spot Singaboy's capital. I was hoping that the barbarian spear might be another chance to get the Archery boost, but now it looks like I'll need to clear that camp ASAP to prevent the barb scout from returning and causing it to erupt. Naturally this is yet another spot with a horse resource within 5 tiles and we don't want barb horseman running about down here. As a result, it might be easier to get the Archery boost from killing this scout when it goes crazy after its camp gets cleared. I'll be moving my third and fourth slinger down here to cover that potentiality, plus the injured first slinger will be heading to heal in Ostia. Maybe one of them can land a killing shot on the scout.

If none of these possibilities work out, I have a request for Singaboy: can you research Archery to within one turn of completing and leave it there? That way it's no harm, no foul if I manage to land this boost, but if I can't, you can finish the tech and pass the boost along to me. It doesn't have to be the next thing China researches but it does need to be soon. We can't afford to delay the time needed for Rome to research Archery tech without having the tech boost.

Now one thing you might have noticed is that Rome has 25 faith but I did not get to select a pantheon. It's that stupid interface bug where only one player can found a pantheon each turn, and someone else must also have reached 25 faith this turn. The only ones ahead of me in turn order are EmperorK (who already has Divine Spark) and Jasper, so either Jasper picked a pantheon this turn or it was something wonky with the turn order. Really annoying. And then there was this:



Mikeforall's Khmer recruited a Great Prophet on the last interturn. However, they did not found a religion with it yet, which was a bit surprising. I thought that there was a delay between recruiting a Great Person and being able to found the religion, but Russia seemed to be able to do both on the same turn. I'm really, really hoping that Singaboy will be able to found our religion on this turn when he finishes Stonehenge mid-turn.

[...]

OK, I was dying to know about this, so I went back and watched the Livestream footage of my A Cold Doctrine Russia game that I played on Livestream. You can indeed move a Great Prophet on the turn that they are recruited, and so Singaboy should be in the clear here. He can found our religion on either the Holy Site district at the capital or on top of Stonehenge itself, wherever the Great Prophet happens to pop up. Either spot is fine, just get that religion up immediately before the Kongo/Khmer team can steal the beliefs we want. Let's get Jesuit Education and then take your pick of either Wats or Church Property. I'm OK with either one since we'll be enhancing our religion pretty quickly with the Mahabodi. This has been a really nerve-wracking pursuit of our religion but I think Singaboy is still going to be able to land the big Jesuit Education that we've wanted all along.

One last thing: if we want a China + Italy connection for our religion, maybe we name it after Marco Polo? It's a thought.

[Singaboy]

The must have been one of the most frustrating turns in Civ 6 so far for me:

This image sums it all up:



The Great Prophet spawns in Xian and due to the fact that I don't have a Pantheon yet, I can't found a religion in its Holy Site. I am afraid that we will lose the second religion to Mike...

more about my turn later

[Sullla]

Oh for crying out loud...! We have the Great Prophet, why won't it let us found the religion?!

That is just goddamned retarded.

[Singaboy]

Not only that, we have Stonehenge, but the GP spawns at the capital instead. If it were at Changsha, it would have been no issue...

[Singaboy]

Turn 32:

Opening the save, there is yet another barbarian scout roaming about. Worse, it has reached Xian and seems to belong to the camp in the south. Rome better takes care of that camp fast.
Masonry is done and animal husbandry next (3 turns, archery would take another 3 turns0



I check the religions and only 1 is founded though it seems another Great Prophet has been claimed. This is no good. We better get that religion this turn. I use another charge on the Stonehenge, it completes (without the wonder animation), but the Great Prophet doesn't show up. This is weird. 



Zooming out, I discover that the Prophet is located in Xian and it won't let me found the religion due to the Pantheon not done. That might be the reason why Mike hasn't been able to found a religion last turn too. We might have to think about the next best belief if Jesuit Education is gone. I would go for Divine Inspiration even though it doesn't do anything for Rome. But it would add a lot of faith for China, with each wonder adding 4 faith a turn. Faith has already jumped by +2 per turn for Stonehenge and I should be able to claim the Pantheon next turn. Nevertheless, I transfer the Prophet to Changsha just to make sure we finally get the religion on T33.



Changsha starts its next wonder, the pyramids, aiming for 36 hammers (6 turns), before switching back to the Holy Site. Charging of the wonder will commence on T39 with a new government. The wonder should then be done by T41.
We need to devise a proper plan for the next few wonders, as the planned delay on BW will give a cheaper campus, but delay Jebel Barkal.

The northern warrior steps next to the northern camp, that we suspected to be there. Next to it is a slinger. I think it would be a good idea to send a slinger up there, Sulla. This should give you the Eureka for archery.

Xian will finish its builder with a huge overflow in 3 turns and then build 2 slingers until Colonization comes in to start on two settlers. With pyramids finishing on T41, I will have a builder with 2 charges and a 5 charge builder. Those builders can improve two sugar, bananas and maybe stuff at the new cities.

Sulla, as you will see during your turn what has been selected by Mike for his religion, please give your input then about the choices I should make for my religion. marco Polo sounds good to me

[Singaboy]

Wait, what is this? Looking back at the screenshots, I realize (I was too frustrated to care during my turn), that finishing Stonehenge has added the horse tile into Changsha's borders. I didn't know that this would happen. Does this happen for all wonders or only for Stonehenge?

Looking at it, the sugar tile and the horses will give Changsha a lot more flexibility now for tile assignments.

[Sullla]

What a weird situation. Now that some of my frustration has worn off, I wanted to respond to some of the thing that Singaboy brought up.

Zooming out, I discover that the Prophet is located in Xian and it won't let me found the religion due to the Pantheon not done. That might be the reason why Mike hasn't been able to found a religion last turn too. We might have to think about the next best belief if Jesuit Education is gone. I would go for Divine Inspiration even though it doesn't do anything for Rome. But it would add a lot of faith for China, with each wonder adding 4 faith a turn. Faith has already jumped by +2 per turn for Stonehenge and I should be able to claim the Pantheon next turn. Nevertheless, I transfer the Prophet to Changsha just to make sure we finally get the religion on T33.

If Jesuit Education isn't available when we found our religion, we definitely want to take Divine Inspiration (the one that grants +4 faith/turn from each world wonder). It's very much inferior but it's better than all of the other options. I actually think we may be OK here; the Khmer/Kongo team has a pretty good chance of wanting Reliquaries for their Follower belief. It's the only reason I can see for them picking those two civs, wanting to get Reliquaries and then try to use relics for tourism purposes.

We also might be OK because Mikeforall is last in player order. As Singaboy said, he might have been blocked last turn from founding his religion because he couldn't establish a pantheon. If that's the case - and I'm not sure that it is - we're in the clear because he'll continue being blocked. Only one player can found a pantheon each turn and both Singaboy and myself are set to found pantheons next turn. Mikeforall will potentially keep getting skipped over again and again due to those ridiculous rules. Since I play before Singaboy in turn order, I'm probably going to get my pantheon next turn and deny him yet another turn's worth of founding the religion. There's no chance to delay a pantheon as far as I know in Civ6. Really stupid stuff here.

If we can found our religion next turn, then definitely do so by all means. If we can't though, we should move the Great Prophet back to Xian. Either a Holy Site district or Stonehenge can serve as the founding spot for a religion, and the Holy Site district at Xian is the better spot because it's more centrally located and will spread the religion to the Roman cities more easily. Like I said though, not a big deal and only something we should do if we're still waiting yet again.

Changsha starts its next wonder, the pyramids, aiming for 36 hammers (6 turns), before switching back to the Holy Site. Charging of the wonder will commence on T39 with a new government. The wonder should then be done by T41. We need to devise a proper plan for the next few wonders, as the planned delay on BW will give a cheaper campus, but delay Jebel Barkal.

Yeah, I agree that we want Jebel Barkal in the near future, it's worth a lot of faith for us. I think we get the Pyramids on Turn 41 as planned, then we have Xian and Changdu each pop out a settler with Colonization in the new Autocracy government, and then we can look to pop out another builder for Jebel Barkal after that, which would allow plenty of time to research up to Bronze Working after getting the discounted Campus district. How does that sound?

The northern warrior steps next to the northern camp, that we suspected to be there. Next to it is a slinger. I think it would be a good idea to send a slinger up there, Sulla. This should give you the Eureka for archery.

Yeah, the slinger north of Roma can head up there and help out with that camp. With the scout en route and a barb spear + slinger up there, we should be able to get a slinger kill on something. I still hope we can do the "one turn away from completion" Archery tech research anyway just to be safe though. I also can't delay that slinger up in the north too long because it will need to be down at the Industrial city state by about Turn 45 to attack, and that's only a dozen or so turns away. I probably only have about 3-4 turns that unit can spare in the north, unfortunately.

Wait, what is this? Looking back at the screenshots, I realize (I was too frustrated to care during my turn), that finishing Stonehenge has added the horse tile into Changsha's borders. I didn't know that this would happen. Does this happen for all wonders or only for Stonehenge? Looking at it, the sugar tile and the horses will give Changsha a lot more flexibility now for tile assignments

OK, I have zero idea how or why that happened midturn. We'll take it though!

[Singaboy]

Yes, the intention is now to research AH followed by archery. I am really curious what the next turn will present. I am certain, we can found a religion using Stonehenge no matter whether I get a Pantheon. By the way, where did you read about the rule of one Pantheon per round? I thought, it's something to do with being one turn beyond 25. Your explanation strikes as something stupid but very Firaxian.

One more thing. The current spot, where my northern warrior stands, seems to be surprisingly suitable for an arctic city. It has two fish, one pearl, copper and other nice hills to mine. Both fish could provide +3 food to enable working pearls (+1 faith) and maybe the copper.

[timmy827]

Wait, what is this? Looking back at the screenshots, I realize (I was too frustrated to care during my turn), that finishing Stonehenge has added the horse tile into Changsha's borders. I didn't know that this would happen. Does this happen for all wonders or only for Stonehenge? Looking at it, the sugar tile and the horses will give Changsha a lot more flexibility now for tile assignments

OK, I have zero idea how or why that happened midturn. We'll take it though!

Pretty sure that building any world wonder claims 2 tiles for its city (following the culture picker rules and not raising the culture costs for future tiles, AFAIK).  Another thing that is (still I think, though I haven't really played since the last patch) undocumented in-game but has been consistent - noticed it often in Epic 1.

[Sullla]

That freaking pantheon business from last turn...



It did end up costing us Jesuit Education. I was so angry playing this turn it was hard to concentrate. We spend the last month carefully planning to build Stonehenge, land it on a ridiculously fast date of Turn 32 - keeping in mind that there was no stone at either capital city and we had to go settle elsewhere to open up the move at all - then we lose out on the one belief that we truly wanted because Singaboy's Great Prophet can't found the religion?! It's such ridiculous nonsense that I don't even know what to say. There's no reason whatsoever to have that requirement in the game, just an assumption that the pantheon will always come first, obviously without ever thinking about the implications of Stonehenge lurking out there. Combine that with the absurd rule that only one player can found a pantheon each turn and it's a recipe for disaster. I mean sure, we'll get Divine Inspiration now for our Founder belief and then we'll get Wats later on, and Singaboy will be able to faith-purchase them and faith-purchase units with Theocracy, and we'll get good value out of a religion. It's just that we would have gotten SO MUCH MORE out of Jesuit Education and it was just sitting there for us to grab, foiled by a completely stupid game mechanic for no reason at all.

I've also been wondering about why our team kept ranking in last place on the faith generation rankings each turn. This turn I think I found out why. Somehow there were FIVE PANTHEONS already taken when I went to select mine!

Dance of the Aurora
Divine Spark
Goddess of the Harvest
Oral Tradition
City Patron Goddess

Apologies for use of so many capital letters today. All of these were already taken when I went to pick a pantheon. We know that Russia had Divine Spark and I could see that Khmer took Dance of the Aurora for some reason. (Do they have that much tundra? Huh.) The others were taken by unknown players but all of the options above were gone. I'm really confused about how that happened. Yes, Russia and Khmer built early Holy Site districts, but how did three other teams get to 25 faith before Rome and China with an early cultural city state? We should have reached God King before anyone else and started generating faith earlier. Were there really three different Religious city states helping the other teams? I sure wish Sinaboy had found a Religious city state in this game...

Well, with all the other stuff I wanted gone, I had to take God of the Open Sky:



This is a poorly suited opening setup for the pantheon, but it is worth 1 culture/turn right now and more later. It would actually be pretty good for Singaboy given all of the pasturable resources near him, but we need Monument to the Gods for China. Oh well. Making the best of a bad situation here. We could be in real trouble if it was Kongo that picked up Goddess of the Harvest though and combined it with Jesuit Education. We'll find out in time.

There was an actual turn to play in here too:



I think that I might have this barb scout pinned here. If it tries to move northwest, I should be able to shoot and kill it with my slinger next turn. It won't be able to move again due to zone of control reasons. Hopefully it won't be smart enough to move west instead. Singaboy, can you move your warrior southeast this turn to try and cut off that barb scout? If I don't get it next turn, your warrior's zone of control can hopefully cut it off and keep it from returning to that barb camp.

Elsewhere, my capital finished slinger #3 and started a fourth one. Since Roma grew to size 4 this turn, I swapped it over to a high production setup: the sheep, the bananas, and the two 1/3 forested plains hill tiles. I swapped over to Urban Planning for this one turn and then I'll drop that next turn for Colonization when Early Empire finishes. The fourth slinger is due in 2 turns and then it's on to settlers next.



Nothing too significant over here in the east. It would be really nice to find either more fresh water or at least a mountain peak to open up a Bath district later on. This part of the map is extremely dry from a fresh water perspective. Still exploring before preparing a final dotmap in this area.



Because the scout at Xian has already been triggered, I'm simply trying to clear this camp as fast as possible. I even got a really crummy dice roll here on the damage: with +5 strength advantage, I should have dealt 29-44 damage and taken 19-30 damage. This dice roll was about the worst possible in both regards. Fortunately not at a critical moment in the game though. I should be able to finish the camp next turn.

OK, so let's talk religious beliefs for a second. These are now the obvious choices:

Follower: Divine Inspiration (+4 faith per world wonder)
Founder: Church Property (2 gold/city following religion)

We caught a very small break when the Khmer/Kongo team took Tithe over Church Property. Tithe (1 gold per every 4 follower) doesn't pull ahead of Church Property until cities reach 12 followers - not size 12 - and that's late enough that it's almost strictly inferior. Church Property is better in almost every situation. So we'll take Church Property know to start raking in money, and then go for the following later:

Worship Building: Wats (2 science, 3 faith)
Enhancer: either Itinerant Preachers or Scripture, I need to check again which one is better

We should be able to beat anyone else to enhancing our religion with the Mahabodi versus saving up hundreds of faith for apostles. That will secure us Wats which means we don't need to take them now. We'll get Church Property to start making money immediately over a building we can't use for some time. I think our role in this game is to be the "money" team, making up for other deficiencies by having lots of cash to toss around. Gold is very powerful in Civ6 if we can leverage it properly, and we'll have to since we didn't get our preferred beliefs.

One last note: Singaboy, you should probably micro Changdu to make sure it's growing off that 5/0 sugar tile. We'll need to actually improve some of these tiles once the Pyramids is done. As for the whole Stonehenge/pantheon fiasco...