[Spoilers] Whosit is playing for second

[Whosit]

I killed one of Krill's corps!  

Too bad that heroic Field Cannon is gonna die, too.

[Whosit]

I see what TAD is doing now. Blitzing for a religion victory. I see Khmer missionaries east and west.

[Whosit]

Guess I'll do an end game write-up tomorrow, before reading other threads. I was going to note that I could observe that Krill was making as much Faith per turn as TAD, and was easily fighting off the religious victory attempt.

I was also going to mention that I was about to settle a city in the last bit of ice down south :P

[Whosit]

Game Over: Whosit of Rome Post Mortem

Congrats to Krill on a game well played. And shout-out to CMF for making the most with the least. Considering that he nearly demolished me with all his limbs hacked off like Monty Python's Black Knight, if he had gotten a better start, or even had just not been harassed by barbs, things would look very different.

Still pissed about the Settler blocking, even though that was the best play for you.

So, I did read the lurker... page :P and Sullla pretty much called me out for my biggest problems, as expected. If you've been reading along this whole time, you probably know what was going on in my head, but with hindsight I'd attribute my loss here to: Poor adaptability, inexperience with Civ6 multiplayer, and the usual culprit of unmedicated ADHD. I'd say that I lost the game on Turn 86 when my Legion attack was doomed to fail. I could go further and say that I lost the game on Turn 5 when I met Korea and failed to adapt my strategy. Let me explain.

Despite my pick of Rome, I went into this game intending to play as a builder. Legions were meant to be a deterrent against invasion as I out-expanded everyone else. In fact, in my mind, I was initially determined to not attack anyone. My attack on greenline was so late, and I was so "distracted" with Wonders because I was never really planning to invade Korea. The invasion was a last-minute change of plans because I thought greenline was checked out of the game and my inexperience with MP made me underestimate the forces I would need. Then I fell into my usual trap of "well, I have all these units, I'd better do something with them!"

With all the benefits of hindsight, what I think I should have done is, upon meeting Korea on turn 5, where I could have extrapolated that we were very, very close, what I should have done is immediately go for an Ironworking beeline and Legion rush. As poor as my skills are, I'm sure I could have gotten Legions out before Turn 84. Without reading my own posts, I am pretty sure that I instead assumed that greenline would prepare for such a rush. Which I guess he did. Anyway, if I had truly fully committed to a Legion rush that early, I may have been able to conquer Korea, which would have put pressure on Krill that I don't think he was ever under. 

Alternatively, I should have stuck to the plan and not wasted time and resources on that super-late attack. All the gold and production put into that could have been Builders or Settlers or Campuses lol.

I will say that I was right about one thing: Krill playing as Yongle of China would become a monster if left unchecked. I was SO certain that TheArchduke was going to leverage all that Faith into an army via the Grandmaster's Chapel. I'll have to read his thread to see what his game plan actually was. Perhaps Krill was pricklier at that time than he seemed to me?

Anyway, everything I did after that point was a mess. I think I realized what a bad spot I ended up in when the Renaissance era began and I realized how bad my Science output had fallen behind. I felt that I HAD to conquer a neighbor to keep up, and then I kept flip-flopping between targets. I am sure that my game was already lost at that point, but I should have probably just kept focusing on domestic developments to try and catch up. I also over estimated the power of Loyalty pressure (I've seen soooo many players complain about it). If I had built Settlers instead of more units, I could have actually blocked CMF out of the lands south of his capital and maybe THEN I'd have had a shot at taking him out.

Plenty of other little mistakes, like passing on the Great General that I lamented over for so long, but my game was not lost for want of a Great General.

I thought I'd have more to say here, but I think my loss was completely due to my own mistakes and the usual culprits. If I could change anything, it would either have been to go ALL-IN on conquering Korea from the get-go, or I should have STUCK TO THE PLAN and actually out-teched my neighbors before attacking. Oh, and I should have built more of a navy. Krill's conquest of Burmese was definitely a big nail in my coffin. I doubt I could have out-produced Krill with only a single coastal city, though, and the rest of my coastal terrain there wasn't great. Should Burmese have been settled 1 off the coast? Was that just an inevitable loss? Dunno.

Hopefully I didn't get dragged too hard in everyone else's threads, but I'm sure it's justified. I apologize for all the unearned gloating I did in my thread. u_u

Anyway, good game everyone. I did enjoy it and I feel I learned a lot. If anyone still wants to watch (and isn't a player).... I'm co-piloting the Ottomans in PBEM25 with Pindicator! We'll see if I learned anything.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Game Over: Whosit of Rome Post Mortem

Hopefully I didn't get dragged too hard in everyone else's threads, but I'm sure it's justified. I apologize for all the unearned gloating I did in my thread. u_u

Mostly the only dragging I did was just before the Roman invasion of Japan, when from my perspective it couldn't possibly succeed, and would basically just hand the game to China or Khmer (just before Krill really began his takeoff). But tbf you didn't have the same vision of Japan that I did, nor, being inexperienced in multiplayer, did you quite appreciate how much stacking combat strength matters more than anything else. So even if you technically have more units, due to the 1UPT and the hex map you can't always leverage those numbers - they're more useful as reserves to keep grinding forward in the face of attrition than in giving you immediate wins at the front. And even if you have more advanced units, each tech jump is only 10-15 points for much of the game, which can be compensated for with promotions, fortification & terrian, religious belief, military alliances, etc. 

So, two major lessons for multiplayer wars:
1)Commit to it! Assume the other guy is going to pop out WAY more units than you expect, because humans are very ingenious creatures when desperate. I always develop my best guess for what they can field, and then double it, because I've certainly underestimated him. 

2)By hook or by crook, stack combat strength any way you can. You need a few high quality units, but you need them in sufficient mass that they can't be overwhelmed and picked off. Krill's hammer is a good model - he didn't have too many, but what he did have were enough to kill one or two units or a city each turn. 

(also, nuts to greenline for taking the Great General eventually! He wasn't paying attention, but I was hoping to lock everyone else out of Generals for the rest of the game. >

[Whosit]

Looked at everyone's opponent analysis.

Does Whosit know [about Trajan's advantages], or did he take Trajan because he's not super confident in himself and, say, Sullla's PBEM1 and PBEM7 choice influenced him? His thread title suggests a modest estimation of his own abilities, but that just raises my radar. I don't trust him.*

This one made me laugh.

*Emphasis mine

Whosit, on the other hand, has generally been a weak player, and I don't expect that to have changed. Maybe he will surprise us, but I expect him to fall off after the monument bonus wears out.

This, unfortunately for me, turned out to be 100% spot-on.

[greenline]

I should have noticed the GG blocking that was happening, that is actually funny.

You definitely played a better game than me, although I'm certainly jealous of the start Rome got

[Sullla]

I figured I should chime in here now that the game is over. I think you covered the main mistakes earlier, the biggest one being that you were absolutely all over the place in terms of strategy. You were simultaneously trying to play a builder start while also then trying a legion rush on your closest neighbor, and that's simply not going to work against other humans in MP. Like look at this picture:




As of this turn, you've built MULTIPLE world wonders plus several Commercial hubs before launching the attack on Korea. How much more effective would that attack have been if all of that production had gone into legions, archers, and horseman rather than all those economic builds? I actually think you had the right idea initially: there was a lot of room for expansion to the north and east of Rome, especially with greenline having loyalty problems (and then checking out on this game) along with Chevalier having horrible land quality plus the worst barbarian situation I've ever seen in Civ6. There was every opportunity here to expand out to 12-15 cities, get ahead in tech/production, then crush one of your backwards neighbors. Rome is really good at pushing to Early Empire civic for the extra settler production and then leveraging Magnus/Liang for builders with lots of chops to rush out settlers. Instead, you floundered around with an attack that arrived too late and then compounded the problem by sending out more attacks against Japan and then Korea again while Yongle ran away with the game.

The good news is that this was hopefully a great learning experience. Civ6 is a complicated game and MP can really catch you off guard if you're used to playing against the AI. I really enjoyed your reporting in this thread which was excellent, even if I was getting whiplash from the constant change of focus. I think you would genuinely do a lot better if you stuck to one plan a bit better instead of swinging back and forth so much.

[Whosit]

I appreciate that, Sullla. A fairly kind assessment.

I think we can agree that things really fell apart during that Legion attack, and I will blame a portion of that on just really lacking that MP experience and only having SP experience. What's sad is that the half dozen Legions I cobbled together was DOUBLE what I thought I'd need against an AI. I'd like to believe that if I was able to understand that an attack at that point of the game was doomed, I'd have just stuck to the builder plan. Though I think I would have stagnated a little early because I can get caught up on infrastructure builds and forget to keep building Settlers.

But yeah, I learned a lot. Hopefully I can give a better showing next time!