[SPOILERS] scooter tries Civ6

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Only if Alhambram makes a tactical blunder of some kind to let you get a good hit in.

Being the target of a declaration of war inspires the Defensive Tactics civic, which is one of the key civics on the tree. Limes (+100% towards walls) isn't as good as it used to be with nerfed chopping, but the civic still is an important stepping stone and best not to give your opponents a free boost if possible.

[scooter]

Oh yeah, good call. I'll take the inspiration for sure.

[Sullla]

Good to see that Pingala 2 has brought your science in line with the other top players. Perhaps that's how we're seeing such high science/culture outputs from the other players, maybe they also went for Pingala with two or even three promotions. (Though Cornflakes and Alhambram went for early Campus districts so that's also probably part of it.) Anyway, Chevalier is completely correct that you want to get the inspiration for Defensive Tactics civic so you should let him attack you if possible. And hey, maybe you aren't even his target. If I were going to rush someone in the early game, I wouldn't target the player with Defender of the Faith and the highest military power rating.

But you definitely do need to assume that you're the target of an attack and plan accordingly. Here are a couple of other thoughts I had:

* Most important is getting at least one horseman out immediately. The defensive strength of your cities in Civ6 is the strongest unit you've ever built minus 10. Capital gives +3 strength, districts give an additional +2 strength each. With a single horseman, your defenses go up to 26 base rate, and you can increase that up to 36 by having a horse stand inside the city to boost its defensive value. So you are absolutely correct that chopping for horses is the way to go.

* The second most important factor is getting walls up. I do not suggest training an archer in Changsha, you need to get walls in there somehow if an attack comes. The good news is that you can get walls relatively simply with a forest chop + the Limes policy that unlocks at Defensive Tactics. Limes is +100% production towards defensive buildings, so that policy along with a forest chop (you can purchase/swap tiles from the capital) will get walls up immediately. I don't know if you have enough time for that but it's what I would be heading towards. Walls absolutely shut down attackers that don't have a battering ram - melee units do 85% less damage than normal (!) to a city with walls. It's crazy how large the penalty is. If you get horses out and walls in place, you will not be conquered here.

* Defensive Tactics is also key because it unlocks another governor promotion. That could be Pingala 3, or alternately, it could be used for Amani. If you get another envoy and pick up Amani, that could be enough to boot Alhambram out of suzerain status and lose his levied city state units. You still haven't met the city states that he's suzerain of yet, but you will meet them if he declares war, and you can always see how many envoys each player has with a city state once you've met them. This could be a way to halt his attack, as losing suzerain status also loses the levied city state units. He could always drop in more envoys and re-levy the units, but there's a limit to how much he can do this. Remember that with the 2 for 1 Diplo policy card plus Amani, you can get 4 envoys into a city state pretty easily. Definitely keep an eye on this.

* You will need to spread Defender of the Faith around to your other cities to get the +5 strength bonus. It applies to any of your units within the borders of a city that has your religion present. To spread religion, you'll need a shrine first in Longxi, which unlocks the chance to purchase missionaries with faith. I think you're getting close to enough faith to purchase the shrine itself (it should be 2x production cost or 70 * 2 = 140 faith) and of course the shrine is also worth 2 culture/turn via Choral Music. Then you could purchase a missionary after that. So this won't help immediately but you'll be able to spread your religion over time if you get another dozen or so turns.

We'll see if Alhambram is actually coming for you soon enough. If he does, your chance to win is probably finished but you might be able to ruin his game at the same time.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

* Defensive Tactics is also key because it unlocks another governor promotion. That could be Pingala 3, or alternately, it could be used for Amani. If you get another envoy and pick up Amani, that could be enough to boot Alhambram out of suzerain status and lose his levied city state units. You still haven't met the city states that he's suzerain of yet, but you will meet them if he declares war, and you can always see how many envoys each player has with a city state once you've met them. This could be a way to halt his attack, as losing suzerain status also loses the levied city state units. He could always drop in more envoys and re-levy the units, but there's a limit to how much he can do this. Remember that with the 2 for 1 Diplo policy card plus Amani, you can get 4 envoys into a city state pretty easily. Definitely keep an eye on this.

Can you send Amani to a city-state you're at war with? She could solidify control of a neutral or allied city-state (Hungary only gets bonus envoys with the CS they levy, right? Not 2 freebies to spend anywhere, because that would be totally insane, right?) and keep Alhambram from spawning a new army in our rear. Not sure if he can use allied city-state territory to upgrade, either. If he can't, that makes the two rear city-states something less of a liability.

* You will need to spread Defender of the Faith around to your other cities to get the +5 strength bonus. It applies to any of your units within the borders of a city that has your religion present. To spread religion, you'll need a shrine first in Longxi, which unlocks the chance to purchase missionaries with faith. I think you're getting close to enough faith to purchase the shrine itself (it should be 2x production cost or 70 * 2 = 140 faith) and of course the shrine is also worth 2 culture/turn via Choral Music. Then you could purchase a missionary after that. So this won't help immediately but you'll be able to spread your religion over time if you get another dozen or so turns. 

Sometimes I've been unable to purchase a shrine. I suspect this may be because the city lacks religion, while I have been able to hand-build the shrine in the same city. Something to check on in the faith purchase menu, though. We definitely want shrines and temples down the road to take advantage of Choral Music.

We'll see if Alhambram is actually coming for you soon enough. If he does, your chance to win is probably finished but you might be able to ruin his game at the same time.  

Realistically: Probably, yeah. Have to divert too many resources to defend. Even worse, I'm not sure we ruin his game. If we totally slaughter his attackers, he's lost...well, nothing except the gold he spent on them, and the return he got for that expenditure was torpedoing our game. Best-case, we could massacre the Hungarian levies and counter-invade, but unless Alhambram's a total moron (he's not), then he'll have built his own army for defense. 

The frustrating thing is I'm not sure what scooter could have done, at this point, to stop this. He's built, what, 3 builders and 2 settlers, and a district. That's not exactly excessive builderitis, and there've been plenty of warriors and slingers in there, too. Even building more warriors wouldn't help against Hungarian swords, so the only solution would be to know in advance Hungary is 10 tiles away, that he intends to rush you, and beeline swords (and have iron nearby) to, uh, use our much-more expensive upgrades than his own to stop him. Or do what we have done, which is switch to walls the instant we met him and start beelining horses. It's just his science rate (and his gold generation!) are so high that he's at swords really early (Sullla hit praetorians around the same time in his PBEM1, as I recall, but later patches dramatically nerfed science from population and slowed the early game research a lot) and he's got a ton of levies. I just don't think any glaring mistakes were made here to give us better chances against an attack.

And I'm probably overly gloomy. Archduke is weaker than us AND lacks DotF, so if he's Alhambram's other neighbor, then he's definitely the better target. Alhambram even has practice rushing Japan early (PBEM13)! 

Optimistic take: If Alhambram achieves nothing, then we could still have a chance if Archduke/Cornflakes attacks Cornflakes/the Archduke and also achieves nothing. Let all 4 players war with each other to no end and we're no worse off than we were. Hope Hungary doesn't pull away in the meantime.

[scooter]

Thanks for the comments, guys. I'll try to address a couple more specific remarks in the actual turn report. I'll circle back to anything I missed after.


Turn 54

This was a good turn. That's not sarcasm! I'm starting to think maybe we truly can make this annoying for Alhambram.





The absolute biggest piece of news was the completion of the Pyramids. This gave us two new tiles which I didn't expect because I thought that +2 tiles thing was Stonehenge only for some reason. This turns out to be crucial, because 1) it gives us a 1/3 tile to work in the city itself, and 2) it opens up tile swapping with Xian, giving us access to another one. I decided to go ahead and go chop the walls now in case units do come from the north here too, which is entirely possible. I know Sullla mentioned the Defensive Tactics policy, but even with the Eureka, that's gated by the 11T Games and Recreation, and then another 8-9T even with the Eureka. That's way too late. So let's just chop it now with help from natural build. Then I'll turn right around and head back to Xian to chop Horses. Weirdly, the Builder who completed the Pyramids is still visible. I have no idea why, because I thought this was his last charge. Maybe I miscounted. So if he is indeed still alive, he'll go to Xian and chop with his final charge.

I also realized we can absolutely finish the walls in Longxi. First, that sword up there didn't move as much as I expected. I thought the +2 movement would make a bigger difference, but he seemingly only moved 1 tile. I also realized even if he does speed up, I can place my warrior in such a way as to stall him from hitting Longxi before walls. Those are only 3T out though, and my archer has an anti-land upgrade, so that helps.

Finally, the archer completing in Xian will move up to Changsha for now, or more like play zone defense between Changsha and Longxi until my northwest warrior can figure out if anything is coming from that direction.





The aforementioned tile additions. This is hugely helpful and makes Changsha no longer dire. Obviously I'd like to get some farms down and grow this city a size or two, but I'm going to prioritize survival for a few turns first. Is there a way to know how much production I'll get from this chop? I have no idea how chop mechanics work beyond "it scales over time." I genuinely don't know if this chop is going to complete it or come close. I suspect surely it'll knock out at least half of it.





I'm leaning towards Games and Recreation next. Defensive Tactics feels the most important, and it's gated by that. I could potentially tech construction next to help here, but I don't have a watermill, and my culture rate is better anyway. Besides, I kinda think Bronze Working next is more important. Drama and Poetry don't feel too useful. One city-state has a Theater Square quest, but we can't afford that right now.





Finally, a couple of you have mentioned the possibility he's attacking TheArchduke instead, so here's a look at that. That's TheArchduke up there in the northwest. I don't know exactly where Alhambram's cities are. I just know he has that north of Longxi. It seems almost certain that I'm much closer, and a unit is already headed my way, so it feels pretty unlikely to be TheArchduke. Maybe I can demonstrate that I'm prickly enough early that he calls it off? If he shows up to Longxi and sees walls, then sees my horse stockpile go down indicating completion of Horsemen, he may redirect or bail? No idea. Very unlikely, but a guy can hope right?

[scooter]

Hitting a few things not really addressed in the report.

* Defensive Tactics is also key because it unlocks another governor promotion. That could be Pingala 3, or alternately, it could be used for Amani. If you get another envoy and pick up Amani, that could be enough to boot Alhambram out of suzerain status and lose his levied city state units. You still haven't met the city states that he's suzerain of yet, but you will meet them if he declares war, and you can always see how many envoys each player has with a city state once you've met them. This could be a way to halt his attack, as losing suzerain status also loses the levied city state units. He could always drop in more envoys and re-levy the units, but there's a limit to how much he can do this. Remember that with the 2 for 1 Diplo policy card plus Amani, you can get 4 envoys into a city state pretty easily. Definitely keep an eye on this.

I totally hadn't thought about this. Maybe next turn I use my wildcard policy to run the envoy policy rather than some of the random stuff I'm running currently.

We'll see if Alhambram is actually coming for you soon enough. If he does, your chance to win is probably finished but you might be able to ruin his game at the same time.  

This is the thing. I've never played with this crew before, and I need to make sure I'm not marked as an easy out if I play another Civ6 game here. Plus I like revenge, and I like it when people who fail to make a clean kill get punished for it.

Realistically: Probably, yeah. Have to divert too many resources to defend. Even worse, I'm not sure we ruin his game. If we totally slaughter his attackers, he's lost...well, nothing except the gold he spent on them, and the return he got for that expenditure was torpedoing our game. Best-case, we could massacre the Hungarian levies and counter-invade, but unless Alhambram's a total moron (he's not), then he'll have built his own army for defense. 

I'd be more than happy to trot my horses up to his borders and do some pillaging were the opportunity to ever arise. I agree we wouldn't be able to like conquer him back or anything. His sheer gold output makes it hard to do too much, though.

The frustrating thing is I'm not sure what scooter could have done, at this point, to stop this. He's built, what, 3 builders and 2 settlers, and a district. That's not exactly excessive builderitis, and there've been plenty of warriors and slingers in there, too. Even building more warriors wouldn't help against Hungarian swords, so the only solution would be to know in advance Hungary is 10 tiles away, that he intends to rush you, and beeline swords (and have iron nearby) to, uh, use our much-more expensive upgrades than his own to stop him. Or do what we have done, which is switch to walls the instant we met him and start beelining horses. It's just his science rate (and his gold generation!) are so high that he's at swords really early (Sullla hit praetorians around the same time in his PBEM1, as I recall, but later patches dramatically nerfed science from population and slowed the early game research a lot) and he's got a ton of levies. I just don't think any glaring mistakes were made here to give us better chances against an attack.

Yeah, this is kind of the main downer to me. I knew Civ6 was super imbalanced, but man the early aggression options are just so strong for so many civs. This is probably more a function of how slow production is (and has to be due to 1UPT), which means any abilities that allow you to summon units insanely quickly is ridiculously OP.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

At least most of the forests are also hill tiles, so after the chops you can come back later to mine them with no net loss in production (other than the turns they spend unimproved). Sucks to lose the appeal but needs must when the devil drives.

If you get walls in both cities, and horses out of Xi'an to keep him from leaking towards the capital, we should be okay. Not even a whole lot to pillage yet. Then we're just behind in expansion and infrastructure still, but we can make plans to come back there.

[Sullla]

Scooter, here's your forest chop formula:

Resource/Feature Harvest yield (food, gold, production)
Basevalue = 25fp/50gold for bonus ...20 for features
=Base Value*(1+9*Larger of [100*(Number of Techs/67 OR Number of Civics/50)]/100)

The base value for a forest chop is 20 so multiply that by (1 + 9 * (number of civics researched / 50)). In theory, civics research almost always outpaces science research when it comes to this formula. I think you have 8 civics finished at this point, which would make the forest chop 20 * (1 + 9 * (8 / 50)) = 49 production. It should be roughly comparable to that. Of course, when you move your worker onto the forest tile, you'll also be able to hover the "chop" option and get an exact count.

Also, all existing builders gain +1 charge when the Pyramids finish. I'm guessing this is why your builder ended up with that one extra charge. Nice to have regardless!

Games and Recreation definitely next for civics, no need for Drama and Poetry right now. Your defense looks pretty solid at the moment, at least based on the information available. With any luck you'll have walls up and a horse out by the time attackers can arrive, and that will make it very difficult for anyone who lacks a battering ram. Still keeping fingers crossed that Alhambram is targeting one of the other players in this game and not you.

PS How much faith do you need to purchase the shrine in Longxi?

[scooter]

Scooter, here's your forest chop formula:

Resource/Feature Harvest yield (food, gold, production)
Basevalue = 25fp/50gold for bonus ...20 for features
=Base Value*(1+9*Larger of [100*(Number of Techs/67 OR Number of Civics/50)]/100)

The base value for a forest chop is 20 so multiply that by (1 + 9 * (number of civics researched / 50)). In theory, civics research almost always outpaces science research when it comes to this formula. I think you have 8 civics finished at this point, which would make the forest chop 20 * (1 + 9 * (8 / 50)) = 49 production. It should be roughly comparable to that. Of course, when you move your worker onto the forest tile, you'll also be able to hover the "chop" option and get an exact count.

Perfect. So we should get these walls rather quickly. 4ish turns from now given our rate of natural build + chop. Unless a bunch of units appear from the fog literally next turn, both of our front cities should be walled up. I hesitate to ask this - but if we get walls up, what can he even do? We don't have that many improved tiles to pillage, and I can't imagine he's got a ram.

Also, all existing builders gain +1 charge when the Pyramids finish. I'm guessing this is why your builder ended up with that one extra charge. Nice to have regardless!

I definitely knew about the +1 charge of course, but the idea that it applies before the builder gets removed from the game for having 0 charges is kinda wild to me. I'll take it!

PS How much faith do you need to purchase the shrine in Longxi?

Are you sure this is possible? I don't have the option, and some quick googling gives me no indication it can be purchased with faith. In any case, it's a 6T build currently.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I didn't think Shrines could be purchased with faith - worship buildings can, but not shrines. But I thought it was just a consequence of religion/no religion in a settlement.

As for what Alhambram can do, until you get horsemen out, your settlements will be weak enough that he can still batter his way in eventually, ram or no ram. I think his play would probably be to pillage and make a nuisance of himself, going for a choke until he can get siege equipment up. The archer and walls will make hanging around the city unpleasant, though.

I think after horsemen are out to win some breathing space, maybe a shrine to spread the faith, then see if we can get peace and go back into expansion mode (ie more settlers and city-state conquests in an effort to catch up).