Suboptimal IV: Indonesian Insanity

[Cornflakes]

Quick very minor PBEM13 spoiler (I don't think you are dedlurking so you should be able to read this?)

TBS mentioned that overflow is not working correctly. Do you have time to test and get some actual numbers on what happens to large overflow?

[suboptimal]

Yes, I'm not dedlurking and have seen it mentioned on CivFanatics. What appears to be happening is that when you chop/harvest for production with a bonus policy you are generating "two" production amounts - the base value of the chop and the "bonus" amount. If the base amount completes your build the bonus amount is discarded.

The example from the CivFanantics discussion, producing an Archer with Agoge and chopping for a base of 30

1) Production currently 35/60. Chop yields 30 + 15 bonus. Archer completes with 5 overflow (bonus production not carried over)
2) Production currently 50/60. Chop yields 30 + 15 bonus. Archer completes with 20 overflow (bonus production not carried over)
3) Production currently 25/60. Chop yields 30 + 15 bonus. Archer completes with no overflow (only bonus production remains and is lost)
4) Production currently 10/60. Chop yields 30 + 15 bonus. Archer now at 55/60.

Thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/i...ed.642113/

[suboptimal]

The capital has two more chariots to get out - one is out next turn and then one more three turns after that. The city could scratch-build a builder or a trader in four turns right now. Perhaps instead of chopping out the trader on the island I go trader (EoT73) -> chariot (EoT77) -> builder (EoT 82) -> chariot (EoT88). That would give us six chariots prior to getting Mercenaries and the builder could be completed under Serfdom. Gotta get a couple of plantations and get the fishing boats and kampung going.

I like this. Do you have harbors unlocked to take the island chop instead of the trader (coastal district for culture)? Downside is loss of Carthage vision. Upside is reducing science yield to Macedon as well as another needle in their backlines that can cause a distraction for some of their military.

Harbors are not unlocked - there's another 4 turns on Celestial Navigation and no eureka. Harbors also don't get the faith bonus. My plan was to put the first chops into a trader and then dump the second round into a coastal Holy Site on the 21 jungle just E of the city center. With the trader getting built in Sound I'll dump the production into a Granary instead.

Amani will be relocated to Lisbon if/when the city appears to be about to fall.

Would it make sense to shuffle Amani to Hattusa in order to cause it to declare war on Macedon?

We could do that too, though putting her in Lisbon gets makes the trader unpillageable on the sea routes.

[quote]
For unit positioning I'm thinking to put the bulk of the chariots around Boxer, upgrade and then attack Macedonia via Carthage. I expect that if Carthage is attacked by Woden that the city will try to get walls up but not be able to do so before Woden can conquer it. If he keeps it I'll try to liberate it en route to Alexandria (or perhaps keep it for myself).

Will knights be enough of an advantage to win an offensive war vs. Macedonia? They will still be in their "golden age" so to speak of military might with GG-boosted UU. Their GG-boosed horsemen will be about equal in strength to our knights and short of overwhelming numbers I don't think we would fare well. I think your previous analysis to stay defensive is the right course of action, using our economic advantages to eventually outpace Macedon. The question then is this: What is the next big break-point in terms of military that would allow us to overwhelm Macedon?

Right now I don't think that Woden has sufficient numbers of Hetairoi, Hypaspists and to take full advantage of the situation. I don't know that it will change, either.

As Indonesia we have a unique advantage through our Frigate UU, namely that we can ignore the expensive naval techs of Cartography + Square Rigging. Looking towards the middle and bottom of the tree there are Muskets and Cavalry. Strength-wise muskets aren't that much of an improvement over Knights, but the biggest problem with Muskets is that they are slow. There is no maneuverability with Muskets. Can't fork cities, and also can't bring as much force to bear simply because you don't have the movement to surround enemy units. Cavalry aren't much of a strength improvement over Muskets (which Macedon may be able to acquire about the time we can make our attack) but have the maneuverability which Muskets lack.

Need to keep in mind that we have no swords for musket upgrades and no horses for cavalry upgrades (yet). Also need to keep in mind that Jongs are currently useless against Macedonia (but will be useful against Scotland).

Just spit-balling here... what would a straight beeline to Cavalry look like after Stirrups? (side note, probably hit Celestial Navigation first if not already acquired). Engineering [walls at Boxer, ] + Machinery [have to build 2 more archers + upgrade slinger] + Printing [skip eureka, but the visibility grants +3 CS immediately] + Construction [maybe skip eureka?] + Castles [Monarchy should be unlocked] + Siege Tactics [skip eureka] + Military Science [make sure you kill something with a knight]. Skip Currency + Mathematics + Apprenticeship + Cartography + Square Rigging. Disadvantage of deep beeline in R&F is the penalty for researching techs ahead of the game era. It is likely that everything from Machinery onward would get a 20% penalty, and Military Science may even get 40% penalty:

We need to start picking up these eurekas. That solves 40% of the problem

Maybe knights attack is best? Or maybe no attack at all (or for a very long time?). Can we out-build Scotland and Korea and ignore the expense of capturing un-developed Macedonian territory? I'm out of time for analysis now and may not have more time for a while. Hope this gets some creative juices flowing.

My plan with Scotland and Korea will be to use the Jongs and galleys/caravels to try to raze their coastal cities and force them into being landlocked.

[suboptimal]

Turn 70

So, Nan Madol appears to be safe for the time being. How about Carthage?




Yep, he’s started chipping away at it. Eh, that’s OK for now. He’s also attacked the sword up at Pella:




The Nan Madol warrior might get frisky and start attacking the city. That’ll be interesting….I give the warrior a whack, giving 36 damage and taking 20 That gives me the XP for a promotion next turn and I’ll take Tortoise to minimize the archer’s capabilities. I have five more turns to kill units and/or pillage things with this swordsman – if Woden is aware of this he might try stalling me. What he’s not aware of is that I’d have no problem suiciding this unit if it means killing one of his or getting that pillage done. Speaking of Nan Madol I foritfy my units and move the missionary next to the city. Conversion starts next turn. While I’m out east I move the galley down the coast and find a little barbarian-bashing party going on.




Shame I don’t have coastal raiding.

Up at Grenada the river runs right into tundra, so there’s no good settlement location up here. I’ll try to work my way around the island anyway.

Down on the island the settler disembarks and I move the warrior next to the iron. Next turn both units will move west one more tile and the turn after that I’ll found the city. Quadrireme heads up the coast to defog. There may be an island just north of the peninsula so I’ll head up that way to investigate.

Cleaning up the unit movement the chariot moves to just outside Old Friends. I move one of the floodplain citizens to the unmined plains hill. That brings the completion time of the monument to 5 turns.

Military Training, chariot at Sound and new pop at Boxer and Punky’s next turn, Campus at Boxer the turn after that.

Woden’s current income appears to be 4 per turn with 92 on hand. His Great General was recruited last turn.

On the religion lens both Old Friends and Boxer will convert to Feelin’ Groovy in 12 turns.

Cornflakes, my initial response to your post was an off-the-cuff quickie () while my turn loaded. I’ll ponder things a bit and put together a more substantial set of responses a bit later tonight.

[suboptimal]

Cornflakes, here’s my detailed response. I did find your post to get the juices flowing...hopefully that leads to Macedonian blood in about 20 turns or so.

Woden

Regarding the immediate issue of Woden, he has 1 hetairoi and 2 hypaspists that we know of and I had a pretty good accounting of their locations and his overall force composition as of a turn or two ago. His income is 4 per turn. With Professional Army running he’d be able to build four more units/improvements.

The big danger with the Great General are hetairoi – they double the bonus. Hypaspists only get bonuses to attacking districts. What made Archduke so potent in PBEM 6 (besides my own ineptitude) is that he had TWO Great Generals in the field and they stacked. Great People no longer stack (IIRC). The idea with a knight attack would be to kill any unit that isn’t a hetairoi and try to pick off a couple if they can be isolated or caught unawares.

It seems that in Civ 6 the time to do an offensive is when you can leverage a tech lead over your opponent. I think with a half dozen knights we’d be able to overrun whatever position he could establish at Carthage and then proceed from there. The primary goal would be to destroy as much of his military as possible and secondarily to pillage him out. If his cities can be taken at that point, then we take them. If we get the opportunity to take Pella or Methone I think it’s worth it. Alexandria should get razed as that cuts off Woden’s cash flow unless we’re able to move fast enough to fight off the loyalty. Carthage, if he takes it, would get liberated. His new city won’t generate him any but might be useful otherwise, depending on where he puts it.

The World

The fact of the matter is that this game appears to be headed towards the end point of my speculated meta way back on Page 1 or 2 – stalemate. The only way this game might have broken open early was if one civ on the 2-player land mass was able to score an early knockout. No dice. Even if I cripple Woden and play catch-up what of the other land mass?

Yes, Korea and Scotland are going on a building spree. They are also probably geographically and militarily stalemated. Neither could afford to attack Australia given their production bonuses and the fact that it’d leave one open to attack from the other. What happens there depends on Pindicator, but he’s got a pyhrric choice. If he does nothing, he gets outbuilt and he’s playing out the string (which is probably what he inherited already). If he diplomatically achieves a 2v1 I think he comes out with the lesser spoils given his tech rate and military strength. We don’t know where Archduke’s army is but I think, based on geographic positioning, that he may be in a slight man-in-the-middle situation with Australia to his south and Korea to his east.

Outbuilding Scotland and Korea while Macedonia is a threat is a non-starter. The only way to achieve that would be to ignore military or go pure defensive, both of which would take that would have gone to improvements. Of course, if we were able to eliminate Woden and keep Pella and Methone in the process, we might have a shot at it.

[suboptimal]

Science and the Art of Pillaging

First off, your post has convinced me not to take Stockholm – I’ll milk it for a promotion for the quadrireme and then pillage it out for 320 on the first pass (provided it completes its library). Where to put that, though? First, the current tech progress:

Stirrups: 75.8 out of 468 (?) as of EoT70. The “magic number” is 312 - that’s the point beyond which the eureka finishes the tech immediately.
Celestial Navigation: 52.6 out of 120.
Also relevant, we’re at 92.6 with 14:6 per turn

The first pillage at Stockholm (86, Turn 76 at the earliest) could finish Celestial Navigation, overflow to Stirrups. The second would go to Irrigation, again overflowing to Stirrups. We’d hold off chopping until then to give Magnus time to get positioned at the island city (T72 move, T77 establish, chop T77 & T78, stay put for the next builder).

Looking forward in the tree on the cavalry beeline:

Engineering: 200, build Ancient Walls for 80
Construction: 200, build a Water Mill for 80
Machinery: 360 (base 300). Own 3 archers for 120
Castles: 468 (base 390), government with 6 policy slots for 156
Printing: 648 (base 540), build 2 universities for 216
Siege Tactics: 792 (base 660), own 2 bombards for 264
Military Science: 1014 (base 845), kill a unit with a knight for 338

Machinery through Siege Tactics revert to base as of Turn 121. I think we’d be able to get the eurekas for Castles, Military Science and Engineering without difficulty. Machinery we could also get without too much trouble (crank out two archers at Sound).

I don’t think the beeline to Cavalry is reasonable as it sacrifices too much. With the mines going in at island and Old Friends the Apprenticeship tech will give those cities quite a production boost. The cost to get to Apprenticeship is going to be 312 as we have the boost for Apprenticeship and will get the boost for Currency with the first trade route. I also think that building swords and upgrading to muskets, while not mobile, makes good defensive sense, particularly if the knight raid goes tits up. We also have only one horse resource available at present and that means that only Old Friends would be able to build horsemen once its Encampment is complete.

Getting to muskets requires Currency, Apprenticeship, Construction, Military Engineering, Stirrups and Gunpowder.

I think after the first two pillages into Celestial Navigation and Irrigation the next two should go into Currency and Apprenticeship. Natural science yield after that point would finish the latter and then we’d start working (and pillaging) towards Gunpowder. By that point Woden will either have suffered military losses or his “golden age” of unit power will be over.

Civics

Just for completeness...after Feudalism we’ll go for Mercenaries, unless we need more time to build quads. Then I’d go for Theology, get two temples built while working on Recorded History and then try to get Divine Right out of the way. I don’t see us getting a second Campus down in that time but then again, outside of the inspiration as long as Stockholm is alive we can milk that for all its worth and we don't need Campus districts .

I currently estimate civic completions as follows provided Nan Madol remains ours during this time:

Defensive Tactics: EoT 74
Feudalism: EoT82
Mercenaries: EoT89 <- If 4 quads are enough we can finish EoT89, if we want five total then we'd need to hold it to EoT92.
Theology: EoT94

[suboptimal]

Builders, Faith & The Island

The builder at the island could be bought on Turn 72, farm the rice on Turn 73, chop the forest on Turn 77 and chop the jungle on Turn 78 (I’d be moving Magnus over there). That gets us 170 and would put us around 300 as of Turn 78 and making almost 19 per turn. I’d have to buy one builder at Sound to complete the Feudalism eureka and that builder could be used to put down a pasture and a plantation at Sound. After that I’d buy a serfdom builder at Island (mine iron, chop/mine jungle, mine chopped forest, wait for expansion to chop jungle) and one at Old Friends (plantation dyes, pasture horses, mine plains hill, maybe mine other hills or make improvements/chops at Punky’s or Boxer).

For reference I’m saving the forest N of Sound for a Magnus chop into a Temple.

Updated build orders and estimates:

Sound: Chariot (finished now) → Trader (EoT74) → Chariot (EoT77) → Chariot (EoT80) → Harbor if coast is claimed
Punky’s: Chariot (EoT71) → Quad (EoT82) → Quad (EoT 91) → Gov’t Plaza (EoT 101)
Boxer: Campus (EoT71) → Quad (EoT85) → Walls (EoT96) → Harbor
Old Friends: Monument (EoT 74) → Encampment (EoT89) → Swords
Island: Harbor (est EoT 78) → Quad (EoT 88) → Lighthouse (EoT 98-ish)

These times slow down a bit if we de-slot Urban Planning. I also need to get Sound’s some housing to get to Pop 10 and be able to switch the sugar over to Punky’s to get its population up.

Question: how many more cities should we found? I’m thinking at least one, either south of Nan Madol or NE of Lisbon. Settling both would be “perfect world” scenarios and might be achievable if we get some chops out of Punky’s & Boxer (I’d be chopping at those cities only for Harbors). Both of these settlements also get us two more luxuries.

City-States

I think I put the Military Training envoy into Hattusa next turn for the added science. Alhazard has suzerained Lisbon using Amani + 1 envoy. Archduke has 2 envoys there. The trade route will give us an envoy to Lisbon. Trade routes there are currently worth 8 and I could actually send one from Punky’s or Boxer. We’ll acquire two more envoys over the next 6 turns – one on Turn 72 from natural generation and one on Turn 77 from Defensive Tactics. We’d get another sometime in the late 80’s from Theology. I think it’s worth holding onto those until they are absolutely needed, either to contest suzerainty at Nan Madol or if we find a useful city-state on the other continent. I don’t think it’s worth trying to suzerain Lisbon with Amani given the current situation there. When it comes time to move her I think Hattusa for a while and then on to Grenada.

I think Hattusa can become a pillaging mill after we pop its borders with the envoy and Amani – two mineable tiles will open up and it’s got the Campus. A knight up there could do some serious accumulation.

I also just noticed that the entire bottom of our continent is defogged. It took me a minute to figure out how that happened and then I saw the Nan Madol galley down in the straits SW of Yosemite. There is nothing interesting down there unless we wanted to plant a tundra river city and bang out four forest chops and a deer harvest.

[Cornflakes]

Keep in mind there is no overflow from pillages (at least there wasn't before the patch massively increased them). You will want to put the pillages into techs that can absorb all or most of the pillage science so it doesn't get wasted.

I’d have to buy one builder at Sound to complete the Feudalism eureka and that builder could be used to put down a pasture and a plantation at Sound

You could harvest the cows and plant an Alcazar there. With Magnus the faith from the cow harvest will almost fund a builder purchase. Trade off is -1/1/0.5Housing for +2 and immediate food infusion (also you get approximately 1-2 free builder charges assuming the faith purchases 2/3 of a 5-charge builder but you have to spend one of those charges on the Alcazar).

A cautious knight attack as you describe targeting units and pillaging sounds like it may work. You will need to be careful not to get over-extended. Bring a missionary to convert Carthage where you can use as a base with DotF to retreat and heal after pillaging. That makes me want to save the island-sword upgrade gold and spend it on another Knight. Stockholm will always be around to pillage. Your Quad help weaken Stockholm's military and aid your warrior's pillaging. Even if it takes extra time to pillage due to healing, you'll get the same overall pillage output (it will scale up to compensate for any delays). And extra knight could make all the difference on the offense against Macedon.

[suboptimal]

My understanding of pre-patch pillaging was that they would overflow normally but that getting a subsequent boost (or another pillage) would wipe out any pre-existing overflow, regardless of source. Hmmm....we'll find out with the first pillage into Celestial Navigation.

Regarding the cows, a harvest would pull in about 81, which would get the city to Pop 8 and start it towards Pop 9. The farm will get it to 9 housing (it's currently at 8.5) and then a Granary could get it to 11. Harvest looks like a good idea - perhaps farm, harvest and then plantation for the amenity & gold with the first builder, then Alcazar with the second. Here's an idea - I can swap the forest N of Sound to Punky's and then Magnus chop that on T83 into the Govt Plaza (instead of a temple at Sound). That would complete the district for a governor promotion and give us about 27 overflow into a quadrireme, getting both of the city's quad builds completed before Mercenaries at T89. It'd also get us Liang for 6-charge builders starting on Turn 88 or 89.

I'm still inclined to do the sword upgrade as the pillaging at Stockholm gets us moving now. The crabs at Boxer would be worth about 160 if I harvested them, 240 if I did so with Magnus on Turn 88/89 and I'd have a builder around.

Converting Carthage, on its face, sounds like a good idea. The issue is that we wouldn't be suzerain unless we moved Amani back there after her tour of Grenada and Hattusa (or dropped our envoys into there). It also assumes that Woden hasn't taken or razed the city and that we could reclaim it if he did take it.

[Cornflakes]

I meant convert Carthage after liberating it (which would give you 3 envoys). My assumption was/is that Woden will be able to capture easily before we get our Knights upgraded an on scene. Chopping of the Govt Plaza sounds better than temple. Speeding up the plaza has better snowball effects that speeding up the temple.