Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

First off, unfortunately the save reached me about 20 min too late. I do not want to rush things with the intricacies in the game, hence I will need to wait another 13 hour until I reach home. Luckily from here on , things will get a lot better and I don't expect to teach evening for the large part of 2018.

@Sulla, the city up north keeps getting better and better. I assume you are going to buy the iron tile to mine for the Eureka for the wheel. If you need some gold, at the moment I could share some.
Good effort at Buenos Aires. I would actually leave the wounded warrior alone and let it suicide against your troops. Concentrate your fire power of the city to whittle the defenses down as soon as possible.

@Modo. According to my own observations, you won't get any benefit of overflow if the technology or civic is gained via Inspiration or Eureka. I might be wrong on that but this is what I read and found out myself. Hence, I will stop HBR for a turn, get the tech to be almost done via the Eureka and research it via the normal beakers, enjoying a sizeable overflow.

What I am more curious about, is the district discount mechanism. In a test game, it seemed not to work. I do hope that here, locking the campus will be done with a discount, resulting in a cost of merely 65 hammers. This would make the goal of growing Hangzhou to size 7 and locking the theatre before producing another settler much easier.

[Singaboy]

Turn 45:

The settler in Hangzhou is done finally, in the north, the barbarian slinger has not moved. I am fine with that as I can then get the slinger closer. HBR seems close to 40%, time to get off it.



First I move the slinger in the south onto the cliff and spot what I suspected for a while now. Besides the barbarian camp, there seems to be a passage southwest and a new third continent. This warrants more exploration for sure. We might want to think about planting a city down there to restrict access north.



Quanzhou changes the citizen assignment to work the horses to make a hammer more. City growth remains at 1 turns nicely. It's also time in Hangzhou to finish the Hanging Gardens and boom, the city gets 2 new tiles incorporated, the wheat tile and a 2/2 jungle in the west. This is perfect as the city can finally stop working the 2/1 tile. The overflow from the wonder shaves off a turn of the settler production. The city is growing back to pop 5 next turn and is working higher hammer tiles. Next turn, the wheat harvest should grow the city to pop 6 and get it on the path to pop 7. I will then use the builder to improve the citrus for an additional amenity. As the second Holy Site should finish in 2 turns, the campus will be locked then. I will need to check when to switch from settler to campus to make sure the city is at pop 7 when the theatre will be locked too. With the new wonder, I am making now 16 faith a turn. Time to get a shrine to get missionaries out.



Next turn, I will switch away from Drama and Recreation and for technologies, back to HBR. My third city is going to be founded in three turns. Lots to consider and do every turn in order to not mess things up

[Sullla]

I think it's always better to wait and play a turn carefully as opposed to rushing ahead with it and make mistakes. The delay didn't end up mattering either; after Singaboy played his turn, everyone else apparently played their turn in about four hours and it came right back around to me, where it had to wait until I came home from work. No big deal, we didn't lose any time at all.

Hanging Gardens finishing is really nice as well. Those extra two tiles that Hangzhou grabbed are both immediately useful, and the city grows right back to size 5 again next turn with only one turn spent at size 4, no food wasted. At 16 faith/turn right now, I agree that we want to get a shrine done in Quanzhou to build a missionary or two. Every city converted is worth 2 gold/turn so spreading the faith will be very profitable for us. Your complicated city and district and research planning still looks like it's on track to me.

I agree that we need to get some more map information going forward. We're looking strong in almost all of the major game metrics (population, research, expansion, income, etc.) but we are likely deficient in map knowledge compared to other teams. I'll send you the extra source of horses as soon as I have them connected, and my units will be free to do some more poking around once the current siege of Buenos Aires ends. Now to my turn:



Here's what I saw when I opened the save. My warrior was attacked by a city state unit moving out of Buenos Aires, and I ended up taking a pretty good chunk of damage. One more hit and this warrior could die which would be disastrous for our plans. The northern city state unit threw itself against one of the archers on the hill, which was the best we could hope for. Overall this was pretty good news; so long as I can protect the one warrior here, we should be clear to take the city now that it's lost the defending warrior.

Here was the response:



The promoted archer on the wheat tile shoots and kills the damaged warrior in the north to clear out one threat. The injured eastern archer takes the only action available, shooting the city itself and earning enough experience for a promotion. That shot did 18 damage to the city center now that there's no defending warrior to protect it. As for the remaining archers, the one next to Buenos Aires shot the southern warrior, and the other archer changed placed with the warrior to shoot and kill the final city state unit:



The main tactical move here was swapping the warrior off to the forested hill tile. This accomplishes two purposes. Number one, it means that the city state can't train a warrior and move to attack and kill my warrior on the same turn. There aren't enough movement points available for that. Number two, by moving outside of the cultural borders of the city state, my warrior can now start healing 10 HP per turn as opposed to 5 HP per turn. That makes a difference in terms of keeping the unit alive. When it's time to finish off the city state, the warrior can still move to attack and capture it from this spot.

Next turn I'll promote the two injured archers back to full strength while shooting the city state with the other two. That should do about 40 or so damage to the city, and then I should be able to do another 80 or so damage on the turn after that with all four archers firing. If no new units pop up inside Buenos Aires, it will fall on Turn 49. This city shouldn't have THAT much production and we've only been at war for 2 turns, so here's hoping.



I also founded a new city this turn! I was the second player after Chevalier Mal Fet to get a third city, and I'm quite pleased with that given the low food output of Roma. I decided to follow Singaboy's lead and our Marco Polo theme by giving my cities the names of the city states of the Italian Renaissance. For a place overflowing with culture from a natural wonder, it seemed appropriate to dub this place Firenze (Florence). I went ahead and purchased the spices tile for 70 gold, which should ensure that the horses are the next tile chosen. It was important to start working a high food tile immediately to get this magnificent city off and growing. Notice how all of the first ring tiles are pretty weak until being improved; I just can't justify working a 3/0 cattle tile when I could be working a 4/2 spices tile instead.

I also went ahead and placed the Campus district immediately and, in a real rarity for me, began building the district as a first build selection. Usually this is a bit of a sucker's move and new cities are better off building something cheaper to help them get started, or building something with a big production modifier (walls, units, etc.) to overflow/chop into a district. However, I thought this over and couldn't find anything better for the city to do aside from working on the district. I don't need units here, not with 2 warriors and 4 archers already done and my two established cities soon to push out 2 more warriors. The capital has already supplied a builder for Firenze which will keep it covered on tile improvements up to size 4. I don't need a granary because this city has lots of natural food and enough housing to avoid the penalty until hitting size 5, and at that point I should have enough tech to go straight onto a Bath district. (Rome is the one civ that can and should skip granaries by going directly to Baths in most cities.) The natural first build here would be a monument, but as Rome I get them for free. So a Campus first it is, and the ETA to build it will drop rapidly as the city grows like a weed. I would chop into the district, however this is one spot on the map that lacks forests for chopping. Take a look:



No forest cover of note here or stone to harvest. Therefore this is a rare spot where I do feel that district first is a good call. I need to get my district count up quickly to start take advantage of discounted districts. I'll use Campus districts as my "first" type, with Commercial districts as the second. I should be able to get pretty much everything else discounted, and I'll want at least one Encampment, Harbor, Theatre, and so on at the cheaper prices. I'm also hoping to build a lot of Industrial districts in this game down the road, but we'll see about that.

Culture is now outstripping science, another thing that happens to Rome and rarely anyone else. The Campus districts will help remedy that as well. No major score changes this tun unless you count our team, which saw Rome add a city and China build a wonder. Woden finished a tech and a civic, that was about it.

[Singaboy]

Working at home telecommuting, I could play a lot faster today This is good because I have to post a few questions for the next turns, so it is necessary to get this off my chest.

Turn 46:

Sulla has founded his third and most powerful city in the west. Meanwhile, the barb slinger doesn't want to move, so my slinger will circumvent the Lake to attack from the other side. Most likely my warrior by itself is good enough to kill it. Drama and Poetry are about to be done as well, hence I will need to swap away from it.

A builder has reached the wheat right in time to harvest it to make room for the campus. This will yield 49 food. Remember, Hangzhou has just grown back from pop 4 to pop 5.



I chop the wheat, Hangzhou immediately gets to pop 6. Additionally working citrus, it will grow in 7 turns to pop 7. This will be very tricky to balance as the settler should not get produced before locking in the theatre. However, in order to do that, I will first need to finish the campus. Next turn I will be able to lock the campus and start producing it. This will take around 5 turns (assuming the cost to drop from 107 to 65 hammers). Only then, I could lock the theatre and continue producing the settler. I will discuss this in more detail below. Science and culture benefit from the population growth of course. 




At Quanzhou, a pasture is built and that additional hammer is precisely enough to get the Holy Site done next turn. This micromanagement was vital to ensure the cascade of districts proceeds well. In the typical Civ 6 UI fashion, the updated production and growth is only reflected in the city detail (lower right corner) and not in the general city display.  
Horseback Riding via the Eureka is almost finished.

In other news, the settler moves north and will reach the site in 1 turn to found the city the following turn. The initial production is up for debate, though a trader might be a good idea (I want currency after locking the theatre).



Finally, a look at the score. We are leading and both China and Rome are #1 in their respective category (meaning China is #1 for the top team position and Rome is now #1 for the second team position). The third Roman city helped no doubt.

In the south, the slinger is now having to round the sea and it will take a while until it can reveal new territory.



Now, for the questions:

Looking at the dilemma of Hangzhou and its settler, the course of action is planned this way:
On turn 47, campus will be locked and started to be produced. This will take roughly 5 turns (assuming the district discount mechanism works). Hence, campus is done around turn 52. The same turn, G&R will be completed and the theatre district locked. Following this, the settler production will be resumed taking an additional 4 turns. The settler will be done roughly at turn 56. This is most likely followed by the theatre district to enable mathematics Eureka and Petra.

Meanwhile Quanzhou is supposed to produce a shrine (70 hammers) after its Holy Site is done. With a meagre production of 8, this will take an agonizing 9 turns with a completion on turn 56. I could use the forest hill for a chop of roughly 50 hammer to shave off 6 turns. However, this would mean the chop is done without any production multiplier.

The question now is, what if I switch production with Hangzhou going for campus -> shrine -> theatre (or finishing the settler) etc. The shrine will be done on turn 58, two turns after the initial completion if done in Quanzhou. However, the more central location of Hangzhou will make spreading the religion easier. In the meantime, Quanzhou goes for a settler after the Holy Site, this time the forest hill chop yielding +50% thanks to Colonization (around 75 hammers). The city would make 12 hammers a turn toward a settler, gaining the settler in 6 turns with the help of the chop. Of course, the builder would have to use an additional charge to mine the hill again. The settler would be ready on turn 53, three turns earlier and it would be produced a little closer to its intended city site. It can reach and found the city within 4 turns compared to 6 turns originating from Hangzhou.

I would also suggest to switch back to mysticism next turn since the campus has been locked then and switch off Corvee for now. More wonders will be produced in due time, but we can afford a few turns without Corvee as currently no wonder is being built. I need to produce the necessary builders for it anyway. The +1 hammer for all cities could help bring down all builds and it could help the next city produce a potential trader faster.

What do you think Sulla?

[Sullla]

OK, responding to some of the excellent questions raised by Singaboy in his last post:

- The timing windows at Hangzhou are tight but I think we have everything just barely lined up. I love the fact that the city grew two population points in a single turn via harvesting the wheat. Let's see, seven turns to size 7 there. It looks like the city needs to put down the Campus next turn (after the Holy Site finishes at Quangzhou), then build the Campus while growing to size 7, then toss down the Theatre district after growing. All that has to be done without opening up another district type until the Campus gets placed, and then also refrain from opening up another district type until after the Theatre gets placed. After the Theatre goes down and locks in its discounted cost, we'll be free to continue researching more techs/civics that open up districts because the next few won't be discounted anyway. We also don't have to build the Theatre immediately in Hangzhou, just place it to get the cost locked in. The culture from the nearby wonders would be nice to have, of course. That also doesn't include the addition of a shrine, which feels like a solid choice for the reasons you outlined.

Long story short: I think the build order in Hangzhou goes Campus -> shrine -> place Theatre district -> finish shrine. Then we decide what to build after that in 10 or so turns.

- Initial production in city #3: I see a couple different options here. I definitely wouldn't open with a district at this spot like Firenze just did, since there are lots of forests to chop into districts at a boosted production rate later on. The trader is a pretty good suggestion since the first two Chinese cities are going to be tied up on their own projects for a while and we do want to get some roads in place across China at some point. However, we don't need China to get out a trader for the Currency boost, which I'll deliver over in relatively short order. (I'm going Wheel into Currency next, and I already have the boost for Currency via my own trader.) The other options as I see them are a monument or, yes, another builder. Monuments tend to make great opening builds for new cities because they contribute meaningfully to the national culture rate while also enormously speeding up the rate at which new cities acquire tiles. Think about it: new cities with 1 population point start out with 0.3 culture/turn. It takes forever to gain any new tiles in the second ring. With a monument, that goes up to 2.3 culture/turn, about seven times the previous rate. The counterargument against a monument here would be the fact that the new Chinese city will be able to borrow tiles from Hangzhou (everything except the capital's first ring tiles) and China's 9 culture/turn is already a very good rate for Turn 46.

The other option I see would be yet another builder. We've been cranking them out nonstop but that's because China is in such a unique position. Three builders have been turned into wonders and for all the builders we've had thus far both Hangzhou and Quangzhou still have unimproved tiles. A builder could harvest the wheat for a big surge in population, then place a Holy Site district on the tile vacated. It could farm the other wheat, mine the salt for an additional amenity, and then still have two more charges left over for chopping forests into districts or mining hill tiles. Between Hanging Gardens and positive amenities, the Chinese cities are going to grow very, very fast and we need to keep up the supply of improved tiles to get the most out of those population points. So those are the options as I see them: trader, monument, or builder. It may come down partly to what policies you plan on running in the immediate future. Obviously it's better to train a builder if Ilkum is in place. I'm probably leaning slightly towards a builder because the 5 charges on that thing will let the new city chop into something else, including a potential monument or trader, but none of those choices are really bad ones.

- Minor note: Games and Recreation civic opens up Entertainment disticts. You can't finish that civic until AFTER the Theatre district is placed since it will open up an extra district type. I think this is what you meant but your last post had the two things happening on the same turn.

- Regarding a shrine for China: I think it's fine if it takes a little while to complete. We don't need to have a missionary done immediately, and we can simply purchase two of them on back to back turns whenever a shrine completes. We'd like to have missionaries out there converting cities to benefit from the gold income, but it's not urgent and it shouldn't be prioritized over the rest of our planning. The idea to have the capital build a shrine and Quangzhou to do the settler makes a lot of sense to me though. It's better to get a settler out of a small city, all things being equal, since population grows very fast at smaller sizes and much slower at larger sizes. I like the idea of using a Colonization-boosted forest chop to get a settler out faster and in a location where there's less time lost traveling to the destination. If there's one place where forest chopping is a great place to leverage bonus production, it's chopping into a settler to speed up the overall growth curve.

The downside to this plan is that we have a settler about 33% done in the capital right now, and that's a bit wasteful. Obviously it would have been better to have started a shrine there a few turns ago. Still, we will get another settler out of the capital at some point, and I don't think that the builds decay in this game. (Does anyone know the answer to that? I'm pretty sure I had a half-completed building in one of my past games for ages and ages.) China will want to stop at 4 cities for a little bit to get out the builders needed to improve them, but we'll return to expansion again soon enough in a dozen or so turns.

- I agree that it's worthwhile to finish Mysticism civic in order to swap out of Corvee. No need to run the policy until we construct another wonder. I think either Jebel Barkal or Mahabodi is next, and we're a little distance away from both of them. Urban Planning and Colonization sound like the best Economic policies to be running right now.

- A quick note on score. We have a sizable lead at the moment and that will go up if Rome manages to take this Industrial city state. While it's obviously better to be in first than in last, I kind of wish we weren't in such a position for metagaming purposes. Everyone always targets the leader and that makes it a scary position in a game with four teams. A lot of our points are tied up in wonders and religion, which means our lead isn't as big as it might appear. I like our position at present, but we don't have anything more than a slight edge. We definitely shouldn't be overconfident.

[Modo]

I also noticed production not decaying and was curious to confirm on that. I guess if you haven't planned as far as to get a production queue in Civ6 then production decay is even more elusive...which might mean that when they do introduce queues (if ever) we might get the decay as well.
But decay should exist imo otherwise hiding military units 1 shield away from completion and other stuff like that is possible.

[Sullla]

So this turn wasn't as much fun.



The worst possible thing popped up in Buenos Aires between turns: an archer. Ugh. I was going to type last turn that the only thing I didn't want to see was an archer in there, but I didn't want to jinx it. So much for that hope. The archer in the city state shot at my archer on the horses tile and redlined it. Fortunately that unit had a promotion saved up, and therefore I burned that while having the other three archers fire on the city:



No time to have the northeastern archer use its own promotion, I needed the damage from that unit. The three archers were able to about 50 damage this turn against the city state. So let's think in terms of scenarios here for what could happen next turn. The best result would be the enemy archer shooting at my archer in the northeast. That unit would take damage but wouldn't die, and then I could promote it while the other three archers attacked and the warrior continued healing. Any of the other three archers getting attacked would also be OK, although not quite as good of a situation since they already have their promotions used. The only truly bad outcome would be the archer attacking my warrior. I don't think it would die since it's on a hill tile with forest cover and I fortified it this turn, but it would be out of the fighting essentially for good at that point.

I rate my odds of taking this city at about 65% right now. Hopefully I'll shoot the city with three or four archer shots next turn, then another three or four archer shots on Turn 49 and take it with the warrior. There's a chance that I'll lose a unit here though; in fact, if the city state archer concentrates on attacking one of my own archers turn after turn, I might end up sacrificing an archer to capture the city. That would be worth it of course, as taking this city in the next few turns would just be huge for my civ. It's like playing a hand in poker where you accept risking a good chunk of your chips because the reward for taking the pot is too great to pass up. Just cross your fingers and pray that 1) the city state archer ignores my warrior and 2) no more archers appear inside the city.

In a worst case scenario, I'll retreat and come back again with more units in 10 turns. That would be bad but we'll survive regardless. And I still think I have good odds to take this city. The defending strength goes down fast once it begins taking damage and I do have four archers to attack with. Thank goodness I brought four of them - this would have been impossible with only three archers.



That was mostly it for the turn. That barb scout that Singaboy injured is now about to poke around my territory and mess with the settler coming out of Ostia, very annoying. Hopefully I'll be able to take Buenos Aires and then escort the settler / finish off the scout. Builder done in Roma next turn to be used to improve the capital.

No new cities or districts from other players this turn. We have a major score lead now, 20 points up on the second place team. Enjoy it while it lasts.

[Singaboy]

That's tough luck. I wanted to suggest earlier on to block the city completely. That way when a new unit is produced and has nowhere to go it can either be deleted or no attack is possible. Let's hope the AI is foolish enough but my experience is that it has improved quite a bit in such situations.
By the way your warrior could still attack the city if the city has zero health and not die. I assume the archer will shoot at the same archer again though.

[Singaboy]

Turn 47:

The first thing I note is that our military strength is really lacking. A high overall score with low military backing is just inviting trouble. We ought to do something about it. I really should produce some horsemen in the near future once I get the second horse resource (so Buenos Aires really must fall). HBR is done, so the tech is there.

The next thing is a huge disappointment. I thought I had seen something in my own test but brushed it off as careless play. Where on earth is the discount for the campus?  
It costs 117 hammers, there is nothing of a discount. Do I need to wait a turn? I the discount mechnanism doesn't work the way we think it should then there is no point holding off those other technologies just to cater for discounts. In fact, i would go right for Theology so I can build Mahabodi for the Apostles.

I am in a bad mood but start a settler in Quanzhou. It currently takes 12 turns but should get significantly less with the chop next turn. I move the other builder into Hangzhou. It will move on the citrus to improve the tile in two turns to increase income by 2 gpt and get positive amenities. That will help with production too.

As for the overall situation, I switched back to mysticism and currency. Next turn I will enable Ilkum together with Colonization and start a builder in the new city. With Mahabodi not that far off, I want another builder to get that done soon so we get nice secondary beliefs for the religion.




The plan now is to get the settler out in Quanzhou and then start some serious horseman business in Quanzhou supported by the right multiplier policy card to gain maybe 3-4 horsemen and capture Antananarivo. We definitely need some deterrent military against the rest. Looking at the military strength of Woden and CMF, I can sense that they are on the move towards Cornflakes and Japper. Woden is hunting the GG as well and that might be a real threat. It might be a good idea for Rome to get IW and have some warriors just in case for legion upgrades. We don't want to end up being victims here.

[Modo]

Do city states even buy anything or do they produce it naturally all the time? There are no longer map indicators for which tiles a city works to see how much production can they put into another archer at this point, even though you've blockaded the high production ones anyway.

Also, can a player give the only resources he has to another player? If you have only one horse resource can you give that single one to your ally if you're not actively using it?