Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Alhambram]

About Tithe versus Church Property discussion, allow me give a example in form of my PBEM 2 game as Russia.

Turn 182 when I won PBEM, I got 184 converted population, which mean 46 GPT with Tithe.
At same time 28 converted cities (at one point over 30, but Woden did clear Weedy Movement from his cities), so 56 GPT from Church Property.
That 56 gold from Church Property did basically cover maintenance costs of my Cossack army at PBEM 2 with conscription policy card.

Too bad that Jesuit Education is taken, else you might take Religious Colonization to save up faith for campus/theater buildings instead spending faith for missionaries and at same time church property would kick in instantly without help of missionary.

[Old Harry]

Turn 182 when I won PBEM, I got 184 converted population, which mean 46 GPT with Tithe.

I'm missing something here. At 1gpt per follower why didn't you earn 184? Is a follower different from a converted pop?

[Singaboy]

Thanks Sulla for the comparisons etc. I think we are in a potentially good position. Once I can use my faith to purchase units, it will get even more powerful. Hence, faith creation is very important.

The other thing I would like to point out, is the strength of Russia and Germany in the second part of the game. Those Cossacks are terror. We ought to go after Russia before they have those. Hence, we need to do more map busting to find them. A good navy might help. May I suggest for you to start with naval techs once the current tech route has come to a completion. With Buenos Aires in your hands, you have the first Eureka and can then build galleys etc.

As for Religion and the secondary beliefs, I think crusade is very powerful in this game. China's troops get +10 strength when fighting around converted Roman cities. We could use this to go tactical advantage when trying to invade others. Homeland defense could also be used for that.

As for technology, civics and districts, I had planned to finish the campus eventually, maybe aided by a forest chop and then put down the theatre at a discount. I am not too sure how effective this strategy will be in the light of new civics and technologies. I would want to get Mil Tradition so I can used the card to get the production bonus for horsemen. Theology and Mil Tradition etc will make the theatre district even more expensive. I am not sure whether deliberately waiting for a discount is really so much better. There are more wonders I would like to grab as soon as possible and they need new technologies too. There are Jebel Barkal and obviously Petra.

Do you think, it is worth going shrine -> Campus -> lock theatre, build temple and delaying Mahabodi until after that just for the theatre discount. My suggestion was indeed shrine -> temple -> campus while building Mahabodi. Once the campus is done, theatre can be locked at whatever discount is available then. However, this also means delaying BW, currency etc and not being able to lock any other districts at Shangdu. Not too sure, we should simply proceed and get discounts when they happen to be possible.

[Singaboy]

@Old Harry,

it is 1gpt per 4 followers not per follower.

[Sullla]

Alhambram: thanks for the concrete example of the Church Property/Tithe situation from your PBEM2 game. I think that proves my point though - even as late as Turn 182 (!) Tithe still couldn't produce more gold than Church Property. The latter was still worth about 25% more gold even in an extreme endgame scenario, and for most of the game Church Property would have been even more beneficial. If anyone has a non-Single Player example of Tithe being the stronger policy, I'd be interested to see it.

Singaboy: I agree that the Russia/Germany team is one to be highly feared in the later portions of the game. I don't know that we have to go after them, especially with them having Defender of the Faith. The path to success is more likely to be running over the weakest team (very likely to be Nubia/England based on what we can see now) and then simply being too large and too far ahead for other teams to catch. Still a long distance away from any of that right now of course. I did not think about the fact that Crusade would give a boost to Chinese units near Roman cities, and vice versa - that makes it an even better choice.

I think that it was worth it to dance around the different techs/civics if we could get a discounted Campus and Theatre districts placed. Since we already lost the chance to get the discounted Campus, it's probably not worth it to continue the effort to avoid researching key techs/civics for the next dozen or so turns. You would be a better judge of that than I would though. I also think we should try to find a way to get the Campus built faster than 9 turns, whether that's via chopping overflow or something else. A 9 turn build to get 1 beaker/turn is not a great conversion rate at the moment.

How about this: let's continue researching normally for China right now and not worry overmuch about the discounted districts. I think we can still get some discounted ones, we'll just need to build a few more undiscounted ones first. We'll hold the tile for the Theatre district empty at Hangzhou, but we'll build a Commercial district as the pop 7 option and save the Theatre for the pop 10 district. There's a perfect spot for the Commercial district on the river northeast of the spices tile, and we can get a discounted Theatre district later after building more Holy Site/Campus/Commercial districts. Let's get the shrine in the capital for now and then decide if we want to do the Campus or the temple next after that. I still think we likely need a Chinese builder somewhere in there too. What do you think?

Anyway, I also had a turn to play with Cornflakes back from his trip:



I saw that little popup in the corner again saying one of my units had been damaged. My immediate thought was, "what the heck, another unit from that city state?!" Then I saw that it was the barbarians who had damaged my unit, and realized it was this quinquireme in the far northeast. Argh, really annoying, if also expected. My warrior was on the forested tile and I moved it northwest to get it away from that ship. I'm pretty sure the barbarian unit can't shoot over the hills and hit my unit again, not 100% sure though. At least Firenze is still developing beautifully, with the builder improving the cattle and the city about to grow onto that tile next turn.



Now for the actual combat against Buenos Aires. The city state did not finish a unit this turn, although I think it's about 50/50 odds it will finish something next turn. I highlighted what the combat odds look like for my most damaged archer, and while these odds are indeed pretty terrible, that archer shot still did 22 damage to the city state. It all adds up and nothing beats getting free damage with ranged units. Three of my archers shot at the city and reduced it to 80/200 HP, then I was left with the full strength Volley promoted archer on the wheat. I really wanted to fire one last shot into the city state and then take it with my warrior, but I ran the numbers and realized I didn't have quite enough damage to pull it off. I could deal about 30-35 damage with that archer, but that would still leave the city with roughly 50 HP, more than my warrior could inflict. Therefore I went ahead and killed that annoying barbarian scout instead:



It really had to be done. Ostia had a new settler that just finished and the barb scout had just been triggered by the city. It was going to run and we had no chance of catching it afterwards. Incredibly, I still haven't had a single turn in which all four archers were able to fire on Buenos Aires. Well, whether or not there's a new unit inside the city, I should be able to take Buenos Aires next turn. It will be at 100/200 HP next turn and I'll be able to use all four archer shots against it, then attack with the warrior who has healed back to 60 HP himself. Note that I blocked the cattle tile with my archer so that it will be free for the warrior to attack from next turn. Even with a unit inside the city, the archers should be able to deal 80+ damage with their four shots and then the warrior should be able to finish it off. Of course, hopefully there won't be another unit in there and this will all be a piece of cake. Buenos Aires did build an archer 2 turns ago and it shouldn't have THAT much production, right? Let's hope not.

I also finished Military Tradition civic between turns. That's significant for this little campaign because it gives my units flanking and support bonuses with one another, which is not a trivial matter at all. The warrior should get +4 strength on his attack by virtue of standing next to the archers, and everything will have a similar defensive boost if they would get attacked. I finished the research for the purpose of setting up a civics swap though:



Colonization and Ilkum are out for the time being, although Ilkum will return at the next civics swap. In comes Urban Planning and Land Surveyors, with the latter only there to discount the big tile purchase of the iron in the third ring at Roma. I checked and that policy knocked the cost down from 110 gold to 88 gold, not huge but every bit counts. Research goes back into Games and Recreation, which is currently set to finish in 5 turns but might finish in 4 turns as I gain more culture from cities and Open Sky pastures.

I made one small unpleasant discovery:



Ostia was not able to swap back to the wheat tile to the south of Roma. I probably should have guessed this; I could only swap that tile to Ostia by also swapping the tile to its south, and that's now off limits because Roma has a Campus locked on that tile. Now Ostia has nothing in the way of high food tiles and it's a bit stuck on growth at the moment. Well, this means that I need to change my plans slightly. There's no point in working crummy tiles for a minimal food suplus; I'm not going to work the 2/2 jungle and the 2/1 unimproved wheat tile for a piddling +2 food surplus and 11 turns to size 3. I thought about this and came up with a solution: we're cashing-rushing the watermill here, not in the capital. Roma will still want a watermill but it actually has enough food for the moment with those two wheat tiles. Meanwhile, Ostia will benefit enormously from a watermill, currently a low-food city with three separate resources that qualify. I'm going to capture a builder at Buenos Aires, and I'm going to use its one remaining charge on whichever one of those two resources gets grabbed by Ostia. Hopefully the rice tile - that would become a 4 food tile with a farm and a 5 food tile with a watermill. In fact, a farm on the rice and a watermill creates +6 food suplus thanks to the +1 food on the watermill itself.

So we don't need to worry about food right now. I'm going to work the best tiles available, the 1/3 tiles, and let food take care of itself once we have a watermill and a farm in place. Singaboy: I'm going to need a good chunk of gold from you in the upcoming turns. You borrowed from me earlier, now it's time to send some money the other way. I'll need to spend 88 gold for the iron tile at Roma, which will boost both Wheel and Iron Working techs, and then I need the 320 gold to purchase the watermill in Ostia. We currently have a shared 205 gold and we're making a combined 30 gold/turn, so this should be very doable between the two of us. Since this city needs a watermill so badly (it will singlehandedly transform Ostia into a powerful city) and the watermill would boost Construction for our team, I think it's a worthwhile investment.

Right now, Ostia is building a warrior to near-completion. It will take 3 turns to reach 38/40 production status, after which I'll burn a forest chop on the tile southeast of the city to knock out most of a Campus district. Ostia is building the warrior now because I'm out of Ilkum; it will swap to a worker after those three turns are done when I'm about to re-enter Ilkum again.



Here's an overview picture from this turn. The builder at Roma put a plantation down on the bananas, and will move to chop next, slowly reaching that forest tile over the next couple of turns. The warrior at Roma is going to be sitting at 39/40 production next turn, perfect. Campus district is next and I think it can be done in 4-5 turns with the help of that forest chop. Then another builder for city #4 with Ilkum policy's help. I want to get these initial Campuses out with +50% Agoge overflow forest chops, and then I'm hoping to do the Commercial districts next after that with the even better +100% Limes city walls forest chop overflow. That's why I'm heading straight for Defensive Tactics civic right now, one of the best in the early stages of the game. Our community is still in the early stages of realizing this, and hopefully Singaboy and I can get a jump on the field by leveraging that production overflow. (Cornflakes certainly knows how to do it.)

No major score changes this turn from the other teams, although Cornflakes did finish civic #8, sheesh! That's one more than Singaboy and I have. I'm still puzzled that no one else has founded a third city yet. Am I missing something in this game that the other teams have realized? Well, Rome is going to be at five cities on Turn 53 and that feels pretty good to me.

[Singaboy]

This turn reached me before Sulla's report. Hence, I wasn't aware of the cash transfer ideas. Well, we work as a team and hence, there is no 'my gold' your gold' in my opinion. Whatever suits the team best. One thing needs to be mentioned. That barbarian quadrireme can't reach your warrior as the range is only 1 tile for those boats. Only frigates can shoot over 2 tiles. Hence, your warrior is as safe as it can get.

On to Turn 49:
Opening the save I am greeted with a nice situation at Buenos Aires. The fact that Ostia's settler is out combined with a city defense of 80 tells me that the barb scout must have been killed by an archer. Sulla's report later confirmed this.

My turn consists mainly of bean counting and some minor actions. Of course, Drama and Poetry has been researched, theology in 4 turns is next.

I have two builder actions this turn, the first mining the chopped grass hill at Quanzhou, the second putting down a plantation at the citrus. This has a significant effect on yields as amenities in all three cities shoot up. Quanzhou makes now 9.4 hammers which translate into roughly 14 hammers with Colonization and indeed, the settler will be ready in 4 turns. Thanks to the amenity change, the city is growing in 3 turns, but will shrink a turn later again.  

At Hangzhou, I change tile arrangement and work the 2/1 forest rather than the 3f cows. The result is 15.8 hammers. Now, the campus would be done in 7 turns. There is always the possibility to speed up the campus with a forest chop aided by Agoge overflow. I will need to see which forest tile would be best and when to get the builder there. Shangdu's builder will take a while to build indeed.

I also highlighted the cost of the theatre. The other option would be to lock a commercial hub first once currency is done in. However, I need to wait for 6 turns until Rome's completion of the tech will give me the Eureka. Hangzhou will grow in 5 turns. Until then, I can still think about whether to go for a theatre or commercial hub. I actually think, more culture with a theatre might be a good idea. of course, a commercial hub would give +4 gpt from Lisbon alone. Decisions, decisions here

Overall, science, culture and gpt improve thanks to the additional amenity. Income at 18.8 gpt is especially comforting. My southern slinger has rounded the continent and is getting closer to the barb camp. This is a potential 50gold, but fighting a spear camp with a slinger is not a good idea. We shall see. A horseman would help greatly here. Might want to insert that policy card soon (Mil. Tradition can be done in 1 turn). The other slinger is busting the fog for the settler from Quanzhou. We don't want any nasty roadblocks there.

In the north, the red warrior kills the barbarian slinger leaving it with 35 health. It might stay north for a while to ensure no new camps up there.

With the shrine done in 4 turns, I will need to read a little on religious city conversions to optimize that. Is missionary charging at small cities more effective, should cities firther away be converted first? I am not 100% sure and will need to read a little there. Maybe Sulla knows better?

[Sullla]

Wow, the save must have been moving fast last night. I played and immediately posted afterwards, and apparently it went through Chevalier Mal Fet, Woden, and Singaboy in the hour it took to type up a report. No harm done fortunately. And as far as gold transfers go, I don't need anything at the moment. I'm just going to need a fairly large sum in about five or so turns and wanted to give you a head's up ahead of time. Our combined income is already very good right now, and will only improve with the Commercial city state to buff our Commercial districts.

By the way, couldn't you put your new Mysticism envoy into Lisbon and become the suzerain? I thought you had two envoys there already, or do you only have one? Minor detail but it would probably be worthwhile for one of us to become the suzerain for the visibility bonus in the far north.

The eternal question of what to build in Hangzhou... A Theatre district would be worth 1 culture/turn immediately from the adjacency bonus with the Hanging Gardens. If we finish the Campus district, the Theatre would then be worth 2 culture/turn via an additional adjacency bonus from the city center and the Campus (each worth 1/2). Since Hangzhou could simply build a monument instead at about half the cost, I don't think the Theatre is worth it just yet. Where the Theatre really becomes useful is when we have a chance to put the Oracle next to it as well. The Oracle adds another adjacency bonus (for +3 culture/turn) and it would also cause the Theatre to produce 3 Writer/Artist/Musician points per turn. Pre-Oracle, the Theatre isn't all that great.

I still think we finish the shrine here and then decide if the Campus district or temple comes next. Also still think a builder might be the better option following the shrine - there are a good number of forests to chop and other tiles to improve.

On religious spread mechanics: each missionary charge is worth 200 points of pressure, which is normally enough to convert 2 population points into followers of the religion. We will probably have enough faith to purchase two missionaries when the shrine completes. One of them should go east and convert the Roman cities: Roma, Ostia, and Firenze (which is far enough away that it won't convert on its own easily). The other one should head west and convert the Chinese cities: Shandgu, city #4, and Antananarivo. That will make capturing the city state much easier if we do land Crusade as a belief, which I think we will. We'll have to decide after that it we want a third missionary or to start saving for a Wat in the capital. Probably the latter, although we'll have more information by then. The opportunity to faith-purchase a Wat (380 faith cost) definitely would be a major argument in favor of getting the shrine and temple done sooner in the capital. One Wat would produce more beakers than the Campus district's adjacency bonus.

[Sullla]

For some reason I keep teasing these turns at the start of the report. Well, Turn 50 was a GREAT turn for our team.



First and most important issue: no new units in Buenos Aires. Excellent stuff. Now if I had left the archer on the horses last turn, I could have pillaged the tile for 50 gold and still had enough attacks to take the city. I still think it was more important to block this turn though, just in case there was a new unit out of Buenos Aires. Anyway, the tactics here were simple. I moved the archer on the cattle tile back to the horses, then shot at the city state with the three archers at or near full health. They did 24 damage, 25 damage, and 31 damage to leave the city state with 20/100 HP remaining. That set up this triumphant screenshot:



The warrior was guaranteed of doing at least 34 damage from even the minimum dice roll and we easily captured Buenos Aires.



What a glorious campaign this was. Without patting ourselves on the back too much, I think this was a model of good execution. We brought exactly the number of units necessary to take the city state without wasting precious early game production on excessive military. Our units were able to use the local terrain to good advantage at every stage of the combat, and we killed four enemy units while losing zero of our own. This was not an easy location to capture either, not with the city located on a hill and with so many water tiles in the area. One galley would have made it trivial, but of course I had no coastal cities to train one. For a little six turn operation, I couldn't be happier with how this turned out.

I intended to rename Buenos Aires and completely forgot on my turn. Well, I'll have to get it next turn. It's going to become "Venezia" (Venice) due to its coastal location with local marshes nearby. The captured city picked up the Sailing boost for having a coastal city, and it came with a damaged monument (2t) and granary (3t). I'll probably start by repairing both of them, and then I want to start building galleys. Venezia can currently get 9 base production/turn with Urban Planning in place, and Maritime Industries will double that to 18/turn, almost good enough for 3 turn galleys. I want at least two of them, possibly three of them, so that we can start getting some map knowledge. They will also let me chop into a district of some kind here with the +100% production overflow. Not sure what district yet, probably a Campus since that will help me with future district discounting.

There's only one small problem here: I don't have Sailing tech yet to build galleys! So I need to stop researching Currency for the moment to get Sailing finished (3t), and I'll also need to finish off Wheel tech when the iron mine completes in about five turns. This will delay my passing of the Currency boost over to Singaboy for a bit - sorry about that. I don't think we have immediate plans to finish a Commercial district in China though. The good news is that Rome's science is climbing quickly now, tied with China at 11.1 beakers/turn currently and with more population growth and Campus districts incoming. It shouldn't take too long to have Sailing, Wheel, and Currency all finished.



Check out this micro at Roma: warrior is sitting at 39/40 production completed. OK there's some luck there in how the numbers lined up, but still pretty cool regardless. I swapped to the Campus, which is currently listed as taking 8 turns to complete. The builder pictured above is moving to the forest tile southwest of the sheep, and it will chop it in 2 turns as Roma swaps back to the warrior. The overflow should take out about half of the district cost; I'm guessing about 60 production right now. Total district ETA should be 4 turns by my current estimate.

Ostia is also setting up a warrior to near completion for a chop into its Campus, but it will have to wait on the forest chop for a little bit. I'm setting up a civics swap in 3 turns where I drop Agoge in favor of the aforementioned Maritime Industries for galley production (and drop Land Surveyors for Ilkum again). I'll pop back into Agoge when I complete the forest chop at Ostia.



Is that the same barbarian quinquireme or a second one? Argh. I moved one tile further west with my warrior, which should take it out of range. I would love to explore this area more fully down the road, hopefully with some galleys.



Here's a more general overview picture. I wanted to highlight Firenze, which grew to size 2 this turn and picked up the cattle tile. It's currently getting an amazing 3.8 culture/turn (!) and will grow to size 3 and pick up the horses tile for another sweet 2 food / 3 production / 1 culture tile in four more turns. Total ETA for the Campus district is probably about a dozen more turns, not bad while the city is just growing upwards. Unfortunately the city's tile picker wants to grab the natural wonder - the UNWORKABLE natural wonder - on its next culture expansion. Sigh. Sometimes this game is really dumb.

There was a significant item in the score tracking this turn: Russia picked up its first Great Writer from the Lavra districts. That was bound to happen and it's part of the reason why Russia is so strong in Civ6. The Lavras ensure an early religion and then they also keep pumping out those Great Writer/Artist/Musician points. We can actually slow down the Great Writer train by getting that Theatre district + Oracle combination in China's capital, which will produce 3 Writer/Artist/Musician points per turn for Singaboy. Anyway, in the short run though, Russia will put a Great Work in their palace, then trade it to Germany, and then put the other Great Work in Russia's palace. That's 4 culture/turn for each of them and they'll be bringing in civics a lot faster going forward. Again, Russia is a really awesome civ in this game.

So I was getting ready to pass on the save, and then I saw this:



What the heck? Cornflakes had 19 empire points and 60 total points last turn. This turn he had 12 empire points and 53 total points. Ummm... there's only one explanation for that: Cornflakes lost a size 2 city! Was that part of the punishment for cheating? Was that another team doing a drive-by razing of one of their cities? No one captured and kept a city except our team this turn. I have no idea. But this can only be good news for our team regardless. Khmer is down to a single city (5 points) with 4 population (4 points) and a district (3 points) - there's your 12 points of empire score.

Generally speaking, the empire scoring is the most important category since it measures cities, population, and districts. I say "generally" because it can be thrown off by unique districts (which count for double points) and someone spamming a bunch of low-quality small cities. With those caveats in place, we're kicking butt in the empire category right now. Singaboy has 32 points and I have 31 points in that category. Russia has 30 empire points with two double-point Lavras (12 total between the two of them)... and no one else is close. Chevalier Mal Fet has 24 empire points from having 3 cities and 9 pop, and most everyone else is around 20 points. We're pretty much lapping the field here.

It's still early but things are certainly looking good for us right now.

[Singaboy]

Turn 50:

Rome's turn was certainly exciting. Kudos to that really nicely executed strike on Buenos Aires. Since you now have a horse resource, I am going to ask you for that so that I can build horsemen in due time.
I thought, mine would be very quiet, but alas...

First thing I did was to stop researching currency as I have reached around 40%. I need to wait for Rome to finish that technology, but it seems Sulla has other plans for now Remember I want to eventually get to mathematics for Petra but will need an additional two districts (campus and CH or theatre). I am swapping back to BW.

I took Sulla's heed and invested one envoy to become suzerain of our pet city state. This will give us better visibility in the north and makes an argument for campus then CH even stronger.



The remainder of the turn should have been quiet but upon stepping onto the grass and being trapped there the slinger spots a barb horseman. How nasty is that?
What to do? Fortify and let the horseman attack with 20 vs 16 (+6 from fortification). I would need to promote heal the next turn and get attacked yet again without a counter. Hence I opt for immediate promotion so I can counter the horseman with maybe 22 vs 18 dealing a damage of more than 30 to the damage the horseman will take while attacking the slinger. The following turn the horseman will no doubt attack again and bring the slinger to roughly 30 health. However that turn during the second counterattack my slinger should kill the horseman and then run off north. I guess we need a little more than slingers to deal with the barbarians there.
This makes the case for producing horsemen out of Quanzhou after its settler more appealing. I would need to swap to Mil Tradition to enable the right policy card though. Colonization and Agoge can be dropped and Ilkum inserted too. Ilkum would be good to have to be able to produce a builder at Hangzhou for chopping etc. That builder could be done in 4 turns with Ilkum after the shrine.
Let's hope the outcome of the first horseman attack are in our favor.

[Modo]

Every time I check in here you guys are making serious progress, nicely done. A couple of questions if I may:

1) Captured workers come with whatever charges they have left or are there any other rules that apply here? What about the Pyramids, do they give and extra charge to even captured workers? If so, does Rome also benefit from that?

2) If I understood correctly the power of the Limes policy comes from the fact that overflow production in Civ6 is not reduced based on the multipliers from the previous item being built? Are walls back to the same state they were in Civ4 before regulating overflow?

Oh, and nice bit about the not my money / your money but what's best for both part...this team is looking better than a marriage.