Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Modo]

Rome should do this....China should do that....Rome is ready to assist...China will send amenities.....
You can almost see two statesmen sitting at their desks with a pile of reports and plans to sign off "Thank God Germany is travelling to England, we get more time to work on the current pile. Coordinating this alliance is no picnic."

In the meantime, two Roman archers are debating marching orders with the other two on who should go forward and who should go back.

[Sullla]

That's kind of you to write Modo. I'm sure the other teams have plenty of communications back and forth between players though - all of the threads seem to be pretty active in this forum. Let's get to the new turn.



Pretty quiet turn for my civ. Chevalier Mal Fet moved his scout north along the Roman border and will run into Lisbon next turn. I sent him a Declaration of Friendship; we'll see if that gets a response next turn. My warriors and an archer are moving to explore the southeast and provide advance warning in the unlikely event that more foreign units are headed our way. Currency tech is due next turn, and the builder at Roma will mine the iron resource next turn to deliver the boost for Wheel and Iron Working techs. I'll be asking Singaboy for some gold next turn to pay for the cash-rushed watermill in Ostia.



So here's a small item of discussion at Firenze. I was hoping the city would stop picking that useless natural wonder tile for its next expansion, but it seems determined to take that tile. It will be 7 turns to get that natural wonder, and then another 9-10 turns after that to get the following tile, which should be the awesome grassland hill southwest of the pearls. That's too slow, and we don't have gold to spare right now to purchase another tile. With Firenze growing again in six more turns, I need to improve another tile for the city to work at size 4. The question is which one; I could go for the spices, pearls, or a normal grassland hill tile. Spices are worth +2 gold/turn and gives us another amenity for Singaboy. Pearls add +1 food on the water tile, get Rome halfway to the Celestial Navigation boost, and also adds another amenity. Mining a normal grassland hill gets 1/3 of the way to Apprenticeship tech and takes a grassland hill to 2/2 yield.

I actually prefer mining a grassland hill over the other options. Both our civs are in good shape on amenities right now; China has sugar and citris, while Rome has spices (from China) and soon to be a second sugar from China. We also expect to have the Colosseum finished for China in about 12-15 more turns. Improving the spices still leaves this city at only 3 tiles to work, and improving the pearls only creates a tile with 2 food / 2 commerce / 1 culture / 1 faith yield. Rome has plenty of culture and doesn't need faith, which means the pearls are essentially a 2 food / 2 commerce tile, and that's pretty pedestrian. Better to get the 2 food / 2 production grassland hill in play and keep improving the production output of what's going to be an amazing city longterm. Still worth discussing but this is what I'm thinking.



Here's a picture of the religious lens for Rome. The one advantage of Milano's slow growth is that it should yield a conversion of the city without need for a missionary. We'll want to use China's second missionary to put one charge into Roma, Ostia, and Venezia which should hopefully convert all three. That will also flip Rome as a civ over to Marco Polo religion, and perhaps unlock Crusade belief for use after we build the Mahabodi. Firenze is too far away right now and we'll have to get it with a future missionary. Once Roma is converted, it will help put some slow pressure on Firenze.

No big score changes this turn; Chevalier Mal Fet's England added a tech and that was it. We're still waiting for Russia and Germany to plant the settlers they completed four turns ago. Our civ improved from fourth in military power to third place this turn, which doesn't really mean anything but is still nice to see. Chevalier Mal Fet's power went up from 186 to 215 this turn, either a lot of units healing or more likely a new unit completing. Military rankings look like this:

Chevalier Mal Fet: 215
Woden: 167
Sullla: 154
China: 43

I could probably stop either of Chevalier Mal Fet or Woden alone without too much trouble, just not both of them at once. Getting two horsemen out for China seems like a good idea to me in order to improve that military score. It's been worth it to accelerate the growth curve of our civ, but we also don't want to look too vulnerable. We're still crushing the Nubia/England team in every metric other than military power - Singaboy and I each have 14 population in our civs. Their teams combined have 17 population (9 pop and 8 pop). Civilization games have changed over time, but more population has always meant more power.

[Singaboy]

Turn 55

A very quiet turn with nothing much happening. I get BW and Military Tradition which enables me to change civics. With Maneuver in place, the horseman at Quanzhou drops to 4 turns. I keep Discipline active for another 4 turns, which Games and Recreation come in. I will then change to save maintenance for troops as horsemen and archers will cost me some.
The southern slinger is not being harassed any longer and now takes a break to heal. The missionary is on its way to convert Antananarivo. Oh, and revealing the irons has changed the computers mind, Quanzhou will add the iron hill in 3 turns to its city. Shangdu's salt will be added in 7 turns.

The new city is ready in 2 turns. Still debating what to build there. i would prefer to build something with a bonus, but might want to build a monument or trader initially until the chopping game for the entertainment district starts. Speaking of districts, next turn I can finally lock the CH for 143 hammers.That's currently 10 turns worth of production




I want to discuss something else, the civic tree for research. I have started to research Games and Recreation for the Colosseum and entertainment district (having the Inspiration netted thanks to Rome). In two turns, Rome is finishing its second campus and gets the Inspiration for Recorded History. Would it be possible for Rome to research that civic after Defensive Tactics? The reason I am mentioning this is: With Recorded History, China could research this civic pretty quickly and then head for Civil Service. It is likely for Hangzhou to grow to pop 10 within a reasonable time frame.
The city currently has housing of 9 and with sugar, bananas and cattle, this should be sufficient to get it to 11 even. I would need to work out how long it would take to get there. Obviously, feudalism is a big goal for 7 builder charges for China. However, given Rome's monster cultural output, it should be possible to change of to Recorded History for a bit?

[Singaboy]

By the way, while thinking about the civics, it occurred to me that Rome could really quickly burn through the civic tree to gain feudalism. Its 275 beakers and with the Inspiration a mere 138 beakers. Rome making more than 20 beakers could reach it within 14 turns. That would require the farming of 4 more tiles. The city triangle of Ostia, Milano and Venezia has those potential 4 tiles.

It would be a huge boost, if Rome could get there by T70 with China following in its footsteps. China should get more culture soon and it would require 70+110 beakers to get those two civics once Games and Recreation is done. Maybe I am looking at 20 turns to get builders with 7 charges. Really worth thinking about it and planning it out.

If this would be a viable plan, I would start producing a new builder in city#4 that would only be finished once 7 charges are an option.

Any opinions here?

*Edit: Planning for builders and Temple/Mahabodi
T57 1st builder at Hangzhou (overflow of 15 hammers)
T59 1st builder improves sugar (4 charges left)
T60 2nd builder Hangzhou at 73.5 hammers, switch to temple
T61 1st builder at Shangdu done at 74 hammers, moves to harvest wheat (4 charges left), 1st builder Hangzhou chops forest (3 charges left) into 2nd builder -> overflow of around 60 hammers into temple, 2nd builder Hangzhou moves off to 4th city

T62 1st builder Hangzhou mines hill (2 charges left)
T63 1st builder Shangdu improves salt (3 charges left)
T64 Temple done in Hangzhou, production starts on 3rd builder (production of 82 hammers)
T65 Mahabodi locked, 1st builder Hangzhou charges (1st - 1 charge left)
T66 1st builder Hangzhou charges Mahabodi (2nd -  builder spent)
T67 2nd builder Hangzhou chops rain forest at 4th city, entertainment district placed, builder continues chopping and improving horses
T68 3rd builder Hangzhou done, moves off to build Colosseum
T69 - T71 1st builder Shangdu charges Mahabodi (wonder done - builder spent)
T73 3rd builder reaches Colosseum site, starts charging -> ideally Colosseum done on T77

[Sullla]

Yeah, so that's basically what I was thinking too Singaboy. I should have outlined this in a post earlier and didn't think about it. The upcoming civics path that I want to take with Rome is Defensive Tactics (current), then Feudalism, then Military Training, then Mercenaries. I won't be able to get the boost for Defensive Tactics (be the target of a war declaration) unless something unexpected happens, and I won't get the boost for Military Training (build an Encampment district) either. However, I absolutely can get the boost for Feudalism by building four more farms (for six total) and I've been planning on lining up exactly that. Roma is training two builders in a row right now, with the pair of them going to farm the many wheat and rice tiles down in the Ostia/Venezia/Milano region. That will land the boost for Feudalism, and I already have the boost for Mercenaries in hand. It should take 7 turns for Defensive Tactics and then 5-6 turns for Feudalism after that. Figure somewhere between 20-25 turns to reach Mercenaries, with a 1-turn policy swap sitting at Mysticism for any kind of city micromangement need or emergency usage.

There's several important reasons for this civics path:

1) I want to get to Mercenaries civic quickly to unlock Professional Army policy. That's one of the most useful ones in the game, and I'm hoping to avoid upgrading any more units without having it in place. With Professional Army policy, I can turn warriors into legions at the laughable price of 55 gold, and archers into crossbows for 90 gold. I already have 4 warriors and 4 archers, and I'd like to train a few more of each for upgrading purposes before obsoleting them. This serves both an offensive and a defensive function. Defensively, Rome researches Iron Working to 1 turn away from completion and is prepared to mass upgrade warriors into legion (and potentially archers into crossbows) if England/Nubia look like they're planning anything funny. I should be able to have Professional Army ready for cheap upgrades by the time they could get an army over to me. Offensively, those warriors into legion upgrades allow Rome to go capture the Seoul city state, at least once we're confident that we're not being rushed by our eastern neighbors. This all lines up perfectly for an attack on Seoul around Turn 80, right when I was planning on hitting that city state anyway. Ideally, I do another round of double settlers with Colonization policy in the Turn 65 area and I'm sitting with 8 cities by Turn 80, way way above the average amount in our PBEM games.

2) I also want to get to Feudalism for Serfdom policy as soon as possible too, and it's on the way to Mercenaries. If I can head into theorycrafting territory again, I continue to believe that builders have been underutilized in our PBEM games to date. Districts and district buildings should almost never be built via natural production. If there's a forest or jungle nearby, train a builder instead and then chop it out with an overflow multiplier. Chop, clear, and harvest everything. If you ever read that thread at CivFanatics where a handful of players are posting Turn 150 spaceship wins, they're doing it by going MASS builders, builders nonstop for the whole game. (That and rushing the AI to steal all their cities/districts, but that's another story.) Builders are the lifeblood of Civ6 gameplay and reaching Serfdom civic quickly is crucial because it opens up 2 extra charges on every builder, not to mention the farming adjacency bonuses too. Feudalism is just awesome and it hasn't been prioritized enough in our past games. Milano is going to be the perfect city to experiment with this because it has so many forests and jungles around it on all sides. I'm going to try to use this as a test case to put these theories into action. Obviously getting China to 7 charge builders is equally amazing.

3) From Feudalism and Mercenaries, Rome will only need Medieval Faires and Exploration to reach the Merchant Republic government. Both of these boosts are highly doable and the fast path to a tier 2 government would be huge. China will likely spend some time in Monarchy and then Theocracy since there's so much religious stuff at the bottom of the civics tree that China wants, but Rome wants to concentrate on the upper part of the tree. Merchant Republic is Rome's dream government for this game.

I do want to pick up Recorded History at some point, and I suspect Rome will have some turns to waste while awaiting certain boosts to line up properly. Somewhere in that research path I will grab Drama and Poetry and then Recorded History. Obviously the Meritocracy policy at Civil Service is also amazing, and hopefully we can have China land the boost for that one and pass it to Rome at some point. However, none of this stuff is as useful to our team as the Feudalism/Mercenaries civic combo and the policies they unlock, so that's where I'm planning to head for the next two dozen turns.

By the way, don't worry about the Commercial district costing 143 production at the Chinese capital. We're never building that naturally - you'll get that district done with a Limes overflow walls chop and save all those turns of production. Much faster and more effective.

[Modo]

Is there a way to annoy a city state (one that you plan on attacking anyway) to such a degree that they declare war on you and therefore grant you the Defensive Tactics boost?
Haven't seen city states declaring so far but I seem to recall there were some diplomatic hits you take for eliminating other city states and things like that (unreasonable gold demands maybe).

Not even sure if you couldn't do that between yourselves but I imagine there are plenty of arguments for such a war dec to be considered cheese along with several other problems

[Sullla]

No, city states never declare war on their own, only get dragged into war along with their suzerain. Now if either Woden or Chevalier Mal Fet is currently the suzerain of a city state, we could declare war on one of them and we'd get the Defensive Tactics boost from their subject city state declaring war on us. However, given that they are the #1 team in military power by a lot, that doesn't seem like a very fruitful path to take. Better to play the long game and outpace them over time while hopefully staying out of a Classical era war.

We're back on a break again; after losing the weekend to TheArchduke's travels, now we're waiting for Japper to get a new computer. While it's all part of real life and I get that, it's still a bit annoying to be stuck a second time after the previous delay. Oh well. Fortunately we have pretty good notes here in our thread for when we pick back up again. In the meantime, I'll toss out a few thoughts about the strategies that I think the other teams are pursuing in this game. I'm going off of score tracking and civ picks mostly, so this could be completely wrong.

Japper (Khmer) / Cornflakes (Kongo): Their strategy hasn't changed from before the game started, and my best guess remains that this is some kind of Cultural victory attempt with religion mixed in. I can't see it working now though, and their team is essentially finished already in this competition. Whatever their penalty was for the cheating incident, it's crippled them as a team. Right now Japper has an empire score of 20 and Cornflakes has an empire score of 12. Well, Singaboy has an empire score of 35 and Rome has an empire score of 42 - we each have more than the two of them combined. They have a combined three cities and 11 pop while we have a combined eight cities and 28 pop. There's virtually no coming back from a deficit that large, even at this early of a stage in the gameplay. My biggest fear about this team is that someone else swallows them up and takes their land before we have a chance to do it ourselves.

Woden (Nubia) / Chevalier Mal Fet (England): I didn't know what they were planning in the early stages of this game but I do now: this is the military rush team. Woden is going for the first Great General and will almost certainly get it, while Chevalier Mal Fet will control the Great Admirals by virtue of being England. They will try to rush someone and then snowball off their early conquests. I'm actually not worried about Woden taking the first Great General - if he wants to build double Encampment districts, so be it. Woden's way behind in his growth curve and their cultural output compared to ours is just sad. However, what does concern me is Woden getting the SECOND Great General and stacking them up. We can stop one Great General, we just don't want to confront stacked multiple versions. Similarly, Chevalier Mal Fet will try to stack a bunch of Great Admirals together and have unmatched control over the seas. I'm not sure exactly how much water this is on this map - certainly not as much as in PBEM4 - but that's also a concern.

Like it or not, Rome is going to have to build some Encampments to produce Great General points and counter the potential stacking from Woden. I'll want at least one Encampment for the boosts associated with the district, and potentially more later on. Hopefully the Germany/Russia team will also help us split up some of the Great Generals so Woden doesn't take them all. As for the Great Admiral stacking, we have a secret weapon there: the Mausoleum. It produces a free Great Admiral when completed, and as a Classical era wonder, it's available for China to build. We'll want to build the Mausoleum to almost-completion and then save it to snag a key Great Admiral, probably one in the Renaissance era which would work on caravels, ironclads, frigates, and privateers. If we can land just one Renaissance Great Admiral, that will stop Chevalier Mal Fet from being able to stack up a whole bunch of them and do what TheArchduke pulled off in PBEM4. If he has two Great Admirals and we have one Admiral, that's a workable margin.

One other note on denying key Great People: the Oracle makes faith patronage of Great People 25% cheaper. Singaboy is going to have a *LOT* of faith in this game, and we can think about saving up faith for targeted snagging of critical Great People. A medieval era Great Person costs 1350 faith to patronage from scratch, which would drop to about 1000 faith with the Oracle completed. That's not really very expensive once Singaboy's up to 100, 150, 200 faith/turn. This could be extremely powerful for our team, especially once we have all our cities converted and Wats built in Chinese cities with shrines/temples. That faith has to go somewhere and snagging key Great People is a excellent use for that faith. (Deny Great General/Admiral stacking, stop Germany from getting the wonder-rushing Great Engineers, land awesome Great Scientists like Issac Newton or Great Merchants like Adam Smith. The possibilities are endless.)

EmperorK (Russia) / TheArchduke (Germany): They are still by far the biggest threat in this game. Their strategy seems to be the same as what we expected, lategame snowballing monster civs with German production and Russian cossacks. They have Defender of the Faith to make them unattactive targets to attack and Choral Music to provide lots of culture. In fact, that's a particularly good belief for Russia because it synergizes well with the Great Writers/Artists/Musicians that Russia will be getting for free from its Lavra districts. They will build up over time and look to make a move when their slow-developing civs come online.

I think the only real way to deal with this team is to out-snowball them. Attacking them early is unlikely to work, not with them having Defender of the Faith and being so far away from us. (We still haven't even met them yet, heh.) We would do better to conquer another target and take more territory for ourselves that way, with the Khmer/Kongo team being the obvious choice to hit. We may also be able to use Crusade belief to our advantage here; it would come as a rude shock if we brought enough missionaries (or a Proselytizer apostle) to flip one of their cities to our religion and change the strength bonus/malus by 20 points in our favor. Much harder to pull that off against humans than against AI leaders though.

Anyway, the way we beat them is to out-snowball them as I said, and we are doing that right now. Their teams are about to found cities #3 and #4 respectively, with TheArchduke having captured a city state. Well, Singaboy is about to found his city #4 while Rome already has city #5. We're a city up on both of them. We have 14 population points each; they have 11 pop and 8 pop right now. We're even in tech but way ahead in civics; Russia has 7 civics but Germany only has 5 civics done. TheArchduke still doesn't have a government yet while both of us have been in Autocracy for a dozen turns. Singaboy is 20 score points ahead of EmperorK while Rome is 20 score points ahead of Germany. Those all amount to a narrow lead but it's still a lead. We have to keep the ball rolling and try to increase that lead further.

It would also be really nice if for some reason Woden/CMF decided to attack these guys and they each traded a bunch of units to no effect. Probably not happening though.

[Singaboy]

Excellent points raised here, Sulla.

I want to reiterate the importance of Great Admirals and Great Generals. We should ensure to get some of those in order to avoid getting into trouble. We need more map knowledge, but the fact that Seoul discovered Rome by boat should give us an idea that naval units might be very important. I suggest to drop a harbor at Venezia as soon as possible. It might be a good idea to prioritize technology to at least be able to get harbors. The same for GG. We need some encampments soon.

By the way, the fourth Chinese city, which I shall name Beijing, could build an inland harbor. The advantage is that it will still provide a trade route (no river here for CH bonuses) while being entirely safe from being pillaged. Of course, it can't produce any navy, but other cities will take care of that.

[rho21]

Now if either Woden or Chevalier Mal Fet is currently the suzerain of a city state, we could declare war on one of them and we'd get the Defensive Tactics boost from their subject city state declaring war on us.

I think they changed this in the last patch so it only counts war declarations from major powers.

[Sullla]

Venezia won't build a Habor district in this game. Given that we have a Commercial city state to buff up our Commercial districts, we want to build Commercial districts over Harbors in most cities, and especially in any city that happens to be sitting on a river. Venezia doesn't need a Habor because it's already on the water and can build ships naturally. Harbor districts are best employed in situation where a non-coastal city will add the chance to build ships; Firenze is a perfect example. Ostia and Milano could also be good candidates to open up shipping production, although I tend to prefer Commercial districts for them since they're both on rivers. The lake region in the southeast and southwest, areas with freshwater but no rivers, would likely be good places for Harbors - especially if they allow shipbuilding access to cities that would otherwise be landlocked. Generally speaking though, if there's no chance to build ships, get a Commercial district over a Harbor district. With the full 6 envoys in Lisbon, that district is worth 8 gold/turn even before finishing any buildings, and the Commercial district buildings are worth much more gold than the Harbor ones. (Obviously building both districts is wasteful since only one will add a trade route.)

Let me talk a little bit about Rome's upcoming tech path since we already did the same thing about civics research. Here's a generic picture of the tech tree:



Rome has everything to the left of this picture completed except Astrology, and does have Bronze Working researched for 8 total techs completed. Currency is 2 turns away from completion and Wheel is being held 1 turn away from completion when the boost lands next turn. As far as beaker rate goes, Rome was sitting at 13.9 beakers/turn last turn, we'll round that up to 14. The capital city will start working the iron resource next turn when the builder mines it, and that tile has a 1 beaker yield so that takes the civ to 15 beakers/turn, and when the second Campus district finishes in Ostia it should another another 3 beakers/turn. That adds up to 18 beakers/turn on Turn 57, a really good rate for a civ with no Scientific city state envoys invested. (I'll have one of those to toss at Seoul for 2 more beakers in a half dozen turns too.) Figure that Rome will be just under 20 beakers/turn for the immediate future.

Here's what I'm thinking about researching next:

Masonry (80 beakers, 40 beakers with boost): I already have the boost for this since Singaboy completed researching the tech for the Pyramids. This is likely the next target after Currency and Wheel because I need to unlock Ancient city walls. The whole point of pushing to Defensive Tactics civic is to abuse Limes policy chopping, and that can't be done without unlocking the walls themselves. This likely has to come next and will probably take 2 turns with research overflow.

Then the path opens up to a couple of different options:

Iron Working (120/60 beakers): This is the safety option and we will have the boost unlocked. Research this tech to 1 turn away from completion and keep it there so that Rome can keep building warriors, while holding legions ready for emergency upgrades if we see something nasty getting prepared by a neighbor. Depending on what we see out of England/Nubia, this might be where I head next.

Engineering (200/100 beakers): The boost for Engineering is to construct Ancient walls, very easily doable. Enginering is key for Rome because it unlocks the Bath district, and even though no cities are running up against the housing cap yet, it's useful to have this tech in hand to thrown down the Baths and lock in their cost. The district discounting formula only applies to specialty districts so there's no reason to delay playing the Baths right away. This is another useful option because it leads directly to Machinery and crossbows in case of emergency attack.

Horseback Riding (120/60 beakers) into Apprenticeship (300/150 beakers): The Horseback Riding boost is already in hand and the Apprenticeship one is easily landed. This is the most economic path and the one that I'd most like to pursue if we could somehow know for sure that we wouldn't be attacked. I'll have builders chopping and mining forested hill tiles while using city walls + Limes overflow, which combined with the upcoming arrival of Feudalism/Serfdom makes this the perfect time to unlock the more productive Apprenticeship mines. However, this tech path represents an expensive investment, a good 8 turns between the two techs even with a strong science output. Perhaps I'll go for Iron Working for safety's sake and then look to head here next.

Shipbuilding (200/100 beakers): Venezia will unlock the boost here by constructing two galleys. Shipbuilding is very useful to let non-builder units embark at sea. I'll need to have it available to attack and capture the Seoul city state, which again is planned for roughly the Turn 75-80 period. This can likely be delayed for a little while in favor of the above techs. Still desired though.

Machinery and Education would be the next desired techs down the line, but both are too far away right now to do any serious planning yet. The good news is that just about every Classical and Medieval era tech should be boostable. Rome also has a good chance to land the first Great Scientist (Aryabhata) given that I'll have three Campus districts done at an early date and none of the other players seem to have been pushing too hard for a Great Scientist. I would dearly love to land the first Great Merchant too - Crassus is really helpful in the early game. We'll see about him, no one has constructed a Commercial district yet and that's going to be a big focus for my chopping efforts in the next dozen or so turns.

Overall, nothing too surprising there. Just thinking about the upcoming turns while we wait on Japper's computer.