The First Civ6 Lurker Thread

[Bobchillingworth]

This has been a fantastically entertaining battle and I've loved Sulla's explanation of everything but at this point the game really seems to be over. Even if Yuri and Teh were launching a coordinated attack Sulla has them outmatched.

When do you think they're going to formally throw in the towel? Neither is updating their thread much and I can't imagine they have very many interesting choices left.


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Teh has been overestimating his chances for a while, and yuris's reading of the meta has been suboptimal, to say the least, so this might still drag out until more cities fall. Not our place though to push for a concession.

[oledavy]

I'm just happy to see 1UPT tactics getting some love. Always thought it was one of the better possibilities for MP opened by Civ5. On full display here. 

No though, it is a little depressing to me how close this game was at points to having a contested conclusion. Sullla has played rather masterfully here, devising and executing a stellar plan. However, he was definitely helped along by his opponents falling on their swords at several key points.  

Hopefully we'll have a more contested midgame in PBEM2

[Mr. Cairo]

This is the kind of situation that I think shows the deficiencies of not so much the 1UPT of Civ 5 & 6, but the much smaller map sizes compared to Civ 4.

Sure, the initial engagements can be tactically interesting in a way that Civ 4 lacks, and a long war between two civs equal or near-equal in tech and production (or 1 very strong civ against 2 or more weaker ones), would be really interesting to watch. But I worry that this situation we have here, with Sulla vastly ahead of Teh and Yuris even if they did work together, will be all too common in Civ 6 MP games.

Because of the faster movement (from roads) and the larger maps (more tiles) in Civ 4, a civ attacked by a more advanced and larger enemy still has tactical and strategic options available, to at least hurt the attacker, if nothing else. But here, the map is so constrained, and it takes so long to move any significant number of units, that there's no possibility for either Teh or Yuris from trying to outflank Sulla's army and hit his backlines. Teh has no option but to sit in a defensive position and die to a bunch of MUCH stronger units (despite not being all that far behind technologically). Not only that, but even should Teh or Yuris manage to get some units around Sulla's army and threaten his cities in either of the arms he controls, those cities are capable defenders all on their own, with the ability to rush-buy units or walls.

My own experience in which I made a much stronger attacker pay (Ichabod in PB32, in which I drew his huge Phract army deep into my culture then ran around it on roads with Knights of my own to start razing cities with impunity for a half-dozen turns or so), simply would not have been possible in Civ 5 or 6.

No one is going to want to go into a straight-up, head-on fight with another civ of equal tech and production, even though those fights would be the most interesting to watch and partake in. Instead strong civs will prey on the weak, and it's only when a bunch of weaker civs gang up on a strong one that the strong one will end up having a hard time of it. And with AI diplo that basically wont happen, at least not effectively enough.

I will probably partake in future Civ 6 PBEMs here at RB, since my main issues with the game stem from its terrible AI, and I'm eager to try out the new mechanics and what-not against human opponents, but I will push hard to allow diplo between the players. Organised Dog-piles in Civ 4 ruined MP games in the past, and diplo was rightly banned, but I think that in Civ 6, organised dog-piles are the only way to stop a runaway player, and so diplo will be necessary.

[Singaboy]

We shall see in a hopefully more competitive second PBEM, whether the movement rules and 1upt are good or bad for warfare.

In this game, unfortunately, the way, the game played out, nobody was able to stop the steamrolling leader. And teh/Yuri only hastened their demise by battling uselessly around Frankfurt. Yuri for some strange reason still thinks, the war turned out well for him...well, i got some flak for my previous remark, but reading how he thinks knights (that only come online in 10turns) might give him a chance...

[Dp101]

Well, that's that. I'm pretty sure that teh would be open to a concession currently, I'm just worried that this will drag on for 10 more turns while we wait for knights to show up and then do absolutely nothing.

[shinghand]

Hopefully we'll have a more contested midgame in PBEM2

Be careful what you wish for 

I actually think teh was really close to having a chance. What really stopped teh was not his lack of cities/production, but that he was just slightly behind on tech. Seems like teh got steamrolled because archers get absolutely destroyed by legions, but if he has more crossbows, I don't think he would have died that quickly. Perhaps in hindsight it would have been better if he didn't make his last stand at Frankfurt - just leave one chariot with thick walls inside - and retreat to buy time. I could imagine a coordinated last stand maybe having a chance to hurt Sullla badly... but I think even that is far fetched.

I wonder whether if yuris will jump in against Sullla after seeing how quickly teh is getting demolished. Too little, too late, even horsemen take a while to construct and come to the front lines, definitely not fast enough to matter against Sullla. Yuris mentioned he's building knights (?) Is he building knights, or horsemen and making the assumption that they upgrade to knights?

Sullla's GG was really, really instrumental to his victory. I imagine future MP games will feature GGs being hotly contested for. I'd imagine it'd be useful even for denial and on defence if you expect to be attacked!

[Nicolae Carpathia]

Also, Frankfurt may be a junk city, but it's important strategically.

It contains a source of horse, so until teh (or Yuris) gets an encampment going, they're blocked from building horse units. But more importantly, it controls the dynamic of the inner core.

In Yuri's hands, it allows expansion from his arm into the core.

In teh's hands, it blocks of Yuri, but also acts as a salient against Sullla, meaning that he need to defend at least Aquilae and Arpinum, and maybe Stockholm as well.

With Frankfurt in Sullla's hand, his backlines are extremely safe and defended on a very narrow front.

A note about salients. In games like Civ4, or in real life, where it is possible to concentrate your forces, a salient has a real strategic value: you can break out of it and defeat any of the forces facing the salient in detail, opening up a hole in their lines. Particularly so in Civ4, my favorite trick was always to plant a big ugly city that forced my enemy to defend multiple other cities.

Less so in Civ5/6, with 1upt. A salient can be less than a dozen tiles, there is no way to concentrate enough units to break out in one direction of the salient. Instead, salients are enormous liabilities, if you do what Sulla did and envelope around the salient in one go. They allow forces to be concentrated against you, instead of the other away around.

[MJW (ya that one)]

It wasn't really close at all. As soon as Yuri's DoWed teh it was over. What really hampered sullla was the geography allowing teh to blob up but it would work the other way around. If teh had crossbows sullla would have just fallen back and won because you cannot share science in this game.

[Bacchus]

A note about salients. In games like Civ4, or in real life, where it is possible to concentrate your forces, a salient has a real strategic value: you can break out of it and defeat any of the forces facing the salient in detail, opening up a hole in their lines. Particularly so in Civ4, my favorite trick was always to plant a big ugly city that forced my enemy to defend multiple other cities.

But if that idea goes wrong, it can go really wrong...



P.S. That's an entire Soviet army, 15 divisions, getting caught in a salient-become-pocket in June 1941.

[kjn]

Another thing that strikes me on the difference between Civ 4 (and earlier games in the Civ line) and Civ 6 is the way armies are produced.

You could update units with gold in Civ 4, but it was relatively expensive (since it cut your research). When a new generation of army was needed, the general approach was to simply build it (or slave or draft it).

But Civ 6 seems to focus much more on a small army where the units are continuously updated (with gold) as tech advances. It's not so much new mechanics as that the balance of the mechanics are changed.