[SPOILERS] PBEM 10 Lurker THREAD

[Emperor K]

Is it just me or does it look like Suboptimal is going to stomp Egypt? Not sure what rfs is thinking, but I understand, I have lost two games via a rush of superior forces. I think he needs his UU fast, possibly even walls to ensure those Eagle warriors don't take him out.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

The fact that he doesn't even seem to be considering where all those Eagle Warriors are going to go after the city-states are done is concerning. 30 turns seems like a long time, because at the 1 turn/day pace most games have that's like a month of real-world time! But in game it goes quick.

[Emperor K]

Ya, his UU is one of Egypts greatest strengths, and would go a long way in helping him in the up coming war. Well best way to learn is from experience, hopefully this does not deter him from future games.

[Ichabod]

Egypt's UU cost 120 hammers. That's almost double the cost of a HC, that it replaces (65 hammers). That's why it sucks, it's too big of an investment for the early game.

[Ituralde]

At least the barb troubles forced RFS-81 to invest into some military.

I don't know how happy suboptimals Eagle Warriors will be, when they attack into three Archers and a City garrisoned by a Warrior.
I hope it's enough to stall the attack.

[Ituralde]

Well, so much for that.

At least RFS-81 didn't settle a city right in suboptimals face. It might actually have been more beneficial for suboptimal to wait a few turns, it seems.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

It's interesting that rho is in emergency mode, while Japper apparently has no idea that another civ is about to be wiped out (at least, his cheerful turn report makes no mention of the fact at all).

[RFS-81]

Sooo...for future reference, what production items should I have replaced with military? Over in my thread, CMF seemed to say that building enough to keep me safe would have crippled me long-term, I'd like to see what the consensus is.

[Cornflakes]

Sooo...for future reference, what production items should I have replaced with military? Over in my thread, CMF seemed to say that building enough to keep me safe would have crippled me long-term, I'd like to see what the consensus is.

I didn't follow this game closely, but skimming through your thread here are a couple of suggestions that might have worked ... 

• First of all Civ 6 is a long game, and with a rush-neighbor like Aztec there really isn't any way to counter it without slowing down your early game. But after doing what's necessary to survive the early game you then convert the later-blooming strengths of your civ selection to catch up and overcome once the Aztec have passed their prime.
  
• Accepting the DoF I think was the right decision. In a lot of cases I think that DoF's are offered/accepted too freely, but against Aztec it is a welcome buffer of 30 turns in their era of strength. That being said, with a DoF you have a ticking clock counting down to when Aztec can declare war. You need to be absolutely certain when the clock runs out that your military power matches Aztec, so that they understand it will be a war of attrition and they will take many losses.  Just a single extension of the DoF for another 30 turns would have put you into the era where you had Chariot Archers and swords in the field, and beyond the immediate rush-danger from Aztec.
  
• I don't think walls or encampment would have worked at this stage of the game. They are just too expensive for not enough immediate return this early. At least with additional military you can fog bust for barbs, and be prepared to roll right into back-to-back colonization-boosted settlers once you secure the DoF extension with Aztec. It's also too early for horsemen or swords, so warriors and archers it has to be at the expiration of the first DoF.
  
• The settler for your 3rd city (which never had time to settle) should have been a couple of slingers instead, upgraded to archers the turn before the DoF ends.
  
• The warrior that you purchased for gold really hurt your ability to upgrade additional slingers had you build them. Rather than building a builder at the 2nd city (which took a long time), a military unit boosted by Agoge may have been better. You still need another builder, but shifting its construction back to the capital would have seen the builder able to improve tiles about the same time frame with an additional slinger in place to protect it when it arrived at the 2nd city.
  
• It doesn't look like you had any units fog busting towards the Aztecs as the DoF wound down. You really didn't have enough military to spare anything for fog busting though, which goes back to the above points. But with some extra intelligence gathering you can judge the likelihood of the attack coming and time your upgrades..
  

[Sullla]

Since you asked for some thoughts on what you could have done differently RFS-81, here's a summary of some things I picked up from reading your thread. You had a tough patch to hoe here, but there were some places where you likely could have improved.



Let's start with the first turn of the game, the decision to settle in place. This was an immediate mistake; the city would have been better placed a tile to the northwest. The basic problem with this spot is that there isn't enough food. It's fantastic for production but weak on food, and that matters in the early game when you can't simply harvest resources or chop jungle for population. A move to the northwest pulls the 4 food foodplains wheat into the second ring, and since it's the only resource in that ring, the city would be guaranteed to grab it on the first border expansion. City works the 2/2 stone resource initially, then swaps to the 4/0 wheat resource as soon as borders expand. You spend your first 50 gold purchasing the awesome 1/3 forested plains hill tile (which the city's borders won't grab barring a miracle) and there you have your three good tiles for the early game. Farm the wheat (boosting Irrigation), quarry the stone (boosting Masonry), and then mine a hill or something with the last charge on your initial builder. At size 3, the city can be working 5/0, 2/3, and 1/3 tiles, then growing onto more hills for more production. This gets you a much, much stronger capital than Beta Colony in this game.



Scout first is a legitimate choice (although it's not my personal favorite), but you wasted the usefulness of an early scout by sending it up into the tundra. As soon as you spotted the tundra and saw that you were at the top of the map, you would have been better off turning around and exploring in another direction. The land in the far north and far south is never going to be that useful. Early scouting turns are precious, and you spent a ton of ton skirmishing with barbarians instead of defogging tiles. If you read suboptimal's thread, he uncovered for more territory than Egypt in this game. There was good land to your south and east that wasn't scouted until very late in the game because the early scout and warriors were exploring every inch of the tundra for some reason. Of course, the scout dying only made all of this much worse.

Notice how slowly Beta Colony is growing in the above picture? That's a direct result of the choice of location on the first turn of the game. I also disagree with settler before builder in this situation. Because Egypt found a Cultural city state, it was important to get a builder out for the Craftsmanship boost. Otherwise you end up wasting most of that free culture on an unboosted Craftsmanship, or wasting time on non-critical civics in the early game like Mysticism. Similarly, you only want to go builder before settler when the starting city has strong natural terrain and that wasn't the case here. If it takes 15 turns to build the first settler, you're better off going builder first.

Also, why research Astrology so early? The initial builder techs are more important to unlock than a Holy Site district. Did you even build a Holy Site district in this game (?) These were beakers that could have gone into something more useful.



There's no delicate way to put this: Barrayar is a terrible city. There's no production here at all, just a grassland hill and a grassland forest. Most of the terrain is bare 2/0 grassland tiles, which unlike in Civ4 are awful tiles in Civ6. You can't cottage them and they basically suck in this game. There are only two forests and two hills of any kind in the initial two rings - this is just awful, awful local terrain. If you wanted a city in this region, northeast of the wheat tile is far superior:



There's a very good 3/1/1 furs tile and a 2/2 forested grassland hill in the first ring for two initial good tiles, and then more grassland forested hills in the second ring. The citrus tile has a 4/0 yield going to 4/0/2 yield with a plantation and can be worked for food. Lots of forests for chopping too. It's still not a great city location because there aren't many hill tiles, but it's much better than the actual Barrayar.



This is just not enough of the map revealed by Turn 30. You had little knowledge of what was going on in the world, and there's the one warrior on the map slugging it out with a barbarian in the tundra. The whole advantage of finding the Cultural city stat was lost due to not finding another continent for the Foreign Trade boost. The Aztec city capture off to the west also should have set off huge warning sirens about an incoming rush. I would have been checking the Aztec power rating every turn and gearing up for potential conflict as soon as I saw this. What you really needed was a supply of either iron or horses. Eagle Warriors are indeed strong, but they're still juiced up warriors at heart. Find a source of horses (or better yet iron), settle it and make sure to get at least one horse/sword. That will get your cities to strength 25 and that's enough to ward off the Eagle Warrior rush. If you can find iron, you can build cheap warriors and upgrade them into swords. I'm well aware that this is easier said than done, and that it will slow your build curve down by focusing on military like this. However, this is the way to not die to your neighbor when they have an early unique unit.

Alternately, build five slingers and upgrade them all into archers and be prepared to fire away at the invaders. Heck, you can always build a heavy chariot (they don't require horses) and that will at least get your cities to 18 defense. And you were Egypt in this game, so you even had a unique chariot to play around with! Suboptimal mentioned that even on chariot archer might have been able to shut down his attack, and two almost certainly would have been enough. Not building any of them with the Aztecs next door was a recipe for disaster.



This is a pet peeve of mine. You went settler before builder and then waited to finish Craftsmanship until you could land the boost. But that was enormously delayed and the civic didn't finish until Turn 39!!! Huge, huge mistake. The two Craftsmanship policies (Agoge and Ilkum) are both critically important for the Civ6 early game. Especially Agoge, which you should be using a lot to build cheap slingers and warriors for upgrading later. Not running Agoge for the first 40 turns of the game is practically malpractice, like not using Slavery in Civ4. Seeing two slingers and a warrior built, all without Agoge in place, it's just painful. This was extremely inefficient.



And when the inevitable Aztec attack arrives, most of the Egyptian units are off in the tundra again. No units posted to watch for incoming attackers, despite a neighbor four tiles away with an early game unique unit who had already whacked a city state. Why not have at least one unit over in that direction to watch his military and give you warning of an attack? Also, where the heck was that settler even going? Surely not to the desert oasis, right? Desert is a very poor place to situate cities in Civ6.

So no, I don't agree with those who posted in your thread that there was basically nothing that you could have done. Weak city locations, poor scouting, inefficient research choices, and lack of threat detection against an aggressive neighbor all added up to create a disastrous ending. I hope that doesn't sound too harsh, this was your first game and that's always a learning experience. Suboptimal was steamrolled in his first two games as well and he's clearly improving. Hope this helps a little bit in thinking over things for the next game.