[SPOILERS] scooter tries Civ6

[scooter]

Ok, everyone chose their civs on PYDT, so I now know what everyone is playing.


Scooter: Qin Sh Huang of China
TheArchduke: Hojo Tokimune of Japan
Cornflakes: Gandhi of India
Alhambram: Matthias Corvinus of Hungary


Interesting group. I’ll spend some time diving into these choices today. Any thoughts? I’d actually be most interesting in a sort of “scouting report” on the other 3 players. I kinda get the sense the skill level amongst the 3 of them is pretty close, with maybe Cornflakes being a tad less experienced?

[scooter]

Here is your start....

Thinking a bit more about this start first, because we may not be that far away from getting turns. Seems very likely we're going to SIP here, so the question is really about first build. My early inclination here is a warrior. I think barbarians are going to be a huge issue in this game with the larger map size and therefore probably large amount of unfogged territory nearby. Tracking down city states for first-to bonuses seems super important too. I'd love to have a scout, but I'm concerned the scout will be too fragile to be worthwhile. Slinger on the other hand I feel is less consistently useful versus barbarians, even though it makes the archery eureka way easier and is cheaper.


I don't think a builder is the most pressing thing here at all given how strong some of these tiles are. We've got 3 4-yield tiles in the first ring, and we're (hopefully) gonna grab a 2/3 second ring tile early. So I kinda want to try something like warrior-settler for a fast start, pending barbarian activity. Could always squeak in another unit, but I don't see much need to get a builder out prior to a settler. Basically, grow to size2 on the rice quickly, then enjoy our 1/3 (and hopefully soon 2/3) tiles. Thoughts?

[Woden]

Any issue with having a red and yellow color scheme? Default in green and white but conflicts with Hungary's base color (green). It will make it easier to tell the units apart. Other options are gold and red or gold and blue.

[scooter]

Any issue with having a red and yellow color scheme? Default in green and white but conflicts with Hungary's base color (green). It will make it easier to tell the units apart. Other options are gold and red or gold and blue.

Yeah, let's go with red and yellow.

[scooter]

Whew. I’m dead last in the turn order (RIP), but within about an hour of Woden launching the game, the save is already in my inbox. It’s gonna be a few hours until I’m able to actually play the turn though, so we’re going to have to settle for part 1 of opponent analysis.


TheArchduke: Hojo Tokimune of Japan


The Samurai seems like a very strong unit, albeit one with a relatively short shelf life. A 48str medieval unit that suffers no penalties for being wounded is nothing to sneeze at. The catch seems to be that nothing can upgrade into it, and Muskets are so close that it obsoletes a bit fast. Overall this unit makes me nervous, but it doesn’t shake me with fear. The Electronics Factory seems like the weakest part of the Japanese civilization. Industrial Zones are kinda meh, and this is barely an upgrade over the Factory anyway. The civilization bonus of +1 adjacency bonus for adjacent districts rather than +0.5 is definitely a nice perk. I don’t imagine it’s a game breaker, but in a PBEM where you allow yourself more time to plan things out in advance, it’s probably got a bit more power.


The real power seems to be in the leader bonus(es). Japan gets Encampment, Theater Square, and Holy Site districts all in half time. They also get +5 str in coastal tiles, partial Hurricane immunity, and Hurricanes do additional damage to enemy units. I would imagine the Hurricane thing doesn’t come up too much, but those district bonuses are really great for Japan. It probably makes TheArchduke a competitor for early religion given how cheaply he can get his Holy Site down. This is the #1 thing for me to watch out for, because I’ll want to target certain beliefs early. I may have to speed up Stonehenge out if he builds an early Holy Site. Hopefully I can find stone.


As for the player himself, I think he’s probably the narrow favorite? It’s tough for me to gauge because I never played any games with these guys in Civ4, let alone Civ6. As I gather, TheArchduke struggled a bit in early games here, but has since put together an impressive resume of being a contender (and even winner) in a bunch of Civ6 games. It does seem like his successful games mostly came off the back of early rushes against less experienced players. DULY NOTED.

[scooter]

Here’s what it looks like upon moving my warrior. Still looks like SIP to me? Except one minor detail that gives me pause.




Nobody else SIP. It’s been my assumption/guess these starts are very similar if not outright mirrored, but that may well be a faulty assumption. I’m trying to puzzle over whether there’s a good option I’m missing here. The only thing I can think is moving to get the deer in first ring might be the best choice, but I’m not sure it’s worth the trade-offs?

1. 1W has no fresh water. Pass.
2. SW-W gets fresh water and deer, but trades quite a few nice tiles for coast and puts our only food in the second ring.

I’ll probably still SIP, but I’ll give it a couple hours in case any of you all have a strong opinion. Other stray observations:

* It looks like this river may be quite long as it goes north and then loops back west. Great Bath may be worth thinking about.
* Looks like some sort of desert to the west. Possible Petra location if there’s more than just those 3 desert tiles.
* Since I believe we’re playing on some sort of modified Pangaea-type thing based on our requests, we seem to be on/near the west side of the map given the coast position.

I’ll finish the turn and pass it on in a few hours.

[Alhazard]

I wouldnt really consider what others are doing to inform your settling decision. The only reasonable argument to move is to NE or E for a plain hill (2h city center) start with dyes in the first ring (if you move E, you can get another dye tile in 2nd ring), and to make room for a coastal city 2S of deer or the tile SE of it. However, that coastal city is in a floodzone area and you are going to be gambling on its fate unless you get a super fast great baths, now the deer tile is in 3rd ring of capital (not accesible). I would SIP.

CMF. your thoughts?

[Sullla]

Hey, are you interested in another voice chiming in? I haven't read the lurker thread or any of the other player threads for this game so I'm unspoiled on this one.

I would definitely say to settle in place for this start. You have tons of great tiles in the first two rings: a 4/0 rice tile to grow onto at the outset, then three (!) 1/3 forested hill tiles, the best non-resource tile in the game, followed by an amazing 2/3 forested hill deer in the second ring and an excellent 2/2/1 culture silks tile off to the east. This is absolutely amazing stuff, and moving onto a plains hill tile for the 2 production center tile will move you away from one of those resource tiles. I don't think you can realistically do any better than this.

China as a civ is an excellent choice, better than anything that the other players picked as far as I'm concerned. My suggestions for an immediate game plan would be:

* Warrior opening for sure. Scouts are too weak to help in barb defense and barely explore better than warriors. Slingers are also terrible against barbs - get one later for the Archery boost but not for the initial build choice.

* Definitely settler before builder here. The land is so strong that there's no immediate need for a builder. Ideally, you would find a stone resource somewhere nearby and send the first settler to that spot to get Stonehenge built quickly.

* Wonders that China absolutely needs to get are Stonehenge into Pyramids into Colosseum into Petra (if there's a good spot), in that order. Lots of the other wonders are "nice to have" but not essential. As a China player, you *MUST* land Stonehenge and Pyramids at a bare minimum or you've wasted your civ choice. The good news is that you're almost guaranteed the first religion with the setup you have here, since there's no Russia player or someone hacking themselves extra gold here.

I'm really enjoying the discussion in this thread so far. Most of the Civ6 threads are pretty quiet and this has been a nice exception. Maybe we all needed to see the game through fresh eyes.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I also still lean SIP. Moving any direction seems like a downgrade - south or east pushes the PFHs to 2nd ring, the PFH deer to 3rd, moving west loses fresh water, and moving north pushes the rice to second ring, plus we sacrifice a forest. 

Oppo analysis -

The interesting thing to me is that everyone had at least GS and 1 R&F civ available, but three of the four chose base civs (and even base leaders, in the case of Cornflakes). If nothing else, it shows that Firaxis isn't powercreeping old content with new. They've actually done a pretty good job releasing mostly balanced civs, with a few exceptions. There are a lot more underpowered civs than overpowered ones, which is good in a primarily SP game.

The Archduke - Archduke is, simply put, the biggest warmonger in Civ 6. His preferred playstyle is to find a weak neighbor, eat him as soon as possible, and move on. He'll start with nearby city-states, then pounce on his nearest neighbor, and try to snowball from there. He has very good tactical skills, having thoroughly demolished several opponents in wars that seemed sort of evenly matched at the start. Where he can stall out, though, is if he CAN'T find that neighbor to eat. IF that happens, he'll grow indecisive and spend a long while wavering about his long-term strategic path, and start to slip behind. Then he'll build up and attack anyway, in all likelihood. So the main trick with facing the Archduke is 
a)Be spiky enough that you can successfully resist an attack. If he neighbors us, assume he is going to rush us. 
b)Hope your neighbors do the same. 

If both these things happen, he should fall off.

Previous Civ 6 games:
PBEM1 - Rome, got famously "caught with his pants down" by Sullla, but put up an okayish fight in the face of overwhelming odds. Biggest thing is he learned a lot from this game. teh and yuris never played Civ 6 again, Archduke did, and learned.
PBEM2 - Pericles, got in on-again, off-again wars with his neighbors, fell behind in development and eventually devoured by Alhambram and oledavy. 
PBEM4 - England, did a great job eating local city-states to catapult his civ ahead, and smashed Singaboy's navy. Neglected the VA, which allowed oledavy to outbuild all the other civs at sea combined. 
PBEM6 - Macedon, crushed suboptimal's Australia in open battle and cruised to victory. 
PBEM7 - Germany, surprisingly peaceful all game. Wavered between attacking Sullla/Singaboy and Woden/me, but probably his best job building. Still fell behind other civs, however, PBEM7 ended in a draw between the 3 surviving teams. 
PBEM8 - Mongolia, chariot-rushed Emperor K, then did the same to Rowain. Rolled on to Alhambram and won via concession.
PBEM11 - Russia, initially stymied by Cornflakes, then successfully devoured Banzailizard, then came back to finish off Cornflakes. Lost because rho21 conquered his continent first and won control of the seas.  
PBEM12 - Netherlands. Strong initial start after quickly conquering not only his but his neighbor's city-states. An early war that didn't end in conquest slowed him down, then he spent hte rest of the game wavering between attacking me and Emperor K until finally my Arabian faith-science economy was able to win out. 
PBEM 14 - Scotland. This game ended quickly. It had a weird set up, Rowain rage-quitting, and things got personal between Rowain and Archduke. Main thing to note is even as Scotland Archduke was planning on devouring both Rowain and Alhazard. 

Japan is honestly the most predictable choice for him. Mongolia and Nubia suit his warmongery preferences, but he's won as Mongolia before and is playing as Nubia. One thing he never does is repeat civs. He disparaged Mali in his duel with Alhambram, and he hates buildery civs like Kongo and Cree. Japan gets half-price Holy Sites, Encampments, and Theater Squares, which is a great bonus that helps with building all districts due to the discount formula. He also gets double adjacencies - from his thread title it looks like he's emulating oledavy's PBEM4 Japan, planning to pack a bunch of districts into a huge metropolitan area. With the government plaza things could get silly. 

But that's ultimately a buildery game, and I don't see him having the patience (or his opponents allowing him) to do that. Otherwise, Japan is kind of bland. The Samurai is not a great UU. It has to be built from scratch, which means it's expensive and hard to mass a bunch of to surprise an opponent. Plus, it's a pike replacement (?), which makes it weak to your basic swords 'n muskets. The coastal bonus is good, so it'll depend on how much coast this map has. Try to avoid fighting him near the sea, if possible. 

Bottom line, he could surprise us by attempting to build, but the main thing to do is not to neglect military and watch him like a hawk. In the long-term, if he can't conquer anyone, he should be manageable. 

Alhambram - A slow starter who has strong lategames, usually. Alhambram has a hard time getting his civs off the ground initially, but he is patient and crafty and plays the metagame well. He monitors who's weak and who's strong, and has a knack for striking at the right moment to eat a weak neighbor and catapult himself ahead. His Cossack attack on Woden in PBEM2 is the stuff of legends - as is the sneak religious victory he pulled in the same game. The main weakness is the long time he takes to get started, which should let you pull ahead early. As long as you maintain that lead, you can probably stay safe. 

Previous Civ 6 games - 
PBEM2, Russia. Started really slow, got hemmed in to a few tundra cities by Woden. He conquered two nearby city-states and suddenly became competitive, then split the Archduke with oledavy and Singaboy. Finally, after 90 turns of peace with Woden (which I'm sure Woden regrets to this day), he reached Cossacks and unleashed an unstoppable attack. Woden even had Infantry and could do nothing, as his Chinese empire crumbled. Alhambram won outright via religious victory since apart from Woden (who was conquered) the other 3 players all neglected religion.

PBEM5, Arabia. Started slow again getting the faith economy going. Was able to successfully conquer Japper's Rome in a late Classic/early Medieval war, but half of Rome also fell to pindicator's America. Pin had snowballed too hard while Alhambram was getting up and running and pin won this game. 

PBEM8, Netherlands. His start improved, as his Netherlands was one of the early contenders, however, by turn 100 I had significantly outexpanded him as Korea. It didn't matter in the end since Archduke conquered the entire other half of the map. 


I think this is his first game since PBEM8, which ended more than a year ago. 

Hungary - Hungary is a warmongery civ. I haven't played as Hungary, so I'll need to do some test games at a PC Bang this weekend, but the main strength of the civ is the ability to levy city-states and pair them with Hungary's UUs to conquer. There is builder stuff, too, around rivers - Hungary can build cheap trans-river districts, which synergizes well with Commercial Hubs to get lots of gold for city-state levies. I think we should consider investing early production in a military to conquer our nearest city-state neighbors with Hungary in the game. Otherwise, every CS is a sword of Damocles and their bonuses aren't worth the risk, to my mind. 

I expect Alhambram to take some time to set things up, probably getting a few suzeraintys (or if he's sneaky, holding envoys until he's ready to strike) and building up a warchest of gold from Commercial Hubs, then when his UU comes online he'll strike and attempt to snowball to victory, since his UU alone can be upgraded into a SECOND UU. 

Cornflakes - Cornflakes is the MVP of the forum, and seems like a really wonderful human being on the whole, but his Civ 6 experience is limited. He replaced Mike the Cheater in PBEM7, taking over a doomed Khmer civ and fighting Woden and I to the end, then played his own game in PBEM11.

I recommend his PBEM11 thread a lot. He played a fantastic early game as Brazil, rapidly building a huge lead in science and culture. I learned a lot from his thread (he prioritizes production above all, and recommends going warrior first, off the top of my head). However, his warfare seems like the weakest part of his game - he didn't fight a successful offensive war as Brazil, when he probably would have been advised to try to attack either of his neighbors. Asi t was, he allowed Archduke to conquer Banzai and then turn the united empires against him, driving him off the continent. He fought well, though, doing unconventional strikes with a navy even as he lost his landward empire, and survived to fight on in the islands. 

India is a bit of an odd choice to me. He had Phoenicia, Zulu, Scotland, Macedonia, and Poland also to choose from (leaving off Brazil for obvious reasons). Phoenicia does seem more naval oriented, and continent-dependent, and has the goofy Loyalty mechanic, so I can see skipping that. Poland really only has the buffed Market going for it, everything else is kind of gimmicky (but I really want to try those gimmicks sometime). But Scotland, Zulu, and Macedon all seem like strong choices. Scotland monopolizes great people and gets really large production and science bonuses from its ability (10% empire-wide adds up). The highlander and golf course are weak, but when you have all the GS and GE you want your civ can do anything anyway.

Zulu is slow to start, but if it reaches Mercenaries (which is REALLY CLOSE) it gets sole access to corps. It has a half-cost district, which is a great economic bonus, and while the Impi is mediocre, it has a fantastic snowball mechanic - more corps/armies appearing as you conquer cities. Some Civ VI wars can devolve into traffic jams, where quality matters over quantity, and the Zulu, between Great Generals and Corps, will monopolize quality. I think they're a really intriguing civ.  Maybe my own bias - Cornflakes wants to build and not warmonger? That would also explain giving Macedonia a miss. Macedonia let Archduke cruise to victory in a similar 4-player game. 

India just doesn't seem like it has a lot going for it. Stepwells are fine, you never have housing issues. The Varu are slightly nerfed since their ability doesn't stack, but are still a strong UU that's relevant for a long time. The dharma bonus is weak, though - you need multiple religions to be founded AND you need them to spread to your cities. I think FIraxis balanced religion around the missionary spam the AI does, because passively, religion does not spread, like, at all. And humans don't fling missionaries at each other, they send armies instead. 

So Cornflakes is a big ol' ? to me. He's smarter than I am, so I'm sure he's up to something. But I don't know what it is. I expect him to make my jaw-drop building as India and looking scary, but then he'll get stuck in a war with Alhambram or Archduke and fall behind. We have to hope they don't conquer him, which I don't think they will - he can defend himself, for certain. 

Big Bottom Line: There are sharks in the water. Let's not fall for wonder-whoring and neglect our military.

[scooter]

Sullla - absolutely, glad to have your input too! Your comments are very much in line with what I was thinking, so that’s good to hear. I just read about the gold-hacking incident a day or two ago, and… I have no words. What a wild sequence of events.


Thanks for the sanity check, all, on the SIP. I was pretty confident in the choice. Just wanted to make sure there wasn’t some quirky expansion mechanic I was unaware of. I think we can then safely assume the starts are not mirrored, even if they may be similar, because I don’t think all of them would move when faced with this start. So with all that aside, I went ahead and SIP.





Seemed to be best to get to size 2 quickly rather than wait 13T working a 1/3, so I’m working the rice and starting a warrior. I went ahead and chose Animal Husbandry first. Of course we have the deer, but more importantly we’ll likely want to know where horse is by the time our settler is ready to see if we can combo that with stone. I’ll probably head north a bit with my starting warrior. Priority #1 is finding stone, and priority #2 is finding city-states.


CMF - thanks for the rundown on opponents especially. I’ve been checking out past games in spare time recently, but this is really helpful. Seems like we have a balanced and interesting group.