Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

I don't have too much to add beyond what Singaboy typed earlier today. China looks solid for the moment and we have our current moves planned out for the immediate future. I will suggest that the next wonder to pursue after the Mahabodi and Colosseum finish should be Jebel Barkal. That one will be worth almost 25 faith/turn all on its own and would have the biggest overall effect. Now for my turn:



More clashing with the barbarians in the southeast. The barb archer did not move forward as I had hoped, instead shooting at the warrior on the hill tile. That poor Roman unit moved on top of a hill and then immediately took damage without getting to do anything. However, that unit gave me critical information for the rest of the turn, revealing that there was another warrior back behind the archer. That's five barbarian units in all from that camp, four warriors and an archer. Thank goodness we didn't have an early game camp get triggered against us.

Anyway, after thinking it over for some time, I decided that retreat was the way to go:



Hopefully the barbarian archer will move two tiles forward and I'll be able to shoot and kill it with my own archer next turn. As soon as the barb archer is gone, I'll be able to move forward and clear out this region with my warriors. There's a fresh warrior and now a fresh archer moving into the region to help out. Sooner or later, these barbs will be cleared out and I can make the area safe for the upcoming settler wave.

My galley in the extreme south failed to find anything of note this turn. However, the other galley in the west spotted this:



So there's a Commercial city state down here as well. TheArchduke has 3 envoys for the Commercial state bonus and EmperorK (the "unknown civ") has 1 envoy for the bonus in the capital. At least now we have part of the explanation for why TheArchduke is making so much money, although he only has a single Commercial district finished thus far. I really do wonder where he's getting the rest of his income. Anyway, the quest for Rome is to "train a legion" here, and I think I can pull that one off. My actual envoys will continue going into Lisbon to push closer to the double district bonus at 6 envoys, and to keep anyone from stealing suzerainship.

Bandar Brunei is fairly exposed to attack from the sea down here, certainly more so than Lisbon up by us. Maybe someday we'll be able to pull off a naval decapitation strike to raze this spot and deny the benefits that Russia/Germany have invested here. That's a long, long distance in the future if it ever happens at all though.



TheArchduke has a pretty good chunk of units over here. I doubt we could attack the nearest Germany city even if we wanted to. Be careful, little slinger!



Not much of interest happened in my empire this turn. I swapped Milano to builder for one turn because I saw that without the Ilkum bonus it could get one more turn invested without completing the thing, leaving it at 68/70 production. Ostia also put a second turn into the Commercial district, which should be enough to finish the thing in 1 turn after the forest chop arrives there and completes the city walls. Things have been quiet the last few turns but they're about to pick up in a big way. Apprenticeship finishes between turns and will boost Rome into the Medieval era, then Feudalism finishes mid-turn on Turn 70, with three builders popping out on Turn 71 and 72. All five cities are growing population points in the next three turns as well. I feel like my civ has been kind of stuck in neutral for the last half-dozen turns, but that's because I've been setting up Serfdom builders and Limes wall chops without actually finishing any of them. I'll finish get to start cashing those things in over the upcoming turns and hopefully surge ahead again. The one real downside is that it will take 6-8 turns to walk my settlers to their destinations in the southeast - argh, Civ6 slow movement! At least I'll be jumping from 5 cities up to 8 cities in a very short span of time.

Score roundup... EmperorK did finish a Lavra last turn and not a settler, as confirmed by Singaboy. We temporarily dropped out of first place on the Tech screen because Russia/Germany and Kongo/Khmer have one more tech discovered than we do, but we'll retake the lead next turn when both of our civs discover techs. We continue to hold the beaker/turn lead by a good margin over anyone else right now. Kongo switched governments from Autocracy to Oligarchy between turns, perhaps out of fear of attack. Nubia is now up to 3 Great General points/turn, but from score tracking I think this was a barracks completing and not another Encampment district. Nubia really seems to be pushing for a military strike - I'm extremely pleased that Nubia is apparently Russia's neighbor and not ours.

Nothing else too noteworthy I can see. Looking forward to more interesting turns coming up soon.

[Singaboy]

Interesting news:

1. Finding that city state. Unfortunately too far off for me to find it to get a quest.

2. German troops. I will retreat the slinger to the east and slowly move back to Beijing for upgrading. There is no point risking that feeble unit. On the other hand, my horseman will move west and block that passage. That way, we can make sure to settle the westernmost spot. With two additional archers and another horseman moving south, we should be safe there. I am convinced it is a good idea to keep producing chariots and horseman and then maybe switch to Agoge for more archers to be able to defend that area against a possible strike from Germany and Russia.

Remember also that we should make good use of Crusade. It would be wise to switch some troops, so that Rome can defend on Chinese soil while Chinese troops can aid Rome in the east.

3. Your progress to the next age will unfortunately result in a loss of 'potentially' new quests for Seoul/Lisbon/Bandar Brunei. I would be good if you can become suzerain of Lisbon as you get citrus for free. Currently we both are tied and none is a suzerain. Maybe you can ultimately invest 7 envoys while I stay at 6.

4. I forgot to mention but your assumption that a commercial hub costs maintenance is wrong. They are free of that.

[Sullla]

Quick responses:

2) We'll need to defend the German border heavily for the forseeable future. I think you have a solid amount of units in that region at the moment, but it never hurts to be careful. One note about Agoge policy though: you have about 5 more turns to make use of it because it obsoletes at Feudalism. Fortunately the Maneuver policy for Ancient/Classical mounted units doesn't obsolete until Divine Right civic, so that one will still be usable for the forseeable future. I think both of us will be training some more chariots for knight upgrading.

Crusade could be highly useful, I agree. At the very least, I'm going to want a missionary or two from China when attacking Kongo and Seoul in 30 or so turns.

3) Yeah, nothing to be done about missing era quests for some of these city states. At least the quest from the new Commercial city state is an easy one (train a legion). I can probably time that with the 2 for 1 Diplomatic policy card since it's controllable. Anyway, my next few actual envoys will definitely be going into Lisbon. Military Training produces an envoy and there are two more at Theology and Mercenaries. That will get me to 6 envoys in Lisbon pretty quickly, and it should be very possible to invest a seventh one later on. I don't anticipate relying on any other city states for envoy bonuses - we'll likely capture or raze everything else we can reach to deny the benefits to other civs.

4) Good to know! Thanks.

[Singaboy]

@Sulla, thanks for the reminder about Agoge. That's what happens when you get old  

Turn 68:

Surprisingly I have contact with Bandar Brunei. That's nice. The quest is a little difficult against a Russian religion I assume. Shanghai has grown to 3 with all the other cities doing what they were supposed to do. There is some work to be done for troops as well as chopping and micro management.
Science is slowly building up and the little increases in culture shave off another turn from Feudalism. Next turn with a monument, this should get even better. I will need to wait for T70 and Rome to finish feudalism to know which turn I will get that.



Let's have a look at our cities. Hangzhou has its production increased from 257 to 281, which means that the production via a wonder gives a bonus of 42%. That's surely better than Ilkum and worth considering as an alternative for overflow built up. After charging its increases to 367. I swap back to the builder to get it out next turn though overflow will be around 15 hammers as the builder will cost 86 hammers with the builder done in Beijing. This will result in additional 65 hammer for the campus. Hopefully it will be done on T72 to start with settler production then. 

At Beijing I am happy to get a chop for 61 hammers resulting in a nice overflow of 76 hammers. As the new builder has 3 extra charges (only 2 are needed for Colosseum), I decide to improve the horses immediately for an additional hammer. In fact I have 3 horse resources now and won't need to renew the deal with Rome once it is up. Things should time nicely for a second chop and then a mine on that hill resulting in a 2f4h tile thanks to apprenticeship.

I micromanage Shanghai and Quanzhou, reassigning tiles for now to get Quanzhou to grow again. Shanghai can work tow hills and the crabs. This boost income a little as well. I decide to send my saved enjoy to Brunei as Russia and Germany won't attack their own cash cow. It will be a long way off until we should be able to take that city state from them, hence I think the returns of 4gpt will be worthwhile.

Income is hence boosted to 36 gpt.

I shift my horseman west and am now effectively blocking germany's troops from moving back north (if they had wished to do so). An archer arriving next turn as a backup unit should German decide to get funny. The slinger moves off towards Beijing.

From the north, though still some distance away, the second horseman and archer are making their way south to protect Beijing and its workforce.

Next turn will be eventful    Also, Apprenticeship will add 5 hammers to my empire. A rather welcome boost. The plan is to finish sailing next and then do some research toward iron working. The builder from Hangzhou is meant to improve two tiles at Hangzhou (bananas and cows), then most likely moving toward Quanzhou to harvest the copper and improve two cows. 

[Sullla]

Yeah, the fact that Agoge obsoletes at Feudalism is really easy to miss. I actually only remembered it because I came across the same thing in the PBEM1 game, and I was looking through some of my notes from that game when thinking about planning for this one. The gameplay does a nice job of forcing a tradeoff on the player in this case, where gaining powerful new abilities (+2 builder charges, the farming triangles) comes with the loss of an older ability. Of course, my preference would be that none of the policy cards ever goes obsolete in Civ6 - if someone wants to run both Ilkum and Serfdom for superpowered builders, why not let them do so? That would eat up two whole policy card slots after all. But we can only play the game that we have in front of us, for better or for worse.

The overflow setup is looking really nice in Beijing and Hangzhou right now. In fact, we should be thinking about what Beijing works on next after the chariot finishes. Perhaps a settler there would be helpful, I can't recall exactly which cities you had selected for upcoming settlers other than Hangzhou. With regards to Feudalism, the civic costs 275 culture and the Chinese ability will deliver 60% of that or 165 culture for free. So you need 110 culture in all and it looks like you have about 25 culture invested in the civic right now. I'd roughball that you need about 4 more turns to finish the civic, so the next policy swap on about Turn 73 or so. That's not too bad, and certainly a lot less worse than it looked like before.

By the way, Roma is going to convert to our religion in 4 more turns. It's good to see that our income is at least matching Russia/Germany right now, even if we can't exceed them just yet. I'm also looking forward to the next couple turns; let's cross our fingers for at least one Mahabodi apostle with Orator or Pilgrim promotion. Wats and (eventually) Crusade, here we come.

[Singaboy]

There is actually a policy card that combines serfdom and Ilkum, it comes later in the tech tree. I forgot which civic is that.

As for my production:
Hangzhou is campus -> chariot -> settler (overflow), then use Colonization to finish it
Beijing is chariot -> entertainment district, then Colosseum -> settler (overflow),finish with Colonization
Shanghai monument -> granary
Quanzhou shrine -> chariot -> settler , finish with Colonization
Shangdu CH -> builder

The nice thing is that I can use wonders to produce +42% which is almost as good as Maneuver or Colonization. Of course, Colonization will be needed as the settlers are prohibitively expensive. After that, I could use Limes to start producing those walls which will nicely overflow into districts. The fact that both Beijing and Hangzhou gain new tiles with the wonders will help with tiles to chop for the Limes bonus.

I have calculated that I would need at least 8-9 districts before I can even think of discounts kicking in again.

[Modo]

You're referring to Public Works all the way up to Civil Engineering for the Ilkum+Serfdom combo.
I think that's pretty standard game design though, if they would allow you to use both as early as now (even with paying the cost of tying up to slots to do it) you may end not either not needing the late game toys or not even reaching that point altogether.

[Sullla]

This was a busier turn than the last one:



First our daily installment of the latest barbarian update. Instead of moving south, the barbarian archer moved north, continuing to chase my injured warrior that retreated off the hill. These barbarians are practically kiting my units around, unbelievable. Well, a second archer is on the way over from the west, and I should be able to pincer these barb units soon. Here's where I ended up:



Hopefully the barbarian warrior in the southeast will be tempted to attack my own injured warrior, then I can shoot it with my archer and kill it. As for the barbarian warrior on the grassland hill, if it moves to the iron tile I can shoot it with my incoming archer. I really hope this area can get cleaned up soon; five barbarian units tightly packed together like this is practically a small army.



These are pretty much the first units I've seen out of Kongo, and with good reason. The city's whole military only equals 60 strength, so this is likely two out of the three units Kongo has. Still circling around and exploring this area.



My galley found a German unit directly, bringing me into full contact with EmperorK's Russia. I almost wish that I hadn't seen this unit with my last move, as now their team will know that I have galleys on the southern ocean. Nothing to be done about it though, and at the very least I'll be able to track Russia's stats more closely in the upcoming turns. Finally I have contact with everyone just before Turn 70.



Firenze grew to size 5 this turn, and unfortunately the extra pop point was not enough to reduce the settler ETA, just as I was expecting. Because Firenze is now at the housing cap (making food surplus mostly pointless) and an extra production didn't get the settler out any faster, I opted to work the pearls tile for the extra culture and gold. What I'm really looking forward to is the borders popping and the city being able to work the amazing 2 food / 1 production / 2 culture / 2 gold grassland hill next to the natural wonder. Only two more turns until it's in range. I will need to get another builder up here to mine it though; using a charge to mine the grassland hill west of the city was a good call, since otherwise a builder would have been waiting around forever waiting for borders to pop. Stupid city - why did you have to grab the unworkable natural wonder tile first?! Argh.



Here's the overview for this turn. Apprenticeship tech finished and my three mines picked up the +1 production boost. It's small at the moment but I will be adding some more mines soon. Through some creative tile swapping I have three cities growing a pop point next turn; Milano is working the 3/1 farmed wheat tile and then taking the horses pasture away from Venezia so that it grows, as otherwise it would be 1 food short. This means dropping the truffles tile for one turn but that's OK, as I'll gain back that loss by working an extra tile next turn. Venezia then needs another high food tile to grow, so it works the rice tile that just popped into borders this turn, and that barely gets it over the hump. Roma did not require any tile swapping, it's just ready to grow regardless.

Next turn is where the fun starts for Rome. The builder on the rice tile will farm it and complete Feudalism mid-turn, and that will cause Ostia and Milano to swap to builders, finishing them on Turn 71. Roma will wait one turn to finish its own builder on Turn 72, so that it finishes a more expensive builder at +8 production cost after Ostia/Milano do the cheaper ones. Then those three builders start chopping left and right:

Roma Builder Charge #1: Chop forest SE-SE of Roma with settler 1 turn from completion, use Colonization overflow into either library or watermill
Roma Builder Charge #2: Mine awesome grassland hill south of Firenze, then go improve new cities in southeast
Ostia Builder Charge #1: Chop forest S-S of Ostia for Limes walls, overflow and complete Commercial district
Ostia Builder Charge #2: Mine tile above
Ostia Builder Charge #3: Chop forest NW-W of Venezia for Limes walls, overflow into Campus district
Ostia Builder Charge #4: Mine tile above
Ostia Builder Charge #5: Chop jungle NW of Venezia with settler 1 turn from completion, overflow into ???
Milano Builder Charge #1: Chop jungle E of Milano into empty build queue, use for Commercial district placed on same tile (pretty sure this works - will test)
Milano Builder Charge #2: Chop forest SE of Milano for Limes walls, over and complete Commercial district
Milano Builder Charge #3: Mine tile above
Milano Builder Charge #4: Mine tile NW of Venezia
Milano Builder Charge #5: Pasture cows or farm rice or lumbermill a riverside forest for Milano (we'll see what makes the most sense)

It's going to take half a dozen turns to move the builders around and pull this off but it'll be fun. Where's Magus when I need him?



I had figured out from number crunching earlier that TheArchduke was running the +2 Great Scientist points/turn policy card, and here's the confirmation. He dropped from 3 Scientist points/turn down to just 1 point/turn. He must think he has this Great Scientist locked up, and I'm inclined to agree with him. Now I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the second Great Scientist will still be a Classical era one and not a Medieval one. Only 3 more turns to go and then we find out what's behind the mystery door. I think I'm very likely to get the second Great Scientist, but it would be far better for that to be Hypatia at a cheap 60 points and not one of the crummy Medieval Great Scientists at 120 points. I'm keeping an eye on this. (If Hypatia is up next, then Rome will chop out a library; if not, it will chop out a watermill.)

In score tracking, Woden and Chevalier Mal Fet both appear to have completed districts this turn, and I strongly suspect Chevalier Mal Fet has finished his first Royal Navy Dockyard. He gained 6 empire score points and didn't add a new city, which is kind of a dead giveaway. Remember that all the civs with unique districts will have inflated scores in this game due to getting double district points, and this isn't reflective of their actual strength. We are still leading in beakers/turn by a pretty solid margin, and China's about to get a huge surge in culture when the Colosseum finishes. I just have one question: somehow Chevalier Mal Fet's culture is reading as 24 points/turn right now. He was at 11 culture/turn last turn - what the heck?! Is that a display error or something? I'm thinking of a potential reason why his culture would have more than doubled in a single turn. Am I missing anything?

Over to you Singaboy. Looking forward to the Mahabodi completing.

[Singaboy]

Turn 69

A really eventful turn, even more so than I expected it to be. The first things is, Apprenticeship is done. However, there is also a DoF from Germany. Very interesting. Let me get back to that at the end of this turn report.

Lisbon has come up with a new quest, a very doable quest indeed. Surely, we will have knights and maybe sooner rather than later. In fact, I could go straight for stirrups, if required. However, there are other pressing technologies such as sailing, engineering and construction. Hangzhou's builder is done and the overflow hopefully ends up in the campus in the end. I am not sure how the game handles a double overflow as in this case the builder overflow and wonder overflow. The UI (you will see soon) certainly can't cope with it.




Let's go down to business. I shift both builders so that the old builder can use its last charge next turn on the bananas, the new builder can charge the wonder and immediately improve the cows next turn.
What a lovely sight. Hangzhou looks good with those two wonders. Two brand new Apostles are nice too.



The first of them doesn't have the right set of promotions available and is used to get use the third belief. We get the best choice of the religious buildings as we wanted it. Each Wat will cost 380 faith and of course, requires a shrine and temple on top of the Holy Site, certainly not cheap. As we now make 32.5 faith a turn, it will take 4 turns to accumulate sufficient faith for the first Wat. After that, we need to buy two missionaries for our new cities. However, in 4 turns, with a new shrine in Quanzhou and the Wat, faith generation will be 37 each turn. Add the Colosseum on T75 and it will be more than 40 faith a turn.

So, what about the second apostle. Well, we are lucky and this fellow has the right promotion available In fact it is the better of both as the unit doesn't need to move all the way to the Natural Wonder. The apostle starts its journey toward Lisbon and Firenze. One thing to note here, England's scout is back and I got to be careful not to run into the unit with our apostle. In fact, I am cautious and move the warrior onto the citrus near Rome to be able to protect Rome's commercial hub just in case. I use the full movement of the apostle as I feel there will be a better time to promote the unit when we are stuck at 3/4 moves in front of a hill or so.
Note also, Rome takes a mere 3 turns to convert on its own. This means in a few turns, China's income will increase by 6 gpt (but will diminish due to the shrine, campus and entertainment complex).
The other weird thing here is that the campus in Hangzhou is shown to take another 6 turns. That simply can't be true as its current production without any overflow would result in those 6 turns. I am hoping that the overflow has halved that time to 3 turns. I guess, next turn we will know.

The other puzzle is really England's incredible increase in culture from 11 to 26 per turn. Either I read that wrongly and it was in fact at 21 or something is really weird. How can England have such a high culture output? A natural wonder combined with a cultural city state. England doesn't have a single theatre district or so.



Well, whatever it is , it surely is powerful. Maybe England invested heavily in monuments too.

Now, what about Germany. I got to the conclusion to not accept that DoF for two reasons. It didn't take me long to think of reason #1, but reason #2 is even more compelling. One needs to have a look at the situation in the southwest to understand that.

In the image below, the three planned Chinese cities are indicated in purple. The large circle marks the zone of exclusion for the city SW of Beijing. If Germany founds a city within this circle (for example where its current warrior stands), I won't be able to found that city. The location there is crucial to benefit from Colosseum and also to potentially provide a passageway for naval units if combined with a city between the two stone tiles further south.
For Germany, that said location doesn't make much sense though as I would expect them to attempt to get a canal city as well. That would be for example a city west of the archer.

Do note all the cliffs there that make landings of units all the more complicated. It will be crucial to hold Germany off right there. It's now clear that I will need to send more units south to block German troops there as well as to make a stand. With an additional horseman moving close next turn, I am hoping to take over those critical spots. Beijing has to go for a settler immediately after the Colosseum. In fact it will use the overflow to do so.

I might need to send the builder from Hangzhou over to Beijing for an additional forest chop to finish the settler right after the Colosseum is done in 6 turns. In two turns the sheep hill will be added to the city. The Colosseum will add two additional second ring tiles to it, just as the Mahabodi did for Hangzhou this turn. In fact the forest hill SE of the entertainment complex would be perfect for such a chop. If it's all planned and executed well, this 170 hammer settler should be ready by T76. It could then found the city on T79, hopefully not too late.

By the way Hangzhou's settler currently already has 67 hammers invested in it. The cost of 200 hammers for it will be tough but bearable.

So what about reason #1 for not accepting the DoF? Well, if we accept a DoF from Germany, it would mean that in 30 turns, Germany can start a war and has the initiative. Not only Germany, but Russia would be ahead of both Rome and China too. That is a very bad arrangement. In fact, if we ever offer a DoF to them, it should be Rome doing it as it would mean Rome + China move first
Such small details can decide the outcome of a war, just ask oledavy about PBEM4.



I still need to mention some micromanagement I had to perform to prevent a premature completion of the chariot in Beijing as indicated in the screenshot. I had to swap from a 2f2h tile for one turn to the iron hill for 1h1s in order to get the completion of the chariot to 3 turns with a huge overflow. I should be able to swap back those two tiles next turn.

[Modo]

That's funny how this is implemented currently in the game....no, I wanna be the first to befriend you so that I can attack you before you can attack me.