Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

I was surprised tonight by a second turn arriving late in the evening. Too late for me to type up a turn report, I'll get to it tomorrow. Singaboy, I don't think there's any news to pass on to you that's time sensitive. Based on where Lisbon moved its units, you might want to use your apostle to convert Firenze this turn rather than Lisbon itself. That's about all I can think to suggest. Good luck!

[Modo]

The Colosseum makes great progress, in fact, too great. The city has produced 14 hammers by itself. If I keep production the same, the Colosseum would finish next turn with two builder charges. That by itself sounds great but I need that overflow for the settler. hence, I decide to switch production to a settler for a turn after another charge has been put into the wonder getting it to 205/400 hammers. Next turn, two charges will get it to 376/400 hammers and the production between turns to 390/400. The last charge will get Beijing 75 hammers overflow into the settler.

So you're basically slowing the wonder to overflow more into the settler. But slowing the wonder means you'll also complete the settler later so I guess the math makes the overflow speedup the settler beyond this delay.
I realize this is a basic tradeoff and evaluating the benefit of getting the wonder sooner might not be as clear cut but I was just wondering how far do you actually go math wise when making these decisions.

[Singaboy]

We are talking about roughly 80 hammers overflow here. With the city making a mere 10 hammers a turn (15 with Colonization), I will save 5 turns to produce the settler. I'd say, the wonder can wait for a turn for that effect. And while delaying the production for a turn, I have put additional 10 hammers into the settler too. Keep in mind that this settler costs 170 hammers.

Imagine I would attempt to build the settler 'by hand', it would take 12 turns.

Hangzhou on the other hand is making 20 hammers , which is 30 with Colonization. Building a settler unaided by overflows is very feasible there.

[Sullla]

Modo, you've misinterpreted what Singaboy meant. He's speeding up the settler by leaving the Colosseum just barely short of completion in order to overflow a lot of production from the last builder charge into the following settler. This will cause the settler to finish much sooner that it would otherwise, not slower. I'm confident that Singaboy has thought about the math involved and tweaked the numbers to make everything come out the way he wants.

Anyway, I stayed up late to make sure that I had the turn done before going to sleep... and then I find that Chevalier Mal Fet, who plays after me, has had the save for 9 hours ever since. Oh well. We're outside of our normal time slots and I understand that a Monday morning isn't necessarily conducive to playing a Civ6 turn. Regardless, let's take a look at Turn 74:



Firenze has finally finished its settler which moved southwest onto the cattle tile. Fortunately the city will only take five turns to grow back to size 5, and I've chosen a Bath district as the next build there, also taking five turns to build. I'm going to send the next trader over to Firenze and run a trade route back to the capital, giving Firenze +2 food and +2 production. The goal here is to grow upwards continuously and build an Industrial district three tiles east of the city, which I should be able to get the discount on once I finish Venezia's Campus. Build the Bath district, build the Industrial district, grow upwards to about size 8 or size 9, and then build Venetian Arsenal. I think that wonder's going to be critically important and I want to get started on it early. Mass Production isn't THAT far away, especially once Machinery comes in and I can place a lumbermill. The early bird gets the worm when it comes to that wonder.

And yes, Rome is up to 4 trade routes now thanks to those Commercial districts completing. That will cover the boost for Medieval Faires and clear a path to Exploration civic for Merchant Republic government. (I'll need two caravels for that, but I already have two galleys so a pair of upgrades should suffice there once I have Cartography tech. Might have to research that one without a boost though - I don't think I'll get two Harbors done in time. We'll see.)

I did kill the barbarian scout with my archer. Only the camp is left to go.



Japper messed up his unit movement in the southeast, that or he had something else in mind aside from what I thought. His settler was on the southern rice tile last turn, and he moved it to the northern rice tile. Then he moved his promoted warrior, who had been on the southern hill tile east of the two cattle, over to the east to cover his settler. There was no need to do that since neither of us can declare war on the other, and I'm not sure why he vacated that hill tile. I was more than happy to take advantage of this opportunity, with my warrior who had been deep scouting moving two tiles northwest to block the grassland tile next to the hills, and then a warrior taking the grassland hill that Japper left. Now the Kongo settler is completely blocked off in this region, and Japper will either need Shipbuilding tech to embark his units or take a very long walk around to the west.

However, even that won't be enough to get his settler through this region. I can put units on the two red Xs (one of them already occupied) and stop any movement further north. All the tiles to the south of those Xs are within three tiles of The Jungle Book and therefore ineligible for settling. I've blocked his settler from moving any further north and there's very little he can do about it. The best play for him is probably to move either southwest and found next to the two rice tiles or go further south to the jungle/cocoa region and plant a settler there. That was likely the better play in the first place, since there's a lot of excellent terrain to be settled down there. I'm curious to see where he actually ends up sending his units.

My three settlers are planned for the three white dots on the north end of this image. Venezia's settler goes to the spot in the northeast, with a settling date of Turn 80 if the city state units don't block me. Roma's settler gets the forwardmost spot next to the cows, with the settler finishing next turn and reaching its destination on Turn 83. Venezia's settler will follow and take the spot next to the truffles, probably also around Turn 83 or 84. I'm not exactly sure when that one will be finished due to the chopping and settler cost scaling involved.



A note in the extreme south: it looks like the southern ocean does wrap around here to the east without being blocked by ice. If this one has open water, then I'm sure all the other arctic and antarctic seas do as well. I'll have to turn back in a few turns to be ready for a potential war around Turn 90, but I think I can get one more turn's worth of movement in first. There should be a second city state over here somewhere that Kongo/Khmer haven't conquered that I could potentially meet.



Domestically not too much happened this turn. My builders both put down mines on the tiles that they chopped last turn, with nice production boosts for both Ostia and Milano. Ostia gets its Bath district done quickly while Milano turns out archer #6, the last one I'm planning to build pre-Machinery. I really wanted to get another builder in that city, but I delayed it for a military unit since it's almost impossible to have too many archers/crossbows. If this upcoming war is going to happen, I don't want to half-ass it. Venezia and Roma are working on their settlers after the cost scaled up from Venezia's settler completing. Roma is set up just the way I want: it will get the settler to near-completion this turn, then the builder will chop a forest to overflow for about 90 production next turn. I've decided to use that for a library, which will be helpful both for the +2 beakers and for the Great Scientist points as I chase towards the medieval Great Scientist at 120 GPP cost. Then I can finish the archer the following turn in enough time for it to still reach the southwest by Turn 88.

I'm also strongly considering running a Commercial district project in the capital to snipe the first Great Merchant from TheArchduke. It would produce 28 Great Merchant points right now (at 116 production cost) and that's probably worth doing if it would land me the Great Merchant. My one fear is that TheArchduke is thinking the same thing and also might run a project; it would be a huge waste to run the project and not get the Great Merchant. Anyway, I'll see where we both stand in a few turns and decide if it's worthwhile. I would need to time it such that I jump from 30 Great Merchant points up to claiming the Great Merchant in a single turn in order to make use of the element of surprise. We'll see.

Internationally, TheArchduke finished a third Commercial district as the two us continue to mirror one another. Germany has also finished a settler for city #7 when it eventually gets planted. I'm also finishing my settler for city #7 next turn - sheesh, stop copying me dude! We have been closely matched this whole game. Nubia likely finished a district this turn, either that or grew three pop points, I'll know which it was next turn. Rome/China have now finally exceeded Russia/Germany in terms of gold/turn income: 72 to 63. Germany has more than either of us, but combined we have more because Russia only makes 15 gold/turn. Rome is also #1 in science and China is #2 in science. Rome is second in culture to England (WTF, is that Kumasi at work?) while China is only middling, but China should be right up among the leaders when the Colosseum finishes. Singaboy has more faith/turn income than every other civ in the game combined, and more than double Russia's faith (38 to 16). With our diplomacy in good shape and our expansion picking up again, I'm pretty happy with where we stand right now.

[Athmos]

(...)
However, even that won't be enough to get his settler through this region. I can put units on the two red Xs (one of them already occupied) and stop any movement further north. All the tiles to the south of those Xs are within three tiles of The Jungle Book and therefore ineligible for settling. I've blocked his settler from moving any further north and there's very little he can do about it. The best play for him is probably to move either southwest and found next to the two rice tiles or go further south to the jungle/cocoa region and plant a settler there. That was likely the better play in the first place, since there's a lot of excellent terrain to be settled down there. I'm curious to see where he actually ends up sending his units.
(...)

My guess is that he wants to settle exactly where he is to set up a double canal with the Jungle Book to be able to cross this isthmus, just as you plan to do with two of your future plants in the north.

[Modo]

Oh, I'm not disputing the effect or the way to do it; especially with the scaling cost it becomes a must.
Excellent comparison with Hangzhou, that was exactly what I was looking for as everyone can default into doing things one way or another but keeping an eye out for which one is best at any particular point in time with all the other moving parts of the overall plan is what keeps me glued to this thread.

Maybe you guys use the power of Excel to keep track of all of this, I know I'd certainly be unable to execute correctly without it.
And to be even more obvious than that, if you do use any form of tracking builds and turn by turn steps would it be too much to inquire about sharing it? Even after the game finishes is fine if it's ok.

[Singaboy]

Turn 74:

Engineering is done and switched to celestial navigation, which I need to run exactly for one turn (48 beakers) thanks to the overflow from Engineering. There are quite a few technologies that are now just short of being finished (iron working, mathematics, celestial navigation). I will swap mathematics next turn as the Eureka will be done next turn thanks to the commercial hub in Shangdu. This in turn will enable Petra, which I would prefer to produce first. I fear other teams might aim for Petra but not for Jebel Barkal. The builder in Quanzhou would do the following:
Move toward Shangdu and chop the forest grass hill for the settler in Shangdu. Move onto the copper hill and harvest the copper. Move NW and charge Petra.
In order for that to happen, Corvee, which will be swapped out of next turn, will need to be enabled again via Military Training. That civic Training is taken out again for feudalism for a turn and then research until 1 turn from completion.

Hangzhou has grown and lost its happy status for a turn. I am sure that will change next turn though. Due to the reduced happiness, research and culture only improve marginal, with faith and gpt actually dropping from my best city.

Shangdu will have its CH done finally next turn. It also grew its borders to include a nice new tile. All cities urgently need granaries and I will produce them in Shangdu, Hangzhou and Beijing once the settlers are done before moving on to walls. We need Hangzhou to reach pop 10 and with the current housing limit at 10, growth is now slowed. The city would actually need 22 turns to grow to pop 10, which is far too long.



There are not so many hot spots this turn, but the Apostle is attempting to convert Firenze (yes, I planned to convert that city first as I could move and charge at the same time unlike Lisbon). Well, the charge wasn't enough to convert the city but half of its population is now following Marco Polo. Again, I can't tell how many turns it would take for the city to convert. Could you check for me, Sulla (for both Roma and Firenze). The extra income would be really welcome. Income will shoot up to 42 gpt next turn thanks to the CH but I would love to reach 50 gpt soon.

It is important to convert the three Roman cities while they are small, hence, I will faith produce a missionary as soon as possible. With faith increasing to 40 a turn next, the missionary should be ready in three turns. With all three Roman cities converted + the current three cities following Marco Polo soon, income would reach 54 gpt. Not too shabby.



The final action of the turn happens at Beijing of course. Two more charges are put into the wonder which is nearing its completion. I do hope there is someone trying to build Colosseum but runs short of my completion. That would be awesome. Losing the wonder would be a real bummer though, so fingers crossed for a turn.
Production in Beijing is emphasized up by working the hill instead of the rice. This brings the production to 10.5 hammers (roughly 15 hammers with Corvee etc.). Next turn with the wonder completion and the mining of the hill, production will be at 13.2 (12 + 10% for being ecstatic). This will translate into 19.8 hammers for settler production thanks to Colonization. The settler will be done by T80 with a sizeable overflow into the granary.

Quanzhou's builder will be delayed a little as Ilkum goes obsolete. However, once the iron hill is mined, production can be reassigned and prioritized as growth is stunted anyway thanks to the housing cap. With Petra in place, the city will then really take off.

[Sullla]

Hmmm, not loving these late turns that come in just before I'm going to bed. I'll type up a turn report tomorrow. Nothing terribly critical happened this turn; Athmos was correct and Kongo settled on top of the rice tile for a canal city. That's in a fairly vulnerable position and doesn't interfere with any of my three planned cities - works for me. More to come tomorrow.

[Sullla]

OK, let's look at Turn 75:



As Athmos predicted, Japper decided to found his city on the rice tile to form a second canal for ships. Was that his plan all along, or did he divert here after being blocked by Roman units? Either way I'm OK with the results. I pulled my units back while still maintaining land blockades of all the routes to the north. Hopefully I'll be able to get all three of my settlers down into this region without any fear of Kongo claiming one of the remaining spots. Mpinda is a full four tiles away from my most aggressive location (the jungle tile northwest and west of the two central cows) so it works out nicely.

Now for the more serious issue. Hopefully Rome is about a dozen turns away from launching an attack on this region, which I'm hoping to be able to hit with legions and crossbows before there are especially strong defenses in the area. The Jungle Book has a strong defensive location and wouldn't be easy to capture, but Mpinda looks extremely vulnerable to me, with crossbows able to set up shop on the grassland hill tiles to the northwest and pour in ranged fire. Mpinda is also a poor production city and seems unlikely to have walls and/or an Encampment finished in the next dozen turns.

For some further thoughts involving Japper, I'm going to put a PBEM5 spoiler tag in place. Don't read this if you're playing or dedlurking PBEM5:

So this is somewhat similar to the situation that Japper was facing in PBEM5, only in reverse, with Rome eyeing an attack on a neighbor with legions and crossbows. Japper's attack backfired horribly in that game and he lost the core of his army to pindicator. I'm wary of the same possibility, but I think this case has a number of different factors in play:

1) Timing: Japper's attack came 15 turns later on the calendar, around Turn 105 instead of Turn 90. Those extra turns make a huge difference in terms of preparing defenses.

2) Opponent: pindicator was the strongest and most technologically advanced civ in PBEM5 at the time of Japper's attack. In this case, Rome would be attacking the weakest and most technologically backwards civ in the game. Perhaps most importantly, pindicator's strong culture gave him access to Professional Army policy for cheap upgrades while Kongo will lack the same option here.

3) Religion: Japper foolishly launched an attack into an American civ that had the American +5 defensive strength bonus along with Defender of the Faith's +10 strength bonus. I have no idea how Japper thought that this was going to work out for him, fighting someone at the same tech level or even a little bit ahead of him while attacking into a -15 strength penalty. Rome won't have to deal with that here, and may even be able to use Crusade to flip things around to get +10 strength advantage on the attack. I'm hoping Singaboy can send the next Chinese missionary down into this region to start converting Kongo cities.

4) Metagaming: The wider strategic context of this game also plays out a little differently. Rome has Declarations of Friendship with both other teams in this game and a clean shot to hit its neighbor. In PBEM5, there was no such deal in place to protect Japper. I also think I can hit Japper with the element of surprise here. Right now, Rome's power is mediocre and doesn't look very intimidating. If I can upgrade all at once and then attack in a rush, he might not see it coming ahead of time and prepare accordingly. For that matter, Kongo's entire military right now is 2 archers and 2 warriors. Yes, he'll build more units in the next dozen turns, but that's just not very much on hand, and it will cost a fortune to upgrade each unit.

My biggest concern right now is the fact that Kongo/Khmer are floating a lot of gold that could be used for unit upgrades. I would love to see them burn that on city infrastructure or on upgrades for Khmer units to defend against an attack from England/Nubia. We'll see what they do and plan accordingly. I am cautiously optimistic that an attack in this region can be effective if timed well.



Elsewhere my galleys have mostly finished exploring the southern ocean. The pathfinding suggests that there's a shallows route through the central part of the water. Does that actually exist? We'll find out soon enough. It certainly would be convenient if it did, but I'm prepared to take the long way around.



The big action of the turn was this forest chop at Roma. The settler was built to 195/200 production and then I chopped the forest for 65 * 1.5 = 97 production into the settler. It finished instantly and I gained a turn of free movement towards its destination in the southeast. I took the 90 overflow production and decided to use it for a 1-turn Library, both for the +2 beakers and to gain another Great Scientist point/turn towards that Medieval Great Scientist. The builder will move to the jungle tile next and chop it (to get the lost population point back), then farm it for a Feudalism farming triangle. This will let me skip the watermill in Roma for the time being and still make use of strong growth. Roma will finish its archer and then I have a decision to make after that.

(Side observation: because there are few mountains on this map and three of the four teams emphasized religion, this has been a game where the players have been slow to build Campus districts. The global science rate is starting to be noticeably slower in this game than in past PBEMs where players were dropping down Campuses with 3 and 4 tile adjacency bonuses with mountains everywhere, and then doubling that bonus with the Natural Philosophy policy card. No other civ has more than 1 Campus district finished... and Rome has three done with a fourth about to be chopped out plus a Library finishing in the capital. I think this might turn into a huge advantage for us as the game continues, as Campus districts are where most of your science starts to come from in the midgame. We'll see.)

Singaboy, here's a question for you: I'm thinking of chasing after the Great Merchant by running a Commercial district project after the Library and then archer complete. The timing needs to be right now, as it will take about 5-6 turns to knock out the district project and in those intervening half dozen turns my Great Merchant counter will be up to about 30 out of the required 60 points. Claiming the first Great Merchant (Crassus) would be awesome to have; he claims three tiles and I could get three tiles in the third ring with that ability, saving about 120 gold each. Since each charge also produces 60 gold, Crassus is worth about 500 gold in total. Plus landing a Great Merchant is the boost for Mercantilism civic, and that will arrive sooner than we think. Anyway, it's definitely worthwhile to claim the Great Merchant if possible, but my one fear is that TheArchduke will be thinking the same thing and land the Great Merchant before I can. Obviously going for the district project and not getting the Great Merchant would be a huge waste of vital production righht now. My hope is that TheArchduke hasn't done the math and realized that the district project needs to start right now to claim the Merchant; we're currently sitting at 15 points (Germany) and 11 points (Rome) out of the 60 required. It doesn't LOOK like now's the time to start a district project but that's how the math shakes out. If you have any thoughts on this, I'd be interested to hear them.



Overview for Turn 75. You can't really see from this angle but a Lisbon city state unit blocked my settler out of Firenze from moving on the ideal path, so it will have to take a slightly slower one to its destination. Ostia is nearly done its Bath district already and then can start growing upwards again. I'm going to want a Library there too sooner rather than later because Ostia will soon run out of tiles to work and might want the option of a Scientist specialist. Crassus would be really nice here to claim another horses resource in the third ring. Milano still working on an archer, Venezia back onto its settler after Rome's settler scaled up the cost. I'll build the settler there this turn and next turn, then chop the jungle tile on Turn 77 to finish the settler mid-turn (gaining a free turn of movement again) and overflow into the Campus district, which will be finished on Turn 78 when the other builder chops the forest tile using Limes wall overflow. The two builders are getting ready to chop those tiles right now, although they'll have to sit and wait 1 turn each for the timings to line up. Long story short, I'll have all three settlers out on the map by Turn 77 and they should all reach their destinations by Turn 83. Eight cities by that date should be pretty solid.

Drama and Poetry finished this turn and I made no civic swaps, so that was a bit of a waste of a policy change opportunity. Nothing to be done though, I want to get to Recorded History to pass the boost on to Singaboy, and I still needed all of the policies currently in use. I'll be able to drop Limes and Colonization at the next swap though, which will free up some additional options. Have to start thinking about what I want there, probably Natural Philosophy for a juicy +5 beakers/turn. Shipbuilding will finish this turn to pass the boost over to Singaboy, and then it's on to Iron Working and Machinery to get some legit units next.

Big turn coming up for China with the Colosseum and a Commercial district finishing. Good luck Singaboy.

[Singaboy]

Turn 75:
The big turn and it has everything in it, from  to . You will see...

The turns starts by a flurry of messages as I get feudalism, the Eureka for stirrups and mathematics. Yes, Shangdu has finally completed its commercial hub. Hangzhou has finished its second chariot. Both cities switch to settlers with Hangzhou picking up from where it stopped. Of course this is all not as important as the fact that there is no wonder message from anyone else.



Which means I can charge the Colosseum one last time. The wonder is done But the horror. It seems now that the overflow issue at Hangzhou and Mahabodi simply stemmed from the fact that the latest patch has gotten rid of the wonder overflow mechanism. The settler still sits at a terrible 9/170. I could have simply finished the wonder by itself and saved a builder charge. Well, I am pretty mad, but nothing one can do. Need to think of a solution to get the settler out fast. The frustration is compounded when nothing in the UI indicates that there is a big jump in happiness and culture output. It turns out, that I need to select/unselect a tile in each of the four affected cities to update the UI (this is what I usually do to update the UI mid-turn).



However, when this is done, the effects are pretty amazing. have a look at the difference in amenities and happiness in my cities. The image below shows the status before and after. What a waste of amenities. Why can't the AI be smart enough to assign more of my three luxuries to Shanghai? I would actually like to have a mechanism where the player can manually assign amenities to his/her liking. Anyway, ecstatic citizens all around and it will show.

After that wonder charge, I change civics and select the ones I was mentioning before. Limes for the upcoming city wall production, colonization for there settlers and Serfdom for the wonder builders that are being produced soon.

Now, let's have a look what all this means for my cities and production as well as other output. Below shows the output after the wonder has been built while the bar copied inside shows the output at the start of the turn. All values made a jump with culture being the obvious leader. However, the happiness factor adds 2.6 gpt giving me a comforting 45gpt and that's without any additional city conversions to Marco Polo which are yet to come. Faith is at almost 44 a turn.

Production also got boosted with Hangzhou making more than 21 hammers. With this, the settlers will be produced much faster. Even Quanzhou's builder has not suffered much of a drawback. With Shanghai growing next turn, I might swap the sugar back to Quanzhou letting it grow to pop 6 for better production too. The real issue of course is the settler at Beijing. 9 turns is simply unacceptable. The solution? The wonder added two tiles to the city, incense and a forest grass hill. Instead of improving the sheep down south, the builder will use its last charge to chop the forest on T77. With an additional civic, I am hoping to get 70+35 hammers out of this chop. Currently, Beijing makes 19.4 hammers for the settler. This means, hopefully the settler will be done in three turns.

Germany is sniffing around in the south with a lot more units and I would feel much better if China can claim all three spots in a reasonable time frame. I am trying to occupy the second city spot in the south so that Germany can't block that.

As for wonders and technology, the following is now planned. I will finish mathematics with a big overflow enabling Petra. Two turns later, iron is mined and iron working can be done enabling Jebel Barkal. This means I will need two builders to charge the wonders. I am now thinking that Hangzhou can produce both, maybe the second aided by a Petra production boost.

Another issues here is the fact that there is no overflow from wonders. This means that a 400 hammer wonder in fact gets around 28 hammers to many with 5 builder charges. That is simply a waste to tolerate. The other idea would be to simply ignore Corvee and charge while adding the missing hammers with normal production. What do you think, Sulla? I did the math and without Corvee I would end up with 375/400 hammers after 5 charges. I think, this is actually a lot better as I don't need to switch to that civic giving me a lot more flexibility. The missing 25 hammers can easily be produced by the city itself during the charging.
The other alternative would be to change government to monarchy, once it's available and then run with corvee. Monarchy would give an additional 50% for city wall production resulting in huge +150% overflows. As monarchy is on the way to theocracy anyway, it could be a way to speed up some districts using limes/monarchy.

One more item to mention is my progress for civics. I am on military training for another turn and would like to swap to recorded history next. I am happy to see that Rome will finish the civic in 4 turns giving China 105/175 for that. With the increased culture output, it will now only take three turns to get that civic. What a beautiful timing. However, getting Hangzhou to pop 10 will be a lot more challenging in such a short span. Hangzhou will need to produce a granary before walls. Civil Service is 275 culture, hence China needs to produce 110 culture, which can be done in under 5 turns. That's pretty short.

As for your question Sulla, I would set Roma on a commercial project. If things get really heated up, how about rushing the GM with some gold? We both make quite a lot of gpt currently. How much gold do you need for your unit upgrades? I am currently thinking of gold rushing a granary for 260 gold in one of the cities that would take a long time to produce it.