[NO PLAYERS] PBEM5 Map Making & Lurkers

[Japper007]

Isn't Japper supposed to be a MP ladder guy? He was crushed in PBEM4 with awful military tactics and seems a bit clueless here about his neighbor. It makes me wonder what the heck goes on in those ladder games. 

I'm not, and I don't see how you got this impression (I saw it in your report on pbem4 as well). I just play a lot of (lobby) Multiplayer, and now a lot through PYDT. I never boasted of any particular skill or "Ladder" experience.

Besides beyond "civplayers" (which is a laughable joke of a league, banning half the things to turn the game into turnbased Red Alert) there isn't even a dedicated community for E-sports, which the game also isn't balanced enough to ever be. No Quitters pretty much fell of the face of the earth when all the casters stopped playing 6 (including FilthyRobot). You guys are far better at this game than anyone I've ever faced in Multiplayer, and I'm happy with that! Even though, maybe especially because, I lose I've learned a lot throughout my time here (just look at the vast difference between my play in this game and in pbem4) and hope to continue improving my game.

The attack was a dumb decision, I'll readily admit it was so bad as to be almost a throw scratch that... a complete throw. What I was hoping to do was alpha strike pindicator to kill his Archers and Warriors before he mass-upgraded them with Mercs, which would have made his army truly unbeatable. Sadly initial positioning meant I came up just short of killing any of them.

[Japper007]

I did some further thinking on what went wrong here, the thing that jumped out to me is this:

I do not know the mid-late game of civ 6!

Most of the multiplayer experience I have are Duels to 4 player (out of nessesity, just try to play a real-time game with >4 players and see how quick someone drops, the game crashes, or people ragequit because they didn't like their start). This nessesarily means that the game is over once it hits ~political philosophy. Someone'll have rushed someone else succesfully and snowball from there. Now with my two completed games so far (4 and 5) map-conditions forced the game to a later era (oceans in 4, massive amounts of space in 5) and I enter territory completely foreign to me outside single player (even there I usually abandon the game due to being to far ahead of the idiot AI). I start losing sight of what to tech, what to build, essentially what to do as a whole beyond the 110 turn mark. So I get suckered into a dumb rush or just wilt entirely like in pbem4.

[Sullla]

I was probably too forceful in making my criticisms and I apologize for that. I don't want to give the impression that I'm taking shots at anyone personally, only trying to critique the Civilization gameplay that I was seeing at the time. Japper, you were posting this in your thread:

As you can see we are not far behind Pindicator, and ahead of Alhambram. I think that once I hit Mercenaries and 4 Xbows (three of which are then double promoted ones right on pindicators border shhh ) I'll be able to take him singlehandedly. A lot of his military score is still tied up in obsolete Warriors and archers, possibly even the scouts he had out earlier. I might just go in earlier without Alhambrams backup, he's free to join in 16 turns if he still wants to of course.

Attacking pindicators Archers with my double promoted (all have Volley+Arrow Storm of course) Crossbows only doesn't result in a one-shot because of pindicator having both DoF and the innate American bonus (the first time in 100 turns that he gets anything out of his godawful civ choice, stay away from the USA people, it's an awful stinker of a civ). Two shots it'll have to be then. I also hit the Encampment on the left side for 5 defenses damage out of 50. I can already see pindicator made a rookie mistake, most of his archers are outside his territory and have to be moved back into it for a turn to be able to be promoted, allowing me another turn of free potshots (and if he doesn't have Xbows at this point, oh boy is that a misplay and this campaign will be decidedly one-sided

This looked like a disastrous misreading of the situation to me and I thought it was worth commenting on. And it turned out that I was correct, but I certainly could have posted in a less aggressive fashion. I have no knowledge of what the Civ6 Multiplayer community looks like outside of Realms Beyond; I actually thought that it was a lot more developed than it apparently is. Back in Civ4 days, the MP ladder community had a ton of really good players and I assumed that there was a similar scene for the Civ6 community today. I guess not though? I agree that the random lobby MP games, which rarely feature more than 4 player or go past the first 75 turns of the game, are not reflective of the games that we play here. (I would also suggest that never getting past the Classical era doesn't really reflect Civilization as a game very well either.) Building a civ for the first 75 turns and building a civ for a full game are definitely two different things.

If there's a lesson here, it might be the importance of thinking about how your opponent will react to your moves. The initial Roman army would have beaten the initial American army, but it was short-sighted not to realize that America was going to upgrade a whole bunch of older units and use them to fight back. And attacking someone who had +15 combat strength on every unit from Defender of the Faith and American home continent was not the best decision.

[MJW (ya that one)]

I'm impressed that CFCJF isn't dead yet after that horrible start.

I'm under the impression that everyone is just trying to stop pindi from winning after he took out japper after his failed attack.

[Ituralde]

I'm really looking forward to see a war fought with Bombards and Biplanes.
Never got to see those in a serious contest!

[Japper007]

Does anyone know if they fixed observation balloons in any patches? Used to be you could stack as many as you wanted over one artillery and they would all apply the range  20 Range rocket artillery anyone?

[Cornflakes]

I do remember seeing that listed in the patch notes at one point

[Sullla]

It's great that we're going to get to see some of the later parts of the Civ6 tech/civics trees in this game. I'm wondering whether or not it's really in pindicator's best interest to attack Alhambram, however. They're about equal in military power right now, and that tends to produce a stalemate in all Civ games, not just Civ6. I've been wondering: since pindicator seems to be the tech and civics leader, couldn't he stay at peace and force the other players to react to him? Why risk stopping what's already working?

The counterargument would be that pindicator seems to have a much better army composition than Alhambram. If he can gain control of the seas, it's going to be very hard for Alhambram to defend his Roman conquests. And pindicator has correctly spotted that Alhambram's military has far too few ranged units, instead being heavily reliant on the (now outdated) Mamlukes. Regardless of how it turns out, this should be fascinating to watch.

[Mardoc]

I think it depends on how attached Pindicator gets to his plan.  Building the military already counts as forcing the other players to react to him, even if he doesn't use it, or doesn't go all-in on the 'cut off Alhambram's army to destroy it' plan.  It sounds like he's correctly identified a weakness in Alhambram - both the lack of ranged units and the ability for Pindicator to fight offensively while taking advantage of Defender of the Faith, due to his balloons.  A limited war ought to let him nibble at the edges of Alhambram, destroy a bunch of units and take a few cities.

If he takes advantage of those weaknesses and then stops to reevaluate, then I think this could work out fine.  He ought to be able to inflict disproportionate damage on Alhambram.  If he gets too invested, and pushes to a point where Alhambram can meaningfully counterattack, then not so much.  Although - part of why I say this is that Alhambram doesn't seem to be particularly upset about being attacked, it's just part of the game for him.  So Pindicator might actually be able to fight a limited war here.

[Old Harry]

Alhambram's cool head is probably Pindicator's biggest issue. Pin's plan sounds good as far as it goes, but Alhambram's counter attack is a neat idea. I guess we'll have to see how greedy Pin is about rushing his troops forward.