Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

Turn 79:

Both shipbuilding and recorded history are done, the latter just in time thanks to Rome's Inspiration. I start on stirrups and civil service. Both won't be completed and swapped into something else later. As the builder at Shanghai will improve the fish in three turns, I will then swap to celestial navigation for a quick one turn completion to aid Rome's acquisition of two harbors, which in turn will aid the all important cartography technology.

Beijing produced its settler and a swap to walls shows a completion of 3 turns. I am going to micromanage here though. Hangzhou stops its walls and continues with the settler which will be done in two turns. The settler will end up with an overflow of 20 hammers which can be invested in a. an archer b. a warrior c. the campus d. builder
After that, it will be a switch back to the walls for a turn and then followed by production of military units depending on the growth curve of Hangzhou. If it seems to slow, I might have to insert another builder at 98 hammers cost (5 turns). That builder could in fact chop a rain forest for growth and then build the Oracle if we think it's a good investment, which I think it is.
Sulla, any opinion on the overflow and builds?



It is time for the Apostle to say bye bye getting the 4th religious belief as we wanted. Let's see how this will work out in battles with all the others (which I think we will eventually find ourselves in).

Nearby the missionary is moving toward the front and will have some options to choose from in 2 turns. The movement path is indicated with each arrow representing a turn. The nice thing is, that the missionary can move three tiles and convert the first city in two turns. After that, it has two options

a. move east (green arrow) and convert the second city right the following turn. From there it can move south to convert Mpinda at the start of the war.

b. move south via the lake (the missionary can't move through a Roman city) as indicated in purple and then convert the southern Roman city and Mpinda.

I have no real preference juts that option a would result in +2 gpt faster (+more streamlined route for the next missionary south). Anyway, I assume the Jungle Book will get gifted to China (as China can access the city much easier from the west). If we have to ever face opposition there, it would be Rome defending Jungle Book and China defending Mpinda.

The stand-off between Germany and China continues. Luckily there is no public diplomacy as Archduke can't stand me I move the horseman to check what is happening and it actually spots the settler that Sulla mentioned.  While I strongly suspect the settler to settle the tile between the elephants and sheep (for a canal), all precautions must be taken to block that settler from taking a spot that would make it impossible for me to found my own city.

Hence, my chariot stays on land to block the settler's progress in case it doesn't settle where I think it will. In the north you can see my own settlers path. It will reach and found the new city (that will be named Kashgar) on T82.

Germany will move NE this turn, then found the city (and all is well) or move east. However, with my chariot and horseman there, it can only move 1E. Though it makes no sense, if it would attempt to found a city there, it's still fine. If Archduke would move two tile east, he can't found the city on the same turn and I am safe too. Funny situation where in the end, most likely both of us end up with the city locations we wanted, anyway. As I can image that he would want to found the second canal city where he has an archer in place, I don't really have the means to block him there. Maybe I can try and slow down the process. I am more concerned about my own settler from Hangzhou crawling south through the jungle.

Finally, an overview of the 5 current cities. After micromanaging Beijing and Quanzhou, Beijing is growing back to pop 4 in 2 turns while Quanzhou is working the mined hill in the south for additional 2.2 hammers. This results in the builder being done a turn faster which to me, is very important. Shangdu's settler now indicates 6 turns as the cost moved up to 200 hammers. It will further increase to 230 in two turns, just prior to the forest hill chop courtesy of Hangzhou's settler. With an additional civic researched, the forest chop should yield 68+34 hammers.

Next turn, I will know the exact amount of hammers invested in Beijing's walls and micromanage the production as close as possible to 80 hammers. the city will grow its borders again but the indication is the rain forest rather than the forest in the south.

Shanghai's trader, which will be done in 5 turns, will most probably be transferred to Beijing to establish a trade route with Lisbon for more gpt and a roads through the Chinese empire.

[Sullla]

Some quick thoughts in response:

* Thanks for passing along the boost for Celestial Navigation. Not only will Rome want Harbor districts, I will actually get another envoy in Seoul when the boost comes over - the current quest is to achieve the boost for Celestial Navigation. Could be useful, you never know.

* Honestly, I think China has enough military for the moment. We're locked into peace with Germany for another 25 or so turns, and production would likely be better invested in growth curve stuff. If you do have excess chariots, you could always send one or two down to the southeast for potential scouting use against Kongo. I do think that the Oracle is desirable to have, as it will unlock really cheap faith patronage of Great People. Obviously both Petra and Jebel Barkal have higher priority than the Oracle though.

* Crusade is here, yay! As far as converting cities goes, I would suggest that the first missionary convert the northeast city (east of the iron) first, and then the southeast jungle city (next to the two cows) second. Then the missionary can head from there over to Mpinda next. The reason why I'm suggesting this is because it sets up the second missionary to convert the western city next to the truffles and then immediately hop into the water and convert The Jungle Book from the sea. With Mathematics in hand for 3 movement embarked units, your missionary can probably move faster over the water anyway. So on this map:

The first Chinese missionary would convert Genova and then Ravenna and then Mpinda. The second Chinese missionary would convert Siena, then embark and convert The Jungle Book by sea. Does that make sense?

* China and Germany are doing some kind of standoff in the southwest. I'm reasonably confident that the German settler on the map right now is the only one that TheArchduke has available. Perhaps he has a second one somewhere, but I haven't seen any other population drops recently and his core cities should have been working on Hansas. I trust that your unit blockades are holding as planned right now. Also, do you have a map of the exact tiles where you plan to settle? I'm a bit uncertain beyond the one spot you highlighted this turn.

* It might be more worthwhile to use a trade route to get a new city off to a faster start. Up to you though, a trade route to a city state certainly brings in a good bit of gold.

[Singaboy]

The city setup so that all three cities enjoy the Colosseum bonuses. The central city is certainly not a particular strong position in terms of tiles. However, it could build a harbor pretty much protected from any incursion. It certainly needs walls. However, due to the land there, it will be almost impossible to take via land as long as the hill west of it can be defended. It might be a good idea to build an encampment there. Yes, a trade route could help to speed up things. It's just the general lack of districts in my own cities which don't boost trade a lot. I should really finish the CH and campus in my capital for a 3f2h boost to trade routes.

[Modo]

Singaboy, the amenities distribution is still the same even after Beijing dropped one pop after completing the settler?

Also, given how the interface "handles" multiple production overflows maybe the same could happen for completing multiple settlers / builders on the same turn. I think Rome at one point completed three builders in one turn, do we know for sure that the game increased the cost accordingly based on all of them? If the interface doesn't handle this properly it would be better to sync them every time it's possible when building more than one at the same time.

[Sullla]

Singaboy, thanks for the picture of where the settlers are going, I know that you posted it earlier but it was somewhere far back in the thread. And Modo, Civ6 does scale up the cost of builders and settlers mid-turn, in the production order in which the cities are listed on the reports screen. In other words, it starts with the capital and then goes down the list of cities in order, so if the capital finishes a builder then city #2 will have a builder that costs 4 more production, and so on. You can't trick the game into keeping builders at the same cost by producing multiple of them in a single turn. Now on to Turn 80:



This was the scene that greeted me when I opened up the save. Still no Kongo units over here by Mpinda, and a deal offer from Cornflakes (Khmer). What was that?



Interesting. He was asking me for 200 gold. This would seem to suggest that an attack from England/Nubia is imminent and Khmer is desperately trying to get money from other teams to meet that threat. Obviously I did not accept this deal; I sent him back a "1 gold for 1 gold" trade which hopefully Cornflakes will understand is a request to wait for a turn so that we can discuss things over as a team. I had two immediate thoughts here:

1) Just reject this offer. We're planning to attack Kongo in less than 10 turns, why would we give them gold? This is the straightforward move.

2) Give them some kind of token amount of gold, not 200 gold but maybe 50 gold or something like that. Obviously this has the chance to backfire, but it would also allay suspicion for precisely that reason. Why would we give another team gold if we're planning on fighting them shortly? It wouldn't make sense, which is exactly why we might be able to catch them off guard if we did it. Still not sure if this is a good idea, but I'll throw it out for discussion. Any thoughts Singaboy?

I would also feel a lot more comfortable waiting to see if Nubia/England actually do declare war on their team before sending them any help. I strongly suspect an attack is coming but it hasn't actually manifested just yet.



Elsewhere, my galley in the extreme south did take damage from the barbarian archer. Annoying. At least it should be safe for the time being as it slowly returns back north again.



The happy news for the turn is that city #6 was founded this turn as Siena. It looks as though everything in this border region north of Mpinda is going to be claimed by Rome and that's a great outcome for our team. City #7 arrives next turn and then city #8 on Turn 83. I love the fact that I'm going to need two screenshots to display my whole territory from now on. Here's a closer look at Siena:



The biggest weakness of this city is low food growth; I'm probably going to send my fourth trade route to this city to help it grow faster with a trade route back to the capital. The wheat tile east of the city is also slated to be harvested when a builder gets down here, since that's where the Campus district will ultimately be placed. I have Siena working on its Bath district at the moment, which is just a production sink for the time being. I don't need the Bath district to be done anytime soon. What I really want to do is build city walls and then chop the forest for a district using the standard overflow tricks. However, I'm not in Limes policy right now and I'll hold off on building the walls until I have that policy running. Was that a mistake? No, I don't think so because I do need the current Maneuver policy for my core cities to use chopping off of chariot overflow, and my core cities take priority. I also would prefer to wait until I have Monarchy government running to cash in the city wall forest chops at the new cities. So we run Maneuver for now and focus on growing the new cities, then in about 10-15 turns the new cities will chop out their city walls and get districts up. They can slowly work on their Bath districts in the meantime.

By the way, there's another new scout out of that barbarian camp in the east. This is getting really stupid, but I do have two archers in that area ready to kill the darn thing and then finally take the camp. Good riddance.



There's a lot going on in this overview shot. Roma swapped off its Commercial district project at 1 turn from completion. I hit the housing penalty there which caught me by surprise; I thought that it wouldn't kick in again until size 8. Still no change from TheArchduke when it comes to the Great Merchant race, and he actually spent about 200 gold this turn on something, which means he won't have enough to patronage away the Merchant. He can only claim it with a Commercial district project and I don't think he's working on one. The Great Person is ours in 2 turns if TheArchduke doesn't have a project finish sooner. I swapped to a builder next with the intention of making use of the Great Merchant; if we do claim the Merchant, then this builder is going to make use of that deer tile northwest of Roma in the third ring. Forested deer is one of the best tiles in all of Civ6: you can harvest the deer for a huge production boost, then chop the forest for another huge production boost. My plan is to claim that tile with the Great Merchant, have Roma train a chariot to near-completion with Maneuver, then harvest the deer for big overflow. Then I'll do the same thing with another chariot and chop the forest. This should be enough for a discounted district at Roma and another building on top of that, perhaps a granary. So while the builder might seem like an odd choice here, what I'm really doing is setting up more units/districts/buildings by manipulating production overflow. All assuming that I land the Great Merchant, of course.

Ostia finished a trader and sent it to Firenze where it will run back to the capital next turn. I'm going to produce another trader there next, which will be used to road over the hills to Mpinda as part of the attack. There's just enough time to get it finished, transfer the trader, and have the road built before we attack. Firenze, Venezia, and Milano are all working on further builders. Firenze's builder is intended for the new cities in the south, and Roma's builder will have a couple leftover charges for the new cities as well. Milano's builder is for itself: ideally, it will chop the rainforest southwest of the city for the Bath district, chop/mine the forested plains hill west of the city, pasture the cattle tile that's will eventually be grabbed by the borders, and lumbermill the forested grassland tile two south of the city center for the Mass Production boost. That's probably the only lumbermill I will build for ages on end, one of the rare non-hill riverside forests available.

Venezia's builder is going to chop/mine the offshore forested hill tile not visible in this picture. I want to pair that with overflow from either a Maritime Industries galley or a Maneuver chariot. The former is preferred but I might not have the policy slots available for it. Then the last three charges will be used on the new cities. I want a Harbor district here east of the city center, which I should be able to get at the discounted rate. I simply have to finish a district somewhere else first, as I have 7 districts finished now and I need 8 done to get the discount after researching Astrology and Celestial Navigation. Should be doable; I will probably build the Encampment at the capital first at the discounted rate, then the Harbor here. Venezia is a slow-growing city and will likely need some trade route help to grow down the road.

Science and culture are doing gangbusters right now, enough so that I'll probably delay the finishing of Mercenaries civic for a few turns to minimize the time spent in Professional Army and Serfdom civics. Those are civics best adopted for only 1 or 2 turns and then popped out of quickly to stuff that's more useful for long stretches of time. I probably need Serfdom for 2 turns total, timed to arrive in about four turns from right now. Elsewhere, Russia has finished an Encampment district and Nubia either finished a second Campus or is running the +2 Great Scientist points/turn card. I think Rome is pretty safe to get this upcoming Great Scientist, but I'm watching the Great Person screen every turn to see if anyone tries to steal it from me with a Campus project. The Great Scientist is due in 10 turns assuming no further shenanigans.

Finally, we still don't have an answer to this question: can anyone answer the question of when our Declaration of the Friendship ends?

Turn 57: Meet Kongo
Turn 58: Offer Declaration of Friendship to Kongo
Turn 59: Message appears stating that Kongo accepted Declaration of Friendship.

If no one knows the answer, perhaps Singaboy and I can set up a test MP game to find out for ourselves.

[Modo]

What about a hotseat game with two human players where you play both parties?

EDIT: I've set up such a game, not sure how hotseat affects turn order but I got this sequence

Turn 10: Australia sends Dof request to America
Turn 10: America accepts
Turn 11: Australia gets confirmation for a 19 turns Dof (online speed)

a thousand clicks later

Turn 30: Both parties report 0 turn DoF and cannot declare surprise war
Turn 31: Both parties see no DoF and can declare.

Assuming that on your speed (normal?) the DoF takes 30 turns then it's calculated from when you receive the confirmation which would make turn 90 the go turn.

[Singaboy]

Turn 80:

I would assume that it will be T90 that we can finally declare war on them. I do hope they can hold on for 10 turns without too many casualties. England will claim its first GA next turn and surely, they will attack their weaker neighbor sooner rather than later. City walls can't be purchased and to spend 200 gold for an emergency archer etc isn't money wisely spent. I don't even think we need to send a token 50 gold to pretend we're not going to attack them soon.
Once Nubia and England attack them, they will disintegrate fast. Your army will crush them. Top this up with Japper's record of warfare and I am confident, we don't need such pretense for the coming war. Let's hope we can take as many cities as possible.

And, we must be aware that after Kongo and Khmer have been taken care of, it will be Nubia/England + Russia/Germany against us. So far, England and Nubia hold the Great General and Great Admiral in their hands and that's never a good thing. The good thing will be that Rome's cities will give Roman units +10 strength due to the Crusade belief. If Rome can net the GS that gives +20 healing, it would make taking Roman cities tough.

On to my part of the turn which wasn't really exciting. Nothing major going on besides moving a few units, the apostle in the east (moving over to Genova to convert it in 2 turns), the settler in the south and the builders in the north.
The main part of the turn was checking production of Beijing to maximize wall overflow and Shangdu for its settler. Let's start with Beijing. Wall production currently at 31/80 with the city growing next turn. I changed the tile assignment to get production to 9.9 with growth still in place next turn. This will get Beijing to 71/80 in 2 turns for a nice overflow once a forest will be chopped into the walls. Question will be, which district to chop it into and I could build a harbor or campus.

Next city to check is Shangdu and I am quite happy with what I am seeing. Production for its settler is at 110/230. Of course, the display shows 200 hammers. However, Hangzhou's settler will be done next turn and cost increase by 30. I am doing my math. The forest chop next turn will net 68 hammers (it was 65 without recorded history last, hence the increase this time). Currently, the city makes 13.2 hammers, which means next turn it will end up with 110+121.8 ((68+13.2) * 1.5) hammers, which is just enough to produce the settler. Why is this crucial? Well, I am running Colonization and with three settlers being produced, I no longer need that civic for the time being.



This means, I am going to finish Military Tradition next turn to swap policies. I will most probably use Urban Planning yet again for that added production, which will help the new cities get off the ground a little faster. I can't swap out of serfdom as Quanzhou is producing a builder and Hangzhou will start another next turn to chop that rain forest W-W of the city center. In fact, that builder could chop rain forest/mine hill -> build Oracle with 5 charges (leaving the city to add a turn of production for it).

After the current round of 3 wonders, I could aim for monarchy. However, there is an issue. The civic that enables monarchy renders Corvee obsolete. If I don't use Corvee and Autocracy for wonder charges, wonders are not done with 5 charges. This is of course an issue. Building those sea wonders will take some time as Shanghai needs to first build a harbor and then two wonders. I need to beeline for that. I could setup a city wall chop for one of those icy hills west of Shanghai to get there.

As for the image below, let's see whether Germany is going to settle on the spot as I predict it will. Sulla will be able to tell during his coming turn. By the way, next turn I can recruit yet another missionary to be sent southeast. There will be one additional missionary presumably at a cost of 200 faith to convert China's new cities. If all 9 cities get converted, gpt will rise by 18.



By the way, could it be that Germany spent the gold for a settler. Archduke might be worried to secure that second canal and feel he needs to rush that?

[Singaboy]

@Sulla,

I can confirm now in another game that the Great Scientist indeed heals units within the hexagon around it. Huge!!!

[Modo]

If you pass on a GP do you get to see what the next one is or the existing one has to be taken by anyone in order to see it?

If not this would impact the strategy as no one should allow such a GS to be taken by others. I'm thinking now that if Archduke knew how strong this GS is he would have passed on his in the hopes to be the first to get this one but that means that basically every team in the game ends up just pilling points for targeting one op GP or another and is forced to ignore the current one if it's not OP.

[Sullla]

Thanks for looking into some of these questions Singaboy and Modo. We'll move forward under the assumption that Rome and China can declare war against Kongo on Turn 90, which means that I will move units right up to the border on Turn 89. If it turns out that we're wrong and Rome can declare war on Turn 89, that's not a problem since I play after Japper in the turn order. Either way, he'll only have 1 turn to react before units are attacking Mpinda. I'm also trying to be cautious here; for all that England and Nubia have a real advantage, it's still hard to attack in this game. Right now total power looks like this:

England: 295
Nubia: 240
Kongo: 205
Khmer: 135

So that's definitely one-sided but not to an enormous degree. With good tactical positioning that could be enough to hold off an attacker. Of course, we don't have any idea what things look like over there and the fact that England and Khmer are the two civs that border one another is not encouraging. Nor is the fact that Nubia has a Great General and England will soon have a Great Admiral. Hopefully we'll get our dream scenario where Kongo moves off to go help Khmer and then we can attack unopposed (or virtually so) from the west.

Over in China, I'm looking forward to seeing TWO settlers finish next turn. Then it's just the slow process of moving them to their destination sites. It looks as though both Rome and China will be sitting at 8 cities around Turn 90. With regards to wonder production, it's true that reaching Divine Right for Monarchy government would obsolete Corvee policy. In fact, it would be a double-whammy because adopting Monarchy government would also mean giving up the wonder production boost associated with Autocracy government. That means it's a real question of when to pick up that policy. Here are the wonders we have done now and the ones upcoming:

Finished:
Stonehenge
Pyramids
Hanging Gardens
Mahabodi
Colosseum
Petra (in progress)
Jebel Barkal (in progress)

That includes all of the "must-have" wonders for the game. The remaining list is noticeably weaker:

Remaining:
Oracle
Mausoleum
Colossus
Great Lighthouse
Terracotta Army
Great Library

There are six other Ancient/Classical wonders remaining, not counting Apadana which was constructed by Russia. Out of the rest of the list, I think that we definitely do want Oracle for faith patronage of Great People and the Mausoleum for the free Great Admiral. The other naval wonders are more "nice to have" than strictly mandatory, although I think the Colossus is genuinely worth having since it's a free trade route and a free trader. All of this suggests that we should probably try to produce a Harbor district at Shanghai to open up some of the three naval-associated wonders. Terracotta Army would be something to build in the late game for the sudden additional promotion on every Chinese unit. Great Library may or may not be built at all, since it would essentially be trading the builder charges for +2 beakers and +4 faith each turn, not sure if it's worth that.

Speaking for Rome here, it would be helpful to have Divine Right and Monarchy government available in about 10-15 turn's time, as I'd like to use the wall-building bonus for some of my new cities. Aside from wanting to get the Oracle done, I don't think there's anything else on the wonder list that would be worthwhile delaying the advent of Divine Right. We're clearly not going to have a Harbor district finished anytime soon for the Mausoleum or Colossus or Great Lighthouse. That suggests to me that we should go ahead and push towards the new government rather than trying to delay, since there aren't any wonder too crucial after we have Petra and Jebel Barkal constructed (both of which will be finishing in the next 10 turns). What do you think, Singaboy?

With regards to Germany: nah, TheArchduke didn't buy a settler. Those scale up in cost very quickly and he's already produced six of them. The cost for a settler has to be something like 600 gold by now. TheArchduke bought something right around 250 gold so perhaps a granary or a trader. If he was upgrading units, it will show up in a turn or two on the power screen. The good news is that Russia + Germany combined only have 300 gold at the moment, and that won't be enough to patronage the Great Merchant:

The cost of rushing a great people with gold or faith is:
For faith : 150+ 10*GP point remaining
For gold : 200+ 15*GP point remaining.

Germany is around 25 points remaining, so cost about 575 gold. It's out of their reach. Only a Commercial district project will cause Germany to claim the Great Merchant, and I still haven't seen any signs of it recently in terms of suddenly higher Germany gold/turn income. Keeping my fingers crossed here. By the way, note that the faith patronage cost drops to (150 + 10 * GP remaining) * 0.75 = 112 + 7.5 * GP remaining once the Oracle has been built. Pretty darn cheap once China is running around with 100 faith/turn income to play around with. Note that Singaboy is almost able to train a second missionary for the southeast, and then we just need a third missionary for the three new Chinese cities. After that, what do we do with all that faith? Start saving for Wats, Theocracy units, and Great Person patronage to cause lots of mischief.

Finally, confirmation that Al-Zahwari works in a one-tile radius is amazing, thanks Singaboy! That opens up all kinds of creative stuff for military action. Units normally heal for 15 HP in your territory and 20 HP in your cities; increasing that to 35 HP and 40 HP means that even near-dead units can be back in the field in just three turns rather than 6-7 turns. Perhaps even better, units normally heal for only 5 HP in enemy territory. The Great Scientist will change that to 25 HP per turn in enemy territory - wow! That's a game-changing ability. Let's hope that no one else tries to run Campus district projects to steal him. I think that would be nearly impossible, since Rome is making 5 Scientist points/turn and no one else is getting more than 2 points/turn, and Rome also has a huge lead in the current standings with 72/120 points. No one else has more than 35/120 points. It's very hard to catch up when the leading civ is both far ahead and out-racing the rest of the field. Still watching the race closely just in case.

Modo: you do not get to see what the next Great Person will be when passing on patronizing one. No one gets to see the next Great Person until the current one is claimed. There's also no "take backs", and once a civ passes it can never claim the current Great Person. The whole system is quite silly, and the game would be so much better if it would simply make all Great People available once the era requirements have been met and let players pick whatever they want. (For example, I would have taken one of the Classical Great Scientists at 60 points if I had a choice.) The whole mechanic of "only one Great Person available at a time with no choice" is one of the weakest aspects of Civ6's design.