Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

The turn came in at 11:30 pm local time; I had time to play but not to write the turn report which I'll put together tomorrow. Singaboy, TheArchduke did found his new city on the exact tile that you expected. Still no war declaration just yet from England or Kongo, although I doubt it will be much longer, possibly this turn. Japper and Cornflakes both held the turn for a long time today, and I wonder if that was to discuss strategy. More to come tomorrow.

[Sullla]

Alright, picking up with Turn 81:



The barbarian scout in the east did not move so I shot it with one archer while moving the second up into position. I should be able to kill it with the western archer next turn and then move the eastern archer next to the camp. This will be the EIGHTH unit from this camp to spawn that I've killed (2 scouts, 4 warriors, 1 archer, 1 spear) and I'm really looking forward to finishing the thing off in a turn or two.



Here's the view over by the German border Singaboy. TheArchduke planted the city right where you expected, and it looks like you should be able to get the spots that you wanted down here in the southwest. I wanted to point out one more thing: note that the defensive rating of the German city is 20 which comes from having the warrior fortified inside. This means that Germany still doesn't have any horses or swords throughout its empire or else the defensive rating would be higher. Germany's power is 245 at the moment and that's a lot when all of the units are warriors, archers, or galleys. We can see most of TheArchduke's units in the current picture: 5 warriors (100), 2 archers (50), and 2 galleys (50). He's missing another 45 power which is almost certainly another warrior and archer. As a result, we can confidently estimate Germany's whole military:

6 warriors
3 archers
2 galleys
245 total power

We just need to be careful since those 6 warriors can become 6 swords very easily with Germany's enormous gold income. Food for thought.



The rebased trader arrived in Firenze this turn and I had the option of sending it to Roma or Ostia. I picked Ostia since the district yields were the same (2 food / 2 production / 1 gold) and the Ostia route would create a separate road connection. Finally I'm starting to get some decent roads through this region instead of getting stuck on the rough terrain. The extra food and production shaved two turns off Firenze's growth to the next population size and a turn off its builder. This is a crucial city that I'm still developing towards a hopefully future Venetian Arsenal.



No change at all on the Great Person screen. Rome is making 3 Merchant points/turn while Germany makes 4.6 points/turn due to Classical Republic government. That won't matter though because next turn the Commercial district project arrives and delivers 29 Great Merchant points, plus the 3 points that Rome gets naturally. It will be enough to send me over the top and claim the Great Merchant unless TheArchduke picks it up on his own turn. I'm still cautiously keeping my fingers crossed that this will work out as planned. TheArchduke probably thinks he has more time before I can snipe the Merchant away, as it doesn't look like Rome is very close right now. Because Rome has discovered so many civics, the district projects have scaled up a good bit and result in more Great Person points than he probably expects. That's the hope anyway. We'll find out next turn; I would guess that the odds that this works are about 80% right now.

We have a new city this turn:



This is Genova (Genoa in English), designed to be the eastern half of the canal between oceans. It's a pretty good city in its own right, with a bunch of food resources and an iron tile, although it will struggle a bit on production with relatively few hill tiles. I threw down the Bath district as a production sink for the moment until I can get back into Limes policy and start working on the city walls. I also went ahead and purchased the 4 food rice tile for 100 gold since it will enormously speed up the rate of this city's growth. Yeah, this was greedy of me but I'm banking on clearing that barb camp for 50 gold and then using the Great Merchant for three 60 gold charges. I should be able to afford this expenditure, although I have to be really careful if the Great Merchant would not materialize as expected. This whole area will need more tile purchases for its districts down the road, when I'll hopefully not be as tight up for unit upgrade money.



There's the overview picture with all seven Roman cities just barely fitting into view. Rome will finish that Commercial district project and we'll see what happens next turn. Milano, Venezia, and Firenze are getting close on their builders and some of them will have to delay finishing them until I have Serfdom policy in place. That's intended though, and I'll be swapping off Mercenaries for a little bit to delay the arrivial of the policy swap. I will likely finish the civic on Turn 84 or Turn 85 depending on how things look, just enough time to upgrade and be ready to move in for the attack on Turn 89. Ostia grew to size 6 this turn and finally has some nice production, up to 13 base production/turn. I would love to get the 2/2 jungle hill tile chopped and mined to open up another high production tile for this city. A library is probably next after the trader, both for the science and because the specialist slot will probably be useful at some points. Civ-wide science and culture are humming along nicely at 40.1 and 33.1 respectively.

I don't have my spreadsheet in front of me to go through all the score changes; the main one was Germany planting that seventh city. We continue to mirror one another, TheArchduke and I, although I'm beating his civ in pretty much every category imaginable except gold/turn (where TheArchduke admittedly has about double my income). No war declarations yet between England/Nubia and Kongo/Khmer although I doubt it will be too much longer. Both sides are stockpiling power right now, and if we're lucky Khmer will be able to put up a stout defense. I think that's all for now - good luck Singaboy.

[Singaboy]

Turn 81:

Things look splendid on the Roman side of our pairings, 7 cities, science and culture output to dream of. China is lacking here clearly as districts and settlers took a back burner to accommodate for all those wonders. Let's build three more wonders in autocracy and then attempt to speed to monarchy.

I had been warned by Sulla about Germany's new city. I am convinced now that Germany's 8th city will be where his archer stands in the east. Well, I will finally found a 6th city next turn and Hangzhou has produced another settler.

England's scout has crossed the water on the north as I feared and he will be sniffing around China to find out about my wonder city Quanzhou. Luckily he can't get access to the south as it's blocked by Chinese tiles.

Military Tradition is done and I switch back to project Civil Service. Let's see how fast I can get Hangzhou to grow to pop 10. I also get another envoy which I keep for now as I don't want to take away Rome's suzerain-ship of Lisbon. Ultimately, we want 6/7 envoys there for maximum benefits.



With Hangzhou's settler done, cost of the 6th settler has risen to 230 hammers. The builder at Shangdu is turning the forest into 72*1.5 hammers, which results in 8 hammers overflow. Of course, the city shrinks too and science and culture are down for some turns now thanks to loss of population. I start walls in Shangdu before switching to a granary later on. Unfortunately the settler can't move west as the builder is blocking the hill there, hence it will need to move NW and west from there. It will be a long march toward its location on the western coast.

With the settlers done, it is time to swap policies and I merely swap Colonization for Urban Planning. The extra hammer will be good for the new cities too. By the time, I get Civil Service, I should have all walls done to swap Limes out to enable it for a short while with monarchy and some nice 150% chops.

I micromanage Hangzhou and growth will happen in 2 turns. Around that time, the forest in the south will be added to the city borders and I can work that tile instead of a 1f2h tile. Production is set on a builder. However, I will insert another turn of walls when production is back to 19.8 hammers. With the builder done in 5 turns, the rain forest chop will happen in 7 turns, that's when Civil Service will be done (T88).

Beijing is getting more hammers thanks to city growth and city planning and will have 75/80 hammers invested in its walls next turn before swapping to a granary. Those cities have plenty of amenities but no housing. Hence, they all are in need of granaries.

Shangdu's fish will be improved next turn and celestial navigation done on T83. I will immediately plant a harbor as any hope of getting a discount on it are not realistic. I would need a total of 9 districts before that and currently there are only 4 finished. The new city will start a wall too.

On the unit side of things, my first missionary has reached Genoa and will convert the city next turn before continuing south. A have hired the next missionary and it will be able to convert more cities in 4-5 turns. There is now a need for one more missionary at a cost of 200 faith. A wat in Quanzhou will cost 380 faith, after which faith will be saved to fight off Germany and Russia. Hence, there is a need to get to theology preferably within 20 turns.

It might be true that Germany has the potential to convert all those warriors into swordsmen. However, China will have knights and crossbows to counter. It will be interesting to see what will happen there in the future. For now, I am trying to delay any incoming German settler to get to that spot, I assume it wants to settle. Hangzhou's settler will take 6 turns to reach its spot and settle on T88.

Wonder production will commence in 3 turns for Petra and 6 turns for Jebel Barkal. Remember that in 5 turns we will get an income boost due to the copper harvest.

As for as the campaign against Kongo/Khmer is concerned, I am sure that England will try and use its GA to soften their cities while Nubia goes in for the land conquest. Let's hope it will take a few more turns for the war to start before Rome can sweep in and take as many cities as possible. If Rome can land the Great Merchant next turn as well as the Great Scientist in about 9 turns, things will look even better.

[Modo]

So Crassus prepares to serve Sulla of Rome...again. And this time with an extra "l" but let's not dwell...

[Sullla]

Yeah, things are looking pretty solid for us right now. One thing that I want to point out is that China's numbers only look bad in comparison to Rome. Singaboy is sitting at 29 beakers/turn, which is second out of eight total teams, behind only Rome. China is making 24 culture/turn at the moment, which is third in the game behind Rome and England's absurd 41 culture/turn output. China also has the most techs *AND* the most civics researched in the game thus far, plus more faith than every other civ combined. City #6 is coming this turn and two more settlers are out on the map for cities #7 and #8. Don't kid yourselves here - China is doing great.

This was a slightly nervous turn to open up the save. Did the Great Merchant plan work out?



Yes, it did! The "Claim Great Person" button in the corner of the screen was a dead giveaway. It looks like we were able to predict TheArchduke's behavior correctly and snipe the Merchant away from him unexpectedly. I'm looking forward to reading his spoiler thread in a few months and seeing his reaction. Chalk one up to careful observation of the Great Person screen every turn and knowing the math for the district project formulas.



Here's the picture of our civ claiming the Great Merchant prize. As Modo mentioned, the first Merchant was fellow Roman Marcus Licinius Crassus, a member of the First Triumvirate along with Caesar and Pompey. He's almost always the best of the three Classical era Great Merchants, grabbing three tiles outside your borders and providing 60 gold for each one. We kind of scoffed at this when Civ6 first came out, not realizing the usefulness of that ability. Now I couldn't wait to put Crassus to use. This was the free chance to grab a trio of tiles in the third ring, each of which would cost about 150 gold normally. And instead of spending 450 gold to unlock them, Crassus will give them to me for free and *ADD* 180 gold on top of that. It's a swing of roughly +600 gold as well as granting your cities some excellent tiles that they wouldn't otherwise get to claim. Crassus is simply great and worth the 4 turns of production required for the Commercial district project many times over.

Side note: Russia's "free extra tiles on settling city" ability is also completely amazing. We underestimated that one bigtime when the game came out. Between the Lavra, the Cossack, and that ability, I would now place Russia in the top tier of any Civ6 MP tier list, at least for the games that we play (i.e. not Ancient Duel Pangaea rushfests).



I moved my archers to clear the barb camp and, oh come on! There was a sword inside the finally-revealed camp. I should have guessed something like that when the spearman was moving around outside the camp a few turns ago. Still, this is completely ridiculous. That's the NINTH unit from that barb camp: 2 scouts, 4 warriors, 1 archer, 1 spear, and 1 sword. I really don't understand Civ6 sometimes when it comes to barbarians. You can go long stretches without seeing anything, and then sometimes get a truly absurd number of units out of one camp. Now I will almost certainly need crossbows to clear out this camp, my goodness. At least my archer won't be one-shot between turns even with a bad dice roll, and fortunately my initial attack plans only call for 5 crossbows, not all 6 of them. I'll back off next turn to rest and heal, then come back after upgrading.

Sheesh.



Here are the front lines, still with no Kongo units anywhere to be seen. Ravenna will be founded on the jungle tile next turn, and that will give me a platform to start upgrading these units in a few turns. I need to sit down and plan out exactly where each unit will be on each turn leading up to the attack; I know already that I need to upgrade on Turn 85 at the latest to provide enough time to move units into the water and be in position on Turn 89. It should all be doable, I just need to watch the logistics closely.

Note that I did not want to finish Mercanaries civic next turn, and I swapped over to Theology to buy myself another turn's worth of delay. Only 2 turns to research Theology? Heh, Rome is putting out a lot of culture right now.



Here's the current overview map. Most of my core cities are training builders right now. The right time to swap civics will be next turn, at the end of Turn 83. That way I can slot in Serfdom for Turn 84 and have it in effect at the start of Turn 85 when Roma and Firenze finish their builders. I will probably need to run two turns of Serfdom because I don't think I'll be able to have every city finish their builders on the exact same turn, not with the cost scaling up by 12 production for the last city in the chain. This will also be a good time to hop into Professional Army for the upgrades since it will be a short run in that set of policies. You generally want to spend the absolute minimum amount of time in policies like Serfdom and Professional Army since they have "one-time" effects instead of persistent effects like the production and science boosting policies. I'm setting things up for a brief duration in those two before a longer research burn in the more useful policies like Maneuver, Limes, and Natural Philosophy.

Notes on Crassus: I'll get a better picture of this next turn, but Crassus is already off to grab the deer tile northwest of Roma. I've had my eye on that tile for the whole game, an awesome naturally-occuring 1/4 forested deer plains hill spot that was just too expensive to buy. Crassus is heading up there to grab the tile, followed by the builder moving to harvest the deer and then chop the forest. Combined with +50% production overflow from a Maneuver chariot, that should be enough to get out a discounted district and some more infrastructure, probably a granary. (Using double overflow chops of course: harvest with a chariot nearly done, wait two turns, then chop with another chariot nearly done.) The really fun thing is that I get to build up an army of chariots for knight upgrades while simultaneously also chopping out key infrastructure at the same time. Win/win baby.

I would prefer an Industrial district at Roma. However, I need an armory somewhere in the next 25-30 turns and Roma is the only realistic place to build an Encampment, barracks, and then armory. Better to get started sooner rather than later. The other charges from Crassus will go to picking up the horses tile in the third ring (sharable by both Roma and Ostia) and then the plains tile three east of Firenze. That's where the Industrial district is going for Venetian Arsenal, and I want Firenze to build the thing while it's discounted. England is shaping up to be a real power in this game and controlling the Venetian arsenal is going to be critical to deal with Chevalier Mal Fet longterm.



Still no war declarations from any teams as yet. Well, at least not between players. The most interesting news this turn was Kongo/Khmer attacking the city state of Nan Madol, which is apparently somewhere in their territory. They have not conquered any city states yet in this game, the only team not to do so. I have completely failed to understand this team's actions from start to finish of this game. Their civ choices didn't make sense, their expansion has been anemic, and they don't seem to be aware that England/Nubia are building up to attack them. Hey, remember how this team crippled their growth curve to steal that early Great Prophet from our team, cheating in the process to do so? How does that decision look right now, huh? I'm really curious what the heck was going on in their spoiler thread the whole game.

Two other bits of news to pass on. Germany had another big score increase, and I'm not sure if it was a Hansa or another city. I forgot to check the diplomacy screen and will see later. England's population actually dropped two points this turn - does that mean two settlers upcoming from Chevalier? Hard to say. At some point, I want to get some of our own scouts out to explore more of the map the way England is doing. That's a smart move and we should look to imitate it down the road. My ships can now move into the eastern ocean through the canal and I'll send at least one off to investigate, maybe the injured one.

That's all for now - over to you Singaboy.

[Singaboy]

Turn 82:

I am happy to see Rome snatching the right Great Merchant. The next is a lot less powerful giving an additional trade route and a copy of a luxury. Excellent execution of getting that GM, Sulla  

On to my part of the turn. I use the builder to improve the fish getting the Eureka we both so badly need. I swap to celestial navigation and it will be done next turn with quite an overflow. The question is, shall I buy the water tile for the harbor right away next turn for 105 gold (Sulla, do you have enough gold for upgrades and a battering ram together with 450 gold from me) ? I would like to lock the costs so that the harbor can be chopped out via one of the forests later. Once the trader is done in 2 turns, I would start building it. It remains to be seen where I produce said builder.

I swap two walls to granaries. The walls in Beijing are at a perfect 75/80, while the numbers in Shangdu simply don't add up. If I continue to produce the walls, production would be stuck at 65/80 next turn (hill was mined there). I am hoping to get some overflow out of the granary which will get the walls closer to 80 in 5 turns. Granaries are needed badly in both cities to restart growth as happiness is not an issue at all.

I am now thinking of producing another builder in Beijing after its granary to improve some tiles such as the sheep, the rice, the grass hill and more tiles at Quanzhou. I might stop short of finishing the builder if Serfdom is not enabled. The second question is which district to build in Beijing. It could be a campus where the current rainforest is located (next to mountain NW).

I finally get a 6th city, Kashgar in the south. Besides being in a pretty strategic location and benefiting from Colosseum, this city has currently nothing to offer. It works the sheep that it borrows from Beijing. Hopefully, cultural city growth will be fast to grab some tiles in the south. I start working on walls. As it has a severe lack of forests, the city will use the wall overflow into something else. I am thinking of an encampment to fend off Germany and Russia. I will start a trading route from here in 3 turns to Hangzhou for faster growth (currently in 6 turns) and a little more production.

Other than that, the first missionary converted Genova for an increase in gpt, the second missionary is on its way to Siena. Wonder production will commence in 2 turns. The settlers are on their way, Hangzhou's settler will found the next city in 6 turns, the one from Shangdu in 7 turns. This means before turn 90, I am going to have 8 cities too with a culture output of 30.

As for production, Hangzhou should go for the campus after its builder as half of the rainforest yield will end up as overflow. I am planning to build a few warriors and archers there as I think 5 archers and 3 warriors would be good to have on top of horsemen and chariots. Hangzhou should also build the CH at one point in time. I am thinking that beyond the 2 additional archers and 2 warriors, the remaining units can come from faith via theology. If I can net both Petra and Jebel Barkal, faith will be at 70+ (temple + wat in Quanzhou too). The goal will be to push this beyond 100 faith a turn with more Holy Sites and leave research mainly to Rome while China can make use of its 60% Eurekas to follow in Rome's footsteps. So, maybe Beijing should build another Holy Site? Shanghai could build a Holy Site besides the harbor too making use of the barren tile south of its mountain.

PS Civil Service will reach 90/110 culture next turn and I will swap out of it a turn after that even though we will lose a tiny amount of culture in the process when the Eureka kicks in. However, that will save us a turn on getting CS.

[Singaboy]

Another issue to mention is my district costs. With harbors available next turn, I have 8 districts unlocked but only 4 finished. I will need to finish another 4 districts, before I can even think of discounted districts. I have a campus, a CH and a Holy Site locked at the moment and should attempt to finish them fast. In fact with Lisbon as our city state, CH should take high priority. Unfortunately, I am lacking of rivers. I have to check whether there are any worthwhile sites for more CH.

[Sullla]

Singaboy, one suggestion I'll make is to place the Harbor at Shanghai on the tile southwest of the city, where it doesn't require purchasing a tile. That saves us 105 gold and I think it's a better spot anyway since it gets the +2 gold/turn for being next to the city center tile. Yes, we'll have to harvest the crabs and the fish eventually to build the Colossus and Great Lighthouse... but wouldn't we harvest them anyway for the gold return eventually? And we would still have to harvest a seafood resource to build them anyway even at the alternate 2 north spot, plus purchase a third ring tile for the other naval wonder. I guess I'm not sure I understand why we would spend that money for a tile with a weaker adjacency bonus when we could just use the water tile southwest of the city. Why not simply place the Harbor there and save money?

I would concur by the way on holding off on finishing builders if Serfdom isn't available, unless there's a dire need otherwise. Getting the two extra builder charges is always a huge deal. I also agree with the suggested Campus district at Beijing and proposed Encampment at the new city. That's going to be the front lines for the immediate future and having extra defenses there would be ideal. This is pretty much what I was thinking as well:

I am planning to build a few warriors and archers there as I think 5 archers and 3 warriors would be good to have on top of horsemen and chariots. Hangzhou should also build the CH at one point in time. I am thinking that beyond the 2 additional archers and 2 warriors, the remaining units can come from faith via theology. If I can net both Petra and Jebel Barkal, faith will be at 70+ (temple + wat in Quanzhou too). The goal will be to push this beyond 100 faith a turn with more Holy Sites and leave research mainly to Rome while China can make use of its 60% Eurekas to follow in Rome's footsteps. So, maybe Beijing should build another Holy Site? Shanghai could build a Holy Site besides the harbor too making use of the barren tile south of its mountain.

Yeah, Rome can lead the way for the moment in research while China follows with the 60% boosts. I do think that having a few more Holy Sites with the full shrine/temple/Wat complement would be worthwhile. Each Holy Site with those three buildings finished and Simultaneum policy running is worth 18 faith/turn. We already have two Holy Sites in places, and I think roughly 4-5 total would be a great target to shoot for. That would get China up to about 150 faith/turn and really allow for major Theocracy unit purchases + Great Person patronage (with Oracle). That won't work by the time we reach the Modern era units but it will do wonders for the Classical, Medieval, and even Renaissance eras, and that's when this game will likely be decided.

Also you're on your own with the district discounting formula, which appears to hate you. OK, on to Rome's turn:



This is about what I expected from the sword in the barb camp. My archer took 63 damage and the sword took about 15 damage, right in line with the expected values for a combat result at -20 strength. I moved the injured archer a tile west onto the rice for safety and then shot and killed the barbarian scout with the second archer, fortunately stopping it from returning back to the camp. I'll have to heal up and clear this place after upgrading to a crossbow. Again, this one dinky little camp has produced nine units total and I've killed off eight of them. Barbarians are really dumb sometimes in Civ6.



The biggest news of the turn was founding Ravenna in the southwest. City #8 is now the forward base in this region and will be a platform for the upcoming unit upgrades. Japper had a chance to explore this region earlier in the game, and he'll know that I put this city very close to Mpinda and The Jungle Book. What he doesn't know is how many units are hanging out in the region because he's never bothered to keep sentry units around for vision. I should have time to plan this out tonight and figure out exactly where each unit needs to be on each turn for the upcoming attack. There's still ample time to be ready to move in on Turn 89.



Here's a closer look at Ravenna. It has lots of food between the awesome 4/2 spices tile and the double grassland cows, which I'm eager to head over and pasture to get more culture from my pantheon. However, the big weakness here is production and a lack of forests to chop. It's funny: Ravenna has the best terrain of the three new cities in the southeast, but since it has no forests for chopping it's going to be the slowest to get its infrastructure done. I'll probably get the Bath done quickly and let the city grow for a while. At least the borders will pop quickly with Open Sky pastures on those cows; the fish tile will be grabbed first (ugh) but then the three hill tiles in the second ring should have priority after that. Mine the three of them and this city gets 15 base production/turn at size 6 working the spices, double cows, and three hill tiles. That's not bad at all.

First district will probably be a Harbor west of the fish. All of my new cities will be able to train ships and hopefully take advantage of the Venetian Arsenal several months down the road.



There's a lot going on in this picture. First the builder adding a camp on the truffles: this is the first amenity Rome has connected all game, after sponging off China for ages and ages. Which I still plan to be doing for a long time, since Singaboy has Colosseum to keep his cities happy. Adding a camp on the truffles gave Milano a point of housing and finally let it start growing again, which is the main reason why I used a charge here. The Bath district will go on the jungle tile southwest of the city center after it gets chopped by the builder currently in production (which by the way was microed to 81/82 production, ha!) More philosophically speaking, camps are really weak tile improvements in the Civ6 early game. They provide +1 gold and half a point of housing - terrible. Plantations originally did the same thing and then were buffed in a patch to produce +2 gold, which makes them worth adding, albeit as a secondary option. Mines and pastures and quarries are the best early improvements because they add +1 production. Farms can be pretty good at +1 food, especially at low food cities. But +1 gold? Come on, that's awful. Even worse, there are boosts associated with mining and farming resources, building a pasture or a quarry, and building fishing boats. There are zero boosts assocaited with camps whatsoever. You might as well avoid building camps in the early game - they aren't worth the effort. (They do become pretty awesome starting at Mercantilism civic which grants them +1 food AND +1 production. The designers should revamp this and change camps to provide +1 food from the start of the game, and then +1 gold and +1 production at Mercantilism. This would make them much better than they are now. Currently you might as well not even bother with them.)

Aside from the builder adding the truffles camp, I also circled the tile in white. This is where the Campus district for Milano is going, and I needed to purchase the tile this turn for 100 gold before the cost scaled up any further with another civic discovery. Of course, I just told Singaboy not to purchase a tile for his Harbor district while here I am spending gold for my own district. Like I said, I've been a bad ally when it comes to gold and resources in this game. But there is a real logic here. I've planned out the districts in this part of the map, and I'm creating a smaller version of oledavy's megaopolis from PBEM4 here. If you look carefully, a Campus on this tile gets a +1 beaker adjacency bonus from having two districts next to it, a Campus (from Venezia) and a Commercial district (from Milano). That allows me to get a Campus adjacency bonus from a part of the map that has no mountains.

But it gets better than that. Finishing the Campus district on this tile also adds an adjacency bonus for the Commercial district, so the Campus is also worth +1 gold/turn. *AND* it adds an adjacency bonus for Venezia's Campus district as well, for another +1 beaker. That's +2 beakers/turn from this Campus, which grows to +4 beakers/turn when running Natural Philosophy policy like I'm doing right now. That's a 10% increase in total science from this district before adding a library or university or anything. Later on, I will add more districts on the two wheat tiles to the south and the empty plains tile between them for another adjacency bonus. Long story short, I needed this tile for the Campus that's about to be chopped out and now was the time to purchase it before the cost scaled up any further. Apologies to Singaboy for spending another 100 gold here.



I did get some of it back though! I cashed in the first charge on Crassus for 60 gold and picked up this deer tile in Roma's third ring. The city immediately swapped off the 3/1 farmed plains tile in favor of this 1/4 yield, since Roma is currently sitting in the housing penalty. I also went ahead and had Rome place an Encampment district down on the map:



There on the circled tile. (I did this before placing the Campus at Milano to make sure that Rome's district would be discounted.) This was another case of me wanting to get the cost locked in before it scaled up any further with more civic discoveries. Rome will finish the current builder and then train a chariot to near-completion, harvesting the deer to overflow and finish that Encampment. If I'm doing the math right the city should be able to 1-turn the Encampment with that harvesting overflow. Then I'll do the same thing a second time with the forest underneath the deer, probably for some combination of a granary and a barracks. Crassus is going to let me build military and district infrastructure at the same time here.



This is the overview picture. My cities are getting ready for the civics swap next turn, when I'll swap in Serfdom and start finishing all these builders sitting at near-completion status. Milano is already prebuilding a chariot for an overflow chop with Manuever policy in place. Venezia is working on a galley WITHOUT Maritime Industries, which is wasting the chance for +100% production on that unit. I still think this comes out ahead, however, as I want to do a chop overflow for Venezia's upcoming Harbor district and it's better to do that with +100% overflow off a galley as opposed to +50% production from a chariot. (I will slot in Maritime Industries before the forest chop gets cashed in.) Venezia will not be able to get a discounted Harbor district because I don't quite have enough districts finished yet to pull it off. After the districts finish at Roma/Milano/Venezia though, I should be able to get a discounted district on everything other than Campus districts, which are my "top district" with four finished and a fifth underway. I also want to set up a chariot overflow chop for Ostia's one remaining jungle tile; I'll have room for another district when the city hits size 7. Long story short: four builders with 20 total charges about to pop out, ready to do lots of chopping into three more districts and a bunch of chariots.

Internationally, the score remains close between our team and Russia/Germany. I'm pleasantly surprised that they haven't been able to pass us yet despite their civs having Lavras/Hansas that are half cost and count for double points. EmperorK finished a Commercial district this turn and his income went up by a good bit; he probably has 3 envoys with a Commercial city state too. Germany finished its third Hansa. Woden founded city #6 this turn, and Chevalier Mal Fet did recruit that Great Admiral a couple of turns ago. Here's a good summary from my Excel spreadsheet:



I'm pretty happy with our current position right now. This probably overstates our situation slightly since we just founded four cities, but then again Singaboy has two settlers out on the map, so maybe not. We also have a whole bunch of cheap techs that we're about to rip through to make our numbers look better in the "techs discovered" category. We're holding strong in cities, population, and districts despite our main rivals all having a bunch of unique districts (Lavras, Hansas, Royal Dockyards, and Nubia's "cheap everything" districts). I'm pleasantly surprised at how we're dominating in beaker/turn rate right now, especially as compared to Russia/Germany. That team has underperformed a bit when it comes to science and culture. We also have a big lead in civics researched, if not in current culture/turn thanks to England's insane 41 culture/turn. It looks like Chevalier lucked into a positive feedback relationship between easy trade routes from Royal Dockyards and the Kumasi city state (probably?) awarding tons of culture from trade. Kudos to him for seeing that and taking advantage of that, but sheesh, what a lucky break. Too bad he didn't get Antananarivo or some crummy Industrial city state by the luck of the dice. That culture is almost single-handedly making England/Nubia a scary team. (Seriously though, what's up with Russia here? Why isn't a Choral Music Russia crushing everyone in culture? I don't quite get it.)

We're just off the leaders in total power and have the most gold on hand right now, plus an income just a little bit short of Russia/Germany. I'm happiest about our science situation, as we are setting ourselves up to accelerate past the rest of the field in about 30 turns. Rationalism isn't that far away, and that's the breaking point on science. You can make do with population for science up until then, but if you aren't building Campus districts and the associated buildings, you just get crushed after that. Each library/university combo is worth 12 beaker/turn under Rationalism and there's no faking that science output from population. Right now, I believe that Rome is still the only team in the game with more than one Campus district. Woden might have two, it's hard to tell. Teams are ignoring Campuses because there are so few mountains on this map, but they're setting themselves up for real trouble down the road. Our path to victory involves keeping our income high and exploiting "first to reach" windows of opportunity for military action by reaching new units faster than the other teams. Hopefully we will be able to start this against Kongo/Khmer in a few turns and then keep snowballing from there.

Whew, this turned into a long-winded post. And still no war declarations yet from England/Nubia. Maybe I was wrong and there's no war coming after all. We shall see.

[Singaboy]

Just a quick response.

I am really surprised that no war has broken out yet, but Woden and CMF play after you, Sulla and honestly, I expect Nubia/England to make the first move here, so if there is a war declaration, it should be news on my part of the turn. Judging from the flurry of posts, I expect a war anytime.

As for Shanghai, the rationale is pretty straight forward. The Mausoleum has its ideal spot NE of Shanghai on that barren 1f tile. It really is a good for nothing tile just like the tile SW of the mountain planned for the Holy Site. If I would plant the harbor in the south, there is no good tile for the Mausoleum. I need to preserve that mined hill. Also, in order for Shanghai to have a decent size, some sea resources need to stay for some time.

105 gold is nothing much here. We gain it back in 2 turns.



Another issue is that I can't build 2 additional warriors as I need to finish iron working soon to start Jebel Barkal. The builder is ready on T84, harvests copper on T86 and starts Jebel Barkal on T87 (that's when IW is needed). With Hangzhou finishing its builder on T85, there is simply no time to produce additional warriors. I will have to buy swordsmen via faith later on.

By the way, you should get +10 strength for your archer at Genova. Did you test this out?

[Sullla]

I have to disagree there - if we spend that 105 gold there, I'm not entirely sure we have enough money to purchase a battering ram. And I still don't understand the appeal of spending that much gold on a tile with a worse adjacency bonus. The Mausoleum could just as easily be placed SW-SW of Shanghai's city center. We'll want to chop that forest tile anyway and a bare plains tile is almost as worthless as a tundra tile. Look, we can probably make things work regardless, but that tile feels wasteful to me. I would totally understand if we were setting up a Harbor district for adjacency bonuses or something similar, but I genuinely think we're spending money to purchase a weaker tile. Ultimately, it's your decision of course.

More generally speaking, thinking "it's nothing to spend 100 gold because we have a high income" is exactly the wrong thought process. Gold is a crucially important resource and not something to waste. It pains me every time I've had to purchase a tile, and I've spent a lot of time planning out the districts to maximize their bonuses. I'm not trying to be annoying here, it's just a bad habit that we should try to avoid falling into. We should always be thinking about the most effective way to spend our resources.

I will check to see if my archer at Genova gets the Crusade bonus. I don't think it would though - doesn't Crusade only kick in next to foreign cities with your religion? And finally, I concur that all the posts in the England/Nubia thread today - plus Woden holding the save for 2 hours instead of the usual 10 minutes - are suggestive. I will not be surprised if you open the save to see the first war of the game.