[SPOILERS] TheArchduke blasts into Space as Russia

[TheArchduke]

Gut check is that you should get that Lavra out ASAP if it's only going to take two turns. That's a pantheon two turns quicker, a religion probably the same turn as normal, and no effect on regrowth time. We've got one monster pantheon option and a whole bunch of ehh for backup plans, plus a very strong incentive to grab the consensus best founder belief. We can also use that time to defog a few extra tiles near site #5, although that is unlikely to be meaningfully beneficial.

The cost is two turns of development on city #2, including city #2's Lavra. That's meaningful, but not a killer. Losing the pantheon would hurt. If will also cost us a sum total of 2 faith (+2 Lavra 2 turns quicker, +3 Lavra 2 turns slower), which is trivial.

Quick micro:
t14: Start Lavra
t15: adopt God King.
t16: finish Lavra. 1/25 faith
t17: 4/25
t18: 7/25
t19: 10/25
t20: 13/25
t21: 16/25
t22: 19/25
t23: 22/25
t24: 26/25, first chance at pantheon.

OR:
t15: CoL, adopt God King.
t16: 1/25 faith
t17: Finish settler, start Lavra. 2/25
t18: 3/25
t19: finish Lavra. 4/25
t20: 7/25
t21: 10/25
t22: Settle Bratukhin. 13/25
t23: 16/25
t24: 19/25
t25: 22/25
t26: 26/25, first chance at pantheon.

There is no way Bratukhin can finish it's Lavra fast enough to break even on Pantheon timing.

For reference, Rome settling on t1 with no terrain or CS based culture or faith boosts and similar growth to us would do the following:
t1-t5: 1 pop, +3.3 culture (16.5/20)
t6-t10: 2 pop, +3.6 culture, CoL on t8
t34: pantheon

Meeting a culture CS will have to be very early to affect their timing. Meeting a faith CS on t10 produces the following:
t9: 1/25, +1 fpt
t10: 2/25, +3 fpt
...
t18: 26/25, pantheon.

A non-Rome civ with the same CoL timing as us and a t10 faith CS:
t10: 0/25, +2 fpt
t15: CoL, adopt God King. 10/25, +3 fpt
t20: 25/25, Pantheon.

A non-rome civ with a +1 faith tile worked at pop 2:
t5: 0/25, +1 fpt
t15: CoL, adopt God King. 10/25, +2 fpt
t23: 26/26, Pantheon.

We can't beat t18 or t20 for a pantheon, and we'll wallop anyone without a CS or terrain based faith boost. However, it's not hard at all to outline a scenario where someone is close enough for those two turns to matter, and the 2t delay of the first settler only seems a reasonable price to pay.

Curious to hear Sullla's take, but I'm voting build the Lavra.

Excellent micro analysis thanks. As you stated, establishing the Lavra is the better play. I pushed this from turn 25 to turn 26 and I could loose the pantheon either way, but it also makes a stonehenge snipe more difficult. (I underestimate that meeting an industrial state clearly calls for an early wonder).

Lots to think about here, busy last turn. For starters, I wouldn't beat yourself up so much for what happened in past games. You've made your share of mistakes but you've also won multiple PBEM games and that's an impressive feat. Everyone makes mistakes because the quality of the players in this community here makes it hard to win. It's very difficult to figure out the correct strategic decision with limited information about what's happening in the wider game, and even the mackotis of the world still don't make the right call every time. The toughest thing to do is figure out where your weaknesses lie and try to improve them over time. For example, I fall too much in love with elaborate micro plans and don't do a great job of seeing things from the point of view of other players. I was never quite able to embrace the mass-whipping of your own nation's population needed to prevail at the highest tier of Civ4 competition. If you can recognize your own weaker area and get better at them over time, that's a huge advantage over most everyone else.

Good news: no one has gotten better at Civ6 over time than TheArchduke. The improvement from the PBEM1 game where we were all learning how to play has been nothing less than staggering. I  thought that it would be fun to dedlurk this game party to bounce ideas off of other talented players, and also because TheArchduke's weaker areas (largely city management / economic development) line up well with my stronger areas. I figured I could toss out some ideas and let you pick what sounds like the best plan.

Regarding the current turn, finding a natural wonder just in the nick of time is a great stroke of luck, enough that it balances out finding the crummy Industrial city state. I actually disagree with your suggestion of settler before Lavra and would build the district first for the following reasons:

1) Two turns for a Lavra is insanely cheap and the district itself is really good. If you had swapped on the turn just played, it would have finished Turn 15 and that would deliver a religion 30 turns later on Turn 45. More likely, you'd get a quick Lavra finished at the second city as well and found the religion sometime around Turn 40. This would practically guarantee the first religion and its very powerful beliefs (this is an ideal setup for Choral Music if I've ever seen one). If you go settler before Lavra, the district doesn't get finished until sometime around Turn 22 and that adds a lot more time for someone to attempt a Stonehenge snipe.

2) The Lavra is also worth an instant 2 faith/turn, which lets you skip the God King policy entirely and run the much better Urban Planning policy. Or, alternately, you could run God King + Lavra for 3 faith/turn and have the potential to land the first pantheon of the game. You'd be looking at establishing a pantheon sometime around Turn 25 which should be one of the first players to pick, maybe slower than someone who stumbled across a quick Religion city state but faster than anyone else, even someone who found a Cultural city state. How value would Goddess of Festivals be in this game? Pretty good I'd wager. I think it's worthwhile to go for the super cheap Lavra to give yourself a chance at it.

3) You found a mostly useless Industrial city state. Well guess what - the fast Lavra actually gives you a chance to get some value out of it! Making the best of some bad city state luck there.

4) There are two huge priority items to finish at the capital right now: settler and Lavra. After that, there's nothing that immediately needs to be completed, either a military unit or a builder is likely next. (I would think builder because you probably won't be ready to flip into Agoge immediately for a military unit build. Your call of course.) So the main goal is whatever finishes settler + Lavra quickly, with the next thing out of the capital having much lower priority. Because you lose the population point after finishing the settler, it will be much faster to go Lavra into settler as opposed to the other way around. Now the tradeoff is your second city gets founded slower... but only 2 turns slower! That's not much of a tradeoff! And it even gives your warrior more time to return for escort duty.

Interested to hear your thoughts in response. I can't get over a 2 turn Lavra though, that seems unfair to be that cheap.

As above, I think you guys are right. The smart money would have been to establish that Larva asap. I am doing this right now and can send the warrior 2-3 turns in the eastern direction maybe even scouting out other stuff whilst I am at it. Especially the pop loss would take off 3 production I can ill afford if I want to crank out this baby. I still think another CS would have been better, but the combination of Natural Wonder and industrial could push things in our favour again.

On my fault analysis, thanks for the kind words. I am not beating up myself up over it too much. I am more a bit angry about repeating mistakes. The problem is never the mistake, but if you do not recognize them and do not adjust your play accordingly.

Doing turn now, both of you are right, the lavra is too good to pass up.

Silly me, well if I loose the pantheon race by one turn I can blame myself.

More lateron.

I also heard a distinct contact ding at the end of my turn which suprised me, is the AI moving at the end of the first player´s turn or at the end of the last human player? Did we make another contact?

[williams482]

I also heard a distinct contact ding at the end of my turn which surprised me, is the AI moving at the end of the first player´s turn or at the end of the last human player? Did we make another contact?

I've never tried to confirm this, but Suboptimal and Woden have speculated in past threads that this is a sound intended for the next player in the turn order. Most likely this means that a CS unit wandered into Alhambram's sight between turns, and he officially meets/met it at the beginning of his turn.

[williams482]

All right, follow up on that contact ding:

In PBEM 14, Suboptimal and Woden were #1 and #2 in the turn order. On t11, Suboptimal heard the contact noise after ending his turn. Woden had already moved his unit next to a CS warrior on t10, and did not meet another CS or player on t11. On t23, Suboptimal again reports "cash register sounds" following the end of his turn. On t22, Woden met another CS by moving one of his units next to their borders, and had no additional meetings for several more turns.

So this would seem to suggest that Alhambram met a CS last turn. Why the sound effect would play now is totally beyond me.

[TheArchduke]

Ah, damn, yes, no contact here.

Turn 15

Uneventful turn. Going God King. More desert to the south.

   

[TheArchduke]

I had a little playtest today.

And I thought long and hard. I was gonna delay our settler 3 more turns for a project or a shrine.

   

Not worth it, we continue settler. If we miss the +culture plantations by one turn so be it.

If there is a stonehenge snipe pre settler, the shrine does nothing. If there is one after a settler by a player, I think I am safe. I think I can even justify throwing a project afterwards as the shrine is a monument equivalent with a quick religion.

So builder order:

finish settler (2t) -> shrine (6t) -> slinger -> shrine project -> settler

We will ignore Craftsmanship, but we might buy a builder somewhere down the line. But we milk our industrical CS for all that it is worth. Especially as the boost does not influence the shrine project.

   

I was REALLY on the fence of going high risk high reward with my scout, but this is not SP. I need to protect the settler. Human players will snipe lonesome settlers.
Thankfully I do.

   

An agitated camp, I will need this warrior to protect the lavra at the very least.
So a lot more strategizing this turn then I thought there would be.

[Sullla]

Why would you want to build a shrine or run a Holy Site project? The whole advantage of being Russia is the fact that you don't have to do those things! You'll get your religion around roughly Turn 40 simply by virtue of having a Lavra built in your first two cities at those insanely cheap costs. Each Lavra is worth 2 Great Prophet points/turn so even if you did nothing else you'd land your religion 30 turns from now on Turn 46. I'm assuming that you'll go Lavra as the first build in your second city and that should shave about 5 turns off the religion arriving. This will be easily enough to get the first religion in any situation short of someone doing something crazy with Stonehenge, and with no China in this game that's unlikely to happen. Worst case scenario, you get the second religion and still pick some excellent religious beliefs.

Your biggest weakness right now is culture. I think you need either a builder next to land the Craftmanship boost or more military beyond a single warrior to defend against barbarians. Ideally you'd finish Craftsmanship before training more military and get Agoge into play to discount the military units but you may have to adjust this depending on what the barbs do. I think it would be a real mistake to go for a shrine or a project right now though. Either one would seriously slow your growth curve and achieve little in return.

[TheArchduke]

Culture is my biggest weakness. I think I am burned by the last game where I lost choral music to a China without any Holy Sites.

The sooner I have Choral Music the better. Good point about the barbarians though, I also should get a basic military against opponents. Still not persuaded about the shrine not being a good choice though.

[williams482]

A builder out of the capital at pop 2 growth config will take 7 turns, plus 2 for the settler. Trying to buy it would take 24 turns at current income, or ~19 turns if you work the truffles in city #2. Assuming no interference from that scout, settler completes t18 and settles t22. Builder could be completed t25, with pasture+pig camp+silk plantation all completed t35, or rice farm+pasture+pig camp on t36. That's well past the halfway point on craftsmanship (~t25), and essentially identical to the time required to research it straight at current rates, but that culture can be dumped into Foreign Trade instead.

The Craftsmanship boost is worth 16 culture. That's 8 turns of a monument or Choral Music boosted shrine. A shrine could be completed ~t26 and would speed up your religion by at most 7 turns, so for raw culture savings the builder beats the shrine even ignoring the value of earlier tile improvements.

The only benefit of the immediate shrine is if we think someone out there is going ham for stonehenge, inevitably at significant cost to their overall growth curve (barring mikeforall-level shenanigans). If someone was that desperate for an early religion, why not take a shot on rerolling and getting China? I could be wrong, of course, but I just don't see any real chance someone out there is going to slam 180 hammers into stonehenge before t46 rolls around.

[TheArchduke]

That rings true, I may very well be paranoid. PBEM 16 is bleeding through a bit too much. I need to take a breath, step back and relax.

But not too much.

Turn 17

   

Real thankful that I got my warrior home. Not that much drama/decision atm. The SW side is locked in, it is the most productive.

I am considering looping my scout back, but I am probably better off running straight southeast to get a feel for my land and opponents. A slinger can always uncover that desert.

[Sullla]

You lost Choral Music to China in PBEM16 because it was freaking China! No one else can build Stonehenge for the cost of a single builder; I was dedlurking scooter and he essentially picked up Stonehenge (180 production) for the cost of a builder (50 production). No other civ can do that and no one else is out-racing Russia to a Great Prophet the normal way. It's your game of course but tying yourself into knots to squeeze out a Great Prophet on Turn 38 instead of Turn 42 feels counterproductive to me.

Regarding culture: your second city can work a 2/2 silks tile for +1 culture and that will help a lot. I'd also suggest saving your gold until you can purchase a monument in your second city. You don't need to purchase tiles since you're Russia and that's one of my favorite ways to spend gold in the early game. This is what I wrote about that exact move in one of my Single Player games:

Rather than buying a unit, I purchased a monument for 240 gold in my second city of Lagash instead. I love this particular use of gold and I don't see it used often enough in our Multiplayer games, especially when someone has met a Commercial city state and scored the free envoy for extra early game income. Remember, culture is the hardest commodity to come by in the Civ6 early game, and it's therefore usually more valuable to spend gold to unlock an additional source of culture than it is to gain more food or production or whatever. Adding a monument increased my culture from 4.7 to 6.7, a boost of almost 50 percent that would be even larger without the 2 culture already coming from Vilnius...

But there are other benefits to this play as well. It's useful to spend money on rush-purchasing a monument in the second city specifically because the second city will be newer and have less production on hand than the capital. At this stage of the game, the capital can produce a monument in about 6 turns while the second city will take 15-20 turns. It's better to put the rushed building in the weaker city. Players should also keep in mind that borders expand very slowly in Civ6 without a source of additional culture. Population only provides 0.3 culture per point, with Lagash getting 0.6 culture/turn on the interface above. The rushed monument took the city up to 2.6 culture/turn, quadrupling its output. Faster culture means more tiles inside your borders: another dyes resource to plantation (and then trade to the AI civs for money), another stone resource to quarry or harvest, more forests and jungles to chop, more hills to mine. And there's no policy that discounts the cost of a monument so the gold isn't being "wasted" in an inefficient way. Rushing the monument therefore accelerates both the second city's development as well as the overall civilization-wide growth curve. If you have the money available to burn, it's one of the best ways to spend it.

You'll also be able to pick up more gold for improving one of the deer camps, and potentially extra culture if you can land one of the culture-producing pantheons. Keep the monument purchase at the second city in mind though, it's a great way to use your early game income, especially when you don't need to be purchasing tiles.