Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

Yes, agreed, by all means go for a city in the area where Germany vacated if possible. That's the only legal place where TheArchduke can place a canal city; if you have your own city there, he can't move any ships from the western ocean to the southern ocean. That's a huge deal. And while a city in that spot isn't particularly strong, there's enough forests to chop out a district and make it decent. Basically, that spot is important for strategic reasons, not for the value of the city itself.

I also saw that Germany had reached the Renaissance era today. I was trying to figure out which tech he researched, and my guess was either Mass Production like Rome or alternately Banking since he has so many Commercial districts. I looked around the map and didn't see Venetian Arsenal placed anywhere; no idea if Germany will try for it. Let's hope not. While I'm reasonably confident that Rome can win a race, since I have an ETA for Venetian Arsenal in less than 20 turns, I'd rather not chance it if I don't have to.

For your research plan, I can definitely have the Gunpowder boost passed over to you by Turn 114. You might need to supply the Metal Casting boost for yourself since I'm not sure that I have time to invest research into that tech for Rome, but it's an extremely easy one to get (own two crossbows) so that should be doable on the next Professional Army civics swap. It sounds like you don't need it until Turn 119 and there should be time somewhere in the next 15 turns to upgrade two archers into crossbows. Don't forget that Printing is also a requirement for Military Science; Rome will deliver the boost on that one though.

Where to place the Chinese knights in the south depends somewhat on how Japper moves his units. However, let's aim for the tiles northeast and northeast-northeast of the copper resource in the tundra right now. From those staging tiles, knights could move onto the stone tile and onto the tile northeast of the stone on the initial turn of the fighting. Obviously a lot depends on whether that Ngao Mbemba hangs around the region of heads off elsewhere. But for now, that's a good area to aim for and we can go from there.

[Sullla]

Here we go with Turn 105:



No message spam this turn, just one notification about my galley being attacked by barbarians in the far north. My scouting knight in the east found a little bit more information but didn't reveal the city center tile of that Khmer city. It's clear by now that Japper has moved his whole army up to the north to ward off England's units, and Chevalier Mal Fet doesn't appear to have made any progress. If anything, he's been retreating backwards a bit. I can see about 200k worth of power in the English units surrounding Nan Madol, which is about a third of England's total military. The rest could be further off to the east out of view, or back in his homeland, or anywhere really. This front looks pretty static for the moment, and that's good news for us. Japper's units are off guarding the northeast and leaving his western flank wide open.



Down here in the south, I didn't discover too much through scouting. Just more tundra, although the eastern-most knight should get a better picture next turn. Singaboy, I've set up my knights to absorb an attack from this barbarian sword between turns. Let's cripple this guy and then finish him off with your knights to get China the boost for Military Science. Japper also has a Ngao Mbemba wandering around down here in the south, which is a smart move for him in terms of scouting what we're doing. Hopefully he'll see the barbarian sword and think that we're fighting off the barbs for him.



Japper's settler moved as expected last turn, and I've left a path open for him to found a new city. It looks like he wants the tile southwest of the citrus resource, and that's a pretty good spot with two resources and three forests for chopping in the first ring. Not much in the way of hills though which is a shame. I would have gone for the spot northeast of the cirtus where it would be easier to share tiles with Savoia, although Japper understandably isn't thinking in terms of what would be the best fit for Rome's dotmap. Also note the Roman legion quietly repairing the pillaged road over to Heart of Darkness. If I set this up properly, the battering ram can move to this tile on Turn 111, then move two tiles forward on Turn 112 next to Heart of Darkness, and a knight can immediately attack the city center to knock out some or all of the walls on the first turn of the war, before the city ever gets to fire a shot. No need to brave nasty crossbow shots on the way in. If luck breaks our way, we could capture Max Havellar and Heart of Darkness in the first two turns of the war, plus the new Kongo city, and then it would just be a matter of taking Kinchassa to eliminate Japper.



My exploring galley was shot as expected by a barbarian quadrireme between turns. However, even though two of them had the chance to attack, only one of them actually did. I swear, the combat AI is completely abysmal in this game. Anyway, I retreated for now. I might come back here when I upgrade to caravels and try to get a kill with one of my own quadriremes, in order to unlock the difficult boost for Naval Tradition. While that's a completely optional (and fairly useless) civic, it does grant a free envoy and with the boost it would be trivial to research. (The cost is 200 culture, 100 culture with the boost.) Having a free civics swap in your back pocket is always useful, and I'd gladly invest a turn's worth of culture for a free envoy. So I'll try to line this up once I have a unit stronger than galleys to clear the barbarians.

Speaking of civics, finishing Diplomatic Service allowed me to change policies:



This was a modest policy swap, simply dropping Serfdom in favor of Natural Philosophy. The research policy gave me an additional 7.5 beakers/turn, or an increase of a little over 10%. The value of the policy has already been eclipsed by the value of Rationalism, and I'm eager to get access to the more advanced research policy in 15 or so turns. I do need to get a third Great Person to boost The Englightenment civic (and fulfill two city state quests), so I will likely be running some Campus Research Grant projects to secure a Great Scientist. Anyway, for the moment I'll be in these current policies for a little while. I want to set up another double policy swap situation, and that's going to take a little while because Humanism can't be boosted ("Recruit a Great Artist") and it takes 9 turns of research to complete. Fortunately Reformed Church is much cheaper at only 3 turns, and I'll take that to one turn away from completion, then start working on the slog to Humanism.

Planned policies in Theocracy government: Conscription, Maritime Industries (Military), Meritocracy, Natural Philosophy (Economic), Merchant Confederation (Diplomatic), Colonization (Wildcard). I would also like a one-turn stay in Land Surveyors and Professional Army for tile purchases and musket/caravel upgrades, so I'll be trying to line up that up for some point in the next 6-10 turns.



Now this was unexpected. I went to move this builder two tiles east and found that it couldn't, stopping instead on the plains forest tile. What the heck? Apparently this road tile here had been pillaged at some point. Now is there *ANY* visual indication that this tile was pillaged? Anything at all? I checked in Stategic Mode and it wasn't any more visible. Seriously Civ6, what is it with this game and presenting information cleanly? Sigh. Anyway, it was the same amount of time either way to reach this builder's destination, so I went ahead and repaired the tile. Why not. The ETA for Venetian Arsenal currently looks like Turn 122 if this builder is able to move as expected.



Here's the overview for Turn 105. Roma continues working on the Armory, which will boost Gunpowder to completion as soon as it finishes. Milano and Ostia are working on their legion/musket builds. Venetian finished a quadrireme this turn, and I'm going to build another one to near-completion, then wait for Venetian Arsenal to finish it. Venezia has a new project once the unit is ready: build a university. I need two of them for the Printing boost and this looks like an ideal city to get one of them finished. Roma needs to build the Armory and then a settler, so I don't know if it has time to get a university done as well (although of course I will still get a university in there soonish). Ostia is building the other settler after its legion. Milano is going to go library into university after that legion finishes, which should take the city about 20 turns for the pair. I wish that I'd gotten one more builder out of Venezia when I was running Serfdom instead of building a quadrireme at the time. I could have used 5 more charges to improve Milano and Roma, which have some choppable tiles remaining. Anyway, I'm trying to set things up to land all of the boosts we need in the next 15-20 turns while also double-expanding with settlers. It's going to be a tricky dance.

Meanwhile, Siena and Genova are finishing galleys before Cartography research completes and obsoletes them. I'm bringing the galley off in the far northeast home to be upgraded, then perhaps I can send that guy on a deep scouting mission as a caravel. Ravenna's builder was sent to Savoia, and it's completing its Bath district (2 turns) right now. I may or may not have time to get one final galley out of Ravenna before finishing Cartography, I'll see how long the build time is. Pisa finishes its city walls next turn and can then be gifted over to China. Savoia will finish its monument next turn and then work on a granary for both food and housing.

Internationally, check out this big picture comparison:



This is a close game right now. The other teams have pushing science pretty hard and we all have similar beaker/turn rates now. The biggest increase here is from TheArchduke, who has been building Campus districts left and right; I believe he has 7 of them now (Rome has 6). Fifteen turns ago, Rome was making 60 beaker/turn and Germany was making 29 beaker/turn. Well, now we're both making 80 beakers/turn and the gap has closed completely. Of course, we're still ahead in techs discovered but it's been an impressive recovery from a bad position by the Germany/Russia team. Their biggest weakness is in culture where they've fallen way behind everyone else. However, they will soon pick up Meritocracy and get a big jump from their massive number of districts. This is the single biggest weakness of their team: poor culture. We're almost an era ahead in civics research. Note as well that Russia is up to 10 cities now so they've caught up in expansion. They've basically ignored military and that has allowed them to catch up by going into full econ mode. Along with their huge income, their team is starting to look scary again.

England/Nubia have stalled out a bit as a result of this war. Their income plunged from all those units and their research and culture have plateaued a bit over the last five turns. They don't seem to be having too much success in their war against Kongo/Khmer; the power of Khmer only went from 761 to 724 and Kongo hasn't decreased at all. Their war looks like it might be stalemated aside from the one city capture. That's good, but what would be even better is bloodshed, lots of bloodshed on each side. We want to see lots of units dying there in costly attacks.

I see we managed to get through Chevalier's turn so we may get in a second one today. Good luck Singaboy.

[Modo]

Japper's settler moved as expected last turn, and I've left a path open for him to found a new city. It looks like he wants the tile southwest of the citrus resource, and that's a pretty good spot with two resources and three forests for chopping in the first ring. Not much in the way of hills though which is a shame. I would have gone for the spot northeast of the cirtus where it would be easier to share tiles with Savoia, although Japper understandably isn't thinking in terms of what would be the best fit for Rome's dotmap. Also note the Roman legion quietly repairing the pillaged road over to Heart of Darkness.

It would have been amusing to block his every tile except the one you wanted, kinda like a mute dispute on where he should settle. But I'm assuming that would have exposed more units than you were willing to show atm.
And thank you for confirming on the legion bug.

[Sullla]

I already did block every tile except the one that I wanted him to move onto, and he chose a different spot for his settler. I've backed off because I'm about 80-90% confident that I know which tile he wants and there's no reason to block him any further. Also, the ability of the Roman legion to fix pillaged tiles isn't a bug as far as I know, just a side effect of the fact that they can create fortifications.

[Modo]

Yeah, I was unsure whether to call it a bug or not but I don't see the connection between the two. You don't need a road for fortifications otherwise you'd just build roads wherever you want by placing fortifications.
EDIT: now I'm reading there's an achievement for a legion to clear fallout so clearly having the legion do other things aside from building forts is intentional.

[Singaboy]

Turn 105:

Military Engineering is done and niter shows up next to Shangdu. Quanzhou has grown to size 7 and needs additional housing to keep growing at high speed. The builder there puts a first pasture on the cows. Tile assignment is changed in Quanzhou to make it grow in 9 turns to size 8. This should speed up when the next cow has a pasture to get housing to 10.



As I had hoped and predicted, the tile selector shows that niter will be added next turn to Shangdu's borders. With the builder there ready to out down a lumber mill, it will move east to connect niter on T108. This tile will be a nice 2f4h tile once a mine has been built. Shangdu is continuing to improve its tile yield and hammer output. I am now wondering whether I should add a industrial hub there as a third district as a campus would not get any adjacency bonus. 



In the east, the knights slowly move south. I am waiting for Pisa to be traded to China to start drafting units every turn. The first unit will be a crouching tiger followed by a 2 swordsmen. I will then start to recruit horsemen in preparation of cavalry. The question is whether I should build a wats in Shangdu in 3 turns when the temple there is ready. It would be mainly done for additional 2 science as I really want to start to boost science.
Beijing will produce another builder once the CH is done in preparation for the campus chops around Beijing and Tianjin. Hangzhou will build a campus before switching to a builder as well. In order to facilitate Serfdom and Professional army again, I will get Diplomatic Service down to 1 turn completion and then swap civics. As Rome is starting to go for Humanism, China will follow this but wait for the Inspiration for it. Rome still has superior culture and China enjoys a 60% bonus which makes it more feasible for Rome to get through difficult civics without Inspirations.
Down at Kashgar, the city will soon see its production boosted by tile improvements. With the CH done in Beijing, the encampment should see a discount once a tech or civic is done. This will take a while though as I am not completing gunpowder soon or any other technology for that matter. Again I will need to wait 6 turns for Rome to get gunpowder done with the aid of the armory. This gives me the time to research Siege Tactics.

[Alhambram]

Yeah, I was unsure whether to call it a bug or not but I don't see the connection between the two. You don't need a road for fortifications otherwise you'd just build roads wherever you want by placing fortifications.
EDIT: now I'm reading there's an achievement for a legion to clear fallout so clearly having the legion do other things aside from building forts is intentional.

Legion is a multi-functional unit: not only packing strength of 40, also able to build Roman forts, repair tiles, removing improvements, chopping forests/rainforests.
-Building fort uses up a charge and result is that Legion can't repair tiles or remove improvements anymore. Also this fort is a Roman fort, so it don't count towards eureka of Ballistics. 
-Repairing tiles and removing improvements similar as builders don't use up charge, so it can done always as long there is one charge left at Legion. So in wartime you can pillage as many you want and repair it quickly when capturing city.
-Chopping forest/rainforests do use up a charge, after that Legion is unable to repair tiles/removing improvements. This can save up use of builders or useful in front-line where builders are vulnerable.


Some notes:
*Legion can't harvest resources.
*In older version of civ 6, when upgrading in Musketman, it still could build Roman fort, hence chopping forests and repairing/removing improvements too. In one of patches it seemingly got fixed, no special actions anymore for Musketman. So it is Legion's power only now.

[Sullla]

Thanks Alhambram! That's a nice summary of how the legion's unique fortification ability works. Now on to Turn 106:



My scouting knight in the east continues to bring back more useful information. This guy is standing on the western borders of the Khmer capital, which should be off to the east of that warrior. We now know the location of all of the Kongo and Khmer cities, even if we don't have vision on the center tile of the Khmer cities as yet. It's a bit of a shame that we didn't have this terrain near us; with all that desert, China could have turned the capital into a fantastic Petra city. Anyway, the situation at Kinchassa seems to have stabilized, and I don't see any English units trying to attack that city. They're all hanging around in Nan Madol's territory right now. Whatever action is taking place is going on in the Khmer territory.

And there's definitely action taking place in the war between Kongo/Khmer and England/Nubia. Kongo's power has fallen from 761 two turns ago to 627 this turn. Nubia's power has also fallen from 988 a few turns ago to 907 this turn. This doesn't necessarily mean that units are dying because power rating goes down as units take damage. However, we can confirm that this is indeed a hot war and it's not simply a diplomatic sham. With it being Turn 106 on the calendar now, we just need Khmer to hold out a little bit longer. Give us five more turns here and we'll be golden.



One of my knights was attacked by the barbarian sword and gave out a punishing blow in return. Singaboy, I would move your knight a tile southeast but no further, so that you can ensure that your knight kills the barbarian sword on OFFENSE and not on defense. I know that the "kill a unit with a slinger" boost seems to require winning an offensive victory, and I'm not sure if the Military Science one operates in the same fashion. It should be easy enough to set up a killing blow with the 4 movement points on a knight.

Further to the east, we're starting to get the full view of the terrain around Max Havellar. The city is wide open to attack from the east and the south, and we can charge in with our knights from all sides at the start of the war, capturing the city almost immediately. Japper appears to be guarding his settler with the one Ngao Mbemba in the area, and that's perfect. I don't care about that new city he's about to found, we'll have that surrounded and take it easily. Max Havellar is the city he should be guarding, and by moving his only unit in the area away, he'll lose any vision of the incoming attack until it's too late. I really like the way this is setting up: instead of charging onto fortified defenses, our peace treaty has caused Kongo/Khmer to concentrate everything on defending in the east, leaving them wide open for a repeat attack. I genuinely think we can take Heart of Darkness, Max Havellar, and New Kongo City all in the first 2-3 turns of the war. We just need Khmer to survive a little longer, and I'm crossing my fingers that with 600 power remaining, Cornflakes can do that for a while longer. Wish I knew what was going on over there to the east though.



I was able to send my sixth trade route into effect from Savoia this turn, resulting in these lovely yields from the city of Roma. 2 food is just what this city needs, and the 3 production + 3 gold/turn are excellent side benefits. As mentioned before I want to get this city to size 5, where it will be food-neutral and can pump out about 20 base production/turn by working four plains hill mines. That's enough for lots and lots of hopefully Venetian Arsenal-boosted frigates down the road.



This is the overview for Turn 106. Roma grew this turn and the Armory is down to 4 turns build time. I should have enough time to build the university and a settler all before Turn 125. Every other city continues what it was working on before. I'm pleased that Firenze is back into positive amenities this turn after I connected a source of spices (finally); the Venetian Arsenal is coming along nicely there. ETA is down to about 15 turns with the chops incoming, believe it or not.



Pisa finished walls and as promised is gifted over to China this turn. We need a base for faith-purchasing units in the east and this it is. I also think we should try to let China capture Max Havellar if at all possible - what do you think Singaboy? There are no districts there so we could try to get a Holy Site there for missionary purchases. There's a stone to harvest at Max Havellar and a forest on the spices resource that could be chopped. It shouldn't be too tough to set things up for either of us to capture that city.



I also wanted to mention the chase for the next Great Scientist. It's a close race between myself and TheArchduke, with Woden also having an outside chance. Nubia might be leading right now, but we're both going to overtake Woden before reaching the Great Scientist. Now Emilie du Chatelet isn't a particularly important Great Scientist; the real issue is that we would like to get a third Great Person for Rome to boost The Enlightenment civic, plus landing a boost for The Enlightenment is the current envoy quest for two different city states, Seoul and Lisbon. Those are both important city states and I would love to get those extra envoys, plus discount a crucially important civic.

Now here's the real issue: will the next Great Scientist be a Renaissance or an Industrial one? If it's another Renaissance Great Scientist, then we're just fine: TheArchduke will take Emilie du Chatelet and we'll get the following one, which has a chance to be much better (50/50 chance for Isaac Newton's vastly better ability). If the next Great Scientist is going to jump to the Industrial era though, we probably need to try and outrace TheArchduke there with a Campus district project. I hate the fact that Civ6 doesn't make this clear; couldn't the game tell you what the next Great Person in each category is going to be? Why is this a mystery? Instead, we have to try and guess what it will be using formulas about era advancement that are never documented in-game. We will get a way to test this next turn, with Chevalier Mal Fet claiming another Great Admiral. If the fourth Great Admiral goes to the Industrial era, then we know that the next Great Scientist will too. If not, we have to try and guess whether enough players will advance in tech/civics enough to chance the era of the following Great Scientist. It's so irritating.

Depending on what happens with the Great Admiral, I either will or will not start a Campus district project to try and snipe this current Great Scientist. If TheArchduke wants this one, there's not much we can do to stop him. He'll be close enough to patronage it pretty easily, or he can run his own district project to secure it. However, if he doesn't particularly care, then I can try to snipe the Great Scientist with a district project. Unfortunately I don't know if even that is enough; Germany is getting enough Great Scientist points that it may already be too late. Stupid Classical Republic government, sigh. Well, let's see what happens with the Great Admiral next turn and go from there.

One last small note: combined Roman + Chinese population hit 100 this turn, yay! We have nearly caught up to England/Nubia in military power as well. Germany is quietly building up its power rating over the last few turns. Either Germany or Russia also donated money to Kongo this turn, giving Japper 200 gold for presumed upgrades. I think we're fine with them spending gold like that... Oh, and the city of Kinchassa UNCONVERTED from Marco Polo due to religious pressure from the nearby Khmer Holy City. Sorry Singaboy! That's 2 gold/turn less for us. We'll have to reconvert it at some point down the road.

[pindicator]

Regarding the slinger eureka, I know they changed that in the last patch (or maybe the one before) so that it also counts on defense. I would really hope that would apply for every unit, but only know it works for slingers for certain.

With great people, I thought it was the era of the farthest civilization - is the actual mechanic something more complex?

[Modo]

Interesting about the gold from Russia / Germany, they must know Kongo / Khmer are doomed one way or another. If they didn't trade equally and indeed gave the gold for Kongo / Khmer to last a little while longer what would they hope to get out of it by doing that?
If they just want to stall the other teams while they develop I'd still think it's a waste of gold, I'm smelling an incoming attack on England / Nubia which would be even better