Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

OK, here are the results of investigating China's wonder-building ability. First of all, to answer Singaboy's question Stonehenge can be built with the stone resource in question being outside your borders:



Stonehenge was buildable three tiles away to the east using stone resources that were four tiles away and would never be workable by the city in question. I bought one of those tiles and tested to be sure, and it worked just fine. The stone resource doesn't have to be within your borders to start building Stonehenge, only the tile on which the wonder will be planted. I suspect that's true for all of the wonders in Civ6.

Next up, how the various wonder-building production modifiers interact with China's ability. I had to restart a new game because the AI built Stonehenge too fast for me to test, and there was no river in this location to use Hanging Gardens for experimenting. So here we are with a new start on Settler difficulty (heh) ready to experiment with Stonehenge. This was the result with no particular bonuses to wonder building:



A builder charge was worth 27/180 production towards Stonehenge: exactly 15%. So far so good. I had to test on this particular turn because a nearby Religious city state had given me a free envoy, and apparently there's no way to delay or deny picking a pantheon in Civ6. I took Monument to the Gods, the pantheon that grants +15% towards Ancient and Classical wonder production, lining up with China's own city ability. How do those modifiers interact together?



It's pretty much the way that you would expect. This time a builder charge was worth 31/180 production towards Stonehenge. That's just over 17% of the total cost and this works out perfectly on the math. China's ability gets buffed by an additional 15%, so the total effect is (15%) * (1.15) = 17.25% for each builder charge. It looks a bit unimpressive but the math does add up noticeably if you're using China's ability a lot.

With State Workforce civic finished, the Corvee policy opens up for another +15% production on Ancient and Classical wonders. Combined together, the results are:



The builder charge was now worth 35/180 production or 19.4% towards the cost of the wonder. The same math applies: (30%) * (1.15) = 19.5% from each builder charge. Finally, I researched up to Political Philosophy to add Autocracy government's +10% towards wonder construction into the mix. I had to do this with the Hanging Gardens instead of Stonehenge because the settler AI actually finished Stonehenge before I could reach the new governments. Fortunately both Stonehenge and Hanging Gardens have the same wonder cost of 180 production. The math lined up one more time:



Builder charges worth 38/180 production or 21% towards the wonder. Same math for reference: (40%) * (1.15) = 21% from each builder charge. Let's sum this up in a table:

No Bonuses: 15% per builder charge, 6.67 charges per wonder
Autocracy alone: 16.5% per builder charge, 6.06 charges per wonder
Monument to the Gods or Corvee alone: 17.25% per builder charge, 5.79 charges per wonder
Monument/Corvee + Autocracy: 18.75% per builder charge, 5.33 charges per wonder
Monument + Corvee: 19.5% per builder charge, 5.13 charges per wonder
All three bonuses: 21% per builder charge, 4.76 charges per wonder

China's ability becomes much stronger with these modifiers in place. In fact, if the Pyramids are finished then with all of the wonder modifiers in place each builder can construct an Ancient/Classical wonder. Once Feudalism is unlock, builders can get 7 charges and an Ancient/Classical wonder costs about 2/3rds of a builder! That makes even marginal wonders like the Colossus and the Oracle worth building. And another great thing about China is that these wonders are constructed completely independently of the local city, since all of the production comes from the builder charges. You can slap down a brand new city with no production and knock out a wonder in a few turns, with the city itself still putting its actual production towards a granary or whatever (swap to wonder, use builder charge, swap back to normal build, etc.)

Even better, we're using the downloadable extra civs and that means we're using the downloadable extra wonders too. There are three of them in the Ancient/Classical eras:

Apanda: +2 envoys when you build a wonder, including Apanda, in this city. Must be built next to capital
Jebel Barkal: Awards 2 iron resources, +4 faith/turn to all cities within 6 tiles
Mausoleum: Grants a free Great Admiral ( ), all Great Admirals can use their retirement ability an extra time, all Great Engineers can use their ability an extra time

Apanda isn't very impressive but the other two would be sweet to have. I doubt there will be much competition for them either, since they cost 400 production each. For China, they cost more like 50 production each and become highly useful. And don't forget about the Ancient/Classical wonders from the standard game that you can't devote resources towards building in a normal game, but nonetheless have useful bonuses:

Colosseum: +2 culture/turn and 3 amenities to all cities within 6 tiles. One of the game's best wonders and something we'll prioritize.
Colossus: +1 trade route, free trader, +3 gold/turn. China can build this cheaper than an actual trader unit.
Great Library: boosts all Ancient/Classical techs, +2 beakers/turn. China might be able to get this early enough for the boosts to be useful.
Great Lighthouse: +1 movement for all naval units, +3 gold/turn. Sure, why not.
Mahabodi Temple: 2 free apostles, +4 faith/turn. Yes please - this is how China will enhance its religion. A huge saver of faith for little cost to China.
Oracle: Faith patronage of Great People costs 25% less, more Great Person points from this city, +1 culture and +1 faith per turn. Blah but maybe eventually.
Petra: +2 food, +2 gold, and +1 production from all desert tiles. Awesome and we'll definitely get it.
Pyramids: all builders +1 charge, grants a free builder, +2 culture/turn. Amazing and our second wonder to target after Stonehenge. The wonder literally pays for itself with the free worker for China.
Terracotta Army: all current units gain 1 promotion, archaeologists can enter enemy territory without Open Borders. Save this for a nasty surprise when we're about to fight someone.

Individually a lot of these wonders aren't particularly great. However, when China can build them so cheaply and stack up the benefits, they start to become very powerful indeed. I really do think China is an amazing pick for MP if you can avoid early conflict from neighbors. Let's see if we can show everyone that in this game.

[Singaboy]

Wow, Sulla! Thanks for the amazing detailed work here!

Don't forget one thing, builders get more expensive the more you build. They start at 50 hammers and each new builder is +4 hammers. Anyway, well worth the investments for sure.

The quest is on now to get out the slinger and settler and settle near the stone while avoiding the barbarian pest. Good thing, Rome can be the military deterrent we need.

[BRickAstley]

Wow Sullla, that's great! Thanks for the analysis.

Singaboy you don't have to use spoilers, I just was for myself.

So I went to look around that mountain a little more and look what I see...

   

I go down and find Buenos Aires.

   

Their suzerain bonus is the one where all bonus resources give an amenity, which is always helpful since I seem to be always hitting the amenity cap in SP at least. The quest is triggering the eureka for military tradition, i.e. clearing a barbarian outpost. Very possible!

The downside is that only those 4 riverside tiles north of the river are settling options for fresh water down there, and I'm not seeing that being a really great city. I'm going to start heading counter clockwise now and see what I can find....

[suboptimal]

I'm very interested to see what tile Xi'an selects with the tile picker next turn... and if it stays on that tile on the following turn.

My guess is that it will take sugar -> citrus -> bananas with no flip-flopping.

[Singaboy]

Turn 3:

Things stay very interesting with nice surprises!
When opening the save, I am greeted by a quest from Buenos Aires (its suzerain bonus is one of the best, as I could witness myself in PBEM4). Sending a trade route is certainly doable. To get the +2 hammers for producing wonders/districts/buildings might certainly be useful. The city state also reveals the coast. 

I move the warrior NW and immediately run into Antananarivo. This for the time being is excellent for culture output and city border growth  The suzerain bonus could be good for a nation that gets lots of Great People. The additional task to build a spearman is certainly doable though a spearmen is somewhat meh. The city also reveals the sea in the west. Tundra starts to show up too which put us up north. I wonder how large our landmass will be like. We need to figure out how many cities we can build here. 



With the additional culture, border expansion has dropped from 7 to 3 turns. This is outstanding news as I do not need to buy the sugar tile. I might want to purchase the forest hill as the tile wouldn't get chosen as suboptimal rightly pointed out too.
The plan now is to work the spices for 4 turns until city growth, then spices and sugar, buying the forest hill (as soon as possible to keep the costs at 50 gold). Turn 12 the city should grow to pop 3 and work spices, sugar, forest hill for a production of 9. With this, the settler is ready by T18.

Finally a picture of the known land. If stone doesn't have to be within the city borders, city #2 might be founded NW of the Oasis, so it can include the horse eventually. Build stonehenge W of Oasis and pyramids between the city and copper hill. What do you all think?

[Singaboy]

@BRick, I hope you get a task from Antananarivo that is easily doable so that you can gain +2 culture too. That would be really a strong opening. We need to find a third city state for Political Philosophy.

I plan to move the warrior south next turn as the north seems to be tundra. I reckon your warrior can scout the area east of Rome and figure out where the coast might be like.

[Sullla]

Great news! The Cultural city state for Singaboy is really helpful to find. Now China can keep up with Rome in culture, and as Singaboy said, hopefully Brick can get an easy quest to put Rome back in first place again. I agree that quite aside from getting through the early civics tree faster, the speedy tile expansion in Xi'an is going to save a lot of money. Hopefully the tile picker grabs the sugar tile quickly and then we can purchase the 1/3 forested plains hill tile for the city to work at size 3, which it will reach super fast with a +6 food surplus.

Buenos Aires is a bit of a bad break since Industrial city states are probably the weakest to meet in the early game. I wouldn't get too attached to either of these city states long term - I think we should plan on annexing both of them in the near future, starting with Buenos Aires and then rotating around to Antananarivo. The city states that we want to keep are Commercial and Scientific since both players are going to be building Commercial/Campus districts and will benefit from getting the district bonuses. Whacking the city states at an early date is way too strong of an option to keep them alive longterm. We can figure out the exact timing later, but I'd shoot for Rome hitting Buenos Aires around roughly Turn 50. Two warriors and three archers should be enough to get it done here on Prince difficulty - legions not even necessary.

Brick, either the plains hill west of the wheat or the plains hill two east of the wheat look like they would make good city locations down in the south. Fresh water + 2 production center tile + ample space for a Bath district = solid city worth founding. Maybe not the best place for the second city but definitely a spot worth claiming in time. (For Rome, any location that can squeeze in a Bath district is worth founding eventually.)

Singaboy, the tile northwest of the oasis looks like the ideal spot for China's second city right now. Lots of resources, has the all-important stone resource to unlock Stonehenge, and enough desert to build Pyramids and Petra down the road. With the copper hill tiles, that will be a monster Petra city later on. We might even want to build Stonehenge on the plains tile northwest of the stone to save a desert tile for future Petra purposes, but we can decide that later. I like the plan to scout to the south with the two current warriors, and then use the Chinese slinger to go north and then loop around west to guard the settler, and the second Roman warrior to head east and see how far the land extends in that direction.

It looks like we're off to a great start so far.

[Singaboy]

Yes, for some reason I kept thinking stonehenge must be built on the desert tile, the plain tile (needs to be bought) would be much better.

By the way, due to getting CoL much faster, I might be able to squeeze out the settler a turn early if I don't adopt God King. The question will be, is it worth adopting God King on T9 to get the Pantheon 26 turns later.

Getting the settler out on T17, it could settle 5 turns later (T22) and then start on stonehenge. The city could work the forest tile 2f/2h and get 3+1 hammers a turn. Even with 3 builder charges (81 hammers), that's still 99/4 turns.

It might still be a good idea to run God King unless we run into a faith based CS. Need to think about this again.

[Sullla]

That's an excellent idea Singaboy. Having that extra culture to unlock more tiles means that Urban Planning might not be as necessary, and it also opens up the possibility for China to get a much earlier pantheon via unlocking God King at Code of Laws half a dozen turns sooner. I thought about how to coordinate things between the two civs for a Stonehenge build; tell me what you both think of this plan:

* Singaboy picks up God King and runs it until unlocking a pantheon. He takes Monument to the Gods for the boost to early wonder construction, since we'll be doing a lot of that in time.

* The main idea is to combo this with the Corvee policy from State Workforce to get +30% on China's builder charges, for a total of 19.5% per builder charge or 5.13 charges per wonder. China's second city shouldn't spend any turns actually building the wonder via natural production. It should all come from the builder charges because they're so much cheaper. The first builder costs 50 production and yields 4 charges and the second builder costs 54 production. At an average of 52 production, those 5.13 charges to construct Stonehenge with Monument to the Gods / Corvee in place are an effective 52 * (5.13 / 4) = 67 production. Much much cheaper than trying to build Stonehenge's 180 production by hand, so we get the wonder entirely through builder charges outside of that 0.13 leftover charges (which equals 5 production so we'll have to sink all of 1 turn into Stonehenge production at the city).

* The tricky thing is lining up both Monument to the Gods and the Corvee policy from State Workforce at the same time since we'll want both by about Turn 40 to be assured of landing the first religion. The timing on this is tight but thanks to that Cultural city state it becomes doable. To pull this off, Singboy will need to research Code of Laws -> Craftsmanship -> State Workforce. Fortunately this perfectly lines up with the policies that China wants anyway: Agoge/Ilkum from Craftsmanship and then Corvee from State Workforce. The Craftsmanship boost will come from Rome improving three tiles and researching the civic first, which is the magic trick that lets this work out with China going settler before builder. Then the other thing we need is for China to build an early Holy Site at the capital for the State Workforce boost. That one will not be coming from Rome so we'll need China to get a district finished quickly, and a Holy Site will be the only one available. Fortunately it's the exact district we want anyway to synergize with Stonehenge, and having a Holy Site district at the capital will allow both cities to convert instantly when the religion is founded.

* That means China ends up with the following build order: slinger -> settler -> builder -> Holy Site at the capital. We'll place the district as soon as possible to lock in the cost (probably on the empty plains tile northwest of city center) and finish it after the builder gets out. That first builder improves the sugar and spices tiles with plantations (with China's research going Astrology into Pottery into Irrigation) and then hops over to the second city to sink its last two charges into Stonehenge. China's second city opens with a builder, and uses three charges from that builder to knock out the rest of Stonehenge. That even leaves the second builder with an extra charge to use for city improvement. All of that should be doable by about Turn 40; I'm pretty sure the beakers and culture are enough to do the research, and Xi'an has enough production to get out the units needed.

* Meanwhile, because China is researching State Workforce and will deliver a free boost to the civic when it finishes, that frees up Rome to *NOT* build an early district and still get the boost. We can have Rome go after Foreign Trade and then Early Empire, and hopefully get a fast Colonization policy (+50% settler production) to crank out some settlers. That along with Agoge's early military production to get out some warriors and slingers to start capturing city states would be just the trick to play to Rome's strengths. I think Rome should place down a Campus district somewhere at the capital to lock in the cost, but there's probably no need to actually build it anytime in the early game. Rome will supply the early muscle while China gets our team the wonders and faith for the long term.

So obviously that's all theorycrafting but I think it will work and follows along with what we've been discussing. What do you think?

[Singaboy]

Nice plan:

Rome would still need to finish craftsmanship in order for China to get the Inspiration. I assume you did consider this in your plan. Anyway, that should not be a problem for Rome considering the culture that it makes. It would also mean that the second Chinese city might have to buy a builder taking into account that it will be 54 hammers.

The rest of the plan seems to play out nicely. Let's hope no barbarians will meddle with this!

During my next turn, I will add some pins for easier communication.