[SPOILERS] scooter tries Civ6

[Alhazard]

Sorry for bringing the bear of bad news. Now that I think about it, I think TAD and Cornflakes probably will get their pantheons first considering that we got early GK while they didn't. they probably met a white city state or working a tile with faith, if city state, they are getting 2 faith per turn and will easily win. And I have to imagine that they started working the faith tile before the turn with GK.

[Sullla]

Yeah, at this point you're probably better off not trying to land the boost for Craftsmanship. I've always thought that Cultural city states are the best to find at the start of the game since culture is the hardest commodity to get through normal means, that was a nice bit of luck. I wouldn't recommend swapping off the silks tile though - that culture is awfully nice to have and the silks are a 2/2 tile even without the culture. I'd rather have 2 food/2 production/1 culture over 1 food/3 production. Why not run the deer + silks + forested plains hill? I'd only drop the silks if that 1 extra point of production shaves a turn off the settler, which I doubt that it does.

To answer your question about how finishing settlers works in Civ6, your city stays at the same amount of food and simply drops down a size. You need 24 food to hit size 3 and 33 food to hit size 4, so if you're sitting at 5/33 food in the box at size 3 and finish a settler, you drop instantly to 5/24 food in the box at size 2. As far as I can tell there's no real advantage to completing a settler at different foodbox amounts. You definitely want to get your settler out ASAP so you are correct to run max production for the moment, and then you can pick up the rice tile again and go back to growing once the settler is done.

Remember that your warriors will be able to take a promotion when they reach 15 XP, which also heals for 50 HP in the process. That's normally three attacks from a warrior at 5 XP each, which then allows you to take Battlecry promotion for +7 strength and easily dispatch barbarian spears. Not sure if that helps here but it's worth keeping in mind.

You also might want to start thinking about pantheon choices based on this start. With horses at the capital and double cows at the second city, God of the Open Sky (+1 culture on pastures) could be a great choice. Take it from someone who played as Rome in two games, having a lead in culture translates into early civics and a lot of snowballing advantages. You always have the wonder-building pantheon as a backup plan since no one else is going to take that, but I think getting +3 culture from pastures this early in the game could be better.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Yeah, with this much culture coming in some of it will be "wasted" by not getting the Craftsmanship eureka - but another way to think about it is we have the luxury of being able to skip it while not falling behind.

Let's see, Sullla answered the food box question, so the only other outstanding one is re:barb horses. Barb horses spawn if there's a horse tile within 6 tiles of the camp - including one inside your own borders (I guess they're horse thieves and cattle rustlers). The horse outside your capital is, I believe, exactly 6 tiles from the camp, so it is able to build horses. But the scout can't get back to the camp to trigger the eruption, so we're in good shape there, I think.

[williams482]

Hey all. Happening place in here.

I have seen the map in the lurker thread, but I didn't inspect it closely enough to know which spot Scooter drew. Is that too spoiled to dedlurk, or am I okay provided I refrain from sharing a handful of largely unimportant details?

[scooter]

Thanks for the answers all around! I didn’t realize the barbarian horse range was that wide. That’s pretty unfortunate. Thankfully that scout miraculously never saw my borders, so I should be good there for the moment. I also am glad to see the agreement on my Craftsmanship thought. Feels like the worker boost in particular is just way too important for us to pass up.

I wouldn't recommend swapping off the silks tile though - that culture is awfully nice to have and the silks are a 2/2 tile even without the culture. I'd rather have 2 food/2 production/1 culture over 1 food/3 production. Why not run the deer + silks + forested plains hill? I'd only drop the silks if that 1 extra point of production shaves a turn off the settler, which I doubt that it does.

I probably was unclear in my wording (either that or you missed it in the insane deluge of turns posted), but this is exactly what I was planning. I’ll check of course, but I’m nearly certain swapping off the silks will make no impact on settler ETA, so deer-silks-PHForest is definitely the plan.


Also, I agree, let’s talk about Pantheons. Reminder that Religious Settlements is banned. There’s an insane amount of Pantheons, the majority of which are truly terrible, so I’m going to pick out the few I’m most interested in. If I skip a good one, it’s an oversight so please do shout at me.


God of the Open Sky (+1 culture on pastures):  Funny that Sullla mentioned this one first, as I tried it in a recent SP game and was surprised by how valuable it was. We’ve already uncovered 4 tiles that would benefit from this, so that’s a clean +4 culture/turn, and I fully expect this number to grow. I especially like getting strong culture in this game because our game will benefit greatly from getting into stronger governments sooner.

Goddess of Festivals (+1 culture on plantations): I’ll throw this one in there as the alternate God of the Open Sky. It now does the same thing, except for plantations rather than pastures. This is a new thing in Gathering Storm. So far we only have 3 of these I believe (the silks and 1 banana), but worth noting in case scouting changes the calculus.

Monument to the Gods (+15% production on ancient/classical wonders): I’m actually not super wild about this one. In terms of builder charges, it doesn’t actually save that many. I think it works out to slightly less than 1 charge per wonder, depending on how many other multipliers you have going. I need to re-check the math from Sullla/Singaboy’s PBEM7 thread where I initially read about this. I know the modifiers are not additive to the base rate. It’s definitely not nothing, though, so it’s totally worth considering.

Fertility Rites (One free builder, +10% growth in all cities): A free builder is a free builder, especially as it’ll come with an extra charge. Alternatively: Receive 60% of the Pyramids. The 10% growth rate sounds pretty negligible to me given how often growth is constrained by things other than food surplus. Compared to Monument of the Gods it seems strictly better given that you get 4 charges immediately whereas Monument of the Gods wouldn’t break even until 4-5 wonders later. I’d rather speed up the snowball at that rate. That said, I kinda expect this to be first off the board, so this may be a moot point.

God of Craftsmen (+1 production and +1 faith on improved strategic resources): This is kind of a meta-bet that we’ll have fairly good access to strategic resources given the balanced map. Horses are right there, surely the others are too? But this starts very slow in terms of usefulness as those tiles aren’t available right away.

Goddess of the Hunt (+1 food and +1 production on camps): I’ll throw this one out there too as we have 4 of these uncovered already, and camps did get a buff recently. Given that we have some wonders targeted that may improve our amenity situation, therefore raising our city size cap, the extra food might actually be useful too.


Those are the ones that stuck out to me. My initial feeling is that Fertility Rites and the two culture-boosting pantheons (Open Sky/Festivals) are my three favorites, but I’m wide open here. The general feel is we're going to have 3rd choice at a Pantheon, so we at least need a top-3.

[scooter]

Hey all. Happening place in here.

I have seen the map in the lurker thread, but I didn't inspect it closely enough to know which spot Scooter drew. Is that too spoiled to dedlurk, or am I okay provided I refrain from sharing a handful of largely unimportant details?

That's generally considered too spoiled, I believe. If I'm choosing between two tech paths, and you say you like X better, maybe I'm wondering if you prefer X because it's better on this map? Even if that's not the case, the thought crossing my mind is hard to shake.

[Alhazard]

God of the Open Sky: probably be gone. I do think twice about taking it since I think its better to harvest cattle to grow other cities quickly to size 3.

Goddess of Festivals: My pick assuming fertility rites are gone.

Monument to the Gods: I think this was stronger in PBEM7 because each builder charge at base game was 20%?

Fertility Rites: Probably be gone but 1st pick.

God of Craftsmen: Gambling with 1 visible horse. not that good compared to.

Goddess of the Hunt.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

The only missing one I would add for consideration is Earth Goddess, which gives a nice, steady chunk of faith throughout the game.

God of Craftsmen I don't like - the payoff is mediocre compared to what you'd get from any of the others.

Goddess of the Hunt DOES seem interesting - it'd turn that deer into a 3/4/2 tile, the truffles into a 4/2/5. That's not bad at all. I think I'd rather have the culture, still, but is tempting.

So my ranking is:
1)FR
2)GotOS
3)GoF
4)GotH
5)EG
6)everything else.

[scooter]

I saw a license plate this morning that was simply “PYT.” I choose to believe this was a particularly patient PBEM aficionado that had no need for an F or D in the acronym. /storytime


Turn 15





The other perk of all this culture is that we’re picking up new tiles rather quickly. I really wanted to go builder next at the capital, but we may need to slot in a slinger or something here given all the barbarian activity and our need for map scouting. For example…





The barbarian warrior slammed into me, which didn’t go too well for him. It also appears the scout took a shot from the city-state warrior. I was unlikely to finish off the scout, or else I would have just done that. I could have finished off the warrior, but that would make me exposed to a dangerous counter-attack from the slinger, so ultimately I decided to stay put and heal for a turn. I’m hoping the warrior will suicide into me, and the scout is slightly trapped right now, so it seemed like the best course of action because I do want to secure some kills. This did mean I needed to begin retreating my northern warrior to be an escort for our settler. I’m definitely leaning towards slinger-builder as our next two capital builds, shout if you disagree.





We moved up into second in religious victory, so I don’t know if that means anything other than maybe we’ll get second choice of Pantheons rather than third, which would be nice.

[williams482]

Hey all. Happening place in here.

I have seen the map in the lurker thread, but I didn't inspect it closely enough to know which spot Scooter drew. Is that too spoiled to dedlurk, or am I okay provided I refrain from sharing a handful of largely unimportant details?

That's generally considered too spoiled, I believe. If I'm choosing between two tech paths, and you say you like X better, maybe I'm wondering if you prefer X because it's better on this map? Even if that's not the case, the thought crossing my mind is hard to shake.

That's fair. I'll watch from afar.

Good luck!