Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Modo]

It seems to apply to land units only. It's interesting how Firaxis is trolling this game more than others: first they remove the GA stacking so you think the GA is not as powerful but then this bug makes it so that only GA owners can create fleets until later in the game which is even more powerful.

It looks like this Military Academy trains units as Corps and Armies which means you can actually attach another unit to the Corps / Army after they are created? If you can add and remove units from Corps / Armies and Fleets / Armadas then you can swap injured units out and healthy units in to basically keep them always at full strength so until Mobilization everybody else is boned

[Sullla]

OK, some clarification on corps and fleets. They are currently bugged in Civ6; you are supposed to be able to merge two units together to create them after discovering Nationalism civic, but that option doesn't appear at all right now. This is a new bug that was introduced when the first patch for the expansion went out; it ended up breaking corps/fleets in both the expansion and the base game. The merge option for units just doesn't exist right now. As pindicator said, you can build a corps in a city with a military academy, otherwise there's no way to get one right now through normal means. Chevalier has a fleet by virtue of claiming the first Great Admiral in the game and burning its unique ability to create a fleet. The ability to create a fleet is a one-time use (well, two-time use since England has the Mausoleum) unique to Gauius Duilius. Other Great Generals and Great Admirals do not have this ability. There's no need to create any rules here and Chevalier hasn't done anything wrong. It's not possible to remove units from a corps/fleet once added either.

Based on the questions in this thread, I get the impression that a lot of people haven't played around much with corps and armies. Long story short, Chevalier basically gets a single fleet to play around with due to the unique property of his first Great Admiral, and there will be no other corps/fleets in the game until players reach Mobilization. Now on to the turn:



This was the screenshot that I meant to post earlier today for that civics discussion. I'll re-add it here in a spoiler tag in case anyone missed it on the previous forum page.

The fact that Chinese culture will rise up to about 80/turn with Meritocracy is highly relevant. I think that we can split up our path through the civics tree and have the strong culture of both civs work together to power through the next era. It's also relevant that we're entering a period on the civics tree where most of the players in this game don't have a lot of familiarity. I think that I'm one of the few people in our MP community who has played out a bunch of games to the end of the tech/civic trees. So let me give you some thoughts about what we want to be targeting and what we probably shouldn't care about. (I took a screenshot of Rome's upcoming civics tree yesterday to illustrate this and then forgot to upload it, d'oh.)

We're working on Mercantilism and then The Enlightenment right now. Those are both critical civics with extremely powerful policies (Logistics, Triangular Trade, Rationalism), and we'll definitely want to knock out the two of them before anything else. After that, the following civics become a lot less useful. A quick tally:

- Civil Engineering has Public Works policy, which combines together Ilkum's +30% production on builders with Serfdom's +2 builder charges. However, it obsoletes Limes as a policy and that's a real bummer. We will want China to research this because Singaboy already has the boost. When to finish it (and obsolete Limes) will be a tough question.

- Nationalism is supposed to be a crucial civic, unlocking corps and fleets. However, it's currently bugged and corps/fleets cannot be created, which is a huge bummer. I tested this in a Single Player game last night just to verify. (Interestingly, you cannot create corps/fleets with Nationalism civic at the moment, but I *WAS* able to load an old savegame file where I had corps on the map and then create an army by merging in a third unit, still without having Mobilization civic. In other words, you can't create corps/fleets at the moment, but if you could get them in some way, you can turn them into armies/armadas. This is really bugged right now.) As a result, Nationalism is almost useless at the moment. I think this would be a great civic for China to target in research, since we are unlikely to be able to land the boost. No one ever seems to be able to get those casus bellis to work. Be aware as well that this obsoletes the Medieval/Renaissance +50% production card for melee and ranged units (Feudal Contract)

- Colonialism: nothing useful here. Rome can research this civic since I'll be delivering the boost (research Astronomy tech). This is a mandatory civic; it's not skippable like a lot of them are in this era.

- Natural History: there's not too much at this civic either, and it has the annoying aspect of revealing those ruins that cannot be cleared from the map without building an insanely expensive archaeologist unit. I should be able to get the boost for this civic by building an archaeology museum at Savoia.

- Urbanization: also not particularly useful, we won't be building any Neighborhood districts. Is there any chance that China can get Hangzhou to size 15 with resource harvesting and jungle chops? I think that's the only way we will have a chance to land this boost for this civic. If not, one of us can power through the civic with natural cultural output. Obviously it would be better if we could somehow get the Chinese capital to size 15.

- Opera and Ballet and Scorched Earth: both optional, both not worth research. For the lurkers, if you see other teams researching these civics, it's a sign that they don't know the Industrial era civics tree very well. They are mostly worth researching for the extra envoys, and I don't think that's needed for us. Once I get 2 more envoys in Lisbon for the 6 envoy bonus, Rome is basically set for the rest of the game.

So what do we actually want on the civics tree? We're going to be driving towards this civic:

- Mobilization: allows the creation of armies/armada, and in this broken patch version, also allows the creation of corps/fleets. Corps and fleets are great because they allow the player to overcome one of the major limits of the One Unit Per Tile system: there are only so many tiles on the map that units can fit into. I would much rather have 5 frigate fleets and 5 normal frigates as compared to 15 normal frigates, simply because I can't get 15 frigates to all fire on the same target at once. There just isn't enough space. And corps/fleets also save a huge amount of money on maintenance costs because they only count as one unit instead of two units. And remember, the +10 strength that corps/fleets get cause them to deal 50% more damage and take 50% less damage in return, so there's no real loss in military effectiveness. Corps/fleets are one of the best ways to leverage a huge military advantage over other players. If we can get here ahead of the other players, we'll have a very big advantage.

As if that wasn't enough, Mobilization also replaces the indispensible Conscription policy with Levee en Masse, which saves 2 gold on all unit costs - double the benefit. Mobilization is therefore both an excellent military civic and an outstanding economic one as well. We will want to push through the five prerequisite Industrial era civics to reach Mobilization as quickly as possible. Unfortunately the cost will be ungodly expensive because the boost is to build 3 corps, and that's currently impossible because corps can't be formed at the moment. Still, that's where we want to be heading in time.

During the turn itself, things are pretty quiet right now since we're not involved in a war. My units are slowly shifting over towards the ocean, from there to set sail for Germany. I'll be keeping a few of them behind for safety, but most of them are getting ready to embark. I have eight quadriremes gathering up near Venezia for future upgrading into frigates; I'm trying to keep them out of view of TheArchduke for the moment since he has a galley poking around. Most of my coastal cities are frantically building more quadriremes before I obsolete them; I really would like to get about 15 of them before obsoleting the ships at Square Rigging tech.

I also renamed the cities we captured a couple turns ago. Kinchassa has become Parma while Seoul was renamed Palermo. Italian city states all around.



We're trying a mechanics test here. I've deliberately placed this caravel outside of my borders to heal to see if the Great Scientist will be able to patch up the unit. As you may know, naval units normally cannot heal outside of friendly territory in Civ6, and they need a special promotion to heal in neutral territory. Will the Great Scientist break that rule? It certainly looks like it since the "Rest and Repair" icon appeared, which is normally not present in neutral territory. The ability to heal with ships in faraway waters could be extremely helpful down the road, especially if we're able to send the Roman navy on a long campaign of city razing. We'll have a definitive answer next turn.



Firenze finished its trader, and I was pleased to see that it could overflow into another trader with its forest chop production. Even better, take a look at those trade route yields over on the left, excellent stuff! I get even more gold than I expected, 8 gold/turn to send this trader to Lisbon and 7 gold/turn plus a ton of goodies to send it to Hangzhou. See the Roman unique ability at work there? +1 gold/turn for each trading post (city) that a trader passes through en route. That can add up to a pretty nice benefit when you have a large empire like we do now. I didn't actually send this guy to any city listed here. Instead, I transferred the new unit down to Palermo (former Seoul), where it will 1) build a road that connects to my other cities and 2) pass through more Roman cities en route and therefore have a higher gold/turn yield. I think I might be close to 10 gold/turn with this unit plus 1 beaker and 1 culture from sending it to Hangzhou, and that's not even counting the imminent arrival of Triangular Trade policy. Give me two more turns and I should be up to almost 100 gold/turn. I might not even need to borrow money from Singaboy next time to unit upgrades. Well, let's not go crazy.

By the way, Singaboy was correct to start sending trade routes for gold/turn income recently. From this point out, income is going to be the biggest obstacle we need to overcome to become militarily powerful. We can research the techs/civics we need no problem, we just need tons and tons of money to upgrade everything. All trade routes should be sent for gold from now on.



Overview picture for the Roman core. I finished my first university at Venezia between turns and now it's back to training more quadriremes there. Roma is almost done the second one for the Printing boost, then it will go back and finish the Campus district project. 5 turns until we hopefully claim the next Great Scientist. Milano and Ostia are about to finish their settlers, with Milano's settler heading to the island location and Ostia's settler going to the tile northwest of the cocoa to fill the hole in the Roman "doughnut". Both cities will train builders next as part of the big wave of forthcoming builders. Genova and Siena are almost done two more Commercial districts, and the rest of my cities are pretty much building quadriremes.



There's a view of some of the ships congregating in the southern ocean at the moment. We've opened up a pretty comfortable lead in score right now, and as our units have healed up from the last war, the advantage has gotten even larger in terms of military power. We are now at 2222 combined power (really) compared to 1520 for England/Nubia and 976 for Russia/Germany. Time is continuing to trickle away for their team as far as building a military. We're down to 14 turns before a war can start there, and that's not THAT far in the future. Yes, they have a sweet income at 227 gold/turn (compared to our 160 gold/turn) and they will surely increase their power in that time frame... but we will also keep increasing our power too, and that disparity is just enormous right now. I don't think TheArchduke is prepared right now for a huge naval assault. Perhaps he's fooling us though, we'll see.



Since Singaboy didn't want my spices last turn, I offered this trade to Chevalier Mal Fet. More happiness would be nice to have, and I will be connecting pearls in a couple more turns for another luxury beyond whatever I can get from Chevalier. I picked him for a trade offer because he makes a lot less science than Woden, and I'd rather give England the amenities bonuses than Nubia.

That's all for the moment. I want to do some more thinking about upcoming tech path and give it the same treatment we gave civics earlier today. Over to you Singaboy.

TRUFFLES COUNTDOWN: 2 turns

[Modo]

Give me two more turns and I should be up to almost 100 gold/turn. I might not even need to borrow money from Singaboy next time to unit upgrades. Well, let's not go crazy.

Singaboy: No, please, go crazy...

Good that the interface at least calculates the whole trade route yield (hopefully accurately) with trade posts included as well.

And thank you for clarifying the Corps/Armies/Fleets/Armadas mechanic, it sounds pretty clunky to form them once and then not being able to manage them at all. Can you at least break them or you have to disband them as a whole?

[Athmos]

Give me two more turns and I should be up to almost 100 gold/turn. I might not even need to borrow money from Singaboy next time to unit upgrades. Well, let's not go crazy.

Singaboy: No, please, go crazy...

Good that the interface at least calculates the whole trade route yield (hopefully accurately) with trade posts included as well.

And thank you for clarifying the Corps/Armies/Fleets/Armadas mechanic, it sounds pretty clunky to form them once and then not being able to manage them at all. Can you at least break them or you have to disband them as a whole?

Corps, fleet, armies can't be broken down again in units. They essentially become a new unit. You can still disband them, but it's not useful to think of them as stacks. You can essentially expand a unit to make another one of the same type more powerful. Don't underestimate the value of it though.

I didn't face the nationalism bug in R&F, I guess The start of my game was further in the past than I thought. I've been busy surviving Mars for a while, so that might explain why I didn't see it, If my game was already to mobilization by the time I loaded it back up again.

[Singaboy]

Turn 121:

The news about the GS Medic are outstanding. 20 Health healing outside your own cities even for naval units is excellent. Looking at Archduke's navy he has in the west means, we should attempt to take it out as soon as we can. I am now thinking about drafting more crossbows on top of horsemen. There is only so much space and having 15 cavalry won't be of much use. However, having more crossbows that could be upgraded to field cannons would be a lot more effective against Archduke's naval harassments. What do you think, Sulla?

My turn is pretty quiet, the monument in Hangzhou is done and it switched to a university as it will give an additional housing point. I am not sure how to grow Hangzhou to pop 15 though. Even chopping the rice would add only another pop. I might be able to bring it to pop 13 to add another district, preferable another industrial zone as it would come with a discount.
Quanzhou switches off its walls and changes to a monument. The city gets another powerful tile, the desert hill in the southwest. I am hoping to grow it to pop 10 as well even though I have not even added a third district yet. I am hoping to get that purple tile faster for a theatre district.



An overview of the core. Next turn, the builder at Shanghai will chop the walls into a harbor while cartography will add 4 gpt to its sea tiles. In the west, my galley runs into a lot more Germany ships. Next turn, with the ability to enter Ocean tiles, I will check that area out a lot more. To me it seems as if Germany is building the navy while Russia is supposed to come up with cossacks. Well, it would be great to stop them well before they can reach that. With Russia having such a poor science rate, it is hard to imagine them getting cossacks within the next 14 turns.

For my culture output, I can't wait to swap out Limes to enable meritocracy. At a later swap I will have to enable serfdom and limes again for builders to finish and some additional walls to be chopped. I am now estimating culture to reach almost 85 in a few turns.




In the east, three units continue to hunt down the barbarian camp, while the knight behind ex-Khmer land is continuing to poke around. I am wording how much further I can get there. As long as there is a path, I will follow it and maybe turn up at the Russian borders all of a sudden.

[Sullla]

I am slightly concerned about China having to face Germany's navy alone, especially if Russia ever starts building units and decides to contribute more ships. It would be wonderful if we could get a canal set up between the western and southern oceans somehow; I'm still thinking about getting a third settler somehow for that isthmus spot, which would form a canal if we could capture the German city of Talinn (note: easier said that done). Hopefully we can draw off some of the German units to the south, especially if the cities down there come under assault from Roman ships and land units. In the meantime, Singaboy is doing a great job of loading up on his own naval units to counter.

I also agree that cavalry won't be terribly effective in the cramped spaces along the German/Chinese border. I think we still want a fair number of them, maybe something in the 6-10 range, just because they are so ridiculously cheap in faith and cavalry will be fantastic units for a long time. That said, crossbows/field guns on land and frigates at sea will be more useful here due to the terrain obstacles. Frigates actually will probably be the best units to have since they have great movement range (5 tiles) and the whole landbridge region is very exposed to attack from the sea. Anyway, I do think we want more than the current number of ranged units on the German front lines. How many archers/crossbows do you have in that area Singaboy? I can see 2 archers, 1 crossbow, and 1 slinger (heh) in your screenshots. We'll definitely want more ranged units than that, and crossbows are still a pretty efficient faith purchase for China. I think they're right around 300 faith to purchase so about 2.5 turns worth of faith income at the moment. Picking up a couple more of them isn't a bad idea.

We may also need to get an apostle to declare an Inquisition at some point too. Inquisitors are cheap in terms of faith, and although they are useless in enemy territory, if we do capture any German cities it would be highly useful to purge their religion from the city. One inquisitor to eliminate the rival faith plus one of our own missionaries to spread Marco Polo should be enough to convert a captured city to our religion. For the textbook example of this in action, see pindicator's example in the closing stages of the PBEM5 game. We're really lucky that TheArchduke doesn't get to benefit from Defender of the Faith or else it would be almost impossible to attack him. (Again, they REALLY should have Russia building the units for their team, not Germany.) It's a good thing that Singaboy has so much faith income, we definitely need it.

At Hangzhou, I noticed there's a rice tile in the third ring that could potentially be harvested for food, plus one more jungle tile. That wouldn't be enough to get the city to size 15, but you could in theory harvest the cows and the bananas as well. Would that get you to size 15? I don't know, and it might be more trouble than it's worth. Just thinking out loud here. As for Quanzhou, it might be worth harvesting the marsh tile out in the third ring for another city size since that city is so awesome.

Since this is a slow period, it's a good time to think about our tech path for the future. Let's take a look at that:



First of all, a line graph that I put together in Excel from my tracking spreadsheet. Civ4 does this stuff for you in-game, and Civ6 actually tracks the same data, but in Civ6 you can't see it until after the game is over. Annoying. Anyway, this is beaker rate per turn for each of the eight civs starting at Turn 70, when we finally had contact with everyone else. I was unable to change the colors on the bar graphs to line everything else up their proper civ colors, but I did label them at the bottom. One thing to note is that Rome was the tech leader for a long period, out in front of everyone else from about Turn 80 to Turn 100. Then TheArchduke surged way ahead, doubling his science rate over a span of 10 turns, only to stagnate and then fall down as we captured the Seoul city state and destroyed all of his envoys there. Rome is now back in the lead and hopefully I'll stay there.

Nubia has pretty consistently been in third place historically, although Woden stalled out around 80 beakers and only exceeded that on the most recent turn. He is a long, long way behind Rome and Germany. Singaboy's China has come on extremely strong in recent turns, from middle of the pack to one of the leaders, right there with Woden jockeying for third place. England has been a disappointment from a science perspective, reaching 60 beakers/turn around Turn 95 and then making no progress over the last 30 turns. Chevalier's problem is that he just hasn't built any districts; I don't have my full spreadsheet in front of me right now, but he's built almost nothing other than his Royal Dockyards. He's also been stuck on a smaller city count for most of the game, just not expanding as fast as the other game leaders. I'll see if I can do a culture graph at another time soon, and it's the same story there: huge jump up to about 60 culture/turn and then stagnation there for the last two dozen turns. The Venetian Arsenal is the one wildcard that makes England a real threat at this point. (Did he sink so many resources into finishing the VA that he fell behind? I wonder.)

Here's what's coming up on the tech tree. First the current era, the Renaissance:



We've virtually completed this whole era already. Printing will be finished as soon as Rome finishes a second university, Square Rigging is behind held 1 turn from completion, and Banking/Metal Casting/Astronomy are all boosted and cheap to finish. I'm going to finish Metal Casting and then research Ballistics behind it to half completion in the hopes of delivering the boost for that tech as soon as possible. Roma is going to pop out the military engineer needed to build a pair of useless forts as soon as it finishes its current university into Campus district project path. I should be able to land that boost before our war with Germany/Russia is set to begin, which is important so that Singaboy can have field guns available for immediate use. Generating gold for all the upgrades we need (galleys into caravels, quadriremes into frigates, slingers/archers/crossbows into field guns) is going to be a real challenge... but it does affect the other teams too, and we have a larger starting army to work off of.

The rest of the Renaissance techs aren't too interesting. The only real decision is when to finish Square Rigging and unlock frigates / obsolete quadriremes. That needs to happen before we fight Germany, and I'm planning it for roughly 8-10 turns from present. That should be enough time for me to get up to my target of 15 quadriremes, and even if I can't upgrade all of them into frigates right away, they'll still be there to use for future upgrading down the road. Now for the next eras down the tech tree:



Ballistics and Military Science open up the next important units, field guns and cavalry respectively. We both already have the boost for Military Science and I discussed landing the boost for Ballistic above. We will definitely have access to both of these units by the time of our next war. After that, the question of where to go next revolves partly around what tech boosts we can and can't land. Sanitation is obviously out; there's no way we're wasting resources on building Neighborhoods. Scientific Theory is easy, and I should be able to supply the Economics boost at some point with a pair of banks. Two extremely important techs are Industrialization and Steam Power, and I don't think that we'll be able to land the boosts for either of them. Both are too costly and not worth delaying otherwise critical techs. For Industrialization, I currently have one Industrial district and I believe Singaboy has zero. We're not building multiple additional Industrial districts and then building three workshops, not when we can invest our production into more important things. I think the game's going to go on a while longer but not THAT much longer. Similarly, Steam Power requires building two lighthouses and then two shipyards. I currently have one lighthouse captured at Seoul and zero shipyards. Those things cost 290 production each - no way. With Maritime Industries, two shipyards could be 1160 production into ships, 10 quadriremes or 4 frigates. I'll pass, thanks.

We still want those techs, however. So here's my current thinking: if Rome does successfully land Great Scientist Darwin in 5 turns, we use his special ability to research these two techs. Darwin yields 500 beakers per adjacement natural wonder tile, and by virtue of capturing Japper's capital we have access to the four-tile Pantanal. It's actually kind of incredible how that lines up, since Pantanal is the only four-tile natural wonder in the game, and there it is, sitting right next to Napoli. If deployed correctly, that's 2000 free beakers for our team. Industrialization costs 845 beakers while Steam Power costs 970 science, so that's a near-perfect match there. Industrialization is particularly nice to pick up as a tech for the passive +1 production on all mines and the revealing of coal as a resource. Steam Power adds +2 movement to embarked units (along with Square Rigging, taking embarked units from the current 2 movement up to 5 movement!) and unlocks ironclads, which are outstanding naval units and have a long utility life. If you remember the PBEM4 game, ironclads with the Embolon promotion were almost unkillable in the big fleet battles. I would love to grab those two techs with Darwin, ideally after building another two or three caravels first for upgrading purposes, and be done with the top part of the tech tree for a long time.

Note: Darwin and Galileo's "gain X free beakers" ability works in a really weird way in Civ6. It actually applies the 500 beakers four separate times, one time for each natural wonder tile present, and the overflow will not apply if you have more than one tech queued up on the tech tree. (The overflow from each of the 500 beaker charges will get canceled out by the next 500 beaker charge.) I distinctly recall using Darwin in a previous Single Player game and getting less beakers than I was supposed to get because of this. I read a thread on CivFanatics that talked about this, but if anyone reading this has some firsthand knowlege of how to work around this issue, I'd appreciate it. We'll only get one chance to use this guy (assuming we land him) and we do want to get the maximum benefit.

After that, what are our other tech targets? I looked at using Darwin to slingshot to Flight, another tech we definintely will not boost, and it was tempting but I don't think worth the investment. Observation balloon are there, and they're pretty awesome to use - again, see pindicator's PBEM5 thread for a great example. Singaboy could make great use of a balloon with his two bombards. However, that's not enough on its own to be worth putting in those beakers. The Aerodrome districts are amazing if the game goes long enough, with bombers having 90 ranged strength and a range of 10 tiles (!) But they don't come until later on the tech tree, and Flight only unlocks biplanes: 55 ranged strength and a range of 3 tiles. Given the huge investment to set them up with their own unique districts and all, that's not worth it and I think the game will be decided before bombers and the like come on the scene.

Instead, I think our next goal will be Steel tech. The boost there requires a coal mine and an ironclad, making it a perfect place to head after Industrialization/Steam Power. Steel would obsolete frigates with battleships, and that may very well be our winning condition: a giant fleet of battleships to sail around and raze the coastal cities of our opponents. We don't have to capture everyone's capitals, just take enough of their cities to demoralize them into conceding. And battleships are completely ridiculous: 70 ranged strength with 3 range. If you can't control the seas against battleships, expect to lose all of your coastal cities in a hurry. They require coal though, so Industrialization is not optional. As if that wasn't enough, Steel also unlocks artillery with their own 3 range attack and grants all of your cities free defenses with 200 strength, quadruple the benefit of walls. Plus Steel also reveals oil as a resource! It's just an amazing tech.

Finally, I think the ultimate tech destination is just beyond that at Combustion. That's the tech that unlocks tanks: 80 melee strength and 4 movement points. While tanks would be good enough on their own, they have another awesome property: knights upgrade into tanks. Yeah, it doesn't make a lot of sense but they are both "heavy cavalry" units so why not. In a perfect scenario, we would be battering our opponents with battleships from the sea and then do a mass upgrade of knights into tanks for the finishing blow. Rome already has seven knights right now so this could be very doable if we make it that far on the tech tree. How about tank corps at 90 melee strength? Would they even care about field guns that shoot at 60 ranged strength? I like the possibilities here.

Anyway, that's my current thinking on techs. First, we finish unlocking field guns and cavalry. Then we hopefully claim Darwin and pop him for Industrialization and Steam Power, followed by hitting the bottom part of the tech tree for Steel and Combustion. We'll throw in Replaceable Parts at some point for infantry when Rome manages to deliver the boost for Economics by building two banks. We ignore the Scientific Theory/Sanitation line completely as unimportant. I might not even research Astronomy since I don't think we need it for anything other than infantry.

Whew, that was a lot. What do you think, Singaboy?

[Modo]

Note: Darwin and Galileo's "gain X free beakers" ability works in a really weird way in Civ6. It actually applies the 500 beakers four separate times, one time for each natural wonder tile present, and the overflow will not apply if you have more than one tech queued up on the tech tree. (The overflow from each of the 500 beaker charges will get canceled out by the next 500 beaker charge.) I distinctly recall using Darwin in a previous Single Player game and getting less beakers than I was supposed to get because of this. I read a thread on CivFanatics that talked about this, but if anyone reading this has some firsthand knowlege of how to work around this issue, I'd appreciate it. We'll only get one chance to use this guy (assuming we land him) and we do want to get the maximum benefit.

...

Whew, that was a lot. What do you think, Singaboy?

I won't even try to test this out but given how this currently "works" I'd imagine the only way not to lose the benefit is to have four techs queued up each at 500 beakers left so that there's no overflow to be overwritten by the next charge. Pretty hard to set up, I agree, but if it's indeed the only way it can be tested like that in your particular case.

And yes, I think we all agree with you...it was a lot. More, please.

[Sullla]

Modo, from what I've read on the subject queueing up more than one tech is exactly what *NOT* to do when using Darwin. Using the Great Person will finish the tech with the first 500 beaker "charge", and then the overflow from finishing the tech will get wasted because the second 500 beaker "charge" will override the overflow from the first tech, and so on from there. The advice that I've been reading is to select each tech one at a time to avoid losing the free beakers. Here's the CivFanatics thread that I could find for anyone curious: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/l...ow.615518/

On to Turn 122:



Chevalier rejected my luxury for luxury offer, interesting. It's probably the right decision because he certainly doesn't need to be making my cities any happier, but it's also a rather unfriendly sign from their team. We're going to ask them for a Declaration of Friendship renewal in about 5 more turns, and if they say no, then most of my units are turning around and heading back for the Nubian border. There's a good chance that we can get a renewed DoF with Russia/Germany if needed, and we're not leaving a potentially hostile army in our backlines if they won't extend the Declaration of Friendship.

By the way, note that the caravel outside my borders did indeed heal from the Great Scientist. This means that I can have fleets operate far away from cities we control, using the Great Scientist for healing along the way. Hopefully we'll get a chance to use this at some point.



My caravel had a chance to wave hello to EmperorK's scout up here in the far north. This unit is getting close to circumnavigating the northern edge of the English/Nubian continent and then coming down to meet up with Singaboy's ships on the other side in the western ocean. I should also throw something else out as a reminder: the other two teams still have an alliance with each other. That means that what England sees is what Russia sees, and what Germany sees is what Nubia sees. We should keep that in mind at all times when moving units around. It's hard to disguise our movements, but we might as well do what we can not to tip our hand too much.



I poked around Nan Madol this turn and saw that Chevalier isn't guarding every tile around the city with his units. In particular, I have one musket with the "climb cliffs" ability, which I think I could get next to the city center tile. End turn with the unit over there to the right of the city center tile, where it looks impossible to disembark the unit, then next turn declare war and scale the cliffs, using frigates to take out the city's defenses from sea. Sieging down the city wouldn't be very fast with only one combat unit available, but it wouldn't be impossible either, and it only takes one melee unit to do the city capturing. This is food for thought down the road if we find ourselves needing to call off the attack on Germany and need something to do with Rome's units.



Domestic stuff: the trade route that I transferred to Palermo last turn could be assigned to a destination this turn. I thought about sending this trader to Hangzhou, but the gold/turn yield there was only 7 and I valued gold income more than anything else from this trade route. Lisbon was worth 11 gold/turn and I couldn't pass that up. We even get a little bit more passive spread pressure from Marco Polo here as a result, nice. Firenze finished another trader this turn, which I reassigned to Napoli, and one of the trade routes running out of Roma finished its journey this turn, which I reassigned to Parma. Both of those cities should be able to run trade routes to Lisbon for roughly 10 gold/turn starting next turn as well. And that takes me up to 8 active trade routes for 32 gold/turn via Triangular Trade, which I'll also be adopting next turn. I was down to just 25 gold/turn (and zero gold in the bank) on Turn 115, but I'll be up to about 100 gold/turn starting next turn. See, I told you I would fix the economy.



Milano finished a settler this turn which is headed for this island location. It's a really nice spot: triple luxuries (including whales which neither of us have yet), iron, on a plains hill, and with a bunch of forests for chopping. The city will get founded on Turn 129 and hopefully get some builder love after that. Milano has already started a builder to be completed as part of the next big wave of builders. As for Ostia, the cost scaled up when I finished the settler in Milano, but it can still finish the thing in two more turns. That city will actually be founded first since the destination is closer, next to the cocoa and the deer tile in the center of the Roman "doughnut".



This a zoomed out strategic view of all the Roman units moving towards the west. Between the Roman and Chinese units here, there's a lot of military strength moving around. I'm up to 9 quadriremes now and still continue to churn out more of them as fast as possible. Every one of them could become a frigate (or even a battleship) one day down the road.



Back in the Roman core, I have two more Commercial districts finishing in the next two turns. That's another 8 gold/turn for each district and then the chance to build more traders. Yes, more money, gimme gimme gimme! Each Commercial district + trade route pair is worth more than 20 gold/turn in income, and that's what needs to be emphasized right now to keep the economy afloat while supporting massive military expenditures. More importantly, I saw that I could use Firenze's production overflow to complete its Campus district project in 2 turns, and then I thought, why not complete the same district project at Roma as well? I mean, we don't really need to finish the university for the Printing boost right away, do we? I think landing the Printing boost in 4 turns instead of 2 turns is just fine. And if we can secure Darwin this way, that would be huge for our civ. I mean, Darwin is worth 2000 instant beakers for us when used at the Pantanal. That's just crazy. The fact that it will also boost The Enlightenment and save us several hundred culture at the same time makes the whole thing even better. Heck, I even get a free envoy for landing The Enlightenment boost, heh. A lot of goodies packed into that civic right now.



Here's the current state of the Great Scientist race. I am making 16 points/turn while TheArchduke is making 15 points/turn. I checked the math for the district project again, which is:

Cost=25*(1+14*Larger of [100*(Number of Techs/67 OR Number of Civics/50)]/100)

GPP yield=10 ....[5 for Theater+Carnival projects... they give multiple types of GPP]
=10or5*(1+7*Larger of [100*(Number of Techs/67 OR Number of Civics/50)]/100)

Right now I have 24 civics discovered so that's 10 * (1 + 7 * (0.48)) = 43 Great Scientist points per district project completed. Incidentally, you can't "lock in" the cost of the project, it keeps getting more expensive (and yielding more Great Person points) as techs/civics are discovered. I'll actually get slightly more points when Mercantilism finishes between turns. But ignoring that for the moment, I'm at 302/420 Scientist points right now. I make 16 points/turn from natural generation and the two district projects are worth at least 43 points each. 302 + 16 + 16 + 43 + 43 = 420 points exactly. Nice! As I said, I'll likely overshoot that slightly but I shouldn't undershoot it.

TheArchduke actually gets his district project cost scaling off of his techs discovered (29) and not his civics (21) which is pretty rare. Germany's science has been far out in front of its culture for most of the game. Right now he would get 40 points per district project so even if he finishes a double Campus district project he'll still be short of stealing Darwin. TheArchduke would need to run a triple Campus district project and have them all finish in the next 2 turns before I claim Darwin. I'll keep my fingers crossed but I think this is reasonably safe for us.



Speaking of TheArchduke, he's built an awful lot of galleys thus far. That's 7 galleys and 2 caravels against only 1 quadrireme thus far. Now perhaps TheArchduke is about to begin on a huge quadrireme building spree, we don't know. Right now though, it looks like he's been overemphasizing galleys over quadriremes. It's the ranged naval units that hold the real power, not the melee ones. If you look at Tianjin, only two melee naval units can attack it at a time whereas six ranged naval units could attack at once. It's always better to deal damage without taking damage in return whenever possible, and ranged naval units tend to be the real killer of enemy ships and enemy cities. I am worried about the naval situation in the western ocean for us; Singaboy only has two cities there in comparison to whatever TheArchduke and EmperorK have on the water. We really do need a way to get Roman ships into that body of water somehow, a way that doesn't involve sailing around the whole northern edge of the continent.



Since Chevalier rejected my spices, I went ahead and offered them to EmperorK. We'll see if he bites - the spices have been rejected twice already. No one wants them!

The most interesting tidbit that I could find from this turn was Woden finishing another settler. That's three of them completed in the last few turns, and they'll take him from 10 cities up to 13 cities when all are planted. It looks like he's trying to fill out the remaining empty spaces on the Kongo/Khmer continent. Even though Germany/Russia are the stronger team in terms of beakers and culture right now, the England/Nubia team will likely overtake them eventually because they have more land and keep expanding. I'm still baffled that TheArchduke has never tried to build more than 8 cities - it's really weird. Anyway, for the moment we keep proceeding onwards under the assumption of conflict with Germany and Russia. Be ready to cancel out of that if we can't get some kind of peace deal with England/Nubia though; I say 5 more turns until we start pestering them. We'll almost certainly have to face down each team eventually, but it would be a heck of a lot easier if we could face them one at a time.

[Singaboy]

Turn 122:

A quiet turn for me, trying to improve stats and getting prepared for the upcoming war. I agree with Sulla's outline of the technology tree. Most important for myself will be to upgrade my galleys and quadriremes just before the war could start. This also means that I need a. gold b. professional army and of course, the respective technologies. In the meantime, I can draft a few more horsemen and then crossbows. They cost 300 faith of course, not cheap.

I finished cartography and am about to go for printing and then military science for cavalry. It would be good to go for frigates after that. As for civics, I am just short of mercantilism. However, since I am not enabling triangular trade anytime soon, I might as well keep the civic from finishing for a quick turn around of civics. Exploration is just waiting for the Inspiration and could be used for a quick 1-2 swap as well. Hence, I start enlightenment in the hope to get the Inspiration boost from Rome.

I am still in need of Limes for a while with Quanzhou and Acre waiting for the walls chops. The one other chop I can execute is done at Shanghai this turn. 104 hammers into city walls surely are nice, especially when the harbor was locked for less than 200 hammers.

The harbor will finish right next turn before Shanghai will resume naval production. I really need more quadriremes. It is a pity that they can't be drafted with faith. Kashgar has finished its encampment. It is producing a battering ram for now, once can always use such a ram. Beijing will finish the campus next turn and then produce a library to strengthen science.

There are currently 3 builders and all of them will attempt to help out in the west to improve hammer output for Shanghai and Tianjin while chopping stone into an encampment. At Pagan, I will use the builder to chop the lighthouse before harvesting the stone into a wonder. Unfortunately that requires a tile purchase. Shangdu will pause the builder production next round and switch to another trader. Yes, we need more gpt.

There is an interesting development on that small land connection. I had though Germany would want to build a canal city. Maybe Archduke has reevaluated the situation and decided not to build a city there as it would be too risky. If Rome could plant a city there and then take Tallinn, it would have the connection it needs for the navy. If possible, I will move my horseman onto the grass hill that is currently not occupied. The tile where Germany has the crossbow would be the ideal canal city. However, the tile SW of it is also not blocked for settling. Food for thought

In the west, I can finally cross the Ocean and I am trying to get a lot more intel there. Germany surely has a lot of naval units.

By the way, I drafted a 5th horseman in the west. I might draft a 6th horseman and then stop there to save faith for crossbows and an apostle.

[Modo]

Modo, from what I've read on the subject queueing up more than one tech is exactly what *NOT* to do when using Darwin. Using the Great Person will finish the tech with the first 500 beaker "charge", and then the overflow from finishing the tech will get wasted because the second 500 beaker "charge" will override the overflow from the first tech, and so on from there. The advice that I've been reading is to select each tech one at a time to avoid losing the free beakers. Here's the CivFanatics thread that I could find for anyone curious: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/l...ow.615518/

...

Chevalier rejected my luxury for luxury offer, interesting. It's probably the right decision because he certainly doesn't need to be making my cities any happier, but it's also a rather unfriendly sign from their team. We're going to ask them for a Declaration of Friendship renewal in about 5 more turns, and if they say no, then most of my units are turning around and heading back for the Nubian border. There's a good chance that we can get a renewed DoF with Russia/Germany if needed, and we're not leaving a potentially hostile army in our backlines if they won't extend the Declaration of Friendship.

If selecting techs one by one works it's certainly less painful to do, I assume that means you can select more than one in the same turn if they actually complete with the charge / charges. I also assume that more than one charge can go into a single tech so even picking a big one is ok as long as the charges get used and not wasted.

That being said, I've also read the same thread before posting initially and I still don't see why the overflow would get wasted if there's no overflow to waste I guess reading every T-Hawk Civ5 spaceship run has made me think you can pull off multiple techs per turn if you lign up your multipliers correctly; this is not Civ5 but it looks to work the same way in this regard.


With respect to England / Nubia, since they have currently an alliance with Germany / Russia maybe the trade and (potentially) DoF rejection is a way to stall you without actually engaging, so you walk your armies between them and each can defend until the other one can come in from the back if you attack anyone.
If that's the case, maybe you posturing aggressively against the weakest one may force their hand to accept a DoF and at least allow you to attack the other without being piled. Nobody wants to suffer against a decisive attacker while depending on someone else to come to their "rescue" so this alliance between them is only as strong as you actually make it I feel.