Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Modo]

If it even gets to the point of traversing them, don't want to jinx it but I think China won't do much defending....hopefully.

[Modo]

Chevalier's ships continue to be annoying. Due to the alliance with Russia/Germany, their team can see everything within vision range of this English caravel. I don't know that we're going to have much of an element of surprise here. Fortunately Chevalier doesn't seem to be aware of the fleet of quadriremes waiting up to the north to be upgraded into frigates. I'm still hoping that they will catch our opponents off guard when they appear on the scene.

As long as anyone knows you were in contention for VA they should expect ships being built and upgraded to take advantage of it...if not CMF may put some CFM boots for the upcoming war.

I didn't see Trasson or Sullla mention this about the boost topic but in this case we also have two civs acting as a team and passing boosts back and forth so that makes the military engineer and chasing boosts in general even more worthwhile.

And dang on a rival being able to see even what great works are available where, I guess in Civ6 they take tourism pretty seriously.

[Sullla]

We do need to line up our planning for where we'll be attacking on the crucial Turn 135 turns. I can look at that tonight in more detail, although an in-depth treatment might have to wait for the weekend when I have more time available. A lot also depends on whether or not TheArchduke builds that canal city. If he doesn't then I'll be looking to found it myself, and we will need to protect the settler from being captured as it walks into position. I wouldn't be able to found the canal city myself until Turn 138 and that would necessitate different timing than if we're slamming into a German city in that same spot immediately when war begins on Turn 135.

Singaboy, I suspect that you will need to take the strategic defensive with your navy in the opening stage of this war because TheArchduke clearly has more ships and more cities up there in the western ocean. Even getting the first strike in likely will not be enough to win. Conversely, however, if TheArchduke doesn't build a canal city then his navy in the southern ocean is completely and utterly screwed. I will pounce on it and kill it at the start of the war and slaughter all of those ships with my superior force. We'll have to think about this some more as we get closer to the starting date. Losing Maritime Industries unexpectedly is a shame; I easily could have held off on researching that civic for a while to avoid passing over the boost. I was under the impression that you wanted the Exploration boost to come over as soon as possible though.

The imminent fall of Geneva is an interesting development. It's a very smart move by Woden and Chevalier, and something that I was hoping they wouldn't try. I was keeping my fingers crossed that they would keep the city state intact because Chevalier was the suzerain and they both had a lot of envoys invested there. However, capturing Geneva is absolutely the right call for their team, as Rome is benefitting more from Geneva than anyone else and they will offset some of their lost science by taking the city. The loss for my civ is going to be pretty brutal: I have 8 Campus districts each getting 4 beakers/turn via the envoys in Geneva. That's going to be a painful blow. The upside is that everyone else is going to take a hit as well, with TheArchduke and Woden and Chevalier all having at least 3 envoys inside Geneva. They just won't lose quite as much as Rome, especially whichever one of them ends up taking the city. Nice call on the part of England/Nubia.

There's another upside here: this is going to slow down the global tech pace, and that's probably to our advantage since we're currently ahead in technology. In other words, we already have certain techs "in hand" working for us, and by capturing Geneva they will slow down the rate at which teams catch up to our current position. If we can get a good dice roll out of our mostly-useless Great Scientist and land the boost for Industrialization or Steam Power, that would be a huge help to us as well. I would love it if we actually got something useful out of that guy. If we can get 500 free beakers from that guy on a useful boost, obviously that matters more if everyone is making 80-100 beakers/turn as opposed to 120-150 beakers/turn. And we do have Rationalism close to finishing, which will provide a significant boost upwards in science that the other teams will lack because we are ahead of the field in civics research.

The downside is that this puts us further away from Steel tech, which I increasingly think is critical to have finished by Turn 146 when our Declaration of Friendship wears off with England/Nubia. Hopefully we'll have enough science on hand to get there in time. I think we'll still make it although it will be a lot closer.

TheArchduke wanting his own Declaration of Friendship is not a surprise. He knows that he's about to be attacked by a gigantic force and he's doubting that he can stop us from smashing him up pretty good. One nice thing is that we can get through 10 full turns of war and potentially sign a treaty with Russia/Germany before the current DoF runs out with England/Nubia. That would certainly be nice to deal with only one opponent at a time. No idea what our situation will be like by Turn 145 though. I don't think that we can sign a new Declaration of Friendship with Germany right now though. That would only delay the moment of reckoning down the line by another 20-30 turns, and I think our position now is better than it's likely to be later. We're going to need to defeat each of the other teams in turn, and this looks like our best chance to hit Germany without England/Nubia being able to join in, and before Russia makes it to cossacks. (A more perfect scenario probably would have been to go after England/Nubia first since Russia/Germany seems content to remain at peace, but that's water under the bridge ever since we signed that Declaration of Friendship with Chevalier. No use worrying about it now.)

For Pagan: perhaps use the stone harvest for a trader (I think you have one more empty slot?) and if not that, then a crossbow sounds good. I also have one other wild idea: see what Germany does and potentially harvest the stone for a SETTLER. You could harvest the stone and then chop the forest tile west of the stone, and that would be enough to complete the settler on Turn 130, right? Move the settler to the tile currently west of the stone on Turn 130 (since it would become grassland), the move it west (Turn 131), onto the cows (Turn 132), onto the dyes (Turn 133), onto the hill to the southwest (Turn 134), and then settle a canal spot Turn 135, gifting it over to Rome at the start of Turn 136. It's a wild plan but if TheArchduke genuinely doesn't want to settle a canal city, this could be our best chance to have one ready at the very start of the war.

Now Singaboy's going to tell me that the builder harvesting the stone is on its last charge and the whole plan is impossible. Worth thinking about if TheArchduke doesn't go for the canal city though, right? We do have the Roman settler to fall back on as an option, although that unit can't get the city founded until Turn 138 and two turns of delay could be a real issue.

Finally, just to clarify Russia/Germany and England/Nubia have an alliance right now, which means that they share vision of each other's cities and units. They do *NOT* share a team together, as Singaboy and I do. Therefore they do not share tech and civic boosts, and frankly I don't think that they are coordinating too closely right now. I suspect both teams are mostly just scared of our team and this is an alliance of convenience. You should not think of the other four civs as being on the same team together - they most certainly have their own objectives in mind. Sharing vision is probably about as much coordinating as we can expect to see from them.

[Modo]

The downside is....but the upside is...now, the downside to that is...
But seriously, when your opponents start to cripple their own development just because they deal a bigger blow to you that's a sign of....rugged defense. It may take some serious attrition on all sides until we see the end of this but a defensive mentality usually fails if you guys don't make serious mistakes in prosecuting your attacks.

If you do deal such serious damage to Germany / Russia to have a treaty on hand by the time the DoF with England / Nubia expires do you consider turning on them at that point? It's a pipe dream but that could be the game right there.

[Singaboy]

@Sulla,

good ideas regarding Pagan. The builder there still has several charges left. I built a 6th trader last turn which would make triangular trade quite attractive too for 24gpt and 6 faith a turn. I might use that until rationalism comes in.

I could produce a settler depending on Archduke's settler movement. I will need to work out the completion date next turn. I have built 7 settlers so far, this means the next settler would cost 290 hammers, quite a feat. I am swapping policies next turn and could theoretically swap to colonization for a few turns (this will cost me 8 science but for a bonus of 100% stone harvest, it might be worth it). With colonization, the settler should be done in 1 turn. With Pagan growing to pop 5 next turn and then shrinking back to 4 due to the settler, I could in fact chop a second settler using colonization. Both stone harvest and forest chop might give me around 520 hammers with colonization and that is pretty close to the required 610 hammers.

The colonization bonus would mean that I can start moving the settler on T129 and found the city on T135 right on time for the war. Depending on Germany's troops, I could even be bold and squeeze a frigate through the city before gifting it to Rome. How does that plan sound?

[Sullla]

Heh, that would be fantastic Singaboy. I think we should plan on founding a canal city ourselves using the plan that you outlined. If TheArchduke does found a canal city himself, then great - we can use the Chinese settler for another spot, possibly that offshore island west of Tianjin. If not, then we'll simply set up the canal city ourselves. I'm assuming that this means I can use the extra Roman settler for a city without continuing to move it towards the canal spot, right? I did move the settler in the wrong direction this turn to be safe. We can decide the best plan of action here before I play my next turn, it's not a huge issue either way.



With Woden and Chevalier attacking Geneva, I temporarily became the suzerain for one turn. 175 beakers/turn, woo! It's nice to have for a single turn before the city falls. I could actually levy Geneva's military this turn if I wanted... which would do exactly nothing since I still wouldn't be able to attack Woden's units anyway. Not that we have the gold to spare regardless. In terms of beaker/turn rate, Woden fell from 102 science down to 89 science and Chevalier (who had the 15% suzerain bonus) fell from 72 science down to 54 science. I expect that I'll fall down to roughly 120 beakers/turn after they take the city, and we'll see where everyone else ends up. Rationalism is fortunately arriving in a few more turns.



Germany's settler is back in the water again. I dunno what TheArchduke is planning here, other than continuing to build tons of naval units over the past few turns. We definitely shouldn't rely on him planting a canal city.



I did found a new city this turn on the island, which I've named Ferrara. This city has two main purposes: chop out a Harbor district for another trade route and connect the whales in the second ring (which will be grabbed by the first border expansion) for another amenity. Fortunately there are lots of forests here to chop, and with some mines on the hills this will be a pretty solid city for naval production. The city is working on walls for now with the intention of chopping them when Limes is in place later on. I just want to get a good forest chop or stone harvest at each of my new cities with Limes in place before obsoleting it at Civil Engineering. I'll try to line up a brief period in Limes sometime in the next dozen turns.



Where in the world is Woden sending this settler?! I guess he didn't want the island spot like we expected. Escorting the settler with only a slinger is pretty dangerous, there are barbarians roaming around randomly in some of the tundra portions of the map. I would laugh so hard if he lost a settler to the barbs and we managed to capture it. Going to follow this slinger for now to see where it ends up.



At home, more cities are getting close to completing their builders. Venezia will finish a trade route next turn and that will be a big help. The useless military engineer is 2 turns away, and I will be placing the forts for the Ballistics boost on Turn 130 and Turn 131. In terms of research, I completed Square Rigging this turn and put the overflow from that and this turn's big beaker surge into Industrialization. I'll go back and complete Astronomy next turn, then overflow into Industrialization, then do the same thing with Ballistics on Turns 131/132. That should put us pretty close to finishing the tech while getting the maximum beaker overflow in each case. On the civics side, I'm taking The Enlightenment to 1 turn away from completion this turn, then going back to work on Colonialism next turn until I'm ready for a policy swap. I will probably change into Professional Army/Serfdom on Turn 131 to have time to upgrade units and move them up to Germany's borders for Turn 135.



Chevalier's caravel continues to be super annoying by scouting out our units for TheArchduke and EmperorK. Not much we can do about it. I think I'm going to move my embarked land units towards the open sea just south of Balkh where it's not clear what their final destination will be just yet. Most of them will end up heading down to the Kreutzberg / Bandar Brunei region to make landfall there and then push inland, but no reason to let TheArchduke know where they're headed until the last minute.



TheArchduke actually recruited two Great People last turn: Great Merchant Jakob Fugger (200 gold and 2 envoys) and Great Engineer Mimar Sinan (+1 housing / +1 amenity in a city). The Great Merchant was clearly the more useful of the bunch, and TheArchduke getting more gold is not great for us. On the other hand, Rome is in excellent position to make a run at the next Great Merchant and I will probably run a Commercial district project in the capital down the road to help land that one. 500 gold would obviously be awesome for more unit upgrades in about a dozen turns. The Great Engineer also looks pretty useful, but no one in the game is making any Great Engineer points outside of TheArchduke. If we captured a bunch of Hansas, that might give us the chance to make a play for the guy - but if we do that, then we'll pretty much have already won the game, heh.

Note as well that Woden and Chevalier are about to recruit their 3rd Great General and Great Admiral respectively. Nothing we can do about that.



TheArchduke also denounced China last turn, obviously fishing for the Nationalism boost. It's not going to happen though; we're going to declare war on them before they can declare war on us, and I'm not even sure if this would work as they think since that Nationalism "declare war using a casus belli" requirement is infamously tricky to land. Does anyone know if we can set this up for ourselves? I tend to doubt it but who knows.

More importantly, TheArchduke is stacking up a *TON* of money. Four turns ago he had 68 gold, and this turn he has 2433 gold. It's really quite impressive, even if about 1000 of that gold came in gifts from Russia. TheArchduke has been harvesting crabs for gold with his builders, and that along with the Great Merchant and his extremely impressive income of 167 gold/turn is making up the difference. This is notably more money than I expected him to be able to accumulate. I hope that we can get in a powerful first strike to destroy some of his units after he upgrades them. Fortunately he will have to defend in multiple places at once against two opponents and that will be tough for him. Russia is just gifting all of its income every turn to Germany - EmperorK still has basically nothing on his end, no units and no gold. They really should have done this the other way around, since they are going to waste Defender of the Faith with German units doing all the fighting. (At least, as long as we understand the mechanic correctly, which I pray that we do.)

Overall, a quiet turn outside of Woden's attack on Geneva which we first saw last turn. Good luck Singaboy - I'm really excited about that settler plan that you outlined. It's actually even cooler than you might think because TheArchduke *CAN'T* attack Woden until Turn 135, and then Woden can plant the city and gift it to me after TheArchduke plays his Turn 135 turn. No opportunity to hit the city until it's already in Rome's hands. His only chance would be to attack the settler on Turn 135 after Rome plays but before China plays, and we should be able to surround the settler with enough units to protect it for a single turn. This is going to be awesome if we can pull it off.

[Modo]

Good luck Singaboy - I'm really excited about that settler plan that you outlined. It's actually even cooler than you might think because TheArchduke *CAN'T* attack Woden until Turn 135, and then Woden can plant the city and gift it to me after TheArchduke plays his Turn 135 turn. No opportunity to hit the city until it's already in Rome's hands. His only chance would be to attack the settler on Turn 135 after Rome plays but before China plays, and we should be able to surround the settler with enough units to protect it for a single turn. This is going to be awesome if we can pull it off.

Woden? Tough relationship

Also, Sullla the mafia bully: hey Woden, what's up with that settler / slinger pair? There are so many "barbarians" around.

[Singaboy]

Turn 128:

The impact of the loss of Geneva is hard, science output without any boost is now at 78. It actually delays square rigging by a turn. We have a look at my technology tree in a second.
Culture is great though and mercantilism done. Tianjin finished the third quadrireme in the west. Shanghai will finish another in 5 turns right before the war starts. It is way too few to fight off Germany there and it might result in the loss of Tianjin and Shanghai if I am unlucky. The good thing is, that Germany has no real land army to fight other cities. We shall see how this will work out.



I am changing civic cards as outlined and of course, Colonization only boost 50% and not 100%. I will need two chops for one settler. It will be done on T130 and then move to found the canal city on T136 unfortunately. We might have to think of a proper strategy to fend off any naval attack at the canal city. I would love to get rationalism as soon as possible for some science boost here.

Ok, let's have a look at technology and what can be obtained before the war starts. Military science takes 2 turns and square rigging 4 turns, which means I will have those by T134. Ballistics should take a mere turn once the Eureka from Rome kicks in. This is great as I can in fact use the extra gold I have to upgrade those crossbows. I would love to have plenty of those in my western cities to fight off Germany.

As for civics, it looks pretty good too. Civil Engineering is now on course to be done in 4 turns. I can delay that by switching to colonialism. The moment Rome gets enlightenment, I will get that too and can then proceed to swap civics, especially rationalism. That should get back some of the lost science.

Looking at the big picture at the end of this turn, you notice that culture has increased further. This is due to investing one envoy into Nan Madol for extra 4 culture. Feudal Contract gets my additional crossbows in 2/3 turns.
Shanghai's quadrireme is done in 5 not 6 as displayed. The builder which has chopped a forest for Qaunzhou is now on the way back toward Shanghai. It could harvest a fish (what benefit does that get?) or one crab (even though that currently makes 5 gpt) for an immediate boost before the war starts.

Tianjin for the lack of the ability to produce a quadrireme before square rigging kicks in starts the library. Hangzhou goes back to the uni, ready in 6. Kashgar will finish its horseman. Pagan's settler is down to 7 turns with the stone harvest and will be done in 2 turns with a forest chop/ My units are blocking the canal now to ensure that Germany can't do a thing here. What we need to prevent is Germany blocking the site via units or the settler founding a city in the jungle.
Well, if they do, Rome could raze that city and we then found the canal city.

In the east near Nubia, we spot that England is the owner of Geneva now. There is also a spot with 5 Ocean tiles to embark. I am curious whether England is going to attempt to block me there.
One more issue, I currently have a mere 3 horsemen in the east and I think, in order to fight off England and Nubia, we need maybe 7, so I shall delay military science while drafting 4 horsemen in the next two turns. What do you think, Sulla? I got plenty of faith by now. I think it will be a good idea to keep some extra faith for emergency drafting.

Let's see how bad the science impact for Rome has been.

[Sullla]

Singaboy, I like your idea to get 4 horses over in the east using faith purchases. We may even want more than that depending on how we choose to play the upcoming turns - more on this in a minute.



First of all, here's the delayed printout message of Woden capturing Geneva and gifting it to Chevalier. The science impact was slightly worse than I had expected; I was hoping to see science around 120 beakers/turn, and instead it fell to 110 beakers/turn. Not great. However, everyone else saw their science take it on the chin too. There's been a worldwide drop in research output across the board:

Rome: 149 science to 110 science (not counting the one turn with the 15% Geneva boost)
China: 92 science to 79 science
Germany: 110 science to 88 science
Russia: 56 science to 50 science
Nubia: 102 science to 89 science
England: 72 science to 65 science

Obviously TheArchduke and my civ were the ones that were hurt the most. Still, the overall situation hasn't changed that much in percentage terms; Rome was making 35% more beakers than Germany before, and Rome is making 25% more beakers than Germany now. While it would obviously be better for us to keep the city state alive, we're still ahead in research and still researching faster than the other teams. This is likely to get better for us in the short term since we'll hit Rationalism before the other teams do, and I'm estimating that it will add about 12 beakers/turn to Rome's science output immediately, with more on the way later.

The main effect of Geneva's fall is that the global science pace has notably slowed. In a weird way this could be a good thing for us, since it will slow down the speed with which other civs can catch up to us. We also have a longer window to exploit a relative tech advantage before other teams can equalize us in tech. For better or for worse, it's one of those things that we'll have to play around as the game continues.



Here's something nice: the new trade route out of Venezia was worth 16 gold/turn, excellent! I had the option to run the route to Hangzhou for 10 gold/turn along with 1 science and 1 culture, but I preferred the city state for such a huge gold output. Now to be fair this is including the 4 gold/turn from Triangular Trade while previous screenshots didn't, but it's still pretty cool overall. The last bit of extra gold comes from being the suzerain of Bandar Brunei, which grants +1 gold/turn on trade routes passing through trade posts in foreign destinations. I'll take it.



Up here along the front lines in Germany, TheArchduke's settler continues to sit in the water and wait to see what we do. I'm having some concerns over our ability to found a canal city here in safety; TheArchduke is going to have a chance to fire away at Singaboy's units as the settler tries to move into position. If he puts frigates in the water to the west and blasts away, it could be tough to get the settler there without the covering unit being attacked and destroyed, then the settler captured. I'm kicking myself for failing to see the best move here last week; we should have kept Singaboy's unit in place when he had that awesome blocking position and then used the settler that I finished in Milano to come down here and found the canal city immediately. That would have been the slick play, as we would have had a city in place before Turn 135 and then been ready to unload on TheArchduke when the war started. Why was I so stupid to just assume that TheArchduke would do what we wanted him to do? That was really silly of me.

For the moment, I've continued moving my settler towards the canal spot, just in case. I feel like it's better to have two settlers in the area as a backup plan because we could be in serious trouble if we don't get a canal city in place.



Overview picture. Military engineer is almost done, and I'll probably try to squeeze out a fast builder from Roma after that. Elsewhere, cities are training builders (two of them are 1 turn away from completion) or ships for the most part. On the research front, I've set up Astronomy to overflow into Industrialism next turn, which will also land the boost for Colonialism. My current plan is to queue up The Enlightenment next turn (Turn 130) to finish at the start of Turn 131 and pass the boost over to Singaboy. I want to get into Rationalism and start completing some of these builders that are nearly done.



The view in the south. Singaboy, I think the missionary in this region probably uses the two charges on Acre (for the Holy Site under construction there) and Parma (for Crusade defensive bonus). Napoli has too much of that foreign religion to be worth trying to convert it. At some later point, depending on what happens with Russia/Germany, we can consider getting another missionary out for Ferrara, Palermo, and another third city.

There was one huge development this turn: EmperorK apparently finally made it to Reformed Church civic and swapped into Theocracy and Simultaneum policy. He now has a huge faith income of his own: 117 faith/turn, only a little bit less than what Singaboy has. All those tundra tiles being worked via Russia's unique ability are really paying off for him in this regard. Russia having Theocracy and a huge faith income is a game-changer. EmperorK can basically pop out a horseman unit every turn, and have them ready to upgrade into cossacks down the line. With Defender of the Faith, it's going to be nearly impossible to attack Russia's territory, even with only horses and knights and crossbows available right now. And to be honest, TheArchduke has done an outstanding job of rushing out naval units and amassing a gigantic war chest for upgrades.

I was thinking this over all day today, and I'm less and less sanguine about our prospects for success here. We're looking at fighting a war against an entrenched opponent at equal tech for both sides, and that's likely to be a bloodbath for both sides, but especially for our team. So... do we really want to go forward with this attack? I'm confident that Rome can capture Kreutzberg from Germany, but what then? Could I hold the city longterm given how far it is from Rome's core, and with Russia right there to spam out faith-purchased units? Then there's the shenanigans with the canal city that may or may not work out in our favor, and finally I think we have serious concerns about Singaboy's ability to defend his cities on the western coast from a naval attack. There's a lot of German ships accumulating in the waters of the western ocean right now, and if we can't blast our way through with the Roman navy via canal cities, defending the Chinese cities in the west might be impossible.

The more I've thought about this, the more this looks like a potential disaster. Does it really serve our purpose to engage in a huge bloodletting with Russia and Germany? We have a clear border betwen our teams and their team has never made any attempt to cross the demarcation line. I think they are very happy to maintain the status quo with us along that militarized border and I think they would jump at a new offer for a Declaration of Friendship. Furthermore, we don't have a tech edge right now over Russia/Germany. However, I think that we absolutely *COULD* have a tech edge over Nubia/England by Turn 146. I think we could get to Steel tech and battleships by that point, just barely making it in time, while I think they would still be a long distance away. What if we shifted our focus and reoriented ourselves around taking down England/Nubia when that Declaration of Friendship wears off? Who knows, maybe we could even get some buy-in from Russia/Germany. At the least we'd be buying them off for a while.

I dunno Singaboy, what do you think on this? We might want to pause here for a few hours and think things over. Seeing Russia hop into Theocracy with that big faith income is just such a game-changer. I don't want any part in attacking Russia or German cities like Kreutzberg that border Russian territory. And if engaging in bloody warfare with Germany isn't likely to help us out... then why do it? Long story short, I'm not seeing an easy path to military conquests here, just a long and deadly slog. So why not opt out of that and play a different game entirely, eh?

Let's see if we can discuss briefly before you play your turn. I'll be checking our thread for the next few hours.

[Singaboy]

If we feel confident that we can make real progress against England and Nubia, then I don't mind to call the attack against Germany off. How about me sending them a DoF this turn and then we decide based on their reaction? Shall we still try and settle that canal city then?

If we do this, we ought to pull our troops over to our holdings in former Kongo/Khmer land and attempt to strike them hard. It would also mean that I would postpone upgrading units as this would only affect our income. It would also attempt to delay military science for a few turns to draft more horsemen.

If you feel confident to be able to beat England at sea, this would be a good scenario. We have to rely on Germany not getting too cocky right now as well. Let's hope if we suggest a DoF that they accept that.