Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

I'm not sure if we can make progress against England and Nubia in ~15 turns because a lot can change in that interval. However, I'm starting to become more confident that we won't be able to win a significant victory against Russia and Germany, and if that's the case, we do better by locking in peace with them and looking to pick a fight with another opponent. I was thinking about it a lot today, and your post along these lines:

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.

It made me think that this might not be such a good idea. If this conflict looks like lots of units killed on both sides and maybe cities razed on both sides... why are we doing it, right?

Yes, the idea would be that we reorient towards attacking England/Nubia when the Declaration of Friendship wears off with them on Turn 146. I think we'd have better odds to make gains there than pushing into the heart of the German/Russian continent. And yes, we could delay some techs and avoid mass upgrades to save income for the time being. That would all be nice.

I like the idea to send Germany and Russia a Declaration of Friendship on your turn and see what their reaction is. Until we get a positive answer, we should keep acting as though we'll be going to war on Turn 135, including moving towards settling the canal city. If we end up with an extra Chinese settler, well, there's room for a pretty decent city on the island to the north of Germany. Let's see what they say in response and go from there... but keep assuming that we're going to war in the meantime.

[Singaboy]

Turn 129:

A pretty quiet turn. I continue to block the spots that could be settled by Germany. Kashgar finished its horseman and starts a granary. Pagan will get its settler next turn. Tianjin manages to shave off a turn from the library with the mined hill. The city is going to get a little better with some tile improvements. At Shanghai, the builder enters the Ocean for some harvesting. It can be either the fish or the crab or in fact both.

Military Science is a micrometer away from completion. I will keep it that way and go for square rigging for now. I am still right on track to finish all crucial war technologies before the war breaks out.



In the east, I draft 2 horsemen. This gives China 5 horsemen there for the moment. My missionary will finally make landfall next turn and then move towards Acre to convert to city so the Holy Site and shrine can be started using a stone chop. Unfortunately, that builder still requires 6 turns to completion. If we want to attack there, I would need to draft a battering ram too. Let's see how things develop.



My final action is to send a DoF to Germany/Russia. Now, Germany denounced me and hence, there is no possibility to do a DoF with them. Hence I am sending it to Russia. I hope their internal communication is good enough to come to a common understanding and either agree with us or reject.
Maybe Rome could send a DoF too during their turn to give them a turn time to think about it.



I can't wait to get off Colonization and enable Rationalism. I will be prepared for a civic swap in 2 turns and it will all depend on the reaction from the guy above which type of civic cards I will enable. In fact, I think, if both parties have a DoF, England and Nubia could be in a lot of trouble as Russia should be a lot closer to their land. Interesting options here.

[Modo]

You offering a DoF to Russia / Germany gives them an interesting dilemma since they prepared for a dogged defense and you not attacking means they'll have to try and catch up development wise. Either attacking you themselves or waiting is bad and you're taking out the one option they were prepared for but they must know the same dilemma applies to England / Nubia as well.
So obviously if you do attack England / Nubia you'll have to take Germany / Russia into account too, that's enough reason to reject a DoF. Three way diplomacy stalemate.

That still leaves you with the better development long term wining chances...very long term if the stalemate is not broken but at least something for the other teams to consider. But that might leave you in a defensive posture for the rest of the game, any considerations so far for a long term defense while you target any other victory condition?

[Sullla]

Yeah, I'm still planning on finishing The Enlightenment policy at the end of this upcoming turn (Turn 130), which will then set up policy swaps for both Rome and China on Turn 131. We will know by then whether Russia/Germany have accepted or rejected our Declaration of Friendship offer, and we can choose policies accordingly. I'll go ahead and send a Friendship offer to TheArchduke on my turn as well, just so that they know this wasn't a one-off thing. It's pretty funny that Singaboy couldn't send Germany a Declaration of Friendship offer because he'd already been denounced.

Now that I've had another night to sleep on this, I'm more convinced than ever that a war with Russia/Germany isn't in our best interests right now. The short answer is that TheArchduke and EmperorK have done an excellent job of setting themselves up to defend their territory. TheArchduke raised more gold than I expected he would be able to put together for upgrades, and EmperorK amassed more faith than I thought he could get. A big war between us right now looks like it would be highly damaging to both sides, and I don't think we should opt into that if we can avoid it.

Since it's me posting, you get a longer answer as well. The dynamics of this game are pretty interesting: three teams, all of them with a legitimate chance of winning. The ideal scenario would be to team up with another team to take down the third team; being on the "2" side of a 2 vs 1 dynamic is always desirable. However, since we are currently winning the game in most every category (score, science research, military strength, etc.) it's going to be nearly impossible to pull off the diplomatic coup of having an ally work together with us. The best that we can likely hope for is to face only one opponent at a time. We signed a Declaration of Friendship with England/Nubia earlier under the hope that they would work together with us against Russia/Germany, but they have since rejected all of our offers for additional Declarations of Friendship or alliances... or even resource trades! So no help coming from that direction. I suspect that they would really like to see us attack Russia/Germany right now and side on the sidelines while we smash each other up pretty good.

However, we're under no obligation to fight Russia/Germany if we don't want to do so. I thought before that it was in our best interests because we could hit Germany with our huge military and deal crushing damage before England/Nubia came in to assist them. That assumption falls apart if we can't defeat Germany quickly though, and I don't see us being able to do that right now. In the three team scenario we have right now, the second-best scenario from being on the happy side of the 2 vs 1 is to be sitting on the sidelines avoiding warfare while your two rivals fight against one another. England/Nubia was setting themselves up to be in that scenario, and I don't see why we have to opt into giving them their dream outcome. England/Nubia is the weakest of the three teams from an economic perspective, and there's a strong case to be made that they are the ones to target first if possible. We do not have a tech edge on Germany, but we absolutely can get a tech edge on England and Nubia. Add in the Venetian Arsenal, and there's a major incentive not to let them sit back and build up for a long period of time.

We also have to consider the role of geography here. Our border with Germany is minimal, a small isthmus between our lands, and both sides have fortified it with heavy defenses. We basically have an equitable split of the land and no real conflicts there - both sides have been content to let the other keep what they currently have thus far. I think it would be very difficult to capture territory from Germany and hold it permanently, especially with Russia having Defender of the Faith protection throughout a good chunk of their continent. Now if this were a 1 vs 1 game, I would be content with razing their cities and that being the end of it. Hurting them would be all we need to accomplish. However, this isn't a 1 vs 1 game because we have three teams. Therefore we need to have the goal of strengthening ourselves in warfare, not just expending resources to hurt another team. It's not enough to burn cities down alone, we need to get something out of our investment into units and upgrades. Right now, I don't see enough of an opportunity to do that on the German/Russian continent. Conversely, I think we have ample opportunity to take more land from Nubia and England in former Khmer territory. The frontier is wide open there and there's no pesky Defender of the Faith to worry about. Add in the possibility to attacking with a tech lead, and it looks like a much, much more attractive proposition.

On the tech front, the key question is whether we can get to Steel tech by Turn 146. That opens up two huge units for us: battleships and artillery. Battleships are the kings of the sea, with 70 ranged strength and 3 range firing ability. We've never seen them yet on a large scale in a PBEM game (just the little taste of the Minas Geraes in PBEM4) and they're just the ticket to take down England's navy. They require coal though (from Industrialization tech) and the boost for Steel involves having at least one ironclad present, so you pretty much have to go deep onto the top side of the tech tree to Steam Power to claim them. If we can deploy battleships for a Turn 146 attack though, I think we can sweep the eastern sea of all English cities present there. The other unit at Steel, artillery, is a monster in its own right. Catapults and bombards are pretty lousy units because of their "cannot move and shoot" ability, but artillery get around that with their 3 range ability and 80 (!) ranged strength. (They get -17 strength against units but deal full damage against cities and districts.) If we can somehow get to Flight tech for observation balloons, that expands to 4 range and becomes absurd. And with Logistics policy, you actually can get +1 movement in your own territory and move and shoot with artillery - they actually require "2 movement" points to fire, and additional movement points from Great Generals or Logistics let them get around their disadvantage. And obviously artillery are amazing at destroying the defenses of enemy cities. If it looks like we can make it to Steel tech, we might want to faith-purchase some additional bombards for upgrading. That's a long, long ways off but we should keep it in mind.

Can we make it to Steel by Turn 146? We need the following techs:

Industrialization: 845 science, will not boost
Steam Power: 970 science, will not boost
Military Science: 845 science, already have boost (422 science)
Rifling: 970 science, already have boost (485 science)
Steel: 1140 science, easy to boost (570 science)

We have about 250 beakers already invested into Industrialization; if we get no boosts at all, that leaves us with roughly 3000 beakers needed to be researched. We would need to average 190 beakers/turn to research all of that in the next 16 turns, so that's clearly not happening. (Darwin would have been REALLY helpful here, sigh.) Unless... if we could land the boost for Industrialization or Steam Power with the current Great Scientist, that would save us 500ish beakers and make this a lot more doable. That would mean that we'd only need to average a little over 150 beakers/turn, and while that's also not going to happen, it does mean that Rome could likely hit Steel tech shortly after Turn 146, in time to have a very meaningful impact. We're going to need to cross our fingers and hope we can land the boost to either Industrialization or Steam Power, which to be fair is 50/50 odds and not a bad chance. Obviously Rome's science output will also be increasing over the upcoming turns as more cities build libraries/universities and Rationalism gets slotted into place.

I should also point out that England is currently making 65 beakers/turn (and Nubia making 89 beakers/turn), plus they are about 4-5 techs behind us, so they are ENORMOUSLY far away from reaching Steel tech. That's another reason why I think this potential war looks like a better option than the one we have in front of us right now. Always try to avoid fighting an opponent at equal tech if possible, and we do not have a tech edge over Russia/Germany at the moment.

Anyway, I hope all of this sheds some additional light on what I've been thinking. I hate to jump around like this, doing war planning for the last two weeks and then suddenly backing off at the last minute. However, if you can't change your decisions to account for changing circumstances, then you're likely to run into disaster. The case for attacking Russia/Germany made sense 5 turns ago when Germany had 86 gold in the bank; it doesn't make sense when Germany has 2500 gold for upgrades and Russia can fire out faith-purchased units left and right for defense. Sorry to all of you reading along - I know you wanted more Blood for the Blood God. Maybe you'll still get your wish and Russia/Germany will reject our offer. Since they offered the same deal to us just two turns ago, I think they'll accept though. We'll know later today. (Or at least Singaboy and I will - you guys already know their answer, heh.)

[Modo]

Avoiding the war in the face of increasing defenses if the better option, one thing I didn't see you mention or maybe can't evaluate properly is how much Germany / Russia sacrificed to get to this point. I'm assuming they harvested a lot of resources and other things that will hurt their long term development and that's why I think they'll reject the DoF to keep you down until they can catch up.
After all, you're not the only one that can change his mind and both your change of mind and theirs would be pretty justified with the current situation.
Or to put it another way, England / Nubia now have the shorter straw but you're in a much better position to exploit that than Russia / Germany so they'll not want you to do so until they can get the better deal.

[roland of gilead]

will be interesting to see if they reject this offer or not. 

What happens then. Declare on Germany to get first strike or run the risk of Them getting it perhaps in coordination with England later. 

We will know soon.

[shallow_thought]

I hate to jump around like this, doing war planning for the last two weeks and then suddenly backing off at the last minute.

So much better than not planning for war and then finding you are in one...

[Modo]

If you want war prepare for peace....sic bellum para pace or something

[shallow_thought]

Si vis pacem para bellum...

Oddly, I misquoted this and was corrected by a team-mate in the chat for our PB38 thread only last week .

[Sullla]

Well I checked the diplomacy with EmperorK and it doesn't look like he accepted the Declaration of Friendship offer. Hard to say for sure since the diplomacy interface is so poor for Civ6. To answer the questions posed in the thread, if we can't get a new Declaration of Friendship with Russia/Germany then we're absolutely going to declare war and go in guns blazing, because if they won't sign with us then that means they're committed to working together with England/Nubia and we'll do better by fighting them one at a time. I do wish in retrospect that we had accepted their previous Declaration of Friendship offer a couple turns ago but that's life.



This is Woden's new city. It's an interesting location to be sure... I can only guess that he needs niter really badly for some reason. That or he's planning on harvesting the crabs but there has to be a better spot for that somewhere else, right?



The German frontier looks essentially the same this turn as it did last turn. The German settler has moved north for some reason and I still have no idea where it's going. Singaboy, do you have a plan for how to guard the incoming Chinese settler, and a plan for how to upgrade those horses and chariot hanging out on the isthmus? If they aren't upgraded in some way they'll be toast when the war starts. One other request: can you move your quadrireme on the tile east of Pagan? I need that tile to upgrade my quadriremes standing next to it, and I plan to start the upgrades next turn. Thanks.

I also think that you should probably focus your faith purchases on defending your homeland for the moment. Crossbow purchases are probably the best option right now, with the goal of upgrading them into field cannons for defensive fire. What do you think?



Now this is annoying. A barbarian camp sprang up near Palermo and it's already produced a scout. Hopefully we just have swords coming out of this camp and not muskets. I'm moving a crossbow and musket over here to defend the city; Singaboy, if you can spare a unit or two it wouldn't hurt either.

I thought that I took a screenshot of my core but apparently I forgot. There are no significant changes there, lots of cities producing builders at the moment. If they aren't doing that, then cities are either building caravels or working on libraries/universities. The capital finished the military engineer this turn and I'll be able to lay down forts starting next turn. Roma itself is working on a trader to fill out the last trade route slot.

I completed Astronomy tech and that delivered the boost for Colonialism, now only 2 turns away from completion. I swapped off that and back to The Enlightenment, which will complete at end of turn for a policy swap on Turn 131. Research overflow is going back into Industrialization again; there should be a ton of overflow from Astronomy and I hope that it's working correctly. I'm always skeptical that overflow will be delivered correctly in Civ6, in part because you can never see the darned numbers for beakers or culture invested.



I sent this offer to TheArchduke to signal our willingness to cooperate with them. He will probably reject it but it's worth a shot. I couldn't offer a Declaration of Friendship because I already have one with both TheArchduke and EmperorK. I will be able to offer a new Declaration of Friendship with EmperorK in two turns, and I'll make one more attempt then. If they keep rejecting us, then we declare war and see what we can manage to accomplish. That might be throwing the game to England/Nubia, but I don't see any other choice if they won't agree to a new friendship agreement.

I was getting excited at the prospect of peace with Russia/Germany and planning towards a Turn 146 attack on England/Nubia so this turn was a bit disappointing. Perhaps I'm wrong and misread the diplo screen and EmperorK agreed to a deal with Singaboy after all. Maybe. Seems unlikely though. Well, we shall see what happens. Not too sanguine about fighting a Germany that hit 1000 power this turn and still has 2200 gold in the bank for upgrades though.