Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

I thought about that pop 15 thing a little more:

Food growth required:
11 to 12: 126 (almost 50% achieved). uni will lift the growth penalty.
12 to 13: 140 (with a plantation at the northern citrus, housing would reach 14, making 'natural' growth still viable). At around 15 food surplus it would take around 9 turns
13 to 14: 153
14 to 15: 171

The university is done in 3 turns, then it will take around 3 turns to grow to pop 12 (T137). Growth from 12 to 13 needs the citrus to be improved. Then it would take around 9 turns for the city to grow to pop 13 (T146). In the meantime, the new builders of Shangdu and Hangzhou can get into position to harvest the rain forest and rice, followed by the marsh 2 turns later. That gives a rough target completion on T150. With nationalism kicking in around T145, this still looks viable. However, it needs the harvests to provide that extra food of 153+171 (if that calculation is correct).
By my own estimation, builder could harvest rice for roughly 150, marsh 100 and rain forest 60. That should be almost enough. Someone has a formula for food harvests? It should be similar to stone harvest and forest harvests?

[Modo]

I feel like congratulating you guys on the diplomatic success with Russia / Germany, this is a significant break. They certainly must have seen you as a big enough threat to agree to it.
Do you feel like this was a mistake on their part? They must know you'll turn on England / Nubia now so maybe they envision this as good for them in the long run  (aside from the obvious momentary bullet being dodged heh).

Also, digging an artifact is the boost for combustion? Talk about saving otherwise pretty useless game mechanics

[Sullla]

Whew, there's lots to go through here. I really love the use of Retainers policy to boost every city to Ecstatic, that was a brilliant choice. China has been punching above its weight for the whole game thanks to having cities in Ecstatic status so often; getting +10% to all of the yields (and an astonishing +35% to all food along with Hanging Gardens) really makes a difference. Let me run through some of the issues in Singaboy's post and then hop over to additional things I spotted while going over the revealed map yesterday.

* I don't think either of us have much luck of land the city state quests at Muscat. It's too far for a trade route (my quest) and we're not going to convert the city religiously. However, we may want to invest more envoys there down the road to boost our Commercial districts. I think the clear order is Lisbon first, then Bandar Brunei, and then Muscat. For the curious, the reason why Germany has such a huge income is due to having 9 total envoys in the Muscat + Bandar Brunei combo: that's +12 gold/turn from every Commercial district. Singaboy and I currently have 6 total envoys (for +8 gold/turn), and my next envoys will be going into taking Lisbon up to the next tier to hit the 9 total envoy benefit.

* A word on science research: I don't think that China needs to research Astronomy at all. The Astronmy into Scientific Theory part of the tree doesn't lead anywhere significant for a long time, and the boost for Colonialism civic will be coming over from Rome shortly. Then again, I see your point about China not being able to advance much further on the other parts of the tree. Can't research Military Science yet because we still want to produce some more horses, can't finish Ballistics so that we can train a few more crossbows, can't finish Square Rigging until the quadriremes finish. Civ6 is an odd game sometimes. That said, as soon as you finish the current quadriremes, I think it would be better to follow Rome along the path to Industrialization (for the mining boost) and possibly Steam Power (for ironclads and the embarked unit +2 movement speed). One nice thing is that China can skip Steam Power if desired and still get to Steel quickly by Rome landing the boost and researching the tech. So China does have some more leeway on research, unlike Rome which pretty much has to beeline straight for Steel if we want to have it by Turn 146.

Here's one thing we could potentially try if China has some excessive research capacity: heading for Flight. It can be researched as soon as Industrialism is finished and an observation balloon would be amazing when combined with the current Chinese bombards, especially once we upgrade them into artillery. Faith-purchase another bombard or two, upgrade them into artillery, and stick an observation balloon on top of them for 4 range units with 80 ranged damage. Worth thinking about for the future, especially with China landing 60% boosts on a bunch of these techs that Rome has to burn through unboosted.

* About your settler: yeah, I would try for the canal city block but I think Germany gets there first. The island off China's northwest coast is a pretty good spot to use as a fallback option.

* I do plan on pulling back my units along the German border. I thought that I would keep them there for a turn or two longer to confuse England/Nubia, although they're probably spotted the fact that we signed an alliance by now. In fact, they almost certainly have because they have secondary vision with Russia/Germany; i.e. they see what Russia/Germany sees, and therefore they will have noticed that their minimap got a lot more defogged over in our territory. Note that England/Nubia see what Russia/Germany's units see, but they do *NOT* see what our units see, just as we do not see what England/Nubia's units see. Conversely, Russia/Germany currently sees what all units on the map see since they have alliances with both teams. It's a little bit confusing, but if we keep our units out of direct Russian/German unit vision, then England/Nubia won't be able to see where they're located. I hope that makes sense.

Anyway, I'll start pulling some of my units back in more force this turn. I'm hoping to slip some of them away without the English caravel in the southern ocean seeing them. I'll be moving them back to the Kongo lands again in preparation for an attack on England/Nubia in 15 turns time. The idea will be to use our combined forces on land to push forward along with naval support from what will hopefully be Roman battleships along the eastern ocean. Chevalier has a lot of vulnerable cities up there that we can capture, including his Great Lighthouse city. More on this later.

* On civics research: now that China has Civil Engineering essentially finished, I think we want China to concentrate mostly on Nationalism and Urbanization. Rome should have the boost for Natural History ready in about 15 turns, and it seems that you have the boost for Colonialism covered (I can also supply it in a few turns as needed). With Rome hitting the top of the civics tree and then also needing to burn through Civil Engineering, it looks like China is going to be taking the lead on civics research for a change. China actually has more cultural output than Rome now - who would have thunk it? It's really nice to have both of us so strong on culture and able to work together on these expensive civics.

With regards to the "Hangzhou Size 15 Project", I think it's just barely doable, and the culture we would be saving (530/1060 culture) is huge enough to make the effort worth attempting. It looks like Hangzhou can hit size 12 naturally, and then we need 140 + 152 + 166 = 458 food according to the numbers I have here. The formula for food produced is the same as the formula for production created when harvesting or chopping, with a marsh harvest being exactly the same as a forest chop and a rice harvest exactly the same as a stone harvest. Jungle tiles are the same as forest chops but yield 50% food and 50% production. Let's see, assuming that you waited to do the harvesting until China had Colonialism and Civil Engineering finished, China would have 29 civics finished. You would therefore get 62 food from the rainforest clear, 124 food from the marsh clearing, and 155 food from the rice harvest. That only gets you to 341 food, clearly not enough. However, bananas and cows can also be harvested for food. If you harvest either your cows or your bananas, you'd get another 155 food and that would give you just about 500 food total, which would clearly get you to size 15. So yes, this is definitely doable, as long as you're willing to cut down your banana trees or slaughter your poor cows. Marsh + rainforest + rice + either one of the cows/bananas will get the job done.

Here is the formula for the curious:

Resource/Feature Harvest yield (food, gold, production)
Basevalue..25fp/50gold for bonus ...20 for features
=Base Value*(1+9*Larger of [100*(Number of Techs/67 OR Number of Civics/50)]/100)

* One last thing about the "mess with England at Nan Madol" option: I don't think there's any risk involved here due to turn order. The turn order goes Rome - Nubia - England - China and then back again, so we can have China dump in two envoys to tie England with 5, which will immediately cause England to lose suzerain status and get booted out of Nan Madol territory, then it cycles back to Rome where I will declare war and move into Nan Madol's territory before Chevalier gets a chance to respond. He will not be able to attack me and therefore can't do much of anything; I guess he could also declare war on Nan Madol and try to capture it for himself, but that would still cost him all of his envoys and lose him suzerain status regardless. Lose-lose either way for him. The other nice thing is that we don't have to make any investment until the turn that we actually execute the plan. I'll be moving my units into position but it'll take them a little while to get there. It's a fun little project to work towards, and hopefully one fewer city we need to capture once this war actually begins.

[Sullla]

Now a look at some of the information I was able to pull out of the revealed map last night. We are the last team to get a fully revealed map via the alliance (since the other two teams signed an alliance a little while earlier), and the map information alone was probably worth 30 turns of peace with Russia/Germany irregardless of anything else. I was pleased to find that my score tracking was very accurate, as I was off by 1 population total with the other four teams. Not bad! I was also reasonably close on the districts, with one or two identified incorrectly with each player. Now I was able to pull all of the data with complete accuracy from the map and summarize it here for us.



Germany
8 cities
64 population
24 districts: 5 Campus, 6 Commercial, 1 Encampment, 3 Harbor, 8 Hansa, 1 Theatre
Tier 1 Buildings: 5 libraries, 1 market, 1 lighthouse, 2 workshops
Tier 2 Buildings: 4 universities

I'll start with Germany. TheArchduke essentially has the northern half of their continent while EmperorK took the southern half, and that was a pretty smart division to make sure of Russia's tundra ability. The core of TheArchduke's territory is the land to the northeast of his capital Marienburg where he has a river valley packed full of districts. There's some excellent placement of Hansas and Commercial districts to get the maximum adjacency bonuses as you would expect. All eight German cities have Hansas, not surprising. Outside of Hansas, TheArchduke has been building Commercial districts and Campuses, which again makes sense because they are generally speaking the most useful ones to have. There's a really useful tidbit here when looking at TheArchduke's Campuses: he ALREADY has libraries in all five of them, and universities in four out of five. In other words, TheArchduke has virtually maxed out his science capacity already and he doesn't have much room to grow further. I theorized this a little while back and the revealed map proves the truth of it. TheArchduke will get a nice boost when he reaches Rationalism in about a dozen or so turns (5 libaries and 4 universities = 26 beakers/turn from Rationalism) but that's pretty much it. He will need to build more Campus districts to get more science, and he doesn't have any under construction right now.

TheArchduke's biggest problem is that he stopped at only eight cities. Everyone else in the game has at least 10 cities and that's hurting him a lot. What he does have is excellent run and has a ton of infrastructure, but the map is mostly full at this point and he's out of room to do much more expanding. This makes me even happier that we signed the alliance with their team, as I believe that the long term favors us heavily here. We will be able to outresearch them and eventually field units that they can't match. If we had managed to land Darwin, that would practically be guaranteed. Instead, we'll have to wait and see what TheArchduke does with the Great Scientist.



Russia
10 cities
63 population
19 districts: 2 Campus, 4 Commercial, 2 Encampment, 2 Harbor, 7 Lavra, 1 Industrial, 1 Theatre
Tier 1 Buildings: 1 barracks, 1 lighthouse, 7 shrines, 1 amphitheatre
Tier 2 Buildings: 5 temples
Tier 3 Buildings: 1 stupa

Russia has a lot of cities, however half of them are pretty terrible spots down in the tundra. Russia has been heavily configured for faith generation and not terribly much else, although EmperorK has slowly been improving his income recently with more Commercial districts and trade routes. Some of his district choices are a bit questionable, such as the single Industrial district standing by itself. EmperorK has only two Campuses and no libraries or universities at all, which is why his science rate is so terrible (50 beakers/turn). For a competitive game like this, you pretty much have to build a good number of Campuses, they are not an optional choice. EmperorK also doesn't have enough slots available to place his Great Works (he has a couple more Theatre districts in production right now) and you can see a bunch of Great People just sitting around doing nothing right now. He also clearly hasn't played out a Single Player cultural game, as he put some Great Artist works into his limited slots instead of Great Writer works, which produce far more culture. Great Artists are basically terrible in Civ6 unless you can get the "theming" bonus in a museum, which is virtually impossible.

Militarily, EmperorK has been doing what we expected: faith-purchasing horsemen in anticipation of upgrading them to cossacks later. That can be a terrifyingly strongly play, however Russia's science rate is so poor that I think we'll have reached the next tier of units by the time that he's able to field cossacks. 30 turns from now we should have infantry and tanks out on the field, and they won't be terribly impressed by cossacks. The window to use the Russian unique unit is probably going to have to come against Woden now, not us. EmperorK also has no navy to speak of, which is a relief. His southern cities could potentially be terribly vulnerable to attack from the sea in a distant future. (By the way, do you see Darwin hanging out by their natural wonder in the deep south? That will net Germany 1000 beakers when used, as we had guessed.)

Currently there are no canal cities between the western ocean and the far ocean. EmperorK could have built canal cities if he wanted but settled in such a way as to make it impossible. Right now, all of Germany's ships are trapped in the western ocean. If he gets a canal city on the isthmus, then he'll have passage from the western ocean into the southern ocean. We need to keep an eye on what he does with his fleet.



Nubia
13 cities
61 population
17 districts: 5 Campus, 3 Commercial, 5 Encampment, 3 Holy Site, 1 Theatre
Tier 1 Buildings: 4 libraries, 2 markets, 2 barracks, 2 shrines
Tier 2 Buildings: 3 universities, 1 armory

Woden has a lot of cities but he's done a poor job of growing them. TheArchduke with only 8 cities actually has more population than he does right now, although that does mean that Woden has more room to grow upwards over time. Nubia and Germany have exactly the same science rate as of this turn, 89 beakers/turn. I'm honestly kind of shocked at how poorly managed the Nubian core looks; why is Woden's capital only size 6?! Why are the districts placed so far apart from one another? Unlike the other teams, Nubia doesn't seem to have a core of overlapping districts with big adjacency bonuses. Frankly, I think he put his cities too far apart from one another. There's a lot of wasted space on the Nubian continent; Ptah is a recent addition and before that, there was first-ring territory north of his capital that was going unused. Weird. Instead, it looks like Woden pushed in the early game to get as far southeast as possible. Thoth is a very aggressive spot and that was Nubia's second or third city. We were fortunate that this team didn't start near us, and that we faced zero expansionist pressure from either of our two neighbors.

Woden has the typical Campus and Commercial district setup, but he's also invested significantly into Encampments as well. This makes sense for him, as he's been the suzerain of Valetta from an early date and all those Encampments have been worth extra production. It makes sense: why build Industrial districts when you can get bonus production and lots of Great General points from controlling Valetta? Plus Nubia can use faith to purchase city center buildings via Valetta's suzerain bonus, and Woden has Goddess of the Harvest pantheon to make that work. One of our goals in our upcoming war will be to capture or raze Valetta, since Woden has been getting way too much of a benefit from the city state. I was pleased again to notice that Woden already has 4 libraries and 3 universities finished, which means that his science rate doesn't have that much room to grow either, although he is building more Campus districts. Woden's Holy Site districts were mostly captured from city states (Kandy) or Khmer, so he hasn't made as much of an investment there as it might appear. It certainly would be nice to capture some of those cities for China.

In total, this is the picture of a civ that grabbed a lot of territory but hasn't managed what it grabbed particularly well. In other words, ripe for attacking. It should be much easier to go after Nubia and England than the tightly packed, very well controlled cities of Russia/Germany.



England
11 cities
57 population
12 districts: 2 Campus, 2 Commercial, 7 Royal Navy Dockyard, 1 Industrial
Tier 1 Buildings: 2 libraries, 2 lighthouses
Tier 2 Buildings: 1 university

England is the picture of an even more underdeveloped civ. Chevalier hasn't managed to build much of anything beyond his cheap half cost Harbor district, and his population is the lowest in the game at only 57. Don't overlook something as simple as that; population = power in Civilization, always has been that way, and we're winning in part because we have more of it than the other teams. (I'll show our numbers in a minute.) Every single English city other than the capital is on the coast, and they all either have Royal Navy Dockyards or are in the process of constructing them. The majority of England's cities are on the far ocean, the one most inaccessible for us. That's where the English navy will be concentrated, and it has the side effect of making the English cities on the eastern ocean very vulnerable to attack from our civ. Jutland, Actium, and the off-screen Lepanto are virtually defenseless against a determined attack from us. I would love to see us take all of those cities in a war, and then send the Roman navy off to another ocean to continue the fight. Note that unlike every other isthmus in the game, there is no possibility for a canal between the eastern and far oceans. English ships in the far ocean have zero chance of making it up to the eastern ocean.

The map makes our war goals very clear: the Chinese and Roman armies will advance into Khmer lands with the goal of capturing the former Cornflakes cities. At the same time, the Roman navy with a detachment of marines will sweep the eastern ocean clear of English cities, ideally capturing Jutland and Actium to cut off the units in Khmer territory from the rest of their civ. Then we can decide how aggressively we want to push further east into the far ocean and the rest of the English core. Obviously a lot would depend on what Russia/Germany are doing by that point in time. Overall though, I think there's a real opportunity here, certainly a much better chance than the bloodbath we were looking at against Germany. Rome is up 7 techs on England right now (!) and researching at double the beakers/turn pace. I don't think Chevalier can keep up, and we'll want to inflict as much pain as possible before he can leverage the Venetian Arsenal to full effect. Even better, any ships that Chevalier builds are mostly going to be down there in the far ocean where it's very difficult to hit any of our cities. Russia/Germany would be their natural next target for those ships.

For the record, Navarino has the Venetian Arsenal, Salamis has the Mausoleum, and Actium has the Great Lighthouse. I'm licking my chops at the prospect of capturing Actium and stealing away the Great Lighthouse. Very kind of Chevalier to put that thing in a spot where it's almost impossible to defend.



Muscat's numbers for the curious. As expected, Russia and Germany have most of the control here. If we have extra envoys down the road, we can consider dumping them in here. Now here are the same comparisons with China and Rome:

China
11 cities
65 population
19 districts: 4 Campus, 3 Commercial, 2 Encampment, 1 Entertainment, 2 Harbor, 4 Holy Site, 1 Industrial, 2 Theatre
Tier 1 Buildings: 3 libraries, 1 lighthouse, 3 shrines
Tier 2 Buildings: 3 temples
Tier 3 Buildings: 3 wats

China leans towards Holy Sites but has done a little bit of everything. Singaboy is the only player to construct one of every type of districts, which is pretty cool.

Rome
13 cities
84 population
21 districts: 9 Campus, 5 Commercial, 1 Encampment, 4 Harbor, 1 Industrial, 1 Theatre
Tier 1 Buildings: 6 libraries, 2 markets, 1 barracks, 1 lighthouse
Tier 2 Buildings: 2 universities, 1 armory

The biggest thing that stands out about Rome is the population number: 84 population, about 20 more than anyone else in the game. That's partly due to capturing some choice Kongo cities and the Seoul city state, but also a sign of how useful the Bath district can be. When everyone else runs into the housing cap, Roman cities just keep going. Otherwise Rome has been focused on two types of districts: Campuses for science and Commercial/Harbors for gold income and trade routes. It's been working well for us thus far, especially when combined with Singaboy's Holy Sites for faith output. I actually have fewer universities than both TheArchduke and Woden, which means that there's room for significantly more growth in terms of beaker rate. The big thing is having 9 Campus districts at a point where no one else in the game has more than 5 of them. That's just huge.

Whew, I think that's it for now. Errr, I guess not because the turn literally just arrived on the PYDT client. Time to go take care of that now...

[williams482]

Loving the analysis here, as always.

One correction, Artillery units in Civ 6 have a range of two, not three. Rocket Artillery is the unit that can get three range by default. The level four promotion for artillery line units also gives +1 range, but obviously it's pretty tough to get those units promoted that far.

Are Artillery sans balloons still a worthwhile unit against human players wth just two range? Obviously the balloons would make a huge difference if singaboy could pick up flight somehow.

[Sullla]

Thank you for that correction williams, I missed that. Artillery would indeed be much less effective without observation balloons if we can't get to Flight in time. We can decide whether or not it's worthwhile to pursue them depending on if Singaboy has the chance to reach Flight tech. Probably not but you never know.

Picking up again with Turn 132:



TheArchduke had this offer waiting for me when I opened up the save. It looks like he got the message that we're planning on attacking England/Nubia in 14 turns; I sent him another "14 gold for 14 gold" offer back to show that we did get the message. Perhaps their alliance wears off as well at the same 14 turn from right now point in time? That would be pretty nice if true. Singaboy also sent me an excess incense resource, which I accepted. My cities are all in the happy range on amenities right now, if not the Ecstatic range.



The military engineer dropped his second useless fort this turn and Ballistic was boosted to 99% completion. Singaboy, let me know when you want us to finish the tech and obsolete crossbows / unlock field guns. We should note as well that Feudal Contract, the policy that boosts Medieval/Renaissance melee and range unit production by 50%, will obsolete when we discover Nationalism. I think that's less of an issue for Singaboy because he can faith-purchase crossbows at a pretty good rate (about 300 faith cost) so long as we don't obsolete the unit itself. I'd love to build a few more crossbows, but at the same time I don't think I'll have a policy slot available for Feudal Contract any time soon. I'll probably be working on more ships with Press Gangs instead, and let China carry the land portion of our military for the upcoming war.



Trade route time! Milano finished a trader and I sent it to Lisbon for 16 gold/turn yield, along with a few more handy road connections in the Roman core. That gave my income a nice boost, followed by another trade route becoming available:



This was one of the trade routes that had been running from Firenze to Ostia in order to provide some additional production for the Venetian Arsenal attempt. I re-routed it to Hangzhou this time, choosing to get the +1 beaker and +1 culture along with 11 gold/turn; I preferred that over a flat 14 gold/turn for sending the route to Lisbon. I think 1 beaker and 1 culture are worth more than 3 gold/turn, even with us prioritizing money for upgrades right now. Triangular Trade really is an amazing policy to have running. I have 10 active trade routes right now and 2 more traders finishing in the next few turns to fill out all of the current slots. Rome's income is all the way up to 163 gold/turn, nice! One other cool thing about potentially going to war with England is that we'll be able to capture a lot of Harbors from Chevalier and unlock even more trade routes. They are extremely powerful as you get further into the lategame of Civ6. It's pretty much impossible to run an economy with the level of unit building and upgrading that you have to do to remain competitive without relying heavily on those trade routes.



Speaking of England, their team traded the city of Hampton Roads from Nubia over to England. I'm not sure why they waited ten turns to do so; I guess the idea was to let England build another Royal Navy Dockyard on the water. (Geneva was also renamed to Cape St. Vincent this turn by Chevalier.) As a result, England and Nubia both have 12 cities now. This is going to be one of our prime targets when we go to war again, as it's sheltered from the sea and Chevalier's navy won't be able to play too much of a role here. If we manage to control this territory, it's not much further until we can reach the English core.



Back at home, I've queued up all those builders that I left unfinished last turn. Three of them should finish next turn, and I regret not queuing up another one in Roma as well. I thought that I wouldn't be in Serfdom long enough to finish another builder in the capital, but now it looks like I'll have to stay in these current policies a bit longer to allow Parma to finish its own builder. That's not such a bad thing though; I'm hoping to chop out another builder at Milano and an additional builder at Parma with a stone harvest. That would give me 7 total builders from this round of Serfdom... and it still won't be enough to improve all the tiles I have available. You always seem to need more builders in this game.

I'm continuing to dump science into Military Science for the moment to avoid obsoleting anything. I'm quite pleased when it comes to research rate: two libraries are finishing next turn and that's 8 beakers/turn with Rationalism in place. On the civics side, Colonialism is now 1 turn from finishing and I'm holding it in reserve until I need my next policy swap. That's probably about 3 turns from now when this current round of builders are finished. Then I'd like to run a brief period of Limes for city wall chops before obsoleting it by finishing Civil Engineering after Singaboy passes be the boost. And I also need a spot of time in Professional Army to upgrade my frigates into quadriremes, at least some of them anyway. I'd like to have about 7 or 8 frigates in place when we attack Nan Madol. I think we can do that in roughly six or so turns, I'm moving units in that direction right now.



In the south, I've peeled off two knights and a musket currently in the southern ocean to go deal with the barbarian camp. Along with Singaboy's musket, that should be plenty to clear the spearman. Napoli did finish its builder, and unfortunately Parma will need a few more turns to do the same. Unfortunately it's down at the end of the city order, and I'm not sure what to do about that. Just going to have to wait in Serfdom for a few more turns, I suppose. Palermo also probably should have trained a builder instead of a trader, I could have had another city do that. Oh well. I'll probably do the Bath district there next until I'm in Press Gangs again. Napoli did finish its builder and it will be mining hills and chopping jungle for the time being. I'll also have a cocoa resource for Singaboy in a few turns, although it doesn't look like he needs it at the moment.

I think that's all for the moment. Hopefully we'll get two turns in today since it's the weekend.

[Modo]

And I also need a spot of time in Professional Army to upgrade my frigates into quadriremes, at least some of them anyway.

If that were possible it would force a concession right there, flaunting your wealth like that.
But seriously now, it will be an interesting war for every remaining team as England / Nubia are now on the wrong "side" of a sandwich.

[Singaboy]

T132:

Rome sure has some nice trade routes going. I think, I want some of that gpt
Well, you can't have it all. I switched off Astronomy and am going to finish square rigging in 2 turns as next turn, my last quadrireme will be done. After that, I am going to go for mass production and the industrialization as laid out by Sulla. Colonization is 2 turns away from completion. Which turn will Rome be sending this over? I am going to be ready for my builders in 2 turns. Would it be possible to finish colonialism then? I could line it up with civil engineering and then go full steam for nationalism.

I am now producing plenty of district buildings, Beijing stopped 1 turn short of the arena as I don't need it right now. I rather save the maintenance and am building yet another university, which takes quite some time. Pagan is starting on its campus, though it takes forever. However, I am waiting for Press Gangs before starting to build some naval units there and then chop for the 100% bonus.

Now for the biggest news of the turn, I managed to get Germany locked out of the settler spot
Look at this. My horseman was able to jump over the crossbow to block the landing of the settler. Archduke could now never reach the canal site before my settler. However, he could be angry enough to settle the other spot SE of my horseman which would block the settling of any canal city. That's why I brought in another horseman and I can then perform the move in green next turn, blocking his settler from moving at all. In the meantime my settler will be able to settle the canal spot in 4 turns. That canal city will be one crammed city and tough to defend though. Good luck with this.




In the east, I drafted another two horsemen and have now 8 of them. I think, next turn, I will finish with additional 2 horsemen for a total of 10. I can then use any faith to draft crossbows before they get obsolete. The battering ram has to be produced by Acre. That shouldn't be an issue as the city will get pretty productive soon. I think, a total of 5-6 crossbows should be enough together with 10 cavalry. It will be expensive enough to upgrade all those units.

In three turns my knight will be able to fight that barbarian camp. By that time, Rome's own units might be there already.

[Modo]

The ink on the treaty that prevented several Chinese cities from being pummeled by German forces has not dried yet and China already snatches the canal for themselves.
Germany will not be amused...but then again they are the only ones not amused

[Kerberos]

Speaking of England, their team traded the city of Hampton Roads from Nubia over to England. I'm not sure why they waited ten turns to do so; I guess the idea was to let England build another Royal Navy Dockyard on the water. 

Didn't you reach some sort of agreement with other teams to not trade cities between team members besides on the turn the city was founded or captured ? 

Not as exploitative here as German -> Russian |free huge border pop| -> German city swapping obviously , but still feels cheesy. Maybe they forgot, long game and all. Or maybe i'm remembering that agreement wrong.