Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[Sullla]

Turn 43 came in this morning on our normal schedule. I started out the turn by moving my warror onto the desert hill tile and... contact!



There's teh's borders, with his second city placed in the exact mirrored Ravenna location where I was expecting it to be. It's the most natural location to choose for a second city on this map, with great minds thinking alike and all that. Note that teh has that pigs resource (truffles?) for his second luxury, which has a yield of 2/1/3 instead of the spices that I have at 4/1. There's an extra gold coin on the tile because it already has a plantation completed. All things considered, I think that the spices are slightly better due to their two additional food, but the extra gold is pretty darn good in the early game too, making this largely a wash. Now that I've made contact over here, it's time to scurry the warrior back home for escort duty on the new settler.

I also completed Military Tradition civic this turn, prompting a policy swap:



With my settler finished, I dropped Colonization policy in favor of Strategos and its +2 Great General points/turn. This is not a policy that I want to be running too much of the time, as I continue to believe that it's a weaker option in comparison to the production-boosting policies. However, I do want to make sure that I can snag that first Great General as it's integral to my plans, and for the moment I essentially have a free policy slot because I don't need to keep running Colonization while I'm not building settlers. The only other strong option here right now would be Agoge for the military production bonus, and with me in first place in power, I think I can sneak through the next ten turns or so without needing it. I really do want to get the Encampment built at some point in the next 15-20 turns though, specifically so I don't have to spend more time in Strategos policy than necessary. Right now, I'm thinking that I can have the capital go builder into slinger (yes, without Agoge in place sadly) and then work on the Encampment until my next civic finishes, then pick up Colonization again to turn out a settler, and then probably go into Autocracy after that for more Military policies. This is still very much contingent on what the other players are doing, of course. The next few civics are not going to be boostable, and the swaps will have some considerable time between finishing.



Here's an overview of my current territory. That scout from TheArchduke will be annoying if it tries to move into my territory, even though it can't enter my borders without declaring war. If TheArchduke tries to get too frisky with it, I'll consider declaring war myself and trying to kill it, although I would prefer to avoid that. No need to initiate a destructive buildup with my northern neighbor when I want to be in peaceful expansion mode. My slinger is holding the northern desert hill pass through the mountains because that's the tile my settler will need to move through in a few turns. The settler itself is now out on the map and heading east, with another half dozen turns to reach its destination. At least the roads are genuinely helpful in crossing over those rivers.

Roma was able to get its builder down to just 3 turns with the overflow from the settler, and I was happy to set that as the next production choice. Note that the city is now benefitting from positive amenities, and thus the production is 12.6/turn even without factoring in the Ilkum bonus of 30%. The real production is therefore something like 16.5 per turn. I'll use that builder to mine the jade, mine one of the grassland hill tiles, and then probably save the third charge for use mining the iron hill, which will be grabbed by the borders of my fifth city. The capital won't be getting above size 6 for a very long time and therefore won't need additional tiles improved at the moment. Elsewhere, the current builder is about to quarry the stone resource at Ravenna (triggering the boost for Masonry tech) and Arretium's builder is already halfway done. Development is coming along nicely.



Now that I have formal contact with teh, I have additional information at my fingertips on the international world rankings screen. Teh has six techs researched, the same as me, and just completed his fifth civic research this turn. That means that he also finished the expensive State Workforce civic and will be pursuing Political Philosophy next. His beaker rate is 8.7/turn and his culture rate is 6.8/turn. You can see the comparison to my tallies at the top of the screenshot. Teh is doing quite well for himself in these categories; he's only a single population point behind me at the moment, 9 pop to my 10 pop, and the discrepancy in science comes almost entirely from my envoy at the Scientific city state. I have almost double his culture because, well, I'm Rome and I have the disgusting ability to get three free monuments. Like me, teh also has an envoy with a Cultural city state helping him out in this category.

I can now see teh's power directly, and he has 50 military score. That's almost certainly two warriors and a scout, unless he's been fighting Yuris and has a damaged unit or something like that. I had him pegged at two warriors and a slinger earlier, and I'm happy to see the scout build instead. Scouts don't upgrade into anything useful until rangers a million techs away, and their 10 strength makes them virtually useless in combat. (One note of caution: their 3 movement does give them the chance to snipe builders/settlers if left unprotected though.) Still, I'd rather see a scout than a sliger that's a mere 30 gold away from becoming a powerful archer. Finally, in the mostly useless Religious category, I can now spot that both TheArchduke and teh have swapped out of God King policy and are now getting 0 faith/turn. I can't see what pantheon teh chose for himself, as it did not appear as a gossip item on the diplo screen like it did with TheArchduke, probably because I didn't have contact when he established his pantheon.



Here is the actual diplo screen with teh. He has two luxuries connected, the coffee at his capital along with the truffles at his second city. I can also see that the second city is named Cologne (I guess none of us are being that creative in this game on the names). Perhaps this is why teh hasn't shown up with a third city yet, because he went for a trader and an additional builder in his capital (?) I'm surprised that I haven't seen another settler appear in the population tracking from teh, although it's possible that he did produce one that was hidden by a pop increase, the way that TheArchduke did. It's been almost 20 turns since he founded his second city now. If he's still looking weak 25 turns from now, perhaps I'll choose teh instead of TheArchduke for an attack, although the logistics are easier to pull off with my northern neighbor. (Of course, TheArchduke doesn't need iron to build his legions, so Germany may be a better target than northern Rome regardless.)

There's one other item of note to mention this turn: TheArchduke's population dropped by a point from 7 to 6. That means he finished a settler in his capital this turn, and his third city will be incoming soon. I expect that it will go on his northern coast somewhere (the equivalent of my mirrored southern coast), where there's some good land... but no fresh water. That will limit the effectiveness of any city placed there in the early game. Alternately, perhaps TheArchduke will make a play for the northern oasis, which would be fine with me if it pulls him into conflict with Yuris. Fortunately I already have control of the key contested land between us, and TheArchduke has no chance of taking my city away without a whole heck of a lot more military.

[Sullla]

After two slow days, we're off and rolling again with some fast turns. Turn 43 was this morning and Turn 44 came back to me in the evening.



By and large, there wasn't a lot taking place in my territory this turn. TheArchduke moved his scout up onto the iron tile, and I shifted a slinger down from Arretium to compensate. In another one of those weird vision rules, my cultural borders can't see the enemy scout, and my slinger on the desert hill tile can't see the scout... but my settler 4 tiles away has vision on the unit. That makes no freaking sense at all. I'm really starting to think that settlers might be worth building as recon units to accompany an army in the later stages of the game. Anyway, if TheArchduke tries to get too pushy with this scout, I fully plan on attacking and killing it. (Maybe I could even get the "kill a unit with a slinger" boost for Archery tech, heh.) Hopefully he'll back off and I can move my units forward in peace.

The settler also moved up two tiles, while my current builder added a quarry on the stone resource, triggering the boost for Masonry tech. That one was pretty easy to get but still nice to have regardless. Unfortunately Ravenna wasn't able to finish its trader a turn sooner even with the extra production point. It's currently on 6 production: 1 from the city center, 1 from the marsh, 1 from the spices, 2 from the quarry, and 1 from Urban Planning civic. That's not bad for a city with zero hill tiles. Still chugging along on that trader unit for the moment, as my other two cities both work on builders.



Strategos kicks in 2 Great General points from my policy selection, and Classical Republic adds +15% to get a result of 2.3 total GPP. I should be almost halfway there on the Great Person by the time that I make my next civics swap. No one else has any Great Person points to date, as no one has constructed a district and I'm the only one in a government with a Wildcard slot. I wonder when the other players are going to start going for these targets, and what gets emphasized. The first Great Engineer would be really nice to have, since it would grant a free wonder that could turn into Colosseum or Petra. The first Great Scientist would also be super nice: a free library in a Campus district when used and +1 science in all libraries for the rest of the game. If wanted to turtle and play a purely peaceful game, that would be the one to pursue.

Since this is such a quiet turn, let's look at the upcoming civics tree:



The initial civics in the Ancient age en route to the governments at Political Philosophy have some very powerful options. Urban Planning, Agoge, Ilkum, Colonization, and so on are great policies with major production bonuses. Then after reaching Political Philosophy, the follow civics tend to be pretty blah, much weaker stuff. I think the developers intended the player to be chasing a religion and building wonders here, but in practice those are usually suboptimal decisions, and it's better to stick with the earlier policies. So for the immediate future, there's not too much of interest here, until reaching the Renaissance when a ton of awesome policies open up again.

I'm making the decision to concentrate on the top side of the civics tree. I'm going to be chasing after Merchant Republic government at Exploration civic as my longterm goal, and that civic can be reached while skipping about half the tree. The only thing I want on the bottom side of the civics tree is Meritocracy policy at Civil Service, and I can backtrack for that when I have the boosts for the stuff at the bottom of the tree lined up at a later date. In the immediate future, the stuff I want is actually amongst the Military policies on the top part of the tree. Military Training will get boosted when I construct that Encampment at the capital, and it has a useful policy in the form of Veterancy (+30% production for Encampments and their buildings) that I'll use for the barracks at the capital. Defensive Tactics has two policies that could be helpful: Bastions (+6 city strength and +5 ranged strength) if I get attacked, and Limes (+100% production towards city walls). The latter policy I will use to construct walls in my exposed fourth city, since a single forest chop with that policy in place will knock out the cost of the walls. Ancient walls are also a critical tech boost for me: half the cost of Engineering tech to get to my unique district Baths faster.

These policies are usually seen as weak choices, and they are against AI opponents that can't threaten the player militarily. Against humans it's a different story. This stuff is more useful than +100% Campus adjacency bonuses from Recorded History civic, here on a map with almost no mountains and with no one having built a Campus district yet. Or Theatre districts that are too expensive in the early stages of the game. I do want that stuff, eventually, but pushing on to the military policies (and Feudalism) is more immediately useful.

Score tracking stuff: teh's population dropped this turn, which means he finished a settler in his capital. He's already too late if he planned to go for the oasis spot in the middle of the map, as I have a settler a turn ahead of him, plus roads in place that his non-Roman civ lacks. More likely, teh is heading for the mirrored double river region which TheArchduke and I already claimed on our side of the map. I don't think either teh or Yuris have cities there yet. Teh also saw his culture increase by 2 points this turn despite the population drop, which means he either built a monument or got an envoy with the other Cultural city state in the center of the map. I'll have to check this next turn.

TheArchduke didn't found his third city yet, but he did research another tech and I'm pretty sure he picked Bronze Working. Do you see those little indicators at the bottom of the scroll bar in the above image of the civics tree, the little "2" and the compass symbol? That shows the most advanced tech/civic that each player has researched on each of the two trees. From centering the scroll bar, I can see that teh's most advanced tech is Currency, and TheArchduke has something from the Masonry/Bronze Working/Wheel trip. Out of those three, Bronze Working is the only one that makes sense as a research choice. Unfortunately, this means TheArchduke is likely to be pursuing Iron Working and therefore won't be a good target for me to attack. Teh might be shaping up as the easiest mark, since he has no unique unit and a tough path to access swords or horses.

Finally, Yuris is back up to tops in military power again, which means he either built another Eagle Warrior or (more likely) his units are done healing from his successful attack on his next door city state. I'm hoping that he won't go after Stockholm at the top of the map, since it would be tough for me to stop Yuris from taking the city, and I have envoys invested in that place. I'll become the suzerain of Stockholm in about 6 more turns, and that will give me vision up there and a better idea of what's going on.

The lurker thread is also getting a lot of attention right now, so either my posts are more entertaining than I think, or something big is shaping up on the map that I'm not aware of. All is pretty quiet in my part of the world.

[gunnerxtr]

Hey Sullla, thanks for the updates. Enjoying following along with this game and in particular, your write ups!

[shinghand]

Hi Sullla, long term lurker on RB Civ. Never felt very confident of participating in any of the Civ IV MP games here (too inexperienced and unable to commit) but hopefully, with a fresh start in Civ VI, I can get into the swing of things for some of the SP games here. Have yet to purchase my copy of Civ VI but hope to do so in the next month or two, now that some of the problems seems to be (somewhat) fixed.

What are your plans for settling in the near future, any dotmaps and why you selected those locations?

[rho21]

In another one of those weird vision rules, my cultural borders can't see the enemy scout, and my slinger on the desert hill tile can't see the scout... but my settler 4 tiles away has vision on the unit. That makes no freaking sense at all.

My theory is that the game design logic is something like this:

• Problem: Settlers can't settle within 4 tiles of another city... but what if we don't know there's a city there due to not having explored it? Won't players be confused?
  
• Solution: Let's make the settler vision range large enough that you can always see any city that might be preventing you planting a new city.
  
• Side-effect: Won't players be confused by having a larger vision range than expected?
  
• Solution: Nah, most of them won't notice. Those that do mostly won't care as it's a positive thing for the player.
  

I hate this sort of design decision.

[Anastenazontas]

In another one of those weird vision rules, my cultural borders can't see the enemy scout, and my slinger on the desert hill tile can't see the scout... but my settler 4 tiles away has vision on the unit. That makes no freaking sense at all.

My theory is that the game design logic is something like this:

• Problem: Settlers can't settle within 4 tiles of another city... but what if we don't know there's a city there due to not having explored it? Won't players be confused?
  
• Solution: Let's make the settler vision range large enough that you can always see any city that might be preventing you planting a new city.
  
• Side-effect: Won't players be confused by having a larger vision range than expected?
  
• Solution: Nah, most of them won't notice. Those that do mostly won't care as it's a positive thing for the player.
  

I hate this sort of design decision.

Actually, I think it is an AI issue. I have been participating in the Vox Populi mod for CiV V and while the A.I. has been highly improved and regularly crushes me nowadays, it still has a fundamental flaw: it is unable to do a good threat assesment of things in the fog of war. Similarly, I believe that too many casual player would hate to loose their settlers to a horseman/scout in the fog, even if they were not escorting it properly, and as such giving the settlers a better vision range helps those players mentain their settlers.

By the way, Vox Populi is proof that the A.I. can learn how to 1UPH and how to plan naval invasions and land wars. The state of the A.I. in CiV VI is frankly depressing when seeing the work that LoneGazebo and Iteroi have done on Vox Populi

[Bacchus]

Improving AI is a lot of work for fairly little return, only the top range of players notice or care. The UI problems are far more depressing I would say.

[Sullla]

Wow, so many new faces that I haven't seen around the forums before. Thanks gunnerxtr, shinghand, and Anastenazontas!

Shinghand: to answer your question, the current settler is moving to the oasis location in the south-central part of the map. I'll have to post a picture on a future turn showing the exact spot with the settling lens turned on. It's one of the very few fresh water locations that hasn't already been claimed; the specific tile that I want is the one northeast of the oasis. The spot itself is very exposed to a potential attack (and thus the reason I want to get city walls in there down the road), but the terrain itself is quite strong, with the oasis tile, a horses resource, and a whole bunch of forested grassland hill that get a faith bonus from being next to Mount Everest. This location is also enormously valuable from a tactical perspective, giving me complete control over who can move through the southern part of the map. My goal is to plant my flag there before anyone else, set up a strong defense, and dare someone else to take it away from me.

The next spot after that will be on the southern coast by the iron resource, the cows, and the second spices resource. That spot does not have fresh water, and I've therefore delayed it until after the more contested spots in the middle of the map. By delaying it, I can also hopefully start on a Bath district almost immediately to solve its housing issues; I may have to go granary into Bath, which would also be fine. Those will be my initial five cities, and together they will eat up most of the land in my quadrant. I'm expecting future cities after that to be taken at the point of a sword, either by conquering city states or by conquering other players.

On the huge vision granted to settlers: I could believe either theory, granting vision for the player's benefit to avoid losing settlers to barbs or it being a cheat to help the AI under the hood. Perhaps both, since this doesn't have to be an either/or thing. The weird aspect to me is the fact that there's no indication via promotions or interface that settlers get this bonus vision. It should be mentioned in some way, right? Very odd. Anastenazontas, I'm also disappointed at how poorly the AI handles the tactical side of the game, and I've heard that modders have done some excellent work in that regard. I generally don't like mods, but perhaps I'll have to take a closer look at some of the AI-boosting ones when the Civ6 patching process settles down. It's a shame that Firaxis won't simply take the AI coding done by the community and apply it to the base game; Civ4 did this with Blake's AI fixes, and even earlier by taking some community mods and patching them in to produce the Demographics screen and bar graphs that we know so well. (Am I the only one who remembers the original crummy graphs from the release version of Civ4? I can link an image later when I'm at my home computer.) Civ6 would benefit enormously from patching in some of the community user interface mods, at least as a selectable option.



Here's our overview screenshot for Turn 45. The tile where the settler is heading is located northeast of the oasis as mentioned above, directly northeast of where my warrior is currently standing. Unfortunately, TheArchduke moved his scout another tile deeper into my part of the map. I've moved up my slinger in a warning gesture to him; if he continues going further into my core, I'll pin this scout between this slinger and the one that I have coming out of the capital next, then attack and destroy it. Two slingers are more than enough to kill an isolated scout, and there's nowhere for this unit to go once it moves deeper into my territory. Again, I don't want to initiate conflict with TheArchduke, but I'm not going to allow him to run a combat unit around in my back lines either.

All three cities are still working on their current projects. The builder finishes in the capital next turn, followed by another one out of Arretium thereafter. Ravenna's ETA on the trader dropped by 2 turns from last turn, so I guess that was another case of the interface not updating after the quarry was improved. The current builder will drop a planatation on the bananas resource next turn to solve the housing shortage (temporarily) at Ravenna. And if there's one positive note in all this, the scout that TheArchduke has moving around hasn't spotted my approaching settler.



Here's how you can check to see how many envoys each player has with a city state. I used Stockholm as the example since it's the only one where more than one player has sent an envoy. Checking the Cultural city state to the south revealed that teh does not have an envoy there, so he must have finished a monument last turn in his second city of Cologne. I was thinking about this, and realized that he must have gone monument-first at Cologne, and it only just completed after about 20 turns of production. That might sound wrong, but think about it this way. Cologne is located at the Ravenna site, and teh does not have my pantheon for +1 production on the marsh tile. He was also running God King policy for most of that span of time, and therefore wasn't getting Urban Planning's production bonus. That means 1 production/turn from the city center tile, and eventually another 1 production/turn from the stone resource and the truffles. But even those last two tiles would be very slow for his culture to pick up, since he's not Rome and the other civs get an anemic 0.3 culture/turn in their new cities when starting out. Monuments cost 60 production, and that means it's totally reasonable that it would have taken this long to build a monument in such a low-production city.

This is just about the most visible demonstration possible of why Rome is so powerful in Civ6. The free monument jump-starts every city off to such a fast beginning, and all that bonus cultural accelerates your development through the civics tree in a way no other civ can match. It makes me think of the free policies that Poland gets in Civ5, and one of the things T-Hawk has been discovering in his solo fast sciencegames is that nothing else can quite match that bonus. While I don't think Rome in Civ6 is quite as powerful, the effect is still similar in many ways.



Finally, since we looked at the civics tree last turn, here's a look at the upcoming tech tree. Currency is the target at the moment; I'll have to swap off of it next turn and start putting beakers into Archery tech to avoid wasting them when I land the trade route boost. Then I want Horseback Riding en route to Apprenticeship, which is unfortunately off screen to the right past Currency. In the exact opposite of my current civics tree, all of the upcoming techs are easy to boost, and therefore their true cost in beakers will be less than expected. Following Apprenticeship, I want to pick up Masonry then push for Engineering tech where I can unlock my Bath districts. I also need to research almost all of Iron Working without finishing it - that last part is crucial. If I finish Iron Working tech, then I can't build warriors any more because they will be obsoleted in favor of legions. The goal is therefore to research almost all of the tech, build cheap warriors for upgrading, and then finish Iron Working when I plan to attack. I similarly have to make sure that I don't obsolete the Agoge policy and lose the +50% production bonus on Ancient/Classical units, although the civic that obsoletes Agoge comes a bit later.

The other key target on the tech tree is Shipbuilding, since that one allows units to embark at sea. It's quite expensive at this stage of the game, and the boost can be tricky to pick up, since galleys are rarely built. I have a plan to trigger this one as well: chop at forest at my fifth city, the one that will go on the southern coast, and use the +100% production on naval units card to turn that forest chop into two galleys. Boom, instant completion of that particular boost and almost 200 beakers of science saved. Juggling all these research projects will be a bit tricky; if necessary, I will delay Engineering tech to make sure everything else is ready for my Turn 80-85 window to attack.

Thanks again for the feedback. It makes the thread more entertaining to update when it's not just me posting.

[Anastenazontas]

Thank you for reporting. Since I lurk I don't want to comment on strategy issues, because any questions I ask might influence you in thinking that certain things are happening. Enjoyable and very thourough read. Keep at it!

[AverageBear]

In another one of those weird vision rules, my cultural borders can't see the enemy scout, and my slinger on the desert hill tile can't see the scout... but my settler 4 tiles away has vision on the unit. That makes no freaking sense at all.

My theory is that the game design logic is something like this:

• Problem: Settlers can't settle within 4 tiles of another city... but what if we don't know there's a city there due to not having explored it? Won't players be confused?
  
• Solution: Let's make the settler vision range large enough that you can always see any city that might be preventing you planting a new city.
  
• Side-effect: Won't players be confused by having a larger vision range than expected?
  
• Solution: Nah, most of them won't notice. Those that do mostly won't care as it's a positive thing for the player.
  

I hate this sort of design decision.

If I remember correctly, one of the initial developer videos had mentioned that the initial settler would have extra vision range to enable better decision making when starting out. 

I believe that has become the default vision bonus for ALL settlers. It's probably a bit of sloppy coding and definitely should have been part of the Civilopedia.