[SPOILERS] scooter tries Civ6

[scooter]

Turn 16

Super short report this time.





This scout is determined to be obnoxious. I’m just hoping it doesn’t mess with our settler pathing. I probably should have moved NW onto the plains hill rather than NE onto the geothermal fissure like I did - that way I give it more of an out to hopefully leave my borders.





So much for second place. No idea how I’m in 4th - guess everyone else scored religious city-states. Guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

[Sullla]

On the score thing: you are last in turn order, so anyone else making 1 faith/turn will be ahead of you on the scoreboard. It's more likely that a couple of other players are also running God King and making the same 1 faith/turn as you, but lots of Religious city states are always a possibility. You'll find out in time.

As far as what to build next: you could always start a builder and work on that for a couple of turns, then swap into slingers or warriors when you finish Craftsmanship and unlock Agoge policy. I always try to avoid training military in the Civ6 early game unless I can have Agoge policy in place since the +50% bonus production is so enormous. Be aware that you will have to drop Discipline to run Agoge though, so that is an issue. This is a real case of "how much do you want to risk" in terms of going for more military versus a builder next.

Other things to think about: what would you use your 4 builder charges on if you do get a builder out? And you're nearing 100 gold in the bank, what's going to be your first purchase? Given the fact that you have all this culture generation coming in already, I'd suggest a purchased builder (in addition to one trained out of the capital) might be a good call. That could be worth 60% of Stonehenge immediately and your city could probably knock out what's left over pretty quickly.

Side note: is there any way to get Reyna in place for a five charge builder? I can't recall when the first governor unlocks in Gathering Storm and whether that would be at all practical.

[Alhazard]

First governor is available after the state workforce and its way too late. Liang gives the +1 builder change.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I believe State Workforce, Early Empire, and then each Government Plaza building each gives one, including the Plaza itself. So there's 4 titles available around the Political Philosophy era.

[Alhazard]

Hmm Early empire does give one also. I must have forgot.

[scooter]

Sounds like the governor option is out at least for the first builder or two. I think we definitely want that ASAP though.

On the score thing: you are last in turn order, so anyone else making 1 faith/turn will be ahead of you on the scoreboard. It's more likely that a couple of other players are also running God King and making the same 1 faith/turn as you, but lots of Religious city states are always a possibility. You'll find out in time.

Good to know. The score table is gradually becoming less mysterious to me.

As far as what to build next: you could always start a builder and work on that for a couple of turns, then swap into slingers or warriors when you finish Craftsmanship and unlock Agoge policy. I always try to avoid training military in the Civ6 early game unless I can have Agoge policy in place since the +50% bonus production is so enormous. Be aware that you will have to drop Discipline to run Agoge though, so that is an issue. This is a real case of "how much do you want to risk" in terms of going for more military versus a builder next.

We probably do want to be in Agoge, in which case yeah that suggested build order makes sense. Worth noting that thanks to the inspiration, Foreign Trade is only a 5T research, so we can get a second civic swap in short order as needed.

Other things to think about: what would you use your 4 builder charges on if you do get a builder out? And you're nearing 100 gold in the bank, what's going to be your first purchase? Given the fact that you have all this culture generation coming in already, I'd suggest a purchased builder (in addition to one trained out of the capital) might be a good call. That could be worth 60% of Stonehenge immediately and your city could probably knock out what's left over pretty quickly.

Builder costs 200g currently, so we're a ways from that still, but once we hit that I definitely agree it's the way to go. I’m guessing we’d hit 200g what, around T30-ish depending on a few things. I’d guess right around then we’ll want Stonehenge, so we may very well want to buy the builder straight into our new city around then and then we have 60% of Stonehenge as you said. From there we just need to come up with the other 40%. That’s 72 hammers or 2 more charges + 18 hammers.

One of the issues we do have here is we’re burning so much science into Astrology that we actually lack a lot of techs for builders to actually have other things to do. We do have Animal Husbandry, but at this point I think we’re going to have to tech Astrology without the natural wonder eureka, or at least we cannot count on it. So realistically, we may be looking at a start like this:



* Builder 1: built from capital. 2 charges on deer and horse improvements, head to City2, 2 charges into Stonehenge
* Builder 2: bought for 200g from city 2: 4 charges into Stonehenge.

Side effect of camping the deer and horse is that it gets us extra gold and therefore gets us that purchased builder quicker. I could see an argument for skipping the deer camp as it’s pretty out of the way, and rather saving a charge for perhaps a stone quarry at city2 since I think we could get to Mining by then. That actually may be better. That gives city2 a 2/3 tile to run, which sounds more beneficial than a couple extra gold/turn. 


If this plan is sensible, we definitely have time to slip in a unit or two (once in Agoge) from the capital during this time, as our first builder isn’t going to have a ton to do right away. The potential rewards from military are probably quite high too: city-states, BW/Archery/MilTrad eurekas, etc. Any holes to poke in this theory-crafting?

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Let me do some quick math checks: 

I think the optimal timing to finish Astrology is right when you're ready to plonk down Stonehenge - which ideally is the same turn you found city #2, so, what, turn 23? It looks like a 5-turn march counting on the map, but I could be wrong. With Astrology due in 9 turns, yeah, we really can't afford to switch off and hope for a natural wonder.

Building the henge: 6 builder charges at 15% each = 90% of the cost, leaving the city to scrape up - I can't look it up at the moment, 180? So 18, city will have 3 production, so 6 turns (and the charges will take 5 turns minimum since you can only spend 1 charge per builder per turn, and the builders can't stand on top of each other). So Stonehenge is a 6-turn build minimum from the time you start producing it, meaning earliest possible ETA is turn 29 - which is really damned good. I think Singaboy managed something like turn 30ish with better builders? 

Coming up with the gold will be harder without clearing a barb camp. 6 per turn and I don't see new sources coming in soon. At the moment you'll need 19 turns to save up the 109 more gold needed, so not until turn 37 can we purchase a builder. :o The deer camp adds enough GPT that I think it's worth spending a charge, especially since you'll be working that tile anyway. There'll be enough builders later for the Masonry eureka. The only other way early game I can think of to get more gold is meeting a Commercial city state (and hoping no one else has first) or clearing a barb camp for a cool 40 gold. 

Speaking of barb camps and wonders, we also might want to think about our era points. Ideally we hit either a Dark Age or a Golden Age - normal ages are the worst of both worlds, with no Golden Age dedications but also no Dark Age policy cards. The loyalty is totally irrelevant. We'll get lots of points for building wonders, exploring the map, and for clearing those nearby barbs, so I'm thinking it might be worth starting to calculate how we can reach 22 points by turn 60.

[scooter]

Turn 17




We were 7h short of the settler, and this configuration gets us 8h, so I swapped back to this to get some growth since we’ll want to regrow to size 3 as quick as we can given the tiles we have available to us. I’ll keep us on the silks tile regardless once we drop to size 2, because we want to finish Craftsmanship ASAP.





The scout moved west this time. I think I’ve probably used my warriors poorly thus far, but what’s done is done. If I’m able to nail that scout, great, but my current inclination is to get this warrior into the capital, heal real quick (or skip this part), and then move it north a bit (being replaced by unit(s) from the capital under Agoge) so that we free up the northern warrior to explore and/or clear that barbarian camp. Of course this is slightly TBD based on the next-build discussion we’re still having. Speaking of, seems like a good time…

I think the optimal timing to finish Astrology is right when you're ready to plonk down Stonehenge - which ideally is the same turn you found city #2, so, what, turn 23? It looks like a 5-turn march counting on the map, but I could be wrong. With Astrology due in 9 turns, yeah, we really can't afford to switch off and hope for a natural wonder.

Building the henge: 6 builder charges at 15% each = 90% of the cost, leaving the city to scrape up - I can't look it up at the moment, 180? So 18, city will have 3 production, so 6 turns (and the charges will take 5 turns minimum since you can only spend 1 charge per builder per turn, and the builders can't stand on top of each other). So Stonehenge is a 6-turn build minimum from the time you start producing it, meaning earliest possible ETA is turn 29 - which is really damned good. I think Singaboy managed something like turn 30ish with better builders? 

Coming up with the gold will be harder without clearing a barb camp. 6 per turn and I don't see new sources coming in soon. At the moment you'll need 19 turns to save up the 109 more gold needed, so not until turn 37 can we purchase a builder. :o The deer camp adds enough GPT that I think it's worth spending a charge, especially since you'll be working that tile anyway. There'll be enough builders later for the Masonry eureka. The only other way early game I can think of to get more gold is meeting a Commercial city state (and hoping no one else has first) or clearing a barb camp for a cool 40 gold. 

So yes, I’d love to be able to start Stonehenge the very turn I plant the city, but I don’t know how I’m going to get a builder up there by that point. Even if I rush my warrior back up to the barb camp and clear it, I’ll need more than 40g to get to 200 by T23. And I’m not getting a builder out of the capital, building two camps, and getting up to Stonehenge by T23. I can’t get it up there even if I skip the camps and rush straight up there. So something does have to give, and most likely it’ll be the Stonehenge date. I just don’t see a way to start plugging in builder charges as soon as T23. I can go back and check and see how fast I can get a builder right now if I don’t wait for anything else. I’ll check on that later when I get a chance.

It does feel like either way it’s worth clearing that camp to speed up my purchased builder date, so probably the correct thing to do with my southern warrior is just to send him north ASAP injured and all, and have my northern warrior go back and clear that camp. The southern barbarians have moved away (and I didn’t know they couldn’t capture your capital until someone said that a few posts back), so maybe that’s the way to go.

Speaking of barb camps and wonders, we also might want to think about our era points. Ideally we hit either a Dark Age or a Golden Age - normal ages are the worst of both worlds, with no Golden Age dedications but also no Dark Age policy cards. The loyalty is totally irrelevant. We'll get lots of points for building wonders, exploring the map, and for clearing those nearby barbs, so I'm thinking it might be worth starting to calculate how we can reach 22 points by turn 60.

Yeah, I’m going to research era points too later today and start looking at targets to hit.

[scooter]

Turn 18




Settler is out, and we're looking at T21 to plant the city. I'm going to go ahead and bring the other warrior up. That scout is still there, but I'm actually going to trust that the city-state will continue to slow things down. I'll keep the northern warrior a step or two ahead since the other is lagging behind, and I'll plan to finish clearing the northern camp. I'll be at 120 gold roughly at time of planting the city. I'll estimate the camp will be cleared by roughly T24, which is roughly another 20 gold from cities and 40 from the camp, and that'll get me to 180g. So we're looking at a builder purchase around T28, give or take a turn.


Meanwhile, I'm hoping the capital can just straight-up build this builder before any military, but we'll play it by ear. If we're able to do this, that'll pop it out EoT23. At the very least, we'll build one camp, which should help ensure we hit that T28 date for the builder purchase. Maybe we'll build two camps, TBD. So I think we're looking at roughly T32-34 or so for Stonehenge completion. I don't actually know - is barb camp gold actually 40, or is it *around* 40? I've tried googling stuff like this, and the Civ6 mechanics knowledge base on the internet is shockingly poor. CivFanatics used to be amazing for this stuff, but unless I'm looking in the wrong place, it's really lacking now.





Just working our best tiles. FWIW, I may get Craftsmanship to within 1T and then pause it until we need to swap to a military build. For example, if I'm able to clear that camp in the next 6T while this builder completes, it makes sense to stay in Discipline. If I need to pause the builder to get a slinger or whatever out sooner, I'll just complete it and get into Agoge.








TheArchduke still completing 0 technologies after 18 turns is definitely odd. Are there any normal reasons why that might happen?

[Banzailizard]

Sometimes people don't complete techs if they are worried about the production cost of districts, or are playing around with the discount formula. Districts cost more as you unlock more techs or civics (whichever is higher, I think its about 7 production per tech?), and the district discount depends on how many districts you have unlocked. However you cannot unlock districts without techs, at least until some classical age ones in the civics tree. My only thought is that he started to research one thing, and then changed his mind as he scouted.