Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[Sullla]

Hmmm, I don't know if I would use the phrase "difference in timing" so much as "difference in pacing", if that makes sense. The biggest change is that Multiplayer games tend to play out slower than Single Player games, because Single Player games are so heavily based around attacking the AI and stealing their stuff. That's the way you accelerate your growth curve: declare war, out-maneuver the tactically inept AI in battle, take their settlers, take their cities, take their districts, etc. One of the reasons why I've been setting up so many of the Epics/Adventures to be peaceful in nature is because sucker-punching the AI and absorbing their empires is so clearly the best option in normal Single Player games. Many people at CivFanatics suggest opening the game with three or four slingers, under the assumption that they will capture whatever they need from the AI's inevitable war declarations. It's a very different way to play the game, to say the least.

Here in Multiplayer, that sort of thing wouldn't work because human players can defend themselves against an early cheese rush. You actually have to build your own settlers and builders and so on, which slows the pace of the game down noticeably, and in a good way. The AI also goes after the Great People and wonders in rabid fashion, whereas in this game we haven't seen anyone claim either. Nor has anyone completed a district yet. There's been much more focus on expanding and building stuff that completes the various tech/civic boosts. We've also seen relatively little in the way of military builds so far, less than I was expecting. I'm surprised that my paltry little army of 2 warriors and 3 slingers remains tops in the game in power; I thought I would be behind in military at this stage of the game. I've been out of Agoge policy for the last 15 turns after all. Apparently everyone else has been running a low-military opening as well though, which suits me perfectly fine. The AI always has large armies in the early game, by contrast, since they get free starting units. Overall then, very different pacing and mostly in a good way.

The new turn wasn't ready when I woke up, but Yuris played and passed it on to me about 15 minutes later. As a result we still managed to finish Turn 55 this morning:



Here's the smorgasbord in the middle of the map again. Teh is in the process of retreating his units back home, Yuris has backed off, and TheArchduke is pulling back in the west. We're like a group of boxers all retreating to our respective corners. I think that means the scouting phase of the game is coming to an end and we're entering into the cold war phase. For what it's worth, I think this was a missed opportunity for Yuris. He could have taken his three Eagle Warriors and slammed them into teh's new city, and there's very little that teh could have done to stop that. Teh had two slingers for defense - two slingers! They have all of 5 melee strength; they likely would have been one-shotted by the promoted Eagle Warrior. And teh's city with 10 strength would have died almost instantly too. By now though, teh either has Archery tech or is very close to it, and he has enough gold to upgrade his slingers to archers. Teh also has retreated his warrior back into his territory, where it can fortify in Mainz and increase the defensive strength of the city. With that combo in place, he likely has enough to hold out now. I'm very glad nothing happened, but as I said, a missed opportunity for Yuris.

Aquileia grew to size 2 last turn, and had to spend one turn working a crummy 1/1 plains tile. The borders expanded to the horses tile this turn, and I was able to pick up the vastly better 2/2 yield:



Just as Arretium is a nice size 3 city, Aquileia is quite good for a size 2 city. The food surplus is +4.4 per turn with the amenities bonus, production is already 6.3 per turn, and I'll grow another size in 5 more turns. The city is actually outgrowing its cultural ability to grab useful tiles, heh. The good news is that the tile picker is smart enough to grab the forested hill tiles on the next two border expansions, although only because of the faith that appears on the tiles as a result of being next to Mount Everest. That will give Aquileia four good tiles between the oasis, the horses, and the two grassland hills, enough to last it for quite some time. The builder that's currently in progress will pasture the horses, then chop and mine whichever one of the two hill tiles gets picked up by border expansion. I'll funnel the chop into Ancient walls with the +100% policy card in place (opened up by finishing my current civics research into Defensive Tactics) and that will be enough to complete the walls instantly, with some sweet overflow into another build of my choice. I'll have to see how much overflow I get; it might be worthwhile to produce one horseman with the +50% mounted unit policy card if I can land it essentially for free. Horseman + Great General + battering ram = dead city state. Yeah, that might be just the ticket.



Yerevan would be my target for that particular move. My builder has finished scouting out this area, and it seems pretty clear the city state has three warriors and one builder to its name. The city center only has 16 strength though and no walls, which makes it pretty easy pickings. (Cities have 10 base strength + 3 strength per district + 3 strength for being a civilization capital.) I'll bring the builder back to my territory over the next few turns and have him ready to use his last charge as soon as my fifth city gets founded. ETA is still Turn 50: three more turns for the settler itself and two turns of transit time. I think I'll improve the spices tile first because that's what the city will be working at size 1, and there's no reason to pasture the cows or mine the iron until the city reaches size 2. The builder out of Ravenna can handle those tile improvements. (Do I get props for good planning here by having Ravenna work on the builder in advance of this city needing it? With no Slavery civic, Civ6 heavily rewards planning things ahead of time.)

I just barely missed out on finishing Masonry tech by about 1 beaker. It's not a huge deal, although after another night's worth of thinking about it, I do believe that swapping off the Commercial district in Arretium for a battering ram is the way to go. I'll do a little more number crunching tonight but will likely make that swap when the tech finishes next turn.



Internationally, teh and TheArchduke both grew a pop point and that was it. They each have 10 population to my 15 population, and I think that's starting to be a pretty decisive edge. TheArchduke is also doing.... something up here at his third city. He spent 80 gold to purchase a desert tile and then threw down an Encampment district. I'm genuinely baffed by this decision. Gold is a precious resource in Civ6, and TheArchduke has now expended cash to purchase four different tiles in this game, including a mountain tile and a desert tile. Whereas everyone else has over 200 gold in the bank for upgrades or emergencies, TheArchduke has 28 gold sitting in his treasury. That's excellent news for me, and swings the pendulum a bit further back towards the "attack TheArchduke" category. If he can't upgrade his warriors into legions (cost = 110 gold per upgrade), most of the threat of his civ disappears.

Let's think a bit more about this tile purchase at Arpinum. I understand that if he wanted an Encampment district he needed a tile in the second ring, since Encampments cannot be adjacent to the city center tile. And a desert is a good tile to place a district since you aren't losing out on the tile yields. However, TheArchduke is playing as Rome here - surely he doesn't need gold to claim tiles in the second ring, right? His borders will naturally do that anyway from the monument's culture. And why does he need to put the Encampment district down now? To lock in the cost, maybe, but how important is that really? Is he planning on building the Encampment district right now at size 1? This city is not on fresh water and already has the -50% growth penalty at size 1, and will hit the -75% growth penalty at size 2. It needs a granary desperately, which is why I thought that would be the first build. So maybe he's planning on purchasing the granary and therefore doesn't want to invest production into it... but that's not going to happen either because TheArchduke just spent himself down to 28 gold, and granaries cost 240 gold. What's going on here? None of this setup makes sense to me.

TheArchduke also improved his copper tile at Mediolanum with a mine, which triggered the boost for Wheel tech for him. That's all well and good and certainly adds a much needed +1 production in that poor city. However, there's no builder visible on the tile, just the mine itself, which means he used the final builder charge to get that mine completed. And yet TheArchduke still has no luxuries connected, which means his capital and his second city are both suffering from the unhappiness penalty. Since he's getting -5% to all yields in both cities and I'm getting +5% to yields in all my cities, that's a major difference. Why wouldn't he have connected at least the luxury at his capital? Definitely some strange decisions going on in northern Rome. Maybe one day in the future we can fix those problems by annexing those cities into southern Rome.

[fahbs]

Do you think encampments are worth building in general?

I've only been building them if there's only one copy of a strategic resource available for a unit I really need to build. Or if there's a rare super strategic choke point I'll consider building one. Otherwise, the other bonuses don't seem worth the production and district slot.

[Dark Savant]

Hmmm, I don't know if I would use the phrase "difference in timing" so much as "difference in pacing", if that makes sense. The biggest change is that Multiplayer games tend to play out slower than Single Player games, because Single Player games are so heavily based around attacking the AI and stealing their stuff. That's the way you accelerate your growth curve: declare war, out-maneuver the tactically inept AI in battle, take their settlers, take their cities, take their districts, etc. One of the reasons why I've been setting up so many of the Epics/Adventures to be peaceful in nature is because sucker-punching the AI and absorbing their empires is so clearly the best option in normal Single Player games. Many people at CivFanatics suggest opening the game with three or four slingers, under the assumption that they will capture whatever they need from the AI's inevitable war declarations. It's a very different way to play the game, to say the least.

This is the sort of thing you can reasonably expect to be fixed -- is there any reason to believe it isn't being worked on?  (It's possible the designers don't think this is a problem.)

These sort of early problems, together with complaints, have happened with every other Civ game, except for 1.  (Anyone remember Civ 2 version 1.05?)  And back then, there was neither much of an Internet, nor any previous Civ game.  I don't take most complaints about new games seriously for that reason, so I appreciate your efforts on behalf of Civ 6.

[fahbs]

Hmmm, I don't know if I would use the phrase "difference in timing" so much as "difference in pacing", if that makes sense. The biggest change is that Multiplayer games tend to play out slower than Single Player games, because Single Player games are so heavily based around attacking the AI and stealing their stuff. That's the way you accelerate your growth curve: declare war, out-maneuver the tactically inept AI in battle, take their settlers, take their cities, take their districts, etc. One of the reasons why I've been setting up so many of the Epics/Adventures to be peaceful in nature is because sucker-punching the AI and absorbing their empires is so clearly the best option in normal Single Player games. Many people at CivFanatics suggest opening the game with three or four slingers, under the assumption that they will capture whatever they need from the AI's inevitable war declarations. It's a very different way to play the game, to say the least.

This is the sort of thing you can reasonably expect to be fixed -- is there any reason to believe it isn't being worked on?  (It's possible the designers don't think this is a problem.)

These sort of early problems, together with complaints, have happened with every other Civ game, except for 1.  (Anyone remember Civ 2 version 1.05?)  And back then, there was neither much of an Internet, nor any previous Civ game.  I don't take most complaints about new games seriously for that reason, so I appreciate your efforts on behalf of Civ 6.

For all the faults Civ4 had, it was possible to lose to the AI.

It's almost impossible to lose in Civ 6. I'm nowhere near an expert and even Immortal is a cakewalk. The one and only danger is being rushed by their starting army before you get archers or walls in the first 15-30 turns. After that, there's no way to lose. The AI can't conquer cities for a domination victory. It can't figure out tourism micromanagement for a culture victory. It can't target the great people needed for a scientific victory (and even if could, it super easy to sabotage/raze spaceports). It can't win a religious victory because you just declare war and wipe out his apostles/missionaries if you're in danger of being converted.

[Sullla]

Taking these questions one at a time... I think one Encampment district is worth building in Single Player games, since there are several tech/civic boosts associated with them. They also have the advantage of being available much earlier than the other districts that boost production, the Commercial and Industrial districts. I'm hoping to try out the idea of stacking the Encampment + Commercial + Industrial + Harbor pairing at the capital in this game for 1 food / 5 production trade routes, which I think would be pretty strong. But generally speaking in Single Player games, yeah, you don't need more than one Encampment district. Multiplayer could be a different story, as the Great Generals are hugely important to control and having an Encampment district on a contested border could be a big advantage. When you have to create a real defense for your cities, the Encampment district is a pretty solid choice.

It's not exactly a secret that the biggest problem with Civ6 is the AI. It can't handle the One Unit Per Tile rules, and the designers also created victory conditions that the AI doesn't know how to pursue. The tourism victory is the worst offender here; the AI does produce lots of culture, but it has absolutely no clue how to turn culture into tourism, making the victory condition almost irrelevant. Civ4's much simpler victory conditions were a major factor in why the AI could be so much more competitive. And of course on high difficulty levels, the AI would get enough production cheats to be able to brute force objectives and compensate for lack of tactics. Dark Savant has a point though: the AI has been getting steadily better in every patch version of Civ6, and I'm sure that will continue. Will that be enough to satisfy the Realms Beyond community? I seriously doubt it. Frankly, at this point the Civ4 AI wouldn't satisfy this community. Too much time spent playing Multiplayer games has colored the perceptions of what gameplay should look like. So while things are slowly improving, it's not going to be enough for most of the longtimers. (This is why we need to keep bringing in more new faces, as I know there's plenty of people out there who do enjoy Civ6's Single Player and would have a good time in our events.)

There's also a turn to play, Turn 56:



There's nothing particularly interesting going on in the center of the map, and so I'll skip that screenshot. I discovered Masonry tech between turns, making my civ the first one to research 9 techs. I also have 9 civics researched and am not surprisingly first in that category too. (TheArchduke is the next closest: 8 techs and 7 civics.) Masonry opens up two very useful builds in the form of Ancient Walls and battering rams. The walls virtually shut down any offense against a city unless the attacker brings a siege unit or a ram/tower, making them quite useful for exposed positions in Multiplayer. I plan to stick one in Aquileia, my most vulnerable spot on the map, which will also land me the boost for Engineering tech.

Battering rams are support units. They let melee units do full damage when attacking a city with walls; without the battering ram, melee units do 15% of normal damage. Yeouch. I'm pretty sure that melee units also do more damage against cities that lack walls when a battering ram is present, although I want to do some testing to prove that. Needless to say, it's a good idea to bring one or two of them along. The best report demonstrating this in practice is Behren's winning Adventure Three report, which is why we had a sort of unofficial gentlemen's agreement not to play as Scythia in this game. Basically, whatever the actual defenses of a city might be, if you bring some battering rams along it will fall quickly.

I swapped over to a battering ram in Arretium.



Yerevan is now up to 5 warriors, sheesh. That brings it up to 100 power in military scoring, higher than any of the players in this game. Beware the city states! I still think I can take this spot without too much trouble, hopefully with a horseman and a gaggle of warriors to put the location under siege to prevent healing. If not, then with a couple of legions a little bit later. With the Great General, a horseman will have 40 strength, and that plus a battering ram will slice right through Yerevan's defenses. (The city's strength is only 16 when a warrior isn't camped inside, and I would wait until that was the case to attack.)

The other story here: TheArchduke researched Mysticism civic after he picked up his government, then put the free envoy in Yerevan. Whaaaaaat? I can't understand why someone would want to drop an envoy in here for +2 faith instead of in Cultural city-state Vilnius for +2 culture. It makes no sense at all. TheArchduke definitely has contact with Vilnius, he just walked a unit past their borders. TheArchduke also didn't use the Diplomatic League policy to get the 2-for-1 envoy deal that he could have scored. I'm going to have to give this move the weed smiley.

This was a busy turn for international news. Teh gained a pop point (to 11 total) and Yuris gained two population, for a total of 16 pop. That's one more population than I have, although I must point out again that he did whack a city state for one of those locations. It's a little harder when you have to build the settlers from scratch. Still, kudos on a job well done; Yuris has almost as much science as me now (since I get +2 beakers from Stockholm), albeit a lot less culture since he's not playing as overpowered Rome. Yuris also did this:



Say goodbye to his whole treasury: zero gold in the bank. That's a very reassuring move, as it means there will be no Eagle Warrior into swordsman upgrade coming any time soon. Not that Yuris has iron connected yet, but he could always settle for some and you only need 1 source of iron for upgrades, not 2 like you do to build swords outright. Yuris makes 13 gold/turn right now, and it will take a while to build up the treasury once more. He spent exactly 210 gold, which is almost certainly a builder purchase. Nothing else lines up quite right, although I suppose he could also have gone on some kind of crazy tile-purchasing spree out there in the fog. In any case, that's one less worry for me.

Teh and TheArchduke both added slingers this turn, nearly pulling even with me in military score. (I have 85 power, Yuris has 84, and they both have 80.) Since I have been out of Agoge policy since Turn 39 (!), I'm honestly amazed that I'm still in first place. Anyway, teh now has 1 warrior and 4 slingers while TheArchduke has 2 warriors, 2 slingers, and 1 scout. I have to point out that teh built his last two slingers out of Agoge policy, which he cannot run since he's in Classical Republic and has the +2 Great Scientist points policy in the Wildcard slot. Those slingers are very cheap at 35 production, but that's still getting rather inefficient to build two of them without Agoge. I expect him to finish Archery tech any turn now.

I am halfway to my Great General, 30/60 points done as a result of 13 turns spent running Strategos policy. It should pop around Turn 70, and I'll try to target roughly Turn 75 for hitting the barb city, then Turn 80-85 for hitting another player. I think I can get everything to line up correctly on those dates, just barely. I don't think I'll manage 660 gold for 6 warrior to legion upgrades, but I think I'll be able to reach 550 gold for five of them. 5 legions, 1 horseman, 2 battering rams, and a Great General should make for a pretty solid invasion force. We'll see how many units everyone chooses to build over the next 30 turns.

[shinghand]

What is a good unit number / composition when going on the offensive in MP?

Thanks for the regular updates so far, hope to see some spicy    action from you in the coming turns!

[Sullla]

Shinghand, I really have no idea how many units would be needed to make an effective attack in a Multiplayer game. I suspect it will be similar to Civ4 though, where it's not a matter of absolute numbers but rather having decisive force in the right place at the right time. I'll make another comparison to Civ4 as well: if you can get a full generation ahead in military tech, you should be able to win a significant victory. In Civ4 terms, that would be something like rifles/cavs against medieval units - any time you see that, you know it's going to be a massacre. Here in Civ6, if I have swords/horses and the other side only has warriors and archers, it's going to be a similar slaughter. Same deal for knights/muskets against horses/swords. If you can get a generation ahead in units, the strength differential reaches a point where defending becomes very difficult. If anything it might be even harder to stop someone who pulls ahead in Civ6, since the combat formula is so brutal once the power differential increases and there's no Slavery/Nationhood emergency units to pull out of your cities. I'm hoping to attack with a half dozen units that will have a total strength around 49 after applying the Great General and Oligarchy bonus; the defender will need units of at least 40 strength to have a legitimate chance. Archers and warriors won't cut it.

I had a chance to play Turn 57 this morning:



The road connection is now finished between Arretium and Aquileia. It only added two road segments, on the copper and rainforest tiles east of Arretium, but having a road on those tiles is highly useful. Units can transfer between the two cities much more easily now, essentially 2 turns of movement to get from one theatre of action to the other. With luck, that won't be needed any time soon.



This is slightly concerning. Yuris has two Eagle Warriors off to the east of Aquileia at the moment. I don't think that he's planning on attacking me, but I moved over my third slinger in this direction just to feel a bit safer. If he were to attack, I would upgrade all of the slingers to archers, revolt into Autocracy government (because my current civic would get boosted to completion by a war declaration), and swap into the policy that boosts city defenses by 6 points. That would give Aquileia a defense of 26 points, and that along with three archers for returning fire would likely be enough to hold this location. I emphatically do not want to do this though, as it would spoil all my long term plans for an attack based around upgrading warriors into legions. I just need about 8 more turns before my builder can chop walls to completion at Aquileia, and then I'll be enormously safer in this part of the map. Again, I think Yuris is just probing around here with his units, so hopefully nothing will come of this. Hopefully.



In my core, the capital is going to finish its settler next turn and then go back to that Encampment district. There's going to be some nice production overflow from the settler, and I think the Encampment will only take 6 more turns after the settler is done. That should synergize with my return to Agoge policy, and then I can get back to turning out some more warriors for legion upgrades. Horseback Riding tech also finishes next turn for my 10th research of the game, and then its on to Apprenticeship barring any more unpleasant surprises.

There was some significant news internationally. Teh finished both a tech and a civic this turn, with the tech almost certainly being Archery. I'm positive that he was delaying the completion of Archery to get out more slingers, and indeed teh's power went up again this turn to reflect another slinger build. He has now passed me in military power and has 1 warrior + 5 slingers. If you're wondering how teh could build a slinger on the same turn that he discovered Archery tech, well, the power ratings seem to be delayed one turn from when a unit actually gets built. It probably has something to do with how the production cycle and the Demographics screen are coded. In other words, teh built the slinger last turn and it showed up in the power tracking this turn. He also spent 30 gold to upgrade one of those slingers to an archer, which won't show up until next turn in the power rankings. Got all that? Oh, and I'm also an idiot: teh is playing as Germany and gets a free Military policy slot, so of course he's been in Agoge policy this whole time. Duh.

Yuris picked up a tech as well, although I have no idea what he researched. Nothing from TheArchduke in terms of score points, who increasingly seems to be playing the weakest game out of this group. His numbers have been getting propped up by the free envoy he scored with Stockholm and free Roman culture; without them, his actual civ-wide development has been very weak. TheArchduke still lacks any amenities and his cities are suffering under the unhappiness penalty. I continue to be baffled by what's going on in northern Rome.

[Dark Savant]

For all the faults Civ4 had, it was possible to lose to the AI.

It's almost impossible to lose in Civ 6. I'm nowhere near an expert and even Immortal is a cakewalk. The one and only danger is being rushed by their starting army before you get archers or walls in the first 15-30 turns. After that, there's no way to lose. The AI can't conquer cities for a domination victory. It can't figure out tourism micromanagement for a culture victory. It can't target the great people needed for a scientific victory (and even if could, it super easy to sabotage/raze spaceports). It can't win a religious victory because you just declare war and wipe out his apostles/missionaries if you're in danger of being converted.

This makes it sound like Civ 6 was designed to be too complicated for the AI.

The AI in Civ 1-5 can always just fall back into a spaceship victory, if nothing else.  The first time a Civ AI ever actually tried to actively pursue any other kind of victory was later in Civ 4, and that involved absorbing fan-made patches.  I also don't think anyone really wants Civ 3-style simplification just to enhance the AI's competence.  If the AI is fixed so that it will win a spaceship victory, but isn't good at any other kind, there's plenty of precedent for that.

It also shouldn't be such that a rush is the best way to play the early game; in all of Civ2/SMAC/Civ3/Civ4/Civ5, it's only a good idea in specific circumstances.  And reading the reports for this game, it's clear that only the AI and not the game rules need to be fixed.  Reading Civ 6 reports against the AI makes it half sound like Civ 1 and its chariot rushes.

[Sullla]

I've said on a number of occasions that the mechanics in Civ6 work quite well overall. It's the AI that doesn't know how to use them properly, not the gameplay itself. This is basically the game that Civ5 should have been, a version of Civ5 where the internal economy actually makes sense and we avoid situations like in the current Civ5 PBEM with players deliberately not capturing cities that they could easily take. I'm hoping that we'll get some more Civ6 MP games down the road so that I can enjoy reading and lurking too.



I knew that teh had a settler out somewhere on the map, since I had seen his overall population drop about a half dozen turns ago. This... this was not what I was expecting to see. Teh has crammed Frankfurt into the last city-eligible gap in the center of the continent. This city is also not on fresh water, and can't qualify for an aqueduct either; Mount Everest doesn't count as being a mountain for purposes of building an aqueduct. (Note: there is a Cultural city state next to teh's capital, and that city state has a 1 in 3 chance of being Mohenjo-Daro, which would give all his cities the freshwater bonus if he becomes suzerain. That could help explain this settlement.)

More likely though, teh grabbed this spot because it was all that was left over, and he wanted to secure a second source of horses. Frankfurt's placement has a couple of significant strategic results. For starters, it ensures that teh will also be able to reach 6 cities eventually, with another location available in his starting peninsula plus his starting city state to capture. Yuris looks like he has no opportunity to expand beyond his current 4 cities, and that's going to be a problem down the road. Second, I am now shielded from Yuris by teh's territory. If Yuris realizes that he's running out of space and wants to go after someone, it won't be me. And third, movement through the center of the map is mostly blocked now. No one is signing Open Borders with one another, and cultural borders block much of the map's center now.



Here's a zoomed out view with the settler lens turned on. Everything is all red at this point - the land is gone, gone, gone. There's that one spot by the iron that I will probably settle down the road, since it will be a pretty nice city with a Bath district, and that would get me to 7 cities, 8 cities if I could manage to capture Vilnius as well. I also want to highlight just how awesome the Aquileia location has proven to be. It's locked down control of BOTH of the southern horses resources for me - no one else can control those tiles unless they capture Aquileia. I also secured a fresh water spot and locked out anyone else from doing the same, while securing a further backline city and making it hard for anyone else to capture Vilnius. Not impossible, but certainly pretty darn tough. One more tile in my cultural control southeast of Aqulieia and all land-based access to the city state is blocked. Now I just need to get those walls in Aquileia for some peace of mind and overall security.

Teh surprisingly purchased the tile east of the horses for his new city. I'm not sure why he wanted that particular spot; perhaps for additional tactical security? But I could still just attack from the horse tile in my territory, so I don't quite get it. Maybe this will become clear in time.



The settler is finally done at the capital, and it regrew back to size 5 on the same turn, never dropping a population point. This would be a cunning disguise of my settler build in the score tracking... if anyone else was doing score tracking, and if I wasn't going to just plant the city anywhere in 2 more turns. Anyway, the city will be going on the tile where the builder is standing, and hopefully that city state warrior won't delay the founding by moving onto the wrong tile. I'm going to build a plantation on the spices tile with the final builder charge here, since that's the tile that the city will be working at size 1. The other impending builder out of Ravenna can connect the cows and mine the iron resource.

6 more turns to the Encampment district at the capital, which should be the first district of the game to be finished. Afterwards, I'll be back into Agoge and can pop out some more warriors to get upgraded into legions.



Teh has burned through about half of his treasury in the last two turns. He spent 110 gold this turn, which I'm pretty certain was 80 gold for the tile purchase and 30 gold to upgrade another slinger into an archer. I'll know for certain next turn when the military power gets updated on the one-turn delay. TheArchduke finished a tech, and there's no way to know what it was, other than the fact that he still doesn't have anything in the "Currency" column of techs. I'm hoping that he is not rushing for Iron Working; I'll know if he actually connects an iron resource or builds/upgrades a legion. Keeping my fingers crossed that neither happens.

[Sullla]

Turn 59:



Nothing too consequential here in the center of the map, other than the fact that the other players seem to have backed away from Aquileia. Between my city placements and my suzerainship of Stockholm, I think I have pretty good vision of what's taking place in the center of the map. I'll also use this opportunity to mention that I sunk a turn of research into the very cheap Sailing tech last turn, which I could see would knock out just short of half the cost. I will get the boost next turn when I settle my fifth city, and then I will finish Sailing and overflow back into Apprenticeship tech again.



Back in my core, I decided that I would have my builder stand on the coastal tile where the city is intended for settlement. With two city state warriors wandering around, there's too high of a chance that one of them ends its turn on that tile, and I don't want to delay the city's founding. I will move onto the spices tile next turn and throw down the plantation on Turn 61.

The tricky decision is what to build in Ravenna after it finishes its current builder. The most obvious choice would be a warrior for upgrading, but I don't want to do that without the Agoge production boost. If I can't figure anything out, I will either start another builder or sink some production into a district while waiting for the next policy swap.



Here's another look at my upcoming tech tree. I need to line up the following tech to make a successful attack: Iron Working (for legion upgrades) and Shipbuilding (for embarking at sea). With the tech boost for each, they will take 4 turns and 7 turns respectively. I also want to get Apprenticeship tech (10 turns) for the extremely useful passive boost to mining tile yields, and that's where I invested my research this turn. I do wonder though if it would be better to skip Apprenticeship for the moment and try to accelerate my attack plans for researching the other two techs first... Could I get everything lined up and in place to attack on Turn 75 instead of Turn 85? I'm going to think about that today and try to figure out if it's possible. There are a lot of moving pieces that would have to be set up correctly: having all the techs needed (with boosts), getting the civic policy swaps done correctly, having the gold in place for upgrades, setting up the tactical movements, etc. This would also mean delaying an attack on any city states until after attacking a neighboring player. Still, if I could put 4 legions + 1 horseman + 2 battering rams next to TheArchduke's capital in 15 turns, with a Great General boosting their strength, that would absolutely be worth delaying Apprenticeship for a bit.

Another quiet turn internationally. Yuris gained another population point to put him at 17 total pop (compared to my 15 total pop). He is doing well for himself on the vertical growth front, in part because he's only built 2 settlers to my 4 settlers, but I'm less sanguine about his prospects going forward. TheArchduke also researched a tech this turn, and based on the fact that his little icon on the tech screen is now even with everyone else, it must be something from the "Currency" column. Since TheArchduke also threw down a Commercial district at Mediolanum this turn, I think that's a confirmed Currency research. That's good news: he doesn't have Horseback Riding or Iron Working techs yet. With luck, I can hit him before he gets either.

I'll also mention that I've more or less decided that if I attack someone, it will be TheArchduke. Teh is simply playing too well; he upgraded another slinger to archer this turn, and I don't fancy invading him. (He's also swapped from Agoge to Conscription policy to avoid paying maintenance on those archers, in another smart move.) What's the most basic rule we've established from Civ4 Multiplayer games? Find the weak neighbor and take them over. TheArchduke looks like the weak neighbor by a growing margin. The fact that it's tactically much easier to invade him is simply a bonus. I'm going to ponder over the merits of trying to time an earlier attack today and see what I can come up with. It's a bit risky but the payoff could be game-winning.