Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[Sullla]

Shinghand, that's a good question, and I'll see if I can draw up some of my longer-term plans the next time that I'm on my home computer. The overall plan for development is relatively simple though: each city is placed to get a cheap Bath district to cover housing and amenities, which should let pretty much every city get to about size 10. Each city also gets a Commercial district to open up trade routes and supply enough gold to fund everything. Most cities will also get Campus districts, even without much of anything in the way of adjacency bonuses, since they are needed to advance through the tech tree once your empire starts hitting the midgame. And my production cities will also be getting Industrial districts, enough to make sure every city is covered by at least one factory/power plant for the regional bonus. I haven't tried to go into more depth than that because a lot depends on what happens with this upcoming attack plan. If I can successfully grab TheArchduke's territory, I will end up with about a dozen cities, and it won't matter too much how I manage them if everyone else is sitting on 4-5 cities for themselves. We'll see.



This is the nervous turn at Aquileia from a tactical standpoint. I moved up my builder to improve the horses, covering it with a warrior and with a bunch of slingers on the tiles behind. Hopefully teh will not start shooting at me when he plays his turn. I've tried to signal that I'm only looking to connect my horses resource, but you never know how someone else will interpret some of these moves. The last thing I want right now is a skirmish with teh over here on the east side of the map. Aquileia itself has become a very nice city for this point in the game, up to 9 production/turn with Urban Planning and the trade route bonus factored in. It's certainly outpacing TheArchduke's city of Arpinum, which finally limped to size 2 this turn and will now stagnate further at -75% growth until a granary can be added.

I finished my first district in the form of the Encampment at the capital, thus boosting Military Tactics civic to near completion:



I swapped off the civic to Drama and Poetry, of course, since I want to hold the policy change in reserve for use a couple of turns later. There's the big red Encampment district located to the northeast of my capital. It actually costs 1 gold/turn to maintain, which is pretty annoying when I'm trying to save money for upgrades. Again, I really could have used the extra income from that second copper tile up at Arretium; an additional 2 gold/turn for the last 20 or so turns would have come in handy.

My cities are building warriors right now, lots of warriors for upgrading, with the Agoge bonus to make them 50% cheaper. Arretium completed one warrior this turn, and when these three cities finish their current builds, I'll have the four warriors that I intend to upgrade and attack with. That allows my two previous warriors to remain in place and reduce potential suspicions from the other players. (Not that it's bad to have more warriors sitting around; they cost no maintenance and I can upgrade them into legions with the half-cost upgrade policy later for 55 gold each. Then I can turn them from legions into muskets later on with another cheap upgrade.) The capital will probably turn out another builder next because I'm starting to outgrow my supply of improved tiles, and then it's likely on to the Commercial district after that.

Research continues to run on the expected target pace, with Iron Working about to be boosted to near-completion and Shipbuilding looking at an ETA of roughly Turn 70 after I land that boost as well. Two cities grew this turn (Ravenna and Hispalis), boosting my empire close to 20 beakers and culture per turn. I'm tops in the game in both categories right now, by a lot in culture and more modestly in beakers. About the only deviation from my hoped-for plans is that I will only have one battering ram for this planned attack, not two, which I think will be fine given the complete lack of city walls anywhere. Roughly 10 more turns until I have units landing at TheArchduke's capital if everything continues to go as planned.

[Sullla]

Apparently there's a new patch out today for Civ6. It doesn't look like anything is going to affect our game too noticeably; this is a land-heavy map so the buffs to Harbor districts are less likely to play a major factor. As a Roman player, I heartily approve of swords being nerfed back down to 36 strength again; apparently someone forgot that buffing swords from 35 strength to 40 strength left Rome (and especially Kongo) in a sad place for their unique units. Now the legions are back to being an excellent unique unit once more.



Apparently I played my turn this evening less than an hour before the patch went live, so there are none of the modest new changes visible in these screenshots. The biggest news is the turn was teh not opting to do anything aggressive; my builder was able to pasture the horses and scamper back over to the west without issue. I recalled the rest of my guarding units as well, but not before snapping this screenshot. As expected, there are two archers on defense at Frankfurt and another archer on defense in Mainz (I can tell from the city defense rating; it would be 10 if there wasn't an archer present sitting on the city center tile). There's also a random Eagle Warrior from Yuris hanging out over to the east, which no longer poses any realistic threat to Aquileia. By the time that it could reach my city, the walls will be up and I'll have a horseman ready to crash out of the gates. I'm genuinely wondering what Yuris is doing with the unit over there - why doesn't he recall it back home? Teh and I are both plenty well guarded over here. That unit is just asking to get picked off at the start of a war and die uselessly.



Back in my core, the builder added a mine on the iron resource at Hispalis, boosting Iron Working tech in the process. I swapped back to Iron Working for this screenshot, but did *NOT* finish the tech itself, swapping back to Shipbuilding again afterwards. Once I finish Iron Working, I cannot build warriors any longer, and that's bad. I'll finish the trio of warriors in production right now and then finish the tech after that.

Rome ended up in a seriously sweet spot on production: 38/40 on the warrior. This lets me get in another turn of production with the full Agoge bonus (worth roughly 24 production) and then overflow all of it into the next build, regardless of whether it also gets the Agoge production boost. I think I need a builder here next, to mine the two grassland hills south of the city and then quarry the stone resource over at Hispalis. Don't forget that Apprenticeship tech is on the horizon, which will turn all of those grassland hills into excellent 2/3 tiles. I'm going to hit the housing penalty at size 6, which does mean that I'll need a Bath district here soon too. That or I can build the Barracks improvement for +1 production and +1 housing, which isn't a bad investment for 80 production while I'm waiting on Engineering tech. We'll see what turns up.

Ravenna desperately needs a Bath district, as it's now reached 6/6 housing and the -75% growth penalty. I might have it invest some time into a builder that I won't finish until after Feudalism civic is done and I can complete the thing with 5 charges instead of the default 3 charges. That worker could then help chop towards the Bath later on. Or maybe I just bit the bullet and start working on a district at Ravenna, since it's going to take a long time no matter what. It's a low-production city so that may be the most prudent option.



I actually microed Arretium after taking this screenshot because I saw that I could get it to grow next turn by swapping off the plains hill tile. It's pretty much always worth doing that, since you get the missed production back by growing a turn sooner, plus a small amount of extra science and culture. Anyway, I pasted this screenshot of the score tally together to demonstrate that I've opened up a nice little lead over the rest of the field. No one else has quite the same combination; Yuris has the population (Empire) points but not the techs/civics, TheArchduke has the techs/civics points but not the Empire points, and teh is somewhere in between. I think that this all flows from 1) playing as the overpowered Roman civ naturally, but also 2) simply having more production than the other players. I'm able to keep pulling further ahead because my civ simply builds everything faster. Landing the pantheon I wanted at an early date has been a godsend, and playing as Rome snowballed me into all those production-boosting civics at a very early date, faster than anyone else could match. Did you know Yuris *STILL* hasn't reached Political Philosophy and established a formal government yet? I got there on Turn 37, almost FORTY turns ago! Yes, it's good to be Rome in Civ6!

Internationally, teh picked up two population points and TheArchduke grew his capital a size and researched a tech. Based on his research time and his previous research of Currency tech, I think that he grabbed Horseback Riding tech here. I am praying that he's currently heading for Apprenticeship, which would be a completely natural tech path... and which would also leave him helpless against my planned invasion. I've been crunching the logistics today, and I really think that I can have all my units next to his capital on Turn 74, land on the shores Turn 75, and capture northern Rome on Turn 76. The execution will be tight but I think it all lines up. That's not too much longer from right now. If TheArchduke doesn't have Iron Working by that time, he will be dead instantly. Even if he does, he'll only have gold to upgrade two legions in a best case scenario, and I'll have more than twice that, plus a Great General. Building legions from scratch at 110 production each is out of the question. It's not happening. Similarly, if he spends any more gold on cash-rushes or bought tiles, it will also be over instantly, because he won't have enough money for warrior to legion upgrades.

Overall, I'm cautiously optimistic at this point based on what I'm seeing now. Still far too many ways for things to go wrong though.

[Sullla]

One other thing I saw in the patch notes that came out today:

Siege units with bonus movement (e.g. from Great Generals or Persian surprise war) can still shoot after moving as long as they still have 2 MP.

This is a major boost to the power of siege units. Their requirement of needing to set up before firing is their greatest weakness, since it always lets the defender get in the first shot. With this new ability, Great Generals become even more powerful; you can move in melee units to provide a beefy front line and then move up a siege unit and fire on the same turn, before the defender gets to do anything. Two shots from a siege unit of equal tech level will decimate virtually any city defenses, so this is an absolutely massive advantage. (Also: Persia even more stupidly broken and overpowered than before, heh.) This initial war is coming too soon for me to have siege units, but I might have a chance to make use of this later in the game. Catapults are Classical-era unit and will qualify for the boost from this first Great General; the second Great General will likely be from the Medieval era and it would apply to muskets and bombards. I would love to demonstrate the strength of 3-move siege units that can move and then fire - here's hoping we get the chance at some point later on.

[Sullla]

Another fast turnaround as we continue to get through two turns per day. Yuris is going to be traveling this week and that should slow things down a little bit, but this game has been moving wonderfully throughout.



Turn 66 was another quiet setup turn for me. Here in the center of the map, my builder moved onto the forested hill tile in preparation for next turn's chop. I'll be able to get the maximum possible overflow from this chop, with the walls themselves nearly finished and the +100% production card from Limes in play. It will be essentially like building a horseman using the old overpowered +100% Mounted unit production policy from the first release version of Civ6. No movement from any of the other players in the center of the map.



Roma and Ravenna both finished warriors this turn. I'm actually glad here that the military power increases don't show up until the following turn, as it will slightly delay my military buildup to the other players. My power is going to start spiking enormously in the next 5 turns as all these units finish and I carry out my upgrades. I'm trying to keep the border regions looking quiet and peaceful as usual, so that if the other players watch the Demographics and see the power rating increasing, TheArchduke will think I'm going after teh, and teh will think (correctly) that I'm going after TheArchduke. Of course, I don't know how closely the other players are actually watching the data on the World Rankings screen. This is the first Civ6 Multiplayer game on our website, and the information is somewhat hidden in the interface. If I'm lucky, TheArchduke isn't watching that closely and will see the complete lack of action around Mediolanum as a signal that nothing is going on... until it's too late.

I set the capital's overflow into a builder that will take 4 turns to produce; I need to mine those grassland hills south of the capital now that it's about to reach size 6. After thinking things over at Ravenna, I selected a builder there as well, although unlike the builder at the capital, I won't be finishing the one in Ravenna until after I complete Feudalism civic and can slot in the Serfdom policy for 5 builder charges. I'll probably do the same thing at Aquileia, which has enough improved tiles for the moment but will need another forest chop (and some plains farms) down the road. Arretium will finish its warrior next turn, then finish its battering ram on the turn after that. I've held the battering ram at "almost complete" status because it costs 1 gold/turn in maintenance and I've needed every penny saved for these warrior -> legion upgrades. Next turn, I'll change my civics research and set up another policy swap, allowing me to drop Limes (+100% defensive buildings production) in favor of Maritime Industries (+100% naval unit production) as I juggle the two forest chops that are about to take place. And I'll also replace Agoge's +50% melee unit production in favor of Conscription's -1 gold maintenance cost per unit, just in time to cover the expense of that battering ram.

Note that my warriors are getting into position on the western coast. Most of them will upgrade to legions on Turn 70 and then hop into the water on Turn 71. I will only have enough money on hand to upgrade three legions on Turn 70, however, so one of the warriors will embark on Turn 70 and then upgrade while already in the water on the fish tile on Turn 71. It's the only water tile in my borders, and therefore the only place I can pull that little trick. Then everyone moves out together on Turn 72, arrives next to TheArchduke's territory on Turn 74, and disembarks back onto land + declares war on Turn 75. Hopefully his capital falls on Turn 76. Going to be an exciting result one way or another ten turns from now.



Amusingly, I will be at 59.9 / 60 points on the Great General next turn. Well, I don't actually need the unit next turn so it doesn't really matter. Still pretty funny regardless. I'm extremely pleased at how the Great General is arriving almost exactly at the time that I need it, showing up on Turn 68 when my units are preparing to leave for their attack on Turn 70/71. This is another place where the power of Rome as a civ is on display: no one else could have reached the governments and Strategos policy this quickly, since no one else has so much culture. You need to reach the first governments at Political Philosophy because Strategos is a Wildcard-only policy, and the initial Chieftain government lacks Wildcard slots. The other way to get a Great General very early on would be through constructing an earlier Encampment district, and potentially using the "Encampment district project" (whatever it's called) that generates Great General points. However, sinking more production into the Encampment at an earlier date, and especially building the district project, would have slowed down my expansion significantly. Without five cities on hand, I could not have amassed the beakers I needed to get all of the techs required for this plan to work: Shipbuilding to embark units, Iron Working for the legions, Horseback Riding for the horseman, Masonry for the battering ram, and so on. I think Rome is the only civ that could have brought all this together in this particular way. It's been highly satisfying to date, and it will be even more satisfying if it all works out as I hope.

Of course, you could also ignore all that and play as Sumeria/Scythia and just rush your opponent to death. That wouldn't make for a very fun game though, and I suggest that future Realms Beyond Civ6 MP games keep them on the unofficial ban list to prevent exactly that. (And this had better be a good showcase for Rome, because I wouldn't let them into the pool of available civs either.)

[Rowain]

Of course, you could also ignore all that and play as Sumeria/Scythia and just rush your opponent to death. That wouldn't make for a very fun game though, and I suggest that future Realms Beyond Civ6 MP games keep them on the unofficial ban list to prevent exactly that. (And this had better be a good showcase for Rome, because I wouldn't let them into the pool of available civs either.)

Here lies a huge problem for Civ6. The Civs are far too unbalanced to make playing on a balanced map with different civs a good thing. It is not only Sumeria/Scythia and rome you have to add at least Australia and Persia too. I fear the only way to have a balanced game is by using the same civ for all players.

Concerning the GG: Greece with its free wildcard-slot might be able to give rome a run for the GG

[fahbs]

I would play against Sulla only if he was forced to play as Spain 

[Brian Shanahan]

I would play against Sulla only if he was forced to play as Spain 

But if he played as Spain, he'd recreate the hydra and driwn you in gold from his monk economy!

[Sullla]

It doesn't look like we're getting another turn this evening, between the weird stuff that the patch did to teh's computer and Yuris' travels. In that case, might as well address some of the recent comments here in the thread.

Rowain: I don't think that civ balance is that big of a problem. Kick out the "overpowered so that people will buy them" downloadable content civs, and the rest of the bunch isn't that bad. Rome is the only one that I think is too strong from an economic perspective; maybe you could make a case for Germany, but their power spike is delayed long enough that there's time to deal with them and come up with a response. Sumeria and Scythia might be OK on bigger maps too - I don't expect every future PBEM to be played out on something this tiny. Let's say that for the next PBEM, we used a list that looked like this:

Arabia
Aztecs
China
Egypt
England
Germany
Greece
Japan
Russia

I think you could make a legitimate case for any of those options, and that provides a sizable enough pool of choices for a while. No, there's not going to be as many options as Civ4 with Unrestricted Leaders, but we also have to keep in mind that Civ4 didn't ship with that feature at all (it came in Beyond the Sword), and Civ4 launched with only 24 leaders and 16 civs. Right now, Civ6 has 23 civs with 24 leaders counting all the downloadable extras, and 19/20 without them. I think it's a pretty fair comparison to Civ4 at this point in the game's lifespan.

Also an excellent point about some of the possibilities that Greece's extra Wildcard slot might open up. I hadn't considered that as a possibility until you mentioned it. It would be very cool to see someone use that extra policy to get a "free" Great Person of some kind, or just ensure that they get the first pantheon with virtuall 100% certainty.

Fahbs: I'd better do a good job in this game because I inevitably always give away all my tips and tricks by posting so much. That's what happened in Civ4: Speaker and I kind of wrote the book on how to play Civ4 MP here at Realms Beyond, and then everyone else learned and used it against us over and over again. But it was all part of the fun, and that's the whole point of these games.

Brian: Did you invoke HinBudJew the Magnificent?

[antisocialmunky]

Looking forward to the naval invasion.  I'm sure it will go successfully because nothing bad has ever happened with Roman naval invasions.

(but serious check out all the documentaries on Invicta's channel)

[Sullla]

Indeed, antisocialmunky. Romans at sea - what could possibly go wrong?



Turn 67 was a particularly fun turn to play. First of all, this was the first turn that I played under the new patch, and there are a couple of small interface improvements visible. Here in the fourth patch, Firaxis has finally managed to implement the request that SevenSpirits posted about on the week of Civ6's release: the ability to add small 2D images to the tech and civic trees. The little silver star next to the Shipbuilding tech now indicates that it allows land units to embark, for example. It's honestly kind of amazing how much better this makes the whole tech and civic trees look; now you can see at a glance where some of the key techs/civics are located instead of needing to mouseover them one at a time. This is something that really should have been in the base game on release, but better late than never. Maybe we'll finally have a decent interface by 2019.

The capital grew to size 6 this turn and hit the housing penalty for the first time. I also had to work the jade tile for lack of other improved tiles, and while it's not terrible by any means, I definitely want the builder unit currently in production to go mine those southern grassland hills for additional production. I think I'm going to construct a Barracks here next; it only costs 80 production and I can slot in a policy that gives me +30% production on Encampment districts and their buildings to make it even cheaper in effective terms. The barracks is worth +1 production and +1 housing, which will give me just enough housing to keep growing for a little while longer before I research Engineering tech for Bath districts. The 1 Great General point/turn won't hurt either; I don't want just the first Great General, I want the second one as well. None for anyone else! The buildings that the Encampment district opens up are honestly pretty good in Civ6, and doubling up Encampment + Industrial districts makes for a strong production city.

Over at Aquileia, we had a tutorial this turn on how to utilize (exploit?) production overflow in Civ6:



For starters, I've been building Ancient Walls the last few turns with the Limes policy in place for +100% production on defensive structures. It's something that you never need to use in Single Player games, but is actually an excellent policy here in Multiplayer. It makes walls very cheap indeed to build, and walls are critical for defense against other humans. Somewhat unintentionally, I ended up at 79/80 production into the walls here at Aquileia, which is absolutely perfect from a production standpoint. I've already been getting +100% production while building the walls. Now I can get +100% production into whatever else I overflow into for my next build, magnified by the effects of the forest chop I have lined up.

I pasted in the production bonus from the forest chop at the bottom of the screenshot. It says that a forest chop is worth 54 production, which gets doubled to 108 production, then that gets added to the 79/80 production currently invested into the city walls. Aquileia ends up with 187/80 production, which instantly finishes the walls and then overflows 107 production into the next build:



Yep, the production from chopping forests/jungles or harvesting a resource happens immediately in Civ6. You do not have to wait for the next turn's production cycle - those walls appear instantly on the map. And then I get the real benefit: the 107 production overflow. Say hello to the 1-turn horseman unit that I've been predicting for the last week or so. Manipulating production overflow like this will be crucial to high-level Civ6 strategies in the future. I'm actually not even getting the best return possible here, since you can use a policy for +50% production into Mounted units. Better still would be funneling a forest chop into something where the player gets no production bonuses at all, like most districts. That's what I'm going to do with the second grassland hill forest north of Aquileia, chop that forest and use it for the Bath district in the city. I'll have to see if I can find a way to manipulate overflow to get a production bonus into that chop in some fashion.

In terms of research, I swapped back to Iron Working now that I've finished building warriors. I ended up with 6 of them, and I'm reasonably happy with that amount. My original two are hanging out near Arretium and Aquileia as they've been for the last few dozen turns, while the new four are all on the western coast getting ready to embark. I also swapped back to Military Training civic, as I will now need to initiate a policy swap next turn to drop Limes policy in favor of Maritime Industries for my second forest chop arriving next turn. Going to be doing the same thing at Hispalis next turn, chopping a forest with +100% production to naval units and using it for a pair of galleys to grab the boost for Shipbuilding tech. With the beaker overflow from researching Iron Working and the tech boost, I think that I'll have that tech done on Turn 69. If not, then certainly on Turn 70, and that's what I need to make this invasion work.



Yuris was the biggest mover internationally this turn, as he picked up both a tech and a civic. Based on checking the diplomacy screen, we can see what both of them were. The civic was the expected Political Philosophy, which means that Yuris finally has a government like the rest of us. He selected Oligarchy, the government that only makes sense if you're planning to do something militarily. I wonder if he has some kind of attack planned against teh or TheArchduke upcoming; he can't even reach my borders right now, so I can't be the target. I was expecting him to pick Classical Republic, since he already built a Campus district and seemed to be building upwards rather than outwards.

We can also figure out the tech: Yuris must have gone for Apprenticeship, since the little gossip notification states that Yuris has entered the Medieval era. I suppose it's theoretically possible to get there using some other method, but practically speaking, the tech has to be Apprenticeship. I'm confident that teh is also heading there for his Hansas, and based on TheArchduke's recent tech path of Currency into Horseback Riding, I suspect he is also beelining the same tech. And that makes total sense, since Apprenticeship is very powerful. I have the most research of anyone, and yet it looks like I'm going to be the last one there, heh. Detouring for Masonry, Shipbuilding, and Iron Working will have that effect.

Yuris also built an archer this turn (well, technically last turn). He now has 3 Eagle Warriors and 1 archer, which I don't think teh will find to be terribly scary. TheArchduke remains the weakest in power, and I hope it remains that way. Yuris and teh have also spent gold heavily in the last few turns, with Yuris spending 75 gold on a likely tile purchase and teh spending 160 gold on... something? Maybe also two tiles purchased at 80 gold apiece? He did not get a power increase so he wasn't buying a unit, and I think all the structures cost more than 160 gold. TheArchduke now has the most gold amongst the other players at 146 in the treasury, and I'm praying that he dumps some of that into another wasteful purchase.

Finally, TheArchduke's population decreased this turn, which means another settler popped out of his capital. I'm not exactly sure where he has space to fit another city; perhaps he's set up his northern coast to plant two cities up there? I'm perfectly OK with this: more cities for me to capture.