[Spoilers] The games they are a changin' - Ichabod Civ 6 PBEM 3 as England

[Ichabod]

No fluff, just straight into action.

I think Greece is my best option.

France bonuses seems to be AI based or too late to matter. For the most important part of the game, you are just playing a bland civ. The bonus to wonders implies I'll go for a wonder, but they are all so expensive that I don't think they are worth it.

Greece has some early bonuses and Unique Districts are always nice (for the cost reduction, mostly), but the main advantages I see for it is the hill bias for the start. Hills are key to a good start and, even though we are getting a checked map, this bias gives me a higher chance for a nice Capital. Pericles seems to be straight up worse than Gorgo, but what can you do? The extra civic slot is cool, nothing game changing, but always powerful.

I'm leaning towards England for the novelty factor, since we had two Greeces already in PBEM 2. The Unique Harbour is nice, but it takes a while to get going. The main advantage is the half cost (the extra TR may seem nice at first, but you'll only benefit from that, compared to someone who went for a Commercial Hub, after you finish your own commercial hub, for the extra TR that they won't get -> that makes it basically irrelevant). Coastal bias is not good, I think... Perhaps I should play a game after the new patch, but I doubt it made things that much better. Museum bonus and Sea Dog are likely worthless.

What would make/break England is the Continental bonuses. If I lucked out into a very close different continent, I could get some free hammers and a combat bonus later, but even the best case scenario isn't very inspiring. I can't really settle against human players as you would in a roleplaying SP game, so it's likely I won't be getting much from those abilities.

Important note: England free unit bonus works on captured cities, apparently. This could make a sword attack pretty good, if every captured city meant a new unit. Again, highly situational due to how the bonus works.

Reading a bit more, it seems the rifleman could be a decent unit (it's not a replacement unit, it occupies a void in the tech tree between one unit and its upgrade, meaning it's dominant for an amount of time, considering equal tech). The problem is getting there while everybody else already cashed in on earlier bonuses.

All that said, my brain says Greece, but my heart says Victoria. Also, she's cuter.

What do you think, Pindicator?

Link to my Steam screenshots: http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561...reenshots/

[pindicator]

Well, I think you covered every point I was going to make about our civ situation and then some. I really want to find a reason to advocate for England because it would be fun n to see some variety in these games, but unless we had some assurances that the map would be snakey land masses with multiple continents that we could easily access then I don't see England as nearly as strong a choice. The free melee unit bonus is the part that is really interesting to me - in theory that would help you keep momentum in a mid to late game attack.

Now I want to go look back on the other MP maps and see how the continents line up. I know at least one civ started on a border of continents in the last game.

(I was actually hoping to have America as an option so I could try to convince you to go for their combat bonus combined with an early rush. )

France has all of it's bonuses too late in the game to affect anything, unless there's a midgame wonder strategy we really want to pursue.

So yeah, I have to agree that Greece is smart choice, and England is worth it only if you really want to try England out.

[Ichabod]

Reference:

Since the information about Civ 6 avaiable on the internet is very lacking, I'll use this post to compile important information, avaiable around the forum or tested within the game.

*City States and Envoys

*Envoys gained by completing quests are affected by the Diplomatic League policy, meaning you'll get two envoys from the quest completion, if it was the first one.

*Declaring war on a CIty State makes you lose your active quest and accumulated envoys. Question: Do you lose Envoys by being declared on by a CS? Making peace doesn't restore them. You need to wait 10 turns before declaring peace with a City State.

*England:

*Victoria's ability works only with melee class units. It does not spawn a spearman if you have BW avaiable, but not IW. You can get units that you don't have the strategic resources to build (i.e. swordsman without iron). You get the unit even if you have a unit guarding the settler on the same tile. The spawned unit spawns with full movement points.

*Royal Navy Dockyard is bugged. It counts as 2 different districts for the purpose of Mathematics eureka (my guess is that it has 2 versions of the same district, for the one in the same continent and the one in others - or perhaps it has to do with unique districts). It counts as a single distrixt for the purpose of civic card boosts (like +1 housing in cities with 2 districts).

*Harbor District

*Can be built on lakes, even if a city is landlocked and even if the lake is not adjacent to the City Center.

*Resources

*Settling on a luxury resource gives you the amenity even if you don't have the technology needed to improve it.

*Settlers and City Pop Loss

I'm actually not sure how a population loss works in Civ 6. Do we keep the "percentage of the food box filled" or do we keep the "amount of food filled" when we lose a city size? Hopefully the latter.

The food box maintains the same food amount. After dropping the size from the settler, if the city has enough food in the box to grow (including the surplus from the turn that the settler completes) then the regrowth is immediate and you don't spend a turn at the smaller size. Since the food cost for each additional pop scales up by about 10, there is usually a couple turn window where a settler can be completed without dropping pop.

For an example completing a settler in a 2 pop city: Growth from 1>2 requires 15 food, growth from 2>3 requires 24 food. Therefore on the turn a size 2 city completes the settler if it has accumulated at least 15 food then it will not drop to size 1. The 15 food is just subtracted from the amount in the box. I tested a case where a settler completes just before growth with 23 food in the box (as close as I could judge), then complete the settler simultaneous with growth. The result was that the food box indicator ended up about 40%-ish full, having subtracted 15 from 25-ish, leaving the 10-ish/24.

*Unit Upgrades

Their formula for upgrades is very close. Round to the nearest 10 (up if the last digit is 5 so 245 would become 250).

Based on the XML files I believe the actual formula used is ((new production - old production) * 2 + 10) * 0.75. Round to the nearest 10.
The result is the same but this formula uses the exact constants from the XML file.

Status: pending confirmation, but seems to work in all cases tested so far. EDIT: I don't think the rounding happens. As you can see down the thread, the new slinger to archer upgrade costs 45 gold, not a round number.

[Ichabod]

We seem to be on the same page, Pindicator. I'll give England a go in a test game, just to get a feel for how coastal tiles are doing with the changes from the last patch. 

One thing I should point out is that my thoughts on the Civs are very geared towards early game. I wonder if we'll see competitive mid-game/late-game situations in Civ 6. In such a situation, the extra TR from England could make a difference.

[Ichabod]

I tested England in a game for a bit.

Water tiles are still very bad. For some reason, I thought a Lighthouse would make every water tile 3f, but all it does is make them 2f. Fishes are 4f tiles with a lighthouse and a worker charge. Not bad, but lighthouses are expensive.

The cheap harbors are very nice, but they are very map dependent. My test game had me with 8 or so cities, where only 2 were coastal (counting my Capital). That's because there's usually no rivers near the coast, so settling coastal cities screws you on the housing department. Can a Harbour be built on a lake? I'm not sure.

Continents seem to be very random. In my game, I had a bew continent right next to me, but my home continent was gigantic, while other continents were way smaller. I managed to get 3 swords in quick sucession after a settling spree (without iron), which I could use to capture a City State for a 4th one and go from there. It's a nice little bonus and it could be lead to some fun stuff with the proper planning and, most importantly, the proper map.

[pindicator]

Yeah, unfortunately that's what it seems like the verdict is on England. Way too map dependent to be dependable. You might get a map that lets you play with some cool abilities, or you might get a map where you're pretty much playing a vanilla civ and leader.

Gearing towards the early game is super smart. We're seeing just how strong early GGs are, and it seems like this game is going to have to be either planning for the fastest GG, or planning around defending your neighbor getting said GG.

I might be able to do some testing tomorrow. Wanted to tonight but social obligations came a calling. Sounds like I should start getting a feel for Pericles though.

[pindicator]

Oh, super important detail that we've missed: what are you thinking about for a naming scheme?

[gunnerxtr]

Can a Harbour be built on a lake? I'm not sure.

In my experience, yes, even a 1 tile lake.

[Ichabod]

Oh, super important detail that we've missed:  what are you thinking about for a naming scheme?

No ideas so far. Do you have any suggestions? Perhaps waiting a bit for our choice and the map, it could give us the needed inspiration.

Can a Harbour be built on a lake? I'm not sure.

In my experience, yes, even a 1 tile lake.

Interesting. I will run some tests to see if a city need to be adjacent to the lake or if you could build it a bit further away. It's an important thing to know, considering Harbours would be our best ability as England.

On the series of "trying to justify a worse option", a Coastal bias could have some advantages in a FFA Pangea map. A coastal Capital means we only have one direction to defend from barbs/other players, which is nice. Considering the new world map setting that we are likely going for, a hill bias loses a bit of its appeal. The map checking also decreases it, while lowering the problems from the Coastal bias. By this, I'm guessing maps where our Capital wouldn't be on fresh water or would be too hammer starved/with poor resources would end up discarded.

[pindicator]

Well, with the thread title you've got, Bob Dylan songs seems a natural choice