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

[pindicator]

When you explain it like that, upgrading archers doesn't make a lot of sense

You will have 4 technologies and 2 civics when you chop, correct? If I'm reading the formula right that means 29 cogs coming from the chop, before any unit bonuses are counted. If we can turn that all into overflow that would be 50.75 cogs, just over half the cost of the 2nd settler.

We should still try to get eurekas if possible. I agree with not delaying needed techs or civics just for a eureka -- but let's send the slinger east towards that barb camp if it isn't needed elsewhere right away

[pindicator]

Upon further investigation it appears that harvest production is not affected by unit production modifiers.

Can any lurker confirm?

EDIT: nevermind!

EDIT #2: It appears that you cannot "double-dip" production modifiers within the same turn when it comes to harvesting. For example, i tried the following scenario:

Policies: Agoge & Colonization
Archer: in production at 40/50
City making 11.5hpt after amenity bonus
Harvested forest for 38g, which completed the archer.
Swapped to settler and completed settler.
Next turn settler was at 64/100 production.

+50% production means there was ~43 base production (I'm not sure if Civ6 tracks decimals in production or not) going into the settler.
Production did not "double-dip" between modifiers on the same turn - If you were to just multiply the forest harvest by +50% for the archer, that gets 97/50. 47 then rolls over roll-over, add the 11.5 production and the settler would have been at ~88 production if double dipped.
But if you separately add the 47 rollover from the archer to 11.5 * 1.5 then you get 64 on the nose.

[Ichabod]

So, overflow hammers don't get the % bonus from the next build, right? But chopped hammers get the % bonus of whatever they were "chopped into".

In this case, what we need to do is chop the forest into the slinger, that'll give the best return in hammers.

It seems things will work almost perfectly. The Capital grew to size 3 this turn, and that took one turn of the first settler build time (done in 2, after the turn I just played). It'll be done with exactly 80/80 production, I think. Since any overflow from this settler wouldn't get the 75% bonus for the slinger, that's pretty much the best we could expect. A settler a turn faster, with no "wasted" hammers.




Notice that we'll finish the settler before Agoge is avaiable. This can change if we find a new continent with our scout in the next 2 turns, but I wouldn't count on that. Anyway, we just need to spend a turn on the second settler and chop the forest when Agoge is avaiable (might even wait for an extra tech to improve the chop value if we are feeling extra greedy, but I don't think it's worth it). Considering chops finish the current production right away, while the turn is being played, there was no way to get the normal turn production and the chop hammers to overflow from the slinger (like we could do in Civ 4), but that's okay. I really think that two fast settlers is the best option for us here, considering we have a very safe space from the barbs in this map (surrounded by City States where we want to expand to). After the settlers, it'll be trivial to churn out a bunch of military units, for conquest and Eurekas.



The Ranger promotion will be very useful here, to traverse all this jungle.



Yerevan is growing pretilly, getting ready for us to take it. If you take a careful look at the borders, the first tile expansion was on the water. That means the city likely has 2 water resources, which is very useful for the Eureka to Celestial Navigation. I don't think we'll capture them already improved, since it's unlikely anyone will go for Sailing so early in the game, but it's good to have it already avaiable.

[Ichabod]

I think I forgot to upload my past turn screenshots. Anyway, I only played 2 turns since the past update, which were very straight forward, basically just exploring with the scout and waiting for the settler. I found two new City States, both religious (Jerusalem and La venta). So, it seems we had good luck in getting the first pantheon, since there was religious CS galore out there. Quests are generating a Prophet and a Scientist. It'll be a while...

Anyway, next turn I'll have my settler, so we'll start the long slog to get him to his intended place.

No new continent yet.

[pindicator]

Did you decide to send him way out east instead of the banana site?

[Ichabod]

Did you decide to send him way out east instead of the banana site?

No, he's going to the banana site (I think it's the best site for our strategy of not getting a builder to help improve it). I'm just complaining about Civ 6 movement. Actually, compared to civ 4, the settler will arrive just one turn later, so I'm mostly complaining for the sake of it.

I played a turn this morning, where we finished Writing. I started on Archery, even if we decide to switch after 50% of the tech is done, because that's basically the most useful tech we can get. I considered going for Holy Sites, but it's about time o make a concious decision of forgoing religion. There's simply too much competition. I think a good idea is to wait and see what Rowain does. If he decides to forgo religion too, we may try and get the last religion later, just because it'd basically be free.

By the way, I think a monument in the Capital is something we need to think about sooner, rather than later. Our Capital needs all the culture it can get, because of all the tile expansions we need. It's actually interesting to compare going for a monument or a Campus first. The Campus won't give "border culture", but it would give culture in the form of the Eureka (State Workforce, I think). It's 87 hammers for a campus right now, or something very close. I'll put the Campus down (to freeze the cost) after the overflow from the slinger is safely storaged in the Settler, to avoid any possible confusions. We can decide about when to build it later.



Still no new continent. Looks like a bunch of our Civ bonuses won't matter this game. Perhaps there's a different continent close by that we didn't explore, even some islands. We'll see.

My screenshot from the Capital failed, so I can't show it right now. One things is that we'll be ready with the second settler before the city reaches size 3 again, so the new settler would take us from size 2 to 1. It might be best to slot another slinger before the new settler, to avoid going to size 1. Though I think we'd only spend one turn at size 1, because we'd probably have enough food to already fill the bar from size 1 -> 2. 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.

[pindicator]

Sounds like we're progressing as planned. I like getting another slinger out of the capital while we're in agoge and can build them cheap. Building a warrior is only 5h more (effectively 3 after the bonuses) if you're thinking it's better to hold off on slingers and just going straight for archery. (I think I favor slingers and trying for the archery eureka since a pair of slingers should be able to take a barb out, but I'm not in love with it.) Anyway, whatever unit can potentially spend some time out west exploring as well.

I think I prefer campus over monument because it's potentially 5 eurekas: the one for a district, the education eureka for a great scientist, and potentially 3 more eurekas from the GS. But we're going to want both, and we're also going to want to leverage agoge to build an army before either.

And I think religion will be helpful down the line but I agree that it's not something to rush for

[Cornflakes]

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.

Actually just tested this a couple days ago out of curiosity  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 ... and I think food wise it is actually more efficient to complete a settler before growing rather than waiting to grow, but no hard numbers to back that up.

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 ... really wish they gave us the actual numbers on the interface  

This result of 40%-ish food in the box when completing the settler at size 2 just before growing to size 3 (as opposed to delaying the settler to grow, then immediately completing the settler dropping to 0% food box) leads me to infer that it is more efficient to complete the settler before growth than just after growth. Obviously if the extra pop was working for a few turns before dropping into the settler then the yield from the citizen balances it out.

[Ichabod]

That's very nice info. Thanks, Cornflakes.

And I think there's a considerable chance that we'll be doing the "keep city at size 2" settler here. I think it would be ready very close to the 2 -> 3 growth, so it'll probably be enough food to get from size 1 -> 2. I'll do some math after I get the new turn.

[Ichabod]

Finally, an interesting turn to report.

Craftsmanship completed, so we made our civic switch, slotting Agoge.




So, it was time to chop the slinger and see the results of our plan. 29 hammers, as Pindicator predicted. My own calculations showed 30 hammers, I think, so I'm doing it wrong.




The result was that the slinger was insta-built and the settler dropped from 9 turns to 5. 4 turns faster 3rd city is pretty nice, I guess. Compared to using the builder for a meaningless improvement or waiting for it to improve the second, third city, I think we did pretty well.




Next turn, after the overflow is applied, I'll lay down the Campus. I think our game is shaping up for the following plan: expand eastward as much as we can. Use our considerable science (nice early Campus + easy suzerainity of Geneva) to get to knights faster than our opponents and try and get some more land with knights. Civ 4 all over again, I guess.   Upgrading Heavy Chariots is probably the way to go, and getting a GGeneral would also be sweet. But that's really far ahead... (and looking at the tech tree, Knights are so easily reachable that building a campus is wasting time -> better to go straight for an encampment).

Anyway, you can see that I'm sending the slinger northeast, to try and kill a barb. You can also take a look at my CS guards, patrolling near Changing of the Guards. I should probably use the northeastern barb camp to kill 3 barb units and get the BW Eureka, because I'm not sure if we'll see any more barb camps (famous last words, right?).



Scout still hasn't found a new continent and I'm realizing that chasing this particular trail has led my scouting astray. Kaiser is likely to the east of Kumasi, and I'm exploring the barren northeast, instead of more useful places. Perhaps backtracking him a bit is a good idea (more in the sense of going generally south now). Another side of this argument is that, if there's actually a CS still to be found, it's likely on a non-obvious place to scout, like in the edge of the pangea. In that sense, keep going on this direction might end up netting the best results.

Whatever is decided, I'll build more units to scout around soon. I want all the map information I can get.