Japper and Cornflakes' team thread

[Japper007]

With all the Civ picks in let's go over the teams:

Team 2 Emperor K (Germany) /TheArchduke (Russia)
Team 3 BrickAstley (Rome) /Singaboy (China)
Team 4 Woden (Nubia) / ChevalierMalFet (England)

There is apparently a slight mistake here, as Archdukes and Emperors picks got switched around in the setup thread.

Team 2:

Germany and Russia, I don't see much synergy here, as both are nations that want to expand-expand-EXPAND. Won't they get in each others way? Also with the incredibly lush maps we usually get in these games, I think Russia goes down in utility significantly. If I were playing this team-setup I'd have Russia focus on getting a religion while Germany makes up the invested hammers with the extra production from the Hansa's. Then later Russia can protect Germany's powerhouse with faith-purchased Cossacks. 

On the players: Archduke has been steadily getting stronger since pbem1, he has a frightening amount of combat experience by now. Emperor K I'm not sure about, all he has is ten turns as Poland in pbem6.

Team 3:

Rome and China are both civs that can get the early snowball rolling, China from it's first 4 charge builder and Rome from it's free monument the turn it settles. I could see this team going cultural as well and thus screw with our uncompeted (because unexpected) culture and tourism boom.

On the players: Singaboy in charge of yet another powerhouse  Brick has of course been a long time member of Realms Beyond, but I have no idea whether he's any good at civ 6.

Team 4:

Nubia is one of the scarier civs here: Archer rushes are one of the strongest plays already, getting a 3 move +combat strenght archer that you also get an innate production bonus to just makes them that much more potent. And Nubia also gets a few strong development bonuses, because of course it does  .  England is a terrifying Naval Civ, and also a gold and trade powerhouse in the late game. Not sure how important naval combat'll be on this map of course... The synergy is obvious, Nubia rules the land, England the waves, both eventually grow into powerhouses of their development bonuses.

On the players: Wodens play has been a bit lacking in his recent games, he seems to overtly favor economic development and he is pretty bad at war. I'm actually, harsh as it is to say so, sorta glad he is the one that got Nubia and not one of the more military focused players like Archduke or Singaboy. I expect he'll just be focusing on Nubia's (admittedly still awesome) econ bonuses rather than on actually rushing with his Pitati Archers. Chevalier Mal Fet was Oledavy's lurker in his pbem 4 victory. He doesn't seem to have much experience but that just leaves room for him to surprise us.

[Mikeforall]

Hmm, lets see.
 
Germany/Russia.
Two very strong civilizations. However, I do not see a lot of dedicated teamwork benefit, mostly raw one. 
Germany will most likely be going on a conquest route, and Russia will be working on culture and expansion with some religion on the side-lines. 
They are rather late-game civs however, so I doubt we will have a lot of trouble early on. 
But yeh, late-game it sure will be a powerhouse. I do not worry all to much about the U-boats, but those Cossacks… 
 
Rome/China.
Now this is a very well synched team. 
Rome will be picking up one civic after another with their free monuments, with China picking them up for half the cost afterwards. 
With China’s builder wonderrush, we can expect them to get an religion early since Stonehenge is basically theirs. 
More worryingly though is that China will most likely also get all the cultural wonders, which combined makes this team the most capable of gaining a cultural victory, perhaps even more so than me and Japper.  
And, not to be underestimated, China will most likely also get the colosseum. This is a must-have building when going wide, since it makes overextension basically non-existent. 
 
Nubia/England.
Again a strong opposing team, which by dedication lies between Rome/China and Germany/Russia. 
Nubia will have a very strong say on land military early on, which England will transform into sea superiority with their navy. 
Of course, I doubt there will be a lot of early-game fighting. However, their +50% production for ranged units does not limit itself to the early ages. 
Also a huge bonus towards district production and gold for mines over bonus and luxury resources. 
When their own special units become obsolete, they can gift it to England, who will need it for their navy and when they take over cities on different continents. 
This team will go full financial, which means that a lot of victories are open for them. Domination on this map seems unlikely to me, so I throw it on a scientific or cultural vic. 
 

Kongo/Khmer.
Now, having said all that, lets take a look to our own strategy. 
Our main goal will, obviously, be a cultural victory. 
I will be focussing on religious output, whereas Japper will go for culture and finance. 
We will split up the science tree to make research as effective as possible. 
 
Both me and Japper will go for a forward settle quite early (third or fourth city perhaps). 
There are two reasons for this:
First of all, we want to prevent settlement on our continent. Creating bordercities early means that you can settle your hinterland in relative peace. 
Although it might cause an early war, it will most likely prevent a must more devastating mid-game war. And if a midgame war breaks out anyways, it won’t be solely on our continent. 
 
The second reason however is a more important one. Jappers forward settle will most likely attract a different religion (either by missionary spread, traderoute or autospread). 
This is key for our strategy. He will build apostles of the opposite religion, who will massacre mine to generate relics. 
Now ofcourse, the tourism benefits of it are limited later on. However, Kongo gets more than just that. Every relic will give them culture, gold, food and production. 
Even if that plan fails however, all we have to do is take out one enemy city or city-state with a different religion, and repeat the above process. 
Now, this would also work against inquisitors or apostles from other teams. However, I assume that they already figured out our strategy, and thus just burn my religious units as heretics.


apologies if some parts overlap with Japper, but I wanted to put my own thoughts out here regardless of what has been said by others.

[Japper007]

I tried the Relic through deliberate Martyrdom angle in our test game, it doesn't work very well at all. Apostles have a shrinking pool of promotions, so only the first Kongolese guy can get Martyr (and one on your side if we take the vice versa route and also kill one of yours).

I could see it working with Mont St Michel wonder (http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/Mont_...hel_(Civ6)) which gives them all a martyr. Without the religious craziness of the AI in SP this wonder will probably not be contested at all, I even have a swamp at my capital to throw it in! It's not the strongest part of the Kongo civ though, and that Wonder is insanely expensive: a full three settlers/districts worth. Also the religious part of the culture tree is not a priority route for Kongo and Divine right comes rather late into the game. A nice niche strategy but let's try just surviving the start first.

[Mikeforall]

I tried the Relic through deliberate Martyrdom angle in our test game, it doesn't work very well at all. Apostles have a shrinking pool of promotions, so only the first Kongolese guy can get Martyr (and one on your side if we take the vice versa route and also kill one of yours).

The Khmer unique building [Prasat] gives every trained missionary the martyr promotion. All you have to do is kill them with an apostle of the opposing faith. 

Which is why in our testgame, when you killed my missionary, I gained a relic. You wasted the apostle in a misclick before we could reverse-test it though.

[Japper007]

The Khmer unique building [Prasat] gives every trained missionary the martyr promotion. All you have to do is kill them with an apostle of the opposing faith. 

Which is why in our testgame, when you killed my missionary, I gained a relic. You wasted the apostle in a misclick before we could reverse-test it though.

Interesting, forgot about that part of the khmer ability.

Btw the one i lost due to a misclick wasnt the one that had the martyr... I did get the relic, just only one...

[Cornflakes]

Starting save attached

[Japper007]

Turn 1 (Japper of the Kongo): A good start!

Start of the turn with getting the Eureka's for Diplomatic Service and Writing, as we both know a player and are allied to him XD




Move the warrior west and:



The Pantanal is right there!  After this i moved my settler southwest ofc cause holy hell are 2 food 2 culture tiles strong to settle!

[Mikeforall]

wel, that was an unexpected discovery...

A very nice culture and food bonus. The food means the capital-to-be will grow faster, making the backfall of not settling in place a temporary one. 
The culture tiles, when worked, means we can get a quick early game civics boost, being only second to Rome. 


Now I shall just wait a day before playing my own turn.

[Mikeforall]

And it is finally my turn!

First I get three nice eureka's: Diplomatic Service, Writing, and... Astrology!
Although teams do not share individual eureka's, due to us sharing a map I too discovered the Pantanal! This will come very much in handy, since it means it will only take me 9 turns to finish this technology. 

I used the plain desert to move my warrior two tiles north, only to discover even more forests. Guess I cannot evade the trees. 
After all, Since Japper will be scouting towards the south and west, I will be taking the North and East for my account. Thus I will be moving the warrior further north next turn, instead of the easier western path. 

After having moved the warrior, I settled in place. It is a very nice location after all. Horses, wheat and a lake in the first ring, a good campus and holy site spot as wel as silk in the second ring. 

Now, in order to make full use of the early astrology, I will first produce a sling, then as soon as available a holy site. 
After all, I would like to get a good religion as soon as possible. Although I ofcourse aim for the first one, realisticly I assume we will get the second one. 
After all, If China decides to go for stonehenge, which I assume since I would do that if I were China, they will definitely get a great prophet before I do. 



Also just a small side-observation, but it seems that all-in-all three players decided not to settle in place. I surely hope this is because their start was just shit, but since it is one player of each team (with one team as exception) I cannot rule out that everyone has started with a natural wonder close-by. 

Either way, the early astrology bonus will sure make for some interesting gameplay. Lets see how quickly we can get our first pantheon set up. 


Lastly, this is the second time (after my testgame with Japper) that I play with the Community Quick User Interface [CQUI] mod, which people wanted to use for this pbem, and although I still need to get used to it I must say that I quite like it. Especially the larger mini-map and citizen interface. The city building menu however is rather... inconvenient, to keep it polite.

[Japper007]

You can turn off CQUI if you want Mike! I didn't create the save with it on and my turn today played just fine as well without it. I don't like cluttered interfaces, and i don't mind having to dig deeper to find more information either so I'm not using it.

Turn 2: Yikes



A barb camp spawned two freakin tiles from my settler   Such excellent game design  fuck you game... 

Oh well at least it'll be easy to get Archery Eureka this way.

Anyways, moving on...



I founded Mbanza Kongo and started it on a Slinger, it is also working the floodplains wheat so it grows in 4 turns, nice

For research I went Pottery, as I need to get Irrigation for my 4 (!) plantation resources, which will give me quite a bit of gold already once improved. Also for writing to get my campus on the desert hill next to the mountain (btw Mike could you check if there is a mountain chain there or just a Lonely Mountain, your warrior only has to move one tile to check it out, i might be able to swing some more adjacency then, which'll help us both on the science front).

Side Note: We really need a naming convention for our cities, since everything Mike settles will be Angkor Something, and everything I settle will be Mbanza Something. That'll never get confusing right?  Any ideas Mike? Or perhaps one of the Lurkers (which I hope we have)?