Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

Great to see such agreement about the short term plans. If we save one builder charge, the builder coming from Xian might improve the stone right away (if mining has been researched) to boost the builder production in that city.

I hope BRick doesn't feel left out as we discuss all about China. Rome's role will be vital to provide the muscle needed to protect us early on from both barbarians and other civs. Also, splitting the research painstakingly to maximize the benefits will be crucial, hence team play is really important here.
I feel confident that the combination of China and Rome can pose a serious threat to the rest. What I don't want to see though, is all the others teaming up on us. Hence, an early lead in the score might actually be counterproductive as I had to witness so painfully in PBEM4.

[Singaboy]

Save only reached me now while I am at work. I will get to it in around 12 hours as we have a xmas party to boot. Would be nice to see an update from BRick

Ok, I just read the PMs. Shall we post this with an explanation at the discussion thread?

[Sullla]

The one big difference in this game is there's no silly diplomacy thread this time. That will make it much harder, although not impossible, to coordinate an alliance against a game leader. And if TheArchduke hadn't launched an excellent timing attack with multiple Great Admirals, I think Singaboy might very well have won PBEM4 anyway.

Anyway, China's going to get the bulk of the early planning because of their special wonder-building ability. That's not to say that Rome isn't important though - none of this plan would be possible without Rome pumping out so much early game culture to boost key civics. China's going to land our team's religion while Rome goes pure military/industrial power. The way I see it, Rome should be building three things in the early game:

1) Settlers
2) Builders
3) Military

There's no need for an early district because China will build the early Holy Site and then finish State Workforce, picking up the boost for Rome. There's no need for any granaries because Roman cities will grow upwards with super cheap Bath districts right when they're starting to hit the housing cap. There's no need for monuments because Rome gets them for free. Rome should be doing nothing but going pure growth curve: settlers for more cities, builders to improve them, and military units to defend them from barbs. With luck, we can get three settlers out quickly and then start conquering the city states on our continent. China can likely avoid building too much military because Rome will supply the muscle.

Regarding the capital city itself:




That's one of Singaboy's screenshots but it was the best one that showed the Roman capital. The tech order is pretty well established at this point: Animal Husbandry into Pottery into Irrigation, the last tech to boost it for China. That tech path should finish a little after Turn 20, just in time for China to plantation the sugar and spices with China's first builder. We'll have to think about what to research next, probably either Writing (to put down a Campus while it's still cheap - remember the Cultural city state quest for Rome is to build a Campus) or Mining. The civics research path is also clear: Craftsmanship (with the builder boosting it to completion), then Foreign trade (boost already done), then Early Empire (an easy boost), then State Workforce (with the boost coming from China), and then finally Political Philosophy. With luck Rome can make it there by about Turn 45 and then we'll divide up the civics tree from there, with Rome taking the top half (with boosts like build an Encampment and maybe build two Campus districts) and China taking the bottom half (build a wonder, found a religion, etc.)

In terms of city management, the builder will definitely improve the sheep (Horseback Riding boost) and farm one of the two wheats (Irrigation boost). I'm unsure at the moment whether it will be better to use the last builder charge on farming the other wheat or putting a plantation on the bananas. Here's the pros/cons for either side:

Second Wheat Farm
+ Gets a second 3/1 tile
+ Capital builds a fast water mill and gets two excellent 4/1 tiles
- The riverside wheat will be harvested to put down a Bath district eventually

Bananas Plantation
+ Turns a tile we will always be working into 3/2/2 yield
+ Doesn't get harvested later
- Gold isn't as important as food/production yields and the Roman capital is somewhat food poor

I think I'm slightly leaning towards the second wheat farm because it will help the capital grow more quickly but I could be talked into the bananas plantation (or even something else entirely). We can't mine a tile because Rome won't have Mining tech and we need that Craftsmanship boost quickly. It will have to be a farm, pasture, or plantation.

The city should grow to the 1/3 forested plains hill tile on the next cultural expansion if I understand the tile picker mechanics correctly. Rome has outstanding longterm terrain for production: a plains hill in the first ring and then four more of them in the second ring! The city mostly needs food so that it can grow onto those tiles and start working them. This will be an awesome location down the road with some food-boosting infrastructure (maybe a trade route to Xi'an with its Holy Site district for the +2 food) and growth onto plains hill mines. I think I would run the 3/2 bananas, the 2/3 sheep (with pasture) and the 3/1 wheat (with farm) until reaching size 4, then pick up the 1/3 forested plains hill at size 4 while also switching the wheat tile over to the other 1/3 forested plains hill. That yields 14 production/turn at size 4 (!) at the cost of dropping to only +1 food. Hmmm. Enough for the early game but not enough food long term. Well, that's plenty to get out early settlers with Colonization at 21 production/turn and then we can re-evaluate from there.

[Singaboy]

Excellent analysis here again, Sulla.

I would improve the bananas too, if time permits as we need craftsmanship soon. Not too sure about that.

[Singaboy]

Turn 8:

I get the Eureka for Astrology as BRick discovered the Natural Wonder. BRick did not send me 10 gold though, so I can't buy the forest hill tile for now. I only have 40 gold, not enough to do that. I am sending a request for 10 gold now, I hope the cost won't go up too much, it should be maximum of 55 gold next turn.
The tile picker has changed its mind and is now going for citrus, I would prefer bananas but so be it.
The slinger is done and I am going for the settler, currently taking 13 turns, but when the city grows in 3 turns, it will drop.



I explore with both warrior and slinger and discover more horses on the coast. The land there looks quite nice with sheep to boost. I will move SE next turn. The slinger will move north and cross the river next turn.



Woden and Chevalier Mal Fet have overtaken us in terms of faith, which can only mean that they ran into a faith based city state. That's just too bad. Let's hope only one of them can get to a Pantheon faster than us.

Next turn, I need to remember to drop down the holy site, change to pottery and craftsmanship.

[Sullla]

So as some of you may have seen, Brick needs to step away from the game for a couple of months to take care of a personal issue. For lack of anyone else available, I'll be taking his place for the time being until he's able to return. This wasn't some kind of plan that we worked up between the three of us; Brick and Singaboy had no idea that I was going to be a dedicated lurker for their team, and I had no intentions of taking part in another PBEM game. It was something that fell together by happenstance, and hopefully it will let Brick concentrate on what's really important for the time being, instead of having to worry about this particular game.

Anyway, that means I'm playing Rome. Again. No one else has played Rome in seven official PBEM games and now I've had them both times. Rome is a fantastic civ in the current version of Civ6, with one of the premiere leader abilities (free monuments in all cities), an outstanding unique unit in the legion, and one of the game's best unique districts. I mean that quite seriously; the Bath district is amazing, and the patch change that decreased the cost of Aqueducts in general only buffed the Bath district even further. Rome is the game's foremost expansion-oriented civ. They race to the Colonization policy faster than anyone else with their free culture, their new cities get up to speed faster with the free monuments, and the Bath district lets cities be placed almost anywhere on the map. You only need a single mountain tile for the Bath district and you're good to go. And Rome's legion gives them incredible strength for the first 100 or so turns of the game. It's resourceless (like all unique units) so Rome never gets screwed over from lacking resources, and legions upgrade smoothly from the initial early game warriors. Legion upgrades + the first Great General + Oligarchy government was the combination that won me the first PBEM game. I was ahead of the curve back then because I had been following the online MP community and that wouldn't work again, but it's a sign of the strength of this civ in the right timing windows.

While we're waiting the turn to get passed around, let me provide some quick thoughts on the other teams in this game:

1. Team 1 Japper (Kongo)
2. Team 2 Emperor K (Russia)
3. Team 3 BrickAstley (Rome)
4. Team 4 Woden (Nubia)
5. Team 4 Chevalier Mal Fet (England)
6. Team 3 Singaboy (China)
7. Team 2 TheArchduke (Germany)
8. Team 1 Mikeforall (Khmer)

Team 1: Japper (Kongo) and Mikeforall (Khmer)

Japper and Mikeforall are friends from the Civ6 MP community. They've been working together in Japper's other PBEM games here at Realms Beyond, although Japper didn't do particularly well in the PBEM4 game. Their civ choices are honestly pretty weak considering that they had the fourth and fifth picks in an unrestricted snake draft. From what I can guess, this is a gimmicky strategy based around trying to win a Cultural victory using relics for tourism. Both of their civs have bonuses related to relics: Kongo gets +2 food, +2 production, and +4 gold from each relic, while Khmer has a unique temple that grants all missionaries produced the Martyr promotion. They're going to have Khmer found a religion and take the Reliquaries follower belief (tripled tourism/faith from relics), then spread the religion to Kongo who gets all of the beliefs of a religion's founder. They will try to build Mont St. Michel or find Yerevan city state to get Martyr promotion for their apostles as well as their Khmer missionaries, and then get them killed to produce relics, which will create enough tourism to win a Cultural victory at some early date.

This strategy isn't ridiculous and it could work. However, it's the sort of thing that looks like it would be much more effective against AIs than against other players. I'm not sure if they realize that the Martyr promotion only works if a unit dies in THEOLOGICAL combat, not if they simply die in general. I played a Khmer game last month and saw this for myself in action. If a barbarian unit or an enemy player kills one of their religious units, it won't create a relic. So where exactly are they going to get these relics from? Unless they've come up with something that I'm missing (very possible), I don't think they'll be able to make this work. I imagine other players will just kill their religious units with military units, not try to defeat them with their own apostles or inquisitors. Religious tourism also falls off very quickly in Civ6, as it gets cut in half as soon as the Enlightenment civic is reached in the early Renaissance. If they want to win, they're going to have to do it fast. In anything other than a religious-fueled Cultural victory category, this team is badly outclassed by the choices of the other players. On paper, I think this is the weakest setup and the one most vulnerable to outside conquest.

Team 2: Emperor K (Russia) and TheArchduke (Germany)

Dangerous. Very dangerous. Germany is another powerhouse civ pick and Russia complements them well indeed. Russia will easily found an early religion - the first in the game with those cheap Lavras that produce double Great Prophet points - and have their pick at some powerful beliefs. We're only going to beat them to the first religion by sniping it with China's own wonder building ability via Stonehenge. Russia's extra territory on city founding is more powerful than many people belief, getting lots of tiles in play immediately for cities and saving money on tile purchases. It also opens up early game chopping/harvesting that other civs can't duplicate due to having fewer tiles in their borders. And Russia always has the incredible "can move after attacking" cossack waiting in the wings for the midgame. Germany is a nice match for Russia, with its cheap Hansas and immense productive power. Germany is slow out of the gate and doesn't start to take off until reaching their unique district at Apprenticeship tech, but once the Hansas (and accompanying Commercial districts) are finished, Germany is ready to start kicking some major behind. Germany is the Psilons of Civ6, or the Financial/Organized comparison from Civ4. God help you if you let them snowball ahead into first place. That's never happened in any of the previous PBEM games because someone kept coming and kicking over Germany's sandbox before it was ready to defend. With everyone on separate islands here... well, it could be tough to stop them.

TheArchduke was a punching bag in his initial PBEM game. He's not a punching bag anymore - he's rapidly become one of the best Civ6 players at Realms Beyond. I don't know much about EmperorK and will have to find out as this game goes along. I think this team is the most likely to win the game out of our three competitors. Good players and great civ choices.

Team 4: Woden (Nubia) and Chevalier Mal Fet (England)

These picks don't seem to have much synergy to me aside from being generically good civs. Nubia was taken with the first pick of the snake draft, and I would argue that it was probably worth that decision. Nubia's unique unit archer is stupidly overpowered, with +5 ranged strength and +1 movement (!!!) which lets them move onto hill tiles or forests and shoot immediately. Nubia gets +50% production towards ranged units and +50% experience on those ranged units. Their archers can be built very cheaply (+100% production with Agoge) and they promote ludicrously fast. Nubia is a rush civ, and the one thing reigning them in is the fact that this is a map with four different starting continents. By the time that the teams begin to clash, hopefully we'll be past the era of archers. For reference's sake, Ranged units are the following: slingers, archers, crossbows, field cannons, and machine guns. Then Nubia also gets +20% production towards all districts, and potentially +40% production towards all districts if there's one of their unique tile improvement pyramids next to the city center. That's not as easy to pull off as it sounds though since the little pyramids can only be placed on desert or floodplains tiles. Nubia even gets bonus production or gold from mines on resources. It's a very powerful civ and not one to discount.

England is a lot simpler: great on water maps, mostly useless elsewhere. Most of the power of this civ is built into their unique Harbor district that is half cost and produces double Great Admiral points. TheArchduke nearly won PBEM4 through doubling and tripling up Great Admirals on a water-heavy map. England is almost invincible at sea, and since this map will involve at least some naval combat, that makes them a solid choice. Elsewhere, England gets bonuses from founding or conquering cities on other continents, and their unique unit Redcoat gets bonuses when fighting on other continents. However, nothing upgrades into redcoats and that makes them an awkward unit to use since they must all be built from scratch. Again, England is godly on water maps and helpless on pangaeas. This map will likely be somewhere in between, but unless their starting position looks a lot different than ours, I would have thought about taking a pick like Gorgo/Greece or Australia or Arabia for this setup instead.

Part of the reason why I'm not as sanguine about this team's chances are the players. Chevalier Mal Fet gave excellent advice for oledavy as a dedicated lurker in PBEM4, but he's never taken part in a PBEM game before and that could be tricky for him. Woden, on the other hand, has been in two previous game and hasn't been very impressive in either. He should have won PBEM2 given his outstanding starting position and weak neighbor's early game position, yet somehow avoided ever making any kind of decisive move until Alhambram finally managed to tech to cossacks and crush him. With Woden's huge lead in tech, he could have set up a field cannon timing attack and romped to victory without much trouble. In PBEM4, he sat on the fence for the whole game and refused to take sides in anything that was going on, until he was finally forced onto TheArchduke's side by oledavy. Then when he finally moved to attack, his moves were ill-considered and his land army was destroyed by Singaboy, followed by his navy getting trashed by oledavy. Woden is just a passive player; he sits back and lets things happen rather than making plans and forcing other players to react to him. Perhaps he's learned from the past two games and we'll see something different here. Maybe. I did not want to dedlurk this team because Woden's style of play didn't appeal to me.

Well, there's my chance to look foolish when this game wraps up and the other teams overperform expectations. We'll have to wait and see how things play out.

[Sullla]

The save file arrived in the PYDT client without any problems. Let's see what we have for Turn 9:



First things first, I accept the 10 gold trade offer from Singaboy. That should allow him to grab the 1/3 plains hill forest tile for Xi'an and grow onto it when the city hits size 3. Next up, I went ahead and moved the scouting warrior to reveal more of that natural wonder off in the east:



There's a freshwater lake here with pearls in the middle. All of the tiles surrounding the lake have the fresh water housing bonus. I agree with Brick and think Rome should sent its second city over here, either on the tile where the warrior is standing or directly on the cattle resource to the northwest. While planting directly on the cows might seem weird, it preserves the tile that the warrior is standing on right now, which is an amazing 2 food / 1 production / 2 gold / 2 culture tile. You can't see the 2 culture because the interface can only display three yield at a time on the world map. We'll see what else gets revealed with a little more exploration in this area.

Rome finished a warrior this turn, giving me an extra unit to play around with. I still disagree with that opening warrior build, by the way; a slinger would have finished a turn sooner and would have been just as good if not better for early game barbarian defense. Oh well, not a huge deal either way. I moved this unit up to the north and hello, what's this?



Contact with a Commercial city state, nice! I think Scientific would have been the best to find right now, but I'm not about to look a gift horse in the mouth. We'll want to keep Lisbon alive permanently and sink our envoys in here for the Commercial district bonuses. Both Rome and China are going to be building lots of Commercial districts and this will give us a safe place to send trade routes in case we want to run the "city state economy" like oledavy was doing in the late stages of PBEM4. The quest to trigger a boost for Bronze Working (kill three barbarians) should be very doable. Even better, that city state looks to be in the tundra and has crummy land, which means it's not very attractive for keeping anyway. I'm going to explore one or two more turns to the north and then double back to the capital to guard the builder under production from any potential barbarians that pop out. It's not wise to leave your capital completely unguarded given how often those things spawn.

Let's look at the capital before closing out this turn:



The cultural tile picker is indeed going to grab the other 1/3 plains hill forest tile next turn, which is exactly what we were hoping. Hopefully it will go for one of the 1/2 plains hill tiles next, I'm sure it will be jumping around between all of those resourceless tiles in the second ring that have a total foodhammer value of three. The immediate plan here is simple: grow to size 3 while training a builder, then get out a settler for that sweet natural wonder spot off in the east. Trajan's unique ability will even produce an automatic road over there when the second city gets settled. In the longer run, I think I have a pretty good idea of how to build this city. The capital has excellent productive capacity with all of those plains hills with the tradeoff of being food poor. Now that we have the extra +4 gold/turn from meeting that Commercial city state, I've decided that the third builder charge should be used here for a farm on the second wheat tile. We don't need a plantation on the bananas because we already have the extra gold income, and having even a temporary farm on that wheat tile will be highly useful.

What this city needs most in the near future is a water mill. It will be worth +1 food and +1 production permanently, and will add a point of food to both of those wheat tiles to make them 4/1 yield with farms. I'm thinking of cash-rushing the water mill with the funds from Lisbon, which will let the capital stick to a steady diet of nothing but settlers and military units. I might not even bother with another builder out of this city after the first one, just settlers and military units nonstop without pause for the first 50 turns. The northern wheat will eventually be harvested and the tile used for a Bath district; I'll probably try to use the plains tiles east and southeast of the other wheat for a Feudalism farming triangle later on. That will provide the food for the 5 plains hills in the inner two rings of the city which will supply lots and lots of productive power.

The current tech path is Animal Husbandry into Pottery into Irrigation. After that, we'll have to evaluate what things look like and decide where to head next. I would really like to get Bronze Working and Wheel done quickly as possible, which will be somewhat dependent on landing their boosts. Let's hope we can kill 3 barbarians and find a resource to mine to get the boost for both of them in a timely fashion. If not, well, we can always build units and go smash Brussels instead.

[Singaboy]

Turn 9:

I open the save to a flurry of news. I knew from the previous post that there is a new city state. This gives me the Inspiration for Political Philosophy. I also finished researching Astrology.

The city state quest is fortunately very doable. I need to storm a barbarian camp. Hence, in our quest to kill barbarians, we need to keep this in mind.

I checked and it's Emperor K of all people who must have met a cultural city state too. Between Rome and China, this is the only other nation that now has CoL (unless he discovered a tech which I didn't check). My score is now at 11 and I don't like to be the early target. Having Sulla in the team already put a fat cross-hair on our back...



Well, on with the game. There are some aspects of that UI Mod that I don't fancy and dropping a district is one of them. If you simply select the holy site (or any other district for that matter), it will add it to the production queue without actually dropping it down. You need to manually put the district into the first place of the building queue and then reverse the build queue or take it out all together, once it has been locked on the ground. Not the most elegant solution.

Anyway, it's now locked at 58 hammers, which is still very cheap and a little less than I calculated. I used the opportunity to buy the forest hill as the cost was still at 50 gold (it most likely increases with the second tech researched). In 2 turns, we can ramp up production another 3 hammers.



As fo technology and civics, I got CoL and enabled God King of course. I selected workmanship (40 culture) to research it until 16 beakers (4 turns) to then switch over to Foreign Trade as we have the Inspiration for that already anyway. I need Rome to quickly get workmanship so I can continue with state workforce. With our early culture and cross-player Inspirations, we might end up with too much culture and too few Civics to research. We better get a barb camp soon so I can get that Inspiration for an envoy in Lisbon.

Pottery is selected too on the way to Irrigation.  Warrior and slinger explore. I think, the slinger will explore a little more in the north. I suggest to Sulla to maybe turn the warrior around and let him search for the barb camp in the south, where my warrior could join the hunt. It seems there is lots of coast in the west, we can decide for a dot map later on.

[Sullla]

Hmm, I'm OK with turning the new Roman warrior around and sending it south to look for the barbarian camp that must have spawned there. Your new Chinese slinger can probably scout out the area in the north anyway and get a good sense for what's up in that direction. We do need to make sure that the slinger is ready to guard the Chinese settler when it completes though, and that's not too far away. The north looks to be mostly tundra anyway, and it has a lower priority for scouting than the south.

I agree that Rome needs to get Craftsmanship civic done as quickly as possible. The current builder ETA says 8 turns but I think I can get it done in 5 turns with city growth and swapping onto the 1/3 forested plains hill tile. Then it will take a couple more turns to move onto the relevant tiles and improve them with the builder. Neither one of us will be wasting culture though, as once you get 40% of Craftsmanship done (and Rome gets 50% of Craftsmanship done), we can both swap onto Foreign Trade and work on that. We both have Foreign Trade boosted already so nothing will get wasted there. If that finishes, we can both start working on Early Empire if we're still waiting on Craftsmanship. It will work out OK, don't worry.

As far as topping the board and being a target... welcome to my situation in every game I play. It's something we can't control so I wouldn't stress out about it. This is an AI diplo game and that will make it harder for anyone to coordinate action against a single team. Besides, we have to get in first place before we need to worry about this overmuch. I think we focus on playing our own game for now and see where that leaves us down the road.

[BRickAstley]

I would say the 2nd warrior isn't bad in that it gets you a second legion that much easier.

Also remember that with the map settings we gave, it's likely no one is too close. So the window of being ganged up on is thT much further away.