Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

Here we go with the Roman half of Turn 10:



The most noteworthy thing discovered this turn was that barb scout who popped up over by Singaboy. He should get the opportunity to give it a good thwack with his slinger and do about 45 damage, enough so that if the slinger can get another shot it will kill the thing. Anyway, we'll see what happens over there. I moved my warrior back towards the south as we discussed last turn, headed for the southern river to poke around a bit more down there. The other Roman warrior is still exploring the area over by the natural wonder and didn't reveal much of anything this turn.

Animal Husbandry finished on research and I started up with Pottery. Since there wasn't much else going on this early in the game, here's a look at the Great Person screen:



Most of these Great People are fairly weak. Crassus is quite nice as the first Great Merchant but nothing gamebreaking. Since we aren't planning on chasing after any of the early Great People, it's good news to see Aryabhata (probably the worst early Great Scientist) instead of Hypatia, and Bi Sheng instead of the Great Engineer that provides wonder-building production. We never want any of those Great Engineers to appear since they're very anti-China in terms of what they do. This will make it much easier to land Stonehenge, Pyramids, Colosseum, and Petra for Singaboy's civ.



I'm hoping to get more vision down here along this river. In fact, I've been thinking it over and I'm debating sending the first settler out of Roma to the eastern plains hill tile down there. While that might seem silly at face value, that spot would get the 2 production center tile plant and has some great early tiles to work at low population sizes, the 2/2 jungle hill and the 1/3 plains deer forest in the second ring. It can even borrow the southern wheat tile from the capital since it's in the third ring of that potential spot. The natural wonder spot will be absoutely awesome in time, but it needs worker labor to be productive and I'm not planning on having the capital produce another builder to help it out. Without that, the natural wonder spot would have all of 2 production and would be sitting there training a builder for itself over 15-20 turns. That's slow and distinctly non-optimal, just as it was in Civ6. That southern spot along the river would have 4 production/turn at size 1 and 7 production/turn at size 2. It would be able to support itself and start contributing much faster. So perhaps that spot for the second city and then the natural wonder area for the third city (?) At the very least, it's worth exploring the area with this warrior and getting some more information. We don't need to make any final decisions for a while yet.

Very little to mention in the score tracking just yet. No one has a capital at size 3 yet, and most everyone is discovering their first tech right about now. We are the only two players who have a civic done and that's excellent news. Aside from someone on the Woden/Chevalier team who has met a Religious city state and will get the first pantheon, we're likely to claim the second and third pantheons thanks to our quick adoption of God King policy. Singaboy is pretty much locked into Monument to the Gods for his Chinese ability, but I'm hoping to be able to claim City Patron Goddess (+25% production towards districts in cities without a specialty district) for Rome. If that's gone, then perhaps God of the Open Sky for +1 culture on pastures. There's one sheep resource at the capital and that's a useful pantheon purely for denial value to other players. Still a long time before either of us gets to pick our pantheon of course.

[Singaboy]

Nice assessment of the second city. Might be worth the consideration. It would lock the horses between your cities as well getting rid of a potential barb horsemen raid.

The barb scout looks juicy, I hope I can lock it in for the kill. To get to the camp with a spear inside might be a little trickier for a slinger. I might have to use my warrior for the settler escort after all. I really want that barbarian camp cleared for the envoy to Lisbon.

As mentioned in the other thread, I won't be playing until 14 hours from now. Save arrived an hour too late.

[Singaboy]

China's half of Turn 10:

Of course, there is not so much happening at the moment. Waiting for Xian to grow to size 3 next turn. The issue at hand is to chase that scout and give him a proper whack. Unfortunately, this turns out to be rather disappointing with a mere 38 damage, well below the expected average. This way, it will take three shots to kill it.

The other thing to note, the tile I suspected to be coastal is in fact along a nice river. It will be interesting what lies north of it.



I decide to move my warrior on rotation back towards the capital and spot another barb scout, maybe the scout that was spotted by Rome earlier on. Hmm, I will need to hunt it down as well, I guess. The good thing I suppose is that the camp should be in the south, which means the scout should be coming back there once it runs into Xian.

Sulla, maybe you warrior can assist in smoking out the barb camp that must be hidden in the south.

[Sullla]

Another mostly quiet turn for Turn 11:



I moved the eastern warrior and found another horses resource up here by the Commercial city state. This looks like the northeastern end of the peninsula; my thinking is to turn around now and try to scout out a little bit more in the southeastern (and more fertile) part of the continent. That would also bring the warrior back closer to our cities for use in anti-barbarian action if needed. Do you have any thoughts here Singaboy?



Another view of the southern area below our capitals. I'm thinking more and more that a city along that southern river is a better spot for the first Roman settler. It just gets up and running so much faster than the area by the natural wonder, which we'll still grab at an early date, just not with the initial settler. I really want to see what's over by that deer resource with the warrior heading down there now. One more useful tile in the fog would basically clinch this spot. By the way, Buenos Aires is going to be annoying to capture since it's located on the coast. That will prevent us from putting the city under siege unless we have the ability to embark units, which we won't when we attack. (We're certainly not getting a galley out any time soon with these landlocked capitals.) I want to take this city as soon as possible so that we *DO* have a seafaring city and can get a naval unit out and exploring quickly. We'd also get the Sailing boost from capturing this city and that would be nice. My plan is to build four slingers and upgrade them all to archers, then attack this city with the 2 warriors and 4 archers. I think that's doable by about Turn 40 and should be enough to take this spot.

I'm putting one more turn into Craftsmanship civic and then swapping to Foreign Trade. I think Singaboy will also have to swap in a turn or two to avoid wasting culture with that 60% Chinese boost. It looks like the Roman builder will be done in five turns (Turn 16) and then will take five more turns to improve three tiles, so I should have Craftsmanship finished on Turn 21 to pass on the boost to Singaboy. That should allow plenty of time to get State Workforce finished in time for Stonehenge.



I also spotted the location of a barbarian camp in the fog on the circled tile. This should be good news: by spotting the camp quickly, Singaboy can get his warrior over there in 2 turns and start clearing up, hopefully getting the envoy for Lisbon (and the Military Tradition boost) in the process. One other thing to note over here is the fact that all those tiles are fresh water, not coastal. That's an inland lake and not the western coast. Singaboy should be able to get a strong city in that incense/horses/rice cluster of resources.

None of the other players have completed their first civic yet, which means no one else has discovered a Cultural city state. They're all limping along at 1.5 culture per turn. Hopefully this will give us an early edge by being first to each civic.

[Singaboy]

Turn 11:

I am warned about the barbarians, I could not see the northern scout on Sulla's screenshot too. Makes me wonder where that scout has headed to, my guess would be north.

First things first, Xian grew to size 3 and I need to reassign the citizens. Settler eta is T18 (I would like it to be T17, but production is short of that: 59/9 = 6.6 turns. I don't think there is anything I can do to shorten it to 6 turns.
The citrus tile has been added to the city and bananas will follow. With irrigation, the first worker can add two luxuries, before heading to help with Stonehenge. So far, so good.



The situation regarding barbarians isn't as rosy. I turn my warrior around to head for the camp in the fog, as I don't want horsemen to spawn. We don't need those to interfere with the settler moving west.
I move the slinger further up north and spot the wounded scout. I hope it will turn around so I can catch it, before the slinger needs to head back to protect the settler.




I agree with you, Sulla. Settle the next city south and conquer Buenos Aires as soon as possible. I would send the warrior to find that camp, that undoubtedly spawned south too. I am convinced we are currently dealing with 3 barbarian camps. We better keep them under control. In order to deal with that, I would turn the northern warrior south too, we have enough information about the northeast to know, there are powerful tiles to settle a city.

By the way according to my calculation, I have accumulated 10.6 culture for craftsmanship so far. This means another two turns to get to 18.4 (I need 16 for the 40%). I will swap to Foreign Trade on T13.

[Sullla]

I agree, I'm bringing the eastern warrior back towards Roma and sending the other one to poke around the southeast to spy for barbarians. If we would have a camp erupt over by you, I could also send that warrior over to help out. I'm cautiously optimistic that we can catch the camp off in the west before it starts producing horsemen since it's been in existence for exactly one turn and you already have a warrior close by.

Xi'an is looking really nice for a size 3 city with no improved tiles. It's going to be a great capital city.

[Sullla]

This was another quiet turn but we have more barbarian troubles brewing on the horizon. The northern barbarian scout disappeared, only for a new one to show up over by the barbarian camp that just spawned. It almost looks like the scout that Singaboy injured with his slinger last turn teleported over there. That doesn't happen in Civ6... right? Perhaps the Cultural city state managed to damage that scout with one of its units. Another barb scout is about to get the exclamation mark over its head from spotting Xi'an next turn. In any case, we need to move Singaboy's Chinese warrior next to that barb camp and start attacking it before it can spawn horse units. With the Discipline +5 strength bonus, I think there's enough time to make that happen before a barb scout can get back. I think. What are you thinking in terms of moving the slinger? Southwest across the river this turn to try and cut off the damaged barb scout as it moves towards Xi'an?

My eastern warrior is on the way back to Rome and will get there in 3 more turns. The southern warrior moved down to explore the river area where I'm thinking of planting the second city. If things start to look bad from a barbarian perspective, I can start moving one or both of them over towards Singaboy. Let me know what you're thinking here.



I swapped research from Craftsmanship to Foreign Trade because it had reached 50% completion. I also changed Roma's tile assignment from the sheep over to the forested plains hill, since it didn't slow down growth to size 3 in two turns. This will ensure that the builder gets finished in 4 more turns, going from the current 19 production via 7/7/9/9 production each turn to complete on Turn 16 with 51/50 in the box. (Of course this will slow down growth from size 3 to size 4 very slightly, but we don't care about that at the moment and getting the builder out a turn sooner is worth it.) If all goes according to plan, Craftsmanship civic will be finished on Turn 21 after improving three tiles.

Not much else to report right now. Japper is the first player on another team to pick up a civic; everyone else should be completing Code of Laws as well in the next couple of turns. TheArchduke still has a size 2 capital and hasn't discovered any techs or civics yet. He might have spent an extra turn or two moving, but regardless it's nice to see Germany getting off to a bit of a slow start.

[Singaboy]

As I predicted, we are dealing with at least 3 camps. My best guess right now is:

1. Western injured barb belongs to the camp that spawned recently. It got hit by Antananarivo.
2. Scout next to Xian might come from the south. It is the same scout that was spotted by Rome a few turns earlier in the south.
3. Northern scout, that had been hit by the slinger belongs to some camp in the north and moved east. It can't have moved west as we would have spotted that movement.

My suggestion to deal with all of them:

Camp 1: My warrior will move onto the rice tile (it's a move 2 tile) next to the scout. Warrior will then move onto the forest east of the barb camp for better defense. Try and eliminate the camp as soon as possible.

Camp 2: Rome's southern warrior to move southwest to find that camp. My guess is that the camp is south of the river

Camp 3: Rome's northern warrior to stay slightly to the north of Rome and Xian to intercept the northern scout, which undoubtedly will return eventually.

My slinger will move across the river SW to help facilitate the barb scout hunt. I will move it to the west of Xian to intercept any scout there and to be ready to escort the settler which will be done by T18.

In the worst case scenario, Rome might need to purchase a slinger for 140 gold to ease the barb situation. We currently have a combined treasury of 100 gold (75 + 25) this round when the turn comes to me. We make 16 gpt and Rome could buy the slinger on T15. It is an expensive solution, but I would prefer that over any other approach that would delay our settlers/builders and builder actions.

Sulla, what do you think?

[Sullla]

That looks like some nice deductive reasoning to me. I can move the northern Roman warrior in such a way that it stays up to the northern side of the city for right now. That should be easy enough. For the southern Roman warrior, I would like to move another tile southeast next turn since that will get my unit onto a hill and reveal any additional resources that might be at the proposed second city site. After that, it shouldn't be too hard to move west and be in position to deal with the camp that we suspect is located down in the southwest. Naturally these moves are subject to whatever the barbs might be doing on each new turn out of the fog.

I did want to suggest moving the Chinese warrior right next to the barb camp this turn (northwest-west). I don't think we need to delay by moving onto the forested hill tile for the defensive bonus, since the warrior will win easily on any terrain if the barbarian spear attacks out of the camp, and if the barb just defends, it doesn't matter what tile we're sitting on. That hill tile will be there as a potential place to retreat if things start looking dicey. This is your call, I think my preference would be to start attacking and killing that barb spear to clear the camp faster before it can spawn more units.

We'll save money for the moment in case we need to do an emergency unit purchase. Hopefully the units we have right now will be enough to keep us safe. As soon as I get my builder and then settler done, I plan to pump out three or four slingers in Agoge policy for barb safety. Unfortunately that's about a dozen turns away so we have to hang in there for the moment.

[Singaboy]

I would move that warrior next to the barb camp this turn, if only I could. However, the rice is different from the other rice tiles, which are on plains. Hence it will eat up both meager movement points. Since I will be stuck on it, it is better to move onto the hill after that. The barb camp is on a hill, hence, it would make no sense to move onto the plains as I can't attack the following turn anyway.