[SPOILERS] Cornflakes (Norway) vs. TheArchduke (Japan)

[Cornflakes]

Time for a real update

   


Had the barbarian horde picture above been a human-led army it would have been game over. With the un-coordinated attacks of the barbarians however, this was a bit scary but not devastating. I believe the city reached around 120 HP at lowest, but was able to heal each turn. With the slinger plinking away from the safety of the city, and the warrior fortified outside I was able to defeat all the barbarian at the cost of only bout 45 HP damage to the warrior.

   

TheArchduke beat me to a 2nd city by 3 turns (the same 3 turns I spent on the Slinger earlier). Oh well, nothing I could do about it with 6 mounted barbarians pouring over the border! I brought the scout back around through to escort the settler since the warrior was to busy fighting barbarians. After founding the city, the scout will continue on north. After finding 2 city states in the south I'm guessing the 3rd will be somewhere north.

   

Another barbarian horse appears to the east. Is this the start of the 2nd wave from those 2 barb horse camps? So soon? I decide to abandon the builder, farm the rice anyway, planning to re-capture the builder next turn while the barb horse sits on the marsh for -2 combat penalty.

   


Instead of capturing the builder, the barb horse moves around and takes a shot at my warrior  would have thought for sure it would be programmed to capture a civilian if available, but ok. I move the slinger west to be behind the river, and the warrior back into the forest where the slinger was. Builder starts heading for the sugar. With the barbarian threat incoming I'm going to want all the rough terrain defensive bonus I can get so I'll leave that forest for the warrior to occupy for now. I'm planning to chop that into the Stonehenge wonder later. Also pictured above, I met the 3rd city state Buenos Aires. Another industrial is not exactly what I was looking forward to, but at least it will help with production on the early infrastructure. It shaved a turn off the Campus. After completing the campus I'll still be about 5 turns short of the 3rd improvement for the Craftsmanship eureka so I might slot in a Monument to take advantage of the double industrial CS bonus. Together they essentially provide a +30% boost to buildings. The other options would be a trader or another builder.

   

The barbs shuffle around, I take a shot with the slinger and promote the warrior to Turtle (since Battlecry doesn't help against mounted, might as well get some extra protection when the horse archers arrive). In hind sight, I think I should have waited 1 more turn to promote and just fortified this turn. I only received +38 health from the promotion whereas had I waited and taken another hit or two I would have received +50 and also +15 for not moving on the turn I promoted (here the extra +15 isn't gained because I've already promote-healed up to 100 HP). TheArchduke's empire score took another tick upwards, and great person screen confirms the race for the first GProphet has begun! On the positive side, I should get a discount when placing my first HS, and also on the positive side with TAD going for early HS I should have a decent head start on GScientist points. Plus with Stonehenge I still think I can beat him to the 1st religion unless he guns for it hard.

Regarding the next build after Campus I'm favoring another builder here. The builder builder would be slated to (1) plantation the Incense which would keep me in +1 amenity at both cities and also raise the housing cap to 8 here [6 base + farm + pasture + 2 plantations] allowing me to get to size 7 for a 3rd district placement without a Granary and also allowing me to work essentially all of the excellent tiles in the starting area. Charges (2) and (3) would chop the forest and harvest the stone into Stonehenge. So the build order would be:

Finish Campus > Builder > Slinger [with Agoge slotted] > Slinger > Stonehenge. The slingers would be upgraded into Archers to take out the barb camps and then Herevan in combination with a couple of warriors out of Stavanger which as of the last screenshot above has started its Holy Site. The goal would be to capture Stavanger after it completes its HS and before founding the religion at Stonehenge to take advantage of the free religion spread.

[Cornflakes]

Exciting nail-biting times for the Viking these past couple of turns with the 2nd wave of barbarian horsies incoming. Horse camps in general are a pain, but double really are a nightmare! With this 2nd wave I don't even have the luxury of being able to promote-heal my slinger or warrior when wounded. Wish me luck!

   

I looped my scout into the fray to hopefully take some of the pressure off. With TheArchduke already ahead of me to 2nd city and 1st district I really don't want to slow the empire development to hammer out another unit without Agoge. And I just don't see how I could have slotted Agoge earlier with the tiles I have available to improve. I really think I've played this as best I could, hopefully I can keep my units alive a couple more turns. The scout got a very bad dice roll on the horse, it was almost a guaranteed kill but left the horse alive with several HP remaining 

   

The red-lined horse in-turn was able to whack my slinger for some significant damage. I had to think about this turn for a while. I debated retreating slinger into the city and warrior back across the river, but ended up taking an offensive approach. Slinger struck first, followed by scout [so that it could remain behind on the campus hill], and finally the warrior cleaned up. I'm on flat land this turn but Turtle promotion will mostly mitigate the Horse Archer's attack. I expect to have the warrior red-lined.

   

Next turn I'm planning to promote the scout back to full health while retreating the scout + warrior. I should be able to keep everything alive  Actually the turn just rolled around back to me so let's find out ...

   

 ANOTHER barb horse archer appears   A normal horse appearing would have been fine since I could retreat across the river out of range, but the archer can just hit me across the river. I'm probably going to lose the warrior, if not then for sure the scout

   

Moved scout into the city and plinked the HA, retreated warrior back across the river, and moved the scout out onto the flat land as a sacrificial lamb. Hopefully the warrior can survive

[Cornflakes]

   

The warrior survived due to the scout's noble sacrifice. What to do here? I'd really like to keep plinking away with the slinger, but I'm afraid if I just retreat the warrior SW onto the flat land that the barb HA will be able to run it down and take it out (I'll be swapping out of discipline next turn).

   

I decide to fortify the warrior in the capital and while retreating the slinger. It will move west behind the hill jungles where it can't be tracked down and shot. Unfortunately I'll probably lose the campus to a pillage  In hind sight I think it would have been better to just hammer out another warrior or slinger without Agoge before building the campus. That would probably have save the 30-cog slinger + a few cogs from the pillaged campus, and since the campus will be pillaged for a few turns now the 3-4 turns delay in completion is getting balanced out now on the back end.

   

This is from the following turn. Pasture completed Craftsmanship (I had  put an extra turn into craftsmanship) Warrior fortified in the city as planned, scout retreated west as planned. With Agoge in place I'm making 21 modified cogs per turn towards units. That's 2-turn warriors and 1.66-turn slingers. I'm going warrior first here because my current warrior will need to stay fortified in the city for a couple turns lest it die as soon as it exits the city, and a slinger would die as well as soon as it exited. After the warrior I'll have a 2-turn slinger, followed hopefully by a 1-turn slinger due to massive overflow. Next turn the new warrior will head SW onto the forest hill while the current injured warrior heals 1 more turn. Then the following turn hopefully I'll be able to hit something with both warriors and take it out, then add the slinger to the fray and another slinger and we should be golden. ... and the next turn just came in so let's see what's up ...

   

Campus got pillaged as expected, needs 7 cogs to repair  I debated whether I wanted to fortify the slinger on the swamp this turn, but if the HA in the east moves SW, it would then be able to move SW again and hit my slinger, taking it out. The slinger would only be safe if one of the two HA advance, if both do then it's dead since my warriors can only handle 1. Next turn the western HA is dead. I expect the western HA to either (1) move SW, in which case the slinger hits first and the warrior cleans up. Or (2) stay in place and hit my warrior outside the city, in which case I'll attack first with the one from the city, and then follow up with the one outside the city ... unless the other barb moves make something else look better.

I really do like the Civ 6 movement rules by the way in combination with 1 UPT (not that I necessarily like 1 UPT, but with 1 UPT I like that units need the full MP remaining to enter a tile). I think I've said this before, but I think something like Civilization Call-To-Power rules which allow multiple units per tile but still have a limit (9 in CTP) would be a good happy medium.

[Cornflakes]

I didn't mention this in the previous post, but Yerevan completed the Holy Site. Tentative tech plan is Bronze Working > Astrology > Archery, with the archers first hunting out the barb camps in the north, then turning south to capture Yerevan. ETA on Yerevan is approximately T60. Alternatively, I could build a couple of extra military units (building them almost complete, and then chopping to completion) and shave a few turns off of the capture. On 2nd thought this would be better. I'll want to capture Yerevan before I complete Stonehenge and found the religion, and my clock is ticking with TheArchduke already at around 15 GPP accumulated on the GProphet. I expect he'll go for a shrine or another HS at his 2nd city to accelerate it.

With this being Deity, and having already had some difficulty in previous duels with bringing too little force I'm planning minimum of 6 attackers, 3:3 or 2:4 warriors:Archers. While maintaining at least an archer/warrior pair at Nidaros, and preferably another archer so that I can take the offensive against the barbs. So I'm looking at needing 5 archers & 3 warriors.

   

HA west of the city stayed put, so I whacked it with both warriors. The other is moving around counterclockwise. Will we have enough overflow off of this slinger to 1-turn the next?

   

Nope, about 3 cogs short. Just as well this way, actually. I'll put 1T into the slinger leaving it at around 32/35, then finish it in a couple turns with a chop for the +50% overflow into Stonehenge. Down to just 2 HA remaining. I shuffle the exposed warrior SW rather than attacking the HA. I wouldn't have been able to kill the HA this turn, and I didn't want to leave myself with either a red-lined warrior exposed on flatland, or the possibility for the HA to move to sugar and hit the slinger without me being able to hit the sugar tile with 2 units in return. This setup seemed to be the safest. 


   

Haven't mentioned Stavenger in a while due to all the activity with the barbs in the north. It slowly built its builder and now things are starting to happen. I had left a slinger 1-turn from completion, so I'll chop through the slinger into the campus, shaving 1 turn off it's completion timeline. The campus will be a 3-adjacency site. I'm contemplating harvesting the Stone here to locate the Holy Site on the stone tile. This will be a 2 adjacency HS site and will additionally bump the Campus tile to 4 adjacency! If I do harvest the stone, I'll wait until the campus is completed first then harvest the stone through an almost-completed unit, the harvest will scale up with the HS and negate any cost increase from waiting. The only downside that I see to the harvest is that it takes a 2/3 tile out of play and I've already spent 1/3 of a builder improving the tile. It will almost have time to pay back the direct cog cost by the time I harvest it, and it did give me a eureka so I still think the Quarry was worth the builder charge.

   

9-turn build on the campus, but will probably shave off a turn after the city grows. I thought at first there was a bug in the harvest since the food bar didn't move when the jungle was harvested. I thought that maybe something with God of the Harvest had bugged the other yield, but the food showed up after I moved the slinger    

In the north, 2nd wave of barbarian horsies is finally defeated   Hopefully they give me time to heal up before the next wave. Once the warrior in Nidaros gets mostly healed he will move and fortify on the Campus to protect it. I should be able to handle the next wave ok as long as they give me about 3 turns to heal. I also have 2 units within 1-2 combats of earning a promotion so that will help with the next wave as well. I swapped off the slinger as planned, waiting a couple turns for the chop. After repairing the campus the overflow will be enough to to finish of the builder in 2 turns since I already have a couple turns invested. Then I'll bring a warrior to near-completion to take advantage of another chop-overflow while building up military.

Looking at my gold situation, it's going to be tight scraping together the gold to upgrade my 5 slingers to archers. I'll need 225 gold total but only have 60 now due to another tile purchase for Stonehenge. I think barb camps give 40g on Deity and I know that I have 2 close by to the north. So I'll need another 225 - 60 - 80 = 85 which is about 15 turns at my current rate. This also solidifies that I need to go on the offensive against the barb camps sooner rather than later. By the time I'm healed up I'll have enough gold in the bank for 2 upgrades. 2 warriors + 2 archers should be able to handle the barb camps. My remaining forces will start positioning around Yerevan. The slingers will need to gather in the west for upgrade in my territory, while 2 warriors circle east to make sure the city gets under siege.

[Cornflakes]

Proposed district layout for the capital (adjacency yield at buildout in parentheses):

   

This will require size 10 city for the four specialty district. With the Aqueduct I'll have the housing and the Sugar + Marsh Rice will provide the food. Current housing will get me to Size 7, then I'll need a granary + Aqueduct to get me to size 10. The plan is tentatively Stonehenge > Settler or two > Granary > HS > Shrine > Stave Church > Aqueduct > Commercial > Theater. The idea is to get out a couple of more cities which will then support further expansion while the capital goes vertical. Granary is towards the front of the queue since I have many good tiles to work at the capital. The HS and buildings are towards the front of the queue since the faith yield has high value to purchase buildings for the Theater and Campus district with Jesuit Education, which will be secured through Stonehenge as the top priority build.

I looked back at Oledavy's PBEM 4 thread to see what his timeline on religion was ... T50  I don't think that TheArchduke will be pushing that timeline though, I'm estimating (hoping) he'll shoot more for T60. Oledavy built two HS + 1 Shrine + 2 HS projects. He was also in what looked to be a tight race with Japper, while here I'm not generating any GProphet points so there is not that extra motivation to push for it ASAP. What I expect is that he will complete either a 2nd HS or shrine in the next couple of turns, followed a couple turns later by the other, thus landing it around T60.

On my side, Astrology completes EOT45, I can start building as early as T46 but would prefer to wait another 4 turns for State Workforce and the +15% policy card. I expect to use 2 chops, and if I wait until towards the end to chop I should get around 40 for a forest and 20 for a jungle. Both chops will go through a nearly completed unit thus getting +50%, which I'll have to round down a couple. Say a total of 55 modified cogs. The total cost is 180 so I'll need to come up with another 125 cogs. I can get base 16/turn counting the two industrial CS. With the +15% policy it will take me just under 7 turns to get 125 cogs. Therefore if I start T50 I will get Stonehenge EOT 56, actually getting it T57. The chop tiles are adjacent to each other and will take a total of 3 turns to chop. To be as efficient with chops as possible I would chop the 2nd tile on T7 of building it, and the first tile on T5. I could shave off a turn by chopping another forest instead of the jungle, but I'd prefer keeping the forest on the hill for now for the juicy 1/3 tile at this stage of the game. Later on those forests will be chopped once I can get Apprenticeship-boosted mines down.

[Cornflakes]

After the last patch I should be getting a healthy discount on my first HS placed since TheArchduke has already built one, right? I recall something like a 40% discount for having less than the average number of districts down. Which means that Japan's discounted HS cost essentially gets passed right along to me

I also confirmed that faith purchase cost is half the gold cost and twice the production cost.

180 for Library
500  for University
300  for Amphitheter
580  for Art/Archaeological Museum

I expect to struggle culture-wise compared to TheArchduke this game, and surpass him in Science. Based on the scoring overview I'm pretty sure that TAD already met a cultural CS so he will beat me handily to Political Philosophy, probably by 10 turns maybe twice that unless he detours to the other early civics ahead of PP. The Japanese Meiji Restoration will approximately balance out against Hypatia whom I will hopefully recruit. The spacious map is a mild nerf to Meiji Restoration because there is room to spread out as opposed to jamming districts down on every available tile. My ability to purchase Library's and Universities should help me keep an edge science-wise. I also have a couple of very nice sites for my first 2 campuses at which should give me a slight early edge. I expect TAD to take Choral Music after I take Jesuit Education, thus far out-pacing my cultural production capacity. 

Now that I think about things more, I'm having second thoughts about Jesuit Education. Choral Music will essentially mean I never have to build any theater districts. Those cogs in turn could go towards producing the science buildings. Having read Sullla's report on the space victory I have recognized the importance of key great persons on the path to Science victory. I could stock up faith throughout the game to patronize key Great People along the way. It seems that faith would do as much or more towards aiding science victory through patronizing GPP as it would by rushing the buildings. If planning on the patronizing route, then Oracle becomes an important wonder. Maybe slot in Oracle in place of Theater at the capital in the above posted build order. Also there are other places to spend faith such as purchasing an army via Theocracy. Also a large stock of stored faith could be used to blitz a religious victory. The more I think about it the more I think that Choral Music will fill a large glaring weakness in my cultural production, while providing more flexibility through Faith purchases down the road.

Something to ponder over the next 10-15 turns

[suboptimal]

After the last patch I should be getting a healthy discount on my first HS placed since TheArchduke has already built one, right? I recall something like a 40% discount for having less than the average number of districts down. Which means that Japan's discounted HS cost essentially gets passed right along to me

There was some discussion on this in the PBEM 4 lurker thread which led to the QotD that's currently displayed. 

The from the info at CivFanatics is that the "formula" depends on how many districts of each type have been built to completion by you, how many district types are available to you (of the eight that can run specialists) and whether or not you've built three total districts.   No one really nailed it down but it seems like you take the number of districts you've built, divide by the number of types available and if that number is > 1 then your first district of a new type is discounted.  Or not.   Likewise, if the result of the math is > 2 your first two districts of a new type would be discounted.  Or not. There was concensus that there was no discount until a minimum number of districts were completed (it was either 3 or 4).

[Cornflakes]

I was looking back at my math on Stonehenge ... the two chops should actually net me 90 modified cogs, less a couple to complete the warrior + slinger, say 85 total. This will shave at least a turn if not 2 off the ETA. The timeline on Stonehenge is thus going to be several turns quicker than I can capture Yerevan and complete the HS at Stavanger (approximately 10 turns later for both). Therefore I need to decide whether to push for Stonehenge ASAP and found religion ASAP, push for Stonehenge but hold off on founding religion, wait a few turns to start Stonehenge, or start ASAP and hold it for a few turns within 1-turn of completion.

Risks of delaying Stonehenge: TheArchduke builds Stonehenge himself. Since he has the 50% discount on HS I don't expect him to push for Stonehenge
Risks of accelerating Stonehenge but delaying religion: TAD either has GP project queued up already which completes while I'm delaying, or he notices that I haven't founded the religion for a couple of turns and then queues up a project to try and beat me. I think the chances of this are small, but it is a risk none the less.

[Cornflakes]

No 3rd wave of barbarians thankfully, looks like I'll finally be able to get things under control!

   

There's a lot going on in this screenshot. Starting in the north, I found the culprit horses supplying the barb camps  I've upgraded both slingers to archers, found 1 camp and will hunt down the 2nd. The 2nd should be to the east since I've seen the scout and horses come that direction. It has to be within 5 tiles of the horses, but I think I saw somewhere that there is a minimum distance of 5 tiles between barb camp spawns ... is the 2nd camp just northeast of the wheat? Does the land there bulge out more? Also, Woden, where are my sea resources  ?

In the south my forces are starting to line up against Yerevan. I'll need to be quick since I believe my researching of Masonry will open up city walls as an option for the CS to build. There is a lot of rough terrain in the east so it will take my warrior 8 turns to get down there. In the west I'll have time to upgrade my two slingers, chop out a warrior, and hopefully build another Archer. The plan there is:

Next turn T50 clear the quarry with 2T left on the campus
T51 (with 1 turn left on the campus) harvest Stone through the warrior. The warrior is sitting at 39/40 so I'll get max overflow. Put the overflow into a HS on the stone tile.
T52 finish the Campus
T53-57 build Archer
T58-61-ish finish HS

On T58 the eastern warrior will be in position to attack. Another warrior will arrive about 2 turns later, chopped out of the capital, bringing the total attack force to 3 archers + 3 warriors as planned. Declaration of war will come somewhere around T58 to start taking out units, with assault on the city will starting somewhere around T60, hopefully capture by T62-63. I'll complete Stonehenge in advance and hold off on founding the religion until the turn I capture Yerevan.

TheArchduke thus beats me to 3rd city, buy about a dozen turns, but my 3nd city comes with completed HS and probably Monument + Granary with about 2 turns of repair on each. It is also an excellent city location with double sugar, 3 mines already, and a couple more plains hills in 2nd ring. Once Colonization is in I'll pump out 2-3 settlers. I will have plenty of military and will thus probably utilize Classical Republic government to put 3 economic policies in place (paying for my army of archers through Church Property income).

[Cornflakes]

   

Turns out there was only one barb camp in the north. I'm absolutely certain that there were two at some point because I saw two separate scouts at the same time (and also got hit with 6 mounted barbs at the same time). I'm guessing the 2nd camp must have been further to the west and was taken out by Buenos Aires. This means that I was very unlucky with the scout from that other camp in the beginning which found me instead of Buenos Aires. But all's well that ends well  Also on Diety difficulty the gold reward for clearing the barb camp is only 30g.

You can see in this screenshot that I'm building a spearman in the capital. This seems like an unusual build. But I have put the entire chop overflow from the archer chop into the spearman to complete it in 1-turn. I was originally planning to put the chop cogs into Stonehenge, but TheArchduke has not accelerated his timeline as expected. I'm very close to entering the classical era via tech and I wanted to finish off the quest. This will likely by my last military build for a LOOOOOONG time (except for a couple of longboats eventually for exploration and the eureka). My current military will be plenty to keep the barbs at bay. I decided to go for the quest and the envoy because I'm planning on keeping the two industrial CS alive. With two of them I can actually get a decent return on investment out of industrial zones. With the full 6 envoys in each I can get 8cpt in each IZ, and the suzerain bonus of both isn't half bad.

   

I also noticed something odd on this turn ... the culture ranking have swapped. TAD was always ahead of me and I thought he'd found a cultural CS, but now with 3 cities (and presumably more pop) his cultural ranking is below mine. Was his 3rd city actually a capture of his cultural CS neighbor? But no, I would have received a notification that an unmet civ had been eliminated. I'm not sure what is going on here. I didn't build any culture buildings.

I'm also starting to close in on Yerevan. My units are in a line to the west of Yerevan cutting their warrior + slinger off from returning. The slinger especially I want to keep from getting back to be upgraded into an archer.

   

T57 my warriors are in position to put the city under siege. They can't reach to attack yet, but I decide to declare war this turn and take the first two potshots with my archers. I roll high damage on both and take out about 15% of the HP. I could have waited another 2 turns to get additional units in position first, but Stonehenge in completing soon so I'll be wanting to found the religion. Also Yerevan could pump out another unit in the interim. I'd rather just declare war a little pre-maturely. Yerevan realistically only has that 1 archer with which to counter attack.

   

Stonehenge completes next turn. I'm currious to see whether the next GProphet in line will be 60 cost or 120. I'm hoping for 120 as a setback to TheArchduke. TAD finished another HS so his first two and only districts so far have been HS. In contrast I'm 1/3 of the way to recruiting Hypatia, with enough faith stored up to purchase two Libraries immediately upon founding the religion. I've not yet decided though if I;m going to faith buy two libraries ASAP though. Hypatia will build a Library, so if I faith-buy two libraries I'd need to build another campus quickly somewhere. Yerevan doesn't have a good site, and any other new city I settle will take a long time. Plus my science is already very strong for this point in the game I believe. Next turn after purchasing a Library and capturing Yerevan I'll be around 22 spt. Once Hypatia comes in another 12 turns I'll get an additional +4. I'll be at the point where I'll be out-pacing my ability to earn the eurekas on science, while at the same time being woefully backwards in culture. I'm therefore planning to save the faith so that I can immediately purchase an Amphitheater in my first Theater Square. I'm also considering faith-patronizing the first GWriter as soon as possible after building the Amphitheater to give me a nice shot of culture. That's still 2-30 turns out though due to my terrible culture rate getting to D&P and then the time required to build the Theater Square. Hmmm, I'll need to think about how I might speed up that timeline.

   

The result after 2 turns of attacking with the archers, and only 1 attack by a warrior. I've knocked off about 40% of the HP. After the two lucky dice rolls from the archers last turn, I got very un-lucky rolls this turn. So it all ends up balancing out. I fortified the damaged warrior to reduce the impact of another shot from the archer. Next turn I'll also take a hit on my archer. I could have paused this turn to chip at the warrior, but overall I think I'll lose less by prioritizing the city capture ASAP. Next turn with the two archer shots and the 3 warrior attacks I think that I'll have enough muscle to take the city. In that case all the units running around would just disappear 

I've revealed quite a few more plains hills too   this is going to be a real production powerhouse in the long term. Plus 2 more copper to harvest late game for gold and faith