Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

{Rant mode on}

Can we talk for a minute here about the craziness of the Kongo and Khmer team? OK, so to their credit they managed to get a religion founded at a ridiculously fast date of Turn 32 despite not being Russia and not building Stonehenge. That's a mighty feat and they deserve props for that. However... man oh man have they ever shot themselves in the foot to do it. In order to land this super early religion, they have to do the following:

1) Build a non-Russian, full cost Holy Site district
2) Build (or I suspect cash-rush in this case) an early shrine
3) Run a Holy Site district project
4) Run a second Holy Site district project

All of that in the first 32 turns. The Khmer/Kongo team curently has zero cities founded on the map beyond their capital. Zero. On Turn 33. Mikeforall's capital has a population of 3. They are actually doing quite well on the tech/civics front, but their lack of expansion is a serious problem. I never thought a team would be willing to sacrifice their development curve that badly to found a religion so early. Like yeah sure, you can get a religion that fast if you make no attempt to expand and do nothing but crank out Holy Site district projects. Still, maybe I'm wrong here and Jesuit Education will be worth it. It just feels like they sabotaged both their game and ours with this play, kind of like someone settling a crazy pink dot up in your face in Civ4. It's a prisoner's dilemma - both players are probably losing when someone does that.

{End rant mode}

[Singaboy]

Too bad about the religion  

If there is a consolation, I would NOT have been able to found the religion on Stonehenge last turn I think, because the builder is blocking the Prophet  

Let's look at the positive aspect of it all. We are doing well with regards to barbarians, culture and city growth. I am going to have a closer look at the amount of civics and technologies that the teams have but I doubt anyone can match us. We have coordinated the civic Inspirations ideally and I am hopeful, both Rome and China will be the first nations to get to PP.
Rome needs 55 culture for that and with the current 7.8, it will take just over 7 turns. China will get to PP by T39. We will have a great head start with civics.

China should be able to add some permanent civic slots with the first coming from the Forbidden city. I have read some threads and nobody has really gone overboard with China's wonders. We should change this here. Rome can provide the muscle that is necessary to protect our lands from invasions.

For the immediate future, I will micro Changsha for faster growth. As Changsha will only use builder charges from T39 onward, there is enough time to slow production for faster growth. I will work sugar and stone (both tile have an output of 5) from this turn. Once the city grows to size 3, things can be adjusted again.
By the way, I don't need to worry too much about builder charge waste (for wonders) as any overflow will simply get into the next production. Hence, there is no need to micromanage production to the last detail there.

Where are you planning to send the trade route to? Are you going for faster growth and sending it to Roma or going for more gpt by sending it to Xian?

[Singaboy]

Turn 33:

It is getting hilarious. Nope, I am not able to found a religion because I don't have the Pantheon and even with a faith of 27.5, one got to wait an extra round. 

At Changsha, I reassign the citizens and city growth speeds up from 6 to 3 rounds. Production drops by 2 hammers. This is of little concern for pyramids. Faster growth means more culture and research earlier on. Of course, at pop 3 Changsha will be at normal amenities.



I send the Great Prophet back to Xian. The scout next to the city is a little irritating. What on earth is it doing there. I move the warrior SE as requested by Sulla. I am sure we can take care of the situation up there. However, with the upcoming 4 settlers that both of us produce, we ought to be a little careful not to get into barbarian trouble.



Finally, in all this religious frustrations [it's good to be an atheist I take a screenshot of all competitors and get a mild shock how advanced Mike and Japper are. Mike has one more technology than I have. In fact both have 6 technologies and they surely have met a scientific civ. However, they also match us in terms of culture and given Rome's strength for culture, this is quite surprising. Their empire scores are not impressive but they will expand now, I am sure.

Russia and Germany are severely lacking in civics.

It's time for Rome and China to show some power and get the scores going. I still hope we can be ahead of Khmer and Kongo reaching PP, but it might not be so clear from here on.

[Brian Shanahan]

I just thought of a name for your religion Cult of GilToss, seeing what you're going to do with it.

[Sullla]

With a day to look back and think about the situation more, I want to clarify my thoughts about the whole Stonehenge and religion situation. Yes, the pantheon requirement is profoundly stupid and the designers should have caught the possibility of running into it with someone building the Stonehenge wonder. I understand that the wonder technically only provides a "Great Prophet" and doesn't establish a religion itself, but come on, that's the whole point. You build Stonehenge to found a religion. It's a small detail that someone should have caught in testing or in a patch somewhere. When combined with the idiotic rule that only one player can found a pantheon on each turn, it's a recipe for disaster in a large game like this. I get the strong feeling that there was little to no Multiplayer testing of Civ6 and the designers don't really care about it too much. Some of the civs that they keep designing don't make any sense for a human vs human environment either. We were caught in a loophole here that the designers left in the game due to a lack of interest in MP gameplay, and it bit us really badly.

However... what I was missing in my frustration over the last two days is that this is a situation we could have avoided. We *COULD* have built Stonehenge faster if we had devoted all of our resources towards it, and I'm largely the one to blame for that. If you go back to our planning earlier in this thread, we predicated our thinking around getting a Stonehenge completion date around first Turn 39 or so, then refined that to Turn 34, and then sped it up further to Turn 32. The crucial fault here was mine as I based my thinking about when religious would fall around what had happened in other Civ6 MP games. In PBEM1, no one founded a religion at all. In the other PBEM games, the first religions have generally been taken around Turn 50-60, and oftentimes Great Prophets have still been available well after Turn 100. I kept writing about this and basing our planning around an "early" Great Prophet being about Turn 40, and maybe a really early one getting taken at Turn 35. That would be about twenty turns sooner than what we'd been seeing in past games after all. Instead, we had the first Great Prophet get claimed on Turn 30, Stonehenge complete on Turn 32, and then second Great Prophet also get claimed on Turn 32. They were hot commodities in this game and three teams went after them very hard indeed. This game is going to redefine what it means to push for a fast Great Prophet in our community. I was going off past precedent and I was wrong, wrong, wrong about how fast it could be done.

What we could have done instead was forget about using builder charges with Corvee policy and Monument to the Gods pantheon in place and simply cram out Stonehenge as fast as possible. In that respect, landing that early culture for Singaboy could even have been a slight setback because of how it influenced our planning. Changdu was founded on Turn 24 and a builder cash-rushed on the same turn. We could have immediately started using charges on Turn 25, 26, 27, and 28. The builder out of Xian could have skipped improving the sugar resource and raced over to Changdu as soon as possible. Dump in those charges as well on Turn 28 and then a sixth charge on Turn 29, and bam, there's Stonehenge done three turns sooner. Of course we still might have missed out on a religion due to that ridiculous pantheon issue, but I think Singaboy clears 25 faith on Turn 30 in this scenario and then hopefully could found his religion on either Turn 30 or Turn 31. The possibility was indeed there and we could have done it... if only we had known that we would be facing so much competition. That was the missing information here. I'm sure at least one person is blaming us for shortsightedness in the lurker threadon this, and they wouldn't be wrong to do so. We couldn't see what the other teams were doing though, and it was too late to adjust our planning once it became clear how hard they were pushing for the Great Prophets.

We were also unfortunate to get stuck in the middle of a race between Russia and Khmer for the Great Prophets. They were both driving each other onwards to push for faster Great Prophets and that sped up both of their finishing dates. This was mostly the fault of the Khmer/Kongo team, as Russia probably wouldn't have needed to do anything beyond build the two Lavras to get their early religion. Mikeforall just went nuts with his early shrine and double Holy Site district project, racing Russia and losing but in the process, probably unknowingly, beating us out due to the insane pantheon requirement. This isn't something that you can know about while playing until after it's too late. We didn't see the Holy Site district projects until the first one completed, and that was like five turns ago, too late to do much in the way of changing. Now you can make the counterargument of always pushing as hard as possible for the Great Prophets, and that would have been a winning strategy here. But you're also giving up a lot to do so (see: Khmer/Kongo team still only have their capitals after 33 turns of play) and this is inherently risky behavior. In the world where Singaboy stumbles into a Religious city state, his pantheon was founded ten turns ago and the Khmer/Kongo team comes away from their big gambit with no Jesuit Education to show for it. They made a bold play but they were also very, very lucky.

Fortunately, we aren't in terrible shape from all this, just not as good shape as we could have been. Since we won't be able to spend faith on science buildings, we'll need to compensate by spending faith on units (in Theocracy) and the best Worship building: the Wat. Singaboy is going to have very strong faith output from all his world wonders and he should be able to get up over 100 faith/turn with ease. We're also going to need to rely on gold in a big way, between the Church Property belief and having a safe Commercial city state to pump up all our Commercial districts. Since we won't be able to match the "Tall" civs of Germany's Hansas or Khmer's faith-purchased science buildings, we'll need to go "Wide" and settle faster and conquer more territory to make up for it. Some kind of mass faith-purchased and gold-upgraded attack could be a viable strategy. We'll have to see. My top goal at the moment is to conquer the Industrial city state to get a sea port and then run the +100% shipbuilding policy card to get out two galleys, both for the boost and to start exploring. I suspect there are islands out there with city states to befriend or conquer, and warrior upgraded legions would be a great fit for that task. We're doing well on a development front and Singaboy should be able to get the Pyramids for his super-charged builders in less than 10 turns. Add the Colosseum, Petra, Jebel Barkal, free religious enhancement from the Mahabodi, and he's going to be a monster down the road. The Nubia/England team is struggling right now and they would make for a delicious target in about 80 or so turns.

Other stuff from Singaboy's turn:

* I'm actually thinking of running the trade route out of my capital when it finishes, taking the one turn to rebase there. Roma needs food more than anything else and that trade route is a way to get it. I'm also considering running the trade route over to Xian or Changdu if the trade route yield is decent. We could use a road between our civs for better movement. I'm also going to run Autocracy government, partially because the policy cards as well suited for Rome, and partially because the +1 to all yields in the capital includes +1 food, which is really needed quite badly. (Getting an amenity from China for the extra happiness boost to food yield would also help.)

* Founding the religion in Xian is definitely better for spreading the religion throughout our continent. For those who don't know, the basic religious spread mechanic is that cities exert pressure on other cities within 10 tiles of them. Normal cities with a religion add 1 point/turn, cities with a Holy Site district add 2 points/turn, and actual Holy Cities add 4 points/turn towards conversion. It normally takes 100 points to convert a population point into a religious follower, although a city with no religion at all takes 50 points per population to add a follower. Xian being in the middle of the continent will reach a lot more cities at 10 tile distance than Changdu.

* I want to do a big score comparison of our rivals in a turn or two, maybe at Turn 35 since it's an even number. The basic score breakdown looks like this though:

- Russia/Germany are the only ones match us on expansion thus far. They have two cities each and about the same population. Their civics score is awful though, and that's a real issue.
- Khmer/Kongo are doing awesome on techs and civics. I dunno how they've managed that, perhaps they met a Scientific and Cultural city state. Neither one has expanded though and their population is a lot lower than ours. (Combined 9 pop on two cities to our combined 13 pop on four cities as of last turn.)
- Nubia/England are way behind in virtually every metric and I have no idea what they're doing. They are ranked highly in military power though - trying to attack a city state early on (?)

* Brian Shanahan: very amusing! Let's do something historically-themed instead though for our religion's name. No need to tell the other teams our plans like that. The power of money is hard to spot because it's not in the score tracking, and I'd prefer to keep our fiscal power a secret.

[Singaboy]

What is done is done. In hindsight, lots of things can be done better. It's good to know the mechanics of the game Even if it cost us the better belief.

Looking at other PBEMs, I still feel that plenty of players do have issues with 1upt combat system in Civ6. If we know how to use our armies during war, we should be able to beat the rest. Archduke is a formidable opponent who has learned a lot the hard way like myself. But there are other players, who we should be able to defeat on the battlefield.

It would be great if Rome could net the first General as it would be an awesome combination with legions. I agree with your plans to find some opponents and then conquer some land. If we plan to play wide, we should make sure to have plenty of amenities. Unfortunately, Buenos Aires is a great city state for that. We will have to make up for that.

As for the religion, I thought we go for Marco Polo. I thought of Marco Polo Inc but that might be a giveaway

[Sullla]

We also have a new turn:



Starting with this image in the south, where my warrior attacked and finished off the barb spearman to clear that camp. That's another 50 gold earned and a third barbarian camp cleared for Rome. All three of them were horseman camps so we've really done a good job to clear them all before they could get triggered. Singaboy is doing a nice job over on his end as well, with one camp cleared and another one spotted in the far north. That 200 extra gold we've earned together is a lot for this early in the game. I'm hoping that some of the other teams are struggling with the barbarians and that they've been as active for them as they have been for us.

The barb scout by Xian moved a tile southeast and I moved my slinger over to count. I think I'll be able to get off a shot next turn on that unit unless it does something crazy because we cleared the camp associated with it. Should we fail to get a slinger kill on the northern scout, I can probably get a slinger kill on this one. Speaking of the northern slinger, I could have sworn I took a picture of the area up there but apparently not. Here's a picture from last turn for reference:



The barb scout moved onto the citrus tile. I think we have it pinned for next turn; my slinger moved a tile west onto the deer. There's almost no path the barb scout can take without getting shot next turn, with the only one I can see being west-northwest-northwest, and that's not towards its camp. There's even another slinger coming out of my capital next turn to help if needed. I'm crossing my fingers that this will finally land the Archery boost and set up for the attack on the Industrial city state.

OK, now back to the current turn:



I moved the eastern warrior to the coast and spotted this: more land over here! It extends a bit further east than we thought, and there's a fresh water tile as well. Definitely worthy of more exploration. This warrior will poke around a bit more and then return to the capital to escort the upcoming settler over to the natural wonder area. I'm probably going to settle on the tile northwest of the pearls: on fresh water and with double pasturable resources right nearby, plus the awesome natural wonder hill tile in the second ring.



Policy swap time. I ran Urban Planning for exactly one turn before dropping it now for Colonization, which will kick in next turn when Roma starts a settler. I'm keeping Agoge in place for exactly one turn's use as well, finishing up the current slinger in the capital. That's a bit wasteful, but there's nothing else I need in the Military policy slot right now. I have nothing to benefit from Conscription at the moment and Discipline shouldn't be needed.



Finally, here is the capital with the God of the Open Sky cultural bonus in play on the pasture. Agoge gets this city to 19.5 production/turn, and that will continue next turn when the settler begins production with the Colonization bonus. Should take 6 turns even with the overflow from the slinger which means the city at the eastern lake should be founded around Turn 46 or so.

TheArchduke finished a district this turn and that was the only major score change. We'll know what type it is next turn when it starts making Great Person point; I'll guess a Campus. I still think they are the biggest longterm threat to win the game. Good luck Singaboy - go get that religion this turn.

[Singaboy]

A while ago, there was a question about naming cities. I don't really bother too much about it. Just made it a little fun naming German cities according to local bonus resources etc in PBEM4.

However, since we intend to call the religion 'Marco Polo', why not name the cities according to the travel routes he took. I googled a bit and came up with the following list for China (and cities along the silk road).

Hangzhou, Beijing, Shangdu, Ningxia, Lanzhou, Quanzhou, Yunnan (actually a province), Kashgar, Hotan, Tagaung (Burma)

Maybe I should rename Xian to Hangzhou as was Marco Polo's favourite Chinese city. Changsha could then be Quanzhou

[Singaboy]

Turn 34:

You wouldn't believe it, but I got my Pantheon and religion.

I chose as discussed. Our religion is known as Marco Polo and since he is from Venice, the Lion is chosen as the symbol. Divine Inspiration and Church property are the beliefs.
The nice thing is, the religion is present on both Chinese cities and we immediately increase our income to 14gpt. Faith goes up too and is now at 7.3. With more wonders and faith related districts, it can only go up.



By the way, I renamed the cities as described in the previous post. No longer do we have Xian and Changsha. Next issues, barbarians. We ought to take care of them pests, though they give us a steady and convenient cash flow.  My attack on the northern camp end with pretty favorable results. I can't complain about that really. Depending on the slinger nearby, I might rest for a turn or continue with the attack.



In the south, the slinger finds yet another Inland lake. Let's see what will be beyond (in the south) of it. Next turn, Hangzhou will finish its builder (which will move to charge the pyramids). It will then produce a slinger since Agoge is enabled. Once PP comes in on T39, settler production can commence. I might be able to squeeze out 2 slingers so archery doesn't need to be held back after that.

[williams482]

China should be able to add some permanent civic slots with the first coming from the Forbidden city. I have read some threads and nobody has really gone overboard with China's wonders. We should change this here. Rome can provide the muscle that is necessary to protect our lands from invasions.

China can only put builder charges into Ancient and Classical wonders, so you won't be able to rush Forbidden City that way.

Some awesome stuff in this thread about how those charges can be leveraged, so thank you guys for that!