Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

Well done all around, China is looking really strong right now. Quangzhou in particular is going to be an amazing city once we add Petra and improve all of those resources. Here's a quick question I can't remember that you (or a lurker) may be able to answer: can you use faith to purchase shrines and temples in a city with a completed Holy Site? I know that the worship buildings (Wats, Meeting Houses, etc.) can be purchased with faith but I can't remember if the more basic structures can also be purchased. Given how much faith Singaboy is producing right now, we'd certainly prefer to faith purchase a shrine to open up a missionary as opposed to spending a few turns using normal production to get one.

Oh, and did we ever get an answer as to whether a wonder can be placed on top of a non-bonus resource? Not critical to know but would be helpful for planning.

[Singaboy]

I tested and Hnaging Gardens can not be placed on top of a luxury resource. However, I did read some conflicting stuff about strategic resources. It says they can be placed on top of unrevealed strategic resources. Whether Jebel Barkal can be placed on top of the iron hill remains to be seen.

I don't think you can buy shrines with faith, but I hope I am wrong.

[Sullla]

Turn 41: Rome joins China in the Autocracy club.



The main policies here are Conscription, Colonization, and Ilkum. I took Agoge in case I wanted to train another military unit, but that slot probably would have been better used for Discipline at the moment in case I run into more barbarians. Oh well, too late now. Future civics path is the top of the tree as Singaboy goes after the bottom of the tree. I might leave Military Tradition 1 turn away from completion for a while because I'm happy with the current policies, and try to set things up for a 1 turn pop into Land Surveyors (the one that discounts tile purchases) when I'm about ready to finish Games and Recreation. My immediate goal is Defensive Tactics because the Limes policy (+100% production towards city walls) is really, really good for chopping into districts with production overflow abuse. It also leads towards Feudalism and Serfdom policy further down the line, another huge goal for our team. This will take some time but that's the eventual plan.



My capital fell to size 3, but fortunately will grow back to size 4 in only four turns. The Autocracy bonus and the +1 food from the trade route are making a giant difference here, fully doubling the city's food surplus from +2 to +4. For that matter, early game Autocracy is just awesome in general. I dropped from 7 total population down to 6 total pop, however my science and culture both increased this turn as a result of the Autocracy yields. +1 to all yields is very good in the opening turns of the game. Maybe I'll switch to Classical Republic later - maybe - but Autocracy is clearly the best policy for me right now.

Builder comes out in 4 turns and I still need to decide whether to send this first builder off to city #3 or improve the capital first. I'm leaning towards the third city because there are three excellent tiles to improve there (grassland cows, grassland horses, and the natural wonder-boosted hill tile). Still need to think about that micro - it doesn't help that I'm at a work conference right now.



Here's the settler en route to its destination. The goal is the tile northwest of the pearls, which is further away than I'd like but is also the best spot available. I didn't put the second city over here precisely because of the distance involved, that and Ostia gave me a bridge down towards the Industrial city state. It takes four turns to move there with the warrior spotting along the way, and then the city gets founded on Turn 46. Slow on food to start but wow, so much culture to pick up from my Open Sky pantheon and the natural wonder.

Meanwhile, in the south war preparations were under way:



I spent 180 gold to turn all four slingers into archers. There's the Machinery boost popping up in the corner already. Long time before we'll have crossbows available though. These units are going to converge on Buenos Aires like so:



It should take about three turns to move forward, and I anticipate declaring war on Turn 44 or Turn 45, depending on what that city state warrior does. There another warrior on the city center tile right now, which is why the defensive strength of Buenos Aires is 25 and not 15. I'd love to lure that unit out of the city somehow; I'm going to leave the tile west of the city center open for it to come out and play. It is nice that the city state went ahead and improved the horses tile with a pasture already. That would be nice to pillage for 50 gold, and I'll see if I can manage it.

Nothing too significant in terms of score changes, a few population points and techs/civics picked up here and there. No one has more than 2 cities as yet while Japper (Kongo) still only has 1 city. With luck, I'll hit three cities on Turn 46, four cities somewhere between Turn 45-50, and a fifth city on Turn 54. Now enjoy Singaboy finishing the Pyramids on his turn for extra builder actions forever and +2 culture/turn. The world's biggest monument!

[Singaboy]

Turn 41:

At the beginning of the turn, I spot yet another barbarian scout in the south. I am beginning to be convinced there is a lot more land down there. I purposely use the UI Mod to show the builder charges before and after the pyramids are finished.
Archery is done and I decide to go for HBR. With a potential land connection to the south, I feel it is better to be prepared. As I will put a pasture over the horses soon, I will get the Eureka anyway. I don't want to research BW yet as it would unlock the encampment, likewise currency for the commercial hub.

I also stop mysticism for now and switch to Drama and Poetry.

Currently, I have two builders with 2/4 charges. Let's see what happens.



I use the last charge on the pyramids and the wonder is done. This creates a new builder with 5 charges in Quanzhou. The builder charging the wonder gets and additional charge like the builder at Hangzhou. Culture rises by two, faith by 4 
In addition, Quanzhou annexes two tiles, the second cow as well as a rather plain grassland tile. I rather the city had chosen the desert tiles, which we need for wonders.

Since the builder popped at Quanzhou, I send it to connect the sugar in 2 turns. Sulla, on T43, you can send the request for spices. I will send the other 2 charge builder to Hangzhou so that it can harvest the wheat in due time.
Quanzhou switches to the Holy Site, which will be done in 6 turns thanks to the overflow.



At Hangzhou, I put the first charge into Hanging Gardens. Due to this, I need to work another tile (not the citrus, but forest tile) and that delays the settler by a turn  I purposely do not work the citrus as I currently 'enjoy' a growth penalty and it means 4 food will not be 4 food, better to work 2f 1h tile.
There will be an overflow of 10 hammers from the 5 charges for the wonder, which will go into the second settler. The builder from Quanzhou will reach the wheat tile in 5 turns to harvest which coincides very nicely with the finish of Hanging Gardens and Holy Site. It's almost a perfect match. This means I can lock the campus on T47 immediately after the Holy Site at Quanzhou is done.

I am planning to use the builder at Quanzhou to improve sugar and horses, then move over to Hangzhou to improve the sugar and bananas there, followed by using the last charge to build a wheat farm at the third city for faster growth.

In the meantime, I will avoid finishing more technologies to keep the campus cost low. Currently, I have 8 technologies and 6 civics.



As for my units, the warrior in the north stays fortified to absorb the warrior attacks, the slinger there is after the scout and in the south, I moved the slinger closer to the barb scout. I am too curious what is going on with the map there.

[Sullla]

Singaboy, your civ continues to look very strong right now. I'm loving the Chinese unique ability right now - two wonders done in 41 turns, and another one already started. A couple quick thoughts:

- What is your current tech plan? I had thought previously you were going to keep Archery research from finishing and then take Bronze Working to almost-completed status. I don't think it matters terribly at the moment (the district costs are being determined by number of civics completed right now, not number of techs finished) but I'm curious what your plan is.

- The city tile picker goes for resources first in the second ring, then picks tiles in the second ring by foodhammers, then repeats the process in the third ring. The desert tiles produce no food at all right now so they get the lowest priority; everything else in the second ring will be taken first. Quangzhou is going to take the grassland forest tile next, then the desert hill tile with the hidden iron resource, then the flatground desert tiles last. This will change when we finish Petra in the city, and it will start emphasizing the desert tiles after that. Quangzhou has lots of good tiles so aside from probably needing to purchase a desert tile for Petra itself, we should be OK.

- Your builder management plans look very good to me. I think we need to give some props on the management of Quangzhou here, taking the Pyramids to 1 turn away from completion and the using a builder charge to get the big overflow (with Autocracy/Monument to the Gods/Corvee) into the city's Holy Site district. Really nice stuff.

- When Hanging Gardens is done in Hangzhou, the city will grab the wheat tile and the 2/2 jungle hill to the west of the city. That's a much needed tile to give the Chinese capital some more production capacity. We might want to invest two builder charges into clearing the jungle for food/production and then mining the plains hill underneath. Hangzhou has tons of food, and it needs more high production tiles. Something to think about after our current builder micro smorgasborg ends.

I also had a turn to play:



The northeast is free of barbarians right now, but lousy with city state units. I might need to clear a path for my settler to walk via the warrior I have up here. At least it can occupy tiles to prevent random city state units from wandering onto them. This is One Unit Per Tile at its worst right here, silly traffic jams for no reason. The ETA for city founding is still Turn 46 assuming no road blocks from the city state.

I also had the chance to think out the upcoming city and builder micro around Roma. I'm going to send the builder off to city #3 when it completes to improve the cattle, horses, and natural wonder grassland hill tiles. They are worth a combined 4 culture/turn at size 3, plus 2 culture from the free Roman monument, plus another point of culture from the city's natural population. Very nice stuff. Meanwhile back at Roma, I'll train a second builder to improve the capital itself. The movement order works out nicely there: banana plantation first, then move to the forested plains hill along the river that's going to be covered by a Commercial district and chop that, then move to the iron tile and mine it. I should be able to line up one turn in Land Surveyors to purchase that iron tile at the discounted rate (along with the natural wonder tile at city #3). The forest chop at the capital will go into a Campus district using Agoge overflow on a warrior. I'll try to micro it so that the capital ends up at 39/40 production or something like that and then get the full chop benefit. It should knock out most of the cost of that district, then I'll do the same thing with another forest chop a little later using Limes + city walls to get most of a Commercial district done. I've noticed that this is starting to become standard play in our community, and it speaks to the growing sophistication of city and builder management for the Civ6 MP group.



Down in the south, my archers all moved up a tile, with the western ones fortunately able to get across the river without city state warrior shenanigans. And even better, somehow my warrior who was at half strength last turn was now back to full health - what the heck?! Certainly appreciated but I did not see that coming. Is there a hidden rule where staying in place for X amount of turns automatically restores a unit to full health no matter what? Well, I'll take it regardless. That allowed me to move the warrior up one tile onto the jungle hill, and whoa, that's just what I wanted to see. Horses AND cattle pastures already sitting there to be claimed, plus a 1 charge builder to be captured, plus Buenos Aires growing another population point to size 5 between turns. Suddenly my God of the Open Sky pantheon isn't looking too shabby after all. Maybe some of those other teams who passed it up will be regretting that decision, since there are a lot of pasturable resources out on this map. They just aren't at the capital, that's all. Between Singaboy's wonders and my Rome + Open Sky pantheon abilities, we're hopefully going to dominate on culture for a long time.



Here's a view of the west taken zoomed out. Is this a landbridge to another continent? It could be, or it could be a place where the land ends shortly because everything seems to be a coastal tile down here. We'll have to keep exploring. There seems to be an absurd amount of jungle that Chinese builders will be happy to clear cut later on. And yes, there's another barbarian scout, although fortunately Singaboy's slinger is in prime position to take a shot at this one on his turn.

Now a quick look at some score tracking stuff:



Singaboy's two wonders have zoomed his score far out in front of everyone else. However, even if you take out the 10 points for Stonehenge and Pyramids, China is still right there with EmperorK's Russia, who is getting a little bit of score inflation as well from those 6 point Lavra districts. I'm also pleased to see that Rome is in first place among the "second teammate" positions, with each team seemingly having one high score member and one lower score member. By comparison, TheArchduke has one more population point than me, 7 pop to my 6 pop, but I have a settler out on the map and I don't think he does. (He does have a Campus district to my zero districts though.) TheArchduke only has 3 civics completed though, and he's very far away from a government or even Colonization policy via Early Empire. I think this is going to be a major factor in terms of snowballing a lead over that team. Meanwhile, Japper (jvanheycop) is tied with me at 6 pop... but it's all in one city. He still doesn't have a second settlement yet while I'm getting ready to plant a third and hopefully capture a fourth. I have no idea what he's doing. Is he walking a settler to a spot extremely far away? Did he lose a settler to the barbarians somehow? What the heck is taking place in the Kongo?!

Woden's Nubia is the other comparator civ, and he has 5 pop to my 6 pop with no settler on the way (I think), and an Encampment district completed. Woden also only has 3 civics done, and he only just picked up the third civic 2 turns ago. I'm not sure what's taking place with Team 3 but their opening has not been pretty thus far. Speaking of culture, take a look at this:



This is the cultural victory screen. Ignore tourism for the moment because it's not relevant yet. What's interesting to see is the little suitcase number below each person's name. That represents total culture generated thus far during the game in multiplies of 100, so Singaboy has 900 culture and so on. You might say, "Singaboy has not produced 900 culture yet!", and that's true - the trick is that this screen counts culture generated through the boosts as normal culture. So Singaboy and EmperorK and Mikeforall are all getting credit for half the culture of Theology via founding a religion and landing that boost, which is worth 60 culture on its own (half of Theology's 120 culture cost), and Woden gets half of the cost of Military Training civic for his Encampment build, and so on. With these caveats in place, it's striking how much less culture some of the teams have generated compared to ours. Japper and Mikeforall are really the only ones keeping up here; everyone else is way behind. While I still think that EmperorK and TheArchduke have played a strong opening, they do need to get some more culture going somehow or they'll be in trouble. Choral Music will work for EmperorK's Russia, but I wonder about TheArchduke. Germany often gets out to a slow start and that seems to be the case again.

OK, that's all for now. Back over to you Singaboy.

[Singaboy]

Turn 42:

The turn itself is rather dull, especially in the light of the exciting turn before that. Well, one cant finish a wonder every turn. Research is humming along, I will get to the questions posted by Sulla later on.
Quanzhou's new builder moves onto the sugar to improve it next turn. The other builder is moving toward Hangzhou protected by a slinger. In the north, my warrior has been attacked by the warrior there again. It ought to defeat the warrior next turn. My second slinger is there to deal with the scout. There is another barb slinger there unless the city state has taken care of it.

Hangzhou's Hanging Gardens get their second charge while producing a settler the normal way.

In the southwest, even though the slinger could get promoted, I chose to attack the barb scout for a damage of 40/100. I want to move the slinger south to find out whether there is a land bridge to other landmasses.



Let's get to the more important issues, short and medium term planning.

This is all tied to the district discount mechanisms currently. Quanzhou will finish its Holy Site in 5 turns, after which Hangzhou will immediately place the campus (wheat gets harvested in 4 turns). The plan then is to let Hangzhou grow to pop 7 so it can place another district, the theater. Of course, before that, Hangzhou will build two settlers and the campus. That should give the city the time to grow to pop 7. Having sugar and citrus, amenities are not an issue. Growth should be manageable too as Hanging Gardens and sugar plantations will push Hangzhou's housing to pop 9. This is perfect for the aim to get the city to pop 7. Hanging Gardens are supposed to help with city growth too.

Once, Hangzhou is at pop 7, the theatre district will be locked. Until then, I must avoid unlocking any technology that comes with a new district. This means BW and currency have to be delayed until after the theatre is locked. If I understand the formula for district discounts correctly, I should be at (with campus completed at Hangzhou)
C = 3 (HS*2, Campus)
A = 3 (HS, Campus, Theatre)
P = 0 (Theatre)

This also means that I could lock a Holy Site at the northern city without any consequences.

As this whole process takes quite some time (Hangzhou settler -> settler -> campus), technology research can focus on other stuff than BW and currency. I am three turns away from BW. With Sulla capturing the beautiful city of Buenos Aires soon (it's a real gem), and my own source of horses, I could potentially build horsemen in case of an impending attack. Sulla's forces could rely on legions for the time being, hence, he could trade me his horses.
That's the reason why I focus on HBR right now. I only need 48 beakers for it, that's 8 turns currently. After getting that, I plan to research BW and currency to one turn away from completion each. Of course, BW is important on the way to IW for Jebel Barkal. 

Another benefit of the planned districts in Hangzhou would no doubt be the fact, that the theatre district will unlock mathematics Eureka. Hence, once the theatre district is locked, I would research currency and mathematics to get Petra as soon as possible. Likewise, with the theatre district locked with a discount, Theology would be the goal to finish for civics to get Mahabodi.

The work for Hangzhou is pretty much cut out for quite a few turns (I will try and work out how long that whole process will take). In the meantime, Quanzhou could build a shrine, a trader, more builders and units for deterrence. In short, there is no lull for the city.

Sulla, there are a few things for you.
a. Are you planning to move your warrior off the territory off Buenos Aires next turn as it would get kicked anyway during a war declaration?
b. Don't forget to send the trade for spices next turn!
c. Do my plans make sense?

[Singaboy]

By the way, thanks for the excellent explanation about culture. I wasn'f fully aware of it. China's score undoubtedly benefits from the fact, that it gets 60% bonus for Theology, not 50%.

[Sullla]

Everything still looks good to me too. I had a concern about Hangzhou reaching size 7 to be able to place a Theatre district, but I think between Hanging Gardens removing the housing penalty and the harvesting of the wheat tile, the city should be OK even with popping out two settlers in the near future. A wheat resource should be worth close to a full population point right now when harvested. As far as the district discounting formula goes, I believe that's correct. So long as we wait until the Campus is done and the Theatre locked in at the capital, the third Chinese city can then put down an (undiscounted) Holy Site immediately thereafter. Until then, we should hold off on placing the district, however.

The tech plan laid out makes sense and I'll be happy to send horses as needed. Having two players to exchange resources back and forth is definitely nice. Now as for your three specific questions:

a. Are you planning to move your warrior off the territory off Buenos Aires next turn as it would get kicked anyway during a war declaration?
b. Don't forget to send the trade for spices next turn!
c. Do my plans make sense?

A) I don't know exactly where the warrior is going to be when I declare war. For this particular turn, I was trying to block the city state warrior from moving onto the hill tile where it would get a defensive bonus. I want to kill that unit immediately with archer fire on flat ground on the turn that I declare war. I'm thinking I need Turn 43 to move up for positioning purposes and then hopefully I can attack on Turn 44. It depends on where the city state shuffles its units around, however.

B) Thanks for the reminder! I'll make sure to request the spices next turn.

C) They make sense to me. I like the idea to have Quangzhou build a shrine and a trader next, as we'll need a shrine somewhere to get a missionary out and a trader to connect at least one road between Chinese cities. With more districts going into Hangzhou, a trade route in a new city back to the capital would be really helpful to get it up and running quickly. And then there's always more builders too - China's going to need to keep popping out more and more of them. We have lots of tiles to improve and then Jebel Barkal, the Mahabodi, and Petra to construct in the not so distant future. There's never enough builders to go around for China.

[Sullla]

What the heck?! I see now in the general thread that Mikeforall used some kind of cheat to give himself extra gold, and then their team used that to purchase a shrine and granary... and without that early shrine, there's zero chance that the Khmer/Kongo team gets a Great Prophet before our team. We lost out on Jesuit Education because one of the other teams literally CHEATED their way to an early religion?!

I'm so angry I don't even know what to say.

[Singaboy]

@Sulla,

it is a shame that someone would cheat their way to victory this way. I was mad too. That said, I would really be angry if that would stall the game. We both have invested so much time into this game, it would be a real let down is that's all for naught.

What puzzles me in all honesty, how can the team mate not know what is happening? I mean if Sulla would suddenly be able to buy a water mill, I would wonder where on earth he would have gotten the gold from. Unless their own reporting is really shabby, one MUST know that something is amiss.

Sulla and myself were puzzled how Mike can get a Holy Site, a shrine and a second city so fast. Now, we know why. Good thing that Woden alerted Cornflakes. It makes Mike's lousy confession even worse. he was about to get exposed and then comes up with his 'i felt bad' story. He must have been reading the lurker's thread as well. I give Japper a slight benefit of doubt, but Mike should be banned from this game (all the worse as RB prides itself to be above the normal fanatics standards and ethics...)

*edit: I scanned through our own posts again and both Sulla and I were puzzled how Mike's team could do what they did...well, now we know..How on earth can you play a game this way and expect to not get exposed? Using a gold cheat HAS to surface sooner rather than later. You are playing out in the open here, for everyone to see. Mind numbing dumb, irresponsible on top of being a complete jerk to spoil to game for seven other dedicated players.