Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[mackoti]

I can say just that they did get punished  and payed back some unfair advantages which they got by cheating, one of them is that they cant use the Jesuit stuff and many others small things .

Is that giving you back your jesuit education?NO.But I hope that doenst make you wanna quitt.Great report.TY.

[Singaboy]

Turn 43:

First thing, I improve the sugar at Quanzhou and then accept Sulla's spice trade. That should help Rome with amenities a little. I then proceed to MM Quanzhou with the aim to get growth a little faster. I change a citizen from the horse tile to the sugar, effectively working a yield of 7 instead of 4. However I will need to switch back to the horse in 2 turns to ensure that the Holy Site still finishes in 4 turns. With horses getting a pasture in 3 turns, that should make up for the shortfall in hammers currently. It's a balancing act that I do need to monitor and not mess up. The Holy Site finish is important to be timed with the campus at Hangzhou.

I am planning to insert a shrine directly after the Holy Site, so the missionary game can get get started.

At Hangzhou, I use another builder charge for the Hanging Gardens. The wonder will be done in two turns together with the settler. This is nicely in time to harvest the wheat after that to grow the city back to size 5 and get the next settler going. At 140 hammers, it won't come cheap.

HBR is now at around 25 beakers, with the aim being 48 beakers. This might be right in time for the horse pasture and Eureka. I will feel better to be able to build horsemen just in case.



In the south, the slinger moves southeast, spotting all coastal tiles. Let's see what lies behind. In the north, my warrior moves onto a hill as the barbarian slinger could have hit it next turn. Better to be safe than sorry. My northern slinger takes the job of area surveillance to make sure my settler has no obstacles on the way north.

[Modo]

That picture with the wonders on the city's tiles reminds of Civ4 GP farms in a way. Is this still a viable option, focusing GP generation in one city? From what I've seen so far there's no National Epic kind of bonuses in this game and each GP pool is separated so there seems to be more freedom with relation to wonder placement (assuming you meet a ton or prereqs that Civ4 didn't have ).
It does look quite beautiful with the wonders in it.

[Sullla]

Mackoti, thanks for letting us know about that. I don't need to hear all the details of what happened, just to know that there was some kind of response for what took place. You can understand our perspective here in our own thread not knowing what's going on and working off of limited information. I'm satisfied with that response - thanks!

Modo: I'm afraid that the gameplay mechanics in Civ6 don't really allow for that sort of dedicated Great Person setup. You can't concentrate Great Person point generation in a single city, and even adding a lot of wonders in one place only has a minor effect. At best, the Oracle might allow you to get something like 10 Great Scientist points/turn from a single city... and that would be easily overwhelmed by the civilization-wide output from other players. Great Person production a civ-wide affair in this game, and each city plays only a minor role. That's just how it works in this game for good or bad. I do agree that the wonders look really neat out on the map itself, and the whole district placement system works really well in Civ6.

By the way, as a general comment it's awesome to see so much activity for this PBEM game. Every spoiler thread seems to be updated multiple times per day. I'll be excited to read them all whenever this game finishes.



Settler arrival in the northeast is still on track, two more turns until the new city gets founded. There was even better news this turn though - check out that tile two east of where the city is getting planted. That's a 4/2 spices tile, sweet! Well, I know what tile I'm purchasing immediately when the city gets settled. Add in the natural wonder yields, the horses and the double cows (with God of the Open Sky pantheon bonus culture), double luxury resources, and the six or seven grassland hill tiles in the area, and we have the makings of a monster city up here. In fact, I'm going to go out on a limb and make a super bold prediction right now: this is our Venetian Arsenal city. It isn't banned for this game and one of our two civs wants to make sure that we control it. I will tentatively do the planning for this city around that assumption, with a Campus district first and then an Industrial district on the coast next to a Harbor district in the third ring. I was hoping we'd find a natural spot for that wonder and this appears to be the best candidate. Now we'll have to hope that a German Hansa-powered Great Engineer isn't available to snipe it away. (Venetian Arsenal is not eligible for China's ability because it's a Medieval wonder.)



OK, back to the current state of the game and not long-off future planning. I accepted Singaboy's offer of spices, or rather he accepted my request for it on his turn, and my cities therefore had the amenities bonus this turn. Science, culture, and gold all went up slightly between turns. More importantly, Roma gained the +10% bonus food and the +5% bonus production. That was almost enough to finish the builder, who is sitting at 53/54 production right now. I'm sending this builder off to the new city and then training another one for Roma itself. Then an Agoge-boosted warrior gets forest chop overflow into a Campus district after that.

Writing finishes next turn, followed by Wheel tech. I'll start placing some Campus districts immediately because I intend to complete them soonish and I won't be getting the discount on any districts for a little while. I've unlocked too many techs that contain districts to get a discount until I finish building a few of them.



Now the fun part: the tactical maneuvering in the south. This was the picture that greeted me at the start of my turn. I thought long and hard about the situation, whether it would be advantageous to declare war this turn or try to reposition further. Ultimately I decided that this was the turn to attack, for the following reasons:

1) The northern city state warrior crossed the river and was badly out of position. This gave my units a chance to move in without being harassed.
2) The southern city state warriors were split this turn. I could move my own warrior between them and fortify, thus getting the buggy +6 strength penalty immediately and preventing them from supporting one another.
3) My forward archers could move up and occupy the forest/jungle hill tiles immediately this turn. I had to declare war to do this or else they would just be teleported away when I did decide to attack.

Here was the situation after moving:



The northern city state warrior is out of position and will need to spend at least one turn moving before it can attack. We'll see where it chooses to go next turn. I expect the western city state warrior to attack my archer on the hill - and that's fine! That's all part of the plan. I'm hoping the warrior inside Buenos Aires will also attack the archer on its own hill tile next to the city. The key thing is that both of those archers are on good defensive terrain and are sitting right around 7/15 XP. I expect them to get attacked and take some damage, after which they'll just promote-heal back to full again. I would love to have that warrior inside the city try to attack out and take some damage since that unit is currently buffing up Buenos Aires with +10 defensive strength. Hopefully I'll even be able to pillage some of the pastures for 50 gold apiece. I'll capture that builder when the city falls so I'll be able to repair the damage right away.

I was also pleased to see that one shot from my archer reduced the city health by 12 points. Now that will obviously go away next turn since Buenos Aires isn't under siege, but if one archer can do 12 damage, four archers should be able to do about 50 damage, and more than that as the city loses strength from its health decreasing. The only real wildcard are those warriors the city state has wandering around, and with my archers able to promote-heal, hopefully that will be enough to take care of them. Archers on good defensive terrain are extremely tough for warriors to deal with.

We also spotted some offshore land to the south of Buenos Aires. Here's an overview shot in strategic mode for the wider field of vision:



Look at those two little tiles just below the crabs. If I can take Buenos Aires, one of the first thing I'll do is have it produce a pair of galleys to explore and claim the Shipbuilding boost. If there's some good land down there on another island, that might be where my next settler is headed (the one after Ostia's current settler is done, I mean).

One interesting bit of news in score tracking this turn, Japper (Kongo) has finished a district of some sort. We'll find out what type next turn. Russia is also up to 5 civics and close to a government; Germany still only has 3 civics completed though.

Pretty busy turn for this early in the game. Fun stuff.

[Singaboy]

Now, this is one awesome city location up there. This will be a growth, culture and production powerhouse. There is no time to waste and builders going up there are the right thing to do. I would not even bother to improve the spices for now, but rather improve the cows for faster growth, then maybe horses and mine that hill SW of the clams or even the clams themselves for extra food. Of course, all those tiles fall in the second ring of the city. You will need some gold for that.

Turn 44
My micro management of the cities continues. Quanzhou is working the sugar for another turn to get 6/7/8 hammers to complete the Holy Site in exactly 3 turns. This will be possible through working the horses next turn instead of the sugar. On T46, horses get their pasture and the city will generate 8 hammers. I am hoping to get the city to grow in 2 turns even though sage will be replaced by horses because of the +15% city growth from next turn onward.

I will switch from HBR to currency next turn in order not to waste any overflow. Overflow wouldn't be counted via a Eureka. Hence, on T46, with the Eureka in, I can switch back to HBR to generate some overflow. My plan is to research both currency and BW to 1 turn completion until the Theatre district has been locked at Hangzhou.



At Hangzhou, the builder is charging the wonder again to 153/180 hammers. Next turn, the wonder will be completed with an overflow of 12 hammers, which will flow into the next settler that requires 140 hammers. The second builder is reaching the wheat tile in 2 turns. With the wonder completion, I am expecting a tile or two to be added to the city, which will surely include wheat. The tile will be added naturally via culture in 2 turns anyway. I am hoping that one of the 2/2 tiles will be added for more hammers. The city should be able to reach pop 7 upon completion of the campus which will follow the settler. I will then immediately lock the Theatre district. Once that has been done, I do not need to micromanage technologies and civics. This will enable me to unlock a lot more wonders. The issue at hand will be builders to charge those wonders. It is essential to spread China's religion for more gold. It would be good to build some commercial hubs for the compounded income thanks to our city state. With a third envoy a given via mysticism I could get +4 gold for each CH.



In the south, my slinger runs into a dead end. I will have to think about city locations there though. With Rome taking up a spot west of Buenos Aires, there is space for more coastal cities.

[Singaboy]

@Sulla, give those Argentinians hell. Might take some turns though to bring down the city health. Better to capture that builder before it improves the crabs.

[Sullla]

Running through some of our topics of discussion before going to bed:

- I expect it will take about 5 or 6 turns to weaken Buenos Aires enough to capture it. A lot depends on what those city state warriors choose to do; I'm going to try and play carefully because I do only have one melee unit in the area to do that actual city capturing. As for the builder, I doubt I'll ever have a chance to capture it until the city falls. It should retreat into the safety of the city immediately and stay there. I doubt it will try to improve the crabs. If it does, well, that's not completely terrible either. We'll need to improve two seafood resources at some point. Keeping my fingers crossed in this area that I've correctly anticipated what the AI will choose to do.

- The city location in the northeast looks pretty amazing indeed. I'll have to purchase the spices tile immediately, but I might be able to avoid too many further tile purchases up there. Between Rome's free monument and all the culture from pastures + natural wonders, that city will be expanding borders very quickly. My builder is not going to improve the spices, I agree that adding +2 gold/turn isn't terribly needed right away. (Eventually definitely.) I still think I'll improve the cows, the horses, and the amazing grassland hill southwest of the pearls in the second ring. That's a 2 food / 2 production / 2 culture / 2 gold tile and flat-out amazing. It gets the city up to four really good tiles and that will hold it for a while.

- The outlined city and research plan for China still looks good to me. I was a little bit concerned about Hangzhou reaching size 7 for a third district, but after thinking about it, I believe you'll be OK. When the current settler finishes next turn the city drops to size 4, but should regrow to size 5 in a single turn. Hanging Gardens will mean no housing penalty at size 5 so growth to size 6 should be pretty fast, and then the wheat harvest should be worth roughly one more population point to get to size 7. You'll probably need to place the Theatre district before finishing that second settler though since I don't think you'll be able to hit size 7 otherwise. It's quite the juggle act going on right now between techs, civics, districts, and city population. Good stuff.

- There's definitely room for a bunch of coastal cities down in the south. Those are slightly later projects though, since they'll struggle for housing with no Aqueduct-available fresh water or even mountains down there. I think this is the current order for Chinese cities:

City 3: between the two wheat tiles 4 tiles north of Hangzhou
City 4: the plains hill between the horses and rice south of Quangzhou on the freshwater lake
City 5: capture the Cultural city state (I will send some units over to help as soon as the Industrial city state is subdued)
Cities 6 and 7: further south and west on the freshwater lake in the southwest (need more scouting to know exact spots)

That will keep us busy for the next few dozen turns. If we find good stuff on other islands, we might try to head there before some of the more marginal spots on our continent.

- You mentioned using a builder for a wheat farm at the city #3 site. That's a good idea, but we probably want to farm the eastern of the two wheats. The northern one will get harvested later because we'll want to put a Holy Site district on that tile for the massive forest adjacency bonus. For the moment, I'm still working off this district plan:

[Singaboy]

Thanks for the thoughts. There isn't much to say about this as it pretty much aligns with my ideas. The juggling part of the city management is fun and quite enjoyable.

The district planning is what I had in mind. I will have to work through the numbers to see whether I can get a discount for a commercial district if I were to put that down first.

With
C = 4 (HS *2, campus, theatre)
A = 4 (HS, campus, theatre, CH)
P = 0

I should get a discount for a commercial hub in city #3. The good thing is, that I would not need to chop the forest before locking the district. However, that would mean to delay BW until the CH as been locked. I am not too sure whether this would be possible or worth the effort.

[Sullla]

This was a fun turn.



I'll start with the combat against the city state since that's what you guys are likely most interested to see. Buenos Aires didn't quite do what I expected, but it worked out OK overall. The northern warrior moved back across the river onto the wheat tile, which is about all that it could do. The western warrior attacked my own fortified warrior. That was a curious choice, and I wonder why it didn't try to go after one of the archers instead. Was it thinking that it needed to protect the city state against a melee unit standing next to the center tile (?) I seem to have gotten a rather bad dice roll because my warrior took 31 damage even though that unit should have been attacking at -13 strength penalty, 20 strength against 33 strength (from fortification and Battlecry promotion). It's fine though - my warrior just needs to stay out of the red and deal the finishing blow to Buenos Aires. Too bad there's no farm here to pillage for the heal, that would be ideal. The warrior inside the city itself held position and didn't attack out, which works out fine as well.

My moves were easy to plan out in response:




My promoted archer on the wheat tile went after the northern warrior and got in a good shot, 50 damage to knock out half its health. That unit is pretty crippled right now and should die easily next turn. The two archers on the hill shot at the western warrior, and together they did enough damage to get the kill as highlighted. My injured archer shot at the city itself and did 13 damage, much more than I was expecting since it had a strength value of like 3 points. Either that was an unusually good dice roll or I'm guaranteed some kind of minimum damage per shot. Sadly that archer is still sitting at 14/15 XP and won't be able to promote-heal for one more turn. Ah well.

Here's the updated end of turn situation:



I moved my warrior west a tile and fortified again there. I'm hoping to draw the warrior inside the city state out to attack, and I seem to recall that leaving an empty tile next to the city center will sometimes persuade them to do so. If not, it's OK if the warrior stays in there too. The northern warrior should attack one of my archers, and I'd like it to go after one of the two archers on the hills, since they will be able to promote shortly. More likely, it will target the archer on the wheat tile who already has a promotion in hand though, since there's no defensive bonus on that tile. In any case though, that warrior dies next turn and then we can begin grinding down the city defenses themselves. So far, I think this is going about as well as could be hoped.



Elsewhere, the settler moved smoothly onto the desired tile in the northeast. I decided to have the warrior in this area explore the northeast coast since it's not urgently needed anywhere else, and look what I found: an iron resource up here too. Seriously you guys, this city is just ridiculous. Chevalier Mal Fet remains the only player with three cities, and I will hopefully be the next one to join him there.



There's a lot going on in this screenshot. For starters, Rome grew to size 4 and finished a builder. I kept the city on max food to take advantage of the positive amenities and this formerly low-food city is now getting a very nice 7.7 food surplus. There was enough overflow to do another builder in 3 turns despite not working any of the hill tiles. This should set up very nicely for the upcoming forest chop into a Campus district, although with the city growing so fast I may end up mining another hill tile instead of putting a plantation on the bananas. I need to think about that and decide what tiles the city will be working at size 5 and size 6. Upcoming production queue here is second builder into warrior (for Agoge chopping overflow) into Campus.

Speaking of Campuses, I finished Writing tech this turn and placed two of them down on the map. There was no reason not to place them right away since Rome won't be getting any district discounts in the immediate future. The cost came out at just over 100 production, not too bad. One of the few weaknesses of Rome is that you tend to get some more expensive district costs because Rome rips through the civics tree so quickly. The Campuses are located northwest of Ostia and two tiles north of Ostia, where they both sit next to the mountain and provide an adjacency bonus to each other. With timely forest chop overflow, I should be able to get the Campus done pretty fast at the capital.

No major score changes this turn. Japper's district from last turn is confirmed as a Campus, not too surprising for an early game choice. Their team is definitely the early tech leaders, albeit also the slowest to expand. That's all for now - I have to run. Good luck Singaboy.

[Modo]

The planning gets quite intricate with so many interlocking mechanics, do you still find it useful to sim any of it or the outcomes are clear enough that simming openings is no longer required?

On tile purchasing, gold gets more and more uses as the game goes so when do you feel is the breaking point between buying tiles and saving the gold for other buys / upgrades, etc. and wait for the natural border expansion to grab them? Going back to Sullla's analysis on the unimproved / improved tiles and when to move from the former to the latter do you use something similar for tile purchases?

And one final question on the switch from HBR to currency to avoid wasting overflow on an Eureka, from my limited observation it seems that the boosted part and the non-boosted part of a tech / civic are separated so the overflow should not be wasted even with an Eureka. I'll test this myself, was just curious if this is something that is known and proved somewhere already.