Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

@Sulla, good to know about that monument issues. One learn stops learning    

Turn 51:

The first thing I do is to assess the damage the horse has done. With odds of +10, it could have caused 49 damage max. The slinger took 40 damage which is below average. That is a relief after that weedy move.

I counter that attack and cause a damage of 31. Given that the odds were only +3, this is slightly below average (33.5). However, now the horse has a penalty of -5 for the damage it sustained and the next attack will proceed with odds of 15 - 6. Even the worst outcome will cause a maximum damage of 47 and hence, the slinger will definitely survive. Next turn, the horsemen will bite the dust and unless there is another unit popping up behind the horseman, the slinger is safe. If however, there is a unit directly behind the horseman, I would need to run off into the rain forest. Not too sure, whether the slinger could survive this attack.

It is safe to say, that I should not attempt to explore that area with a slinger. Instead, I will move the slinger back to where city #4 will be founded.

Shangdu grew to size 2 and is borrowing another tile from Hangzhou making sure the city grows in 3 turns. This is just nice as I can enable Ilkum in 2 turns. Once size 3, the city can work two forest tiles for 5 hammers as well as the improved wheat tile. This, together with Urban Planning gets the city production to 8 hammers, which will be slightly less than 11 hammers resulting in the builder ready around turn 60.

In two turns, both Hangzhou and Quanzhou will finish their respective builds. Hangzhou will go for a builder since Ilkum is activated. However Quanzhou, which is slated to produce horsemen, would do so for 2 turns without the policy card (it takes 2 additional turns to research Mil Tradition and with it, Maneuver). It could produce another warrior with Agoge in place. In two turns it would get to around 30 hammers. An alternative is to start with the production of a trader since there is no policy card that boost that build anyway.

[SadGit]

Perhaps weird Q. What happens if you put production into a trader and then buy one before finishing? Will it save the production for when you are able to field more than one trader or will it be lost?

[AverageBear]

Perhaps weird Q. What happens if you put production into a trader and then buy one before finishing? Will it save the production for when you are able to field more than one trader or will it be lost?

You can’t buy a trader if you are at the maximum number of traders (existing plus under construction)

[Sullla]

Singaboy, your slinger did survive the barb horseman attack with a sliver of health left. As long as it can kill the barb unit on your turn, it should survive... at least so long as there are no other barb units in the fog. Shangdu is looking good on its current fast growth path. I think landing the Hanging Gardens so early in the game is going to be a huge boost for China; having +15% growth before Turn 50 in every city forever makes a major difference in growing them up to larger sizes. With the Colosseum's huge amenities bonus in two dozen or so turns, it will be even more dramatic. As far as Chinese city builds go, I would keep Hangzhou on the current plan to follow up the shrine with a builder, which will chop into another builder via Ilkum, and Quangzhou to go onto a horseman. Producing it for 2 turns without the +50% production card in place is OK - certainly better than training half of a warrior that we don't finish. With my three archers on the way, upgrades for the Chinese slingers into archers, and that horseman out of Quanzhou, we should have enough forces to take Antananarivo. The horseman is the key unit though, so I wouldn't delay it. We keep delaying a trader for China, but since Rome can pass the boost over for Currency and China is making bank already, I don't think it's an urgent need right now.

Now for my turn, another fun one to play:



I open up the savegame file and, oh come on, barbarians! How did ANOTHER scout manage to appear out of nowhere and immediately get triggered by the sight of a Roman city? Sheesh. Well, I'm not going to catch this one before it makes its way back to the camp, but at this point I should have the units on hand to deal with it. Two warriors and an archer will head to the southeast, and hopefully that will be enough. I'm crossing my fingers that this won't be a horses camp. Seems like barbarians have been everywhere this game - I wonder if it's been as bad for the other teams.

The settler moved a tile west to its finishing spot this turn, and I happily discovered that there's a 1/3 forested plains hill tile to the west. Excellent, excellent. This is going to be a great city with so many forests and jungles to chop. Tons of long term potential here after a lot of builder labor hacks it out of the wilderness. The warrior in Venezia keeps healing, three archers are heading northwest slowly towards China, one archer heads east to deal with the barbs.



Ha, look at that. Ostia ended up at 39/40 production into its warrior, just like Roma. I actually thought that it would end up at 38/40, and I know some players in other games were accidentally finishing builds that were intended to be used for overflow. It looks like the production queue keeps tracking all those fractional production amounts but doesn't consider them when giving you the turn number ETA. When in doubt here, be careful and aim to undershoot slightly. Anyway, Ostia swapped over to its Campus district, which is currently listed as taking 13 turns to complete. It won't take anywhere near that long though, since a forest chop is going to knock out about 2/3rds of the cost of that district. This is also why I have to delay my policy swap by one more turn, since it will take that long for the builder to reach the forest southeast of the city. Next turn to move onto the forest, and then the following turn to do the chopping BEFORE swapping out of Agoge. This will work out nicely, just you wait and see.

Venezia finished its monument this turn, on to the granary repair next which will take two more turns.



OK, now to demonstrate this whole chopping overflow thing in practice. I know that many of you have seen this plenty of times before, but (for better or for worse) there are always more people reading my threads who might not have as much experience with Civ6 mechanics. So the first thing to do was set up Roma with a nearly-completed warrior, the 39/40 production that we saw last turn. I swap the city back to the warrior (with Agoge policy still in place in the background) and tell the worker to chop the forest tile. That's 43 base / 64 modified total production. Click the button and...



The warior completes instantly and the city overflows into the Campus, completing it the next turn. Very, very nice - that's how to get a district constructed. It's especially useful because I was only going to build over this forest tile anyway with a Commercial district after research finishes into Currency tech. One of the secrets to high-level play in Civ6 is trying to minimize the amount of time spent building anything without some kind of production modifier in place. Every cheap build with a big production modifier is a chance to funnel chopping/harvesting overflow into something that doesn't get a modifier. Coastal cities can use the naval production cards to get +100% on ships and use that for overflow. Landlocked cities want to leverage Ancient city walls + Limes policy for a one-time opportunity to do the same thing. When this game first came out, everyone thought that city walls were a waste of time. Hah! It's exactly the opposite: city walls + Limes policy is a golden opportunity to knock out an entire district for the cost of one forest chop. In fact, Monarchy government is better than we all thought just because of the production bonus it gives for city wall construction. But more broadly speaking, anything with a production modifier can be used for overflow use. Warriors are cheap enough that I'm leveraging Agoge here in both of my first two cities to turn a chop into 2/3rds of a Campus. You should think about every forest and every stone/deer tile as a chance to turn them into a district or some other similarly expensive build item.

The Campus district is only worth 1 beaker/turn immediately in Roma. However, I'm only about four turns away from completing the second Campus district in Ostia (with the second forest chop), and that will take BOTH Campuses up to +2 science via the half adjacency bonus that they grant one another. Each district gets +1 science from being next to the mountain, and then each of them has a pair of half adjacency bonuses (Roma with the Ostia Campus and the jungle tile, Ostia with the Roma Campus and the city center tile). So give me a few more turns here and those districts will be worth +4 combined science, which is no laughing matter this early in the game.

Oh, and the quest that I received from Antananarivo way back in the beginning of the game? Build a Campus district. I'll take that +2 culture next turn from the envoy, and then I found city #5 next turn with its own free monument. 22 culture per turn on Turn 53? Sure, why not!



I also purchased the iron tile this turn for 88 gold while still in Land Surveyors policy and before the cost could scale up any further from discovered techs/civics. Three turns to move to that tile and then one turn to mine it with the builder for the Wheel and Iron Working boosts. Singaboy, I'll let you know when I have a request for gold in a few turns for the watermill cash-rush in Ostia.

There was finally some significant movement on the scoreboard. Woden planted his third city so he and Chevalier Mal Fet are both up to 3 cities each. EmperorK and TheArchduke both have settlers out on the map and will follow suit in a few turns. EmperorK and Chevalier Mal Fet have also reached 6 civics for presumably their first government, while TheArchduke and Woden have 5 civics done and will soon reach the same mark. Japper and Cornflakes have fallen down into last place on the scoreboard, and I suspect they'll remain there for a long time. Whatever their punishment was for the earlier cheating, they seem to be in a world of trouble. Our team will be countering with another city, population point, district, and tech for Rome next turn. I almost wish we could keep our scores lower to avoid attracting attention. Hard to do that with the most cities and the most wonders though.

[Singaboy]

Singaboy, your slinger did survive the barb horseman attack with a sliver of health left.

A sliver only? How could that be. The minimum it could have is 13 Anyway, should be good enough to survive.

Awesome progress and perfectly timed chops. That culture output is amazing and can get you through some civics without boost so that China can get their 60% discount.

As for the barbs, see it as free experience for new units and free additional income.

[Modo]

Ahh, using a builder to chop into another builder...call me a nostalgic but that is damn sexy.

1) If you plant a district / wonder on top of a forest before chopping it do you still get the bonus production or you're not allowed to? I'm assuming the latter since that would mean saving builder charges.

2) Is the a type of "raging barbarians" setting in this game or anything similar that could explain this barbarian activity?

3) Is there any place on this not so refined interface where you could see with what options was the game set up? From what I've observed you just get some basic info about map type, size, no of players and difficulty on the ESC screen and that's it.

[Singaboy]

Turn 52:

Indeed the slinger has a mere 13 health left. It got a really bad roll of RNG. Well, at least it is still alive but a victory over the horseman isn't all that guaranteed. I am really relieved when the slinger manages to kill the horseman. It looks as if it can run off next turn and run it should until it reaches city#4 to upgrade.

Nothing much else happened. Quanzhou grew to size 5 and works a 3f1g tile for a turn to shrink again next turn with the settler done. Hangzhou will be done with its temple to change to the builders. Of course, chopping a builder with a builder makes no sense in civ 6 terms. The chops will be used to get the campus done faster and maybe get a builder-Ilkum overflow mechanism going.

A missionary will be sent to Shangdu - Antananarivo - city 4 for its tour of duty. Hopefully the income will be enough to buy Rome a water mill and still have cash to upgrade some slingers.

[Sullla]

Responding to Modo's questions:

1) Placing anything on top of a terrain feature - district, wonder, or city - removes the terrain feature without receiving any kind of bonus production. This is why settling on a plains hill tile will produce a 2/2 city center tile, but settling on a forested grassland won't do so. The forest part of the terrain gets ignored when the city gets settled.

2) There are no granular barbarian settings in Civ6, only "On" and "Off". The default level is slightly less than the "Raging" option in Civ4. I've long wished that they had an option in Civ6 that had fewer barbarians without eliminating them altogether.

3) I don't think there's any place where you can see the map setup options after a game begins. A couple of the most basic game options (like difficulty level) show up when loading the savegame file. This was a custom map anyway so I'm not sure how helpful that would be for this game. (I'm pretty sure the base version of this map had the "New" world and "Wet" climate options though. Lots of hills and forests/jungles.)

There was something new in the game today:



Someone out in the fog captured a city state. I can tell you from score tracking that this was TheArchduke, who captured a size 3 city, pretty much the same thing that Rome did on our island. (I'm quite pleased that we pulled this off a few turns sooner, and without Germany's +7 strength bonus against city states. That ability makes it almost too easy.) Since TheArchduke also has a settler out on the map, he's going to be at 4 cities shortly. It continues to be clear that the Russia/Germany team will be our biggest competition in this game.

There's a bunch of other notifications on the side of that screenshot. One of them comes from getting an envoy in Antananarivo for completing the Campus district in between turns. The other notifications are related to meeting a new Scientific city state, Seoul:



Unsurprisingly, we are not the first team to meet Seoul. Three players in total have an envoy inside, which means at least two teams have contact. If I had a free envoy, I would consider dropping it in here too for the +2 science bonus. My quest is to trigger the boost for Celestial Navigation (improve two seafood resources) which should be pretty doable. The first galley out of Venezia is going to come down here and snoop around to gather some more information. It may be worthwhile to embark a 1-charge builder down here too in a little bit if there's a lot of land tiles to explore.

Capturing Buenos Aires was the first major strategic objective for my civ. I'm going to state right now that the next major objective will likely be to capture or raze this city state. We can keep Lisbon around because it's deep in our back lines and we should have enough envoys to keep control of it. Seoul is a different story; it's in the middle of the map and will be hotly contested by everyone. That means it either needs to be captured by our civ or burned down. I'll see if I can see up a legion-powered attack on this city timed around Turn 75-80 to establish a foothold for our civ on this continent. There should be time enough for that. Obviously what our galleys find down here will influence what happens.

In all that excitement, the placement of a new city was overshadowed:



Say hello to Milano (Milan), named here after the Italian city and not the tasty dessert cookie. Milano has always been an industrial powerhouse and that's what this city is going to be down the road. Unfortunately I do not have a 3 food tile to hand over to this city at the moment, and it's forced to make due with a 2/2 jungle hill at the moment. If Venezia or Milano would grab the wheat tile in between them, I could trade the horse pasture over to the new city to let it grow faster. I was also hoping that my trade route between Rome and Ostia would run out soon and I could rebase the trader over here, but I checked the mechanics on that and it looks like the trade route's going to run for another dozen or so turns. Oh well. I'll get some builder labor over here to improve some tiles soon enough.

Venezia is finishing its granary repairs this turn. Ostia continued working on its Campus; the captured builder moved onto the forest tile for next turn's chopping. Sailing tech finished between turns to unlock galleys and I went back to Currency, due in 3 turns. Civics research swapped back to Games and Recreation for a policy swap next turn.



Firenze will grow to size 3 next turn and can finally pick up the horses tile. I couldn't swap off the cattle tile even this turn or it would take an additional turn to grow. I'm still waiting with the 1-charge builder up there and hoping that the city will grab one of the amazing grassland hill tiles next to the natural wonder. It looks like the tile picker is going to take the completely unworkable natural wonder itself though, blah. I'll have to keep waiting, I can't afford to spend gold on a tile purchase and the city does have outstanding cultural output.

Roma finished its Campus and started a builder. This is a turn where I potentially could have put production into something like a library, since I wasn't getting any production modifiers into the builder yet. However, I need more builders for Ostia and Milano (and frankly at least one charge for a chop at Venezia) and I valued getting a builder done sooner here. There's also not much point to having a library sit around uncompleted in the build queue for a while - unfinished items in the queue are also inherently inefficient. Anyway, the builder will take 4 total turns to complete with significant overflow and it can get down to Ostia right around the time we cash-rush a watermill and the city begins growing again.



Lots of interesting news in the score tracking this turn. For starters, we pulled ahead in every category other than military power where we sit in an uncomfortable last place. That said, we managed to capture a city state with that "weak" military and no one has contact with us, so I don't think we've been punished as yet for lack of units. We do want better scouting information though, which is why I'm trying to get some galley out ASAP. This deserves a quick word about how the rankings are determined. Domination is probably the simplest, first number of capital cities control (non-issue right now) and then total military score for each player. Religious ranking is number of cities converted to your religion, then faith/turn output. We're tied with Russia/Germany at two cities converted, but we produce a lot more faith/turn than they do. (I believe Khmer/Kongo only has one city converted, not completely sure of that.) Culture is ranked by tourism output and then number of civics discovered. We're easily winning both of those metrics between Singaboy's wonders and our monster cultural output.

Science is a bit more interesting. It's ranked first by number of spaceship parts completed (almost always irrelevant) and then number of techs discovered. We were previously in second place in the Science category until this turn when I picked up a tech. We have 17 total techs discovered right now and that ties us with Russia/Germany and Khmer/Kongo, with Nubia/England sitting at 16 total techs. Because three teams are tied with the same number of techs discovered, this actually tells us something interesting: we have the most beakers/turn of any of those three teams. That's excellent news and comes as a relief to me because neither of our civs went for early Campuses. It looks like faster early expansion into slightly later Campus districts works just fine. Even better, we're beating these teams despite no Scientific city state envoys for us and at least three teams with envoys in Seoul. That's a very good sign indeed.

Rome gained 11 points this turn and almost caught up to Russia in score; I'm at 71 points to EmperorK's 72 points. He'll jump further ahead of me when he plants his third city though. In addition to TheArchduke capturing a city state, Woden also finished a district. Either that or all three of his cities gained a pop point and that seems really unlikely. I'll be able to find our what type of district next turn. He already has an Encampment so I'll guess Campus as a stab in the dark.

Looking good Singaboy. Let me know if you have any thoughts about the new city state discovery.

[Singaboy]

Wow, what an exciting turn for you. Getting contact with Seoul through their galley is nice indeed. I wonder whether I can get that contact too. I am not entirely sure about it. As I am getting an envoy this turn via theology, I would invest that immediately for 2 science. Let's hope for the contact.

I am relieved to see my wounded slinger intact. It can run off north now.

Another issues that went through my mind. It will take quite a while to get the builder out of Hangzhou to start chopping the campus. I don't think I can hold off technologies to get the theatre district locked at a discount. Currency will come in once Rome gets it. Since you are getting Games and Recreation, I would in fact want to research this as well for the Colosseum. My fourth city will be planted in due time. This will open up the path to the Colloseum there, I just need to buy an additional tile for the placement. With Hangzhou producing two builders (one for improvements, one for Mahabodi) and Shangdu producing a builder too, it might be possible to send one of the builders south for the Colloseum. This would maximise the Corvee card. Of course, there are two additional wonders we want, Jebel Barkal and Petra.

As it is now, I would simply finish researching BW and then go for mathematics once currency comes in in three turns. However, it might be wise to lock a district in Hangzhou once it grows to size 7 in two turns. The question is, do I lock the theatre or do I wait for currency to lock a CH? This requires to buy an additional tile. I will need to check whether I have enough gold to buy that tile on top of sponsoring Ostia's water mill. CH makes more sense due to the city state bonus of +4gpt it would yield.

[Singaboy]

Turn 53:

Opening the save I am quite disappointed not to have met Seoul too. However, BIG NEWS, England has arrived in the form of a scout. I do not have contact with them either but Sulla has. It's a good thing, they come via the east, where the stronger Roman forces are. It is high time to spice up our army, especially China.

Beside the arrival of the first other players, I finished both shrine and settler. BW is near completion and in order to avoid district cost to increase, I swap to sailing as the Eureka is there now anyway. Theology is done of course and I now remember that all my planning for Hangzhou with regards to districts and wonders needs some adjustment.

Let's first look at the civic card changes. In fact it is only one change. Colonization is out and Ilkum is in. To note is that in 6 turns (that's before the next wonder is being produced), I will get an additional 1% bonus for wonders. Not big, but when building Mahabodi with 5 builder charges, it will create an additional 400 *0.1% * 5 overflow (2 hammers). That's pitiful, unless I got the % wrong. Based on Sulla's original expertiment, each builder charge with all three modifiers is 21%. Adding that 1% apparently results in 21.1% per charge.

With the new civic card, Hangzhou and Shangdu are now full steam on builder production. I adjust Shangdu's citizens to ensure the city grows in 1 turn but runs a 2f1h tile instead of the plain 3f cows. Next turn, the city can go on production focus working two forest tiles and the improved wheat giving it a total of 8 hammers (before bonuses are applied). With its builder costing 74 hammers (as Hangzhou will finish its builder at 70 hammers first), it should be done in about 6 turns.

Back to Hangzhou. It will produce two builders. Initially the plan was to let the forest chops go into the campus. However, in order to build the Mahabodi, the city has to have a temple. That costs 120 hammers and without any production bonus, that is around 8 turns. I think to produce Mahabodi faster than the campus is far more important. We want to make sure to get the right secondary beliefs, hence speed is important. We also want capture of Antananarivo to go smooth. Unless there is a huge counter argument, I would chop the forests into the temple. Hopefully we can time the forest chop in such a way that it coincides with the completion of the second builder to maximise overflow.

Now, since the campus would be delayed again, there is no point to try and fiddle with those overly complicated district discount. In fact, next turn, Hangzhou grows yet again and I would lock the theatre immediately. By the time the city borders have grown to include those tiles to the west, the city might be size 10 and I can lock a CH. This would also free up my restriction on technologies. I could finish BW to reveal iron. Quanzhou's borders are expanding in 5 turns and I hope with visible iron, that tile will be included. What do you think, Sulla?

Below is a screenshot of the overall situation in China's heartland. The northern slinger could move west towards Antananarivo to support the capture of the city. Quanzhou is building a horseman now. Production should speed up in 2 turns with Maneuver enabled. Quanzhou's settler is on the way to its destination and will reach that in 3 turns. I did not forget to buy a missionary and its journey is indicated in black. In fact, checking religion, a lot of cities have one follower by now. Converting those three cities will gain China 6gpt. The next missionary costs 160 faith and can be purchased in 4 turns. The missionary there will move clockwise to convert Roman cities.

Just to compare Church Property and Tithe. Once the three cities have been converted, Church Property generates 10 gpt. There will be roughly 20 citizens in all 5 cities following our religion. Let's assume 16 will follow the religion. Tithe would generate 4 gpt. Not even close.

By the way, if we would follow my suggestion to aim for the Colosseum soon, we could start charging in about 15 turns. Having that wonder in roughly 20 turns would really boost China. It would generate 8 culture a turn from those surrounding cities alone. Not to mention the amenities boost.

Lastly, a look at the pitifully wounded slinger. A barbarian spear is trying to chase it but will never get there and my experience is that those spears always stay close to their camps anyway. Running off in to the forest, the slinger is supposedly safe.