Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

A few comments here:

Currency should be done next turn according to your screenshot and in fact, I am waiting for it to finish currency for me to lock the CH at Hangzhou.
Generally I agree with your tech choices. They are also in line with China's needs.



I know that CH are better for us than harbors due to Lisbon. However, the purpose here is for GA points. Do not underestimate the power of frigates (we do not know the full map to be able to evaluate the usefulness of a navy). Frigates/caravels boosted by GAs are powerful and can wreak havoc. There must be a way for us to counter that and the GA points do either come for the GA policy card or harbors. As I would want to build ideally three coastal wonders, that all require to be built next to a harbor, I will need those anyway. Antananarivo is the first obvious choice. I am not sure whether the coastal tile requirement would mean that those wonders can't be built on Inland lakes?

Anyway, there are more spots on the coast in the southwest to build more harbors.

[Singaboy]

Honestly I am pretty pissed at this moment with Team Japper/Mike. First, they cheat their way through the initial 40 turns (with Japper claiming not to know a thing), we all give them a chance to continue with Cornflakes picking up Mike's pieces and now this.

I know a rig can always fail. Maybe I am a an 'old school' person but a commitment such as a PBEM is not to be taken lightly as there are 7 other people waiting for my turns to be played properly. If my computer were 'out of order' for 2 weeks, I would at least try to find an alternative solution rather than keep everyone waiting with no definite deadline.

I suggest, we locate them on the map and take them out as priority #1.

[Sullla]

Yeah, it's annoying to me as well. I understand that these are just games and everyone has to live in the real world. I don't expect anyone to plan their life around an online Civilization multiplayer game. Still, the notion that we're all expected to wait "for a week or so" while Japper sorts out his computer issues is far from ideal. That's the sort of thing that can easily spiral into a much longer duration. Let's hope that Cornflakes can play his turns or something along those lines to keep the game moving. And yes, it's especially annoying that the same team has been the cause of pretty much all the problems in this game thus far.

Anyway, while we keep spinning our wheels here waiting for the game to start back up, I'll respond to Singaboy's post from earlier today:

I know that CH are better for us than harbors due to Lisbon. However, the purpose here is for GA points. Do not underestimate the power of frigates (we do not know the full map to be able to evaluate the usefulness of a navy). Frigates/caravels boosted by GAs are powerful and can wreak havoc. There must be a way for us to counter that and the GA points do either come for the GA policy card or harbors. As I would want to build ideally three coastal wonders, that all require to be built next to a harbor, I will need those anyway. Antananarivo is the first obvious choice. I am not sure whether the coastal tile requirement would mean that those wonders can't be built on Inland lakes?

OK, so let's discuss Great Admirals a bit. Believe me, I understand the scars that Singaboy has from facing off against TheArchduke's England in PBEM4. I was working on the writeup over the last couple of weeks and that game was just insane with the double and triple Great Admiral boosts. Fortunately there are a number of factors in this game that are a bit different:

1) Obviously this map is not as water-heavy as the PBEM4. It still seems to have a good bit of water and ships are going to be important on this map. But on the PBEM4 archipelago, ships were all-important and land units were almost irrelevant. Virtually every tile on the map was within 2 tiles of water and ships could reach almost everything with their bombardment. Clearly that's not the case here, and that means a less dominant role for navies.

2) Similarly, less water on the map meas fewer Royal Dockyards. Unless their continent looks a lot different from ours, England won't be able to build a Royal Dockyard at its capital.

3) We're playing in teams of two here. Even if Chevalier Mal Fet were to claim every Great Admiral, they wouldn't apply to Woden's units. Therefore at worst we're looking at half of the forces arrayed against us having the Great Admiral bonus instead of all of them, and that's not nearly as bad.

With that said, we still need to come up with a strategy to counter Great Admiral stacking. I think we have one though, and it's not based around building lots of Harbor districts. As I see it, that's opting into a fundamentally losing strategy. England will always be able to produce more Great Admiral points in the natural fashion; their civ gets half cost Harbors and double Great Admiral points for an effective 4x advantage. We can't win that game and we shouldn't try.

What we can do is leverage our own unique advantages to claim Great Admirals (or whatever type of Great Person) via our own strengths: wonder building and faith purchases. In the wonder category, China can actually build any Ancient/Classical wonder for a cheaper cost than an actual Harbor district. As soon as we capture Antananarivo, we can look into putting Colossus there. That's worth 1 Great Admiral point/turn, a free trade route, a free trader for that trade route, and 3 gold/turn - plus the innate 4 faith/turn from Singaboy's religion. Not bad, even if other wonders have a higher priority. We'll definitely get this eventually since I can't see anyone else sinking 400 production into the thing. The Great Lighthouse is very similar: +1 movement for all ships (allowing China to counter England's Royal Dockyard bonus), 1 Great Admiral point/turn, 3 gold/turn, and 4 faith/turn. That wonder requires a Harbor district with a lighthouse improvement, so it will be delayed for a bit but we should get it too eventually. The combination will help China's ships fight more evenly against England or whoever else.

The big wonder for naval power though is the Mausoleum. It grants a free Great Admiral upon completion, and we should be able to save it and grab the Great Admiral at a key moment. I'm thinking we spring it to take the first Renaissance Great Admiral, which will boost caravels, frigates, ironclads, and privateers. This will also make it harder for England to try stacking Great Admirals since we'll have one for ourselves in a critical part of the tech tree. Even if England gets two of them, that's a 2 vs 1 advantage instead of 3 vs 0 or whatever, and the math looks a lot better.

The other way we stop stacking of Great Generals/Great Admirals is through faith patronage. The key wonder here is the Oracle which discounts faith patronage by 25%. Faith patronage is already cheaper than gold patronage by about 25%, and the combined effect is roughly half cost Great People. Take a look at this image from earlier in the game:



It's 750 faith for the Classical Great People and 1350 faith for the Medieval ones. With the Oracle, that drops down to 562 / 1012 faith. Now that might sound like a lot but Singaboy is going to have outstandingly high faith generation to play around with. The Ancient/Classical wonders alone are worth about 60 faith/turn if we build them, and we should get everything except possibly Apadana due to its "must be next to the capital" requirement. Shrines are worth 2 faith/turn, temples worth 4 faith/turn, and Wats (or any other Worship building) are worth 3 faith/turn. That's a base 9 faith/turn per Holy Site district with the buildings in place, which doubles to 18 faith/turn per Holy Site district with Simultaneum policy. The Wats don't even cost anything because they're purchased with faith. This still requires a good deal of setup - the Holy Site districts and the shrines/temples represent a real investment - but the payoff is worth it. I did some back of the envelope calculations, and if Singaboy has just five cities with the full Holy Site + buildings setup, he'd be producing about 150 faith/turn between districts and wonders. That's a lot.

That faith will let us do all sorts of useful things. Missionaries to try and spread religion for Crusade purposes. (Remember, England/Nubia have no religion at all and would be easy targets for Crusade religious spreads.) Faith purchasing of units at a really cheap rate under Theocracy government. And then finally saving up faith for patronage of critical Great People. I hadn't thought about this before the game started, but with Oracle in hand this becomes very powerful indeed. The conversion rate is about 9 faith per Great Person point, roughly speaking, and we'll be able to target it wherever it does the most good. Someone getting too many Great Generals/Admirals? *snatch* Now those people are working for China. Great Engineer appears with wonder charges? *yoink* Now he's ours. (Remember, the Mausoleum adds +1 Great Engineer charge for more wonder building fun.) If the second Great Engineer pops up as Isadore of Miletus (215 wonder production, 2 charges) or Filippo Brunelleschi (315 wonder production, 2 charges) we can make a push to land them. Germany's getting the first Great Engineer and it's a crummy one so they can have it. We'll have a real chance to take the next one if it's any good though. The Engineers with wonder charges could turn into Chichen Itza, or Forbidden City, or Oxford University, or most importantly, lock down Venetian Arsenal for us.

Long story short, don't stop England by trying to build Harbor districts. Stop England by building Holy Site districts and wonders and using the power of faith. Asymmetrical warfare at its finest.

[Modo]

Every civ can buy GP with faith and them having more points invested means for them the GP's will be cheaper to buy. Even with China's faith income you may get your pick of one GP or another but maybe not several.
Given the faith to GP points ratio it may be worth investing into generating some points of your own to reduce the faith needed to buy, much like slavery in Civ4 where you do want some production invested into an item to 2pop slave it instead of 3pop.

[Sullla]

Modo: yes, everyone can recruit Great People via faith patronage. However, no one is going to have as much faith as Singaboy, and only a civ with the Oracle can get the 25% additional discount on faith patronage. Obviously we'll keep building districts normally and accumulating Great Person points, and of course we're not going to get all the Great People. My point is only that we have a real opportunity to use faith for a significant targeted advantage if we leverage it correctly, and we should think about that when deciding how to spend China's faith.

Anyway, we have a new turn after four days of waiting:



My warriors are finally beginning to push back some of the fog in the southeast. There's another truffles resource down here and room for several solid cities on fresh water. I'm tentatively thinking of a pair of cities northeast of the truffles and another one east of the iron. I think it's going to be important to have a pair of cities in place to convoy ships through the narrow lake and therefore create passage from the southern ocean to the eastern ocean. The land is pretty good but it's definitely weaker than what we've both been setting to date (not enough forests for chopping over here for example). Obviously a lot is still subject to further exploration down here.



My builder finally mined the iron resource at Roma and picked up the boosts for Wheel and Iron Working in the process. Naturally I swapped the city over to working the 1/3 tile with the +1 beaker. With Currency tech finishing, I also threw down a Commercial district at the capital on the tile southwest of the sheep:



It costs 126 production, that's not bad at all. A good forest chop with Limes + city walls overflow will be enough to finish that. I swapped back to completing the builder, due next turn and then another builder after that. Ostia is also about to finish its Campus district next turn, for +3 beakers if I've done the math on adjacency bonuses correctly, and that city will also start a builder afterwards. Now's the time to get them started with Ilkum policy in place and Feudalism not too far away on the horizon.

In terms of research, the aforementioned Currency finished and Wheel is next with a lot of beaker overflow. That means it was time to hit up Singaboy for a loan:



I almost forgot about this with the long delay. This will be enough to cash-rush the watermill in Ostia next turn, not coincidentally the same turn that the Campus finishes and I can start working a high food configuration. The two wheat tiles at Ostia will both go to 3/1 yield immediately, with a builder coming down to farm them for 4/1 yield. Even unfarmed, the city will go up to +5.5 food/turn (with the amenities bonus) and that should get it off and growing again nicely. With the farms done, the city reaches 7.7 food/turn and that's still not counting the rice tile outside the city's borders. I'll feel better about that city's development once it's off and growing again. It has great land (and it's already popped out a Campus district and a settler), it just needs a watermill and some farms to get off and running.

Milano will expand borders and pick up its truffles resource in two turns, that's worth +3 gold/turn and will be quite nice. Venezia is expanding borders next turn and has picked a 1/3 forested hill tile across the water to the southeast. That's a great tile: more production capacity and another forest to chop. I'll be curious to see if gaining that tile reveals anything in terms of sight. Two more turns until the first galley there. Firenze is still growing towards size 4 and working on its own Campus district. That will make three districts and I'm creeping closer to being able to use the district discounting formula.

So let's talk about the one other team we've met. Chevalier Mal Fet did *NOT* accept my Declaration of Friendship:



This picture was from the start of my turn. His scout is on the wheat tile southeast of the northern peak and he seems to be exploring over to Firenze right now. I also found this little tidbit: England has signed a Declaration of Friendship with two other teams:



Unless I miss my mark, that's two DoFs with two separate teams. To me, this pretty much is a statement that their team plans to attack us in the future. I would strongly consider attacking and killing their scout but I don't want to give them team the boost for Defensive Warfare. Fortunately our borders block access to most of our civs and Roma's about to pick up another tile; I may be able to stop the scout from exploring anything to the north of my capital by blocking tiles up there. Let them think we're unaware of them. But going forward, we need to assume that this team is going to be hostile and is planning to attack us down the road. Anything else would be too unsafe. All my cities to the east will need immediate city walls and units to defend them. Next techs for me are Masonry and then Iron Working to 1 turn away from completion, then we'll see about where to go after that.

I'm also well aware that Firenze is exposed to attack over the water from the east. I intend to get city walls there as well and hopefully put a scouting unit in the water down the road to give advance warning of anything approaching. It's not time for full paranoia right now but I also don't want to be caught unaware.

There was a lot of stuff in score tracking. Singaboy managed to gain TWO techs this turn, one on his own research and one from the Currency boost passed over to China. I think we'll be first in the Tech rankings next turn, which may be a bad thing given that it only puts a larger target on our back. EmperorK's Russia had a big infusion of score points this turn, his empire score going up from 30 (where it was static for the previous 23 turns) up to 43 points this turn. That's a city and a pop point for sure (6 points), but that still leaves another 7 unexplained points. I think that's another pop point and then a Lavra, which would be really weird because it would mean a district getting completed the same turn the city is founded, but I dunno where else those points come from. Perhaps two districts then, one in each of his other two cities? It will become clear next turn when the Great Person points pop up. TheArchduke didn't found a city this turn but I expect his settler will plant a city next turn or the turn after.

I did find one other tidbit. Chevalier Mal Fet and Woden were getting 2 faith/turn and 3 faith/turn respectively on previous turns. Now they are getting 0 faith/turn and 1 faith/turn. This can only mean one thing: they are attacking their Religious city state and they lost the faith bonus from their envoys. We'll see how long it takes them to capture it. At the very least, that will occupy them for a few turns.

Off to you Singaboy. Do you know how many more turns until you'll have your next missionary ready for purchasing?

[Singaboy]

Interesting turn on your side.

From this point on, I think it is a good idea to save up some gold for emergency upgrades and purchases. The last thing we want is to be caught with our pants down being attacked from both sides in the south. To me the screen from England indicates a DoF with one other team, the other is simply being friendly. I am surprised about this as I actually expected them to take on Japper/Cornflakes. Let's get ready for an attack from the south. At this era of the game, they might think Nubia's UU might be more powerful than Rome's legion. Better to be ready than to be sorry later on.

I have 3 slingers that need to be upgraded to archers and with a policy card change in 4 turns, I will add Conscription to avoid paying maintenance for my archers and less for the horsemen I am going to produce. I am now thinking, with all my infrastructure, builder and wonder production, one city has to be on permanent unit production. Even if we don't get attacked, it is clear we are target #1 (Sulla alone is enough to get that 'honor'). It is wiser to boast higher military strength to deter attacks.

As far as the missionary question goes, iirc, the next missionary would be done by T57 and could then head for Roma, Ostia and Venezia to ensure that potential Crusade bonus (Mahabodi and its two Apostles only arrives at T71 though). If Crusade works the way we expect it to work, it would in fact be better that Rome defends Chinese cities and vice versa. This would in fact give the same bonus as DotF. This brings up the question whether Roman units can be inside Chinese cities and the other way round?

[Singaboy]

Turn 56:

Well, I still have neither contact with England nor with Seoul. Currency is done and I stay course for the wheel anyway. Everything is still according to plan. I think with Rome's two archers + 2 of mine as well as 1 horsemen (+1 maybe to clear the back), we should be more than ready to attack Antananarivo. I do not want to wait until T71 to test Crusade for that. I rather start developing that city earlier. It will need walls for sure. Unfortunately, the city looks nothing like Venezia.

In the south, you can see Seoul's galley getting close to China. I might move the wounded slinger eat next turn to maybe get a glimpse of that galley for a contact. I will soon get an additional envoy too.

With currency done, the CH gets locked SW of the city for 146 hammers. Might want to knock it out with chops into a wall. Hence, I will need to follow SUlla's culture lead to obtain Limes. Of course, first G&R get done with a policy swap. I will wait for 3 turns to upgrade both slingers near Quanzhou.

I copied the cost for the missionary into the production display. It costs 160 faith and will start its journey to Roma on T58. It should convert the city by T59, then Ostia a turn after that. With Milano getting converted in 4 turns automatically, there will be 5 additional cities following Marco Polo by T60. That's an additional income of 10gpt

I get a little annoyed by that English scout. I rather we eliminate it. I fear it might get the idea to pillage one of the districts. Hence, my warrior moves south to be ready to protect the coming builder from Hangzhou as well as the holy site.

Sulla, I strongly suggest that you get those units near Ostia to be ready to deal with this intruder, if he decides to get funny.

By the way, I checked and it is not possible for our units to enter each others cities, unfortunately.

[Sullla]

Regarding the England/Nubia team, I completely agree that we want to be prepared for trouble from them. That's why I want to have Iron Working queued up for research and start saving some gold for upgrades. At the same time, we shouldn't let fear of another team drive us off our development path either. I doubt that there's another English unit within 25 tiles of our civ right now aside from that scout. England and Nubia have power essentially equal to Rome's right now, that should give you an idea of the size of their military. Nubia is about 20 turns away from a Great General and England has no Royal Dockyards or Great Admiral points as yet. If they attack us, it will most likely be in 25-30 turns, not in 5 turns.

That's great to see that China will already have enough faith for a second missionary purchase next turn. As you said, it should be enough to convert Roma, Ostia, and Venezia, and Milano will be converting on its own. Along with Antananarivo and the Chinese city #4 to be founded next turn, that's another 12 gold/turn via Church Property. Very nice indeed.

I concur that we don't want to wait for Crusade to attack the cultural city state. Four archers and a horseman should be enough to get things started in about 5 turns. Both my archers are already promoted and close to earning a second promotion; they'll tear right through any warriors and archers that the city state might happen to have. The city defenses should fall quickly with four archers plugging away and a horse to deal the final melee blow. Too bad Antananarivo is a weaker city than Buenos Aires but a free city is a free city after all. It will bring incense into the fold and a place to build naval wonders if nothing else.

Too bad about our units not able to enter one another's cities, that was my guess without testing it. I'll move the archer and warrior in the Ostia/Roma area over to Hangzhou in case Chevalier Mal Fet tries to declare war to get his scout through our territory. My preference is still not to declare war to avoid giving them the Defensive War boost, but we'll see what happens.

Oh, and what are you thinking as the first build in your new city next turn? If nothing else comes to mind, builder is always a decent choice.

[Modo]

That might very well be the intent here, for the scout to provoke you into giving them a free boost (along with some diplomatic fallout as well).
I'm assuming they in turn can't pillage anything without declaring war as well so it's a mini Mexican standoff atm but even in such a scenario they would lose the benefit of moving it around and busting some more fog.

I wonder what did they gain from those declarations of friendship since leaving you out is a pretty obvious sign; maybe it would have been better for them to not sign them and mask their intentions for a while longer. If they wanted the other teams to feel safer about you guys being the target then that could be leveraged against them.

Very interesting to see how willing are the others to befriend you once you meet them.

[Sullla]

Another significant turn rolled in today:



The main news is meeting the Kongo/Khmer civ piloted by Japper and Cornflakes. They arrived from the southeast as well, which means that there's definitely some kind of long-running land bridge in that direction. I'll have a whole bunch to say about their civ later in this post. For the moment, it's significant that we've now met two of the other three competing teams.



Here's the land after I moved my exploring units in this region. Lots and lots of fresh water everywhere; how far this extends is anyone's guess. I'd like to explore a bit further with the two warriors although I'll probably keep the archer back in the home area for defense. If for some reason Cornflakes wanted to attack us, I have enough warriors in the area to defeat the Kongo warrior pretty easily.

Domestically, the big news of the turn was purchasing that watermill in Ostia:



Thanks again to Singaboy for the big gold loan last turn. This was very pricey at 320 gold but speeds up the development of the city enormously and lands us an important boost in the process for Construction tech. Here's a closer look at the city:



I now have Ostia on a high food diet at 5.5 food/turn surplus. Growth in 3 turns, and I think I can manage to get to size 4 in five more turns after that. This is a good city, it just needs farms on the food resources and a watermill to get it up and running. A quick additional word about the farms in this region: we need 4 more of them to trigger the Feudalism boost, and while I will have enough builder charges for the farms, the difficulty is getting the bonus food resources inside the Roman city borders. The rice tile is currently stating 14 more turns to be grabbed the Ostia's tile picker. That ETA will drop slightly as the city grows and picks up more culture, but it's going to take about a dozen more turns regardless. Still, that tile is guaranteed to be the next one Ostia selects. I'm more concerned about Milano, which has a wheat and rice tile in the second ring but may choose to skip both of them. It's getting the truffles tile next turn for its first expansion, and then it's 1/3 odds each for rice, wheat, and cattle tiles. There's absolutely no way to know what the city will pick. Anyway, I'll save gold for now and I can run a 1 turn policy swap into Land Surveyors via Mysticism civic if needed. Would really prefer to save gold for unit upgrades but we'll see.

Ostia also finished its Campus district this turn. That district is indeed worth 2 beakers/turn as I expected, but the one in Roma is only producing 1 beaker/turn. It should be getting 2 beakers from the peak (+1 beaker) and then two half adjacency bonuses via the jungle tile and Ostia's district. Perhaps this is because the production cycle goes city-by-city and Roma took place before Ostia? Well, we'll see if this corrects next turn of if I'm missing something here.



I thought I'd put together a picture of my upcoming tech tree. A lot of the key upcoming techs are looking quite cheap, with Masonry just barely a 3 turn research and Iron Working / Horseback Riding only 4 turns to complete. Even the "long slog" to Apprenticeship tech would only take 13 turns on a direct beeline. The current science rate of 17 beakers/turn feels good for this point in the game, and I still have another Campus district halfway done along with an envoy arriving soon to dump into Seoul. Rome's science output was pretty underwhelming earlier in the game so I'm very happy with how this has been developing.

One other note: none of the other players have a tech more advanced than the Currency/HBR/Iron Working column on the tree. That's also good to know - it's literally impossible for anyone to have Shippbuilding yet. These enemy units arrived by land, not via embarking over sea.



Overview shot of my territory. Roma finished a builder this turn and it's heading down to the Ostia region to start adding farms. Another builder to follow. Ostia and Milano are also starting builders that won't finish until after Feudalism/Serfdom are in place for the extra charges. Now's a good time to work on them with Urban Planning and Ilkum running. Venezia finishes its first galley next turn with another one to follow; the second one will take 3 turns if I've got the math right. Firenze still working on its Campus district, 6 turns left after accounting for its upcoming growth. All five cities are growing a population point in either 3 turns or 4 turns.

Oh, and my civ also picked up the boost for Recorded History this turn for having two Campuses. It'll be a long time before I finish researching that tech though. I have a pretty decent shot to land the first Great Scientist with two Campuses done and a third upcoming soon. TheArchduke's ahead in that race but still getting only 1 GS point/turn. I don't really care if I win that race since the first Great Scientist isn't that useful. If I don't get the first one, I'll probably just get the second one.

So let's discuss foreign policy next:



We currently stand in first place on the rankings in total score, science, culture, and religion. Our third place standing in domination is the only place we aren't on top, and hopefully we'll keep pulling up our numbers there with Singaboy's horsemen and Rome's galleys. I kind of wish this wasn't so obvious - you guys know that seemingly all of my games end up with a dogpile against my civ. Then again, the only time that didn't happen in Civ6 PBEM1, I kind of won pretty easily so maybe those dogpiles are warranted. Seriously though, our team as a whole is doing really well. We're clearly first in pretty much everything other than military strength, and that's a great place to be coming out of the early game. Much easier to fix military power than it is to fix poor economic infrastructure.

Here's the diplomatic screen with Japper's Kongo:



His capital is size 6 and he has a second city at size 2. One district completed, a Campus at the capital. Yeah, so this looks pretty bad, but it's still a lot better than the situation of Cornflakes:



He has, uh, no cities beyond his capital. I mean, we knew that already via score tracking but it's still kind of amazing to see it in practice. Whatever the penalty that this civ suffered for the earlier cheating, it was certainly harsh.

Quick comparison of some economic stats:

Science
Rome: 17.0 beakers/turn
Nubia: 13.8 beakers/turn (with envoy in Seoul)
Kongo: 13.2 beaker/turn (with envoy in Seoul)
China: 13.0 beakers/turn
England: 10.3 beakers/turn
Khmer: 9.2 beakers/turn

We're looking good here. Once we can place envoys in Seoul to match the other teams we'll have a clear lead.

Culture
Rome: 23.3 culture/turn
China: 10.4 culture/turn
Khmer: 7.6 culture/turn
England: 7.3 culture/turn
Nubia: 7.0 culture/turn
Kongo: 6.7 culture/turn

This is our biggest edge. We're destroying the other teams in culture (although I think Russia/Germany is doing better here).

Gold
Khmer: 21 gold/turn
China: 19 gold/turn
Rome: 11 gold/turn
England: 8 gold/turn
Nubia: 3 gold/turn
Kongo: 1 gold/turn

I'm not sure what's going on with the Khmer/Kongo team; it looks like they routed all their money to one player. This is also a big reassurance against the England/Nubia team: they don't have much gold on hand and their income is poor. That means limited opportunities for unit upgrades, the most powerful move in Civ6.

Military Power
England: 218 military score
Rome: 180 military score
Nubia: 179 military score
Khmer: 105 military score
Kongo: 85 military score
China: 44 military score

The only place we're not in first and it's not really that bad. Rome is equal to Nubia and slightly weaker than England. I can definitely have legions online before an army of theirs could reach Roman borders and probably crossbows online too. We'll keep an eye on this but not overreact. Also, I'm not listing faith but we're killing everyone here as well. China makes 19 faith turn, and everyone else combined (including Rome) makes 6 faith/turn. A bit one-sided.

Singaboy, I think we should offer Kongo a Declaration of Friendship. I can't see us having any desire to go to war with them in the next 30 turns and it would signal friendly intent on our part. It would also mean I don't have to worry about their warrior trying to pillage or attack builders as it explores. At the very least, it will give us more information about their team's intentions. What do you think?

One last thing. Chevalier Mal Fet has a Declaration of Friendship with Khmer, Germany, and Russia. The only civ he doesn't have a DoF with is Kongo... and he rejected one with us. I don't know what Chevalier Mal Fet is thinking here, since it's extremely clear that the Kongo/Khmer team is a much weaker team than we are. Perhaps he thinks they need to chase after the leaders (?) Well, we shall see in time. And Singaboy, beware of that English scout: based on its movement pattern this last turn, it has the Ranger promotion: faster movement in woods/jungle. Just be aware it can move through forests and jungle tiles as though they're flat ground. We wouldn't want to lose a builder to a sneaky unexpected move from that unit.