Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

Two things for a quick comment before I play my turn later on today.

- I am happy that Roma grew from 2/5 to 3/6 followers. This is pretty good to know and means the city will flip to Marco Polo soon.
- I will post the discussion in the general thread to make sure no further nonsense of city gifting happens. I agree completely that the amount of abuse in the game would be endless.

[Modo]

I've also considered this as a huge exploit at the time and still think it will warp the gameplay but on the other hand one of the points of playing these MP games is to explore different ways of approaching the game.
Since I'm pretty sure this will trigger a big back and forth and there's no better argument than an actual test maybe the best solution is to have a dedicated PBEM game where this is allowed and in fact it's the main feature and see how it goes.

[Singaboy]

Turn 60:
What an eventful turn! The first thing I notice when opening the save is the message from Seoul about a quest. This means I have managed to meet Seoul via the wounded slinger. Don't you just love it when a plan works  
As I don't think I will build a water mill this fast, I decide to use one of my envoys I have to gain +2 science. To note as well, Milano has converted to Marco Polo and the income increased to 24gpt.



Time to convert Ostia and Beijing, which gains me the Inspiration for Reformed Church (having 6 cities converted). My income shoot up to 28 got in sync with this. Now, Roma, which showed a conversion in 16 turns, will feel a higher pressure and should convert sooner (after a religious charge, I can't see the city conversion times any longer, another of those bugs in the UI). One missionary still has a charge left for Venezia and hopefully can convert the city next turn too.



Time for builder action. One builder moves onto the hill for the chop next round. Hangzhou changes production back to a builder now that the builder takes 78 hammers. The newly produced builder at Shangdu removes the wheat for 72 food ! (I hope the forest chop will give the same amount of hammers next turn). This let's the city grow to pop 4 and in fact, the counter now says 0 turns for growth, hence, I assume the city will grow to pop 5 next turn. I am running out of tiles to work as there are only 4 decent tiles currently (I could borrow the sugar from Hangzhou of course). The good thing is that salt will be part of the city next turn and worked immediately before being improved in 2 turns. It will be a decent 2f 2h 1g tile. I start a trader there, which currently finishes in 6 turns.



Finally an overview of the Chinese land. Shangdu has locked two districts this turn, the Holy Site SW of the city as well as a commercial hub E of the city at the river. With a cow in the west, the wheat in the east and the sugar to borrow from Hangzhou, the city can grow decently.

At Quanzhou, I have upgraded the second archer and we will be ready for an attack on T62, when both Roman archers can attack.

[Modo]

Soon this team could be renamed to Sullla and the Holy Pope of Marco Polo team.
And the Pope is the former German Axis member from the previous PBEM game off all things.

[Singaboy]

Good thing, the cheesy city gifting has been stopped before it was abused too much. I am a little disappointed that Germany/Russia started to use it without at least consulting other players. Do they really need this advantage when they already play a terrific combo of civs.

[Sullla]

Wow, that was a great turn! There's so much going on in the game that it's hard to keep track. Let me run through a bunch of the issues we're currently discussing:

1) Singaboy's micro plan from yesterday. For starters, you won't get quite as much production for a forest chop as food from a wheat harvest. In the formula for how this works, chopping has a base value of 20 while harvesting a resource has a base value of 25. By a simple ratio, that means the value of chopping is about 0.8 of the value of harvesting a resource. Actually, I think this is exactly what you wrote yesterday, which I misinterpreted initially. By my account a forest chop should be worth 0.8 * 72 = 58 production, and then the 30% Ilkum bonus turns that back into about 75 production total. That should knock out more than half the cost of the temple; I think Hangzhou will only need about 3 more turns to finish the thing. Since this chop also produces the builder needed to charge the Mahabodi itself, this whole plan is coming together really nicely.

I worked through the math of where each builder was moving in my head and it all seems to proceed logically enough. I think that we'll be able to line things up at Beijing so that the forest chop listed on Turn 67 will be able to complete the builder that Beijing is currently training and get some serious overflow into the Entertainment district. The city might have to swap off the builder for a little bit somewhere in the upcoming turns to avoid completing it. Let's see, the jungle clear produces half food and half production, so that should be about 30 food and 30 production. Even with the Ilkum bonus, that won't finish the Beijing builder ahead of time. So that seems to be coming along nicely as well, clear the jungle for the food/production boost and get about half the builder done, then the forest chop overflows to get half the Entertainment district finished, with the SECOND forest chop (on the future Colosseum site itself) knocking out the rest of the Entertainment district. And then we have a fresh builder to charge the Colosseum itself. Your micro plan looks like it will work out swimmingly.

2) Seoul envoys. Nice job making contact with the Seoul galley and getting contact, opening up the ability invest an envoy in the city state. Rome is going to get a new envoy via natural passive generation next turn, and I have a choice to make: invest the envoy into Seoul for +2 beakers, or save it for investing in Lisbon? I wanted to get your thoughts on this. The more obvious play is to put the envoy into Seoul to get +2 beakers, which would increase my civ's overall science output by about 10%, from roughly 20 beakers/turn up to 22 beakers/turn. However, there are two things that potentially argue against this move. One is that we're looking to possibly attack Seoul in about 25 or so turns and putting envoys into a city state we plan to conquer is a bit of a waste longterm. The second thing is a concern over Lisbon, the Commercial city state in our backlines. We do not want to conquer that location, and that means that our team needs to control Lisbon at all times to stop anyone else from ever becoming the suzerain. An enemy civ having control of that city state would be pretty disastrous from a tactical perspective.

There's a simple way to stop this: one of our two teams does nothing but invest all envoys into Lisbon for the whole game. If we keep stacking up envoys there, no one will ever be able to wrestle control away from us. Obviously it would also be helpful to get to 6 envoys for the massive +8 gold/turn in every Commercial district too. With Rome being the first of our two civs to build Commercial districts, it makes more sense for Rome to play this role. I wanted to get your thoughts on this; I'll have a natural envoy next turn and then I have a second one essentially in my back pocket from Mysticism civic whenever I choose to complete it. I could put 2 envoys in Lisbon to get me up to 4 total, or I could put 1 into Seoul and 1 into Lisbon. The Lisbon quest right now is build an Entertainment district while the Seoul quest is trigger a boost for Celestial Navigation (improve 2 seafood resources). Both are technically doable but won't happen in the near future. Any thoughts on how to play this?

3) Rome's research. I forgot to mention this in my turn report yesterday: after completing Masonry research, I waffled a bit about taking Iron Working to 1 turn away from completion before finally swapping over to Horseback Riding. Basically, the logic here is that I don't see any reason to play scared. The only team that appears to be close to Rome is Kongo, and that's a very weak civ with less than half of my current power rating. If Kongo is this close, that means England and Nubia are almost certainly not close. I don't want to waste research at the moment by taking Iron Working to 1 turn away from completion (which let's face it does nothing for us) if I don't think we're going to be attacked, and all the evidence we have right now suggests that no attack is imminent. At the very least, with units now out on the map a good distance away from my cities, I should have enough warning to finish researching a 3 turn tech before being attacked. No one has Shipbuilding tech yet to embark units, and none of my cities appear to be vulnerable to being boated from the seas.

Long story short: I'm headed for Apprenticeship tech for the economic boost. I can get there in 10 turns time and I have the three mines ready to land the boost. I'll remain ready to swap back to the Iron Working path as needed, but I refuse to jump at shadows and play scared. There's no immediate attack coming against Rome, trust me. And the faster we can get to Apprenticeship tech and Feudalism civic - the two biggest economic techs in the early midgame - the sooner we can keep snowballing our lead.

4) City gifting. I'm glad that the other teams seem to be OK with ending this practice. Again, while we didn't explicitly ban this, it's exploitative as all hell if pushed to the extremes by the different teams. Chevalier Mal Fet mentioned gifting cities to England to get a free melee unit from the "other continent" bonus as yet another example of this. What Russia and Germany was doing is honestly pretty darn bad; they were gifting Germany's cities to Russia to get the border pop and then gifting them back. That's EIGHT additional tiles for Germany to work/chop/harvest etc. Seriously, that is a huge bonus and very much done in bad faith. Do you have any idea how much stronger my cities would be if they have eight more tiles to play around with? I'm willing to let this slide to keep the game going, but sheesh man. How could that team have thought that was a fair move? I swear, the other teams in this game have really disappointed me. :rolleyes:

5) Religious spread. This is a happier note. Marco Polo is starting to spread like wildfire and the power of Church Property is on display. We have 7 converted cities at the moment for 14 gold/turn, and that's doubling Singaboy's up to a total of 28 gold/turn. By my estimate, the religion has about 20 followers right now and that would roughly 5 gold/turn. Sorry Japper, it's really no contest for these two beliefs. Thanks for choosing the worse one though. China is rich rich rich and that's already helping us a ton, between the builders we purchased in the early game and the crucial watermill purchase in Ostia. We shouldn't have any trouble purchasing the tiles we need to set up the Colosseum and lining up unit upgrades down the road. Again, it's hard for me to stress how wealthy Singaboy is right now. The England/Nubia team makes a combined 13 gold/turn right now, and the Kongo/Khmer team makes a combined 22 gold/turn. Singaboy has 28 gold/turn all by himself, and then Rome adds another 14 gold/turn on top of that. Hopefully we'll be able to keep showcasing the power of money in this game.

As for the city of Roma, it won't be long before it converts as well. It will have 8 units of religious pressure from Hangzhou (which is worth 4 points as the Holy City) along with Shangdu, Ostia, Venezia, and Milano. Give the city somewhere in the range of 5-10 more turns and it should flip over. I think we'll look to save up China's faith for a Wat purchase next, and then potentially go for another missionary after that to convert Firenze and Roman cities #6 and #7, which will be going in the southeast lakes district. A Wat should cost about 380 faith, and that won't be too long once the Mahabodi is up and running. The temple in Hangzhou is worth 4 faith/turn, and then the Mahabodi is worth 8 faith/turn (4 from the wonder itself and 4 from China's Founder belief). Wats are going to start looking mighty cheap - it's the shrine and temple that will be tricky to build in each city's Holy District.

6) Shangdu city micro. Yeah, the glitchy interface doesn't update properly but the city will be size 5 next turn. I see that we already tossed down the Holy Site on the spot of the former wheat tile as planned, nice work. We may want to avoid locking quite so many districts in the future thouhg if we're ever going to make use of the district discounting formula. One thing we may end up considering for this city would be purchasing the 2/2 forested hill tile west of the sugar resource, as that's a tile that both Shangdu and Hangzhou can share, plus another place to chop into something good. I'm not a huge fan of a trader as the next build choice, although I don't think it's terrible either. Once Antananarivo is ours, we always have the option to just build the Colossus instead, and that comes with a free trader unit all on its own. Odd way to get China's first trader but it would be an option. Of course, China does want a trader at some point to fill out that unused trade route so it's not a bad decision by any means. China just has some really weird early game math because builders are incredibly useful both for wonders and city improvement.

I'll make a broader point here: Singaboy's cities are growing REALLY fast. Positive amenities plus the Hanging Gardens have been doing wonders (heh) for China's overall growth curve. If we end up winning this game, we might look back at that very early Hanging Gardens play as a sneaky good move. Next turn, China's total population will be 18 points with city growths in Shangdu and Beijing. Similarly, Rome's total population will be 19 points next turn. I don't have my PBEM7 spreadsheet in front of me, but from what I remember most of the other teams have around 10 population points each. This is huge and it's one of the main reasons why we're doing so well in this game. Population has always been power in the Civilization games, and in Civ6 population literally converts directly into science and culture. We've been consistently leading the field in city count and total population, while also keeping our lands improved with a healthy (unending?) army of builders, and that's been propelling our efforts along in this game.

I think that's all for now. Busy turns and lots to discuss - this is a really fun game.

[Singaboy]

I second that, the game is really fun. And, I have to admit, a big part of that fun is Sulla's outstanding analysis of the situation and reading that. I am always looking forward to the turn reports and reactions to my turns.

Now let's see what i have to say to those questions posted:

Envoys:
I think it is really important to keep Lisbon on our side, the entire game. Hence, I like the idea of putting all your envoys in that city. This means also, you should try and fulfill the quests before advancing an age. If you, for example, finish apprenticeship, you advance an age and won't get another quest since the old quest is still open. Keep that in mind before finishing apprenticeship. Finishing an entertainment district is no easy task though. Generally, I think you do not need to sink in one envoy into Seoul as you want to capture the city sooner or later. Rome's science output is good enough. However, I felt it is important to increase my science rate.

Technology:
Generally going for apprenticeship is always good. China doesn't need iron working urgently as Jebel Barkal can wait. I will net the Eureka for apprenticeship myself soon with two more mines coming online in 2 turns. I might head for it once mathematics hits the 40% threshold. Those additional hammers are always welcome. For myself, I might want to finish sailing and get those maritime technologies to get the Sea Wonders going. We might need machinery though in case someone wants to sneak attack.

Shangdu's production:
Well, I was debating between trader, monument or actually building the Holy Site. What do you think? A trade route could net 3gold 1 science if sent to Rome. Or 2f 1h if sent to Hangzhou. A monument is always good for more culture (I am lacking in that aspect until the Colosseum comes online). However, I had a new idea. What about building that commercial hub. It is locked at currently 14 turns. This will drop of course, as salt will add 2 hammers. Let's say, the commercial district would come online around T72. This would roughly coincide with the entertainment district in Beijing, resulting in mathematics done and Petra available. Quanzhou really needs that wonder to get productive tiles. Any opinions on this?

City Gifting:
Pure exploits with no excuse whatsoever. Throwing tantrums isn't going to make this look any better but I won't comment in the thread any further on this. In fact, German cities should be able to use those additional tiles for 30 turns as a punishment, I'd say.

[Sullla]

It's evening locally and the turn actually hasn't come back around to me yet. EmperorK still has it, hopefully not because of the discussion today about city gifting. I'm glad that Chevalier Mal Fet was able to cut through a lot of the back and forth with his summary post a bit earlier. I don't think we have any particular objection to one-time city gifting, not so long as a city stays with a particular civ afterwards. As long as we don't have cities going Germany -> Russia -> Germany or whatever, I agree that it's not a big deal. Hopefully no one will try to abuse this part of the trading gameplay.

Anyway, as far as the issues we were discussing before, I also like the idea of saving the Roman envoys for Lisbon to make sure we maintain control. I did have a thought about getting an envoy in Seoul for Rome, however. The quest I have there is to trigger a boost for Celestial Navigation, which means improving two seafood resources. I'm clearly not going to do that anytime soon... but I might be able to get the boost passed over from China. Antananarivo will come with a crabs resource already improved, and if we could improve one of the nearby fish resources for that city, it would become a cheap tech for China to research. We're going to need a Harbor district in that city eventually anyway to build the Great Lighthouse. Obviously this is a low priority, but it's something we might be able to make happen sooner or later. If not, 2 beakers/turn isn't a huge deal by this point in the game.

On techs, we'll cautiously proceed with Rome's path to Apprenticeship right now. That could be a good target for China as well since it's such an important economic tech. Is there anything else that China has an immediate need for once Mathematics is taken to 40% completion? I'm not sure if there is. With Horseback Riding tech already in hand, Apprenticeship is pretty close (as long as you can land the 3 mines for the boost, which you said you'll have ready). Yeah, I'm not sure that there's anything else immediately as useful. Worth thinking about alternate paths though.

Last issue regarding Shangdu: I would be fine with the Commercial district there and it's not a bad idea to get the three different specialty districts for the Mathematics boost. Here's my one question: is there any way to chop into the district making use of Limes overflow on city walls or something like that? That's always preferable if possible and Shangdu does have a good number of forests nearby. Now maybe that might not be possible, but it would be useful to think about it. Sitting and spending a dozen turns slow-building a district with no production bonuses should always be avoided if possible.

[Singaboy]

It seems one guy is holding the game hostage with his silly antics! Let's hope when he wakes up, he comes to his senses.

The game is great to play but the nonsense we have to deal with from players, hmm. Irksome to say the least

[Sullla]

Unfortunately the savegame file was passed over to me at about 11:00 PM local time. That means this is going to have to be a bit shorter than usual on the turn report.



My warrior was not surprisingly attacked by the barbarian warrior between turns. I decided to move a tile west onto the hill where the warrior couldn't be attacked for safety since there were now two barbarian warriors in the area, then shot and killed the barb scout with the archer. I'll get a free shot on the damaged barbarian warrior next turn and will play it from there depending on how these units move. At least this doesn't appear to be a barbarian horse camp.



Visibility on the closest Kongo city, which is size 2 and has the Oral Tradition pantheon. Now we know how Kongo had such strong culture in the early game, via taking the +1 culture on plantations pantheon. Interestingly, this is the SECOND Kongo city and not the third / most recent one. Japper planted this city back on Turn 43 and it's still only size 2. Good production site but appears to lack much in the way of food. There's a monument under production but nothing else present, no districts and no completed buildings. I'll keep exploring with the nearby warrior. Cornflakes should not have seen my galley since it's remained out of visibility thus far.



Archers have moved up into position to attack Antananarivo. Ready to launch the invasion next turn and get the first strike in against those city state warriors.



Domestic overview. Milano and Firenze grew pop points this turn; Milano still needs more food for faster growth. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the rice will be the tile chosen on border expansion. Builders will be clearing two jungle tiles though for the Campus and Bath districts, and that will largely solve the problem of slow early population growth.

Defensive Tactics finally finishes next turn. That's been a very expensive civic, costing 175 culture and with no boost to discount it. Policy swap will take out Maritime Industries in favor of Limes next turn and all of these cities will swap over to city walls to set up forest chops. Then the builders displayed here finish after Serfdom civic finishes and we get 15 builder charges for use in chopping overflow. A wave of settlers will follow in about 5-10 turns; I hope to have seven cities ready by Turn 75.



Here's some good news: we pulled past the Russia/Germany team in terms of power ranking. At the very least we don't look like that soft of a target any more, thanks to the Chinese horsemen and the new Roman galleys. Elsewhere, Chevalier Mal Fet of England settled city #4 this turn, and there was more insane stuff going on in terms of the score for Russia/Germany. They were trading a city back and forth so I'm not sure quite what that meant in terms of score. Well, it will sort itself out soon enough. TheArchduke actually has 3 Campus districts finished now and seems a lock to take the first Great Scientist. I'm also about to reach 3 Campuses, and if we're really lucky, the second Great Scientist will still be another Classical era one without advancing to the Medieval era. Keep your fingers crossed that Germany gets crummy Aryabhata and Rome ends up getting awesome Hypatia. It's a long shot but it could potentially happen.

Too late to post more right now; good luck Singaboy.