Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Athmos]

It is possible perhaps that JB was not flagged as a wonder, as it was introduced in a later DLC. Especially that charging other wonders worked as expected both BEFORE and AFTER it, so there must be something strange in its case. Maybe some XML-digging might reveal the answer?

I'm a dev myself, and while Civ VI is very nice, I can see that it has a lot of problems that should not have been very difficult to catch in development/testing (e.g see the one great work for everything I have bug that was patched after 3 months).

It's obviously a wonder : It can only be built once, it receives the autocracy bonus, and it's even considered an ancient/classical wonder by the part of the code that is allowing china to spend builder charges on it.

But sure, there are a lot of bizarre inconsistencies (my personal pet peeves are all the UI bugs that are still lying around), and obviously this is a specially strange one as we can plainly see that Jerbel Barkal is considered as a classical wonder by parts of the code, and not by others.

[Modo]

The only conclusion that I can reach is that the district count wasn't refreshed properly, i.e. it must have been refreshed BEFORE the production cycle finished and Roma's district was counted. This is a useful empirical test for future use, as I thought that completing a tech and a district on the same turn would get the refresh to work. It looks like tech/civic completion happens before production, so I guess you need to complete a tech/civic on the turn AFTER a district is built, I guess? We'll get another test next turn since I have Construction tech finished at end of turn. I swear that I'll get that Harbor district discounted!

Nice catch there, I wonder if you don't actually need Construction finished next turn and just passing a turn will refresh it since then the new tech should be counted. No point in delaying Construction for a turn but something to be tested.

Getting the popcorn ready for the next turn or dare I say...the cornflakes.

[Sullla]

This was a busy turn so I'm going to jump right into it.



I opened the save and found that the Declaration of Friendship had expired as expected. (There's also a new barbarian scout that appeared literally out of nowhere but we'll get to him in a minute.) Japper sent a request to renew the Declaration of Friendship, which I'm sure he knew wasn't going to happen. It was worth the shot though on his part. I went ahead and formally declared war:



"Heavy" warmonger penalty isn't great, but there's nothing we can do about that. Any increased war weariness was worth it in exchange for catching Japper off guard. He appears to have been caught completely flat-footed by this attack. I don't know how that's possible but it does look that way.



The war declaration brought a counterdeclaration from the Geneva city state, which Cornflakes (Khmer) controls as the suzerain. There's a couple bits of useful information here. One is that this explains why Kongo/Khmer were so surprisingly competitive in science during the whole early game despite their poor opening. They were getting free beakers from TWO Scientific city state plus free culture from a Cultural city state. Seriously, that was an awesome haul on their part, really good luck there. Khmer has also been taking advantage of the +15% bonus to science while at peace for being Geneva's suzerain. He actually lost that bonus this turn when I attacked, heh. One other useful bit of information here: this shows us the eastern edge of their continent on the minimap. We can see that Geneva is on the coast and that must be about where the land ends for them. The western coast of England should be roughly due north from there. That's a pretty good distance away; I don't think it's too likely that England or Nubia will be coming to attack us, at least not in the immediate future.



Now for the combat portion of the turn. This barb scout appeared from thin air, apparently? I guess it was on the truffles tile last turn and moved west-southwest onto the rice. The crossbow with +34 strength advantage was almost guaranteed to kill the thing, and fortunately did one-shot the scout. Hopefully no more units will spawn in the time needed to walk over there and clear the camp. (I think I might clear the camp with a chariot and send the crossbow to the front lines, although I worry that the camp might spawn another unit in the intervening time. This is the TENTH unit that this camp has spawned already.)



Mpinda had the worst bit of news for the turn. My crossbows shot for 26 and 23 damage (both poor roles below average damage) and then I discovered this unpleasant fact: no Crusade bonus for the legion. It looks like China is the only one who gets that. There's one bit of good news to offset this though: if Rome doesn't get the Crusade bonus, then that means that Germany shouldn't get the Defender of the Faith bonus either, only Russia. Singaboy, maybe you can hover over a German unit at one of TheArchduke's cities and check to confirm this. That's highly relevant information for us to know.

The legion went ahead and attacked for 51 damage (again below the expected damage, sheesh!) to leave Mpinda at exactly 100/200 HP. Here's where all the units in this area ended up:



Three legions and two crossbows can attack Mpinda next turn - it's toast. I'll be moving my units to try and push on to The Jungle Book as quickly as possible from here. Since it's also unguarded, hopefully that won't take too long either. I mostly have to work around some rough terrain there, lots of hill tiles. After those two cities, this campaign will get a lot tougher and I'll probably need knights to push onto Japper's capital. The Ngao Mbembas are actually pretty tough units and I don't want to take them for granted. Anyway, we'll see what Kongo does in response. His army appears to be off attacking a Cultural city state at the moment, nowhere near the front lines.



Oh, and there's also this. Japper is moving an unescorted settler around down in the south. Geneva has a sword right next to that settler - is he about to lose it to the city state? I would actually rather he found the city so that we can take it away from him, there's good land down in that river valley to claim. Remember, Japper has already played his turn and can't move this settler before the city state gets to act. I guess he wasn't paying attention to the fact that Rome was the suzerain of Geneva? Funny stuff.



For the economic portion of the turn, I checked to see if the district discounting mechanic went through, and it did! Finally! As a note to all future Civ6 players, we now have confirmation that the district refresh that comes from discovering a new tech/civic takes place BEFORE production. In other words, you need to discover a tech/civic on the turn AFTER a district finished to get the refresh to work properly. Very useful to know for the future. As for Venezia, I placed the Harbor for 121 production cost on the tile east of the city, then chopped the galley for 147 production overflow. The Harbor will instantly complete in 1 turn and I'll still have about 45 more production overflow to play around with. I might use that for another 1 turn chariot, then go back and finish the quadrireme that's also nearly finished. We're at war and it's basically impossible to have too many chariots for knight upgrades.



With the district discounting formula in effect, Firenze could also go ahead and place its Industrial district on the tile grabbed by the Great Merchant last turn. That will take 7 turns to build and then I'll still have some time to kill before reaching Mass Production tech. I can use it to prep the city walls for a future forest chop, or maybe slip in a Library if there's enough time to kill.



Speaking of research, I chopped this jungle to complete the Campus district in Milano. That was a slight waste since I didn't chain this jungle with any production modifiers to get more than the basic 37 production, but jungle tiles only provide half the production of forests and it was simply too much work to try and set up something here. I wanted the distict finished sooner so that I could proceed on to the Bath district next. Milano needs it badly to get back to growing again. Fortunately the tile southwest of the city was now cleared for the Bath, and Milano can produce it in only 4 turns.



As if that wasn't enough, Rome also picked up the long-awaited Great Scientist this turn. He's heading off to the front lines to support Rome's combat operations and will probably be there forever as a super-healer. The next Great Scientist is Emilie du Chatelet, who offers three random technology boosts. Not that great. (Full dislosure: I accidentally clicked on the wrong button and used the Great Person initially. I went back and replayed the turn to do what I wanted, teleporting him to Ravenna. This is why the time stamps don't line up in these pictures. I replayed the combat the same way the second time, and I hope no one objects to undoing an accidental misclick.)



Here's the overview. With the new Campus district, science is up to 61 beakers/turn, almost double the second-best in the game. I have more comments for later but I've got to run now. Good luck Singaboy!

[Singaboy]

Great action and progress. Rome simply looks amazing currently when compared to all other players.

By the way, I am glad that your attack was not at the higher end of odds as I suspect England to attempt to sneak attack Mpinda and take the city from you with the galley. It's a good thing, you can take the city next turn without any issues.

I will have a few comments about my tech and other developments when I play my turns. Due to the Oracle, there are some adjustments needed. More of that later on.

[Singaboy]

Turn 90:

It is nice to play on a Saturday morning, when I have the time to check a few more things than usual. Ok, let's start to look at what England did during their turn. Besides the flurry of information here, England, I assume, is trying to position the galley in such a way as to snatch Mpinda or at the very least, make progress for Rome more troublesome. There is however, still no DoW from England.
I am confident, that Rome can take the city on T91. And with that super healer, progress toward Jungle book should be a lot faster. Question here, Sulla, should I send a few chariots towards the front to help out. You said, you are going to gift a city to China. I could then upgrade my chariots to knights there and help with the progress. Let me know. My missionary moved into position to charge Jungle Book. I am not so sure, whether I should use two charges there or maybe one additional charge at Seoul? Since Crusade doesn't work for Rome anyway (By the way, I checked and DotF only works for Russia which is great news as the front line cities are all German)



I then realize that I am not at war with Geneva. I check the envoys and Nubia is trying to get this city with its awesome suzerain bonus. As I still have an extra envoy in store I decided to place it in Geneva for immediate 2 science a turn. To wait for the 'two envoys for one' card would take far too long. I can't change to monarchy until T95. I rather take that bonus now. let's hope Cornflakes doesn't invest more envoys into the city for now. Woden might try to get that city under his control for additional research. Not good 

Shangdu has grown in size, now making 14 hammers a turn. It will lead to some overflow in two turns and I will get that into the second trader I really need for Tianjin. The city is adding the tile planned for a theatre district for Quanzhou next, just nice. However, I will try to get those theatre districts at discounts. Once the trader is done here, I will produce an archer before getting into the wall chop -> district game.

In the southwest, my exploring archer runs into the Hansa powerhouse production with two Hansas making 6 hammers a turn each. Nice setup there, Archduke. I will use the archer to explore those borders and then head back home in time for any potential war.

At Quanzhou, both temple and Jebel Barkal are getting closer to completion. Let's hope that Jebel Barkal's code allows the overflow to go into the temple and not get wasted. As it currently stands, the wonder will finish with an overflow of 19 hammers and it would be nice, if they could be used for something else. As Quanzhou needs to have more housing badly, it will produce a granary (I am not sure whether I should insert a builder there before that). With the sugar tile on its side, housing would be 6/6. A granary would make it 6/8. Farming all 4 cows would get it to 10 housing, not too shabby.

I also change Shanghai's tile assignment to prevent the galley to finish with almost zero overflow. It will delay it by one turn, but at least there will be some overflow into the Holy Site (I planted it to lock the cost). I will really need forest chops here for the districts. 

I will make similar adjustments at Tianjin to get some overflow into a granary. The next tile expansion will grab the fish. I am still hoping to get some of the tiles that we want for encampments to be selected. In fact, I highly suspect the tile SW of the stone to be added next. That would save some gold. Tianjin needs a trader and tile improvements to get something going.

Finally an overview of the Chinese land. As I stated in the previous post, due to Oracle only finishing at T95, I will need to delay monarchy until then to keep autocracy bonus. I will swap out of Divine Right next turn to avoid wasting culture. With the temple-Inspiration due in three turns, I can then swap back to Divine Rights at T94. The last wonder charge will be executed on T95. Immediately after that, a government switch will be done gaining the Eureka for castles. As I am finishing the 6th chariot in 3 turns, I can then complete stirrups too.

Before chopping the walls/forests. I will need to switch to Serfdom to get builders with +2 actions out of Beijing and possibly Hangzhou. I might even need to purchase another builder to get all this done properly.

Next turn Kashgar is growing to size 3. Though short of food, the city could potentially be rather strong. It would be great to snatch the copper hill from Germany

And as I was too free this time, I took the effort to decipher the numbers for all civs:

Overview Research/Culture/Faith/gpt
Khmer      23.1       14.1     1       ?
Kongo      19.7       15.7     0       ?
China       39.1       33.0    48.3   71
Rome       61.1       38.6     1       40
Russia      25.8       30.5    20.5   31
Germany  28.0       21.3     0         84
England    39.4      42.5     0        83
Nubia       46.8      28.6    7.3      28

The numbers for each team combined (bar Kongo/Khmer) look pretty even. Though Rome has a huge science output, combined we are only 15% better than Nubia/England. Culture output is even more balanced which is somewhat disappointing as Rome is a culture powerhouse due to free monuments, China gets so much culture from Colosseum. Well, we got no city states to support this. Let's hope we can extend the lead with the new holdings.

China will get a huge boost to faith output soon. This has to be the leveler in terms of military units against german's Hansa production power. Faith purchase will be immensely important here.

There is of course one final edge that China has. All Eurekas and Inspirations are worth 60%. That is the only reason why I can keep pace with Rome's progress on technologies and civics.

[Modo]

Oh, and there's also this. Japper is moving an unescorted settler around down in the south. Geneva has a sword right next to that settler - is he about to lose it to the city state? I would actually rather he found the city so that we can take it away from him, there's good land down in that river valley to claim. Remember, Japper has already played his turn and can't move this settler before the city state gets to act. I guess he wasn't paying attention to the fact that Rome was the suzerain of Geneva? Funny stuff.

Minor tidbit, from looking at the pictures I think you mean Seoul not Geneva; Geneva is your opponent and their ally.

Lots of new stuff discovered about the game also, very enjoyable even when beating a dead horse

I think it was Cornflakes or Suboptimal that mentioned an alternative Civilopedia on this site where all these findings can be posted once they don't impact current games (it would make finding this information a lot easier than searching through different threads), do you guys know of such a thread or anything else here where updated information is being collected? The wiki for Civ6 doesn't keep up

[suboptimal]

There is an extended civilopedia thread in the general topics forum. Info like the district discount formuLas has been posted there.

[Singaboy]

If Seoul really captures the settler, I am wondering what would happen to it? Could you get it under your control? I never had such a scenario. Very curious what Seoul will do.

[Athmos]

I never found a way to get a settler captured by a city state pacifically. In my experience they just keep it. I even tried levying their unit to see if I could get the settler and found a city with it, but it didn't work.

[Sullla]

There was so much going on last night that I didn't have a chance to respond to Singaboy's turnset. As a group, we went through six player turns in five hours - I think everyone was excited to get to their turns. Some thoughts and responses:

* On the Jebel Barkal thing, I think you guys have tracked down the likely issue. The DLC wonders must not be on some kind of list as far as what gets affected by Monument to the Gods pantheon. It's the only explanation that makes any sense, something about how those extra wonders were added to the base game in a slightly different fashion. It's the kind of bug that's obscure enough to go undetected for a long time.

* A few more thoughts on the war with Kongo/Khmer that I didn't have time to type up yesterday. Taking Mpinda is a given at this point, and by the way, I didn't think at all about England sniping the city until Singaboy suggested it. Heh, I should have thought of that! Fortunately it didn't end up mattering. So Mpinda will fall easily on the next turn, and I think The Jungle Book should be fairly easy prey as well, given how there are zero units to defend it and I can swing the Roman units down to block the path over to the city from the rest of Kongo's core.

I'm not sure that the remaining cities will be quite so easy though. This is mostly due to the Ngao Mbemba unique unit swords that Kongo gets and which Japper already has several out on the field. They have the base 36 strength of other swords and Japper is in Oligarchy government to take them to 40 strength. Their unique abilities are movement/sight through jungles as if they were grassland tiles (nasty in the large patch of jungle down near the Kongo capital) and +10 strength against ranged attacks. That's basically the Tortoise promotion for free and it neutralizes a lot of the advantage that I have from crossbows. After enough turns, we also have to consider the involvement of Khmer as well. I'm still expecting England to attack at some point and start occupying the Khmer units, but until that happens we can't rule it out. Long story short, I will probably need knights to push on the Kongo capital without taking on an unacceptable level of risk.

* And on that note... Singaboy, if you feel safe enough to send some chariots down to the front lines in the southeast, feel free to be my guest and send them. The plan is still to gift The Jungle Book over to China after it's captured, and that will give us a place to upgrade Chinese units into knights. It will also, critically, give us a place to faith-purchase more units once China reaches Theocracy government, and that's not far away on the horizon. I think we'll reach Theocracy before Germany is in a position to attack, and that's assuming that Germany even wants to attack us. I'd love to get another Declaration of Friendship with them after the current one runs out. No idea if they feel the same way though. Basically, I think you're in a better position to know what you need to be safe in the west and what can contribute to our offensive in the southeast.

* Also the AI is so stupid in Civ6 that I only give it about a 50/50 chance that the city state actually captures that settler from Kongo.

* Both The Jungle Book and Seoul will require two charges to convert since they're population 4 and population 5 respectively. I'd go ahead and use one charge at The Jungle Book just to see if that's enough to get a conversion. It likely won't be, and therefore I'd use the second charge as well to convert the city. I don't think having both The Jungle Book and Seoul partway converted would help us too much; better to get a full conversion so that China can look into building a Holy Site district there down the road. The next faith purchase is likely a Wat in Quanzhou and then we can save for more missionaries or some Theocracy units, whatever makes the most sense.

* Regarding science: Woden investing those envoys into Geneva significantly increased his beaker output. He was only at 37 beakers/turn when I played my turn. That means we don't have as much of a lead as I'd hoped, but fortunately we are still clearly ahead in both science and culture right now. The ones who have fallen apart are Germany and Russia. Our team is making a combined 100 beakers/turn and 69 culture/turn. The England/Nubia team is making a combined 86 beakers/turn and 70 culture/turn. Russia/Germany is only making 53 beakers/turn (!), and although they're closer at 51 culture/turn, they're still behind and falling further behind there as well. England appears to be running a huge section of its economy via trade routes to the Kumasi city state. If we could ever find it and raze it, that would give us a gigantic advantage in this match.

It's very clear though that England/Nubia is our main opponent now. I was completely wrong about this when I wrote that Russia/Germany would be the main opponent. I don't know what happened to them; given their civ choices, they should be in a better position right now. Especially Russia which has turned into a major disappointment.