Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[RFS-81]

"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.

Does that even matter if there are no AI civs? Does it increase your war-wearieness?

[Sullla]

I actually don't know RFS-81. I assumed that it increased the war weariness penalty, but you may be right, that could be an AI-only reputational thing. Anyway, the turn cycled quickly back around to me this morning. Japper played his turn in about 10 minutes, make of that what you will. Here's what I saw from the save on Turn 91:



Mpinda finished walls between turns and shot at my legion protecting the battering ram. For those of you reading along, this is why you always bring a battering ram along when attacking. You never know when city walls are going to complete between turns and then your effort comes to ruin without a ram to knock the walls down. I'm really glad that I remembered to cash-rush it on Turn 87, I almost forgot at the end of the turn and that would have been a real problem. Well, the main effect of the walls completing was to require one extra legion attack to capture the city, and that did matter since it delayed how quickly that legion could move on to the next city. It might have looked like sending all these units to capture one undefended city was overkill, but without the third legion over here I wouldn't have been able to take Mpinda this turn. Always better to send more forces than not enough.

The tactics were fairly simple here. I had the legion northeast of Mpinda attack first to knock out the city walls:



Note the effect of the city walls: 1 damage to the city center, 46 damage to the walls. Melee units are basically useless against walls if you don't have a battering ram. Of course, with the ram the walls fall almost instantaneously like they did here. Then I could line up a crossbow shot to take off the remaining 4/50 HP on those walls. I used the crossbow to the northwest of the city for this attack, not wanting to attack with the crosbow two tiles north of the city at all. I wanted to move that unit forward to relieve the traffic jam up there, and that meant not attacking this turn. So this crossbow shot the city center to remove the last of the walls and get some minor chip damage, then the legion southwest of the city attacked Mpinda for big damage:



I'm not quite sure what the difference is between city center damage and defense damage is. I'll have to look at that more closely when it comes to attacking The Jungle Book. Anyway, this redlined the city and now I could have my injured legion attack and capture Mpinda. It was important that this be the legion to take the city, both so that it would end its turn inside Mpinda where it can heal faster and also to vacate the tile northwest of the city so that the crossbows to the north could move forward. It was an easy capture and Mpinda passed over into Roman control.

The city is basically useless right now under the occupation penalty, unable to grow and with its production and research capacity slashed by 50% and 75% respectively. I set it to work on city walls, which it will actually be able to complete (eventually) with Limes policy going into effect shortly. The Great Scientist super medic moved into position to start healing injured units next turn, and the crossbows shuffled forward. I forgot to rename Mpinda (which I'm thinking of naming Pisa) and will have to do so next turn. Should have done it this turn to confuse anyone on other teams who might be looking at the city names.



At The Jungle Book, I shot the city center tile with this crossbow, mostly for experience purposes. It did 21 damage which will essentially disappear when the city heals back 20 HP next turn. I tried to diagram out the upcoming moves with arrows; the nearby legion will move onto the plains hill tile nearby and cut off the path to the city, while future units will swing out to the wide purple arc in the east to stop any reinforcements from arriving. My crossbow near Ravenna embarked this turn (white arrow) and is trying to move to the tile where the legion currently sits right now. The walls in Mpinda delayed the legion with the yellow arrows, which I plan to embark and ultimately move to the tile northwest of the city. There's also a new galley moving down here to support an attack from the sea, along with the damaged galley in position to cover Singaboy's missionary. I expect that city walls will complete inside The Jungle Book either next turn or the following turn. If we're lucky, we'll get one more grace turn before they go up. Hopefully this city will fall on Turn 94 or Turn 95.

Remember that city state sword in position to capture a Kongo settler? It doesn't look like it took the thing. Here's the side by side comparison from the last two turns:





The sword moved west, not northwest onto the tile where the settler was located. So if anyone is curious, yes, the AI really is *THAT* dumb in Civ6, not even able to capture unescorted settlers that move next to its units. This is why we pretty much abandoned Single Player, the AI is just too stupid to play the game.



Venezia finished its Harbor district betwen turns and had just barely enough production to complete this chariot in 1 turn as I hoped it would. Before the builder mined the offshore plains hill tile, it didn't have enough production and those extra two hammers made the difference. One thing that I wish that Civ6 would do is detail overflow production better. Unlike in Civ4 (which very clearly would show natural production as opposed to forest chop production and overflow production), Civ6 gives no indication that anything is happening at all. I just have to watch what happened on the previous turn and guess because the interface sure isn't telling me. In this case, I knew that I was getting 18 base / 27 modified production this turn into the chariot, but there's no way to tell how much overflow came in from last turn. I knew it was roughly 40 and that was indeed just enough to finish the chariot. The interface in this game really sucks.

The Harbor district itself wasn't terribly useful, worth 3 gold/turn. The main reason for building it was for the Cartography boost: build two Harbors. I'm going to chop out a second Harbor at Ravenna and use that to finish the tech about 10-15 turns from now. With the Campus finished in Milano last turn and the Encampment finishing in the capital, Rome is now up to 10 districts: 5 Campus, 3 Commercial, 1 Encampment, and 1 Harbor. I'm very proud of that result, second in the game behind TheArchduke in total districts who has 12 of them finished, and of course 7 of his 12 districts are the half-cost Hansas. He's getting 57 empire points from those districts compared to the 30 points that I get because all of the Hansas count for double score points. You can't take the score points of the teams with unique districts too seriously for exactly this reason.

Also worth remembering: Meritocracy is only a couple turns away and those 10 districts will be worth 10 culture/turn.



On the overview, Roma has finally worked through its overflow from the deer harvest, which completed a Barracks and half of a Market. It's preparing for the forest chop by almost finishing another chariot over the next two turns while growing towards the next population size. Ostia finishes its Library next turn, and will be working on a second Market for the Guilds boost next, with a chariot jungle chop thrown into the process for good measure. Firenze finished a trader this turn and started its Industrial district, due in only 6 turns at the discounted rate. I might have time to squeeze something else out of there before managing to research up to Mass Production. Milano and all of the new cities are still working on their Bath districts, with Siena nearly being finished. Ravenna reached size 3 this turn and Siena/Genova will reach it as well next turn. They're starting to get to the point where they can actually contribute to the rest of the empire.

Internationally, the biggest news was Russia finally planting a sixth city. EmperorK has been lagging behind the non-Kongo/Khmer civs and finally managed to get out another city. England and Nubia continue to stockpile more military power; Rome is at 483 power compared to 408 power for England and 538 power for Nubia... plus they have the double Great General / Great Admiral combo too. Really wondering how much longer before they attack someone. Kongo's power continues to go *DOWN* amazingly; Japper was around 200 power five turns ago and he dropped to 121 power this turn. What's going on over there? Is he losing units to a city state?! Oh well, works to our benefit.

Good luck Singaboy!

[Modo]

Is it even worth continuing to attack a city state at this point? I give up.
Thank you, suboptimal, now I've found the 21 posts expanded civilopedia

[Singaboy]

Turn 91:

Sulla gaining Mpinda is certainly the news of the round. What amazes me is the similarity of this military campaign to PBEM1. Almost an exactly the same timeline with an equally inept and unprepared opponent. Anyway, the worry will be England and Nubia. Those guys are gearing up for a war. I don't even understand why they signed a DoF with Khmer and Kongo. Let's hope they turn their attention to Russia or Germany instead of Rome and China.

My part of the turn was relatively quiet. I did some micro management, especially in Shanghai, where I geared up production again to maximize overflow, which I will let go into the Holy Site. It won't be an awful lot, but better than nothing. It will add 16 hammers into the district before the city will produce a quadrireme next. I figure it might be good to have some naval support in the southwest.

Hangzhou finished its chariot and lined up another. However, the builder was starting to charge the Oracle. By now, I know that the overflow of a previous build will end up with the charge of the wonder. Rather weird mechanisms with wonder charges, but that's how it is. This means that instead of producing 55 hammers, the charge ended up adding 79/290 hammers into the Oracle. As each charge should add 55 hammers, this means that the remaining 4 charges will add sufficient production into the Oracle to finish it by T95. This in turn also means that the small overflow from the next chariot (around 7 hammers) will go to waste. Well, one can't have everything. I want to swap out of Maneuver on T95, hence, I can't afford really to play around here.

Hangzhou will go for 2 turns chariot and then produce a builder in 5 turns, with the last charge waiting for Serfdom to be active.

The chariot here started its journey south towards Jungle Book. It will take quite some time to reach that destination. I will send yet another chariot from Hangzhou south. The chariot from Shangdu will head southwest.
Quanzhou continued the Jebel Barkal charges and is now one turn away from completion. This will give the much needed faith boost. The wat is ready to be purchased in three turns.
The missionary at Kashgar slipped through the city to convert it from the eastern side. This will make sure that Pagan can be converted on T93. The additional income I am making will be used to upgrade those chariots and archers/slingers in due time, but not too early to avoid unnecessary unit maintenance.
Kashgar has grown to size 3, the monument due in 5 turns hopefully speeding up the tile acquisitions. The wheat tile is due in 2 turns to be added. The grass hill should be next really saving gold to get that tile under Tianjin's influence.
Pagan is expanding next turn to the stone right in time for city growth. It will shave off a few turns off the granary built.

At Jungle Book, the missionary wasn't able to convert the city, the missionary simply stopped when entering city borders. Weird stuff. It will charge next turn and then convert to city on T93 along with Pagan.

As for civics, I switched to medieval fairies, a pretty expensive civic (needs around 5 turns research currently). Remember that I will swap back to Divine Rights on T94 in line with the Oracle completion. I would like the diplomacy card from it, which would add 8gpt at the moment. A new envoy is due in 3 turns via accumulation of envoy points.

[Singaboy]

* added thoughts about Hangzhou and the Oracle.

I might be able to use only 4 charges instead of 5 leaving the builder with a precious 2 charges for wall chops on the hills between Hangzhou and Shangdu. How to achieve this without delaying monarchy? Next two turns, the builder will use charge 2 +3 to add 110 hammers. At the same time, a slight overflow of 7 hammers will be added via the chariot. That brings the wonder to 196/290. Production will be left on the Oracle T93 adding around 27 hammers resulting in 224/290 on T94. That turn a 4th charge will bring the wonder up to 279/290 and leaving the production with the Oracle yet again, the wonder will finish via normal production on T95! This way I can swap to monarchy on T94 in fact after the 4th charge. (I will swap back to Divine Rights on T93)

The capital can then proceed to produce two archers which are really needed to deter Germany from attacking.

The idea of buying any builder is ludicrous as the cost is already at 400+gold.

[Modo]

Good bit of management there, OCD approved.
Is there any sort of discount at any point in the game to help with the scaling costs for builders / settlers? I can understand preventing the player spamming them but they shouldn't become prohibitively expensive either, even with the increasing production / gold generation capabilities.

[Athmos]

There are no discount that I know of other than the policy cards production bonuses. You have to hope that you can manage by having more and more productive cities, but the costs are rising fast. in Rise and fall, the golden age dedication "monumentality" provides an additional discount to faith and cash buying civilian units, and allows you to buy them with cash. Other than that, captured builders and settler don't increase the cost. One more benefit of snatching builders and settlers.

Since I think last summer (or last fall ?), the scaling of settlers has been doubled, so the cost of settling now rise very significantly. When cash rushing, the first settler costs 320, the second 440, the third 560...

Ciies founded in the late game usually have a hard time producing their own builders (Your core production powerhouses usually have no trouble churning them every few turns though). This is part of the diminishing returns of settling/expanding, but sometimes it feels like it mostly favour conquest rather than colonization. Regarding builders in particular, It is quite painful when playing china (who want even more builders than usual), and their additional charge is nowhere near as good as the Aztecs capture ability (mentioning them since they also usually want more builders than other civs).

[Sullla]

Hmmm, I'm not sure that this situation is all that comparable to PBEM1. The attack in that game arrived 10 turns earlier and it was a lot bolder in execution, embarking an army to strike at an opponent's capital city and effectively win the war in one big blow. This attack was slightly later and doesn't represent some kind of crushing checkmake move, instead being more of a traditional campaign that starts by hitting a border city and then proceeding deeper in the enemy's core. The unit mixture of the attack force is slightly different as well: right now, the main units of Rome's army are actually the crossbows, not the legions. The legions are just there to do the city attacking and block on the front lines for the crossbows, who will do the real work of killing Japper's units. I do agree that in both cases these attacks are ones that the opponent should have been more prepared for; there was ample warning in PBEM1 that Rome was chasing after the first Great General and upgrading an army to attack someone (although it was the first-ever Civ6 MP game and I think TheArchduke gets more of a pass). In this game, there's no excuse for Japper leaving his border wide open to attack, especially after he saw Rome plant multiple cities in his direction over the preceding dozen turns. He should have been aware that the Declaration of Friendship was about to run out and had units in position to defend. Well regardless, let's hope this campaign ends as well as the one in PBEM1.

Singaboy, I saw that you mentioned Kashgar was working on a monument. That's something useful to remember: China has been getting most of its culture from wonders. We can still build monuments in all of your cities, and that increasingly is worth doing since the relative cost of a monument is a lot cheaper now. 60 production is a lot on Turn 20, not so much on Turn 90. You might want to slip in more of them if it looks like a cheap build in some of your cities, food for thought.

Since we were talking about builders, one of my long-running arguments is that people misunderstand the scaling costs involved with them. Yes, every builder costs 4 more production than the last one, but what everyone misses is that the whole game scales up alongside the builders to keep those costs essentially constant. At the start of the game, builders cost 50 production and my capital, which was getting about 8 production/turn, could train one in about 6-7 turns. Less than that with Ilkum running, for that matter. Right now, a builder costs about 90 production and my capital is getting about 25 production/turn, which means that the builder takes about... 3.5 turns. Furthermore, I can use Serfdom to get two extra builder charges, which means that the cost per builder charge, relative to the size of my capital, is much LESS now than at the beginning of the game. Similarly, we saved up our income and purchased an early builder for China when it cost about 200 gold. Now the same builder costs over 400 gold to purchase. However, what that overlooks is how much more income we have at this stage of the game. We were making 10 gold/turn apiece back then and the builder cost the equivalent of 10 combined player turns to buy. Now we make over 100 gold/turn in income, and a builder is the equivalent of only about 4 combined player turns to buy. And that's not counting China's possession of the Pyramids or Serfdom civic to get the builder 7 total charges instead of the 4 total charges at the beginning of the game.

Again, builders are CHEAPER in relative terms to train as the game goes on, not more expensive. Think of this like those inflation-adjusted graphs of economic performance: if you aren't thinking in terms of the wider context, it misses what's really going on. Builders scale up in cost but everything else in the game scales up too, and generally at faster rates. The one difference is that new cities can't really train builders when they first start out, and that's something that does have to be worked around. But it's not like new cities were used to train workers in Civ4 either, right? After a certain point, your mature cities support the new cities as they get up to speed with the rest of the empire, and that's what happens in this game too. I hope that all makes sense; this is one of the most misunderstood aspects of Civ6 gameplay from what I see commonly getting posted. (People have the same misunderstanding about settlers, which are perfectly viable to continue building as the game goes on. I still have several spots I want Rome to settle down the road.)

Cornflakes has had the save for a while now and said he wouldn't get around to playing this morning. Hopefully we'll get in a turn at some point today.

[Modo]

Since we're in a standstill at the moment can we expand on this a bit more?
I'm thinking in terms of how these multiplayer games are being set up like the previous PBEM with Singaboys's Germany. If at some point during the mid or late game you manage to conquer another team's continent how feasible is it to try and develop it with all the movement rules and scaling costs and having to secure it also and such?

I don't have any experience with Civ6 Multiplayer so to me it seems like in this game you're going to do it just to eliminate opposition more so than attempt to incorporate the new holdings in such a timeframe as to make them actually useful...so basically not as much of a snowball to always grab more but actually judge what you're taking for yourself and what you're just denying to the others (the spud planets of MOO1)

[Athmos]

Well; building a builder in a freshly settled city still takes longer later in the game than at the start.
Sure, your production capability scales too, so it's still not only viable but desirable to get builders, but as you mentioned yourself, the dynamics change and your core is now investing the builders for the new cities as well as the settlers. Please don't read more than I wrote : I never said builders or settlers were not worth their cost, at any stage of the game. And yes, turns of production in core cities are of course worth more than turns of production in freshly settled cities.
Even at t130, if your capital or a core production take 10 turns of production, using a policy card slot along the way, to get out a builder + settler, that's still a significant investment.

It's clear that there has to be some kind of diminishing returns and I'm fine with the scaling costs, but it is not simply inflation as it changes the dynamics of your civilian investment as the game goes on.

However, it does significantly affect the balance of war and peace; as any civilian capture reduces the price of all your future civilian production as well.