We did get a new turn today, and it brought mixed news:
I was hoping we would get one more turn before the city walls went up in The Jungle Book, but it was not to be. To be honest, it was a bit of a miracle that weren't already finished before this attack even began. Japper also made what I would consider to be a tactical mistake by shooting at my injured galley, which redlined it but failed to kill it. This is why I didn't try to attack with the galley previously, as I knew that taking more damage would open it up to dying if Japper finished walls and attacked. Anyway, that galley will go off to heal now, possibly boosted by the Great Scientist medic but more likely not. It's out of the fighting for the time being. What Japper should have done was shoot at my legion or my crossbow, both of which are higher priority targets and both of which were in range. The legion is the unit he really should have attacked even though the raw damage would be lower. That's the one unit nearby that has the potential to drop the city walls completely.
After shuffling units around, here's the deployment that I ended up with:
The most important units here are the legion that moved next to The Jungle Book and the fresh galley approaching from the west. I plan to move the embarked battering ram next to the city center tile next turn, and hopefully that will allow the legion and galley to get the battering ram bonus and remove the walls. I'm not 100% sure that the ram does its thing if it's embarked when next to a city center tile; we're about to find out one way or another. Japper actually cannot see most of these units because visibility from borders only extends one tile in each direction. Hopefully he's unaware that there's a second galley and the battering ram moving in.
I had a free attack from the northern crossbow so I shot the city center. Last turn that did 21 HP of damage; this turn with the walls in place, it did 7 damage to the walls and 1 damage to the city (heh). That chip damage is not irrelevant though, as it does weaken the strength of the city bombardment. Japper is also running the Bastions policy card for +6 city defense strength and +5 city ranged strength. It doesn't look like Kongo has any crossbows on the field yet because that would have made the city bombardment strong enough to kill my galley. (The walls are currently firing at 25 (archer) + 5 = 30 strength. That would give it about +10 strength advantage over my galley for about 45-50 damage on the attack, which matches what I saw this turn. A crossbow-enhanced city walls would have had +25 strength advantage and averaged 80 damage against my galley, which would have killed it for sure.) Japper and Cornflakes really should have pooled their gold together and rush-bought a unit of some kind in The Jungle Book. One Ngao Mbemba in there would have made this vastly harder, with +10 additional defensive strength for the city center tile and the ability to attack out against incoming units. They have no units inside though, which means that Singaboy's missionary is safe. Even if they cash-rush a unit on Japper's turn, it can't move on the same turn that it gets rush-bought.
This is honestly a pretty risky move on my part. I'm gambling that I can get the walls down in The Jungle Book next turn before Japper can reinforce the place. The other legions at Mpinda will be healed back to full strength next turn (thanks Great Scientist!) and 2 legions + 3 crossbows will start moving southeast into that grasslands region. However, I'm in a risky position here if Japper has more units about to pour out of the fog. I'm only making these moves because I've been tracking his power rating and I'm confident that I've caught him off guard. Note the Kongo unique sword off there in the far east that my galley spotted - that's where the Cultural city state is located, and where I think Japper has most of his units. He can't get them back in time over land, and if he tries to embark, my galley will kill them. Remember too that the slower I move, the more opportunity I give Japper to marshall his defenses. Hopefully my decision to push speed here will pay off.
More interface craziness from Civ6. I had a whole bunch of popup messages about unhappiness and insufficient amenities. It turns out that I picked up 1 point of war weariness last turn, but Rome still had more than enough luxuries to me OK. In fact, clicking on Siena itself showed that the city was at +1 amenities - what the heck?! It's another interface issue showing incorrect information; I was able to fix it by selecting a different tech and then reselecting Stirrups again. While Rome will likely run into amenities issues down the road, for the moment I'm doing just fine.
The trader rebased to Roma last turn started another trade route, this time running back to Ostia again. The main use of this trader was to get an additional +2 food in the capital, now that it's out of the housing penalty. I chose Ostia as the destination city because that will be the shortest duration trade route, giving me a chance to select another location in about 20 more turns. I valued the extra food and production over running a trade route to the Lisbon city state for +9 gold/turn; we aren't that desperate for money right now. Most importantly, this trade route also was the fourth one for Rome and boosted Medieval Faires to near-completion. The next boost I'll be working on is the Guilds boost, with a marketplace underway in Roma and Ostia.
Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, and that's what I did at Milano. Sort of. I bought this riverside grassland forest and built a lumbermill on it. This was the only tile in my whole empire where I wanted to build a lumbermill, the only riverside forest that was not a hill tile. I hated spending the 110 gold for this tile given that we'll be ugprading a lot of chariots into knights soon, but we also aren't very far away from researching Mass Production tech and I wanted to get the boost secured right now while I had a builder in position. Plus this is actually a good tile for Milano itself to work. I'm going to use the fifth and final charge from this builder to improve the cows that are finally popping into Milano's borders. Once it finishes the Bath district, it will be able to grow for awhile.
The standard overview picture for Turn 92. Roma is about to overflow forest chop another chariot next turn, taking me to 4 chariots total. Ostia also has a nearly-done chariot set up for chopping purposes, abd I'm hoping to get one more apiece out of Venezia and Milano after their current builds. Venezia is finishing a quadrireme next turn that will likely go to help out at The Jungle Book. Siena is nearly done its own Bath district and will probably start on its city walls next, even before Limes is ready. It's OK to build walls for a few turns before I swap in the policy. I'll also need another round of builders soonish to help these new cities with the district chopping plans. (Genova had its iron tile mined this turn, and I have four more charges to use on that builder.)
For research, I will swap off Stirrups next turn when it gets 1 turn away from completion and work on Education next. I will be finishing Stirrups soon though, timing it at the same point that I finish Divine Right. That's coming over from Singaboy on Turn 95 so I'll probably try to adopt Monarchy government on Turn 96 and finish Stirrups at the same time. The tech path will otherwise be Education into Mass Production next for Venetian Arsenal purposes. In civics research, I have queued up Civil Service next and can drop Maritime Industries (with the galleys done and the quarireme finishing) in favor of Meritocracy. I'll take Divine Right to 1 turn away from completion next and try to set up back to back civic swaps with Divine Right and Medieval Faires finishing on consecutive turns. I'll only want to be in Professional Army civic for 1 turn, enough to upgrade every chariot into a knight, then switch again.
Internationally, Woden's capture of a Religious city state 30 turns ago has finally delivered him a Great Prophet and a religion. There wasn't much left in terms of good beliefs and they ended up with these two. Zen Meditation is OK, at this stage of the game providing a few extra amenities in mature cities. I think Stewardship is pretty lousy myself, offering a tiny trickle of extra gold and science. As I said though, there wasn't much left for them to choose between. We'll see how long it takes for them to start spreading religion about. It would normally take forever given Woden's awful faith output, but he has Goddess of the Harvest pantheon and likely has a good bit of faith saved up from chopping/harvesting stuff.
Woden founding his religion was the biggest news in terms of score. He also finished Campus and is all the way up to 55 beakers/turn now. Nubia was sitting at only 37 beakers per turn 2 turns ago, so that's a shockingly fast rise in research power. He's been building several more Campus districts and picked up the 3 envoy bonus over in Geneva, that explains it. (I suspect he also adopted Natural Philosophy policy along the way too.) We're currently a few techs ahead of them but it's not much of a lead, certainly a lot less than it looked like a few turns ago. I've been really impressed at how well their team is playing. They're strong in science, culture, gold income, power (which is above ours and still going up) - everything other than faith. England/Nubia has totally eclipsed Russia/Germany at this point, and it genuinely looks like a two-team competition right now for first place. We have a real game on our hands here.
I was hoping we would get one more turn before the city walls went up in The Jungle Book, but it was not to be. To be honest, it was a bit of a miracle that weren't already finished before this attack even began. Japper also made what I would consider to be a tactical mistake by shooting at my injured galley, which redlined it but failed to kill it. This is why I didn't try to attack with the galley previously, as I knew that taking more damage would open it up to dying if Japper finished walls and attacked. Anyway, that galley will go off to heal now, possibly boosted by the Great Scientist medic but more likely not. It's out of the fighting for the time being. What Japper should have done was shoot at my legion or my crossbow, both of which are higher priority targets and both of which were in range. The legion is the unit he really should have attacked even though the raw damage would be lower. That's the one unit nearby that has the potential to drop the city walls completely.
After shuffling units around, here's the deployment that I ended up with:
The most important units here are the legion that moved next to The Jungle Book and the fresh galley approaching from the west. I plan to move the embarked battering ram next to the city center tile next turn, and hopefully that will allow the legion and galley to get the battering ram bonus and remove the walls. I'm not 100% sure that the ram does its thing if it's embarked when next to a city center tile; we're about to find out one way or another. Japper actually cannot see most of these units because visibility from borders only extends one tile in each direction. Hopefully he's unaware that there's a second galley and the battering ram moving in.
I had a free attack from the northern crossbow so I shot the city center. Last turn that did 21 HP of damage; this turn with the walls in place, it did 7 damage to the walls and 1 damage to the city (heh). That chip damage is not irrelevant though, as it does weaken the strength of the city bombardment. Japper is also running the Bastions policy card for +6 city defense strength and +5 city ranged strength. It doesn't look like Kongo has any crossbows on the field yet because that would have made the city bombardment strong enough to kill my galley. (The walls are currently firing at 25 (archer) + 5 = 30 strength. That would give it about +10 strength advantage over my galley for about 45-50 damage on the attack, which matches what I saw this turn. A crossbow-enhanced city walls would have had +25 strength advantage and averaged 80 damage against my galley, which would have killed it for sure.) Japper and Cornflakes really should have pooled their gold together and rush-bought a unit of some kind in The Jungle Book. One Ngao Mbemba in there would have made this vastly harder, with +10 additional defensive strength for the city center tile and the ability to attack out against incoming units. They have no units inside though, which means that Singaboy's missionary is safe. Even if they cash-rush a unit on Japper's turn, it can't move on the same turn that it gets rush-bought.
This is honestly a pretty risky move on my part. I'm gambling that I can get the walls down in The Jungle Book next turn before Japper can reinforce the place. The other legions at Mpinda will be healed back to full strength next turn (thanks Great Scientist!) and 2 legions + 3 crossbows will start moving southeast into that grasslands region. However, I'm in a risky position here if Japper has more units about to pour out of the fog. I'm only making these moves because I've been tracking his power rating and I'm confident that I've caught him off guard. Note the Kongo unique sword off there in the far east that my galley spotted - that's where the Cultural city state is located, and where I think Japper has most of his units. He can't get them back in time over land, and if he tries to embark, my galley will kill them. Remember too that the slower I move, the more opportunity I give Japper to marshall his defenses. Hopefully my decision to push speed here will pay off.
More interface craziness from Civ6. I had a whole bunch of popup messages about unhappiness and insufficient amenities. It turns out that I picked up 1 point of war weariness last turn, but Rome still had more than enough luxuries to me OK. In fact, clicking on Siena itself showed that the city was at +1 amenities - what the heck?! It's another interface issue showing incorrect information; I was able to fix it by selecting a different tech and then reselecting Stirrups again. While Rome will likely run into amenities issues down the road, for the moment I'm doing just fine.
The trader rebased to Roma last turn started another trade route, this time running back to Ostia again. The main use of this trader was to get an additional +2 food in the capital, now that it's out of the housing penalty. I chose Ostia as the destination city because that will be the shortest duration trade route, giving me a chance to select another location in about 20 more turns. I valued the extra food and production over running a trade route to the Lisbon city state for +9 gold/turn; we aren't that desperate for money right now. Most importantly, this trade route also was the fourth one for Rome and boosted Medieval Faires to near-completion. The next boost I'll be working on is the Guilds boost, with a marketplace underway in Roma and Ostia.
Sometimes you have to spend money to make money, and that's what I did at Milano. Sort of. I bought this riverside grassland forest and built a lumbermill on it. This was the only tile in my whole empire where I wanted to build a lumbermill, the only riverside forest that was not a hill tile. I hated spending the 110 gold for this tile given that we'll be ugprading a lot of chariots into knights soon, but we also aren't very far away from researching Mass Production tech and I wanted to get the boost secured right now while I had a builder in position. Plus this is actually a good tile for Milano itself to work. I'm going to use the fifth and final charge from this builder to improve the cows that are finally popping into Milano's borders. Once it finishes the Bath district, it will be able to grow for awhile.
The standard overview picture for Turn 92. Roma is about to overflow forest chop another chariot next turn, taking me to 4 chariots total. Ostia also has a nearly-done chariot set up for chopping purposes, abd I'm hoping to get one more apiece out of Venezia and Milano after their current builds. Venezia is finishing a quadrireme next turn that will likely go to help out at The Jungle Book. Siena is nearly done its own Bath district and will probably start on its city walls next, even before Limes is ready. It's OK to build walls for a few turns before I swap in the policy. I'll also need another round of builders soonish to help these new cities with the district chopping plans. (Genova had its iron tile mined this turn, and I have four more charges to use on that builder.)
For research, I will swap off Stirrups next turn when it gets 1 turn away from completion and work on Education next. I will be finishing Stirrups soon though, timing it at the same point that I finish Divine Right. That's coming over from Singaboy on Turn 95 so I'll probably try to adopt Monarchy government on Turn 96 and finish Stirrups at the same time. The tech path will otherwise be Education into Mass Production next for Venetian Arsenal purposes. In civics research, I have queued up Civil Service next and can drop Maritime Industries (with the galleys done and the quarireme finishing) in favor of Meritocracy. I'll take Divine Right to 1 turn away from completion next and try to set up back to back civic swaps with Divine Right and Medieval Faires finishing on consecutive turns. I'll only want to be in Professional Army civic for 1 turn, enough to upgrade every chariot into a knight, then switch again.
Internationally, Woden's capture of a Religious city state 30 turns ago has finally delivered him a Great Prophet and a religion. There wasn't much left in terms of good beliefs and they ended up with these two. Zen Meditation is OK, at this stage of the game providing a few extra amenities in mature cities. I think Stewardship is pretty lousy myself, offering a tiny trickle of extra gold and science. As I said though, there wasn't much left for them to choose between. We'll see how long it takes for them to start spreading religion about. It would normally take forever given Woden's awful faith output, but he has Goddess of the Harvest pantheon and likely has a good bit of faith saved up from chopping/harvesting stuff.
Woden founding his religion was the biggest news in terms of score. He also finished Campus and is all the way up to 55 beakers/turn now. Nubia was sitting at only 37 beakers per turn 2 turns ago, so that's a shockingly fast rise in research power. He's been building several more Campus districts and picked up the 3 envoy bonus over in Geneva, that explains it. (I suspect he also adopted Natural Philosophy policy along the way too.) We're currently a few techs ahead of them but it's not much of a lead, certainly a lot less than it looked like a few turns ago. I've been really impressed at how well their team is playing. They're strong in science, culture, gold income, power (which is above ours and still going up) - everything other than faith. England/Nubia has totally eclipsed Russia/Germany at this point, and it genuinely looks like a two-team competition right now for first place. We have a real game on our hands here.