Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

More good news overall. Running through the standard list of different topics to comment upon:

* I still need to play things somewhat cautiously at The Jungle Book. Japper could always cash-rush a unit to completion or finish one through natural production, and in the latter case the unit can immediately act at the start of his turn. I would like to avoid losing any units here if at all possible. We'll see how much damage I can get on the city next turn, and whether capturing it on Turn 95 or Turn 96 looks more likely. It should fall on one of those turns regardless.

* The question about competition: close games are fun for the lurkers to read, and if you manage to win them, then yeah, they make for great memories afterwards. But close games also have a nasty habit of turning into losses about, oh, half of the time. I would rather have another game like PBEM1, which wasn't particularly close but ended up being a ton of fun for me to play. Winning in dominant fashion is just as good as a tight victory, and a heck of a lot better than a close loss.

* Regarding the naval threat from England: this is the biggest longterm strategic danger. I'm trying to develop my newer coastal cities so that they can start contributing by building ships, although they still have a ways to go both on population and production. I've deliberately placed my cities to minimize risk of attack from England via the eastern ocean. Firenze is three tiles inland and safe from coastal bombardment (at least until battleships), yet it can still build a Harbor later on and contribute to the naval buildup. Siena is safely on the southern ocean. Ravenna is two tiles inland, which holds some risk from bombardment but can't be attacked directly by ships. It's also getting a Harbor as its first district to be able to train ships (and to unlock the Cartography boost). Genova is the only city directly on the eastern ocean, and it's located on a hill at the mouth of a narrow channel that limits attack directly from the sea. All of these cities will be building walls next and should have them done by the time that the Declaration of Friendship with England wears off. Genova and Mpinda will both likely build the upgraded medieval walls too at some point for additional safety.

That covers the land defenses. You need ships to fight back at sea though, and I'll be doing my best to train more of them to deal with a potential threat from England. Maritime Industries is going to be a near-permanent policy card once I get into Monarchy government, as I want Venezia (which is very strong at almost 20 production/turn capacity) cranking out galleys and quadriremes for a while. I have three galleys now and I think I'd like to get five or six of them in total before unlocking Cartography and upgrading them all to caravels. Then it's largely a question of how many quadriremes I can build before frigates become available, and there's basically no wrong answer to that question. I don't think it's possible to build too many frigates given how awesome they are as units. I've changed my mind from earlier in the game and likely will stay in Monarchy government for a little while because if I unlock Exploration and Merchant Republic, that will obsolete Maritime Industries policy and I don't want to do that until I have a whole lot of quadriremes. England may force our hands here because if Chevalier Mal Fet shows up with caravels/frigates, I'll have to unlock the units too and respond. Overall though, the goal remains to build a lot of ships in preparation for this looming threat.

* The Venetian Arsenal is a separate question. I need to tech Education and Mass Production to unlock the wonder, and right now those are reading 3 turns and 5 turns apiece. Since I also need to polish off the tail end of Stirrups, let's say 8 turns total there given that science will keep going up slightly. Firenze will have its Industrial district ready in time to start the wonder right away, and I'll also have time to prep a city walls forest chop for Limes + Monarchy abuse there. That forest chop should be worth about 90 base production by the time that I cash it in, which results in 90 * 2.5 = 225 production overflow. There's a second forest that can also be chopped, although without overflow abuse, so let's say about another 90 production there. All told, this knocks out close to 350 production from the wonder's 900 production cost and gets it down to 550 production cost remaining. The city is making about 20 base production/turn right now, and that will keep going up with time as the city grows. Factor in the +5% bonus production from positive amenities and the slight +4% bonus production from Autocracy's legacy feature (heh), and I'll estimate that Firenze can average about 25 production/turn over the course of its build time. That would require roughly 22 turns to knock out 550 production and put the wonder finishing date around Turn 125. This is all highly subjective but I'll use that as a rough estimate.

There are a couple of things that I hope will work in our favor here. One is that Woden is on course to get the next Great Scientist; I hope that he and Chevalier see that in the pipeline and decide to wait to get the boost for Education instead of teching it themselves. Since Education is a mandatory prerequisite for Mass Production, that would buy us more time. I'm also encouraged by the fact that England currently has no Industrial districts completed, although that could always change in a hurry. (I still have no Industrial districts completed either.) I also don't think Chevalier Mal Fet has scouted the terrain where Venetian Arsenal will be built; he saw the city of Firenze, but he spotted it over land, not the water off to the east. And it seems silly that such a landlocked city would be the one constructing the wonder. We also have to hope that the second Great Engineer will not roll as Filippo Brunelleschi, the Renaissance one that has 315 production wonder charges. TheArchduke and his Hansas will definitely claim the first Medieval Great Engineer, and then we don't know which of the three will roll for the Renaissance choice. Remember that Chevalier Mal Fet already has the Mausoleum so he would get an additional Engineer charge if he claimed the second one, which would equal 945 production and a free Venetian Arsenal. Since that would essentially mean a game over loss for us, we may have to save up faith and patronage a Great Engineer if Brunelleschi is the next one rolled.

* Nan Madol: that was certainly amusing making contact and achieving their quest on the same turn! It is too bad that you couldn't score the 2 for 1 deal but oh well. I don't think we want to invest much in the way of envoys there and try to compete for suzerainship. It makes for sense to have a goal of capturing or razing the city state to take away the coastal ability from Chevalier's Royal Navy Dockyards. As far as Kongo goes, I don't know what Japper was doing in terms of attacking the city. He did some modest damage to the city walls without breaking through them. No idea if he brought a battering ram or not. I've been unimpressed with his play throughout this game.

* Another Wat purchase is great to see, we're basically getting a miniature version of Jesuit Education there. Instead of a Library costing 180 faith, we get the same 2 beaker building at 380 faith cost along with +3 faith/turn. It's not the best deal, but Simultaneum policy turns that into 6 faith/turn and makes it so that the building will almost pay its faith cost back in time. (380 / 6 = 63 turns so if the game goes on long enough it will eventually pay its own cost.) Having 82 faith/turn income is just awesome though. The Oracle will boost that close to 90 faith/turn, and reaching Theocracy government and Simultaneum should get China up over the 100 faith/turn mark. Faith-purchased units, here we come.

* I do not think that we should make a run for a Great General, not from China at least. Maybe we can try to land one from Rome eventually since Rome has some minimal Great General points coming in. I would advise against running any of the Great Person Wildcard policies to be honest; those are some of the weakest policy cards in the game. The only time they're worthwhile is chasing after the early Classical era Great People, since the Great Person cost is so low at only 60 points. All of the Great People available now cost 240 points and 2 points/turn is essentially worthless there. We'd be better off running Simultaneum for extra faith generation and then faith patronaging Great People with the Oracle. The conversion rate is better (with the Oracle each Great Person point costs 7.5 faith) so as long as Simultaneum is producing at least 15 faith/turn it comes out ahead... and faith is a much more flexible currency that can be used for lots of things. There are better options to spend policy card slots on.

* Finally, I just want to mention that I'm excited about the two galleys on the western ocean, one finished and another about to finish. We definitely can use more information over there and it will be good to know what we're facing. That offshore island could be a future target for settlement from China.

[Sullla]

This was a pretty quiet turn, especially for a war turn.



I opened up the save and found zero notifications for the first time in ages. No new units in The Jungle Book yet, no units of mine attacked, no techs or civics discovered - nothing. I still have no vision of incoming units from Kongo, although I suspect those Ngao Mbembas will be appearing soon enough. I went ahead and shuffled my units as planned last turn, first moving the injured crossbow a tile west. That puts the unit in a much safer spot and cleared out room for the legion to land on the tile that the crossbow vacated. Or, at least I thought it would. Why wasn't my legion disembarking on that tile?



Oh, you've got to be kidding me! There's a cliff blocking movement between the little lake and that tile. I completely failed to spot this - kudos if any of you in the lurker thread realized this as an issue, you had better eyes than me. Well, that's highly annoying but not disastrous since the legion can attack from the sea at -10 strength penalty directly against the city center itself. This unit actually had a promotion ready to use and an moveable turn to burn it. One of the available options? Commando: can scale cliff walls. I thought about taking it, but the problem is that I think I can take The Jungle Book next turn and that would make the cliff-scaling ability (otherwise super-niche) completely useless. I would have happily taken the Amphibious promotion if it had been available, however that required Tortoise (+10 strength when defending against ranged attacks) and I lacked that one. So I went with the standard Battlecry + Tortoise combination again, which is what I pretty much always end up doing with melee units when they hit the second promotion. The tier 2 promotions just aren't that good and both of the tier 1 promotions are pretty amazing.

I had the crossbow shoot the city center, and then saw that I was getting too good of a deal when attacking with the legion to pass up a melee attack too:



76 total damage, not bad. I still have no idea what the difference is between "city center damage" and "defense damage". The pictures that I have from PBEM1 don't display those two types of damage so this must be something added in a patch. A search on CivFanatics did not yield any information of use, no surprise there. Here's where all of my units ended up:



I think that I can capture The Jungle Book next turn if Japper doesn't complete a unit inside. Three crossbows are in position to shoot next turn, and they should average about 25 damage per shot, a little less on the injured crossbow and a little more on the healthy ones. One legion can attack from the tile to the east, one legion can attack from the water, and there's a galley and quadrireme in position to attack as well, although only one of the two ships can be in position to attack. (Quadriremes are the slingers of the naval world and have only 1 range - they are pretty useless until they upgrade into the awesome frigates.) Of course this all changes if there's a fresh new Ngao Mbemba in The Jungle Book next turn, in which case I will shoot with the crossbows and quadrireme and rotate in a fresh legion from the east, then take the city on Turn 96. It's toast one way or another shortly.

The other units are moving over to the east into a staging position for a further advance. I have no plans to move forward without knight support, however; legions and crossbows won't get very good odds at all against Ngao Mbembas in that jungle terrain. Rushing in now would just be foolish. My chariots are moving up from the Roman core as we speak, and I'll pause here for a few turns to heal up and allow them to turn into knights and reach the front lines. One thing I'm also probably going to do is move the Great Scientist next to Japper's capital to scout it out next turn. He'll kill the unit but it will just magically come back to life again, and the knowledge of what's lurking over there is worth having. The Great Scientist finished its turn one tile west of the spot in this picture, by the way - I had one movement point left and retreated onto the cocoa tile.



Will it finally be time to clear the barbarian camp of doom? Or will another unit pop up between turns to thwart our efforts yet again? Tune in next time!

There's another reason that I posted this picture, a slightly more serious one. This unit is one of two reasons why I need to delay Stirrups tech and Divine Right/Monarchy government unit Turn 97. This allows time to take the barbarian camp on Turn 95, move back to the rice tile on Turn 97, and then upgrade the unit to a knight on Turn 98 before swapping out of Professional Army policy. You can't upgrade a unit with zero movement points so finishing the techs/civics on Turn 96 and swapping out of them on Turn 97 won't work.



The other reason is this builder circled in white. This guy needs to chop the jungle tile just to the east of Ostia, and he can't do that until reaching the tile on Turn 96. This means that I need to *NOT* have either Stirrups or Divine Right on Turn 96. Stirrups would auto-upgrade the chariot in the build queue to a knight, while Divine Right would obsolete Manuever policy. So the net result is that I have to delay the tech and civic for one turn longer than I was expecting, and fortunately that's not a serious issue. It just keeps me out of Monarchy government for one more turn. It also allows me to squeeze out one more chariot from Milano; I have 4 chariots on the map now and 4 more coming, 1 apiece from Roma, Ostia, Venezia, and Milano.

Milano and Siena both finished their Bath districts this turn and suddenly housing is no longer a problem in either city. It's kind of striking how Rome's population keeps growing upwards while pretty much every other civ has started to stall and slow down. I have 41 population and Singaboy in second at 37 population (Ecstatic cities + Hanging Gardens FTW) with our other main rivals sitting in the low 30s. Those are partly guesstimates because it's hard to track population of players in the fog, but they should be reasonably accurate. Bath districts really are amazing and one of the reasons why Rome is just an awesome civ in this game. Rome has the huge early cultural output, the legion muscle coming online in the Classical period, and then the uber-cheap Bath districts let Roman cities keep growing upwards almost indefinitely in the midgame. Seriously, I have ELEVEN housing in Milano and I've never had to invest production into a granary (which could take the city to 13 housing if needed). Oh, and the Bath districts also provide +1 amenity for each city as well. Crazy.



Since there wasn't much else going on this turn, I thought I'd post the score graph for the lurkers. This is a great example of why score can be deceiving: England/Nubia is clearly way ahead in the game right now compared to Russia/Germany. Do not be fooled by the numbers here. The main reason why is those unique districts, which count for double score points, and Russia/Germany has a ton of them inflating their scores. Do Germany's 7 Hansas really deserve to count for 42 score points, equivalent to 5 cities with a combined 17 population? Probably not. I think this game is also serving as a clinic on why building lots of districts doesn't always lead to success. I have TheArchduke down for 15 districts right now (!), split between 7 Hansas, 5 Commercial districts, and 3 Campuses. But his science (36.4 beakers/turn) and culture (21.3 per turn) are only mediocre, and Germany's gold/turn income is no better than China (religion) or England (Royal Navy Dockyards). Germany's power isn't anything special either, 5th best in the game right now. Can TheArchduke leverage all those Hansas into something tangible? We'll see.

One last thing to mention. Japper's power has not increased at all and is still sitting at 165 points. However, Cornflakes has seen a rapid surge in power, now up to 414 points with a big surge in the last three turns. Are there a bunch of Khmer units heading west towards us? Or is he fortifying the border with England and Nubia? I really hope it's the latter case, but we need to be prepared for the former case. Fortunately knights are on the way in a few turns and I don't think Kongo or Khmer have a unit that can deal with them too well. It would certainly help us if England attacked and got into a bloody struggle with Khmer. If their team is focusing their resources on defending the east, that would be perfect for us.

That's all for now. Over to you Singaboy.

[Singaboy]

Goodness, I didn't spot the cliffs as well. Let's hope you can take the city next turn.

My chariots and any purchased archers can only be upgraded on T103, I still have time to get the chariots south. I think I will get both chariots to enter the Ocean and then sail south to Jungle Book to be upgraded to knights. Both chariots should reach Jungle Book by T102 easily and then get them upgraded on T103. I can faith purchase units on T103 as well and would most likely get 2-3 archers in the east. Those units will serve two purposes.

1. Help in the war against Kongo and Khmer.
2. Take defensive positions along the coast in Roman territory in case England wants to attack. With Crusade, those crossbows enjoy +10 strength. Another idea would be to get the garrison promotion for those crossbows. They could then occupy districts or forts to get an additional +10 strength. As legions can construct forts, that might be a viable defensive strategy here. It would turn the crossbows into 50/60 units, equivalent to field cannons!

Of course, the purchases depend on the situation in the west. Like Sulla, I am hoping for Germany to renew the DoF. However, I need to be able to react to any offensive move by Germany here. Better to have some faith and gold in store for purchasing/upgrading.

On another note, I will enable meritocracy next turn in place of any Great People civic. It will give a modest +5 culture boost. I am planning to produce a few monuments soon in my core cities to further boost culture. With wall chops producing a few more districts, hopefully unlocking cheaper theatres, meritocracy should gain its value too.

[Modo]

Well, according to the Wiki the two layers of city defenses come from the city health and outer walls which makes sense. You can find more details here

http://civilization.wikia.com/wiki/City_Combat_(Civ6)

The cliffs of doom are awesome, another cool feature that's annoying due to how hard to read the map can be; I wonder if it shows more clearly on the strategic layer.

I thought you can see the pop of each city on the diplo trading screen but maybe not for the cities you don't actually see on the map? If the GS can enter other players territory even without open borders (like in Civ4) then you could use it....well, maybe not this one as it's a super healer but any other GP.

[Singaboy]

Turn 94:

Sometimes it would be better to be smart
The turn starts with stirrups and Divine Rights done, a natural wonders spotted in Congolese land. No war declarations yet again...they might really gear up for attacking us. We have a new convoy which I don't use for now.



The last thing in the old government is to charge the Oracle one last time and the wonder is almost completed. There will be some nice overflow available for the builder next turn.

With the last wonder charge done, it is time for a new government and if I am not wrong, I am the first to have a 6 card government. The choice of civics has been gone through several times, the last change is meritocracy for additional 5 culture. Getting out of autocracy leaves out capital with all yields 1 less, nothing to be done about that. With the policy cards, I can keep on producing naval units and city walls. There won't be any military unit production for now I hope. faith can take care of it, if Sulla will help me out of my misery (soon to be revealed).

I am happy about how things go according to plan but when I want to select a new civic I have to realize my own stupidity. There is no direct path to Reformed Church. I am not sure how this slipped through my attention but one would need Guilds first. Now, this IS a problem.
I do not have two markets, nor do I even have 2 Commercial hubs. I know Rome has them but am not even sure, whether he has two markets? Is it possible for Rome to research Guilds to completion (with the Inspiration it should take 3.85 turns at the current culture output). If that is not the case, I got a serious issue to get into theocracy in a reasonable time frame. If the Inspiration for me can be done by Rome within 4-5 turns, I should still be still on track as I would need to start with Reformed Church on T99 to finish in 4 turns. Guilds would take me 3.85 turns too with mercenaries inserted for a turn at T97 to enable Serfdom. So, If the Inspiration can come on T98, that would be sufficient.
I am pretty upset about my own fault to spot this

The remainder of the turn is pretty straight forward. Units are moved toward the front lines. The galley in the west is exploring a little. Shanghai switches to a quadrireme, Tianjin delays the galley to 2 turns completion for a nice overflow. Pagan makes use of the 150% bonus and starts a city wall. I will swap back to the granary before the city completes the walls.

Two things for Sulla:
First, good luck conquering Jungle Book
Secondly, I hope you can research guilds with highest priority.

[Singaboy]

Clearly, Rome doesn't have even a single market...Plan B needs to kick in here. I need to get two markets in Shangdu and Hangzhou. Well, the chops come in on T98 for Hangzhou and for Shangdu on T100.

The chop at Hangzhou will instantly finish the CH with an overflow of roughly 40 hammers flowing into the builder. The builder will consume 20 hammers. This means the market can be produced by T103 assuming it will take 4 turns to complete it. At Shangdu, the wall chop could be used for the market instead of the Holy Site netting it on T100. I could then swap to Reformed Church on T103 finishing it on T107. This would delay faith purchase archers by 4 turns. Maybe better to produce two 'by hand' for the western defense (at Shangdu and Beijing for example).

That's the only scenario on my side. I am not too sure what impact a quick swap to markets at 2/3 CH cities for Rome would have. Only Sulla can answer that.

[Sullla]

Modo: you can see the population of enemy cities on the trading screen except for the capital, which is of course never tradeable. That's what I mean when I say that I can "mostly" estimate another team's population. If we were able to get visibility on their capital, then I would always know with certainty how much pop they have and that would be useful to have on hand. It would certainly make counting up the total districts a lot easier.

Singaboy: let's calm down a bit. No need to panic about the Guilds boost. It's been on the agenda all along for Rome to land that boost and I should have it done in the next few turns. Roma will finish a market at the end of the upcoming Turn 95 turnset with the help of a forest chop, and Ostia is supplying the other market with another Maneuver + chariot overflow jungle chop. I don't have the game open in front of me right now for exact numbers, but I should be able to finish Guilds research on either Turn 98 or Turn 99. The one thing that we absoutely should not do is ignore our past planning and start racing about to try and get a pair of markets in Chinese cities. At worst, China will be delayed by a turn or two in entering Theocracy government and I don't think that poses any real problem. We will definitely be there before the Delcaration of Friendship with Germany wears off. The biggest wasteful move that we made this game was spending 320 gold on a cash-rushed watermill in Shangdu that's supplying all of 2 food and 1 production per turn, doing so out of a desire to get the Construction boost that Rome was about to deliver on the next turn regardless. That was a failure of coordination on both of our parts, and it would be a major mistake to repeat the same error with the Guilds boost.

Long story short, don't worry, the boost is on the way in the next few turns.

[Singaboy]

T98/99 would be almost perfect and in line with my planning laid out on page 60!

There is another thing I forgot to mention. Are you going to connect the second truffles source soon? If you do so, please send it over to me. I have now two cities that are merly 'happy'. I woudln't mind all cities to be ecstatic though that won't be possible with Jungle Book being added very soon.

[Sullla]

Alright, picking up with Turn 95:



Excellent news, still no new units in The Jungle Book. That place is definitely toast this turn. The one bit of bad news was the loss of suzerain status at Seoul, but that wasn't really much of a surprise. I only had 3 envoys invested in there and it was all but certain that someone else would also want the 3 envoy benefit. As it turns out, two different players jumped up to 3 envoys in Seoul this turn: TheArchduke and Japper both landed there the same turn. I also picked up my own envoy this turn from natural point accumulation (not a quest or civic), and I'll probably drop it into Seoul in a couple of turns for the suzerain bonus. Why? Because I'm about to enter the Renaissance era and I might as well get the free boost, which is Seoul's unique ability. Then again maybe not. We'll see.



Before attacking at The Jungle Book, I sent my Great Scientist off on a scouting mission towards Japper's capital. This revealed a lot of interesting information: the city of Heart of Darkness along with a bunch of enemy units. Heart of Darkness itself is a very nice city and I'm licking my chops at the thought of getting control of it. There's a 6 food wheat tile east of the city, which means both a watermill and a Feudalism farming triangle. (This is really useful information: Feudalism for Japper means no more Agoge for faster Ngao Mbemba and archer production.) The tile northeast of the city has a Commercial district and I think there's a Campus district off in the fog too. Heart of Darkness was just converted to their state religion this turn, only the second city to be converted to the Khmer religion anywhere. I'm guessing they were worried about Crusade belief kicking in here, heh. I can also tell that the third Kongo city is directly south of Heart of Darkness, and that's the last one that Japper has under his control. Heart of Darkness, Kinchassa, and that southern city. And look, a settler, the one that the incompetent city state couldn't kill. Would be nice to capture that if possible.

Perhaps more interesting are the units over here. Those are KHMER units, not Kongo ones. It's about 100k of the 400k power that Cornflakes has at his disposal, and I must say that I'm not terribly impressed. Archers and warriors will get shredded to pieces by legions, crossbows, and knights. Furthermore, he can't upgrade these units because they're no longer in his territory. I'm pretty sure that you can't upgrade units in an ally's territory - need to check on this. I'll need to pause for a few turns to heal my units and get knights to the front lines, but attacking this location looks pretty doable right now.



At The Jungle Book, I had my three crossbows fire at the city center tile one after another. With no city walls or units for defense, it took those attacks right on the chin, even with the -17 city strength penalty for (land) ranged units. This knocked the health down into the red, at which point in time I had odds to capture it with my legion. But why rely only on "odds" when I could have complete certainty of the capture? I went for this move next:



Hooray for the quadrireme! I knew it would come in handy. While this wasn't strictly necessary, I figured there was no reason not to make the life of my legion easier and pick up some XP in the process. One important thing to keep in mind here: naval ranged units do *NOT* have the city attacking penalty that land ranged units suffer under. This is why frigates are so great and why they can capture coastal cities so easily. Sail up with half a dozen frigates and unprepared enemy cities just die. Anyway, I used the injured legion for the attack because the unit will need to stop and heal for a couple turns anyway. He had no difficulty taking the city, and The Jungle Book was ours.



Somehow I missed taking a picture of this area after all my units moved. I could have sworn I did so but I must have forgotten. I actually went back when I was typing up this report and replayed the combat part of the turn just to take this picture, which you can see from the timestamp is out of sequence with the others. Woden and Chevalier had already played their turns by the time that I took this. It's accurate to the real game state though since I just moved everything in the same order. Singaboy, I forgot to trade The Jungle Book over to you: can you request the city from Rome on your turn? That was also my bad. We've said all along that the plan was to give this city to China, and hopefully it's not a problem that I forgot to do it immediately on my turn.

My other units in the east are digging in and preparing to hold position for the moment against Kongo/Khmer units. They are outside vision range and perhaps with luck some of the enemy units will stumble into them for an easy kill or two. As I said before, I'll need knights to make the main approach to Heart of Darkness. We may even get a chance to pillage the Kongo trader, who is underneath the Great Scientist and headed back to the west.



This galley is off on its own scouting mission. I'm trying to get as much information on England as possible, and to determine whether or not there's a fleet incoming against us when the Declaration of Friendship wears off. So far I haven't seen anything and I don't think Chevalier Mal Fet can cross oceans yet. There's a slim possibility that he could be attacking through the Arctic where there's a long string of coastal tiles. I don't think that's likely - why would they do something crazy like that instead of simply taking over the Khmer cities? - but I'm going to send a naval unit up there next just in case. There's one random English archer over here who's probably on lookout duty. We said hello as our ship sailed past.

Then it was time to clear the barbarian camp and...



Well, you had to figure this would happen, right? Seriously, I just knew it. The game will not let me get rid of this blasted camp. I think that was the 11th or 12th unit to come out of this one camp. I went ahead and attacked for all the good it did, dealing about 60 damage to the barbarian scout. The worst part is that I have to move back into my territory next turn in order to upgrade the chariot into a knight. If I take the camp now on Turn 96, I won't be able to make it back before swapping out of Professional Army policy. This stupid camp gets to live yet again, although with a knight soon to arrive its days will finally be numbered. A knight with 4 movement points can finally push through the rough terrain quickly.



Economically, the main action of the turn was finally getting to use this forest chop at Roma, which had been perfectly prepared ahead of time. Chariot at 64/65 production and Maneuver in place - I never get tired of this stuff. That gave me 79 * 1.5 = 118 production from the forest chop, easily enough to finish the market at the end of this turn. I should have enough to overflow and finish a granary on the subsequent turn too which the city needs because it's hit the housing cap again. Singaboy, this market #1 for the Guilds boost.



Market #2 will arrive from Ostia at the end of next turn. I'm chopping the jungle east of the city and that will produce about 60 production (80 production divided in half and then multipled by 1.5 for Manuever) which I think should be enough to complete the market. At worst it will finish at the end of Turn 97. I think that I'll actually finish Guilds on Turn 99 based on what I see right now. I need to swap to Stirrups and Divine Right next turn to make use of them on Turn 97, and although I can overflow back into Guilds again, it's still going to take 4 full turns of civics research to get the civic finished. I'm afraid that there's nothing I can do about that. I don't think that the slight delay represents a seriously problem though.

Elsewhere, Milano and Firenze are growing next turn and Ostia will grow as well with the jungle chop. Milano is finishing up the last chariot alongside Ostia's jungle chopped one. Venezia is taking this brief moment when I'm not in Maritime Industries policy to produce a Library. Since it's going to be doing nonstop shipbuilding for many turns after this, now is the time to get the Library done. The southeastern cities are finishing up with their Bath districts and getting ready to swap over to city walls once Limes arrives in preparation for their Monarchy + Limes city wall chops.

No major score changes from the other teams this turn. Good luck again Singaboy.

[Singaboy]

Turn 95:

I am glad to see Jungle Book in our hands. 

On my side, I finish research of castles. With the issues of Guilds almost out of the way, I keep on researching it until T97, when I will switch to mercenaries to enable Serfdom. The good thing is, if the Inspiration comes in at T98, I should get the civic done by T99 and then proceed to get Reformed Church by T103. Some re-adjustments are always possible and not the end of the world.

The other big news is of course The Oracle which pushes faith output to 86 a turn. I will be accumulating as much faith as possible until T103 for purchases of units. With that in mind, cities can concentrate on other stuff for now.




With a new wonder in Hangzhou, its borders expanded at two locations. The citrus was expected, but it also expanded in the west to include the rice tile. Well, a good tile for growth but it might be even better for harvesting later on. Something to ponder on. I switch from one 2f1h to the citrus tile for faster growth. Currently both Shangdu and Hangzhou will grow in 7 turns. Hangzhou starts a builder which will be ready in 4 turns even without the forest chop. As Beijing is going to produce its builder on T98, the cost increase might delay it but the overflow from the forest chop will certainly get it done by T99 together with Quanzhou's builder.
The current builder left with two charges is maiking its way toward the forest hills in the west to chop on T98 + T100.

Research is started for siege tactics, though this will be stopped in due time (264 beakers needed). I might swap to education and other stuff when it seems more sensible to do that. Currently, there is no urgency in all that yet. I might want to swap to a tech that will get the Eureka from Rome though, for example Military Tactics.

Now for the bad news of the turn:

1. Upgrading of units. This is a double edged sword. In the case of Khmer, it might hurt us, but in the case of China on Rome's shores, it might play in our favor. It is possible to upgrade your units in an allies' territory as can be seen from my own chariot. So, watch out, Sulla.

2. The second news is certainly bad news. I could not request for any of Rome's occupied cities. The don't even appear in the list of cities. I do recall the issues with PBEM4  with such trade attempts. I am not sure whether Rome can gift an occupied city to China. If that is the case, tactics need to be adjusted as I can't faith rush units to support the Roman conquest. It would have to be units that walk the long route from Hangzhou down to Kongo/Khmer land. Certainly a bummer.

I have of course, two chariots on the way down there, but before they get upgraded much later, there isn't much I could do with them. Sulla, can you test whether gifting is possible from your side? If gifting is not possible, I might produce a few archers in Hangzhou (after the builder is done) to be upgraded in Roman land for support.



Finally an image of the Chinese core. Production emphasis is on builders (3x) and naval units. Tianjin will start a wall next turn to make use of the 150% bonus as long as possible. Pagan is going to finish its pre-build on T99.
With Kashgar's monument done next turn, I could start an archer there. With faith still having its limits, this might be a good alternative. I am hoping to get the encampment without a tile purchase and with a discount once sufficient districts have been built.
Shangdu could start building a market on its own as the forest chop will be used for the Holy Site. What do you think, Sulla?