Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Modo]

1) Sullla, I wanted to pull your leg for forgetting several things this turn then you went back and replayed the combat to take the screenshot...that is above and beyond, much appreciated.

2) Wouldn't it be epic if the barb camp lasts more than Japper?

3) Actually, Singaboy worrying about the limits of faith is even more epic. Still true but given how fast you're rolling with the faith it is funny.

[Singaboy]

More input about my city production:

Shangdu: Monument next, Holy Site will be chopped via walls, then followed by shrine and temple for simultaneum boost, then market and another district
Hangzhou: builder, CH chopped via walls, monument, medieval walls for theatre chop (not sure whether that is really worth it)
Quanzhou, builder, granary, monument
Beijing: builder, monument, CH chopped via walls
Pagan: walls, granary, monument
Tianjin: walls, granary
Shanghai: naval units
Kashgar: monument, encampment chopped via walls


I will check the next Great Merchant. If it is an attractive choice, with more CHs coming online, a faith rush might be possible. Now that The Oracle will add +2 Great people points in Hangzhou, a CH and theater would be even more pressing.

[Sullla]

Lots of important information to digest in that turn report Singaboy, some of it good for us and some not quite as good. I'll try to run through some fast responses:

* To be clear about the Guilds civic, I expect that I'll likely finish researching it on Turn 99 and the boost will then pass over to China on Turn 99 as well. Fortunately Rome plays before China in the turn order so this lines up well. I don't want to give you the incorrect impression that the boost is coming a turn sooner on Turn 98.

* The Oracle finishing is excellent news. Now we can think about serious Great Person patronage if there's a critical one that we need to control. While I think we both agree that faith is likely best used on Theocracy unit purchases, this gives us another flexible tool to work with. (Keep a close eye on what Great Engineer pops up after Germany lands the first one, I know we've discussed that previously.) We could even recruit a future Great General or Great Admiral if we think it would be helpful for China. A Renaissance version of either once would cost about 1500 faith, but that's not really out of the question right now. 86 faith/turn before Turn 100 is just insane. It's like something out of one of my Single Player religious games, heh.

* One small note: you mentioned the Military Tactics boost coming over from Rome. I think you meant the boost for Military Engineering, the one that comes from finishing an Armory. Military Tactics is the useless tech the unlocks spearmen and nothing else, which neither of us if ever likely to research. Just a general FYI on this point.

* OK, so units can be upgraded in an ally's territory. That's super useful to know, thanks for pointing that out. It will definitely be useful down the road when we're helping each other out in combat operations. And as you pointed out, we'lll need to be aware of this ability since the other teams (and right now specifically Kongo/Khmer) can make use of it as well.

* Unfortunately I doubt that I can trade The Jungle Book over to China on my turn either, though I will check. Occupied cities are weirdly not really considered to be owned by the one who captured them until a peace treaty is signed. We can't talk to Japper right now, but if we could, we would still see those cities listed under his name on the diplo screen. There is one alternative that would speed things up and prevent Chinese units from having to walk all the way down from the northwest: we could always found a new city to the east of The Jungle Book in that fertile area. All we need is a Roman or Chinese settler, either one, since a non-occupied city can be freely traded. This is probably worth doing since the conflict isn't going to end any time soon and it would be extremely helpful to have a place where China can faith-purchase new units. What do you think?

* Singaboy, you also mentioned potentially starting a market in Shangdu. I advise against doing that, not because of anything on your part, but because of this dirty little secret: markets and banks are a sucker's build. Seriously, they're a bad investment for a Multiplayer game. You absolutely do need gold to support your military and economic infrastructure, and Commercial districts are a fantastic choice for us in this game given the presence of Lisbon in our backlines. We'll have enough envoys that both of us can easily get to the 6 envoy bonus for +8 gold/turn on each Commercial district, +10 gold/turn along rivers, and that makes Commercial districts a great choice. But markets and banks are not worth the production investment; markets cost 120 production for 3 gold/turn while banks cost 290 production for 5 gold/turn. It's just not worth sinking 400+ production into those buildings when the district alone provides the same or greater gold/turn income.

Now markets and banks aren't completely useless, since they benefit from the +100% Economic production card (Free Market) that unlocks in the Renaissance era from The Enlightenment civic. This boosts banks up to 10 gold/turn income and makes them pretty nice deals. However, in order to make this policy card worth running, you need to build quite a few markets and banks (and stock exchanges should the game last that long). This is worthwhile for a Single Player game where the entire military side of the game can basically be ignored and you're mostly running an economic simulation game. Under those conditions, these buildings are great. But in Multiplayer there are just too many demands on your production to make investing 400 production in each city - AND tying up a precious Economic policy card slot - to make this worthwhile. Get the immediate advantage from the Commercial district + 3/6 envoys benefit and leave things at that. Sink production instead into units + Encampments for defense and Campus districts + libraries + universities for science. For China's specific case, it's going to be more useful for us to focus on the Holy Sites and their buildings than trying to get out markets/banks. I'd have Shangdu build a shrine and a temple instead of a market: they would be worth a combined 12 faith/turn with Simultaneum policy and would open up the faith-purchasing of a Wat for another 6 faith/turn and 2 beakers/turn. And if that's not enough, the Holy Site buildings are less than half the cost too! (Combined 190 production against 410 production.)

I'm building two markets as Rome because I need them for the Guilds boost. Later on, I will also build two banks for the Economics boost. Otherwise, I'm not going to be wasting my time on the Commercial district buildings. Production is just too limited and libraries/universities get priority.

* We had the question about when it's worthwhile economically to build medieval walls (as opposed to the default ancient ones). Ancient walls are always worth building everywhere because their 80 production cost is really only 40 production with Limes, and that's so cheap that any kind of forest chop will more than pay for itself. Medieval walls cost 225 production, which makes the break-even point on a forest chop half that (112 production) with Limes policy in place. When also in Monarchy government, the discount is 2.5 times the production bost so the economic break-even point drops to 90 production. We're pretty close to that now, I think we'll hit that point after a few more techs/civics are finished. So if building walls only for economic reasons, we aren't quite there yet but will be in about 5-10 turns. Since China is quickly leaving Monarchy government, I would say this is probably not worth it.

Now the calculation is obviously different in cities that may come under attack, and I would absolutely suggest building medieval walls in the German border cities and potentially the western coastal cities. As long as it's roughly break-even economically, the defensive benefits made the extra walls very worthwhile. I remember how having medieval walls made a huge difference in the PBEM4 combat when Woden and TheArchduke attacked Germany in the lategame. The Brazilian frigates couldn't make much of an impression against walls with 100 HP as opposed to 50 HP.

* Finally one comment in response to Modo: Japper's not going anywhere for a while. Movement in Civ6 is slow, and I think it will take about 10 turns to move from here to a position where we can take his capital, much less his other two cities. We also have the two Declarations of Friendship with the other teams running out around Turn 105, and if they both decide to attack us, we'll have much more important things on our mind than capturing the remaining Kongo cities. Don't get me wrong, we made huge strides forward over the last half dozen turns. The basic structure of this map is that each team gets its own continent and then there are narrow isthmuses running between them. We are the first team to push THROUGH an isthmus onto another team's continent, which puts us in fantastic shape for the longterm. Everyone else will be just about running out of room to expand while we have an entire continent opening up before us (such as that spot between The Jungle Book and Japper's capital where we could drop in a nice city). But Kongo is a long distance away from being eliminated right now, and the reaction of the other teams is very much up in the air. We shouldn't get too confident.

[suboptimal]

* Singaboy, you also mentioned potentially starting a market in Shangdu. I advise against doing that, not because of anything on your part, but because of this dirty little secret: markets and banks are a sucker's build. Seriously, they're a bad investment for a Multiplayer game. You absolutely do need gold to support your military and economic infrastructure, and Commercial districts are a fantastic choice for us in this game given the presence of Lisbon in our backlines. We'll have enough envoys that both of us can easily get to the 6 envoy bonus for +8 gold/turn on each Commercial district, +10 gold/turn along rivers, and that makes Commercial districts a great choice. But markets and banks are not worth the production investment; markets cost 120 production for 3 gold/turn while banks cost 290 production for 5 gold/turn. It's just not worth sinking 400+ production into those buildings when the district alone provides the same or greater gold/turn income.

In your opinion does the offloading of envoy bonuses and trade routes to the Markets and Banks in Rise & Fall change this calculation at all?

[Sullla]

Suboptimal, yes it absolutely makes a difference. One thing that I should have mentioned above is that Commercial districts are also great to build because they grant +4/+8/+10 gold/turn (with increasing envoys and the river bonus), but *ALSO* because they provide a free trade route. This is important because trade routes are awesome in their own right, flexible enough to grant more food/production to key cities or be sent to city states/other civs. You're getting a double benefit from the Commercial district in that case, the gold/turn income from the district itself and then more gold/turn income from the trade route (although you do have to build the trader unit). You can actually make that a triple benefit when factoring in the Economic policies that boost trade routes, Caravanseries and later Triangular Trade. Caravanseries tends to be less worthwhile because Economic policy slots are tighter in the early game and there are fewer districts to grant trade routes. Triangular Trade and more powerful midgame governments swing this equation a bit though; if I can get Rome into Merchant Republic government (with its own 2 free trade routes), Triangular Trade would be worth 7 * 4 = 24 gold/turn (plus 7 faith/turn), and that's no chump change.

Anyway, the Commercial districts, the trade routes, and the trade route-boosting policies are all synergistic with one another and every city in your territory should try to build either a Commercial or Harbor district to make sure it can add a trade route to the empire. In our situation here, Commercial districts are better than Harbors in most situations. The main reason for Rome to build Harbor districts are twofold: for boosts on the tech/civics tree (e.g. Cartography's "build two Harbors" boost), or to allow a city that's non-coastal to build ships. Ravenna and Firenze both fall into that latter category for me. It can also be worthwhile for a city with very limited land to build a Harbor, which was the main motivation for why I built one at Venezia. I needed a Harbor district anyway and that city didn't have much of a place for a Commercial district. Still, Commercial districts are better in most cases if you're not playing England.

I'm not sure how valuable trade routes will be in the expansion. I'm not a big fan of how they changed the way the city states worked, moving those benefits to the first tier building instead of the districts themselves. I think this worked perfectly well in the non-expansion game: districts are expensive to build and they need either adjacency bonuses or envoy benefits from city states to be useful. (Seriously, look at some of the Campus districts I'm going to build at places like Genova and Ravenna soon. 200 production cost for a district that provides zero beakers on its own. Getting some beakers via envoys isn't exactly unbalanced.) The buildings then represented further specialization into a specific district type, and frankly the buildings needed their respective +100% policy card to be effective. Libraries aren't that good without Rationalism to boost them from 2 beakers/turn to 4 beakers/turn; I'm essentially preconfiguring my empire in anticipation of later Rationalism right now. I also love how the non-expansion game makes it so important to fight for envoys and control of city states. It makes a huge difference whether or not you have the 3 envoy and 6 envoy benefits from different city states.

But the expansion screws with this logic by moving the envoy bonus to the tier 1 buildings, and then nerfs the policy card bonuses from +100% to +50%. I don't like this change because it makes the whole system less distinctive, more samey. In the non-expansion game, there's a bigger difference between having the buildings with the policy card active versus not having them. You have to make a real choice about how much to invest into that particular district type, and whether it's worthwhile to commit to the policy card on a longterm basis since the buildings aren't that great without it. In the expansion, I get the feeling that everyone just adds the tier 1 building and it doesn't matter nearly as much as to whether or not to run the policy card thereafter. Rationalism now takes a library from 2 beakers to 3 beakers, whoop de doo. You pretty much have to build a market now to make a Commercial district viable, so everyone will do that and everything will be slower and less distinctive. I think it's a bad decision.

[Alhambram]

But the expansion screws with this logic by moving the envoy bonus to the tier 1 buildings, and then nerfs the policy card bonuses from +100% to +50%.

Actually it went from 100% to 0%!
In expansion policy cards as Rationalism gains 50% if city population is 10 or higher and another 50% if district get at least 3 adjacency bonus (4 for commercial hub).
So if it meets both conditions, it is 100% again.

[Sullla]

Seriously, is that right? That's both overly complicated and quite silly, since both conditions are too difficult to achieve for your typical city. I truly don't like the changes they implemented in the expansion. Anyway, here's Turn 96:



Japper decided to... not kill my Great Scientist? Uh, OK then. I mean, it just would have been teleported to a nearby city but that's still kind of weird. I'll take the free intelligence of his capital area though, thanks. We also got our first glimpse of a Ngao Mbemba along the front lines this turn as one moved into sight east of the marsh tile. I would deal with that unit in a minute. First, the issue of trading cities with Singaboy:



Yeah, unfortunately it's what I expected. The Jungle Book (and Pisa) don't even appear there. No trading occupied cities back and forth it seems. I do think that it's probably worthwhile to get a settler from one of our civs down into this region so that China has a place to faith-rush units for the offensive. Perhaps I can find a way to get a settler out somewhere once the current round of builds completes, we'll see. If we could somehow capture the settler in Heart of Darkness, that would be magnificent.

For the combat portion of the turn, I swapped the position of my two crossbows so that the one with Volley promotion could take the free shot:



There's the unique ability of the Ngao Mbemba at work granting a free Tortoise promotion (+10 strength against ranged attacks). This fully cut the damage of the attack by 50%, from an expected damage of 34 to an expected damage of 22. I rolled right around average for an attack at -7 strength difference. Still, 21 free damage isn't awful and the crossbow gained enough experience to earn a second promotion. The Ngao Mbemba can move through forests/jungles as if they were grassland tiles, but it can't move through a marsh tile in one turn so the crossbow is safe. I would love it if this unit tried to attack my legions, who are fortified on jungle tiles with Battlecry promotion for 50-something strength. I don't think Japper will try that, but he might attempt to circle around the marsh to the north... where he would run into FOUR crossbow shots next turn. More likely he'll turn around and retreat to heal for the moment.

Several units are healing right now and I'm upgrading to knights next turn, so I plan to hold position here for the next few turns until the knights arrive. Then I can start a cautious push forward, with the knights and legions in front of the ranged units. Unfortunately the rough terrain here makes the crossbows not that useful, but knights will be highly useful with their 4 movement across two jungle tiles per turn, and the Great Scientist will allow units to heal very fast as they take damage. And remember, Japper/Cornflakes have archers that are just as constrained as mine in the jungle, unable to shoot very far at all. That's useful when advancing into enemy territory. A few more turns here and we'll begin the attack.



Of course, it also depends on what's happening over here. Hmmmmm. That's an awful lot of English units just north of Kongo borders. They certainly aren't there to attack Nan Madol, since the city state is controlled by Chevalier Mal Fet and he has 3 envoys invested. There's only two possibilities here: either Chevalier is about to attack Kongo, or he's preparing to attack our team. I think the former is more likely since our Declaration of Friendship still lasts about 10 more turns. If he's going to attack Japper, then we race forward and make sure to take the capital before his units can get there. If this is intended to attack us, then at least we have a lot of warning ahead of time. We certainly have stronger units in the area around Kongo, legions and crossbows and (shortly) knights to their archers and chariots. Mechanics question: can you upgrade units in the territory of a suzerained city state? I might have to test that in a Single Player game.

This is a really good example of the importance of scouting. Knowing that these English units are here is vitally important for our upcoming plans. We'll need to make sure that we can capture the Kongo cities while also not leaving ourselves vulnerable to the English forces. I'm going to continue sending this galley east on a deep scouting mission while my trailing galleys shadow this English force along the coast.



OK, sue me: I went ahead and cleared the camp. Finally! This means that the chariot pictured here won't be able to be upgraded along with the rest, but I think that's OK. It can always be upgraded in the next round of Professional Army policy time, whenever that might be. I'll heal this unit and then send it north of Firenze to watch the tundra approaches from the sea, just to be safe against the slim possibility of an attack. I think having 7 knights in the southeast will probably be enough down there.



This is super annoying. Taking The Jungle Book added another point of war weariness (up to 2 total) and for whatever reason the game chose to make Firenze unhappy. Argh, the one city where I need happiness for upcoming Venetian Arsenal production! Why does stupid useless Jungle Book get +1 amenity while this city is at -1 amenity?! I really wish that you could control how to distribute your amenities to avoid stupidity like this. I think that I'm going to run Retainers for the +1 amenity per garrisoned unit next turn, as I don't have anything else I need in that third Military slot right now. It's as good as anything else while Venezia is building its library and no cities are on naval units.

Singaboy, Rome has two citrus resources at the moment, one at The Jungle Book and one from Lisbon. What do you think of this idea: I could offer the excess one to Germany for their extra gems. I think it's worth a shot, since it shows friendly intent and if TheArchduke shoots us down, well, that gives us some clue into his intentions when the Declaration of Friendship wears off. What do you think?



The main economic activity of the turn was putting this jungle chop into the nearly-done chariot at Ostia. Wave goodbye to those chariot chops because this is the last one Rome will be doing in this game. The market ended up getting about 50 overflow production in the end, and it wasn't quite able to finish at end of turn. It will have to finish at end of Turn 97, which should be just fine. Guilds research is still on schedule to finish on Turn 99. The chopped jungle also grew another population point:



Note the presence of the rare Civ6 specialist. This is part of the reason why I chose to build a library and market in this city, to open up extra specialist slots. A scientist specialist worth 2 beakers is genuinely more useful than any tile that the eighth population point can work, and it's not worth investing builder charges to farm those plains tiles to take them to 2 food/1 production yield. There are much better tiles to improve or chop elsewhere with those vital builder charges. Eventually I will want to chop and harvest the deer tile east of the city, but not until we're getting close to the end of the game, since removing the deer and forest would make that tile essentially useless. Fortunately Ostia is getting close to grabbing all the second ring tiles (only 3 left to go) and then it will eventually expand out to the plains hills in the third ring to get some good tiles to work again. In 35 turns or so, they'll be mine.



This is the overview picture for the turn. Roma did complete its market and overflowed to a 1 turn granary to take care of its housing issue. Milano will hopefully finish its chariot and overflow into a builder, although now that I look at this I'm worried that the chariot will auto-upgrade into a knight. I guess we'll find out. Firenze finishes its Industrial district and will start prepping its walls for a future chop while Rome researches Mass Production. I probably should have bought the tile for the Venetian Arsenal before finishing another civic there. I'm going to try and get another round of builders out of Roma/Ostia/Milano next to help the new cities and Firenze while it builds Venetian Arsenal.

For research, Stirrups and Divine Right both finish next turn. Then it's on to Mass Production in science and back to Guilds in civics. I also have Medieval Faires 1 turn away from completion, which I'll complete a little bit later when I can do another 1 turn swap into and out of Serfdom.



Finally, here's the gold shakedown for the knight upgrades. Gimme gimme gimme.

Elsewhere, Chevalier Mal Fet became the suzerain of Geneva so his beaker rate went up by 15% with the "extra science while at peace" bonus. He and Woden are both a little over 50 beaker/turn. More importantly, England and Nubia spent a lot of gold, almost 500 since last turn, and their per-turn gold income dropped noticeably. Nubia is down to just 14 gold/turn, and even England has fallen to 47 gold/turn, down from 85 gold/turn a little bit earlier. This strongly suggests that they did a major unit upgrade and it will show up in the power tracking in a turn or two (which is always delayed). Expect them to jump up from their current 500/600 power to something in the 800 or 900 power range. Of course, Rome is at 572 power right now and will go up by about 300 more power with the knight upgrades completing - and Singaboy is going to be able to purchase a ton of units with his insane faith output - so we're essentially in that ballpark too. But our teams are quickly leaving everyone else in the dust since they lack the same science/culture output to keep up. This is not going to end well for the weaker teams.

[Singaboy]

Turn 96:
China's turns are so much less eventful than Rome's currently. I am slowly cruising along accumulating faith and gold that Rome takes away consistently as well. I think I need to have a word with that bugger.

I switched to Military Engineering as to get prepared for the tech to be able to spot niter and connect it too before heading for muskets in due time. Of course, I am highly dependent on Rome here.
I did what was planned. Beijing got off the builder (it's a 101/102 hammers). I am planning to push culture a little with those monument's. Beijing and Shangdu started them, Kashgar just finished it. That city is producing the one token military unit before it will start with the encampment. I might be forced to purchase the tile there. As Beijing also still need to add its tile for the chop, the gold required is somewhat worrying. For a proper deterrence of Germany, I would really need to upgrade some units, but if Rome keeps on pestering me, there is nothing left in my coffers.
Maybe I should simply chop both jungles south of Beijing as it would expose one useful plain hill. The other tiles simply leave useless plains behind. This would also eliminate the need to purchase a tile at Beijing. I am planning to use the chop at Beijing for a commercial hub NW of the city. It doesn't get any adjacency there, but would benefit from Lisbon nevertheless and of course, add a trade route.

Tianjin started a wall after its galley finished. The new trader has been sent there and it will start a route next turn. Trade routes to Lisbon are currently worth 8gpt already. However, for the sake of growth, it will go to Hangzhou for 3f1h (soon to be 2h).

Next round, I will swap to mercenaries for the policy swap on T98 to enable Serfdom for one turn. All three builders will then finish on T99 together with Guilds. I will then swap to Reformed Church to be done on T103.



I continued to scout the west but am now running into a blocked path as the galley can't enter the open Ocean yet. Well, at least we have some additional intel about Germany's shores.



Finally, I did check the Great People's overview and frankly, I am not impressed with the new Great Merchant at all. 200gold and 2 envoys? Well, the envoys are great but why would I spend so much faith to get that? No way. Maybe the next Great Engineer or Great Scientist add more spice here. It will take some time for any of them to get in the range of being purchased. However, I am now making 3 GS points due to the Oracle and that might get the GS to be cheap enough to be purchased at one point in time.



Finally to answer Sulla's questions.
1. Yes, I saw Germany's extra gems and thought of a trade myself. Go ahead of do that. If you would be able to connect the second truffles, you could help me stay ecstatic in all my cities too.
2. Additional cities. There is certainly enough space here and I am thinking of running a round of Colonization driven settler production once the situation with Germany/Russia is clearer. It would be great to get them to sign a DoF again (their military score is low enough to deter them from attacking). If we could secure those western borders, I would like to expand to the peninsula in the south, maybe the Island in the west and also a city between ex-Kongo. If you could produce a settler there, that would be great too.

[Athmos]

Mechanics question: can you upgrade units in the territory of a suzerained city state? I might have to test that in a Single Player game.

Yes you can (at least in R&F).

That's an awful lot of English units just north of Kongo borders. They certainly aren't there to attack Nan Madol, since the city state is controlled by Chevalier Mal Fet and he has 3 envoys invested. There's only two possibilities here: either Chevalier is about to attack Kongo, or he's preparing to attack our team. I think the former is more likely since our Declaration of Friendship still lasts about 10 more turns. If he's going to attack Japper, then we race forward and make sure to take the capital before his units can get there. If this is intended to attack us, then at least we have a lot of warning ahead of time.

This is just an hypothesis, but he might simply have been protecting Nan Madol by blocking the tiles Kongo would have wanted to use to attack. That would explain both these units presence and why Kongo/Khmer failed to take the city.

[Sullla]

Hmmm. The ability to upgrade units in a suzerained city state's territory is annoying, but it's good that we know about it. Too bad that Khmer and England both seem to be able to operate in the territory of other empires as if it were their own territory. The one other mechanic that I want to test is whether or not it's possible to declare war on a city state when you have a Declaration of Friendship with its suzerain. I think that's possible but not entirely sure. An ideal scenario would be to get another Declaration of Friendship with England/Nubia when the current one wears off, and then use that 30 turn window to alpha-strike the city states propping up their economy from the sea with caravels and frigates. I'll try to check this with one of my Single Player saves today to see how the mechanic works.

I drew up this tactical planning last night for the Kongo front:



This is where all of the units ended their turn, for the curious. I put the Great Scientist right in the middle of the formation, which means that if either of the legions in the front are attacked, they'll heal back 30 HP between turns (since they didn't move this turn). One of the keys to attacking on a large scale in Civ6 involves advancing forward with units in a logical tactical formation. This is something that we often haven't seen in action yet; I think one of the best examples was TheArchduke's attack on suboptimal in PBEM6. The ideal setup has melee units with strong defensive bonuses in the front, with the ranged units following right behind them where they can't be attacked directly, and then your cavalry units are placed on the flanks of the formation to guard it and use their extra movement points for harassment and chasing down injured enemy units. These are basic military tactics from the real world and they work surprisingly well in Civ6 too.

I'm hoping to set up a similar formation here for advancing towards Heart of Darkness. The four legions anchor the center of the formation along a diagonal line running from northeast to southwest. The crossbows will filter in one tile behind the legions where they're protected, although they won't be all that useful in the jungle terrain. They will start to play a larger role as we get closer to the city itself. Then the knights will flank around the edges of the formation, taking advantage of the fact that they can move 2 tiles through the jungle which no one else can do. I need one turn to keep moving the units forward, and then on Turn 98 the offensive rolls forward along the lines displayed here. The trailing knights will be able to catch up since they have the extra movement points. Crucially, because the units are clustered together they'll all be taking advantage of significant support combat bonuses; those legions in the front lines should have +6 or +8 strength due to other legions next to them and crossbows right behind them. Add in a Great Scientist who can heal them for 25 HP per turn even in enemy territory, and it should be a powerful force.

While we're on the subject of tactical formations, here's an example of them done well:



TheArchduke in PBEM6 as mentioned before. All the melee units are in front, the ranged units are one tile behind, and they're clumped up together to provide lots of support bonuses to each other. The Great Generals are also providing coverage to the maximum units possible. For the opposite, try this example:




This is Woden in PBEM2. He has a huge army but they're completely scattered across his empire in small bits and pieces. While it's true that Woden had a huge front to defend, by trying to defend everything he ended up defending nothing and was slowly cut apart by Russian cossacks.