Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

Turn 101:

I played my turn before Sulla's report came up but it was pretty clear to me what happened. From Roman gossip, I could tell that Russia signed the DoF and obviously, peace has been signed between Kongo and Rome too.

This means, that effectively, I can postpone a lot of unit upgrades to keep my gpt higher. I will upgrade both chariots in the east to knights to net the envoys. I will faith rush archers and then swordsman, but I could faith rush a wat after the temple at Shangdu has been done. It also means that I can postpone the walls chop and rushes in the west to wait for an encampment discount for Kashgar. I doubt I can get discounts for 2 districts of the same kind though. I will prioritize the encampment in Kashgar and Theatre at Hangzhou. However, I would like to build a campus at Quanzhou and will need to buy the tile next to the mountain for that. I should also build two libraries in those campuses to boost my somewhat mediocre science.

My builders will improve tiles in the next few turns for better yields. The first benefit is for Beijing. The mine on the hill is speeding up the commercial hub by 2 turns. At Quanzhou, the copper was mined too for a total of 2f4h2g yield tile. With the pressure in the west gone for now, I will move Beijing's builder E to mine the grass hill too and then move west to improve tiles around Kashgar.

In the east, one chariot landed and the other is two turns away from that. There is no rush now for those units but as mentioned, in order to get two envoys, I will upgrade both.

With Colonization in place for quite a few more turns, I should really think of producing another settler before embarking on a round of builders. Maybe Quanzhou can produce a settler at a reasonable time frame. I will check this next turn.

Lots of builds will be done next turn adding two military units. Quanzhou should get back to growth next turn with a jump in housing. Shangdu will immediately finish the shire as predicted and start a temple. The city will soon benefit from more hammers via mines and two lumber mills along the river (available once machinery comes in on T104). Shangdu can produce another district next turn too. I will need to see whether a campus is a good choice here for the lack of any mountains.

By the way, my missionary should be able to convert Kinchassa next turn. This would give China the boost to attack with Crusade bonus, whether the city is still in Kongo's or England's hands. By the way, I could not detect much on the front, no drop in city defense, no drop in military power. I shall post images from the front next turn to provide more intel. For intel reasons, I am sending one galley off west in the artic for now. Let's see what we can spot there.

As for civics and technologies, I will finish Reformed Church, then go for medieval fairies for the gpt boost for envoys. With four additional envoys being added soon, it would boost my gpt a little. Of course, having 6 envoys in Lisbon would boost my income further (8gpt at the moment).
For technologies, I will finish education, then finish machinery and head for gunpowder too without completing it. I reckon, 5-6 swordsmen would be good to have. I think, no matter what the outcome of the current war between Kongo/Khmer and England/Nubia, we should use our advantage there to stab them. War weariness could hurt them two being involved in two successive wars. China doesn't really have to fear war weariness for now. I could always add incense/salt to my amenities.

[Modo]

This was the worst part of the turn: look what tile Firenze picked to grab next. Seriously, this is the worst part of Civ6 stupidity. Why is the city picking a 1/1 tundra hill tile over a 2/1 grassland hill tile and a 1/2 forest tile?! It literally makes no sense. There is no universe where I would want this tile over either of those two tiles. Now I'll likely have to purchase both forest tiles, the one in the second ring and the one in the third ring, for chopping purposes at Firenze. Argh. Stupid, stupid game.

Not to be mean but maybe that's exactly the point, the devs wanting the player to spend gold on tiles. More likely it's randomness involved at some point in the code for this which is also inexcusable if it leads to something like this.

To add to what Singaboy said about the current war, to me it seems that Germany / Russia are not interested to get involved at all so if they see England / Nubia being involved in a war with all the other remaining teams they might just join to get their share; I mean they should be trying something now anyway otherwise you or England / Nubia will outdevelop them.

[williams482]

Now that Savoia is out of occupation, it can be traded to China as a forward base for faith purchases, etc, as previously discussed. Is that still the plan, or are you guys going to go with one of your original fallback options for a frontline Chinese city?

[Singaboy]

The agreement was to not trade cities between allies except for the very first turn the city is founded or captured. As this has passed for some time, China is going to build a city on that Island.

I am going to rush some archers and swordsmen that I will move towards the front. My idea is in fact to secure the coastal Roman cities with my crossbows as they enjoy +10 Crusade strength.

[AverageBear]

I am going to rush some archers and swordsmen that I will move towards the front. My idea is in fact to secure the coastal Roman cities with my crossbows as they enjoy +10 Crusade strength.

Is that how the belief works? I thought the +10 strength bonus is only for the founder (China) in enemy cities? Would Roman cities be eligible?

[Modo]

It's near friendly cities
EDIT: which brings up the question what does "near" mean

[Sullla]

Yeah, I would happily trade Savioa or Pisa over to Singaboy right now if we were allowed to do so. But we asked everyone to limit city trading to the initial turn of founding, and I think that's a good rule for everyone to follow to avoid abusive manipulation of the gameplay. (For example, what if Germany trades any city that comes under attack to Russia for Defender of the Faith bonus? What if we traded the Venetian Arsenal city back and forth every time a player was about to complete a ship? Etc.) Singaboy, I promise that we'll make sure the final city captured from Kongo goes over to China, even if we have to manipulate this by standing outside a city with 5 HP left to make sure that it gets captured by us. That's the best way to get at least one Chinese city in the southeast for faith-purchasing purposes.

Today there's a very late blizzard hitting the area where I live with snow, canceling work for everyone. That means I could play my turn immediately when it came in during the late morning, and I can write even more than usual since I don't have to rush to get the turn report out.



Cornflakes sent me this request for money at the start of our turn. I turned him down, of course; we need that gold for ourselves and we're not going to give them additional funds for upgrades when we'll also be attacking them soon. I feel legitimately bad about how we're treating this team, or at least as bad as I can feel for a team that cheated their way through the opening turns. Cornflakes had nothing to do with that though, and he's helped us all out by volunteering to sub in and play the Khmer turns. Still, no soup for you guys. We're holding onto those funds for ourselves.

By dumb luck, I was confronted with a great opportunity this turn:



There was an injured barbarian warrior hanging out to the south of this Kongo city. I was only intending to scout the area, but saw the barbarian warrior and went ahead and attacked. I honestly didn't realize that this would trigger the boost for Military Science, since it's far enough down the tech tree (in the Industrial era) that I wasn't thinking about it yet. Well, uh, there we go, exactly as planned. While I think we would have gotten this boost anyway at some point, it's always better to have it in hand.



Here's where all the units ended up in the southeast. I continued pulling back from the border, although this is as far as I plan to go in the northern part of the map. In the southern jungles, I'm deliberately leading the Kongo settler like a man walking a dog, quietly herding Japper towards the white dot tile. I left him a path to move southwest this turn, and I'll let him move another tile west on the following turn. It will look like we're backing off here, giving Japper enough time to found his city and move his units up towards the English front line, and then we'll pounce when the treaty wears off, ruthlessly stabbing him in the back and taking the spoils for ourselves. Certainly not very nice, but we've never promised anything beyond 10 turns of peace, and that's what we need to do to win.

Japper's military is looking pretty dug in up near Kinchassa, and I don't think Chevalier Mal Fet is going to have an easy time of things there. Although I still can't see too much of the English forces yet, the terrain is rough and Chevalier seems to have mostly swords, archers, and chariots. I'm not seeing him having much luck in pushing through, at least not yet. (Seriously Japper, get your walls done in Kinchassa!) Cornflakes is moving his knights and crossbows off to the east as we were hoping he would do. We will also have visibility on the Kongo city in the south next turn, which should be on the tile east of the lake. According to power tracking, no one has lost any units yet or taken serious injury. Cornflakes has 732 power (and Japper 254 power) against 988 power for Woden and 591 for Chevalier Mal Fet. I'm starting to think they may not have an easy time of this, since everyone is working at the same generation of military technology right now. Still early in the war though, and we'll have to wait and see.



My galleys have almost circumnavigated the eastern ocean and this is what it looks like. There don't appear to be any major islands in this body of water, although there are some coastal tiles under that "octopus" on the map that I still want to investigate. England has surprisingly few cities along the coast, just Actium visible. I would have expected him to be cramming them out everywhere to make more use of Royal Navy Dockyards. Then again, England only has six cities total and has been on that number for the last 30 turns. Not the best internal development there, Chevalier. Honestly, his score only looks as good as it does because his five Royal Navy Dockyards all get counted for double empire points. If we can raze Nan Madol, the numbers for England are going to look pretty pedestrian. (My biggest fear was that England would have tons and tons of naval units running around, and it doesn't look like that's the case, although we don't know what ships they have elsewhere. I've only seen two galleys and zero quadriremes thus far.)



The biggest economic action of the turn was chopping this forest into a Campus district at Siena. It was worth 86 * 2.5 = 215 production with all but 2 production overflowing into the Campus. This was unfortunately just a little short of finishing the Campus, which cost about 230 production in total. I should have locked the Campus immediately upon founding the city, since I'll never get a discount on that district type. It's my "top district" and the one driving the cost reductions on the other districts. I didn't do so because I was planning to harvest the wheat tile, but I ended up not doing so because Siena already has more population points than workable tiles and it's growing upwards at a good pace. So I'll have to finish the district through normal production, which is still fine but will take 3 more turns. I'll mine the grassland hill tile next to give this city a good 2/3 tile to work, and the borders are popping to the 2/2 grassland hill tile to the south in another two turns as well. That forest will get chopped into a Commercial district, which I should have placed as well because I won't be able to get a discount on it either. Have to remember to do that next turn. At least I can chain Maritime Industries + galley overflow to get double the benefit on that second forest chop. Siena is another place where I'll want to build a Library not just for the beakers but for the specialist slot it unlocks. This is turning into a pretty solid city.



With a tech and civic finishing next turn, I went ahead and placed the Harbor district at Ravenna. The Harbor will be chopped to completion next turn using the standard Limes + walls overflow, and I was indeed able to get the district discount on this Harbor since I only had one other Harbor finished elsewhere. I was originally going to place this on the tile two north of Ravenna, but there was no reason to do that by spending 120 gold when I could simply override the fish resource instead. I thought about putting the Harbor on the tile west of the city, but that leads into a landlocked lake and would make it impossible for any ships to get out into the open waters. Obviously not worth it. Then I put a Campus district down on the tile northeast of the city, which would get an adjacency bonus from the Harbor and city center... if it's ever completed. Not sure if it will be since there are no more forests to chop at Ravenna. Perhaps down the road if we really need to push science.



Here's the overview for Rome on Turn 101. I've swapped Ostia and Milano onto legions, which are prebuilds for musket upgrades of course. I have 4 legions right now and I'd like a few more melee units, with this being the best chance to build some before I upgrade to the next tier of units. Venezia finished a galley and will be building quadriremes for some time to come, fortunately getting this initial one done in only 3 turns with some overflow. Next turn I'll finish Military Engineering and Medieval Faires, swapping into Serfdom to finish three builders. I think I have enough culture overflow to complete Diplomatic Service in 1 turn, which would be perfect since I'd only have to spend a single turn out of Natural Philosophy. If not, then 2 turns is also OK. I'm looking forward to seeing where the nitre resources are next turn, that might give some of our cities extra production once mined.

More to come later, I'm heading out in the snow for a bit now.

[suboptimal]

It's near friendly cities
EDIT: which brings up the question what does "near" mean

It's near foreign cities, friend or foe.  Based on what I've seen with DotF the unit needs to be in a tile controlled by a city with the religion.  Attacking into a tile doesn't get the bonus, but attacking out of one does (at least with DotF).

[suboptimal]

The agreement was to not trade cities between allies except for the very first turn the city is founded or captured. As this has passed for some time, China is going to build a city on that Island.

Yeah, I would happily trade Savioa or Pisa over to Singaboy right now if we were allowed to do so. But we asked everyone to limit city trading to the initial turn of founding, and I think that's a good rule for everyone to follow to avoid abusive manipulation of the gameplay.

The lurkers believe that the agreed-upon trade rule was that cities could be gifted between teammates once, no time limit between founding/capture and trade enforced and that it should be brought to your attention.  Cornflake's original suggestion is here and CMF's final proposal is here.  At a minimum it should be clarified with the other players first if you're unsure whether your intended city trade is "in bounds".

[pindicator]

Enjoy your snow day! We didn't get enough of them in the northwest this year