Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

Hmmm. This seems like something we should clarify with the other teams before this gets too much further into the game. The notion that any city can be traded to another teammate once, at any point in time, seems far too open to abuse to me. It's not a big deal if someone exchanges a just-founded or just-captured city to their partner, but I think we open up a huge can of worms if we go down the path of "one trade is fine whenever you want." Since we're the ones who have been opposed to city trading from the beginning, I also don't think we should be looking to trade our own cities at this point. What do you think Singaboy?

Since I have the extra time today, here are some more thoughts about longer term issues.



This is the upcoming tech path for Rome, with the screenshots pasted together to be able to see more than a tiny fraction of the tech tree. Military Engineering is next, followed by a combination of Gunpowder and Cartography. I will need to wait for the capital to complete its Armory to land the Gunpowder boost, and I'll want to finish the two legions in production ahead of time as well before completing Gunpowder. I also will need to make sure all of my current galleys are finished before completing Cartography, which will get its boost at the end of next turn with the second Harbor finishing. They will both likely finish at about the same time in roughly 7-8 turns from now.

Afterwards, I will need to research Metal Casting to completion so that I can pass the boost over to Singaboy, although that boost is easy enough that China can also probably land it without issue. We need Singaboy to faith-rush two catapults, then research Metal Casting to unlock bombards, and then upgrade them both to bombards and finish researching Siege Tactics to pass the boost over to Rome. So China will be working on the Castles/Siege Tactics line of research while Rome will be lining up most of the other techs and boosts here. I will also need to get two universities finished for Printing tech, which will land the boost for Astronomy at the same time. The capital and either Milano or Ostia will be the most likely candidates for the two universities. Ideally I'd have Milano do the university while Ostia trained the second settler, with the capital producing an Armory, settler, and university in succession. Going to be some busy times there, but the city is up close to 30 base production/turn and can handle itself.

The next big military techs after caravels/muskets are Square Rigging for frigates and Ballistics for field guns. Military Science for cavalry isn't all that far off either. I think we have a solid plan for the next dozen or so turns, and we can evaluate where to go from there as conditions change.



At Firenze, I realized that I should go ahead and purchase the forest tile circled in white for 120 gold. We need it for chopping anywhere, and it's a better tile for the city to work than anything else available. I chose the 1/2 plains forest to work over the bare 2/1 grassland hill tile that I had been using, and now when the city grows to size 8 in half a dozen turns, I'll be able to work both tiles. I also realized something that I'd missed earlier: Firenze actually has FOUR forests to work with, not three. There's a fourth forest in the third ring that I'd been ignoring because we would have needed to purchase two tiles to unlock it. Well, that idiotic tundra hill tile that the city grabbed last turn has now placed that extra forest a single tile outside the city's borders, and darn it if I'm not going to use that forest. So grabbing that 1/1 tundra hill tile was all part of the plan, or something.

The builder coming out of Roma will scoot up here and invest all five charges into Firenze. The first charge is to mine the grassland hill tile southwest of the city. Then we can use all four of the other charges for forest chops: first on the spices tile, then the two tundra forests, and then the plains forest because the city will be working that tile and we don't want to lose the production until the last minute. Those four forests add up to a *LOT* of combined production. Right now a forest chop is worth 86 production, and by the time I get into position to do those chops, I should have at least two and possibly as many as four more civics completed. That puts the base value of a chop right around 100 production, so let's use that number. The Limes + city walls forest chop is worth 250 production, and then each of the other three forest chops is worth another 100 production, for a grand total of 550 production from chops (!) Firenze only needs 400 production naturally to finish the Venetian Arsenal and that should be pretty easy. The biggest obstacle here is actually the time needed to move a builder from tile to tile to do the forest chopping. I counted this out and ended up with a finishing date around Turn 123 or Turn 124, which should be very difficult for anyone else to beat. This put me in a really good mood today, and I'm hopeful that the plan will be able to come together as outlined here.

The only downside is needing to purchase those two forest tiles in the third ring. I think I can purchase them while Land Surveyors is in place to save 20% of the cost and knock about 80 gold off the cost. Nevertheless, this feels very worth it to me. Controlling Venetian Arsenal is super important and we don't want to take it for granted. If we can gain uncontested naval dominance, we can raze any coastal city we want on the map. We're never going to conquer the whole world, and the surest way to win concessions from the other teams is to demoralize them by building a juggernaut fleet and razing a bunch of their cities. This is a crucial step in that direction towards what is hopefully a future victory.



As mentioned before, I want to get into Colonization policy for a little while in about 10 turns after the capital has a chance to build its Armory. One settler should go on this spot, the "doughnut hole" identified earlier in the middle of Roman territory. The goal of this city will be to improve the cocoa tile for another amenity and harvest/chop the deer forest for an Entertainment district. Why an Entertainment district? For one thing, it will produce an envoy with Lisbon due to that quest which has been around since the earliest period of the game. An Entertainment district will also be the 7th different type that Rome has built, which will unlock the boost for Civil Engineering policy, which isn't that far off down the road. And an Entertainment district on the indicated tile hits six of my cities at once, so the happiness value is actually pretty high. A zoo here would be worth 1.5 luxury resources for use in combatting future war weariness. If I harvest the wheat tile in the second ring, I should be able to get to pop 4 for a second district, and there's a cheeky spot for a Campus off in the third ring where it would actually provide an adjacency bonus to the capital's own Campus, as well as getting one of its own from the Campus + Encampment combo. With more forests to chop and plains hill tiles to mine, this city can easily get a second district done and reach about 12 base production/turn, enough to produce a library and eventually a university for itself. Very much worth a settler to fill this unused spot in Roman territory.



I'd like to get the other settler out of Ostia, which has more population than it knows what to do with, and use it for this island spot. This location would be an absolutely delicious city to colonize, with three luxury resources, an iron, and FIVE forests for chopping, not even counting the jungle under the cocoa resource. Given some builder attention, I can turn this spot into a powerful naval base that will hopefully be churning out Venetian Arsenal-powered double frigates. This is the better of the two spots and I'm eager to get my hands on it to start development. It probably will take until about Turn 120 to be founded though.

These will be the last two settlers that Rome builds this game. The payoff time for anything else is likely too long to be worth investing in more settlers, and the map will be mostly full anyway. Everything else should come from capturing enemy cities. My best guess is that this game will last somewhere between 150 and 200 total turns, for the curious. As for China, I think the best spots are south of Pagan and the island west of Shanghai. There are locations in both of those areas that would make for solid cities, and anything beyond them will likely also have to come from conquest. The map is pretty full at this point and I don't think any player is going to get too far beyond 10 cities without taking land away from someone else. (By the way, this map is absolutely fantastic. Just the right size for the eight players involved, enough room to spread out but also constrained enough to create conflict, and an awesome balance between land and water. Exceptional work everyone. )



Finally, speaking of China, check out how awesome the Petra-enhanced Quanzhou is. I never get to build the wonder in a Single Player game because the AIs always rush it, and you just don't get to see tiles like that copper mine. Singaboy is getting 5/1/3 yields from the oasis, 2/4/4 from the copper, and 2/4/2/1 from the iron mine. Absolutely amazing. Even with 7 charge Chinese builders, Singaboy can't get all of these tiles improved fast enough!

[Singaboy]

Turn 102:

First issue is the trading of cities. I will post another clarification of our Team's thoughts on this in the general thread later on. Other teams should play along our lines, I feel. Anyway, I open the save and find a trade request. Four cities have completed their production though. I am one turn away from switching to theocracy and simultaneum. let's have a look at the request and it's Khmer now asking me to gift 400 gold. Sorry, as much as I would like to help you, but this is never going to happen. I think, that team is doomed.



Why is Khmer so desperate. The answer can be found in Nubia's gossip...They actually managed to take a city pretty quickly. Khmer is on the brink of being kicked out from the game sooner rather than later. I hope their military might will show eventually by stalling Nubia long enough so that Rome can take some of Kongo's cities. By the way, since I will have two knights in the vicinity soon, it might be possible for China to take a city rather than fiddling about with Kongo's last city. It remains to be seen whether such an opportunity will open up.




9 turns for us to declare war and we better rush in with all our might. Let's have a look at my core where those production cycles ended. The most obvious change comes from Germany. being safe for additional 30 turns has made them move troops away. I am secretly hoping that they will attempt to advance towards Nubia and England. The German front city has locked an encampment, mirroring my intentions there. It looks like a build-up of defenses there. I am still hoping to get that encampment at a discount. Kashgar starts a trader for now.




A round of micromanagement of the triangle Shanghai-Quanzhou-Beijing begins now that Quanzhou has finished its granary. Shanghai finished a quadrireme and adds the overflow into the Holy Site. It doesn't really need to work the sugar for now. I am buying the mountain tile though for Quanzhou. Not cheap at 120 gold. I will not get a discount for campuses in this game, I reckon. Hence, it is better to buy that tile now. The good news here is that the next tile added to Shanghai is finally one of the forest hills for chopping.

Now that the mountain tile has been purchased, Quanzhou can start to build a campus. I need more science and quick. A single campus doesn't cut it. I chnage tile assignments and housing increases to 8 spurring growth in Quanzhou. The city will grow in 3 turns and then get more hammers automatically. The campus should finish faster than in 14 turns. The builder which is going to mine the grass hill at Shangdu is going to farm the cows for an additional 2 housing, getting Quanzhou to size and power. When pastures make 4 food, this city could theoretically grow like weed.

Shangdu starts a temple and will be helped by mined hills and lumber mills soon.

The last city to get its micromanagement is Beijing. It borrows a tile from Quanzhou for more hammers. The builder has moved onto the next grass hill and the additional 2 hammers will ensure that the commercial hub will be ready in 5 turns instead of 6. In the image you can also see the tiles next to the mountain. I am going to build two more campuses there, one for Beijing using the current rainforest and the other forest tile for Tianjin. This will get me to a current 4 campuses.

At the frontlines, I push my chariots forward. I also convert Kinchassa to add a little gpt to my coffers. Strategically, Kinchassa under Marco Polo could get very important. England seems to park its units there for now.



A word of caution for Sulla. Next turn, I will upgrade a first chariots after changing government. This will get me 2+1 envoys (I will enable two envoys for the first) and Lisbon will fall under my control with 6 envoys. This also means that citrus will be given to me. If I don't remember wrongly, you have traded your citrus to Japper and might need it? If that is the case, you could send me a citrus request on your turn which I will accept once I have control of Lisbon. With medieval fairies done soon for me too, the additional envoys I am getting as well as the bonus from Lisbon, I would be making additional 20gpt which is needed to compensate for the military expenditure which is bound to increase with 2 knights and 2 crossbows that I will have in 2 turns.
Three of my cities are now merely 'happy' thanks to continued population growth. I am now thinking of connecting the second salt and one source of incense to change that. If Rome would eventually get a second source of truffles, it would be even better.

As far as technologies and Siege Tactics are concerned, this is what I will research:
Printing is done next turn, then machinery on T104. This will be followed by Military Engineering for a turn (T105). After that, I will head to Siege Tactics (faith buying 2 catapults along the way).
Siege Tactics costs 660 beakers, which translates to 264 beakers for China. It will currently take me around 6 turns to finish it.
Gunpowder costs 196 beakers, around 4 turns.
Metal casting costs 264 beakers, around 6 turns.

This means an eta of currently 18 turns for all technologies combined. I do hope that I can boost science via the new campus, a library in Hangzhou (after the settler), maybe a wat in Shangdu and a library in Quanzhou.

[Singaboy]

Another request for Sulla:

When you reveal niter next turn, could you post a screenshot of China to locate any niter there (if any). This will help me to plan my next builder moves. Hopefully, some of the useless flatland gets boosted by niter.

[Sullla]

Hmmm, Khmer losing a city is obviously not great news, but not unexpected either. I figured that whatever city Woden targeted first would likely be toast since he had the initial first strike before Cornflakes could respond. Khmer seems to be using the default city names and Hariharalaya is fortunately not the Khmer capital. Now the dangerous thing is that there were only three total Khmer cities, and if both of the remaining two are captured, all of the Khmer units will vanish into thin air. We need to hope that Cornflakes and Japper can stall this out for another ten or so turns. I doubt that we'll capture any of the Khmer cities, but it's important that we have a chance to get some more of the Kongo cities. I would be very pleased if we could get Heart of Darkness, the city to its south, and the city that Japper's in the process of founding. That would split the total gains with five cities to our team and four cities to England and Nubia. Heart of Darkness is the key though as it's by far the best Kongo city. We can only cross our fingers and hope that it's still standing in ten turns.

Unfortunately Japper signed our peace treaty on Turn 101, which means that the first turn we can attack again in Turn 112. That's nine more interturns to get through before we can declare war. Too bad we didn't send the peace offer to Cornflakes instead; he would have signed it on Turn 100 (and moved his Khmer units off to the east a turn sooner), allowing us to act on Turn 111. Them's the breaks though.

By the way, I agree that we should have China take a Khmer city if at all possible. If the opportunity is there, we'll make sure to take it and then we don't have to worry about trading shenanigans. Quick other notes:

* I agree that it's a good idea to get some more Campuses in China. Culture is coming along nicely with the Colosseum, it's science that could use some boosting. Seems like a good call.

* By all means, go ahead and get the 6 envoy benefit in Lisbon. It doesn't matter which one of us is the suzerain, only that we control the city. I'll go ahead and request a citrus resource from China since Rome is indeed trading away its own citrus to Kongo right now.

* I will definitely give you a screenshot of niter sources once we can see where they're located. I'm also hoping that a few will pop up in some low-production locations.

[Singaboy]

Sulla, this seems to be the consensus on city gifting.

"My 2-cents is that one-time city gifting (between team mates only) is fine, back-and-forth gifting is too far. You want England to get a free unit at that city? Sure, trade it away and get the unit but keep the city with England don't trade it back. You want free border expansion? Sure, found city as Russia and gift to Germany but keep it with Germany. The opposite cases would also be true of course ... found as England to get the free unit and then trade away, or found as Germany and trade away for the border pop. This also works to transfer war spoils to the other teammate as desired.

The only case I'd have a problem with is gifting a city for the purpose of keeping a teammate alive. If in doubt in a situation where one teammate is losing territory, ask the lurkers first to confirm."

Now, this in mind, I would suggest that you gift Savoia to me this coming turn so I can start drafting units using faith right next turn. What do you think?

[hzhp800]

Do you think it might be worthwhile to double check with the Emperor K/TheArchduke team first considering they were the team that was burned before and the "tension" that resulted from that? If you guys had a different understanding of the "consensus" they may have too. Strictly speaking, you have only heard from one team  CMF/Woden so far.  I am just wondering if it might be prudent to try and avoid inadvertently provoking anymore unpleasantness that might jeopardize what is otherwise a perfectly fine game.

[Singaboy]

Good point.

I assume that Archduke can chip in by the time he will play his turn way earlier than Sulla will be up again. I hope by then it is clear what the stand on this is. If it is what I quoted here, I would suggest a city gifting. Else, we leave it as is.

[Modo]

City gifting introduces a new level of decision making that's specific to team games and could prove interesting as it certainly changes what civs and leaders are better suited with it, that's why when the initial discussion took place I've argued that the decision should be made beforehand if a game would have this option "on" or "off" so either you ignore it completely or use it freely.

Given that this particular game started without a consensus on it maybe it's better to ignore it completely instead of trying to regulate particular cases and arguing about exceptions to exceptions and such.

[Sullla]

My preference would also be to have no city trading at all, which is what I thought we were going to be experiencing heading into this game. But it's true that we didn't clarify one way or another, and each team apparently went into the event with different notions about what would and wouldn't be allowed. Since teams are going to be allowed to gift cities, we would be foolish not to take advantage of that rule in places where it's to our benefit. And in this case, it's a huge benefit to have a Chinese city down in the southeast for purposes of faith-buying units in Theocracy.

However, after thinking about it, the city that we want to trade is Pisa, not Savoia. A couple quick reasons why:

* Pisa is better positioned to gain the Crusade bonus if we get attacked by England/Nubia. It's closer to Kinchassa and Nan Madol, and a place where we're more likely to be defending. (Something has gone badly wrong if we're defending at Savoia.)

* Pisa is also closer to the front lines for purposes of faith-purchasing units.

* Savoia has a largely useless Theatre district. However, that's actually important to Rome because it gives me another district "type" towards the seven different types requirement for Civil Engineering. With that Theatre district in hand, I only need to build an Entertainment district (or a Holy Site district) to line up that future boost.

So I now think Pisa is the better city for China to have, after thinking for a long time that Savoia would be better. If we could ever get a Chinese builder down to that region, we could also potentially chop some of the jungle tiles for a Holy Site, which would open up missionary purchases out of Pisa. Savoia, by contrast, can't build another district by virtue of being stuck at size 3. I won't trade the city for the next two turns though, because I'm pretty sure that city production gets reset during a trade and we do want the current walls to be finished for safety's sake. In other words, let's finish the walls in 3 turns and then trade the city after that. How does that sound?

[Sullla]

I didn't get back from work until late tonight, which means this report will be shorter than normal. I didn't have a chance to crunch the numbers like I normally do, which I'll have to look at tomorrow. (This being a PBEM game, I can look back at the save even after passing it on.) Anyway, let's run through Turn 103.



Our Declaration of Friendship has ended with TheArchduke, which doesn't particularly matter since we re-upped with EmperorK a few turns back. I thought I'd show this picture because it also gave a pretty good view of the English forces near Kinchassa. I have a knight slowly moving east to see what everything looks like just beyond those Ngao Mbembas, but it doesn't appear that Chevalier Mal Fet is making much progress here. Japper's baffling refusal to finish walls in Kinchassa is about the only thing preventing me from feeling safe about this spot.



Further south, this knight revealed the last remaining Kongo city, Max Havellar. It's size 5 but lacks city walls or a granary and doesn't appear to have any districts completed. I genuinely don't know what Japper has been doing with his cities throughout the game; something went very badly wrong with their team. Honestly, if I can get four knights down here, I might be able to snipe the city immediately on the first or second turn of a war declaration. With no walls and a defensive strength of only 25, knights would tear this place to pieces (average damage per attack = 75, with more damage as the city dropped in health). That might be something I try to set up for Turn 112, obviously assuming that the city hasn't been captured yet.

As Singaboy mentioned, one of the Khmer cities was taken by Woden last turn. However, the power rating for Khmer hasn't dropped at all so far, which means that either the power numbers are lagging again or Cornflakes made an organized retreat back to his remaining cities. Let's hope it's the latter case. The only place we can see military action taking place is near Kinchassa, and Chevalier Mal Fet doesn't appear to be advancing there.



Here's where my military units ended up in the southeast. This is about as far as they'll pull back to the west, maybe one tile further. I've left an opening on the white dot tile yet again as I slowly lead Japper's settler to the desired spot. He has no units anywhere nearby and this city will be completely toast as soon as we're able to declare war. In fact, I'm going to slip in a legion and repair the road that I pillaged on the tile where the settler is currently standing. Yeah, legions can do that since they have the build fortification ability. Or at least they could do it back in PBEM1 days, so unless it's been removed in a patch I think they can still fix pillaged tiles. Things are shapely up nicely over here as long as Khmer can hold out for about eight more turns without dying.



Completing Medieval Faires opened up a policy swap, and I replaced Charismatic Leader with the much better Merchant Confederation in the Diplomatic slot. Yes, I prefer having another 10 gold/turn over +2 envoy points/turn. I also needed to pop into Serfdom for the round of builders completing right now, and that meant I had to drop either Meritocracy or Natural Philosophy. This was a tradeoff between 12 culture/turn or 7 beakers/turn, making Meritocracy the far superior policy option. Sorry Natural Philosophy, you'll be back soon enough. I was hoping that I had enough overflow culture to finish Diplomatic Service in one turn, but nope, looks like I'm a bit short. How much? It's basically impossible to know because Civ6's interface still refuses to tell anyone the exact amount of beakers and culture invested into each research project. I tried rearranging tiles for max culture and I was still short, so we'll have to suffer through two turns without my science-boosting policy.



A trader finished in Roma this turn and I reassigned it to Firenze for help with the Venetian Arsenal. However, ANOTHER trader operating out of Firenze also came due for a trade route renewal this turn, and I sent this trader to Roma as well. I really would have liked to get a road over to Genova for tactical movement purposes; that will have to wait for a future opportunity though. I couldn't pass up the chance to have two different trade routes with 3 production/turn each running in there. The pair of trade routes get Firenze up to 25 production/turn right now, and further city growth will take it up close to 30/turn in a short while. I may not even need to purchase all those forest tiles here for the Venetian Arsenal's completion; we'll have to see how close the city is getting to the wonder when it gets closer to the finishing date. I think the wonder will be done in about 20 turns from right now, certainly before Turn 125 unless something goes badly wrong.



My favorite part of the turn was cashing in another forest chop with the Limes + Monarcy city walls bonus. This never gets old for me even though I've shown these pictures like a dozen times now. At a total chopping value of 90 * 2.5 = 225 production (!), this will easily be enough to knock out the 140 production cost on the Harbor and still have another 80 production left over. I'll use it to finish the Bath district on the following turn and then perhaps put what's left over into the Campus district. Maybe, maybe not. It's that or a military unit though and I have much stronger production cities to churn out military. The Harbor district will provide the boost for Cartography tech, the next one that I'll be pursuing after taking Gunpowder to the halfway point.

Speaking of Gunpowder, note the niter resource just south of Ravenna. I'm sorry to say that the niter resources weren't terribly kind to our team, and this niter in the third ring is one of the most accessible ones we have. I will probably need to purchase this tile to connect a source for Rome; perhaps I'll purchase this tile and ONE of the tundra forests as Firenze when I have a chance to pop into Land Surveyors down the road in a little bit, rather than getting two tundra forests for Venetian Arsenal chopping. I do need a niter resource connected soonish though to upgrade my legions into muskets. Then again, perhaps Singaboy can connect this one once he finishes researching Military Engineering:



That niter resource next to Shangdu is the only one anywhere in Chinese territory, unless there's one underneath a city or district somewhere. Rome did not get so lucky as I still don't have a niter source connected. Singaboy, if you would happen to connect this resource sometime soon, perhaps you'd be willing to let Rome use it for musket upgrades? I don't know if that's plausible or not, I wasn't expecting the niters to be in such awkward spots. I should be able to work around my own sources if needed.



The overview for Turn 103. All three builders should complete next turn even with the cost scaling increases, which is why I was hoping that I could finish Diplomatic Service in 1 turn. Perhaps I should have invested one more turn into the civic before swapping, and then dropped Meritocracy as well as Natural Philosophy for a one-turn hop into Serfdom and Land Surveyors to purchase tiles. Oh well, water under the bridge now. The builder out of Roma will invest all five charges up at Firenze to help build the wonder. I'll spend some time tomorrow planning exactly where to spend the other 10 charges on the other two builders. Then it's time for the capital to build its Armory for the Gunpowder boost, while Ostia and Milano go back to finishing their legions (prebuilding for muskets). Venzia is building ships, and will still be building ships for some time. Siena is nearly done its Campus district, and will be expanding borders onto the 2/2 grassland hill forest next turn. I'm also about to mine the bare grassland hill that was just chopped, so it will be up to some real production soon. Genova's city walls are at 79/80 production and the city is waiting for a builder to come chop a forest tile for the Campus district.

Looking forward to spending some more time with this game tomorrow. Have fun Singaboy.