Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[timmy827]

https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources...ple.26276/

As far as I know that still applies for "what era the next GP is from", but haven't played the most recent patches.  I suppose it's possible a team game may do era by team, not civ, as well. 

I'm wondering about chasing every last boost, particularly the one for Siege Tactics if you're beelining cavs?  Seems like that takes a lot of investment (the research of equally-expensive Metal Casting, faith for the catapults, gold for bombard upgrades)...can you get much use out of the bombards themselves?

[Singaboy]

Turn 106:

This is the turn I get a gifted city from Rome for drafting units. Crusade might be an issue thanks to the other religions there. Now, I got an idea. The cities that are under the influence of Khmer's religion should be able to faith buy campuses? Is that correct? We might be able to make use of that in the new cities.

The situation at the beginning of the turn. Hangzhou has completed the settler which moves southwest to found a city on German's vacated spot. It will take 9 turns for the unit to reach that place. The capital starts a library to boost science, as it takes a mere 4 turns to finish. Beijing is close to finishing its district. I should be able to get a district discount with a new technology or civic to come online after that.
Diplomatic Service ad well as gunpowder will stay for one more turn before swapping to other technologies. timmy posted an interesting question whether spending so much faith and gold on two bombards is worth the Eureka. I have found in some games that bombards can be useful, but their limitations to move and shoot make the unit pretty weak indeed.



Shangdu is slowly increasing its hammer rating. I build a first lumber mill and change tile assignment to niter which just got added to out empire
When the city finally hits size 8, it will make 28 hammers, not too bad. The question is whether I should add an industrial district here, as a campus is of limited use.




In the east, I acquire Pisa. I guess I will keep the city name as it is a present from Rome. Besides the faith drafts (started with China's UU), the city is of limited use at the moment. It starts a monument as housing is at 5. I will draft two swordsmen there next and then start drafting horsemen. The question is still whether we spend the faith to draft catapults...Sulla, what do you think. A Chinese 60% research discount is pretty strong in my mind.
My knights in the south can't spot the barbarian unit, but I should be able to defeat that next turn unless the sword has moved. We will know during Sulla's turn.




The final situation on T106. Quanzhou will get a housing boost next turn and should get the city to grow in 4 turns. Hangzhou, Shangdu and Beijing will start another round of builders that will be used to chop walls in the west. Before that Beijing will finish a monument in 1 turn to further boost culture. I am not worried about culture in this game, but science is an issue and I need to fix it with more campuses. Another question is, should I spend 320 faith for a wat in Shangdu. With the temple done, it would boost faith output to 123 a turn. However, 320 faith equates two military units.

[Sullla]

With regards to the Siege Tactics boost, the whole idea is to unlock the tech faster by cutting out half of its cost. We can save about 4-5 turns worth of research by lining up the boost and that could be the difference in terms of launching a timing attack. I also looked at the possibility of skipping the boost (therefore avoiding the need to detour to Metal Casting) and determined that it wasn't a good idea. I even had a whole paragraph typed up weighing the pros and cons before ultimately deleting it because I decided that chasing the boost was superior. To make a long story short, this isn't a worthwhile idea because we still need to research Gunpowder and Metal Casting to gain access to field guns, and those are critical units that we'll want anyway. Furthermore, it's actually slightly cheaper to get to Siege Tactics by way using the boost, since China is the one that will be unlocking Siege Tactics and therefore gets the 60% discount from the boost. If we ignore the boost, then we pay slightly more in beakers to reach Military Science, and then a LOT more in beakers when we have to research through Metal Casting anyway to unlock field guns. It's just too wasteful to ignore the boost here, especially because China's ability to faith-purchase catapults gives us a huge leg up on every other team in the game here. Catapults are terrible and expensive units since there are no policies that boost their construction. The fact that we can get around those restrictions by using Theocracy + faith is just awesome for us.

Now you guys aren't wrong - bombards are also terrible units and they will be essentially useless in combat. However, Singaboy can hold onto them and if we ever reach Flight for observation balloons or eventually get to artillery, then suddenly those units become very useful indeed. Observation balloons let bombards hit a city from three tiles away, safely out of reach of enemy units or enemy cities. Artillery pieces are awesome in both Civ5 and Civ6, with a default range of three tiles that achieves the same function without the need for a support unit. So I would purchase two catapults, upgrade them to bombards, and then hold onto them for a long time. They just might come in handy one day.

As for whether or not to purchase a Wat, I would definitely say yes. The Wat is worth 6 faith/turn while in Simultaneum policy along with 2 beakers/turn, essentially a faith-producing library. Now obviously there's a long payback horizon for the 380 faith cost, 63 turns in total if running Simultaneum policy the whole time. Will this game last another 63 turns? Right now it looks like it may very well, which would mean that the Wat would eventually pay back its own cost while generating over a hundred beakers in the process. That's too simplisitic of a comparison because it ignores the opportunity cost of not doing something else with that faith, but I still think that it's worth the price tag, especially here in a situation where we're trying to boost China's research output. Faith is a currency that exists to be spent on useful items, and this is one of the more useful ways to convert it into a tangible benefit. We should still have plenty of faith available to purchase units for use in military operations. (I mean, with the temple + Wat in place, China is going to be up to about 130 faith/turn and that's one horseman per turn. We'll run out of space for units to be placed (and out of money for unit upgrades) long before we could run out of faith for horseman purchases. (Maybe we can reach Nationalism and create horseman Corps before upgrading them into cavalry. That would certainly be awesome - 72 strength units with 5 movement points on the attack! We'll have to see how much time we have.)

As I understand it, if we capture a city with Jesuit Education as the dominant religion, we can use faith to purchase Campus/Theatre district buildings. That is definitely worth remembering.

By the way, the single best news of Singaboy's turn was no notification that England or Nubia had captured a city from Khmer. The clock is still ticking and we're getting close to our peace treaty running out. Five more Nubia/England turns to go before we can declare war and start capturing territory for ourselves. Hang in there Cornflakes, just give us a few more turns.

[Modo]

Hang in there Cornflakes, just give us a few more turns.

Very encouraging...if I were him this would pop my corn and leave flakes all over the place.

[Sullla]

This turn had a mixture of good news and bad news.



First the good news. My scouting knight was able to get vision on the non-capital city of Khmer and it seems to be holding the line magnificently right now. No damage at all to the city walls, which suggests that Woden's forces are concentrated further to the east at the Khmer capital. With two knights and two crossbows sitting around at full health, this does not appear to be a city that's going to fall anytime soon. City defensive rating of 46 looks like the base 38 strength from a knight, plus 6 strength from Bastions policy and plus 2 strength from a district completion. There are only five turns remaining until the Declaration of Friendship wears off, and I don't think we have to worry at this point about the Kongo cities falling en masse to England and Nubia. They seem to have their hands full just dealing with Cornflakes at the moment.

Even better, the power tracking suggests that both sides have been losing some units in the ongoing war. Woden's power has dropped from a high of 988 down to 793 this turn. Cornflakes is also down from 761 to 550. That's truly excellent news for us as our opponents trade units with only a single city changing hands thus far. It's really starting to look like we'll be able to talk the bulk of the Kongo cities for ourselves, maybe even all of them. Five more turns to go until we can redeclare war.

Also important: both Khmer cities have Cornflakes' religion so if we find ourselves fighting Khmer units in a few turns (very likely), we'll be able to benefit from the Wars of Religion policy: +4 strength against all units following another state religion. Good thing we'll have that unlocked for the next war.



Here's a view of the south, with that barbarian swordsman putting itself in perfect position for Singaboy to unlock the boost for Military Science. Two moves southeast and it's all yours, Singaboy. Now there's some bad news here: what happened to the Kongo settler? We have visibility on all of the tiles where it could move, and it looks like Japper deleted it. Very disappointing if true, we wanted another free city! If anyone can tell where the settler may have gone, feel free to let me know. It was on the tile northeast of the rice last turn and I don't see anywhere it could have escaped without our seeing it.

The other piece of bad news this turn took place at Seoul:



TheArchduke dropped two additional envoys into Seoul to reach the coveted 6 envoy plateau, sending his science skyrocketing up to 98 beakers/turn. It's truly impressive how Germany has gone from 29 beakers/turn merely 15 turns ago up to 98 beakers/turn now. We've swung in a dozen turns from England/Nubia being the clear threat to win back to Russia/Germany looking like the biggest competition. I can match TheArchduke here with 6 envoys in a relatively short period of time. I have one envoy in hand already, another one potentially coming from Naval Tradition if I can line up the boost, and a third potential envoy from the quest for boosting The Enlightenment here. Failing that, I will get 2 envoys via natural generation in about ten turns time and I can at least match TheArchduke at the +4 beakers per Campus district. He's actually producing about the same science as Rome right now, the difference is having that extra +2 beakers per Campus district.

But I'm still kicking myself here for missing the obvious strategic play. As soon as we signed peace with Japper, I should have sent my army down here to conquer Seoul immediately. I didn't see that move at the time because TheArchduke and I each had 3 envoys, and I was thinking in terms of both of us having about the same number of Campus districts. The big difference is that TheArchduke has finished several more Campus districts in recent turns, and he was able to line up a bunch of envoys via quests or civics discovered or whatever. I should have seen that capturing the city state and taking it for myself would have yielded the biggest advantage; everyone loses their envoys, but Rome would then get a strong city to compensate the loss, with everyone else getting nothing. Seoul has a completed Campus with a library inside, plus a completed Harbor for another free trade route. Add in several hill tiles and forests available for chopping, and you've got one excellent city. We had 11 whole turns with this huge Roman army standing around doing nothing, and that time would have been perfect to capture this city state. It even would have given Japper a reason as to why the Roman army was sticking around in the area, gone off to deal with this city state. That would have been the proactive play, putting that army to use and strengthening Rome during a period of enforced peace. Now it's too late to move on the city before we're ready to fight Japper again - the immediate opportunity is lost.

That said, we can rectify this situation. I'm going to build a battering ram in Savoia, which it can do in about 6 turns of production. (The main battering ram is needed on the front lines.) Once that finishes, I'll send a small detachment of units to Seoul and look to capture the city state. Singaboy, you can probably help with this using some units faith-purchased out of Pisa. I'd like to bring a galley upgraded into a caravel over to attack from the sea tile, then something like 2 crossbows and 2 knights would probably be plenty to capture the city. Seoul seems to have very few units because they died fighting that barbarian camp off to the south. If we took out the city defenses immediately with a caravel attack, the city state should be a sitting duck. Even better, TheArchduke has now sunk 6 envoys into this city state, and if we capture it they'll all go to waste. I can focus my envoys on Geneva, potentially dumping 5 or 6 of them into the city state at once. (The quest there is to trigger a boost for Square Rigging, i.e. kill a unit with a musket; if I can land that with the 2 for 1 policy card in place, I could dump 4 more envoys in there and immediately go from zero to six in one go. Maybe.) So there is a solution here, we just have to accept that TheArchduke is going to be the research leader for the immediate future until we can capture some Kongo cities (and get them out of occupation).



Adding to my frustration this turn... Stupid city state sword! Why did you have to stand on the one tile where my builder needed to go?! Obviously I wanted to move onto that tile and then onto the grassland hill to mine it next turn. Now I have to waste an additional turn moving onto the grassland hill before being able to mine it, instead of having the mine finished on the same turn that Firenze grew to the next size in slick fashion. Sigh. The Venetian Arsenal is still scheduled to finish on Turn 122, believe it or not, with three forest chops incoming for a combined 450 or so production. England has actually finished an Industrial district now, but still doesn't have Mass Production tech since England hasn't entered the Renaissance as yet. It looks like TheArchduke is the only other player who has a realistic chance to build the wonder. We don't seem him building it at any of the coastal cities where we have vision; hopefully he's not thinking about the wonder at all.

By the way, I have two quadriremes and two galleys heading up to the northern tundra here in the hopes of landing the boost for Naval Tradition (kill a unit with a quadrireme). Humanism is a very long slog at 9 turns of research time, and I want to set up a quick policy swap midway through this long project. I already have Reformed Church sitting at one turn away from completion, and if I can get a quadrireme kill, I can pair it with research into the cheap Naval Tradition for a free envoy and a back to back civics swap (1 turn worth of Professional Army for caravel/musket upgrades and 1 turn worth of Land Surveyors to purchase a niter tile and a forest for Firenze to chop). With four naval units headed up to this corner of the map, I should be able to pull off a quadrireme kill in the next four or five turns.



Milano renewed its trade route with the capital, now worth 2 food and 3 production. Unfortunately the trade route bonus apparently didn't apply to the city for this production phase, as the legion will now take one more turn to complete (albeit with lots of overflow). Note the two legions finishing one turn before the Armory completes in the capital and obsoletes them. No more errors like the half completed knight in Milano that I still have to go back and fix.



Here's the overview for the turn. I'm still frustrated that I didn't train one additional builder in Venezia during the last round of Serfdom. I'm short almost exactly 5 builder charges, while could be getting put to excellent use right now in Roma and Milano to chop out infrastructure (and maybe get some forest chop overflow on that knight in Milano with a one-turn jaunt into Chivalry). Sloppy, sloppy play. That's something that I should have thought about and planned for better. I certainly could have used that builder more so than a quadrireme that will mostly sit around for a while waiting to be upgraded into a frigate. A lot of cities have run out of the easy things to build and are now working on longer term projects. Genova and Ravenna are finishing up with galleys before I obsolete them with Cartography. I'll have to hold off on the tech for an extra turn or two to let them finish but that's no big deal.



The front line region in the southeast. Knights are getting ready to strike at Max Havellar while everything else holds in place for the moment. I'll start moving up to the border around Turn 109 or Turn 110. The goal will be to eliminate Japper as soon as possible and then turn and deal with Cornflakes. Kinchassa looks like the only tricky city, but I think we can overwhelm it with sheer weight of numbers. I'm also hoping to upgrade my legions to muskets using the borders of Heart of Darkness and then use the 55 strength units to push onto that last city. Japper's Ngao Mbembas hold their own against legions, but not against muskets.

Whew, I'm tired of typing now. Good luck Singaboy.

[Singaboy]

Turn 107:

4 turns to war with Kongo and Khmer. I can see both sides of the current war having power drops and we are now #1 in power. This can only go up in my mind with China still having a lot of upgrades in store and faith purchases every turn for now. The completed commercial hub in Beijing pushes gpt beyond 100. Both gunpowder and diplomatic service are moved out for now. I am going to purchase two swordsmen before getting gunpowder and am waiting for Rome's Eureka.
Beijing goes for a 1 turn monument to push culture further. I could almost get humanism myself if not for the 60% bonus I will be getting from Rome via the Inspiration. Good to start it now though.




The trade route at Kashgar is up for renewal. The city is growing pretty slow and production is pushed by mines. Hence I decide to start using international trade routes. Have a look what is available and Rome in fact is the best candidate. China needs more of everything and 6gpt as well as 1 science is good for now. I can't wait for triangular trade to come online as well. Kashgar itself will finish a third trader in 2 turns. It will start a route from Pagan for the road connection it needs. I will decide also where to build a 4th trader that is available now.



In the east, very interesting but potentially problematic developments are under way. I easily take out the warrior to get the Eureka for Military Science. The real issue however, are three horsemen from Nubia. Are these guys trying to go after Max Havelaar? I suggest we try and block them as much as we can until we can attack the city ourselves on T111.  These guys can't cross the river next turn. Rome could pull the northern knight south to block the river crossing SW of the niter. The other knight could move a little west or stay where it is to see what Woden does next. The western knights surely have to move east as fast as they can. Unfortunately, the mountain is forcing them to move past it one by one. I hope we can delay them as much as possible. I will set up my knights west of the mountain to strike from there. Alternatively, I could position one of the knights at the tile where the Great Scientist currently is to hit the city from NW. I doubt Nubia can take the city with three horsemen on T111. He will need to T109 just to cross the river. Unless he has more fast units there, it will be impossible for him to block our access too. Interesting development here.

We really need to get to cavalry fast to be able to counter Nubia and England. You can also see in the image that I drafted a swordsman, 1 of 2 I will draft before getting 2 catapults.




Finally an overview of China at the end of the turn. Next round, four builds will be done increasing culture by 4. The temple and wat will get faith to 120 and Pagan can start growing again. Hangzhou, Beijing and Shangdu will produce builders for some serious chopping duties soon. Once I am completing a tech or civic, I should get a discount for the next theatre, encampment and industrial hub. I will try and get the builders to near completion for a quick serfdom card swap, enable Limes and then go for chopping duties. Unfortunately, humanism is a real slow burner...

[Sullla]

Love to see that income continuing to skyrocket Singaboy. 107 gold/turn? Awesome. We are actually tied with Russia/Germany now in income despite a much larger military to support. And with the temple finishing in Shangdu, you'll have a chance to purchase another Wat as well, excellent. 130 faith/turn, here we come. This was a pretty quiet turn for us.



Those Nubian horsemen are going to be annoying. I moved the northern knight as Singaboy suggested, then moved this knight northeast to scout and then back to the southeast again after taking this picture. This won't stop them from crossing the river (the forewardmost Nubia knight can move west-west across it this turn), but it will slow them down a little bit. That's the best that we can do here right now. If we can just wait a turn or two, that should give us enough time to Max Havellar for ourselves. We may need to give this city to Rome because Rome plays before Nubia; really whoever can get the city is fine. One important detail to point out: we signed peace on Turn 101 - the very beginning of the turn but still Turn 101 - and I'm pretty sure that means we can't attack until Turn 112, not Turn 111. I'll double check on that but I'm pretty sure that it works that way. It's too bad that we didn't send the peace requrest to Cornflakes instead of Japper, that would have let us act a turn sooner. Oh well.

Singaboy: I think we want to avoid a war with England/Nubia right now if at all possible. We'll have our hands full with one team as our opponent, much less two of them. Still, if Nubia captures Max Havellar, we may not have a choice here. We definitely do want to control that city. By the way, if Woden takes the city and then we take it from him, does anyone know if the occupation penalty is geared to Kongo or Nubia? I think it's still Kongo in that situation, right? That could be an important detail.



Most of my units are still hanging out in place right now, waiting until the peace treaty is about to end to move up to the border. I did pull back my galley a bit because I didn't want to give Chevalier Mal Fet a chance to get in a first strike with his units hanging out around Nan Madol and kill the unit. Japper now has two crossbows, which he was only able to upgrade due to a gold gift from Germany. His power is 280 and I can break that down exactly since they're all at full strength:

5 Ngao Mbembas (35 power each = 175 power)
1 Archer (25 power)
2 Crossbows (40 power each = 80 power)

Add it up for 280 total. While this isn't too intimidating, and the crossbow and Ngao off by themselves should be easy pickings, Kinchassa could be tricky. I actually think the easiest solution there is likely a caravel attack from the sea to take out the walls, embarking the battering ram after taking Heart of Darkness to apply it to the city walls. With legions upgraded into muskets, it should be doable. Muskets with Battlecry have a base 62 strength and that's enough to overwhelm those Ngao Mbembas in direct combat. (Plus Japper has been taking Tortoise on his promotions, great for defending against crossbow shots but useless for melee combat.)

I also wanted to discuss my plans for Savoia here for a minute. I'm going to finish the granary because it's a cheap build at 2 turns remaining and it will double the city's food surplus. With the trade route to Roma for food, this is actually a pretty darn good city, already up to 13 production/turn with room to grow further upwards. I will get a battering ram next for the sole purpose of attacking Seoul, since the main battering ram will be needed against Japper. That's only a 5 turn build and it's a quick jaunt down to the city state from there, so we can be attacking Seoul in 10 turns from right now. Singaboy, would you be willing to send your faith-purchased swords and the crouching tiger down to the city state to help capture it? Maybe any future horses as well. I don't know if there's room for those units on the front lines, but they'll be perfect for attacking Seoul. I'll send a caravel to do the actual capturing and two crossbows for ranged support, and that should do the trick. If you can get the crouching tiger down south of the city state, there's a place where it can move onto the tile southwest of the city center and fire on the same turn with 50 strength. Alternately, if you'd rather keep the crouching tiger at Pisa for defense, that's not a bad idea either. But if we're going to faith-purchase these units in the area anyway, let's use them to go take this city state and eviscerate TheArchduke's science output.



Here's my little fleet getting ready to take on the barbarians for the express purpose of landing the Naval Tradition boost. I really want to flip the switch on a civics swap in about 5 turns and landing that boost is the way to do it. With two galleys for blocking dummies and two quadriremes to shoot, this shouldn't be too tough to pull off. If I can't find the barbarian quadriremes, I'll kill the spearman in the camp itself, ha!

As I keep mentioning, Firenze is less than 15 turns away from completing the Venetian Arsenal. For you lurkers out there, if we're in a race then the current ETA looks like the end of Turn 121 or the beginning of Turn 122, right around that mark. Hopefully this isn't a last second photo finish... although in an ideal world, it WOULD be a photo finish that we win and other teams waste a ton of production over, heh. I'll take an uncontested wonder though. Chevalier Mal Fet entered the Renaissance era this turn, so he almost certainly has either Mass Production or Cartography completed. I think it would be awful tough for him to build the wonder in less than 15 turns from scratch but it is possible, and I won't rest easy until the wonder is in my hands.



Speaking of eras, I was reading through the Great Person era formula again that timmy linked a couple days ago, and this has caused me to shift my thinking a bit. The way it works is that the Great Person era shifts when MORE THAN HALF of the players in a game have reached the next era. For our purposes here, that means 5 of the 8 players have to enter a new era. (It will become 4 of 7 when Japper or Cornflakes gets eliminated, and so on.) And for whatever reason, the Great Person era is one era beyond the current one for the players. In other words, the next Great Scientist will switch over to the Industrial era when 5 of us are in the Renaissance. Currently, 3 players are in the Renaissance: myself, TheArchduke, and Chevalier. However, Singaboy is about to join us as soon as he picks up the Gunpowder boost in 2 turns, and I suspect Woden isn't far behind either. Therefore I think that we won't be able to get another Renaissance Great Scientist and the next one will be from the Industrial era at that intimidating 420 point cost. If we want to get the boost for The Enlightenment, it looks like it's going to have to be this current one, Emilie du Chatelet.

As a result, I'm planning to run a Campus district project in Roma as soon as the Armory finishes. It will take 5 turns to complete, so finishing 7 turns from now on Turn 116. I'll be at about 210/240 Great Scientist points then, and the district project will definitely put me over the top to claim the Great Person. Of course, that assumes Germany hasn't finished the Great Scientist already, which TheArchduke will definitely get if he chooses to run his own project or use cash to patronage the Scientist. This is where it gets interesting. If TheArchduke does either of those things in the next few turns, it will be too soon for the era to advance and I'll just take the next Great Scientist. If he doesn't do anything, then I'll also get the Great Scientist by sniping it away at the last minute. In a perfect world, he would patronage the Great Scientist just before the era advances and I would sneak in and get the far superior Issac Newton. But I'd settle for any Great Scientist at this point - I really would like to get the boost for The Enlightenment.

I can also alway abort this mission if it looks pointless, and the extra science that I pick up while running the project will also be nice. Because Roma is doing a Campus project, however, I'm going to shift my settler production to Milano and Ostia. They'll put their overflow from their legion builds into settlers next turn, then return and finish the settlers when I pop into Colonization in a few turns. I might also get a third settler from the capital, since we're not going to capture a city from Japper at that nice cocoa/citrus spot. We'll see. But the capital's main plan for now is armory, then Campus project, then university for the Printing boost. Venezia will supply the other university for that boost; it has a quadrireme 1 turn from completion now awaiting Venetian Arsenal to (hopefully) double it.

No major news internationally right now. Our power rating is indeed high than England/Nubia's now as a result of the fighting they've endured. They also seem to experiencing some war weariness because their beaker/culture rate is down slightly, probably from amenities loss. The game remains close and very interesting between our teams. Good luck Singaboy. Oh, and don't spend that money - I know you're up to about 1000 gold now, but we're going to need a TON of it for upgrades in the next 20 turns.

[Singaboy]

Turn 108:

Things are getting interesting in the east. Sulla, I am not sure whether you simply had a typo, but Woden's units are horsemen not knights. Huge difference not only in strength but in movement too. Anyway, I get back to the strategic situation in the east soon.

Four builds have completed, with it, culture slowly increases. Still no match with Rome, but getting better. Shangdu and Beijing both start builders (currently 5 turns), Tianjin starts a granary it badly needs. Pagan goes for a galley. I would want at least 4 before they go obsolete.
I decided to use the builder at Quanzhou to improve the incense at Shanghai and then use its last charge to chop they rainforest at Tianjin into a campus (Beijing) there. Campuses won't get discounts for me in this game any longer I reckon. I only need to figure out how I can get a production multiplier there. Kashgar's builder is moving to improve the salt (one more amenity for Rome) and then move to Pagan to wall chop the flat stone there into a commercial hub.




At Shangdu, the builder mines the niter creating a nice 2f4h tile and unlocking the Eureka for rifling. The mine creates a nice opportunity for an industrial hub SE of the city. On a side note, the addition of the wat lifts faith beyond 120 a turn.




Let's have a look at the eastern battlefield. I am more than happy to comply with Sulla's request to conquer Seoul. As you can see below, I have a few troops moving towards the city. There is a chariot that has been sailing east for quite some time to support the area. It is going to land at Savoia in 4 turns. The units from Pisa are all moving south and would pass Savoia as indicated, if Rome removes the crossbow (move it into Savoia for the time being). I am planning to upgrade all those units in around 4 turns (when gunpowder is researched), so China would have 1 crouching tiger, 1 knight and 2 muskets there. I will need to upgrade two archers into crossbows as well to net the Eureka to get to bombards. For that reason, I will need to draft two catapults next depleting my faith reserves.
After those catapults, I will start to draft horsemen which are just a little more expensive than my current faith output.



A little further to the east, the situation is pretty interesting. As Nubia has horsemen not knights, they couldn't have possibly crossed the river. Instead Woden chose to cross where he was. he has a crossbow there too. Now, Rome can effectively block those horsemen. Next in line in the turn order is Rome. It can move the knights as indicated with blue arrows. Woden could then only move up to the river but not cross on the same turn. On T110, Rome can simply block those units by taking up the space west of the river. The only unit he could move past is the horseman, that has already crossed the river. However, with one horseman, he is not going to achieve a thing.

In red, I indicated my planned attack moves on Max Havelaar.

Any comments on my plans at Seoul and Max Havelaar? We better get clear on the moves here before we create a traffic jam.



As for the timing of the war against them, this is what my interface is telling me. I can declare war on T111. maybe this is how it goes. I will declare war on T111 and hit Max Havelaar twice with my knights. Of course, Japper can then respond to my attack before Rome is next in line on T112 hopefully taking the city. My knights should be able to survive a counter by Kongo's lone crossbow there. Of course, there will be some issues if Max Havelaar is finishing its walls before T111.

I have also been cracking my head how to time policy changes to enable Serfdom and Professional Army. I can't just slip in a double civic change any time soon as civics are getting more expensive. I am now thinking of finishing Diplomatic Service in 4 turns, maybe 5 (T112 or T113), enabling Professional Army and Serfdom. I would then try to get out of it with Humanism. The other problem I have here is that I will need a second round of Professional army for two bombard upgrades. And yet again, another time to upgrade horsemen to cavalry. Maybe I delay the first civic swap and then try and combine the upgrades with bombard upgrades too. This would mean that I need to research metal casting close to 40%, swap policies, upgrade two archers to crossbows, finish metal casting the following turn, upgrade two catapults and the finish Siege Tactics. For this to work, I will need gunpowder (Eureka coming in 2 turns?).

Of course, I will need a better science output too. In 2 turns, with a library and a new trade route, it will be 56 beakers, still not enough at all. Need to keep pushing those campuses and then enable a science civic boost instead of Meritocracy.

[GoldenredDragon]

I’ve  always understood the turns remaining to be full turns. In the sense that I’m three turns, it’s going to be written “available in 0 turns”, and you won’t be able to on turn 111. Maybe they patched it differently along the way, but that’s how I remember it being. Maybe check in a SP game to make sure the current version works as you believe it does?

That’s how it worked with the DoF twenty turns ago, so it wouldn’t surprise me if it happened the same way again with peace deals.

That being said, everyday I’m on the edge of my seat reading your detailed reports, and it’s aazing! Thanks people!

[Modo]

I decided to use the builder at Quanzhou to improve the incense at Shanghai and then use its last charge to chop they rainforest at Tianjin into a campus (Beijing) there.

So Quanzhou into Shanghai and then....Tianjin...yeah, definitely not getting dizzy here.

Also, what's the current gold cost to change policies without waiting to complete research on a civic? I'm presuming the cost scales up but is it that prohibitive to pay it in a pinch? Even if not prohibitive it's still not optimal but given the fact that civics do get more expensive than the player's ability to generate more culture....

@GoldenredDragon: that's definitely how it works and it's also how it worked in my previous test hotseat game for a similar situation.