Chevalier Absolutely Knows What He's Doing as Best Korea

[skanar]

Don't have time for a long reply or comment on the overall plan, but I'm concerned about moving the northern city off of a hill. The position needs to be able to hold the line against Japper (unless there is a military strike in that direction in the offing... ) and cities on hills still get bonuses, correct? I know it would be sweet to have the diamonds 2nd ring, but perhaps it is a bridge too far...

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Cities do get bonuses, and that's a good point. However, note that I'm planning on relying on Defender of the Faith + Victor for defense. Combined, they'll grant any units +15 strength around the city. Even if Japper telegraphs his attack by grabbing a Great General (racing Mongolia no doubt to do so), he'll still be attacking into the teeth of +8 defending units, and I doubt he'll manage to get a tech advantage on me. When you also include the fact that I can throw down an encampment defending the river crossing (again, with +15 defenses so good luck one shotting that Japper), and I'll be at Hwachas relatively soon after rushes become viable, while Japper's UU is fast becoming obsolete already, I think the better tiles 1 spot east make the loss of defense worth it.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

On turn 39, the spear made a tentative stab at my slinger, wounding both units. However, my slinger had a promotion saved up and so I went ahead and took volley. If I can save up until this guy is a Hwacha I'll be happy. The warrior, meanwhile, moved to cover the camp, which raises an interesting idea - the spear moved out to attack the slinger, so if I can lure the warrior out of camp, my new slinger out of OCISLY might be able to clear the camp. I still want warriors and slingers, though, because I'm presently last in domination score.   Of course, both my neighbors have DoFs with me, so it's not an issue until turn 65 or so, but you gotta build in advance in this game. My biggest nightmare is Alhambram chopping out an army in one or two turns and invading me before I have a chance to respond, so I need to hang close. 

...

Jackpot! Goddess of the Harvest is ours! Let's break it down:

1)Goddess of the Harvest will give us faith equal to our chops for the rest of the game, and yes, Magnus does affect this. Faith purchase is 2 faith/cog, so a Magnus chop basically gives me 1 to 1 faith to production in that sense. 
2)It is unclear if production cards affect this.  I need to run a test game. Reddit claims that faith IS boosted, Woden in PBEM7 found that his chops were not. I need to test R&F specifically. 
3)Valetta lets me buy monuments, granaries, water mills, sewers, walls, and encampment buildings with faith.  Lots of culture and population growth! But you wanna stay away from walls, you use those for more Magnus chops and more faith! Valetta is my #1 suzerain target for this reason, need to make sure Japper doesn't murder it. 
4)Monumentality in the Classical and Medieval Golden Ages lets you buy settlers, builders, and traders with faith - at 2 to 1 faith to production, again, ridiculously cheap. You could chop out a market, for example, and use the faith generated to buy a trader, too. Or chop out a settler and buy a builder to accompany him - who needs the Ancestral Hall when you've got Goddess of the Harvest? 
5)The Grand Master's Chambers lets you buy military units with faith, effectively replacing Theocracy (which boosts faith generation now instead). So you can double your chops for armies! 

To sum up: There is nothing in the game that can't be bought with faith, 'cept districts and their buildings (more on that later). Furthermore, this is ridiculously cheap at 2:1 to production (compare 4:1 gold purchases), and unlike gold there are very few demands on faith. You can bank thousands of faith and pray for an army, or burn it steadily for city buildings, civilian units, what have you. Magnus doubles your faith output from chops - meaning that with Magnus you get the chop's base value in hammers AGAIN with Goddess of the Harvest. While the rest of these chumps get 2x Magnus, I get 3x Magnus. :D 

So, I've been thinking about the Choral Music/Jesuit Education tradeoff some more, and I think I've changed my mind from Choral Music to JE. My initial thinking was that I have lots of science, but will need to find a way to generate culture, and I could skip purchasing science buildings to spend my faith on other things. However, I've since decided I'm going about it wrong. Choral Music wants me to build lots of shrines and temples - but I don't WANT to do that! I get faith from GotH, I can use my limited district slots for other things. JE, on the other hand, syncs well with GotH, and lets me focus production on things other than libraries/universities. With JE, GotH, Magnus, and Seowons, I have the chance to set a new record for science - but I gotta be careful with that lest I paint a target on my back...

Anyway, moral of the story: Everyone made a huge mistake by letting me pick this pantheon with the 4th or 5th pick. Chumps. I can't beleive Alhambram opted for a few extra great scientist and great writer points instead of this. Here was the situation at end of 39:

Yeah, I'm not entirely sure why this was so undervalued. I think Faith and this pantheon in particular were already a bit undervalued in vanilla Civ 6 (where you have to run Theocracy or pick up Valetta or JE something similar to really use faith). With R&F and the ability to faith purchase units regardless of government as soon as Divine Right and settlers/builders during golden ages, including Classical golden ages if you can manage it? Even if you have perfect terrain for one of the better terrain pantheons I think Goddess of the Harvest should never last until 4th or 5th. Their loss - it will be exciting for Korea!

I agree that you probably don't want to build Holy Sites everywhere, so Choral Music is somewhat less appealing. Choral Music syncs really well with the non-faith terrain pantheons where you will want to build several Holy Sites to get your faith generation up anyway. On the other hand, you will need Culture generation somewhere, and Holy Sites + Shrines are both cheaper and generally more useful than the equivalent Theatre District + Ampitheatre. Enough cheaper to justify spending a belief slot on Choral Music? Probably not, on balance, and you could possibly get by with fewer total districts if you pick up a GWAM or two somewhere, which could happen with no Russia (or Greece) in the game.

Responding to some of your excellent posts, aetryn, because I realized I hadn't specifically addressed any of them in a week or so - not intentionally, I was sort of mentally responding and then folding your points into my next report, but such high quality comments deserve a response of their own. 

Anyway, I'm still torn about Holy Sites. I want one, obviously, to discount other districts and let me buy religious units to spread Defender of the Faith everywhere. But do I really want more? Theater Squares aren't fantastic, but just one or two ALSO gets me district discounts and lets me start banking some Great Artist points (the ONLY way to boost Humanism, down the line). Culture is going to be one of my main weakpoints this game - I'm leading now, but that's literally just 1 culture envoy + 1 monument (and my culture at JRTI gets boosted 10% thanks to Magnus). I think, with Korea's unique civ ability and Pingala in the game, at least one city - maybe even JRTI - needs a Theater Square and a Seowon to maximize the boost from that governor. So basically I think I'm talking myself into Jesuit Education as being definitely the better choice.

With the pantheon secured, and noting your above concerns about military competitiveness, I'm wondering if it might be a good idea to be a bit cautious in the opening stages so as not to get yourself targeted. It seems like you have a pretty decent amount of land and several long-term advantages, so time plays into your hands. Obviously you'd like to get DotF, and you want to get some Seowons down if only for the yield bonus to other tiles. And again, I make no claim to be good at Civ6 or this format in particular, but here's a crazy idea: Try looking competitive with military, at least enough to deter aggression, and non-threatening economically. This syncs up well with a Classical Dark Age -> Medieval Heroic age. Get lots of builders out for chops and positioned, get some faith banked through some early chops for settlers or a couple Seowons (not too many, as they will give you double Empire score, which will make other players nervous, and beakers per turn, which will make them even MORE nervous). Then when you hit the Medieval age, go nuts with chopping and science (chopping the rest of your Seowons or CH to feed faith into purchasing libraries or more units). At that point, you might have enough of a military base to upgrade (and faith to purchase more) that even if you have a target on your back it will be hard for your neighbors to mount a successful invasion. Then, when you get enough of a tech lead you can go out stomping  . I'm not entirely sure this kind of "slowplay" will work - anyone that's run some SP R&F games should understand that Korea is a dangerous civ to leave alone regardless of what their current numbers look like - but there are enough other metagame factors in these long form MP games that you could fly enough under the radar until you are ready to make your move.

Agreed on all counts. That's sort of what I have in mind as an overall gameplan, in fact. The trouble is restraining myself with Magnus in play. I ran another test game with Provision enabled and simply roared past the AI in number of cities, districts, everything. And that was in single player where I wasn't carefully maximizing every chop, syncing policy swaps with builds, or anything like that - if I'm not careful, I'll paint a huge target on my back with too many cities and districts too fast. 

The other side of the coin, though, is I can't throttle myself too much, either, because the other players will ALSO grow exponentially. I maaaaay have a slight edge in founding cities thanks to noticing the Provision combo, but let's be honest - it's not exactly rocket surgery. I can't count on other players restraining their settler chops to limit population loss, and most of them will probably go for the Ancestral Hall, too (I'm really nervous about not taking it, but you gotta try new things, and besides, if I don't take it playing as Korea, when DOES it make sense to take Audience Chamber?). 

Right now I want to get the land first. If I have the land, and the units to defend it, then when we get to the medieval age or so I can tech upward like mad and laugh at efforts to stop me, particularly with AI diplo and the inland sea making coordination between my neighbors tough.

This is a bit of confirmation that he's on the far side of Japper, but I already knew that from Era score, which gives a lot of info in the early game. I could be getting more out of Era score - but that requires daily tracking, and I'm not investing that kind of time in this game. Monitoring overall developments is enough, I think. The player order I have deduced, starting from me and proceeding clockwise, is Japper, Emperor, Archduke, Rowain, and Alhambram. Alhambram getting a DoF with Rowain reassures me about Emperor getting rushed by the Archduke, since Sumeria must be aiming at Mongolia. I wonder who would win - Mongol heavy chariots or Sumerian war carts? Can Genghis Khan capture war carts? That'd be hilarious! I hope it happens. 

I'd have thought the warmonger civs would have wanted to target each other last. Sumeria taking out or significantly damaging the Mongols would be great as it would remove your big worry about the Medieval era - though I think Mongolia being on the exact other side of the map removes a lot of it too. A cross-map attack probably isn't going to be in the cards at that tech level, barring some kind of PB2-anti-KillerAngel-teamup (should be impossible with AI diplomacy only). 

My original warrior will, barring a new spawn, be able to clear this camp next turn. If something spawns, I'll spend the promotion and wait for reinforcements, now only 3 turns away to the north. I'm confident, though - this barbarian crisis seems just about handled (-knocks furiously on wood after he realizes what he just said-), and we can finish up our early military and turn to expansion. 

I was about to say "good job on the barbarians", but then I realized I should just probably find some wood to knock on too.

-looks at slingers- I don't think we knocked hard enough, mate. 

Turn 43
...

I always look at Empire score first - showing cities, districts, and pop (5 points per city, 3 points per non-unique district, or 6 for a unique, and 1 point per pop, plus I think 1 for the palace). Then civics and tech - 2 points per tech, 3 per civic, that was a change for R&F, not sure why - and only then do I look at everything else. Era score is good for clues but is mostly useless at predicting civilizational strength. 

Speaking of, I'm worried that I'm going to miss a Dark Age entirely. Clearing that barb campw ill give me 3 points, and the Seowon will grant another 4. That will put me at...13. Nuts.

If the camp's far enough away it should only be 2, but that's still too much.

I agree that Era Score is entirely useless to predicting civ strength. Personally, I would rather look at beakers per turn and culture per turn if it's available over raw techs/civics finished. There are often good reasons for leaving a military tech or any cultural advancement at 1 turn to go, and beelining will often result in fewer, but sometimes more effective techs (plus catching up on the earlier stuff will happen quickly if the science is high enough). Plus, even if raw techs reflects a real tech lead, beakers per turn is a better leading indicator. Empire score is pretty good as it is, but it's nicer if you can get the full analysis. A player getting their empire score from a good number of cities with no districts and a lot of score from pop but bumping the housing cap seems less scary simply because there's likely to be some stagnation in the near future. Similarly, Russia with inflated Era score from early Lavras counting as double points everywhere isn't probably quite as string as its points indicate.

Struggles with barbarian camps notwithstanding, I think this is still a promising start.

Again, agreed on all counts. Empire Score is all I have for the moment, though, until Rowain or Archduke sends a scout over here. It'll be a while before I can spare the unit to wander down that way - but I SHOULD make an effort to scout the world. There could be really fantastic city-states out there that I should compete for, although that's unlikely with Valetta in the backyard and needing most of my envoy attention.

Down the line it might make sense to cram out some quick scout builds. Do scouts profit from Agoge? If so, I could use them to boost a Magnus chop. 

Okay, guys, that was just an exercise, but now I'm really wondering if this is the way to go. I don't need to invest in a Holy Site this way, I guarantee my pick of beliefs, I'm giving up a stone at the capital but hell, I could be ready to do this in 2 turn when the warrior is established (I need to buy the tile or destroy my lovely rice farm). Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. 

Timeline would be:
T45: Builder steps onto quarry.
T46: Builder removes quarry (I suck at planning ahead or I wouldn'ta built the dang thing, probably)
T47 chop. Not sure how many cogs the warrior will need. Let's say we get 120 into the wonder, 60 left. 
T48 builder steps onto forest.
T49 builder chops forest, gets 36 x 2 = 72 cogs, more than enough.

I'll sleep on it. This might be worth a shot to have the religion in place on t49. Plus we'd get 162 faith, nearly enough to buy our first apostle and evangelize. 

Downsides: This delays our holy site district, but hell, we don't need it. We DO need a Seowon to boost State Workforce. State Workforce is due in 8 turns, so we need a Seowon by turn 49 to get the boost. I'm willing to swap to another civic, although note that I'll have time to sink some cogs into the seowon first (or into the wonder, hell), AND use some of the wonder-overflow to boost the district, so we're probably looking at turn 50/51.

The main motivating factor for this is the early DOTF. No one has successfully yet attacked a civ defended by that belief, and with my tech advantage from lots of Seowons it'll be REALLY tough to get superior units to me.

Right now I'm leaning towards taking the shot. The danger zone is T48-49 - if anyone finishes in that window...well, in that case, I just funnel the cogs into a holy site anyway! No worries! You get failproduction, so all I've lost is my stone tile (a bummer, but I have more!).

*fun fact: you can chop the stone that you used to place Stonehenge with.

Keep in mind you WILL need a Holy Site at some point just to buy Missionaries (and apostles to enhance). JE isn't going to help if you can't spread it to your other cities. On the other hand, you probably don't need the Holy Site any time soon, so pushing that back behind a couple of Seowons is definitely good for starting to get district discounts lined up. I kind of lean toward going for the wonder, since DotF would be so useful in a civ that wants to turtle a bit anyway and the failproduction cost is probably enough to build the missing Holy Site anyway.

Also, the stone isn't that much of a long-term asset - you're essentially only giving up the extra hammer until Apprenticeship. It's a hill stone, so it's slightly less terrible than a flatlands stone (which for me is an auto-harvest), but I don't much like quarries.

This was the post that really pushed me into going for Stonehenge. Too bad I removed my quarry without being able to harvest the stone, giving up 1 hammer a turn for no reason. 

Right. Let's focus on getting Seowons down, then later we can build a discounted Holy Site - that lets us keep up district diversity for more discounts, too.

Turn 45


The warrior needs 17 cogs to finish - agoge is kind of awkward here, but a boost is a boost. A Seowon takes 4 turns at 14 cogs per turn, while a Holy Site is 7. That means that a district is somewhere from 84-96 hammers base at the moment, I think on the higher end. If I check my table, it looks like districts must cost 92 hammers atm. Therefore, I can expect - yikes - only 38 hammers from my stone harvest. x3 for Magnus + Agoge = 114 hammers, or 97 into Stonehenge. One turn of production into the henge will take us to 111 hammers, still needing 69. 

Can you micro workers to lower production tiles to get the warrior almost to completion (say, 2 cogs away) without actually completing it? If so, that means more overflow into Stonehenge and less spent on the warrior. Again, more "free" hammers off the chop. That's generally how I try to work Agoge chops.

...

You can't buy an apostle immediately anyway - no Temple. I suspect by the time you build the Holy Site + Shrine + Temple, you will have accumulated enough faith even if you don't chop anything, which is itself incredibly unlikely.

I realized that I probably should have done that after I passed on the save - at least for the slinger, because the warrior I needed to get my per-turn production down to 11, which was really tough with the population I had. The individual citizen micro to manage overflows is one of my weaknesses - you note I'm very bad at remembering details in general. I get mixed up when certain policy cards come online or go obsolete, what techs are needed for which units (or to chop certain resources  ), which governments do what (I even posted the governments and then a few hours later was chattering about 600% Monarchy-Limes-Magnus chops, completely missing even in my own post about updated governments that, guess what? Monarchy doesn't boost walls anymore. I, uh, wasn't going to share that because it was embarrassing when I caught it, but oops, forgot that, too), and so on. That's something I'd really like to improve on. 

Anyway, gameplan for now is to work on the wonder slow-building while my builder hurries over to the deer to chop. I haven't run the numbers, but deer SHOULD be as good as a stone chop (bonus resources yield equal production, right?), and then I can chop the forest on the very next turn. That might get us back on course to our original Henge timeline, albeit slightly delayed. Hopefully not a fatal delay. 

Military units continue to either flee (the wounded slinger), heal (the injured warrior an slinger), march (the promoted warriors), or fight (I killed the barb slinger, and Alhambram already 'helpfully' cleared the camp. ). No pictures, and I'm tired of sitting in this Starbucks so I'll see everyone on Monday hopefully with restored Internet.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

In lieu of a turn report, I wrote this eulogy for my dog today. I hope this will suffice today.

I first met Sam the summer I turned eleven years old. It was a tough time for me. My parents had recently divorced and I was moving to a new school in the fall. I was leaving the few friends I had managed to make in my first couple of years of elementary school, and I would have a hard time making new ones that fall. 

I didn't do well, socially, in school (or anywhere, really). It was like everyone else was reading from a script that I didn't have access to, and I was forced to muddle along as best I could, trying to learn my lines, failing embarrassingly most of the time. 

Sam was my reprieve from all that. When she came to us, that hot summer so long ago now, she was so small she could fit into the my sixth grader's palm. Just a few weeks old, she was all black and brown fur and floppy ears and a warm, wet nose. My brother, after the excitement of watching the race to break Roger Maris's home run record two years before, was obsessed with Sammy Sosa. So, the new puppy naturally had to be named Sammy - Sam, for short. 

I thought she was perfect. 

While I struggled to make friends, struggled to relate to my peers, Sam never judged me. She was happy to see me every day when I got home from school. Now, all dogs are happy to see their families, but I was special. Sam always reserved her most enthusiastic greetings for me. She and I played together, romped around the house and backyard together, she chose to sleep in my bed above all others, to beg from my plate - for my middle school years, we were inseparable. I know that everyone thinks their dog is the best dog in the world, but I *knew* Sam was truly the best, because she was /my/ dog. 

Well, time passes, people and dogs grow up, and gradually I spent less and less time with Sam. I had to go away to college, and on my increasingly infrequent visits home she was as pleased as ever to see me, but I could tell that gradually her people that lived at home were replacing me in her heart. Every time I saw her, she was a little grayer, a little slower, but I loved her no less for it. But the whole time, in the back of my mind, I knew this day was coming.

This is part of the terrible bargain we've made. We invite dogs into our homes and our lives, and we love them, and they love us, but always we have to be aware of the price: We will outlive them one day. 

In recent years, Sam was too slow to sprint around the block, as she used to with me. She couldn't bend her knees well enough to play in the living room. Her vision wasn't quite sharp enough to intercept a meatball on its fall from the stove to the floor anymore. Gradually, she was declining. And I told myself that this day would come soon, that someday even Sam would have to leave me. I thought I was mentally prepared for it. 

I wasn't. 

She hasn't even been gone a full day yet and I already miss her so, so much. I've said farewell to other pets before, but Sam was the one constant in my life. I could always count on her warm greetings when I went home. I always knew that to one creature, at least, I was their favorite person in the world. I always knew that my oldest friend couldn't wait to see me again. Now, though, that's not the case. 

I just wanted to share a little bit about her, as I say goodbye. She was the best dog in the world, guys. She really was. 

Goodbye, Sam. I'll see you in dreams.

[Ichabod]

My condolences, mate.

And I'll use this moment to say that I really like your updates. They are the ones that I wait for the most recently.

[pindicator]

That's really beautifully written Chevalier.

[aetryn]

That's really beautifully written Chevalier.

I second that. I still remember when we had to take the cat I grew up with to be put down.

[aetryn]

With the pantheon secured, and noting your above concerns about military competitiveness, I'm wondering if it might be a good idea to be a bit cautious in the opening stages so as not to get yourself targeted. It seems like you have a pretty decent amount of land and several long-term advantages, so time plays into your hands. Obviously you'd like to get DotF, and you want to get some Seowons down if only for the yield bonus to other tiles. And again, I make no claim to be good at Civ6 or this format in particular, but here's a crazy idea: Try looking competitive with military, at least enough to deter aggression, and non-threatening economically. This syncs up well with a Classical Dark Age -> Medieval Heroic age. Get lots of builders out for chops and positioned, get some faith banked through some early chops for settlers or a couple Seowons (not too many, as they will give you double Empire score, which will make other players nervous, and beakers per turn, which will make them even MORE nervous). Then when you hit the Medieval age, go nuts with chopping and science (chopping the rest of your Seowons or CH to feed faith into purchasing libraries or more units). At that point, you might have enough of a military base to upgrade (and faith to purchase more) that even if you have a target on your back it will be hard for your neighbors to mount a successful invasion. Then, when you get enough of a tech lead you can go out stomping  . I'm not entirely sure this kind of "slowplay" will work - anyone that's run some SP R&F games should understand that Korea is a dangerous civ to leave alone regardless of what their current numbers look like - but there are enough other metagame factors in these long form MP games that you could fly enough under the radar until you are ready to make your move.

Agreed on all counts. That's sort of what I have in mind as an overall gameplan, in fact. The trouble is restraining myself with Magnus in play. I ran another test game with Provision enabled and simply roared past the AI in number of cities, districts, everything. And that was in single player where I wasn't carefully maximizing every chop, syncing policy swaps with builds, or anything like that - if I'm not careful, I'll paint a huge target on my back with too many cities and districts too fast. 

The other side of the coin, though, is I can't throttle myself too much, either, because the other players will ALSO grow exponentially. I maaaaay have a slight edge in founding cities thanks to noticing the Provision combo, but let's be honest - it's not exactly rocket surgery. I can't count on other players restraining their settler chops to limit population loss, and most of them will probably go for the Ancestral Hall, too (I'm really nervous about not taking it, but you gotta try new things, and besides, if I don't take it playing as Korea, when DOES it make sense to take Audience Chamber?). 

Right now I want to get the land first. If I have the land, and the units to defend it, then when we get to the medieval age or so I can tech upward like mad and laugh at efforts to stop me, particularly with AI diplo and the inland sea making coordination between my neighbors tough.

Actually I'm coming around to Audience Chamber more. The double district bonus policy cards now all require a city size of 10 and a good adjacency. Both of these encourage thoughtful placement of fewer cities with lots of food capability and good district placements over maximum wideness. While I think it would definitely be a mistake to settle only 8 cities and try some kind of pure tall strategy, it still might be worth it to have 4-5 cities that are focused on growing to 10+ and pushing out the good districts with a governor to help them with the Amenities and Housing. Especially early, +4 housing is enough with some city improvements and fresh water to get you close to 10, and the Amenity obviously helps as well. Plus I think (but haven't tested) that population in excess of housing just doesn't grow further - it's possible you could use a governor to grow a city to 10, then move that governor elsewhere and, even though the city won't grow to 11 until much later, it would still qualify for the 4th district and bonuses through policy cards.  Add in Korea's bonus to governors, the new policy card that further enhance cities with governors (another +1/+1 to Amenities and Housing if you have a governor with promotions), and the limited lifespan of settling bonuses in a game setup like this, and I think it may even be a better choice in this game.

Don't get me wrong, Ancestral Hall is amazing too, but it's also come down a bit in my estimation. Liang gives builders an extra charge, which kind of encourages setting up a builder-pump city, and the "free" builders from Ancestral Hall won't benefit from that and will inflate the cost of produced builders. Plus, a number of times I've had the free builder do one improvement and then sit around for many turns waiting for borders to pop (or Magnus to become available for a chop). It's still obviously free production which is good, I just think it's slightly less good than it looks.

One more issue with Provision and Magnus that you haven't mentioned yet: it can make it impossible to see settlers appearing when monitoring player score (because there's no corresponding pop drop). That makes it even more clear to take the land, since you may have lagging intel on how expansive your neighbors are being. So yeah, settle the cities and build the units to protect them, and if you have slightly lagging districts/economy for a while, that can hopefully be fixed later.

Again, agreed on all counts. Empire Score is all I have for the moment, though, until Rowain or Archduke sends a scout over here. It'll be a while before I can spare the unit to wander down that way - but I SHOULD make an effort to scout the world. There could be really fantastic city-states out there that I should compete for, although that's unlikely with Valetta in the backyard and needing most of my envoy attention.

Down the line it might make sense to cram out some quick scout builds. Do scouts profit from Agoge? If so, I could use them to boost a Magnus chop. 

Scouts don't benefit from Agoge.

I realized that I probably should have done that after I passed on the save - at least for the slinger, because the warrior I needed to get my per-turn production down to 11, which was really tough with the population I had. The individual citizen micro to manage overflows is one of my weaknesses - you note I'm very bad at remembering details in general. I get mixed up when certain policy cards come online or go obsolete, what techs are needed for which units (or to chop certain resources  ), which governments do what (I even posted the governments and then a few hours later was chattering about 600% Monarchy-Limes-Magnus chops, completely missing even in my own post about updated governments that, guess what? Monarchy doesn't boost walls anymore. I, uh, wasn't going to share that because it was embarrassing when I caught it, but oops, forgot that, too), and so on. That's something I'd really like to improve on. 

Anyway, gameplan for now is to work on the wonder slow-building while my builder hurries over to the deer to chop. I haven't run the numbers, but deer SHOULD be as good as a stone chop (bonus resources yield equal production, right?), and then I can chop the forest on the very next turn. That might get us back on course to our original Henge timeline, albeit slightly delayed. Hopefully not a fatal delay. 

Military units continue to either flee (the wounded slinger), heal (the injured warrior an slinger), march (the promoted warriors), or fight (I killed the barb slinger, and Alhambram already 'helpfully' cleared the camp. ). No pictures, and I'm tired of sitting in this Starbucks so I'll see everyone on Monday hopefully with restored Internet.

Yeah, I struggle with forgetting things, since you can't queue up things like "swap out production when there's one turn left on this". I've started to establish a routine of checking every city production queue, and my tech/civic research, at the end of the turn to see if there's anything that needs switching (usually only things with 1 turn left except in extraordinary circumstances). I usually set up the citizen micro for chops when I slot the build in, and if I forget to revisit them (to add an additional production or two that couldn't be present for all turns but can for a couple) before reaching the 1-turn mark, it's not usually the end of the world, especially since Civ 6's habit of tracking everything to 2 decimals but not displaying any of that means you don't want to cut things that close.

I also, um, leave notes with things to remember next to my capital or someplace convenient. Things like "remember to buy tiles then switch out of Land Surveyors!" or "Switch production next turn". I've started keeping a pinned note with the A and C values from the formula, so I know where I stand without having to go look up tech and count completed districts all over the empire. Not sure how secure notes are in MP these days - I know there were some issues in PBEM7. But that's another thing I usually glance at before pressing End Turn.

Still, my biggest sloppiness issue is remembering to swap/evaluate swapping policy cards when a civic completes. It asks at the very beginning of the turn, then shunts my screen off to unit movement. For whatever reason, this is NOT when I am ready to consider the policy swap - I want to get a general idea of what the empire is doing first, and the UI fights you on that until you finish moving your units. Then I forget to come back to it. I THINK I've solved this by refusing to set a new Civic research until I've checked Policies, since it does give you a nag about that.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Thank you for your kind words, everyone - Sam was a part of my life for 18 years, nearly 2/3 of my total lifespan to this point! A very long life for a dog, and she was well-loved and cherished through all of it. But you're never really ready for that last day. 

Anyway, I'm mostly put together again, and so I can attempt a turn report. 

Turn 48

The last turn I played before Sam took a turn for the worse was turn 46, when I attempted to chop Stonehenge only to remember (when the game helpfully reminded me) that you can't harvest stone without masonry! So, I somewhat sheepishly swapped research over to that, and moved the builder over towards the deer instead. This will cost me a couple of turns marching, BUT the upside is I can harvest two turns in a row (first the deer, then the forest) so I get one turn back that way. New plan will be to harvest the stone into settlers instead - it seems to make sense to tap out a lot of the early chops here, then I can swap Magnus out for Pingala or Liang to make JRTI a builder or research city. It also makes the most sense to me to chop out settlers quickly and claim the land, then build the districts more conventionally later since there's not as much of a race for those. As long as I keep up in science/culture, so that my enemies don't reach key military units or governments before I do, I should be fine with this approach. 

I think I've all but got my slinger saved, knock on wood:




By my calculations, the barbs can't cut it off from the city center now, and I'll have another warrior/slinger coming out as part of the Henge chop to provide more cover. I'm still dead last in Domination score, and my time to rebuild my military is fast shrinking. Goal is to reach Archery before the DoFs expire and upgrade my 3/4 slingers into an archer force, which should keep me relatively safe until swords take the field. DOTF, if this Stonehenge gamble works, will also assure my turtle-dom. 

Alhambram seems to have spent his first Magnus chop on a Campus:




That's fine by me. As a result, I have dropped to 4th place in science - Alhambram and Japper have ~8.9 science each, while I'm coming along right behind at 8. I AM working my mercury tile, so I don't have any more up my sleeve, but I DO have a seowon on the map but not finished yet - best grab the wonder first and then the district. I'm not worried about my tech rates, and my culture is the highest of any civ I have contact with (no idea how Rowain and Archduke are doing, but Rowain is highest rated in both science and culture). Just need to fix that domination score so I don't look tasty and I'll be okay. 

On turn 49, I continue racing my slinger to safety:




The injured barb scout is also cleared up by one of my returning warriors. Next turn the builder will reach the chop site, and on turn 51 we'll commence the Stonehenge chop. Turn 52 we should finish the wonder, and also most of our Seowon. Turn 53-54ish we finish the Seowon and then State Workforce, and start the Magnus settler pump. I need one more builder here to chop - next up after the district - then settlers. OCISLY will finish a builder and go military until I finish settler chopping up north, then Magnus will come down here and I'll start chopping settlers for the south. 

That's a pretty late timeline, so I expect Alhambram to be aggressive in settling towards me. He'll get the natural wonder for sure, but I wrote that off long ago. It'll be interesting to see if he grabs the spot near A Startling Lack of Gravitas, though - it's on a river, and it's the only fresh water between us, but it's pretty close to my borders already. If he does settle there, I think I can combine the Audience Chamber with Amani and a concave settlement pattern and play some loyalty games at the right time. It'll be neat to see if I can exploit that mechanic. 

Finally, a bit of diplomatic news:


 

Alhambram has denounced an unmet player! I know he's Friends with Rowain, so this must be the Archduke. Is this in support of Rowain, as the Archduke is threatening him with a rush? Is Alhambram trying to warn the Mongols off his neighbor? Dunno. I'd really like to get a fuller picture of the situation over there, but with what units? 

Anyway, next turn is a final set-up turn, then we start our wonder chop. No score update, I was too distracted to take a picture.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 50

Welcome back, everyone, to another exciting episode wherein I pretend as if I know what I'm doing when I play this game (spoilers: I actually don't). Today I remembered to check the score screen and get a picture of the game state! Good for me! 

Anyway, let's start the turn with a mystery. As you guys know, because you religiously keep track of all of my units, I've had a warrior healing out west for the last five turns or so after a barb horseman kamikazed itself on the warrior. Today, I got a notification from that warrior. Was he attacked!? Well, no. Is he healed and ready to move? Er, not quite:




He, uh, has a promotion? 

This is NOT the warrior that murdered the random barb scout last turn. This guy has been doing nothing but stand here for more than a week now. I got no notification that a unit of mine had been attacked...so where the hell did that XP come from? I have no idea. I don't know how anything in this game works. Well, in some bafflement I take Battlecry, and he's all healed up. In retrospect, I could have taken a single step towards home first, but what the hell, if I lose, it's going to be because of much larger mistakes than that. 

Another error is in my favor! I forgot where I left my builder and it turns out it's chop time already! Wooo! Let's take a look:




(Our adventurous slinger is almost home)

Now, this deer tile is going to become way less attractive a tile after this. HOWEVER it is a forested hill tile NOT next to a river, but it IS next to a seowon. That means a future lumber mill would not get +1 production, but a mine WILL be worth +1 science and can profit from all the mining techs later. In the meantime, I'll suck up just having the bald unimproved hill (I really need Liang - there's going to be a LOT of workers this game. Landing the pyramids would be nice but I have no desert tiles anywhere at all near my empire. Still, imagine 7 charge builders in the middle ages. Someone's getting those. I'm jealous, but 6 charge builders actually ain't too shabby). 

According to my chart, bonus resources all have the same yield - but deer, contrary to giving food like you'd expect, instead add production! They're just as good as stone! Check it out:




43 production, which Magnus doubles to 86, which Agoge then takes to 129. That's more than the chops I'm getting on turn 112 over in PBEM7! -whistles- Not bad. I forgot how much production the warrior needed, let me flip back through the thread to see...-flip-...-flip-...aha, here we are. The warrior got 17 cogs. So I just dumped 112 into Stonehenge. With the wonder already sitting at 52 cogs, that takes the wonder to 164. I generate 12 cogs naturally, so to grab the last 16 I just need two turns! Meaning my next slinger chop will be mostly superfluous, but I can dump the excess into the seowon, coming close to finishing that in 1 turn, then I can grab State Workforce by t52 or 53, and be chopping settlers as soon as I finish another builder. Woo! We'll chop the stone and the future Holy Site Hill into 3 settlers, then shift Magnus hopefully by turn 60 or so and do the same in the south. 




I think I'll wait on the second chop, though. I have to wait until the end of turn to dump the overflow anyway, and it's just 4 cogs. May as well do it natively, then chop on t52. Slinger gets 14 cogs, Seowon gets 8 overflow + 1.5(2(36)) = 102 total cogs, it only costs 46 so I overflow 56 (+12 more native) into a builder, which costs 62 as well. So that's our timeline: 

T52 stonehenge
T53 Seowon (+slinger)
T54 Builder
T55 step on rice, settler is building
T56 step on stone, settler is building 
T57 chop stone for ~140 production into settler. Settler will be at 36/110, so settler finishes with ~70 overflow into next settler. 
T58 step on hill, settler is at ~88
T59 Chop hill for ~120 production, settler is at ~224/140, overflow ~80 cogs into next settler. 
Next settler needs ~90 cogs or 5 turns to finish, so we move Magnus right on turn 60. no need for provision. One pop point won't hurt. 

We'll go slower at OCISLY, but there's more jungle to chop. I think I can get 3 settlers out of there in a reasonable time frame. It takes 7 turns to build a builder there, so start a builder by t58. 

Scores:






Near the bottom as everyone builds campuses. No worries. Seowons are cheap and there's no "first to" bonuses for tech, unlike religion. Stonehenge si the right use of my chops. Alhambram leads with 2 campuses, then Emperor, Japper, and Rowain all have 1. Archduke and I have none - Archduke might be going Encampment first. 

Alhambram and Archduke have 5 civics, everyone else has 4, except Rowain, who has 7! Ziggurats give culture, right? That plus a culture state might explain it. Most everyone has 6 techs, except Japper, with 7, and Rowain, with 8. Alhambram's tech rate is up to 9.8, Japper is 9.4, Emperor is only at 7.5. I'm pacing the field comfortably at 8, which will of course shoot up to 12 on turn 53. No rush there. Culture, I lead all my neighbors - 8.3 to 6.3 (the Dutch), 5.7 (the Georgians), and 5.4 (the Cree). 

Let's break down Empire. Rowain leads with 27. 1 Campus, 3 cities, 8 total pop? He has had Magnus for a while and could be chopping settlers like mad, building ziggurats with the leftovers.  Could be it. Japper has 24. Two cities and a district, 9 total pop. Alhambram has 23 - 2 districts, 2 cities, 6 total pop. Emperor and I have 22. I have 2 cities and no districts, with 9 total pop, so Emperor must have 6 pop with his campus. Archduke has 21 and no districts, so one less pop than I do. I think I got some of those numbers wrong. 5 points per city, 1 for the palace, 3 for each district, and 1 per pop, right? 

I am dead last in the useless Era score.