[Spoilers] Pindicator already misses slavery, and other out-of-context quotes

[Japper007]

I agree mostly but:

DotF is strong BUT it is also a sizeable investment: there is the cost of the Holy Sites, and the oppertunity cost of not using one of the other strong beliefs available. I do agree though that it is too good for civs that want a religion anyway (Spain) or that can get one cheaply (Russia, Japan).

I think the scaling on districts is too steep yeah, and it leads to the stupid locking in, overflow, discount farming and other exploiting nonsense that just adds tons of tedious and unnessesary micro to the game. I think it'd be perfectly reasonable if Districts didn't scale at all. But I'm fine with the Builders/Trader/Settler ones. Before the Settlers were increased in cost the whole game basically boiled down to getting to Early Empire and spamming cities until you ran out of map.

Chopping is just a strange mechanic, but its main problem derives mostly from another broken mechanic: overflow. It just shouldn't apply bonuses to things that aren't boosted: if you play Vikings in R&F you can get 250% hammer bonuses (Magnus+Viking shipbuilding boost+Ship production boost policies). I was able to get wonders to one turn in a newly founded city by chopping into quadrimes. This is a pretty easy fix: devide out overflow, I can't believe Firaxis doesn't get this

[Ichabod]

Absolutely agree, Pindicator.

The hammer cost scaling is not only about districts/settlers/builders (the costs that scale during the game). Those actually work fine, since it's more organic (well, there's the problem that, without chops, new cities will never ever build a district). The problem is the scaling of fixed cost production, like units, buildings and wonders. After a certain point, they cost way too much for the benefit given (buildings/wonders) or have different ways of acquisition that are way better (faith purchasing and upgrades, in the case of units).

Housing is a problem, because cities are just too weak right now. The dependence on hill tiles is also very bad, even worse (well, I guess there's the option of planting forests and lumbermills for flat tiles, but that's way more costly - perhaps not even worth -, and depends on rivers as well). Cities after a point (and that point is not that far from midgame, I'd say) are just chop fodder, you either have things to chop, or the city will likely never come close to repay its costs.

I think the problems you point out are way more serious than they appear on a first glance, Pindi.

[pindicator]

Turn 168

After the last few missteps it was nice to have a turn where everything went right.  Well, mostly right.

In the inland ocean, Alhambram decided his privateer was gone and so he threw him against my caravel in a hope of removing my last boat able to capture coastal towns.  I don't have any plans on continuing up into his core, but I guess it's nice to have the option if I were to decide to later on.




I used my caravel to attack first (to keep it away from the coast), which gave it enough XP for a promotion.  Then a frigate came down to finish off the privateer.  My own privateer I sent east, to the other side of the narrows.  I'm going to try to spy out what Alhambram has on that side of the straight and then just keep my distance.  With the narrow sea lanes in the east it is really easy for a naval force to get pinned down, and I'm going to just keep to my wide open inner waters.  Especially now that I have control over them.

My other two frigates in the screenshot patrolled the northern shore and angled west.  However, as I mentioned last turn, they probably won't be needed.




Wow!  Somehow he killed a frigate and almost killed a 2nd!  My guess is that his frigate and the back field cannon teamed up on he foremost frigate, and the field cannon in the city rolled high and really hurt my own cannon.  He also moved up a musket to try to keep me from having enough units to take Coimbra. Coimbra had no walls and 181hp.

The first thing I tried to sort out was how to kill the musket to open up more attacking lanes to Coimbra.  And then I realized I had enough firepower in range that as long as I rolled average I would be able to take Coimbra anyway.  Another reason to take Coimbra first: the musket was getting +4 support bonus for both the frigate and the field cannon inside of the city, and removing that bonus then adding my DotF bonus would make killing it theoretically easy. I could even bring a field cannon, bombard, and a pair of muskets against Tangiers' encampment after. The attacks took a little bit of coordination to make sure I wasn't wasting units and keep spaces open for future attacks, but they went like so:

First the bombard in Al-Majrit moved up to road tiles to the horses. Those are last 2 modern roads in the area, so I will not be able to move 2 tiles before firing after this turn. The bombard hit for 39. The frigates fired next, keeping their same positions: 45 and 26 damage on the two shots. Overall I was a little below average but close enough. Coimbra was at 71hp, and I had a field cannon available to come up if I needed it. Some quick math suggested I didn't need it. My cavalry on the desert hill moved up next, dealing 53 damage. And I saved my Commando musket for last, to deliver the final touch:




Guess we found out where the cavs went, but this is only half of them. It looks like his mamluks are mostly at Lleida. And that battering ram could make life difficult against Coimbra.

Repeat the same tactics at Al-Majrit: buy the first two levels of walls for 190 faith overall. Mechanic learned: if you buy walls mid-turn you cannot then also attack with those walls against enemy units the same turn. I had mentioned doing that earlier in the game, so it's good to know that you actually cannot.

Brought up the missionary with 1 charge left and spent him, so I wouldn't have to worry about juggling so many religious units, and then we moved the inquisitor to the cavalry and removed all Weedy religious influences from the city. (Are inquisitors too strong? Should they be restricted to cities out of occupation?) And with that, I had majority religion and DotF in a lot of tiles in the area. Previously, Alhambram had smartly swapped tiles away from Al-Majrit so I wouldn't get as much territory to work with. But he really didn't have the option here with how Tangiers and Coimbra are set up. True, there were a couple tiles he could have given Tangiers, but it's not a huge change overall.

From here, I may have gotten greedy. I could have easily killed the musket with field cannon, bombard blast, and cavalry. Except the cavalry could also reach that field cannon and I really wanted to eliminate that. Plus, the cavalry would take up one of the tiles that Alhambram could potentially attack my city from, and it also covered the only square that he could use to fire. I would be attacking at a great strength advantage too:




1hp left! I had attacked at +29 strength after all modifiers were counted, so this was technically still an above-average roll, but I really could have used 1 more damage here! No, there was no way to bring up another unit, and sadly the walls could not fire. Hopefully the cavalry survives the turn and can retreat. With 86 strength defending I think it has a good chance.

Well, at least we'll have 2 units with DotF to fire against the musket and kill it. The field cannon moved up and blasted, and so did the second bombard. +24 for the field cannon rolled low, doing only 69 damage. And then the bombard connected for 30. Another unit with 1hp left! How many units have I left him with 5hp or less this war??? So yeah, that's frustrating, despite the otherwise good turn.




How I left things. I decided not to move up against the encampment and instead moved my muskets to make sure the bombards were covered. No reason to get careless now and give him an opening to snipe my bombards.

Across my cities I'm totalling -13 amenities. It would be really nice if I could take Tangiers before the enforced war period is up and be able to ask for peace as soon as the 10 turns are done.

[pindicator]

By the way, with the earlier discussion, I agree with Ichabod 100% here. It's not so much the scaling production costs, it's a combination of base costs of buildings and units being so high in the late game, and that combined with districts being tweaked just a little too high. Maybe not. My 2nd wave cities (the ones I took from Japper and the ones I planted after) can make a district in about 20 turns right now, which is probably a good number for them being underdeveloped at this stage in the game. But it means a new city has really hard time to get up and running, to the point where it doesn't seem worth building settlers.

But worse are the unit costs. Units cost as much as districts right now - actually moreso. Early in the game the balance is definitely that units cost less. And the high unit costs also mean that if a player were to have his army wiped then that is likely game-ending for him in multiplayer. If I can corner and wipe out those Arabian cavalry then Alhambram will likely never be able to replace them in any realistic timeframe. And with the 3 cities i have building Rough Riders - they aren't slouches on production, but they are going to take 14-18 turns each to complete. I could research up to tanks in that timeframe - so there's definitely some imbalance between not just production but also how production relates to research in the lategame.

[pindicator]

Turn 169

Got in late last night so after I got the turn played I just went to bed.




It took Alhambram 2 field cannon shots, a cavalry hit, and an encampment shot to kill my wounded musket. I've maybe been a little too cavalier about losing units; war weariness has now gotten to -17 overall, meaning every city is at -1 currently. However, I will certainly take this trade as it leaves open units that I can now easily mop up on my turn.

Alhambram used his units by Coimbra to pillage rather than attack: the university at the campus, the wat at the holy site, and a mine in the northern turndra.




I first used the frigates since they could only hit the wounded musket. My own wounded frigate moved south and promoted it. I then accidentally moved a musket instead of the intended frigate, but that shouldn't cause any problems. And finally I moved my healthy frigate over and attacked the musket, killing it and earning another promotion. I'm not sure which ranged naval promotion line I want to emphasize in this inner sea, so I'll split how I promote these two units.




This is why I say DotF is too strong. I'm getting attacks where I can 1- and 2- shot Alhambram's units and Alhambram is taking 4 attacks to kill 1 of mine. His Great Generals are countering my America starting continent bonus. So the only real difference between our armies is DotF.

Unfortunately I rolled low on this attack and his cavalry was left with 5hp. I also made a bit of a mistake in moving the musket forward. I was gambling that the cavalry would die and then my musket could move up onto the flatland, but now that I realize how the battle took shape afterwards, this would have just put the musket in the way of what I wanted to do. It would have been better to just retreat him and keep him on the road network.

The next step was to move the 2 muskets closest to Alhambram's encampment up (the ones on the tea and desert hill), towards the encampment. Then the field cannon by Al-Majrit could move to the tea, which would open up the space for the bombards to get to the right tiles for attacking the encampment. Another mistake here: as I moved the observation balloon into Al-Majrit I forgot about the battering ram and accidentally swapped positions of the two units. I don't think I'll need the battering ram though, so having it on an unroaded hill didn't turn out to be a costly mistake.




While I think bombards and observation balloons are strong, I don't think they're doing quite as big a lift in this fight because bombards can only effectively hit fortified structures. If I attack any unit out in the open I'm hit with a -17 penalty, much like a field cannon would get for attacking an encampment or city. (I wonder if the fort improvement also uses this mechanic: switching a unit's defense so field cannons are less effective and bombards more effective?) Against the musket last turn that I had hoped to finish off with my bombard, even with all my bonuses I only did 30 damage to the unit. Against this encampment? I took off the walls entirely with the first shot. With the second shot I did 69 damage to the structure, bringing it to 30hp. I also earned promotions on both bombards this turn!

The musket on the road network then took the encampment, killing the field cannon inside and removing the GG from the battle. Perhaps I should have waited on that first field cannon shot until after the GG was gone; that might have guaranteed the kill on his cavalry!




+37 strength!

You better believe I one-shot that unit.

The field cannon inside of Al-Majrit then moved to the empty grassland tile between my muskets, the one beside the encampment on the road netework, and finished off the 5hp cavalry to completely remove all of Alhambram's units here.

And I misspoke before. The musket on the desert hill didn't move until after this screenshot. Now that I could see inside Tangiers and knew there weren't any more units in the fog I positioned my melee troops to defend the field cannons. Alhambram could possibly bring his cavalry west here and try to take on these ground troops, but his best bet I think is to write this off until he has better units, and pick his battles farther east, where the terrain is more open and the increased spacing between cities gives me less ability to bunny-hop along with DotF bonuses.

He already left his units too close: I finished by using the city walls at Coimbra to fire on the near cavalry, and then moved up my last field cannon into the city itself to try to make the kill. 18 damage from the city walls, 73 from the field cannon. And once again, I fail to kill a unit and leave it with less than 10hp.




This was the first turn I got to engage Alhambram's forces in the field and it was very decisive. Trading that musket between turns to draw out his field cannons was a very good trade for me. If I have counted right, the tally for units lost is now along the lines of:

Me - 2 caravels, 1 frigate, 1 musket
Alhambram - 2 frigates, 1 privateer, 3 field cannons, 1 musket, 1 cavalry

The thing that has me considering ending the war, though, is war weariness. With every city now at -1 amenities, I'm not sure that pushing on is going to be in my interest yet. In addition: I'm near to accomplishing the goals I set out for. So in 5 turns when I'm able, assuming I've captured Tangiers by then, I'll offer peace to Alhambram and see how he reacts.







Two big builds finished this turn: the arts theater at Forgottonia, and the archaeologist at Jefferson. I thought about sending this first archaeologist to dig up sites near Krill - ones I may not be able to grab later - but decided that it's more important to clear out any spots first that are on tiles I may want to work myself. There weren't a lot of them that interfered with tiles I want to improve, but there is one out west at Popham, so after I excavate these two I'll head back to Popham to clear out the third.

As for my next builds...




After chopping all the oldgrowth in the western part of Lost Dakota the zoo is now down to 6 turns. I'm also getting the forests in place for my first national park at Jefferson. Yes, this isn't the most efficient park, but this first one is more about getting the Radio eureka, so I went with the location that doesn't require me to buy any tiles.

I'm also building settlers! Without the boost! Actually, I decided to swap off the settler at the capital and now on turn 169 I am finally building a monument at Jefferson But after that we likely will build a settler there too. The settler at Forgottonia is going to claim the Spices island in the inland sea, and the one at Jefferson will go to the west coast for a coastal spot steeped in jungle. There's 2 more spots I'd like to grab: the tobacco and the jade in the outer sea, but I need more of a naval presence out there first. There's also some decent filler spots along the coast that would be nice to have, to also work on that outer navy.

I know i had just dismissed a settler at Forgottonia, but what changed my mind was seeing that the city did not have enough food to sustain it's population. Rather than starve down to 14 I'm going to swap to the upgraded version of Colonization (can't recall it) and then chop out a jungle to help that settler along. And while I'm in colonization we'll see how many more settlers I want to get out. Expect to be over 20 cities soon.

[pindicator]

It looks like the game's been conceded.  Cool beans, I won my first Civ 6 game.  

I will have to read other threads to confirm this, but I think there are a couple distinct reasons why I won:

Faith, Religion, & Valletta
Kudos to Ichabod spotting the winning strategy as soon as I ran into Valletta.  If you go back to his early posts, he was the one who suggested pushing an early religion, and using faith for Valletta alongside Choral Music.  I was already wanting to go for religion, thinking that it had been undervalued in PBEMs 1-4, but Ichabod convinced me to use Choral Music and leave my faith for buying buildings with Valletta.  This gave me a huge jump start in culture, which snowballed new cities getting up and running.

Map in My Favor
This is the one where I need to look, but I had a lot of stone to chop this game, and a huge belt of jungle later on.  I'm not convinced other players were given the same resources, and I suspect it's why I was able to get more infrastructure up.  Also, was there an early war between Krill and CFCJester?  That may go to explain more about why I was able to get a lead.  And we can't discount the GIGANTIC starting continent that was in my favor.  I could have pushed Great Generals to compound the advantage even more, but when I saw all the competition for generals I was able to transform that +5 bonus into going after other districts and great people (engineer, merchant) and letting other people catch up to my bonus with the generals.

Culture lead snowballs the economy
I know people love science, but I think there's room for a culture-heavy strategy.  Being the first to open more government slots, the first to science boosting policies, is fantastic.  In this game I lined up Feudalism into a wave of builders into a Limes & Monarchy wave very nicely, and was able to get a giant lead in development over the other teams. Being first to Rationalism catapulted my science into a lead I never relinquished.  Conservation and lumbermills combined with Steel will help push your production ahead of other teams.  And if Corps weren't bugged, I would have had even better success on the battlefield - but I certainly would have still been first to Armies with the Mobility civic.


There were certainly mistakes made.  My first attempt to take Brussels was almost comic in its failure.  From skimming the lurker thread it seems was completely oblivious to Alhambram and Japper intending to team up on me around turn 120 -- although I'm not sure how that would have benefited Alhambram. I think that I didn't need to take Divine Spark, and would have been better off with Goddess of the Harvest or Earth Goddess for more faith generation.  

Finally, a note on Tourism.  Don't do this in MP.  At least, dont' do it the way I did.  I still think America has good potential for turning on a late-game tourism win from little investment ... but it happens so much later than I thought.  I was still at least 20 turns away from starting to plant down seaside resorts.  And this was already the longest into the tech tree a game here has gone.  Perhaps if you find yourself neck-and-neck late in the game you can look at seaside resorts as a tourism and/or gold source.  But it's not worth shaping a full game's plan around.  I was getting bored wait to get to where I wanted to go ....

That said, National Parks are still worth looking at if you find yourself needing amenities late in the game.  Each park adds 6 amenities to your empire.

[Japper007]

You clearly demonstrated the strength of Choral Music this game. I severely underrated its strenght untill I saw you easely pull ahead of my Rome in culture around the 100 turn mark. Congratulations a well deserved win indeed

[Ichabod]

Congrats, Pindicator!

I think the strategy you used this game is very strong, and I can't see many other ways to compete with it. Culture lead is very, very strong. As you pointed out, being first to feudalism, Limes, Monarchy and key policies gives a huge edge. I think it can work out even without Valetta, even though it helps.

Perhaps going full military can beat it, but only by conquering other Civs, because DoF is just too big of an edge for the player that gets first religion.


And to think you did it with a subpar Civ! Very well played!

[Ituralde]

Congratulations on a well played and well reported game. The win was well deserved in my eyes.

I miss your turn reports already!

[oledavy]

Congratulations on the win Pindicator, well played 

If you're up for it, in a few weeks (think mid-May), after I wrap up the semester, move, and make sure I have internet up and running, I would love to start a new PBEM if you're interested in joining. Although, I understand if you want to start one sooner than that

Anyway, congrats again on a well-earned victory.