Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[roland of gilead]

Turn 126 Seems late for the great lighthouse anyway. 

Dealing with England at sea is going to be brutal. Any ship left alive will be able to flee easily to repair. 

I am no expert but getting a naval tech advantage will be hard if they prioritize it and they surely will. They won't be able to keep up on land and sea though i suspect. 

This is going to get really bloody. 

Really really.

[Modo]

Somehow I sense really bloody is right up Singaboy's alley...and Sullla is also probably more motivated than it's safe to be to smack England around

And almost all four teams will need every advantage in a war of attrition once China / Rome start throwing their weight around, I still can't get past the fact that Russia is a non-factor yet is the only one in their duo that could act before Rome / China. Never played MP but this sounds very bad when you give first strike to an opponent like that and basically forfeit the initiative.

It looks like it will be a war between China / Rome and England with three supports....protect the Kog'Maw Hail Mary comp.

[Sullla]

Hmmm, England building the Great Lighthouse isn't ideal but I don't think that it's critical either. Chevalier's naval units were already going to be 2 movement points faster than my ships, now they're 3 movement points faster. Does that really make a huge difference? While the Great Lighthouse is one of those things that would have been nice to have, I don't think it's too terrible for us. England was already likely to get the first strike in on us when it comes to warfare, and England still remains likely to get the first strike. Chevalier is limited though by the speed of his Great Admirals though - if he wants them present for a major fleet engagement, he has to move at their speed and they don't go as fast. Fortunately Singaboy also didn't waste any resources that would have gone into the wonder build, nor did he have to spend the gold to purchase a tile. That's a small bit of good news there.

On your A/B question, I would definitely go with the Commercial district over the Colossus. For me, it's as simple as not spending the 140 gold to purchase a tile and investing that instead into more unit upgrades. Even the 50 gold from the barbarian camp will help there, and every gold coin is precious right now. It's just not worth it to spend 140 gold to get a single trade route (and some minor faith and gold/turn income) when we could build the Commercial district instead for 8 gold/turn. Not the most exciting choice but that's what we need. Too bad that you already have a Harbor district there so you won't get a trade route out of it.

Singaboy, you should be aware for your planning that I don't intend to complete The Enlightenment right away, and instead hold it at 1 turn from completion for a little bit to try and set up a double policy swap exchange with Colonialism in a few turns. Instead of Turn 129, you should plan on something closer to Turn 132 or Turn 133 for The Enlightenment to finish. You will be getting the boost for Exploration civic next turn though, as that will complete at the start of my next turn. We really have to juggle our policies here, between keeping science/culture/gold/faith incomes as high as possible while also slipping in periods of Serfdom and Professional Army. And right before the fighting starts, we'll want to slot in Wars of Religion policy as well: +4 strength for all units when fighting civs that follow another religion. That's almost a free Great General against Russia and Germany. I'm not even sure if they researched Reformed Church civic since neither of them are in Theocracy for a government. I wouldn't be surprised if TheArchduke skipped that optional part of the civics tree and then has to go scramble to pick up the policy. It's very easy to miss if you haven't played a religious game before.

About which opponents to fight: I would also prefer to be facing Woden instead of TheArchduke. Woden has not impressed me with his tactical decisions in past game, and from the limited knowledge we have in this game, it seems like he struggled against Cornflakes. I mean, it took him almost 20 turns to capture three cities from Khmer despite having a significant edge in power, technology, and double Great Generals. I still don't know how his forced ended up capturing the Khmer capital from the EAST at the end instead of the west. Anyway though, this is one of those situations where we don't have much of a choice. We are likely to be up against both of the other two teams for the remainder of this game, and this upcoming Turn 135 to Turn 146 window is our best chance to attack one of those teams without the other one being able to join in. If we can successfully capture the German canal cities and get the Roman navy into the western ocean, the game will open up for us from there. We've spotted that Woden has some highly exposed cities on that body of water and England doesn't appear to have any cities present. If we're lucky, we'll capture/raze a significant part of TheArchduke's empire, burn down Woden's cities on the western ocean, and then have Steel tech researched and ready to go to defend our holdings elsewhere when Turn 146 rolls around. That's probably our best opportunity to induce a concession from the other teams.

And I agree that our units are going to have to be careful not to trip over one another in these upcoming turns. We'll need to coordinate carefully when war breaks out.

[timmy827]

Sullla,

What is the high appeal of Colonialism?  Is it just being able to set up a double civics swap, or the envoys?  Is colonial taxes useful at all (I don't remember where the continent borders on this map are)?  Curious at the Astronomy research for that boost since Astro leads to nothing else you've identified as a medium-term tech goal.

As a general question (looking at the 'useless military engineer forts' boost), do you have a rough rule of thumb for hammer:beaker (or hammer:culture for civics) that you're willing to spend to get a boost, when the build for the boost is of little other use like those forts?

[Trasson]

As a general question (looking at the 'useless military engineer forts' boost), do you have a rough rule of thumb for hammer:beaker (or hammer:culture for civics) that you're willing to spend to get a boost, when the build for the boost is of little other use like those forts?

Obviously not Sullla here, but seeing as how I'm bored between classes I figured I'd take a shot at analyzing this.

I'd say that's a pretty good question. Earlier, Sullla was running two Campus Projects. This was part of the goal to get a GS, which would be worth the Enlightenment boost. Enlightenment is, if I'm looking at the pictures right, something around 700 culture (Sullla's turn 124 image shows 4 turns to discover with the boost in place at 86 cpt). These projects were also worth about 3 beakers per turn each (since Rome's science dropped from ~154 to ~148 once the projects were finished). At the time Firenze started its project, it was 182 production. While discovering more civics in the process would increase this, it's close enough that I'll just run with it. This 182 only took 4 turns to finish, due to chopped overflow.

182 production got 4 turns of 3 bpt, or 12 science. Additionally, it contributed towards 300 odd culture. I'm not sure how correct these numbers are, but I think it's on the right track.

Incidentally, if I'm reading things right, military engineers cost 170 production (Civ 6 wiki). Ballistics was 7 turns to research at Rome's ~140 bpt on turn 121, with nothing put into it yet. This makes Ballistics somewhere around 900 beakers, meaning the Military Engineer's 170 production is worth about 450 beakers.

Now, this comparison is a bit apples to oranges: if Rome didn't need the projects to get the third GP before Enlightenment was finished, then the projects did not actually contribute 300 some culture. That being said, a district project contributes some small amount of science. In the above, 182 production converted into 12 science. Constructing the Engineer converts 170 production into 450 beakers. But what does that mean?

Well, luckily, we already have an equivalency. You can cash rush units at 4 gold per 1 production. In the above example, the military engineer could have been purchased at 170*4 or 680 gold.

What's 680 gold worth? Well, gold can be used to patronize Great People, at 15 gold per point remaining plus a flat cost of 200. Thus, 680 gold is worth 480/15=32 GPP. That district project above was worth about 43 GPP. How GPP converts to science/culture could vary, but let's go with our contemporary example: The Enlightenment. Assuming that the project was the difference in whether you scored the boost or not (era changing with someone ahead of you, just plain researching it faster, whatever), then that 32-43 GPP could be worth half the cost of The Enlightenment. As covered, we're talking 300-350 culture.

So, the Engineer looks like a great build.

What's the takeaway? Building the military engineer at 170 production for 450 beakers is an even more efficient proposition than building a campus project for GPP for 350 culture. This is, of course, discounting the effect of the recruited Great Person, but there's other factors discounted as well; most notably that you may be going for getting The Enlightenment's boost sooner as opposed to Ballistic's boost at all. I'm also discounting the thought that the constructed forts could be of use. But really, who isn't? The real discounted factor is that a Campus Project is the Civ 6 version of building Research in Civ 4. Here, 180 production converted into 12 science with the project, while 170 production converts into 450 science with the Engineer.

I can't give you the exact ratio that it becomes "worth it", but if running a project to nab a GP for a boost is worth it, the military engineer build is incredibly worth it. If you just look at the available options for converting production into science/culture, then building the Engineer goes from "really good idea" to something like "why are you not doing this? Do you just enjoy losing or something?".

In the process of this, I was checking some formulas on CivFanatics, and apparently the yield of a District Project is 15% of the production. For example, with 186 production, we get just under 28 science. I don't know how that works with overflow/chopping/whatever, but let's just assume it's a straight conversion with nothing lost. As such, the much simpler version is that the game will always let you convert 1 production into .15 science/culture, and so anything with a better ratio (such as 170 into 450) is probably worthwhile. But if I'd looked that up in the first place, I couldn't have passed an hour of my day typing the above, and thus in conclusion, Civ 6 mathematics is a land of contrasts.

[Modo]

You should get bored more often...the ratio between your boredom and our benefit goes from "really good idea" to something like "why are you not doing this? Do you not enjoy teaching Civ classes or something?".

[Sullla]

Trasson, that's a great post - thanks for adding that! Let me add on a little bit more about how I think of the various different boosts, with the military engineer for Ballistics being a good example. In this case, we have the opportunity to spend 170 production at the capital to save half the cost (422 of 845 beakers) for Ballistics tech. Trading 170 production for 422 beakers is a great conversion rate, almost exactly 2.5 beakers per production spent. That's definitely a lot better than one would get from running a Campus district project, although I see that as a separate question in its own right. Most of the boosts are also more useful for your civ than the military engineer and its forts, which makes them only that much more appealing. For example, I probably wouldn't have built an armory in my capital if it wasn't needed for the Gunpowder boost, but since it provides 2 production and 1 housing while also saving me 270/540 beakers on the tech's cost, it practically becomes a no-brainer. Then there's the time limit that our civ is acting under right now: we really want to hit certain key techs (Ballistics, Military Science, Steam Power, Steel, etc.) as quickly as possible so that we continue to maintain our military advantage. Unless there's a really, really important competing priority for my capital's production right now, it's worth it to build the engineer.

Civics have a similar math but also introduce the notion of granting a free policy swap when they are discovered. This can lead you to research some civics that wouldn't otherwise be very appealing. Timmy asked about Colonialism, and this is a huge part of the reason for heading up to that part of the civics tree. There's three benefits from Colonialism:

1) Another policy swap, opening up the double swap into and out of Serfdom/Professional Army
2) Two additional envoys, which will be enough to grant Rome the 6 envoy bonus at either Lisbon or Bandar Brunei. With 5 current Commercial districts, that's worth a non-trivial 20 gold/turn
3) Unlike Opera & Ballet and Scorched Earth, Colonialism is a mandatory civic to research. We need it to research Mass Media or anything further down the civics tree.

That's enough to make it a worthwhile endeavor to me. Policy swaps are going to get thin on the ground in upcoming turns; once we hit the Industrial era, they get pretty expensive and we're not pumping culture the way that we're emphasizing gold and military right now, for obvious reasons. After picking up Rationalism at The Enlightenment, we have pretty much all the policies that we want for the rest of the game. The only two things that we want further down the civics tree are corps/armies at Mobilization (since Nationalism is bugged) and access to one of the 8 policy card governments in the Modern era. Not sure that we'll get that far, of course. This makes Astronomy worth the fairly minimal research cost to boost Colonialism and cut that policy down to about 4.5 turns research time. And we do need Astronomy + Scientific Method techs to make it to Replaceable Parts for infantry upgrades in the future eventually, so the tech isn't a complete waste to research.

District projects are a separate issue; I think that they are generally a weak pick myself. You should only run a district project if you really want to recruit a specific Great Person, or to beat a rival to someone important. My own Campus district projects were basically failures; I ran the first one to grab a Renaissance Great Scientist, which didn't end up happening, and then the second one specifically to get Darwin. If I had landed Darwin, those projects would have translated into 2000 beakers and been a fantastic use of production. Instead, I simply recruited a Great Scientist that I would have landed in 6 more turns of natural Great Scientist point generation anyway. Of course I couldn't have known that at the time, but that's hindsight for you. In retrospect, I should have run a Commercial district project instead - I would have swiped the current Merchant for 200 gold and 2 free envoys. Instead, TheArchduke will claim the Great Merchant next turn, with a narrow lead of about 25 points on me. It's a bit of a shame really, but nothing I can do about it. Just one of those games where a couple things narrowly missed lining up for our team.

We did have a turn today, a quiet one:



There's the printout of Chevalier finishing the Great Lighthouse coming in finally on my end. And this barbarian caravel came out and attacked my exploring ship, which means that I'll have to go heal now. This caravel is not part of the upcoming war, just hanging out as a scout in the eastern ocean, but it's still annoying. I sent the unit west to go heal. Hopefully the barbarian unit will go attack Chevalier's units or something.



The most notable news from this turn was TheArchduke's settler disappearing from view. Huh, where did that thing go? Singaboy, you might want to bring a horse back on your turn to see if you can spot it. I went so far as to avoid planting my new city this turn, moving the settler back towards the west instead. I mapped out the movement of the unit and it can make it onto the tile right next to the dyes on Turn 135, so I'll keep moving in this direction until I actually see a German city go down. I'm still hoping that TheArchduke plans to settle here, I'm unsure where else he would be sending that unit. And yes, there are more German ships down by Kreutzburg. If TheArchduke does not found a canal city and we have to do it ourselves, I will look to attack at Kreutzburg first and then rotate the navy up to the north to pass through the canal city when it gets founded on Turn 137. Still hoping that Germany is going to plant a city here soon.



Chevalier's ships continue to be annoying. Due to the alliance with Russia/Germany, their team can see everything within vision range of this English caravel. I don't know that we're going to have much of an element of surprise here. Fortunately Chevalier doesn't seem to be aware of the fleet of quadriremes waiting up to the north to be upgraded into frigates. I'm still hoping that they will catch our opponents off guard when they appear on the scene.



I purchased one more scout with Theocracy government before swapping to Merchant Republic for the two additional trade routes. I've now used all three midgame governments for the first time ever in Civ6, heh. The only policy change here was slotting in Press Gangs in place of the now-obsolete Maritime Industries. I'd like to get three caravels built to take my total from 5 to 8, and that will hopefully be enough for ironclad upgrades. I would rather concentrate on building more frigates after that for later battleship upgrades.



Can you tell that Chevalier wants to protect Nan Madol from attack? He's not the danger right now, we can come back to this spot later. I do think that if we could ever raze this spot, that might go a long way towards inducing a concession from Chevalier. We are much more likely to be defending at Parma than attacking at Nan Madol, however.



Here's the overview of the Roman core for Turn 127. Builders are getting close to finishing in a couple of places; there's one at 115/120 production in Milano that I had to swap off of while awaiting Serfdom's return. I have three trade routes in production right now and Milano will do the fourth one after it completes the current trade route. I'm really looking forward to all of them finishing to give me some more income. I also grew two population points this turn but my science and culture stayed flat because the extra amenities needed to keep everyone happy counteracted the small increase from the population points. Heh, it figures.

Now that the last quadrireme is out, I have Square Rigging queued up to complete next turn. I'll overflow from that into Industrialization next turn, then after a turn of that I'll go back and finish Astronomy, then overflow again into Industrialization. When the boost for Ballistics completes, I'll do the same thing a third time. That's the best way to avoid wasting any overflow beakers from all these techs that are 1 turn away from completion. Industrialization is the next big economic tech for me, since unlike Singaboy I don't have a bunch of horsemen to upgrade into cavalry. Civics research is doing something similar, dumping the overflow from Exploration finishing into Colonialism, then going back to take The Enlightenment up to 1 turn away from completion, and then finishing it a little bit later. I think the ideal turn there is Turn 132, which gives my ships enough time to upgrade on Turn 132 and still make it up to the front lines for the Turn 135 start of the war. I'll have to think about this some more; perhaps Turn 131 would be better to get more ships up there. We'll see.



If TheArchduke does not plant a canal city, then Kreutzberg will be the initial target for my forces. I was planning on razing it before, but I spotted something this turn: there are two Great Works inside the Theatre district there. That makes the city worth keeping in my mind, plus there's a new luxury that we don't have (wines) within the city borders. For that matter, I also need a place to land my ground units and the Bandar Brunei / Kreutzberg region seems like a good place to do it. It doesn't have the cliffs that are widespread further to the north and if it pulls Germany's attention down here, freeing up room for Singaboy to operate in the north, all the better.

I am not sure if I would want to try and capture or raze the Russian cities near Kreutzberg. My gut feeling is to stay out of Russian territory where Defender of the Faith will apply and the Russian cities appear to be mostly tundra junk that's not particularly worth having. However, if EmperorK doesn't improve the pathetic state of his military, then I might be tempted. We'll see what he comes up with. Obviously I need to capture Kreutzberg first before I can get any grand ideas about pushing on beyond it. Not going to get cocky here just yet.

Time is rapidly running out here, only eight turns left until we can start this war. It's going to make for some very interesting turns next week.

[Singaboy]

Interesting stuff about the settler. Maybe Archduke thought it over and realized that the canal city would be a trap. However, this means that he can't get his ships from the west over to help against a Roman strike. If that would be the case, I'd say, Kreutzburg is doomed.

I think, we need to have some proper plan how we are going to strike on T135. It's a mere 8 turns away and we don't want to end up fumbling that turn. I am having some thoughts about the situation at Tallinn. I would most likely attempt to take out the encampment walls without exposing my units too much there to naval counter bombardment. This could be achieved by a battering ram supported cavalry attack with additional crossbow/field cannon strikes. Of course, it will depend on Archduke's troops deployment. At the western sea, it would be great if I could muster an initial naval strike to take out some naval units. I am going to pull back those exploring galleys to have a total of 4 caravels and hopefully 6 frigates.

Since there is no triple civic finish line-up, I will postpone the builder finishes. I am wondering whether I should even put in Professional army for a turn for some upgrades. I was planning to upgrade two galleys and two archers near Kashgar and Tianjin. I can only upgrade so many units in the waters of Tianjin, thus getting two galleys done will ease the logistic challenge of upgrading all those units later on.

I am aiming for upgrades on T132/133 to get units into position for the first strike on T135.

What do you think, Sulla?

[Singaboy]

Turn 127:

Wow, this game has so many twists and turns, it is interesting but often frustrating. This turn, there were three things that made me think and also want to kick my own butt for another stupidity of mine.

First off, I am greeted with the completion (and some culture waste) of exploration, which incidentally obsoletes Maritime Industries. Yeah, I should have known that and planned accordingly, though I couldn't have done that much different. I had planned two stone harvests to make use of the +100% bonus. Well, forget that. Let's see how this can be salvaged.

Besides that, there were other news with war declarations and it soon became clear what is happening...and a request for a deal, hmm, interesting. Exploration gave me 4th envoy at Geneva.



The real surprise is the war declaration and the imminent fall of Geneva. Who would have thought that Nubia is taking the city state. Didn't they have a host of envoys in the city themselves? Wasn't Woden the suzerain enjoying a peacetime bonus with them. They obviously felt that the city was better to take, losing science this way but depriving us of research output. I am only affected by 6 beakers, but Rome with 4 beakers per campus will be a lot more affected. Of course, the rest are also affected as well.

The other surprise to me is the renewed interest of Germany to buy time. Well, I am not interested to see Russia get to their UU. I am now thinking that we should strike Germany and then maybe send a DoF to England and Nubia. They might agree only to secure some land from Germany and Russia too. Otherwise, they have to watch us strike without them being able to do anything.



Now, it is also too clear what Germany's intentions are. Archduke pulled back his settler to await our decision for a DoF. He clearly wants the canal city but is aware that this will open the flood gates for Roman units. Well, well. I can totally understand his intentions here. 

A look at the western navy from Germany is indeed quite intimidating. My navy completely pales in comparison and my inability to draft naval units with faith really doesn't help here. The loss of Maritime Industries hurts even more. My aim must be to get at least 5 quadriremes out. let's see whether this is possible.

Ok, so what did I do on my home front and for the economy. The first chop went as planned using Limes for one last time (note also that Acre just finished its walls). Now, what to do with the overflow knowing that I need the city to build a crossbow etc. A commercial hub is expensive and would require additional 4 turns to build. It would receive no adjacency bonus whatsoever and then only give me 8gpt from Lisbon + a trade route. I decide to go for another theatre which is currently discounted and will finish immediately. I will give me some overflow too and speed up the crossbow.

After the wall chop, I was free to choose new policies and I went with this. Since I wanted to chop the encampment at Tianjin but lacked Maritime Industries, I tried to slaved the best I could for a 30% bonus. Professional army is slotted in for some upgrades as stated previously. I also decided to take out Natural Philosophy for the loss of 8 beakers but inserted meritocracy for a nice bonus.

The result of the stone harvest at Tianjin was an immediate completion of the encampment. The overflow alos makes sure that the quadrireme is done next turn. The double encampment looks nice and should be hard to take. I hope that together with the city and occupying crossbows/field cannons and some naval units, I can drive off any German navy. Of course, going into the war, we can always use War of religions and Bastions for more damage.

The trader in Shangdu added another 10 gpt for a trade route with Lisbon to make up for the fact that I upgraded two galleys and 2 archers. By the way, the green arrows above indicate the changes I am planning to make next turn when mercantilism kicks in. Culture is now at a healthy 86 and will grow even bigger next turn when the theatre is done. Of course, I will suffer from the loss of envoys from Geneva, but plan to make up with Nat Philo for now.

In order to save faith, I am producing a second crossbow in Shangdu. And with Limes and Maritime Industries gone, I will use Feudal Contract to speed up the production. Beijing which finished its library is producing an arena to take care of amenity issues later when war weariness starts to kick in. Hangzhou will finish the builder pre production and then continue with its university.

The big question now is, what am I going to do with the builder at Pagan. I do not want to waste the stone harvest. I rather use it with maybe a crossbow or other military production so that I can enjoy a 50% bonus. Any suggestion?

This weekend, I am going to think carefully about my defense plan in the west. I do not want to lose my navy on the first turn of war against Germany. I think, a canal city is really essential for Rome to cross over to the west to help me out (once Kreutzburg has been taken)

[Ituralde]

Those two adjacent Encampments are just a thing of beauty. Combined with the Kashgar City Center that is one nasty isthmus to traverse.