Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Singaboy]

Just a heads up, just played my turn and indeed, Russia did not agree to a DoF. The moment where both our teams run into each other with England/Nubia profiting from that is drawing closer. Maybe Archduke will still agree to an alliance, we will know during your turn, Sulla.

Will update this post soon.

[Singaboy]

T130:

Well, besides the mention of the Eureka for Astronomy, there are no positive news from Russia. Nope, they want this battle as dirty as it will be...
Time to think about getting that settler into position to be able to get any ships north for Rome. Meanwhile, Germany is adding more ships at Kreutzburg. That alone will be bloody...



I chop the settler and send it on its way. What I am planning is to guard the settler with a cavalry and a musket next to it. If Rome has some frigates on the eastern side, this can be used to fight off any units from Germany. Of course, he can still attack from the west with frigates. For that, I am hoping to put some deterrence in the form of crossbows (drafted one at Pagan this turn). Since there is going to be a change in civics next turn, I might use that to keep Professional army in place until the war in order to be able to continuously upgrade my units. At Kashgar, I am planning to disable to Germany fort to be safe from nasty attacks there. That spot NE of the German camp is safe from naval attacks too.

I am hoping that Rome's attack on Kreutzburg will draw away some of the attention. Keeping Tianjin and Shanghai will be a challenge on its own. I still hope, Germany understands that this battle with only serve England and Nubia.



In the west, I am trying to send a knight and the musket to help out with the barbarian camp. This will take a while though.

[Sullla]

TheArchduke has had the save file for 6 hours now, and there was some posting in their thread recently. I think they may be considering our latest offer of an alliance. Maybe, maybe not. I'll hold off on any more comments for the moment until we get the save back and see how they respond. I genuinely think it's in their interest to sign something with us, not just speaking from our own team's point of view. If we do go to war, it's going to be a bloodbath on both sides and I think England/Nubia would be the real winners.

[Kerberos]

Hello, new guy here at the Realms, been dedlurking this thread exclusively, just thought of something , maybe clear to you veteran PBEM players, but :

Does an attack on one member of alliance trigger war on all people in on the alliance , i think it works that way on RnF single player at least ? So, if Ger/Rus are allied with Eng/Nub and you attack Ger/Rus, will that automatically make you at war with Eng/Nub too ? Would be inconvenient to have all your troops on other side of the map if that happened...

Of does your DoF with Eng/Nub prevent you from declaring on Ger/Rus too, because they have alliance ? Game mechanics here are confusing

[shallow_thought]

Hello, new guy here at the Realms, been dedlurking this thread exclusively, just thought of something , maybe clear to you veteran PBEM players, but :

Does an attack on one member of alliance trigger war on all people in on the alliance , i think it works that way on RnF single player at least ? So, if Ger/Rus are allied with Eng/Nub and you attack Ger/Rus, will that automatically make you at war with Eng/Nub too ? Would be inconvenient to have all your troops on other side of the map if that happened...

Of does your DoF with Eng/Nub prevent you from declaring on Ger/Rus too, because they have alliance ? Game mechanics here are confusing

Welcome to RB!. I'm no vet, but I know this one .

Alliances don't trigger war in vanilla Civ VI (that is, they don't function as Civ IV style defensive pacts). That was something added in for RnF.

[Sullla]

TheArchduke accepted my alliance offer. We now have a revealed map of pretty much the whole world. I'm going to take some time to process things and think about where to go next, so the turn report might be a bit late tonight.

[Singaboy]

Finally some excellent news! Take your time on this. I am going to wait for your report before playing my turn then

[Sullla]

The big news from the turn was already announced earlier: TheArchduke accepted our offer of an alliance from last turn:



To clarify how alliances work in Civ6, or more precisely non-expansion Civ6, we now share line of sight with Germany and Russia, and of course we can't declare war on one another. We do not share war/peace status with the alliance partner as in other Civilization games, so we can go to war with England/Nubia or vice versa without Russia/Germany getting involved. Because I was curious about Germany's military, I went through and counted up all of TheArchduke's current units. Here's what he has right now:

3 warriors
1 archer
2 crossbows
3 muskets

That doesn't sound so bad. But then at sea, he has:

9 galleys
15 quadriremes
2 caravels

Now he couldn't upgrade all of those units at once; I did the calculation and it would cost about 4000 gold to upgrade all of those units, while Russia/Germany combined have about 2500 gold right now. But the lesson is pretty clear: we had no naval advantage at all against this team. It would have been a total bloodbath between us. I had the big post a couple days ago explaining why we didn't think a war with this team was in our interest right now, and it pretty much boils down to that list above. If the war is only going to result in mutual slaughter on both sides, then the only winning move is not to play the game at all.



There was a second deal offered from Woden to exchange resources. I didn't see any reason to say no here so I went ahead and accepted. I don't think it's a big deal either way.



Because we are not immediately engaging in warfare with Russia/Germany, I did not have to adopt Professional Army and start turning my quadriremes into frigates. Instead, I used my policy swap to take Rationalism and Serfdom, using Merchant Republic's sweet double Wildcard setup to have four Economic policies in place at once. This is a temporary setup though, something I'm only going to have in place for a few turns to get out this round of builders. I actually want to get back into Press Gangs to crank out a few more caravels, and then I think I might spend some time in Feudal Contract to get a round of crossbows built for upgrading into field guns. I'll hold off on completing Ballistics for a little while now that we don't have to fight a war immediately. It actually turns out to be a good thing that Ballistics is at 49% completion right now and will jump up to 99% when the boost arrives.



Speaking of that boost, here's the military engineer tossing down that useless fortification. Next turn I'll place the second one and we'll have that boost in hand. My settler, which walked down to the coast in case we needed it for an emergency canal city, is now heading back to the intended spot to found a city. I wasted a lot of time with that unit walking in circles, sigh. I would dearly love to use a policy slot on Logistics right now to give my units +1 movement within my territory, but I'm not willing to give up any of Conscription, Rationalism, Meritocracy, or Triangular Trade - and that leaves only one policy card slot remaining, which I would prefer to use on a military production card of some kind. How long until we reach the 8 policy card governments again? Heh.

Science went up by 13 beakers/turn from Rationalism and will keep increasing from there with time. Firenze and Genova are both finishing libraries in 2 turns, and that's 8 beakers/turn between the two of them. Actually 10 beakers/turn because it will let me run a Scientist specialist in Genova instead of working a terrible 1/1 plains tile. Universities are worth 8 beakers/turn apiece with Rationalism, and I'm slowly building some more of them too. I had previously thought that I would come up short of reaching Steel tech by Turn 146 but now I'm not so sure. I think it's going to be pretty close, and that spells real trouble for Woden and Chevalier.

I'm also really glad that we signed the alliance BEFORE Rome managed to hop into Rationalism. TheArchduke and Woden are both sitting at 89 beakers/turn right now, and Rome's new total of 125 beakers/turn is a pretty good distance out in front of them. I think I'm going to be right back around 140 beakers/turn shortly, and that's closing in on half again their current science rate. Hopefully they're going to regret giving us this window of time to tech ahead.



Singaboy, our next target is the Nan Madol city state. Remember how we had the suggestion in our thread that we could invest enough envoys to make Chevalier no longer the suzerain here, booting his units out of the city's borders, and then declare war and move in to capture the city? Yeah, I think we should do that. Right now, Chevalier has 5 envoys in here and Singaboy has 3 envoys. We just need Singaboy to take the 2 envoys he'll get from finishing Colonialism civic and equal Chevalier at 5 envoys, which will dump his units outside the city borders. We time it to do this when Rome has ships and units in position to attack and snap up the city before Chevalier can do anything about it. It's going to take me some time to get units into position to do this (especially the ships), but I think we can pull it off. The revealed map makes it clear that Chevalier is getting a ridiculous amount of free culture from this city state; it even applies on districts sitting next to inland lakes, for crying out loud. This is going to be my next project for the 15 turns until we can start our next war.



Here's the homeland on Turn 131. I get another trade route to play around with next turn for some additional income, and there are a bunch of science buildings under construction. You might notice that there aren't any builders under production in this picture. Didn't I swap into Serfdom this turn? Well yes, but I want to make sure that Napoli gets its builder out first. It has low production output and it's down at the bottom of the city list. I'm deliberately not finishing my other builders yet so that Napoli can gets its builder out first, then I'll produce the other four at the higher cost total. I'm also going to chop out a second builder at Parma before I leave Serfdom civic just because there are so many tiles to improve there. Speaking of which:



Here are the southern cities, with Napoli finishing its builder first. In case anyone is curious, Savoia is working on an amphitheatre en route to an archaeological museum for the Natural History civic boost. Then I'll probably build an archaeologist because further down the tech tree "Extract an Artifact" is the boost for Combustion, and that's a tech that we very much want to have. (Tanks, yay!) I do have to thank Japper for that district. By the way, I hate the builder in Ravenna but I didn't have anything else obvious to build there when outside of Press Gangs. I might drop that and continue working on the caravel regardless; I did have Venezia keep working on its own caravel despite being out of Press Gangs for the same reason. Just nothing else too important to build there right now.



I offered this note to TheArchduke at the end of my turn, letting them know that we have 15 turns remaining on our countdown to war with England/Nubia. I'll send them 14 gold for 14 gold next turn, and so on for a few turns until they get the message. If we're going to be allies, we might as well try collaborating against the other team in the game. Maybe it will turn into real cooperation, maybe not. I don't think it hurts either way.

I have a bunch more screenshots and analysis to post now that we have a fully revealed map but I think I'll wait until tomorrow to type that up. Good luck Singaboy - now we can concentrate on hitting England/Nubia with a monster force in 15 more turns.

[Singaboy]

Turn 131:

Wow, what an incredibly longish turn for me. It took me almost one hour to think and play, check and micromanage. I hope this also can serve for some discussion and strategic play between Rome and China.

For a start, I am so relieved that my coastal cities are not going to get slaughtered in a few turns. Just like Rome, this is a big twist in policies to choose now that enlightenment is done. Civil Engineering is almost done, but just almost and that is perfect. I am going to hold off that civic to be able to do a double swap later on when I need to get out three builders with +2 charges. Science is at a modest 78.5, but culture is really nicely coming along getting close to 100 a turn.

I get another pretty tough quest from a city state. I will not invest any envoy there to have a hand in that Nan Madol gamble. If only I had an envoy at hand to be sure this gamble works. England might simply invest more envoys into that city. The good thing is, we don't have to waste any envoys unless we are sure this will work.



Now, the choice of civics at this time. I did NOT take up serfdom as I want to delay the completion of builders until Acre is ready for that and can then chop the Holy Site. I chose rationalism to boost science, anything to can help with science output at this stage is welcome. The for my second military slot, I did not choose any multiplier as I think I am going to draft units for now and might only resume with military builds when things heat up. I had a battering ram and a crossbow finish last turn. For whatever reason, Shangdu's crossbow didn't finish but is 1 hammer short. Good, as I can save some maintenance this way.
Anyway, I debated between logistics and retainers, but ultimately chose the latter for the happiness reasons.

You might think, that's a odd choice. Not when you look at the screenshot below. Before adopting retainers, 4/11 were ecstatic. Now, have a look at this. All 11 cities with a total population of 66 are at double happiness. That's awesome. I pulled some units into cities for that but it was not difficult to achieve.

What about the effects on my output? It took some fiddling around and employing a specialist in Quanzhou and output has gone up. Science is now at 89 and that is just enough to finish astronomy in 3 turns. I will get to science and civics later on. Three cities are producing campus buildings to further boost my science output. Shangdu has switched from the almost completed crossbow to a market. It didn't really have much else to produce as the builder is near completion there as well. Pagan locked a campus which gives +3 science for adjacency. Thanks to the late lock down, it will cost 300 hammers. That would need to be done via chops and Press Gangs.

The settler skirmish with Germany continues and his settler is again on its way back to the land bridge. I am not too sure what he is going to do, but he can theoretically reach one spot to settle before I can claim the spot. His settler could settle the location, where Germany has a crossbow, in 4 turns. I need 5 turns to settle and Germany has one turn extra. The alternative for my settler would be a spot on the Island NW of Tianjin and my boats are now going to block any access there. I will follow through with Germany's actions but am ready to head NW.

In the east, my galley uncovered the barbarian camp and we can feel a little relieved as there is no musket but a mere spear-man. The scout has reached the camp though and will trigger units to spawn. I have two units on the way but that will take as mentioned before. The missionary is on the way to Acre. The builder there will be done in 4 turns, nicely timed for another civic swap. Actually, if developed that city will be quite good. I also drafted another horseman at Pisa. We currently have small force of 3 archer/crossbows, 1 bombard, 5 horsemen, 1 musket and 1 knight. I am planning to draft more horsemen in the coming turns. I guess 10 of them would be nice to have for the land war. I must not forget to draft a battering ram too.

Are you planning to pull back your troops there too, Sulla?

By the way, south of England is another barbarian camp and I am sending my knight there. 50 gold are always good to have.

[Singaboy]

Let's talk about technology and civics and the project "Hangzhou pop 15".

First of all, my culture output is the same as Rome's. This means we could bridge those Inspiration-free civics in a split fashion. I guess we ultimately want to reach mobilization and conservation. Colonialism will take me 290 culture, which I can actually reach in 3 turns. As I am trying to hold off civil engineering and colonialism for a double swap with serfdom (or in fact public works), I will research colonialism for 2 turns, then swap to nationalism for a turn and then go for the double swap.
Later down the road, before T145 kicks in, I will need a swap into Professional Army and all those upgrades. Now, while Rome concentrates on natural history, China could attempt to finish nationalism. That civic will take a painful 10 turns to finish (920 culture). It would take the most part of the extra time I have before Professional Army is needed. Meanwhile Rome could go after natural history. Does that sound like a plan?

After that, urbanization, which is even more expensive, would need a pop 15 city.



A city with pop 15 when Hangzhou is currently sitting at pop 11. The current issue is that housing is at 11/12 and growth pretty much stalled. That's why I am working the low growth, high production tiles. The university, which will finish in three turns, will add 1 housing. If I emphasize growth tiles, I could get Hangzhou to pop 12. But, what comes then? How to achieve pop 15? This could only be done with chops. Would it be enough to lift the limit to pop 15? I could harvest the rice, a rain forest and a swamp (does that add food to the city?). Sulla, do you know the formula for those harvests in terms of food added? I am getting a builder out there in a few turns. That builder with 7 charges could go on a harvesting spree.

Lastly, let's discuss technologies. With the new situation and a delayed war, military science can be held off until I have sufficient horsemen. I am currently researching astrology which needs exactly 3 turns (don't bother about the display here). Square rigging is about to be done too and I would finish it soon when those 2 remaining quadriremes have been produced. I don't think China will ever be the determining naval force. That role is given to Rome while China will have to fight the land war. I still need to finish mass production and banking to move further down the tech tree. Scientific theory would be a very interesting technology to have as it will give Hangzhou and extra 3 food from bananas and citrus. It could make the difference to grow the city to pop 13 (the housing limit).

The good thing here is that all those technologies have the Eureka provided by now.

Oh, by the way, I almost forgot but the amenity provider China has gifted incense to Rome, I could have traded with Germany for diamonds. I opted against that as we don't need them to be happier and I can't have my cities more than ecstatic anyway. Hope it will help Rome with happiness.