Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Modo]

I think the agreement was for a one time only during the lifetime of the city at whichever point in time the players choose.

[Sullla]

Nice move, Singaboy! Blocking that canal city from Germany is a truly sweet play. It's going to be a weak city and exceedingly difficult to defend, but we're locked into peace with Russia/Germany until Turn 161. Denying Germany's fleet the ability to move between the western and southern oceans is simply huge, and it almost forces TheArchduke to attack Woden next because there's nowhere else for his ships to go. It also keeps his main fleet separate from his smaller southern fleet, and that's a good thing as well. Really, really cool play to see there.

Yeah, I also think you're hitting the point at which you won't be able to fund upgrades for the units on hand. 10 horsemen should be plenty for the upcoming attack; turning them all into cavalry will be pricey enough. It's 193 gold per horseman into cavalry upgrade, and 117 gold per crossbow into field cannon upgrade. I think you'll have enough money to transform 10 horses into cavs and another 8-10 crossbows into field guns. Along with support from the Roman land units in the area, and hopefully a bunch of Roman battleships at sea, I think that will make for quite a potent force.



We cycled around to a second turn today very quickly, only about six hours after my initial turn this morning. I received a notificatio that I was no longer suzerain of Bandar Brunei, and it turned out that EmperorK had tied me with 4 envoys at the city state. I'm going to go back later tonight and check to ensure that my units do not have the ability to enter Bandar Brunei's borders when I'm tied with another civ for the most envoys. Obviously this is what we'd like to set up at Nan Madol a little ways down the road. The other deal was TheArchduke accepting my 14 gold for 14 gold trade last turn. We'll send him another version of the same deal when it gets down to 10 turns remaining.



Now you might have noticed that I'm getting close to finishing Military Science tech. In fact, Rome had nearly finished all of the techs that we were holding off on completing to still be able to build older versions of the same units. With the boosts for Ballistics and Scientific Theory now in hand, it was time to roll the dice on our Great Scientist and hope that we pulled the boost for one of our desired techs. In order of importance, we wanted:

1) Steam Power: the most expensive tech, required for ironclads
2) Industrialization: the second-most expensive tech, on the path to ironclads and containing the +1 production mining boost
3) Sanitation: not very useful, but a boost that we're unlikely to get otherwise (we are not building two Neighborhood districts)
4) Economics: not on the path to anything we want right now, also an easy boost to get later (build two banks)

This was pretty much a coinflip result, as either #1 or #2 would be very useful and the other two weren't helpful. The result was...



The second-best result, Industrialization. We'll take it. This resulted in 420 free beakers into the tech with no wasteage, taking it to about 97% completion. I swapped over to Industrialization immediately and can get started on Steam Power afterwards. The net result of the whole Great Scientist race is that we picked up 420 beakers as compared to TheArchduke picking up 1000 beakers, assuming he uses Darwin next to that natural wonder in southern Russia. (We also picked up half of Chemistry tech, worth another 625 beakers, if that would ever become relevant. I'm not counting Chemistry's boost though.) Overall, a net loss of a little less than 600 beakers in the trade, which isn't as bad as it could have been. Obviously Darwin would have been worth +2000 beakers for us instead of -600 beakers, but that's water under the bridge now.



Check this out on the tech tree. Singaboy and I along with TheArchduke and Woden are all showing up as being tied on the tech tree; this means that all of us have at least one tech in the same "column" on the tech tree, the last one in the Renaissance era. None of us have any Industrial era techs completed yet. However, even though no one has an Industrial tech finished yet, Rome has Industrialization sitting at 97% completed, Ballistics at 99% finished, and Military Science at 75% completed. Even Scientific Theory has been boosted to 50% completion. I nearly have the entire next column finished! We're going to finish Industrialization first, then push through Steam Power and then bang through Ballistics, Military Science, Rifling, and on to Steel. I don't think I will make it there for Turn 146, but I think Turn 148 is very doable.



My units are returning across the southern ocean now, and a small detachment of them are going for the barbarian camp. It looks like we have the barbs under control down there barring some kind of truly unlucky spawn.



Three builders completed this turn and I'm working on lining up the remaining ones. Singaboy, to answer your question, I think that I will be able to finish Colonialism at the end of next turn (Turn 134), and then pass the boost over to you on Turn 135. I'm not completely sure on that; I need to check some of the builder math to make sure all of them get completed on Turn 135 before changing civics out of Serfdom. If it's not Turn 135 it will definitely be Turn 136. I want to switch into Limes and Professional Army on that swap, the former to set up some city wall chops/harvests before that policy gets obsoleted, and Professional Army to upgrade some quadriremes into frigates for an attack on Nan Madol. Let's plan on roughly Turn 140 to hit Nan Madol, something like that - enough time to upgrade units and move them into position to capture the city state.



I'm deliberately holding off on finishing a builder at Siena this turn so that Parma will finish its builder first. Roma finished a trader this turn and I moved it over to Napoli, which means that two more trade routes will go into effect next turn, which should be worth something along the lines of another 25-30 gold/turn. With two libraries completing this turn, I'm up to 139 beakers/turn - about 40% higher than TheArchduke's second place rate of 100 beakers/turn. Things are looking good right now.

I see that Singaboy is already back up to play again so I'll post this report now. Busy day for this game today.

[Sullla]

OK, a couple more points to make. I couldn't resist staying away from the game.

* I checked and confirmed: your units cannot enter the territory of a city state if you are tied with another civ in the envoy race. So if Singaboy can drop 2 more envoys into Nan Madol to tie with Chevalier at 5 envoys apiece, it should boot his units out of the city state's territory. In other words, everything should work as we're planning it to.

* Germany has used Darwin, picking up two techs in the last two turns. Neither one was an Industrial tech so I assume that TheArchduke was finishing up with some Renaissance techs. I'm not sure what he picked up, although neither Germany nor Russia have any bombards, so there's a good chance that they paid the full price for Siege Tactics. They've never been at war with anyone either, so they might have needed to pay the full price for Square Rigging and Military Science unless they managed to kill some barbarians with a musket or a knight respectively.

* TheArchduke swapped into Craftsmen policy this turn - double adjacency bonus for Industrial districts - and that has his Hansas all juiced up, with some of them up to 12 production/turn right now. He also changed into Merchant Republic government which means that Maritime Industries has been obsoleted. I suspect that TheArchduke probably has Square Rigging now or is about to pick it up and will be following up to Industrialization shortly. The good news is that his use of Darwin only pulled Germany even with us in tech, instead of pulling them ahead. That's as good of a scenario as we could have hoped for. Meanwhile, Russia dropped Simultaneum policy and fell down to 82 faith/turn. I'm not sure why; faith-rushing units is one of the best possible things that Russia could be doing for their team. An odd choice.

* I ran the numbers on potential battleship upgrades and I should have just enough cash to pull them off around Turn 146. The quadrireme into frigate upgrade costs 125 gold apiece, while the frigate into battleship upgrade costs 118 gold each. With my 14 current quadriremes, that's a total cost of about 3400 gold; I have 1600 gold in hand now and I'm making 160 gold/turn. If my income stays at its current rate, I'll make another 2080 gold over the following 13 turns, and that gets me to roughly 3600 gold, so a little leeway there. However, it does mean that I won't have a lot of gold leftover for crossbow into field cannon upgrades. I'm going to harvest a crab and coppe resource though, and that should get me another 500 gold, enough for at least a few crossbow upgrades. And I'll want to turn at least a few of my caravels into ironclads, which are 110 gold apiece.

Long story short, I won't be able to upgrade every single one of my units, but I should be able to get pretty darn close.



* These are the overall numbers for Turn 133. Unlike Russia/Germany, which did a magnificent job of organizing defenses against an attack from our team, I think England/Nubia really might be screwed. The other two teams are floating 3000 gold in the bank but they only have 1000 gold on hand and a much lower income. Nubia also makes fewer beakers than China, and while they should be able to make it field guns by Turn 146, it's doubtful that they will have ironclads. They absolutely will not have battleships, no chance whatsoever. We already have a much, much larger army and we're going to be dumping close to 7000 gold into further upgrades for that army come Turn 146. That's going to be an exceedingly tough defense for them to make. And if Russia and Germany join in as well, then that's simply a game over situation for them.

By the way, did you know that Singaboy has taken over as the game leader in power? He's been quietly faith-rushing out a very strong force indeed. Trust me, you don't want to mess with China in this game.

[Singaboy]

Turn 133:

The chess play at the canal continues. I think I will name the city Xiangqi (chinese chess version) to honor the back and forth that was going on there. How many turns has Germany moved its settler towards the canal and away and towards it again? That battle is lost for them barring some divine intervention. The city will be settled in three turns. The question is, do I gift it to Rome immediately? I could potentially send a builder down there to connect the dyes. Well, I am not too sure what to do about city gifting. I thought that completing a special district and then donating is in very bad spirit. 

Not much is going on currently as I am building a ton of districts and their buildings and some minor stuff. Shanghai finished the last quadrireme and is now building a shrine. It could potentially go for a temple and wat (not by faith but self built) for more faith. I noted that Russia has reduced faith generation now, presumably he is trying to get his science going for cossacks.
Kashgar for the lack of anything better is building a very protected harbor for another trade route though that district is really expensive and takes forever to build. I might swap to a builder when I have the right policy in place.
Next turn, project pop 15 will start in earnest and I am actually hoping to get to pop 13 by growth and not chops. This remains to be seen and I would be willing to sacrifice the cows if necessary.
Nationalism is started too. I will switch to colonialism and civil engineering when the boost comes in a few turns. I plan to finish civil engineering and then enable public works to boost builder production a little to make sure all three builders are done. I will then use colonialism to swap the cards again.

Technology: I am going to finish square rigging for faster unit movements at sea and the follow the path to industrialization. That +1 hammer boost is very valuable by itself and I am glad Rome rolled a great result for the Great Scientist. I am delaying military science as there is no rush to get that yet. With nationalism, I will most likely have to switch to Professional Army and then mass upgrade my forces depleting my treasury and hurting my gpt badly. I am hoping that some of my trade routes are expiring so that I can send them to Lisbon for higher yields.

In the east, Rome will certainly take care of the barbarians for 50 gold. That's better than nothing. I have finished the draft of 10 horsemen and will draft 3 additional crossbows in time to have a set of 6 crossbows there. The faith for it will be accumulated next turn and then I can think of getting some missionaries in the east. Of course, for that I have to finish the Holy Site which costs 263 hammers. I need to think of a way to boost that stone harvest. Regardless, Acre will pause producing that builder and start a battering ram next turn.
The missionary will be able to start a conversion in 3 turns. I noted that Parma is following Marco Polo again by itself.

[Modo]

I am hoping that some of my trade routes are expiring so that I can send them to Lisbon for higher yields.

There's no way to check this in game? I'm assuming you can review a past screenshot or save to see when the route started and what the duration was but the game doesn't log this kind of information anywhere so that you can see it at any point in time?
I seem to remember there is a trade route screen, can the info be there somewhere or maybe there's a way to derive it indirectly from somewhere else?

[Japper007]

I am hoping that some of my trade routes are expiring so that I can send them to Lisbon for higher yields.

There's no way to check this in game? I'm assuming you can review a past screenshot or save to see when the route started and what the duration was but the game doesn't log this kind of information anywhere so that you can see it at any point in time?
I seem to remember there is a trade route screen, can the info be there somewhere or maybe there's a way to derive it indirectly from somewhere else?

It's in the Trade Route overview, at least it was a few patches ago (might also have been a CQUI feature, come to think of it).

[aetryn]

I am hoping that some of my trade routes are expiring so that I can send them to Lisbon for higher yields.

There's no way to check this in game? I'm assuming you can review a past screenshot or save to see when the route started and what the duration was but the game doesn't log this kind of information anywhere so that you can see it at any point in time?
I seem to remember there is a trade route screen, can the info be there somewhere or maybe there's a way to derive it indirectly from somewhere else?

The vanilla UI has the route distance, not its time, which is pretty useless unless you record the turn it started (and also know the rules for how many trips the Trader will make, which is a function of the distance and the gamespeed). Remember, the goal of the Civ 6 UI is to make it harder to play the game well.

[Sullla]

Singaboy, I think that we may as well have China hold on to the canal city for the time being, since that will let us faith-purchase units in the area for defense. We can always trade it to Rome later on if we want to do so. We should probably think about what we want to do with the 1100 faith sitting in China's treasury right now. I don't have time at the moment, but I can try to brainstorm different options for the future. It is indeed too bad that we can't purchase sea units with faith (only Khmer can do that). Maybe if we can get the Holy Site district finished in Acre, we could do some missionary spam to convert the former Khmer cities in the east and stack up the Crusade bonus for China's upcoming military operation. Maybe.



This turn was noteworthy for completing Industrialization tech and entering the Industrial Age. The upgraded roads will be nice for my mounted units, although they still have no effect on normal 2 move units as yet. (Need Modern roads for that or Logistics policy to get up to 3 movement.) Industrialization revealed the location of coal resources, and they turned out to be placed in some very unusual spots: I have four of them in my territory, all of them located at either Savoia or Ravenna. There are actually THREE coals at Savoia, two of them already mined and connected to my trade network. China apparently doesn't have any coal resources at all, but fortunately Rome has more than enough for both of us. Zero coal located on our actual home continent. It's a darn good thing that we managed to conquer this territory from Kongo earlier.

The +1 production on mines also popped up across my empire, and that was very sweet indeed. A whole bunch of cities increased their production by 20-25% as a result. This wave of builders will be working to get even more tiles mined, because the days when there wasn't much difference between improved and unimproved tiles are long since over.



I also picked up new city state quests, although most of them weren't very useful. Nan Madol had the only one with any chance of being fulfilled, sending a trade route to the city state. Singaboy, there's some important news here: Chevalier dumped another envoy into the city state to get up to 6 envoys total. That means that we can't equal him at 5 envoys and attack the city state ourselves. Do you have any way to reach 6 envoys there (3 additional envoys from China's current 3 envoys) in the next half dozen turns, or is that simply impossible? If it's out of our reach, then that's fine. We'll simply plan on attacking it in 12 turns on Turn 146. I'm just curious if there are any envoys on the way aside from the 2 that China will get upon finishing Colonialism civic.



I also sent this trade route to Nan Madol, and not due to the city state quest. I was already planning to run this route because we need a road connection of some kind between Napoli and Parma. Unfortunately the yield here was pretty crummy, only 10 gold/turn when I could have gotten 17 gold/turn from Lisbon. Still, we do need a road for tactical purposes through the jungle. And when we go to war with Nan Madol, this trade route will be canceled and we'll get to reassign it again for additional income. It still kicked me up to 183 gold/turn income regardless, not bad at all.



Most of my time this turn was spent trying to figure out the math of finishing builders. Ultimately I realized that I could not chop out a builder next turn at Parma, and therefore I needed to delay my policy swap by one more turn. I'm sorry about that Singaboy; Colonialism will finish end of Turn 135 and you will have the boost on Turn 136. I hope that doesn't interfere with your planning too much. I really wanted to get an additional builder out of Parma and it needed another turn to make that happen. Over here at Milano, I was able to chop this forest for a builder that came out with the full 5 charges. No manipulation of production overflow here, just getting another badly-needed builder out with more charges. The new builder is heading off to the capital while this builder will stay at Milano to chop down two jungles and mine the plains hills underneath. Remember when Milano was a jungle-choked long term project at the beginning of the game? It's developed into a magnificent city for us.



TheArchduke upgraded a few of his warriors into muskets and several quadrirems into frigates, but only the ones down here. He left the rest of his units unupgraded, all of the ones up on the northern part of his territory. I'm very confident that he's about to attack and capture Bandar Brunei, and I wish that I'd see it sooner. I could have moved some units down here to try and stop him. (This explains why EmperorK put an envoy into the city state recently, he didn't want me to remain the suzerain and potentially block this capture from taking place.) It's a smart move because they have most of their Commercial state envoys invested into Muscat instead. Anyway, I doubt that I can stop him from taking the city state if he wants, and let's face it: this spot is very much within their sphere of influence. I'm just annoyed with myself for not seeing the move coming and reacting sooner to try and block it, argh.

On the plus side, TheArchduke is going to lose a substantial amount of income from taking this city state. Russia and Germany both have 3 envoys here, and that's going to cost them. I'll be able to break even on gold by investing my Colonialism envoys into Lisbon and retain my Commercial city state total bonus of 6 envoys.



Here's the core of my territory. Most of the builders are finished now, with two more to go at Sienna and Parma. Lots of cities are working on universities. I intend to switch back to Press Gangs soon and get to work on more ships, but in the meantime I can slip in some science buildings. Roma has nothing pressing to build and therefore is producing a Commercial district project to go after that very tasty Great Merchant currently on display. He's worth 500 gold and 2 free envoys, both of which would be pretty sweet to have.



The captured southern cities are starting to develop nicely now, especially with the mining boost. I'm going to connect a cocoa resource soon at Napoli for China, and Parma has a ton of forests, jungle, stone, and copper resources to harvest. I'm planning on using 8 charges there and it still won't be enough to get everything improved. I'll have to add more builder labor there later on once it grows a bit. As for Savoia:



Holy cow did this city get a lot better from finishing Industrialization tech! There are THREE coal resources here, two of them mined and one still unimproved, with the two mined tiles now worth 1/7 yield apiece. Then there's also an iron mine here too with its own 1/5/1 yield, sheesh. I did not understand this spot when Japper chose it earlier in the game, but wow has this ever gotten to be a lot better. Are you sure that you weren't using map hacks here Japper? You didn't really know that there were three coal resources hiding out underground, right?

Seriously, this city almost has as much production capacity as my capital. If I can mine that remaining coal resource and get the city up to size 6, it will be sitting at about 37 base production/turn. Absolutely amazing. That's enough for 4 turn frigates with Press Gangs in place, and even this stupidly expensive archaeological museum won't take too long, plus I'll be able to get out the obnoxiously costly archeaologist unit (400 production cost!) for the Combustion boost a little bit later on. What an impressive turnaround for this city.

Research goes into Steam Power for the moment, though I may delay finishing it a little bit until I'm ready to obsolete caravels. One more turn of civics research into Civil Engineering and then I finish Colonialism at the end of next turn. Elsewhere, Germany picked up another tech this turn and equals me at 34 total. TheArchduke does not have any Industrial techs yet, so he must have Banking up on me and I have Industrialization up on him. That's surely his next destination given that he has three workshops completed to boost the tech. It looks like I am roughly 200 beakers ahead of him right now, about half a tech. We'll see which of us can manage the upcoming tech boosts better; I do have two techs at 97% and 99% completion rate waiting to be finished, which he may or may not have ready to complete.

That's all for now Singaboy. Let me know your thoughts about Nan Madol and if there's any way to get another envoy in there - if not, we'll just attack the place on Turn 146 with the rest of the English/Nubian cities.

[Modo]

Anyway, I doubt that I can stop him from taking the city state if he wants, and let's face it: this spot is very much within their sphere of influence. I'm just annoyed with myself for not seeing the move coming and reacting sooner to try and block it, argh.

Given the plans for Nan Madol and the city states in general what do you think you could have done better if you'd realized in time?
The only defense apparent so far is to always ensure you have more envoys than your opponents so that you can keep your troops as roadblocks. That's leaving out a hot war, obviously.

EDIT: Can you build forts on city state tiles? I seem to remember you testing earlier and you can't build anything for anybody else, ally or city state included.
You could consider gifting gold to the city state but given how anemic the AI is I presume that's a waste, any other diplomatic option that could prop them?

[Singaboy]

T134:

I finish square rigging and get the Eureka for Industrialization from Rome. Looking at Rome's awesome production bonus for that, I want that technology as soon as possible. With regards to the question of 3 envoys, the only way, I could get that 6th envoy would be through a new quest that could be done instantly. For that, I could finish military science (I did not think of this during the turn, but now occurs to me). I could swap next turn to military science and then get that quest on T136. Might be some impossible quest, who knows.

Science output increased thanks to the university at Hangzhou. My gpt is pretty stagnant thanks to all those military purchases. I am pausing with drafting for now (I still need 3 crossbows drafted from T140 onward).

Germany is going to settle the Island north of Tianjin, that's pretty obvious. one of his ships claimed a spot that the settler could use to land. In order not to aggravate relations any further, I remove my boats as I could never block the whole Island anyway.



With science almost at 100 beakers, let's have a look at the tech tree. That doesn't look too bad, does it. The 60% bonus for China really pays off here. A mere 6 turns to Industrialization (216 + 338 beakers). As military science is almost done, the switch next turn wouldn't even slow this down, I guess. On top of that, Tianjin with a mined iron hill will get its library next turn to further boost science a notch. With plenty of mines in my territory, Chinese cities will benefit nicely from it. But, boy oh boy, that coal loaded place in Roman hands is a killer city.

Also, something to note, Woden's Nubia has reached the industrial era. We need to be careful as he will certainly have ballistics or military science himself. Since Nubia is equipped with a GG for that era, we have to be on our toes here.

As for the civics game, I am going to switch to civil engineering next turn, finishing it on T136, when the Inspiration from Rome for Colonialism kicks in. Then, I can finish that that in 1 turn, using that 1 turn for a quick public works builder round. The other question is: Should I upgrade a few units to cavalry even though it will hurt my coffers? The reason? I am going to have to wait a long time for nationalism to kick in, probably on T144. That might be a little late for war preparations, especially if I am forced to upgrade all 10 cavalry in one go. What do you think, Sulla?
I will also have to swap out of retainers to give way for Professional army followed by Press Gangs. Hence, I need all the amenities I can get. So please, Sulla, send over that extra amenity. It might be crucial for Hangzhou too.
By the way, as Sulla had mentioned it before, but he forgot about the extra 10% bonus for China. If Hangzhou can grow to pop 15, urbanization will be a mere 424 culture. This means that we might reach urbanization before T150. Of course, mobilization is a brutal 1410 culture. The game might well be decided by then.

Now that the university is done and housing lifted a point, Hangzhou can emphasize food. The city gets the sugar from Shangdu. Some other minor adjustments gets the city to grow in 4 turns to pop 12. If I manage to connect the citrus in the NE, housing will be at 14 and the city should be able to grow to that size by itself. I can then proceed to harvest the rice, marsh and rain forest. That should be sufficient to get the city to pop 15. With the city at pop 13, I can even insert another district, possibly an industrial zone next to Shangdu's industrial zone.