Every turn now takes a long time to play. I've noticed that our pace has been slowing down a little bit and it's been wearing on me as well. Hopefully we're getting closer to a conclusion for this game; the next 10 turns might be the deciding factor. Anyway, here's Turn 142:
I opened the save to find that one of my units had been attacked. Huh? Apparently a barbarian caravel attacked my scout that was heading down to watch the southern waterways. Well, I didn't find any English ships, but I did find one hostile opponent. The surprising thing is that my scout survived at all; shouldn't that have been 50 melee strength against 10 melee strength for a one-hit kill? Embarked units actually don't use their own combat strength in Civ6, instead getting a strength rating based on the current era: 20 for the Classical era, 25 for the Medieval era, and so on. Here in the Industrial era embarked units have 35 strength, and while that's normally a penalty for units in this period, it boosted the strength of my scout significantly.
Embarked units are helpless though, and the scout did not deal any damage back to the barb caravel. The net result was that I retreated up to the north and maybe with luck the barb caravel won't spot me again next turn.
Normally I move my units first and then do the city management stuff second. For this turn though, I wanted to chop out the Terracotta Army first so that I could promote my units on their last movement point. Line up the forest chop, click the terrain removal button, and boom! Terracotta Army complete. Finally a wonder project finished as expected.
The net result is that my units had additional promotions to take. *ALL* of them had additional promotions to take, including the naval ones.
The mechanic did not work exactly as I expected; I thought that it would award one more promotion "for free" to each unit without affecting the experience bar. Instead, every unit had its XP gauge increased to maximum, as you can see in the corner of that screenshot. While this isn't quite as good since the units will have to earn experience the normal way to their next promotion, it's still pretty freaking awesome. All my non-promoted units went to 15 XP, all my 1-promo units went to 45 XP, and my handful of 2-promo units went to 90 XP. Sadly, I did not have any units at three promotions already to get the coveted fourth promotion at the bottom of the respective promotion trees. That's OK though. We'll have to earn that the hard way.
Here are the two naval promotion trees, with naval ranged on the left and naval melee on the right. There are actually two more naval promotion trees, one for naval raider (privateers and subs) and one for naval carriers. I don't have any of either class of ship right now, although I'll probably build some privateers for upgrading into subs down the road. Both of these promotion trees have obvious paths to follow on the left hand side. Naval ranged almost always wants Line of Battle to get the edge in fleet vs fleet combat, and then Preparatory Fire is the obvious followup to keep advancing on the promotion tree. Bombardment and Rolling Barage are extremely nice in their own right, but if you can win control of the seas then you'll have an easy time taking down city defenses anyway. Useful for Single Player, not so useful here.
The naval melee tree has two incredible promotions in Embolon and Reinforced Hull. Embolon is amazingly good because it's always active, on offense or on defense. The naval unit pretty much just increases in strength by +7 on a permanent basis. I believe that the Line of Battle promotion in the naval ranged tree only works on the offense, based on screenshots that I saw from the PBEM4 game. Embolon is great though, and Reinforced Hull makes naval melee units almost invincible against ranged attacks. My ironclad would go to 77 strength against ranged attacks, and even an English frigate with a Great Admiral for support would only shoot at 60 strength. (Average damage at -17 strength would be 15 per shot.) Anyway, these promotions are going to be enormously helpful against Chevalier, effectively like getting an even better Great Admiral for my own use.
While I was upgrading and promoting a ton of units, I also had the chance to reassign some trade routes. This trade route in Savoia was renewed back to Rome even though it only had 7 gold/turn yield because the city needed the extra food and production from Roma's districts. I'm trying to get the city to size 6 where it will cap out at close to 40 base production/turn for a kickass naval base. At least, once it gets done building a museum and an archaeologist. Then there was another trader:
I sent Sienna's trader on to Lisbon for the 16 gold/turn yield. That drove the city into a slight negative food deficit and I'm OK with that for now. It won't starve for 20 more turns and I can always fire the Scientist specialist for more food if needed. Right now, I need the gold/turn income more than I need positive food growth in this city. The trader will even create a handy road that runs through Lucca along the highlighted path.
Unfortunately the resource harvest did not work as planned at Lucca.
Instead of growing multiple sizes, the city stopped at size 2 and wasted something like 120 food. I think it's because Lucca didn't have enough food to feed itself at size 3, something like that? Harvesting a resource for food at a low population size city seems to do weird things to the city interface. Well that was a waste of a builder charge, blah. I'll have to remember to avoid doing that in the future.
Over at Napoli the builder harvest worked properly. I harvested the sheep for about 1.5 population points, adding a Scientist specialist for the time being. Napoli will finish its monument and also pick up a natural wonder tile when borders expand next turn, for a nice little 4 culture/turn bonus. Hopefully that will let it expand out and grab more jungle/forest tiles in the third ring. I'll need more builders to improve those tiles down the road once they are grabbed by the city's borders. I'm really pleased at how nicely this city has developed thus far.
Northern overview for Turn 142. Notice that a bunch of cities are either not growing or in a food deficit right now. I counted out the beakers required for Steel tech, and there's just enough to make it there in 6 turns if I work some extra specialists. Not counting the 1% of beakers needed to finish Military Science, I have 1055 beakers left for Rifling and Steel techs, which is 5.92 turns at the current beaker rate of 178/turn. And yes, I have a university finishing in 3 turns to give me a little bit of a cushion, my science rate is also likely to drop as war weariness kicks in. Better not to take any chances - I want that tech in hand on Turn 148.
Elsewhere, I finished a trader in Milano this turn and started another one, moving the new trader to Ferrara. It should be worth about 16 gold/turn next turn when I send the trade route to Lisbon and then there are two more traders completing in 2 turns and 4 turns. Roma's Commercial district project will also kick in a little bit of extra gold while it's running. Speaking of which, here's the Great Person screen:
Rome is in line to get the Great Merchant in about eight more turns. The Commercial district project should be worth about 50 points, and Rome is making a base 8 Merchant points/turn. Figure that I should claim the Great Merchant around Turn 150 unless something weird happens. Hopefully that will be a nice insurance program for battleship upgrades; I'm no longer too worried about being able to afford them, just hoping I still have an intact fleet to upgrade by Turn 148. Over in the Great Scientist category, I'm 19 points behind Woden but making 22 points/turn to his 15 points/turn, and therefore catching up quickly. I will win the race to this Great Scientist unless he uses patronage to claim it. I'd like to have this guy because I don't know if the game will last long enough for me to claim the Modern era Great Scientist behind him. I won't spend gold on patronage here, and Woden is welcome to pay it if he wants. More likely, he'll use faith from his resource harvesting to patronage this guy. If not though, I have some modest faith trickling in from my trade routes. If Woden's not paying attention to this screen - or if he's spending his faith on unit purchases like he should be doing in Theocracy - I have a decent chance to snap up this Great Scientist. Two random boosts for Industrial/Modern era techs could be pretty nice indeed.
Overview for the south. Not too much changing here aside from that archaeological museum finally completing in Savoia next turn. On that note, I'm going to try and finish Natural History civic next turn, although I don't think I have quite enough culture. I've counted it out and I think I'll be about 25 culture short. I'd like to finish the civic for two reasons: the first and less important is so that I can get started on training an archaeologist in Savoia for the Combustion boost down the road. It's going to take about a dozen turns to build that unit and therefore I need to get an early start. The second and more important reason is so that I can change policies:
Note that I will have all of my units in the combat zone upgraded next turn. I'll get the last crossbow (just outside my borders this turn) and two more caravels and then that will be it for this current round of upgrades. I'll be free to pop into Conscription again to save some cash, changing back into Professional Army again when it's time for battleship upgrades. I can do that when Nationalism completes, and Singaboy will be passing me the boost for that right around Turn 147-148, just when I want to do more upgrades. It also might be worthwhile to run Logistics instead for +1 movement on units starting within my territory. Not sure if that's worth spending 45 gold/turn in this situation for the extra movement benefit.
Battlefront map: there's a lot to cover here. I currently have vision on 9 frigates from Chevalier and I suspect there are more than I'm not seeing. My ships are upgrading and then congregating in the circular bay in the Ravenna/Pisa/Parma region. I will have 16 frigates and 5 ironclads here at the time that combat begins on Turn 146. Will that be enough? Hard to say. It surely would be enough if I were able to upgrade those frigates into battleships at the time that combat opened. It's such a shame that we didn't manage to land Darwin; just having Steel tech 4-5 turns earlier would have been enough to upgrade these ships right now and be ready to kick butt when the fireworks started. Instead, I have to fight with frigates against frigates for at least the first two turns and let the chips fall where they may. Such a small thing to make such a big difference.
Singaboy, I don't think that you should invest your envoys into Nan Madol this turn. However, I think it's looking like a nice play to invest them into Nan Madol the *NEXT* turn, on Turn 143, to set up a possible attack by Rome on Turn 144. I can move my battering ram up NE-NE along the road this turn, and then move it next to the city on Turn 144. I'll also have lot of ships in position to close in on the city state and grab any available sea tiles that might open up. This would also kick Chevalier's units out of Nan Madol's borders and leave him in no man's land shortly before the attack begins. And if an attack doesn't look like a good idea, we don't have to do it at all - just booting out Chevalier's units will be helpful unto itself. For that matter, if I finish Natural History and pass you the boost, you'll have two more envoys and you might even be able to steal the suzerainship for a little while.
Another important note for you Singaboy: Woden has formally adopted his state religion. This means that you'll definitely want to run Wars of Religion policy for the +4 strength boost against him. I may choose to adopt it as well, although I don't know if I'll be fighting Woden's units that much. Probably still worth it.
Now this picture also shows the bad news of the combat on the eastern ocean: Lepanto and Midway. These are junk cities that Chevalier founded, with one goal: forest chopping and resource harvesting. He's produced a Royal Navy Dockyard at both of them and now the resources will be sacrified for more units. With Press Gangs and Venetian Arsenal, each stone resource is worth 2 frigates and each forest is worth 1.5 frigates. There are five forests and two stone resoures sitting there at these cities, so that's potentially close to a dozen frigates sitting there in those resources.
This is Civ6 at its absolute worst, the +100% production policies combining with junk cities founded only to chop and harvest out units. And Venetian Arsenal is as broken as we all know, the single dumbest wonder in the game from a balance perspective. We knew it was critically important and we failed to get it. Honestly, if Rome had built the Venetian Arsenal this game would already be over. I would have 30 frigates and Chevalier would have a dozen and that would be GG. It's really stupid that he can throw down crap cities and get an advantage like this. Not a knock on Chevalier, he's making a sweet play here, but it's a dumb aspect of game design.
Here's the one piece of good news: I have the promotion edge and that's a huge factor indeed. It may be enough to save my entire game here. Frigates with Line of Battle promotion attack at 62 strength against 45 melee defending strength. The +17 strength differential deals an average 60 damage, enough to two-shot enemy frigates. Ironclads with Embolon are even more lopsided, attacking with +22 strength for 70 average damage dealt (and 12 damage taken). I should have the advantage of first strike due to turn order, and if I can manage to get all of my ships into the fight, I could easily sink as many as 7-8 frigates before Chevalier even gets a chance to take his turn. No seriously, the first strike advantage is that huge. Of course, he will have his Great Admirals around to give all of his ships +5 strength, but I think I'll have a good chance to attack and kill his Great Admirals at the start of the fight to remove them. They won't "die" and they'll go back to his closest city... but his closest city is Midway or Jutland, a long way out of the fight. Chevalier doesn't have Steam Power yet (or even Industrialization), which means that his embarked Great Admirals only move 3 tiles per turn. Kill the Great Admiral and it's a 5 turn swim back to the battlefield again.
My plan is therefore to congregate my ships in that bay that we control to the west of Nan Madol. If Chevalier moves up to confront me, then we use the first strike advantage and try to sink 7-10 ships on the first turn of the war. That could be half of his navy right there - hopefully he doesn't have too many more than 20 frigates! If Chevalier moves back to protect his own cities, we stall for two turns and wait for battleship upgrades. I'm going to bluff towards Nan Madol next turn and see how he reacts, whether he keeps coming forward or backs off when he sees all the ships with the upgrades. (By the way, that little scout is SUPER helpful for vision right now, heh.) So we threaten towards Nan Madol, see what Chevalier does, and either attack the city state or not depending on how he reacts. That's the best plan that I can see in this theatre. Complicated stuff. I almost wish I were Germany/Russia right now since they have vision on all the units on both sides. It would be quite a show to watch. We're setting up for a naval battle here that dwarfs the one in PBEM4.
Singaboy, you might want to start upgrading your units now to allow a few turns for moving up to the front lines on Turn 146. You do have to be careful because Woden will get to move before you. I think he's in serious trouble though - his army is a fraction of China, Roma, and England and he doesn't have a lot of money for upgrades. I think he'll have field guns but not much else. Then again, a German trader spotted some Nubia horsemen moving west though his territory, so perhaps there are some Nubian cavalry upgrades incoming as well. My non-naval units are yours to position where you like, let me know if you want something in a particular spot.
Whew. That's enough typing for now. Good luck Singaboy.