Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

Suboptimal: we'll see what happens at Lucca on this upcoming turn! I'm not optimistic though - the city was supposed to grow to size 3 prior to last turn, and it wound up remaining at the same size instead of increasing in size. I think something buggy happened and the city just ended up remaining stuck in place.

Singaboy: Science rate increasing to 125 beakers/turn is quite nice. China is only slightly less science right now than Nubia (135 beakers/turn) and Germany (140 beakers/turn), and far more than England (85 beakers/turn) or Russia (65 beakers/turn). I think one of our greatest strengths as a team has been possessing two different civs that are both strong actors in their own right. England/Nubia are closer to us in that regard, but Chevalier's civ is honestly kind of terrible at everything that doesn't involve naval power. He's getting roughly 50 culture/turn via the suzerainship of Nan Madol, and without that his research rate in both science and culture are poor indeed. As for the other team, TheArchduke is a monstrous customer but Russia is quite weak. While EmperorK has strong faith production, it's still quite a bit less than Singaboy and his culture rate is barely higher than Rome despite all those Lavras and essentially free Great People. I think that splitting things up so that we have two actors that can both contribute in their own right has been a net positive overall. The fact that Chevalier doesn't have the science rate to reach ironclads or battleships (or potentially even field cannons and cavalry) is a huge deal right now.

I will definitely move my units forward on this upcoming turn (Turn 143) to be in position to attack Nan Madol on Turn 144. That includes putting units in position to bounce Chevalier's units off to... somewhere. Maybe they'll go into the water? That would certainly be nice, heh. I'll give you my final recommendation on whether or not to drop the envoys into Nan Madol after playing my turn, but I suspect that the answer will be yes. There is one unfortunate thing about Singaboy's turn report: zero pictures of what Chevalier did with his ships on his turn! Did he reveal more ships? Keep them in place, retreat, etc. I'm guessing it wasn't too dramatic since Singaboy didn't post about it.

As far as Woden is concerned, I think my preference would also be to hit the city north of Ma'at (Haathor) first if possible. That would isolate any English units up by Nan Madol and cut them off from the Nubian units in the south. Obviously we could also avoid crossfire from both Nubian cities under that scenario, and the terrain also looks more open up there now that Woden has been cutting down some of the forests and jungles. Good terrain for cavalry. My second battering ram is on its way east from Savoia right now along with a bunch of muskets (all of them with Battlecry + Tortoise promotions) to guard it. Just let me know where you want them to move. We'll likely do best in this theatre to have China move first and clear out a path, followed by Rome then moving a battering ram forward and taking down the city defenses before Woden can play his turn again. Let's focus on Haathor first and then head to Ma'at if we have success. I don't want to get too far ahead of ourselves just yet, but if we can break through the initial defenses there might not be much stopping us behind them. Woden will have field cannons and knights and likely cavalry of his own though, plus his Great Generals, so we'll need to take care. (His current top unit is a musketman as per the 55 - 10 = 45 defensive strength in Kurgus. Watch that city to see when he first gets access to cavs. And don't forget that we want to be in Wars of Religion policy for the +4 strength bonus against Nubia units!)

Do you know what promotions the apostle rolled? If we get a promotion that grants extra spread charges, I think that we can use the extra spreads and then still declare an Inquisition with the apostle so long as it has 3 spread charges remaining. I'm not 100% sure on that and I'd want to check on it. What we really need in the former Kongo/Khmer lands isn't missionaries or apostles so much as inquisitors to remove the offending religion from these cities. One inquisitor shot and the foreign religion would completely disappear from those cities. Since we have an apostle now, we may as well think about whether we can get some extra spread charges via promotion and then still call an inquisition anyway. Of course, if the Prosleytizer promotion is available, that would also be amazing to have also. Too bad this guy is like 20 turns away from the front lines right now. Well, Modern roads will let an apostle move 8 tiles per turn and they aren't far away now. That's another little miniature benefit from Steel tech in addition to all of the other goodies.

[Sullla]

OK, here we go for Turn 143:



My scout survived its encounter with the big, bad barbarian caravel, yay! No further sign of the unit this turn; it must be lurking around in the southern tundra depths. Be careful with your knight on the waters down there Singaboy, you might want to return that unit to land once you get a little bit further to the west, away from Chevalier's city of Cape St. Vincent. Somewhat amazingly, this scout looks like it's managed to live to fight another day.

We'll get to military stuff in a minute. First some more domestic tasks:



I had a builder improve the whales at Ferrara, followed by the city running a trade route to Lisbon for 17 gold/turn. This place is pretty nice for a tiny little island city. I'll probably see if I can get another builder here later to harvest those forests into some more ships. I could chop each one into a privateer and then upgrade them into battleships. (By the way, that's the next big naval upgrade path that I'll be doing. Once I have battleships unlocked, my port cities will swap over to building privateers, and then we'll do a mass upgrade to subs later on. Similarly, my land cities are going to push out a round of knights in the near future for tank upgrades. Always be planning for the next mass upgrade in Civ6 MP.)



Then Milano had a trader to assign to a trade route, and I saw that I could send the fellow off to Nan Madol for 14 gold/turn. Lisbon wasn't an option because Milano already had a trade route running there. I figured, why not run the trade route to Nan Madol for one turn, and then I'll get a chance to reassign it next turn when we attack the city state. It seemed worthwhile.



My caravel returning home spotted these quadriremes waiting to be upgraded in Chevalier's territory. Hmmm, he has 500 gold in the bank right now, why hasn't he upgraded them already? This is a bit strange to me. Perhaps he's not in Professional Army policy at the moment (?) Well regardless, the more units that Chevalier has sitting in the waters south of his core, the better it is for us. The key engagement is going to take place in the eastern ocean, not here. I was expecting him to send his navy that he built down here off around the southern edge of one of the two continents, but it hasn't happened as yet.



Back at home in the core, more traders are getting ready to complete along with the Commercial district project. That thing is worth a lot of money right now; it may even be worth running the project when there's no Great Person to recruit for the extra gold. I think I may owe Singaboy an apology about that from what I posted earlier in this game. I'm continuing to run extra Scientist specialists to be absolutely sure that Steel tech will finish in five turns on Turn 148. I should make it with beakers to spare, especially with another university finishing in two turns, but better safe than sorry. War weariness is going to kick in at some point and begin dropping my science and culture output.



Down in the south, the trailing portion of my army keeps chugging along. Singaboy, I'm trying to leave the desert tiles east of Napoli open for your units to move towards Hathor. Please feel free to take those tiles as you wish, although of course Woden will get to move before you on Turn 146, so that may dictate staying back on the first turn of the war. Your call here.

The archaeological museum completed in Napoli and boosted Natural History. I ended up about 2% short of finishing the civic, which is unfortunately what I predicted last turn. It would have been nice to complete the civic this turn for the 2 envoys (to be dropped into another Commercial city state to boost all my districts) and a policy swap into something other than Professional Army now that I'm done upgrading for a little while. Still, I've set up the policy swap for next turn, which will pass the boost over to Singaboy. I will need China to finish Nationalism on Turn 146, passing the boost to Rome on Turn 147 and allowing me to change policies at the start of Turn 148 (back into Professional Army again to begin upgrading frigates to battleships). Will that work out OK for you Singaboy?



Here's the main diplomatic news for the turn: England signed a Declaration of Friendship with Russia and Germany. That's obviously a big deal indeed; we can give up on any dreams of Russia/Germany working with us to take down England and Nubia. They will be locked into peace now until Turn 173 or Turn 174 (depending on whether they signed this deal this turn or last turn), and I expect that the game will probably be over or just about ending by that point. I don't think that they have an alliance at the moment, just the Declaration of Friendship, which would mean that they no longer share vision. Have to double check on that since it's significant. I also think that signing the double Declaration of Friendship, with both Russia and Germany at the same time, was a bit silly. They should have staggered out that DoF, signing it with one teammate now and then leaving the option open to re-up in 15 turns with the other teammate. There's no need to close off your options like that in this particular game setup.

An interesting philosophical question is whether Russia/Germany should have signed this deal. I'm sure the lurker thread has been debating this and it's worth thinking about. I think you could make a good argument that they would have been wise to crash into Nubia at a time when Woden and Chevalier have most of their units off fighting our team. If TheArchduke could manage to capture Chevalier's Venetian Arsenal city, for example, that could be a game-changing play. On the other hand, you could also argue that Russia/Germany's only realistic chance of winning is to team up with England/Nubia and work to take our team down together. However, I can't help but think that we've managed to set up overlapping Declaration of Friendships / Alliances that give us a good chance to deal with first one opponent, then the other. This new Declaration of Friendship is a gamble on TheArchduke's part that our upcoming war will turn into a stalemate. He's banking on Chevalier and Woden fighting us to a draw, and then Russia/Germany can attack our team from the other side. But if we can win decisively, then we'll be in a position where we have two whole continents under our control and the power of England/Nubia smashed, which might very well be impossible for their team to come back from. They have repeatedly taken a passive approach to every decision in this game, a real oddity for TheArchduke. I just don't think they can sit back and build forever in this game, and waiting until Turn 161 (when our current Alliance wear off) to make a move feels really, really late in this game. Especially with Russia's science being so dismal - EmperorK has basically lost any window to do something with cossacks. By the time he has them ready to attack, we'll have Steel for 200 HP defenses in all cities and tanks on the field.

This is the picture of the main battlefront with Chevalier, spoilered for size. I had to go into strategic view to see everything, there were so many units in this area. Chevalier's ships are sitting in place right now and have barely moved since last turn. He's showing me about 8-10 frigates right now and I know there are a few more caravels in the area as well. Now maybe there are more ships hidden out in the fog and this is all a big trap, but I have pretty good vision in this body of water and I don't think that's the case. And Chevalier is running out of time to harvest/chop out more ships, with only three more turns remaining until the war starts. He needs to have a major advantage in numbers to win, as my promotions actually make my ships stronger than his Great Admiral, heh. Right now, I have 5 ironclads and 14 frigates in this area, all of them promoted, with 2 more unpromoted frigates appearing in Parma next turn via natural production and a stone harvest. I will also get the advantage of the first strike via turn order, and right now, Chevalier would probably see every single ship here killed if he left them in place. I would sink the ship protecting the Great Admiral first and then I would crush everything else with +17 strength advantage on my frigate attacks. Of course, Chevalier does still have three more turns to get more ships in place and chop out units, so we'll see what he comes up with.

Singaboy, you should definitely drop your two envoys into Nan Madol this turn and boot out Chevalier's units. Check to make sure he hasn't added more envoys into the city state, but he still only had 6 envoys as of my turn. My units are in position and ready to attack the city state next turn. I can hit it with an ironclad + battering ram combo to drop the walls, then a musket and two field guns. That won't take the city immediately, but it should be easy prey for a Turn 145 capture and then we have the city state's borders to operate from within at the start of the war. If I can take the city state, I'll look to fight in the area west of that little island choke point with my navy, buying time to upgrade to battleships.

I'm legitimately curious what Chevalier will do here on his turn. If he gets spooked and pulls his ships back to the east, that will make it easier to capture Nan Madol. If he doesn't, he's setting himself up to get slaughtered on the first turn of the war. I'm not sure that he realizes how powerful the promotions are on these ships. That plus the first attacker advantage is simply massive. Heck, if we take Nan Madol I can even bring my field guns up and fire at any ships trying to pass through. I'm still nervous here, especially about the possibility of invisible Sea Dogs capturing my ships, but starting to feel a little bit better based on what I can see.

[Sullla]

One last mechanics check. We signed the Declaration of Friendship with Chevalier on Turn 115:



No Declaration of Friendship at the start of Turn 115.



Signing the deal.



And now we have it in place. We had this exact same situation earlier in the game with the Declaration of Friendship mechanic. First I offered a Declaration of Friendship to Japper on Turn 58, and he signed on Turn 59:



That Declaration of Friendship lasted for 31 turns. I was *NOT* able to declare war on Turn 89:



Then on Turn 90, the deal wore off:



Japper asked me for a new Declaration of Friendship, which means that he could have declared war if he wanted. He played before me in turn order and it would have been an option. This should function the same way. We should be able to declare war on Turn 146 and Rome will get the first strike by virtue of playing first in turn order. Of course, if I'm wrong that could be disastrous.

[Singaboy]

I am leaving late for work for a medical check-up. Turn report to come later but I could play in time with your instructions for this turn.

A teaser here for Rome's next move:

[Sullla]

Beautiful, absolutely beautiful! Loving that musket that now finds itself north of Parma on a tile stuck between Roman borders and two cliffs.

[Singaboy]

T143:

These are the turns that make playing Civ6 so enjoyable. Some crafty business here. Before I do anything else, my excitement is too big and I have to check the envoy count. Just beautiful. I am not sure whether we caught them unaware or whether CMF has no additional envoys, but the result is the same regardless. I was a little worried that the additional envy last turn would be a hint for them to add more envoys.

The situation while England is the suzerain. Four muskets, 1 crossbow and 1 frigate are going to be teleported in a second. To note as well, how England has pulled some ships back. I guess, the presence of the Roman navy has some effect here.



And, as the teaser already showed, it makes boom and England's units are 'beamed' to some nearby places. You got the love the musket at Parma. England has now two units that are doomed before the war even starts. Will he delete the unit or allow Rome to collect free experience? We can only see 3/4 muskets, one of them presumably in the fog east of the city.

The attack that I can envisage is a battering ram supported iron clad attack. That should deal around 30 damage (when I moused over the city, it showed a strength of around 70). It should be possible to attack with an additional knight and one field cannon causing maybe an additional 50 damage? I am sure on T145, the city should be attacked with sufficient units to take it right in the nick if time before the war with England.
There is also a crossbow in the water, which can serve as exp for Rome's frigates. 

I got one question for Sulla to check at the beginning of his turn. The display showed a culture output for England around 125 (not too sure). I would like to know to which value it has dropped now.
We need to ensure to stall Nubia and England badly since it is clear that we have to deal with two opponents here. I do not quite understand Germany and Russia. Why would they stall their expansion by signing a DoF upfront. Are they that confident that Rome and China won't make any progress against England and Nubia? Whatever... 



What about China's economy and progress. I have both builders in place to harvest and it would yield a total of 270 food. That's not quite enough to reach 320 food that would be required. The question is: Harvest next turn, when Hangzhou has grown to pop 13 and then harvest the banana rain forest? Or wait a few turns until natural growth has taken care of the missing 50 food? I am not in a hurry to finish the Inspiration right now as I am lining up two other civics for a double swap before moving on. In addition, two additional civics will increase the harvest output. The only downside would be to have two builders idling around. Not too tragic here as I can always harvest the south later on for higher output.

The trade route that I rerouted is being assigned to Lisbon for a nice 16 gold. My gpt is increasing to counter the additional unit support. By the way, I tested and Colonial Taxes in fact applies to trade routes as well. This means, that I might swap from triangular trade to Colonial Taxes after the next double swap of cards. Currently, each trade route to Lisbon gives me 16 got and 1 faith. With Colonial Taxes, I would get 12+3 gold for them, which would result in a maximum loss of 6 gpt if all 6 routes start from cities in the west other than Hangzhou. However, all other income from those NINE cities would enjoy a 25% bonus. That got to be more than the shortfall of 6gpt. I am going to check each city tonight for their current gpt output and do a proper calculation.

Beijing has finished the arena but the net result for happiness isn't really great as it only adds one amenity. However, the third builder connects dyes and the result is instant. My cities really enjoy all those amenities. What if Rome had two copies of whales to trade to China too? And with Nan Madol in Rome's hands it would mean tobacco for both of us as well. We are well prepared to fight off war weariness I'd say.

In the east, the war preparations are well under way. It needs strategic view to still get a good idea of the battle field. I am going to have to come up with some plan how to attack Hathor. I would assume Rome's battering ram to roll in via the desert SW/SW of the city while my cavalry will try to surround the city avoiding the fire from Ma'at. Of course with Nubia playing between Rome and China, this gets pretty tricky. I'd say, we approach the city with Rome holding tight on T146 while China tries to clear Nubian units and then go for a possible attack on T147.

I assume Rome will use the field cannons for coastal defense and to hunt England's units and navy. Hence, I might position some cavalry west of Hathor while the rest comes in from SW with field cannon support.

This turn, I upgraded more units and found out, that my unit count was wrong. I will in fact have 8 field cannons and 10 cavalry. I still need to upgrade one crossbow and six horsemen, costing me roughly 1300 gold.

I am in fact hoping to have some extra gold to upgrade my western navy to battleships and ironclads. that might make the defense of Xiangqi more viable. I am glad that my income is still doing relatively fine. I would like to have more trade routes. I am still thinking of getting rid of theocracy. Of course, that would mean no longer can I draft units.

By the way, I have switched to natural history now before switching back to nationalism on T146. This times nicely and I can then swap policies on T147 enabling War of Religion as Professional army won't be required for the time being.

In the east, England seems to start to move some navy towards our land. I will disembark my knight in two turns before those frigates can harass me. We might need some navy to protect ourselves from incoming units from the southeast.

And finally, to answer Sulla's question about the Apostle. The turn you hire the unit, you cannot do anything with it and have to wait a turn to activate it. Anyway, the unit is a proselytizer and will help turn Acre to Marco Polo. We might be able to convert other ex-Kongo cities as well.

Wow, what a longish report. Good luck to you Sulla, attacking Nan Madol. By the way, next turn I will take over Lisbon as  Suzerain again due to the Inspiration from natural history. Please do NOT invest any envoy there are I need to be suzerain to hold 2 copies of niter.

[timmy827]

Back at home in the core, more traders are getting ready to complete along with the Commercial district project. That thing is worth a lot of money right now; it may even be worth running the project when there's no Great Person to recruit for the extra gold. I think I may owe Singaboy an apology about that from what I posted earlier in this game.

What's the conversion rate (has it been changed in one of the patches?).  Always thought the per-turn rates from district projects were poor tradeoffs for production, although I only have SP experience where gold is more abundant (and more likely to still have good spots for settlers this late in the game).

[Modo]

England has now two units that are doomed before the war even starts. Will he delete the unit or allow Rome to collect free experience? We can only see 3/4 muskets, one of them presumably in the fog east of the city.

I presume that if they want to delete them (which is the correct play given the circumstances) they would want to do it asap to also save on some maintenance gold that they currently pay for them.
So if the units are still around the next turn that might already indicate their reluctance to take this approach; off course keeping them until the last possible moment and delete them then is the worst scenario aside from actually getting them killed for Roman xp.

[roland of gilead]

this is getting exciting.

[Sullla]

The turn was actually in my inbox this morning when I woke up. However, I didn't want to try rushing through an important turn like this at 5:30 AM, especially given that the turns have been taking me about an hour to play recently and I only have half an hour in the morning before I need to leave for work. We'll just all have to wait until I can get back from work today to play through the turn, and my apologies for that. I hate the fact that I'm the one who often ends up holding the save right now in our current turn pattern, but for better or for worse I'm not a grad student working from my home anymore who can play turns instantly when they first arrive. Anyway, let me respond to some of the issues from Singaboy's turn.

* The envoy play at Nan Madol was a really sweet move. I love the fact that we made it happen by entering the Industrial era and getting a friendly city state quest, that was one nice bit of RNG that went in our favor. I'll check to see what Chevalier's culture/turn rate looks like before I declare war on Nan Madol. He will actually become the suzerain again on his turn after we attack, because attacking a city state directly (i.e. not attacking their suzerain but the city state itself) causes you to lose all of your envoys. With any luck, Chevalier will only enjoy that suzerainship for a single more turn before the city state is ours.

Only one of Chevalier's units was truly screwed as a result of this. The musket teleported north of Parma is completely and utterly dead as a result, as much as if we had dropped it into a black hole. I also wonder if Chevalier will delete it to save on maintenance costs. The musket on the end of the little peninsula may be able to escape; it can embark on Turn 144, and then move three tiles east on Turn 145. Or Chevalier could move it onto the marsh tile and prepare to attack us with it on Turn 146. It's also in pretty terrible shape. The other two muskets and the crossbow will likely live to fight another day. However, we've completely disrupted his defensive formation, and now he'll be forced to scramble to come up with something new. Chevalier was expecting to dig in outside a friendly city state and force us to attack against an entrenched position. Instead, his units have been scattered in every direction and we should be able to capture the city state before the war starts, flipping it around to have control over its borders and the line of site that they grant (a big deal). This was worth the cost of the three envoys Singaboy invested here quite apart from anything else.

* On attacking Nan Madol: it looks very doable right now for a Turn 145 capture. As Singaboy mentioned, the battering ram moves up next to the city and then an ironclad attacks to remove the city walls. They still have some damage from Japper's attack long ago (I've found that the AI apparently never repairs wall damage, ever) and an ironclad attack should remove them entirely or get extremely close to it. One ironclad even has an unused promotion that will erase any damage taken in the city attack, ha! I can then fire with two field guns, with Industrial roads for once serving a useful purpose. The field cannons move two tiles and then can still attack with their 0.5 movement points remaining, heh. I can also attack with a musket against the city center and move two knights into position. I should even be able to get a two-promotion frigate into position to shoot at that crossbow to the east of the city, which has odds to one-shot the thing with 62 ranged attack against 30 melee defense. The city won't fall on this upcoming turn, but the ability to attack with another ironclad, two knights, a musket, and two field cannons, it should be plenty to capture it on Turn 145.

Chevalier seems to be pulling his ships back slightly without actually abandoning Nan Madol. We'll see how he responds when he finds out that we're attacking the city state. I'm starting to think that he doesn't have THAT many ships in the eastern ocean, perhaps something like 10-15 instead of the 25-30 that I was worried about. Interested to get more scouting information here.

* For Hangzhou, it's up to you whether to harvest the food resources right now or wait a bit for the city to grow naturally and for China to research more civics, therefore increasing the food haul from the harvests. As long as we aren't held up on civics research waiting for the Urbanization boost to arrive, it's fine with me.

* Colonial taxes does look like it might be better for your situation. It's not useful for me since basically all of Rome's cities are on the same continent. I'd also be curious to see what the numbers looked like in a proper comparison. By the way, I'm happy to see what you'll be getting a free envoy in Lisbon to take back suzerain status. It's definitely silly for us both to have the same number of envoys there.

* Sorry, only one source of whales right now. I'll be happy to send your tobacco if we take Nan Madol though.

* Your plan for approaching Hathor sounds good to me. Rome will hold position on Turn 146, and then follow China's lead in attacking the city on the next turn. The road approaching Hathor from the tiles SW-SW of the city looks like a good avenue for the battering ram to approach from; it will likely have Nubian units blocking it by the time we attack though, so be prepared to have to clear out a path. That attack is going to be harder than it looks right now since Woden still hasn't upgraded his units yet. Expect lots and lots of field cannons on his part; we're definitely going to take losses in clearing him out. No real way around that. At least his Encampment is placed on the wrong side of Maat, and 8 field cannons + 10 cavalry is a pretty impressive force.

* Here's a longterm thought on defending Xiangqi. We have until Turn 161 until our alliance wears off with Russia/Germany, and we're going to make significant strides in tech and civics research by that point. We should have Steel and Combusion techs by then, and hopefully we can reach Mobilization civic as well. That would be the key because it would allow us to create armies and armadas. How do you stop Germany from taking that city? Well, in theory we could take three tanks (base strength 80) and combine them together into a tank army (strength 97), followed by combining three battleships (base ranged strength 70) into an armada (ranged strength 87). Steel tech puts 200 HP defense walls into every city for free. So with this combination in place, even little Xiangqi would have a defensive melee strength of 87 (97 - 10) and shoot back at attackers with a ranged strength of 87. Oh, and every other city would be equally as powerful, or more so with districts to boost their defensive rating. Heck, you could even switch into Bastions policy for 93 melee strength on defense and 92 ranged strength attacks. While that wouldn't stop the full German military, it would at least slow them down and make attacking extremely difficult. I don't think we can hold that city, but I think we can drag things out for a little bit and buy time for the Roman navy to return from the eastern ocean. If we can frustrate Russia/Germany enough after having smashed England/Nubia and captured a bunch of additional cities, perhaps that will be enough to induce a concession from the other teams.

* I do not think that China should leave Theocracy government right now. Faith-purchasing units is still too useful IMO. Knights are probably the next unit to faith purchase; remember, they can be upgraded to tanks and we're only about a dozen turns away from accessing tanks. That's the unit that will truly crush Woden - he can defend against cavs and field cannons but he can't stop 80 strength attackers.

* Excellent news on the policy swapping. I think we have a plan with China swapping back to Nationalism on Turn 146 and then delivering the boost over to Rome.

* Not so good news in the far south: I think my caravel is a dead unit. Your knight can hopefully disembark on land and get to safety but my caravel can't outrun the English units with their 7 movement points. The real question is how many more ships Chevalier is moving around down there. Is he about to send a dozen frigates down around the southern end of the Kongo/Khmer continent? We have to be prepared for that eventuality. At least we managed to scout out these ships on the move, that's a big deal. Fortunately we'll have Steel tech finished researching by the time that those ships can make it over to the southern ocean, and with extra defenses in our coastal cities and battleships available, I'm hoping we can hold any incoming ships off. This gives an added impetus for the need to win the naval battle quickly in the eastern ocean: Rome needs to smash the English navy there and then race to the southern ocean to defend against the other arriving English ships. This actually makes me more willing to fight Chevalier's navy on the eastern ocean right away on Turn 146, since I don't know if I can stall for time and wait to ugprade my ships to battleships. They may be needed in the southern ocean sooner rather than later.

* Last point on the apostle: that Proselytizer promotion is an excellent dice roll. Definitely don't waste that guy on an Inquisition, we want the Proselytizer promotion for sure. One charge will remove all foreign religion from Acre and convert it to Marco Polo, allowing us to use the city to purchase missionaries (once the shrine is done). If we can get a temple in there too, we could purchase apostles and inquisitors up near the front lines. Similarly, one Proselytizer charge followed up by one normal missionary charge would surely convert Hathor or Ma'at over to our religion. Too bad that the apostle is so far away from the front lines, argh! Still, Industrial roads do let apostles move 5 tiles instead of 4 tiles and that will get our religious guy down there fairly quickly. Modern roads via Steel tech can't come soon enough - we want 8 tile movement on the apostle ASAP.

By the way, Ma'at already has a Holy Site district with shrine and temple intact. If we can capture the city and hit it with the Proselytizer apostle, it will flip right around into a city that can produce missionaries and apostles for us. Long wait to reach that point but it's a possibility.