Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Modo]

Too bad I couldn't hover for potential combat odds with those ships and see all the bonuses like I could with Woden. That's not permitted because I had a Declaration of Friendship with Chevalier but don't have one with Woden. I can't attack Woden, mind you, but I can hover for combat odds with his units.

Quick legal quirk here, are you allowed to take a save at the moment when your frigate sees their ships so that Singaboy can check the odds for you? I mean it's pretty critical intel but I don't know if it would be considered cheesy or not. So basically you both play your turns normally but Singaboy gets also the chance to use your ship's vision to check the combat odds using that save.

As for your last remark, at least the start of this war catches you on your free Friday and CMF away from the reigns of his nation so that's a plus. And tomorrow will certainly top the MSI group stages )

[Singaboy]

T145:

Well, it turns out that our opponents are not stupid either. England has given up on Nan Madol and Nubia has upgraded their crossbows to field cannons. The situation in the east at the start of the turn. England's five naval units have moved somewhere. If they can move 7 tiles, where did they go? I somewhat suspect that they all moved in different directions with three of them moving west (one frigate can be seen here). The rest might have moved east.
It might be a good idea to poke west and then sink them all while moving the entire bulk southwest protecting those that take out these three frigates and wait for battleships to arrive while attempting to isolate some ships and sink them. I can't mouse over the England fleet to spot any flanking bonuses. Sulla can do that and then check whether there might be more ships in the west.




With Nubia showing up with field guns, it would be mad suicide to attempt to strike there. They have, after all, some promotions and a GG to speed those field guns up. I send a cavalry towards the border (with 5 moves, it can retreat to safety). This is the best intel we get. There is even a proselytizer, but it belongs to the Khmer religion. Desperation to keep their cities off Marco Polo. A retired GG has given Nubia a cavalry corp, something not to be underestimated. Mouse over shows no sign of War of Religion, at least something. I can't mouse over the corp inside the city though. It is clearly the best call to put up a defensive line and wait for a technology advantage to give us an edge or wait for a mistake by Woden.

Nubia has drained its treasury and gpt gone down to 82. Woden has now 4 envoys in Lisbon, something to closely monitor here. I will get 4 additional envoys in 2/3 turns via natural history and natural accumulation of envoy points. This should keep Lisbon in our hands.

The decision I make is to put up a defensive line, which can be attacked by Nubia's cavalry but is out of reach of his field cannons (move 3 units currently). Note that my spying cavalry is moving onto the desert hill to close the lines before the end of the turn. If Woden decides to attack my frontline cavalry with his cavalry, he might pay a heavy prize for it as I have 8 field cannons directly behind the line of cavalry. The hills to the left and right of my diagonal cavalry line serve as a perfect protection from too many attacks. It would be great, if he actually attacks so that I can fire at him with the field cannons. He could of course, decide to move slowly towards Napoli. Not too sure what sort of risk he is willing to take but judging from his past, I expect a wait and see approach. This would play into our hands as we are waiting for battleships, artillery and tanks.

I am going to draft a bombard there next turn for an additional artillery.

In the far south, Englands frigates have disappeared. I suspect, England is going to sail west to try and hit us behind the front line. This coupled with the fact that there are barbarian naval units made me upgrade one quadrireme to a frigate. I might upgrade the other frigate too as I expect to get steel in 4-5 turns. I would need a source of coal though to be able to upgrade those two frigates. Two battleships could help protect our units there. Sulla, are you going to connect that third coal source at Ravenna soon? I might really need it. Of course, I am slowly running out of money.

A look at my core shows some silliness on my part. Two cities stopped producing the builders one turn away from completion. However, I have two cities producing frigates which might never get ready on time before battleships arrive. Shanghai might be able to finish its production if I delay steel a little but I doubt that is what I want. I started a spy at Shangdu as there is nothing meaningful to build currently. I would like to have either a counter spy or do a spy mission for ourselves to gain some gpt. Pagan will get its campus chopped in 3 turns. Hangzhou is now 136 food short of pop 14. With currently 8 food a turn, I will reach a good time to harvest the marsh in 3 turns with 2 additional civics in place to increase the chop to probably around 130 food. This and the increase in rice harvest yield should be just enough to push the city to pop 15. Once the city gets there, it can then employ a few specialists for research output.

By the way Sulla, once you have taken Nan Madol, please send me the extra amenity. I need it. Good luck taking the city and hunting down some lone English frigates.

[Sullla]

Wow, this was a monster turn. I'm going to have to split the turn report in thre parts because it lasted so long. Let's get right to it.



The turn begins and I'm confronted by the same situation that Singaboy had on his turn. The Declaration of Friendship with Chevalier has ended and war can now be declared by either side.



After clearing out the notifications, I decided that this was as good a time as any to use the Great Scientist that we picked up last turn. Better to know what boosts we're going to get early on and get visibility on oil so that we can include it in our planning. We had good odds to get at least one useful boost, about the only thing that wouldn't be helpful would be the Economics boost (build two banks). I clicked the button and...



Holy cow! Flight *AND* Radio?! I think that was the single best result that we possibly could have gotten. Both of them have nearly impossible boosts for us to land (build an Industrial or later wonder, build a national park) and clear our path further down the tech tree. Radio is important because discovering Radio is the boost for one of our upcoming civics that we have to research. Seriously, if the game goes long enough for this to be a factor, this Great Scientist pull just saved us about 1200 beakers worth of research. Absolutely amazing! More on this later.



Before moving any of my units, I needed to get more information about what Chevalier had out in the water, and I needed to do that before declaring war so that my units could still pass through his with no zone of control rules. I moved my scout one tile east, saw a frigate on the pearls resource, and kept moving east to discover these units. Looks like this is where the units hanging out around Nan Madol ended up, along with the Great Admiral. Well, if that's all that Chevalier had on the eastern ocean then this would be a picnic, but I was pretty sure he had some more units hanging around somewhere.



I moved my northernmost frigate a tile to the west and spotted this: two frigates and a caravel. Mousing over them also revealed that there were more units behind them, just great. How many? At least two or three more units in the fog. Note as well the suspicious tile outlined with a hexagon, which had to be the location of a Sea Dog, and since we knew that there were two of them, the other one almost certainly was nearby too. Those Sea Dogs were the most important units to kill on the ocean, with their potential to capture my own ships. No matter what I did this turn, those units had to die.

What to do with my ships? Ultimately Chevalier's move didn't leave me with much choice. He was clearly heading towards my canal city at Genova and there's no way that I could allow that city to be captured or razed. I had no choice but to move to engage and fight him on this turn. If I were to pull back and try to wait for battleships, he would just use his superior range (7 move frigates) to hit me from distance with a devastating first strike and cripple me before the war began. I'm still annoyed that TheArchduke managed to snipe Darwin away from us, as the extra beakers he would have given us would have allowed me to reach Steel tech 5 turns sooner and have battleships here for this fight. Instead I have to try and do it with frigates against frigates, and that's a tough situation when fighting an English civ with mucho Great Admirals and the Venetian Arsenal and Great Lighthouse. Could get ugly but I had no choice.



First things first though: Nan Madol. It was time to capture this city state once and for all. I moved my knight up to the top of that hill northeast of the city to make room for the field cannons, rotating them to the east to pull the fourth one into the battle. They shot at the city center tile:



Even with the city state weakened to half health, these field cannon shots didn't do very much damage. That one dice roll in particular where I did 16 damage was just pathetic, pretty much the minimum damage possible at that strength differential. Annoying, although not likely to make a difference.



So I lined up the musket to take the city with this attack. It was nice to finally have this location under my control, and...



What the!?! Oh you stupid game! Come on, 3 HP left? You've got to be kidding me. Well, fortunately that knight was in position to attack from the hill tile, who I'd put there "just in case" without ever expecting I'd need to use him. I was planning on moving back to the tile east of the tobacco resource to provide a little more cover for the field guns but I guess not. Die you stupid city state:



That's better. Nan Madol comes as a pretty solid city in its own right, with the notable features being a Harbor district (another trade route yay!), a repairable monument and granary, and a stone resouce that can be harvested. I'll likely turn that into a privateer with the expectation of upgrading it into a submarine later. I'd prefer to get another frigate but there isn't time to harvest the resource before discovering Steel tech, and I'm certainly not delaying that one. City was renamed to Bologna so that we never have to talk about Nan Madol again.

Oh, and Chevalier's culture dropped from 128/turn to 59/turn. Woden only makes 64 culture/turn so they are essentially finished as far as civics research goes. Nan Madol was their whole cultural strategy and Chevalier was getting SEVENTY culture/turn from it. Sheesh. Again, he was incredibly lucky to have that city state located in that particular spot, one of the best possible city states for his civ. This whole game would have played out differently if that had been a random Industrial city state or something.

End of part one...

[Brian Shanahan]

Oh man, the suspense is killing me.

[Sullla]

*Deep breath* OK, let's do this.



All of my tactical movements at sea this turn were based on getting every ship into the battle. There was only one ship out of range to attack any of Chevalier's ships, the injured frigate next to Nan Madol, and even that unit could attack the embarked English musket next to it. Every other unit was focused on killing the maximum possible number of English ships before they had a chance to attack me. For example, this frigate could only reach two ships: the English frigate next to the pearls (which is the one that I was originally planning on targeting) or this other frigate that was revealed in the fog when I moved forward. Now, should I have sat back and tried to defend with my ship while waiting for battleships? Unfortunately that wasn't an option. Chevalier's ships all move faster than mine and frigates are much better on the attack than on the defense. If I pulled back to Nan Madol and waited, he would just get the first strike instead of me. I really did have no choice but to attack and inflict maximum damage. I went for the southern frigate next to Midway because it didn't get any bonus from the nearby Great Admiral.



Then this ironclad finished it off. My frigate that attacked over is surely dead, but Chevalier will need to use two of his own attacks to sink it. The ironclad is probably OK: this guy is the only one of my ironclads with double promotions, enough to get the generic +7 strength (Embolon) that all my ironclads have plus the anti-ranged promotion (Reinforced Hull) for +10 strength against ranged attacks. In other words, this ironclad defends at 77 strength against those frigates, who will be attacking at 60 strength with the Great Admiral (average damage around 15 per shot). I think this unit will probably not be targeted, although if Woden wants to use five attacks to sink it I'm fine with that. (Woden will be playing the next few turns for Chevalier, for the curious.)



I chose not to go after the Great Admiral in the east. While I could have sunk the frigate that it was protecting, that would only teleport it over to Lepanto and it would be right back into the action again. My larger strategic goal was to pull the fighting over to the western side of the ocean, both to help protect my cities and to draw the English units further away from their own cities. That way if I do kill a Great Admiral, it will take much longer to return back to combat. Anyway, I had range enough to reach this frigate sitting off by itself and shoot for 52 damage.



Then finish it off with this frigate. Again, notice how I'm pulling these units over to the west as much as possible. The one frigate off in the east is completely doomed, but I was trying to create a formation with everything else.



Another frigate, another shot for 50+ damage. This is the power of the Terracotta Army in action: line of battle on every single frigate meant 62 strength attacks instead of 55 strength attacks. That pulled the damage range per shot up noticeably, from 36-54 damage (average 45) at +10 strength up to 47-71 damage (average 59) here at +17 strength. I could confidently assume that two attacks would kill every defending frigate. Without the extra damage from the promotion, I would not have been able to two-shot these units and the combat would have been much more difficult.



I finished off this frigate with an ironclad, taking 9 damage in the process. These units here would end up becoming the eastern end of my naval formation by the time this combat was over.



Next I wanted to go after the Sea Dogs, but what's this? They disappeared! Apparently they really do become invisible when you're at war; even mousing over their tiles doesn't show them on the screen. Scary stuff, good thing that I already found the location of this pair. I moved up another frigate, and there they were:



Both of them, just as expected. Sea Dogs are more frail than frigates and rely on stealth for safety. This one practically melted when a frigate engaged it, although unfortunately I didn't have quite enough damage to get into the one-hit kill area. The two frigates highlighted here combined to take down the eastern of the two Sea Dogs.



Now I shifted focus over to the western half of the ocean. I had just barely enough range to get this enemy ship into firing distance to make this attack. This was one of the two frigates chopped out of Parma, and the lack of a promotion was instantly notable in terms of the damage dealt. Only 47 damage here and that roll was slightly above average (45 damage). Fortunately it was still enough to ensure a two-hit kill:



I used an ironclad here for the finishing blow. Now why an ironclad you might ask? The simple answer is that I'm looking ahead to the next round of combat and trying to minimize damage taken on my ironclad. Unlike the ranged frigates, my ironclad takes damage every time that it attacks and therefore I had an incentive to use ironclads to finish off crippled attackers. This is backwards from what you might think, where the melee unit would go after the strongest attacker, but actually not so much here. Both the ironclads and the frigates shared the same 62 strength on their attacks so I basically "babied" the ironclads to keep their health as high as possible for the next round of fighting. Keep in mind too that melee units have to deal with defending support bonuses while ranged units get to ignore them. I didn't want to attack into the teeth of that formation up there to the northwest where the defending unit would get +6 or +8 strength. My frigates could attack the same unit without any strength bonus for the defender.



This worked out so well that I repeated the process again. First the non-promoted frigate...



Then I was going to use an ironclad, only to realize that this double promoted frigate couldn't attack any other targets. It was this enemy ship or nothing. Don't worry about me "wasting" the double promotion frigate, the second promotion just provides a combat bonus against land units. Irrelevant in this context.



Have you noticed that more ships kept appearing as I sank more and more English units? This was concerning but no choice now other than to soldier on. This frigate pictured could only reach the Sea Dog and crippled it with a shot.



Followed by this frigate hitting an English ship with a Great Admiral bonus. Hmmm, must be still more units in the fog to the west back there. It looked like I still had enough attacks to kill this unit, the Sea Dog, and then maybe one or two more units with my ironclads, although I wasn't eager to attack with the melee units into the middle of that English formation.



The last attack revealed this ship, which I saw did *NOT* get the Great Admiral bonus. I pounced on that chance, first with this frigate...



And then sunk with a second frigate. Note that I wasn't leaving any of these units alive but in critical condition. You want to finish kills in Civ6 if at all possible. Do not leave units alive but redlined. In Civ4, a redlined unit is nearly worthless in combat, attacking at a fraction of its strength when full health. In Civ6, a near-dead unit just has a -9 strength penalty, that's all. If Woden reduces one of my frigates to 1 HP, it will still attack at 53 strength and that's pretty darn good! I was making sure to get complete kills on each and every enemy unit. My promotions gave me just enough damage to two-shot everything.



Next I moved my ironclad forward, and oh my god, are you kidding me?! How many ships did Chevalier build on this ocean?! Stupid Venetian Arsenal, sigh. Well, I still had room for some more kills on my turn. This frigate, the one that had moved a tile west at the very beginning of the turn to spot the English ships, slid over to the east and finished off the Sea Dog.



That opened up space in my naval formation for this frigate to move up and finish off the injured frigate from before. And there was one injured enemy frigate up there in the north, presumably from barbarian activity by that camp. (Thanks barbarians!) That was the last target for this turn, using my ironclads to hit another ship out of Great Admiral range.



Note the +4 support bonus. This is why I tried to have my ironclads pick off exposed enemy ships to avoid the defender's strength bonus. Oh, and there's the Great Admiral behind a frigate ARMADA, jeez. That was Chevalier using one of his Great Admirals for their sacrificial bonus, only he gets to use it twice because he built the Mausoleum way back in the day. Man oh man, it is not going to be fun dealing with that unit and its 77 ranged strength. I just pray that it will roll low and not one-shot a frigate on its turn.



Anyway, the other ironclad finished off the damaged English frigate and that brought the naval portion of my turn to a close.



Well, except for this. The frigate pictured here was unable to attack any of the English ships and therefore contented itself by poking at the embarked musket. That unit is probably going to survive too because all my ships are too busy fighting in the fleet to fleet action to chase it down.

All told, I sank 8 frigates and 2 Sea Dogs this turn. The first mover advantage in combat is huge and I did my best to make the most of it. The real MVP here was the Terracotta Army; without the extra promotions, this would not have been possible. Building that wonder may have just saved my entire game. And yet, despite killing 550 points of naval power rating in a single turn, England still has 5 frigates in the east, 6 frigates in the west, and 3 additional caravels. I also spotted builders at Lepanto and Midway preparing to chop/harvest out additional ships, although fortunately England is down to "only" 3 forests and 1 stone remaining over there. That would normally convert into 1 frigate per stone and 0.75 frigates per forest, or about 3 ships, but of course with Venetian Arsenal that will become 6-7 more frigates. That wonder is really, really dumb. In retrospect it should have been banned for this map. Settling two junk cities and harvesting/chopping should not produce close to 15 modern ships for one player.

This upcoming turn is going to be brutal for me. I expect to lose about 6 frigates, and anything less than that would be a very pleasant surprise. I do have 4 frigates completing between turns and a pair of caravels racing up from the southern ocean that can upgrade into ironclads along the way and help out. With some battleship upgrades, I think that I'll eventually prevail in this battle, but it's going to be a bloody mess. I think that I played this turn just about perfectly and it's still going to be nasty. Crossing fingers for Woden to make some tactical errors somwhere at sea on his turn...

[Sullla]

And I still had the rest of the turn to do! What long turn to play.



I actually reassigned a trader to Genova last turn, which I naturally sent on to Lisbon for another sweet 15 gold/turn. My capital began another trader for my 16th trade route following the capture of the Harbor at Nan Madol / Bologna. As far as this city goes, I wonder if Woden will try to attack it. I would kind of like to see him try, especially with Steel tech getting ready to complete and give all my cities 200 HP defensive walls in two turns. I think that he might be able to raze the city if he put all of the efforts of the nearby ships into doing so, but I think I would be OK with that trade. If he focuses on the city then I should be able to clean up his fleet. And although losing Genova would be a real loss, I could always get another settler to replace it and open up the canal path again. Geography only allows three ships to attack Genova at a time, so it's reasonably well protected.



Now this was a sad outcome. I found that the two Sea Dogs were blocking the passage of this ship out of that little channel and therefore I was forced to delete it. You can only delete units at full strength in Civ6, to get around some exploits that took place earlier in the game's patching history, and that meant I had no choice. I couldn't afford to have this unit softened up by the other English ships and then taken captive by the Sea Dogs. Ironically then, I lost zero ships in the massive fighting on the eastern ocean, only to lose a ship down here in the southern tundra. (Of course I'm going to lose a lot more ships in the eastern ocean come Woden's turn, heh.) Singaboy, your knight now looks like it may be able to escape to safety. We'll see.



Northern overview as usual. Frigates are popping out of Firenze, Venezia, Ravenna, and Padua next turn. With battleship upgrades and Steel city defenses incoming on the following turn, I'm not too concerned about the little raiding force that Chevalier sent through the southern tundra. On battleship plus city defenses should be enough to hold off those four units until more help can arrive. I will probably stay in Press Gangs policy to keep building ships, swapping protection from frigates over to privateers. They're a weaker unit but I don't have the +100% production card for Modern era units yet and that means battleships are going to be prohibitively expensive at 430 production cost. The production civic that I want there is International Waters and it comes extremely late in the game at Cold War civic, something we'll probably never reach. Perhaps I can overflow forest chop a privateer to get ~300 production into a battleship that way. They're tough ships to build.



Overview in the south. Not too much going on here, both sides of the militarized border are keeping our units back for safety at the moment. I expect that Woden will stay on the defensive on his turns. Singaboy, he actually has an inquisitor and not an apostle in Hathor, which means that he can purge our religion immediately even if we were able to spread it inside the city. So much for the Crusade bonus, heh. Unfortunately it's very hard to use that one effectively. Perhaps we could have it in effect for a single turn, but that's all that we would get.

Steel tech still on pace to arrive in 2 turns. Nationalism civic will go a little bit over 50 percent and then complete instantly at the start of Turn 148 when Singaboy passes the boost. Then we'll both get to work on Urbanization, hopefully with the boost for that civic coming over from Singaboy as well when his capital hits size 15.



OK, here's the awesome thing about the Great Scientist that we popped this turn. Just look at that upcoming tech tree: we'll have the boost for every single Modern era tech! Flight and Radio were just boosted this turn. Chemistry was boosted via our previous Great Scientist, when we landed that one (guaranteed to appear) alongside Industrialization. Electricity and Combustion will both be easily achieved, with the privateers that I'll be building and the archaeologist already under way in Savoia. In fact, the only tech that we're not going to boost will be Sanitation since we aren't bothering with Neighborhoods, and that's in a fairly unimportant part of the tree. I'll be going for tanks next at Combustion, and then after that, probably back to Flight so that we can unlock observation balloons. I would really love to mess around with planes, but they are just so incredibly costly with their own unique district and then 440 production cost for the most basic plane, the biplane. The lategame planes are amazingly powerful but I can't imagine this game will last long enough to make them a good investment. Then after that, I'll head for Combined Arms (off screen) in the Atomic era because that unlocks destroyers, the game's top melee ship. They can see stealth ships and that might be very handy against Sea Dogs and potential U-boats.

Resources: I'll be connecting another source of coal next turn for you Singaboy, and a fourth source in a few more turns after that. We'll have 4 total sources, enough for both of us to have two. I can see oil now on the map, and you have two sources: one in the desert at Quanzhou (making the Petra city even more amazing) and a second source in the second ring NE of Shangdu. The borders will expand to pick it up as soon as it becomes visible, it's one of the few second ring tiles that hasn't been claimed yet. I have no oil in my borders directly right now, with one in Genova's third ring being the most accessible. There are a lot of water-based oil sources that would require Plastics tech to unlock. I would get ready to connect the Quanzhou and Shangdu sources of oil when you discover Steel in a few turns.

One last note: these turns are starting to eat up too much time. I spent most of my day playing this turn, and while they won't all be this bad, the game is simply taking too long. I'm wearing out on this game and its daily grind. I really hope that we're getting close to the end; it's been over six months now, and whatever anyone believes, I wasn't looking to take on this commitment when I filled in for BrickAstley. Hopefully we can smash the rest of the English navy and maybe that will be enough for the other players to call it quits.

[Singaboy]

Wow, what a turn. Amazing job Sulla! I can imagine the grind here. Let's hope Woden messes up somehow. Maybe he panics and pulls back the ships? Maybe he attacks Genova? I regret now having pulled all units over to Acre. A few field cannons in play could hit those frigates really hard with the Crusade bonus.

I will know soon what decisions England has made and how many of your units have been sunk. No matter what though, their culture progress has been badly crippled and Rome's tech and culture progress is amazing. (+ all that gold). I will be getting three new builders in two turns, two of them at Quanzhou and Shangdu, what a great coincidence. With two sources in our possession, we can have tanks on the battlefield in about 6 turns (for Rome, China might need a little longer here). I am so going to draft a few more knights in Acre.

[Modo]

Holy mother. Here we go, boys, the best laid plans....
On the VA debacle, prohibiting it would probably invalidate England as an option and you already made the best effort possible to showcase it's downsides; it reminds me of the Muad'dib dilemma...if you rely too much on one thing you tend to underestimate the effectiveness of lesser alternatives. Yes, it's a dumb wonder to make the entire game warp around it but just imagine how much expense you just saved for CMF....I'm sure they're not grateful for that one, heh. Same goes for "Bologna".

Oh, and did your GS just give you around the same amount of beakers as Darwin did for Germany? Yeah, it's a less powerful GS in theory and you're not having battleships now because of that but you've played the hand you were dealt

EDIT: I'm reminded of those famous Sirian words "and then it was my turn"....of course that could equally apply to England's next turn as well

[ebbitten]

VA definitely does seem hyper-powered but unless it keeps leading to the team/player that gets it winning the game I’m not totally sold that it deserves a ban


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[Singaboy]

T146:

I have not played a move during the turn, but this is what matters most. Woden has decided to got for Genova. The eastern units (frigate and ironclad) have been sunk, in the west, one frigate has been sunk. Geneva is at 113/200 health and will either be captured (I actually think, England wants to break through these two cities) or razed unless Rome comes to the rescue.

I think, Rome should be able to sink a lot more units on the western side of the war theater now. Of course, those fleets and the armada are beasts and require battleships to deal with them. However, Rome needs to continue to attack unless we want The Venetian Arsenal power to kill us right here. That wonder ought to be banned.