Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Modo]

Now, there is one little trump in my hands. Nubia has a Great General there, which makes things much more difficult. His field cannons are battle hardened and promoted to make things worse. However, Marco Polo has spread to Acre (I only realized that end of the turn). My Apostle has arrived just in time to purge Napoli and get Marco Polo to be the predominant religion there. The Apostle passed the city and a mouse over showed that 3/7 citizens would follow Marco Polo. With Acre following our religion, I can hire a missionary, which I do. This missionary, together with the Apostle, should be able to convert Napoli right next turn. And that means, Crusade will be active during China's turn, adding +10 strength to every Chinese units within Napoli's territory. Even better, Nubia can't know this yet, as it will happen right on China's turn. I am now hoping that Nubia will move in his units around Napoli.

Sometimes it is better to be lucky...and good.
England having VA fleets is wad, trolololol....but still, they are retreating for now. This looks like a tide with four way waves coming and going but if you hold their morale might exhaust before their units do. Especially since you're not even in a defensive posture yet and still have options at sea.

[Singaboy]

Just a quick update why I conceded. 2 points. I have played Rome's turn and sank two more frigates. Englands power continues to drop. Before going to work I opened the save a saw that England's power is back to what it was and in addition they seem to have a lot more ships. Just stupid...that wonder is just silly. Top that with the fact that Sulla and me had nationalism for some time and could have attacked Nubia with cavalry and field cannon corps as well as combining some navy for a much stronger fleet. Now Nubia and England and soon Germany and Russia can form those by simply reaching nationalism. This is the last straw for me...too bad. I think in all honesty I am done with Civ6 and it' chopping antics. Not my type of game. I want to see my empire grow into a real powerhouse thanks to powerful cities that can actually produce sth meaningful rather than harvesting and chopping things

[Singaboy]

T151 Rome's part:

This turn was played with the patch in place with quite an impact. Before I do anything at sea, I get the battleship to defeat that pesky musketman. In the screenshot, you can also see that some privateers are close to completion. This will give me the Eureka for submarines which should be researched in 3 turns after combustion. 4 turns until we have tanks. This will be vital.



Now, what do I spot? The nationalism bug is fixed. This is a great thing but it comes a little late. We got nationalism on T147. Those few turns could have made some difference with fleets in play. Anyway, it is never too late. There is a catch though. If you combine two units, you won't get an accumulation of experience. The fleet or corps will simply take on the higher experience of both, while health is being averaged out. This means, that preferably, I should combine unpromoted with promoted units.

Have a look at the strength difference here. You can see a normal unit at Bologna and a first fleet made up of a promoted and unpromoted unit. The standard unit would inflict an average of 88 damage in this case. The fleet however does 131 damage, an increase of 43. This makes a huge difference, whether you can sink/defeat a unit with one shot or not. On a cluttered battlefield such as the area around Napoli and Acre, that can make the difference between winning and losing.

I proceed to combine three unpromoted with 3 promoted battleships to get 3 fleets. This in fact improves the gpt as unit maintenance drops. Unfortunately, there are only promoted knights that can be combined to tank corps later on. No new knights anywhere in sight. No builders to magically chop them.

I sent four battleship in the direction of the caravel that was sunk by England and spot the remainder of the former England fleet. This is an opportunity not to be missed (and later badly regretted) as I sink 2/4 frigates with double shots. I feel that Rome is getting on top of things (how stupid of me)

Let's have a look at the power ratings: England which suffered 31 ship losses still has a power of 1900. This is simply insane. Actually when starting the game, I assumed it to have a lot less water. One ridiculous game decided primarily by the Venetian Arsenal was enough, but now we got potentially another.Amazingly here, China has the highest power rating with plenty of units that still need upgrading, particularly the navy in the west. Germany has upgraded their ships to ironclads and frigates there. That has resulted in a drop in gpt for them too.
Woden's Nubia has a scary power rating as well with GG boosted cavalry and field cannons. I can only hope, that we can hold Nubia off until the arrival of tanks. With tank corps, we could steamroll them I hope.

[Singaboy]

T151: China

The save arrived just before leaving for work and I could not resist to open it to see how many units China has lost to Nubia's attack. But....no attack by Nubia at all. This will cost him as I can now combine my many cavalry and field cannons to corps making them much stronger. Nubia has not reached nationalism at the moment.

Then I check the Ocean and 1/4 battleships in the north has been sunk, while another has been wounded. This can only be due to a lot more English ships there. The power rating has jumped back to 2200, simply ridiculous. It feels like playing space invaders where wave after wave of enemy troops are thrown at you regardless of your military prowess. Top that with the insane war weariness model for modern units and I feel what Sulla must have felt a few turns earlier.

Of course, Rome is by no means defeated. The question here is, what's the point of playing a game which is so lopsided due to ONE wonder. China's ability to build such nice wonders doesn't really matter. Naval units are way superior to land units due to the fact, that they do not have to fight with terrain movement rules that make land units crawl about. No, ships can move 6-8 tiles in one turn, they can destroy walls without the help of super slow battering rams or entirely useless catapults or bombards. In all seriousness, what on earth were the designers of this game thinking?

[Sullla]

Wow, this game has been moving fast today! I checked the thread this morning with the intention of replying tonight, and another turn and a half went past. Singaboy, you've been playing as well or better than I would have done with Rome. I don't think that there's any serious chance of Rome or China being defeated, at least not for a long time. With battleships online now and tanks coming available soon, we can dish out more damage than we take on defense for a long time to come.

But I don't disagree with your post in the General thread either. We've killed an absolutely astonishing number of English ships in this war, better than 3:1 ratio of kills to deaths. We fought with a tech edge and a promotion edge. And we still can't reduce England's power at all. It's completely crazy. Venetian Arsenal + lategame chopping/harvesting is just broken. Maybe the lurker thread sees this differently, but it certainly looks like whoever builds that wonder simply becomes invincible at sea. Now I really am in the process of moving and have a ton of stuff going on in real life - I wasn't lying about that - but it's the sense of hopelessness from playing my turns that probably tipped the scales into wanting this game to end in a draw. It's so, so very disheartening to kill incredible numbers of enemy units and not have it matter because there are always more of them. That combined with the patch dropping just screwed us over so hard. We were ahead in civics the whole game, but when we reached Nationalism first we couldn't use corps/fleets. Now they become unbroken again just as the trailing teams reach Nationalism. It's so unfortunate from a luck perspective.

If the game continues, our big picture strategy remains the same. We absolutely have to capture or raze every English city on the eastern ocean, then send the Roman fleet through the canal into the southern ocean to deal with Germany's fleet. There's also likely an English fleet coming around the southern tundra to attack us in the southern ocean as well. I never thought that we'd have to face as many ships as we've been fighting thus far. Kudos to Chevalier for chopping them out, but it's completely stupid that cutting down a few forest tiles is more important than building up a navy for the first 95% of the game's elapsed time. It's really sad that the stress testing that we've done in this game has revealed Civ6's economy to be fundamentally broken in the mid to late game. I doubt that I'll be able to motivate myself to play much Civ6 in the future. Too much knowledge has basically ruined things for me.

Sorry about such a depressing post! I really do think you've been doing a good job, and I'm extremely happy with the game we played over the last six months. Venetian Arsenal + chopping/harvesting just breaks this game apart, and the patch screwed us over really badly.

[IsusArkan]

Imagine how absurdly over the game would have been if Rome had landed the wonder instead. Roughly double the roman fleet and half the English, the losses would be around 4 times as bad, i doubt the cities on that ocean would even be standing by now, assuming that things would have otherwise remained the same.

[Modo]

VA is equally broken no matter who gets it.
As for Sullla and Singaboy...we play games to improve ourselves so if Civ6 ultimately fails do deliver on that even despite it's many good points it's still a good thing that you've taken part in this, played the hand you were dealt to the best of your abilities and exposed the issues. If that leads to improvements for the game itself we can't tell (and I'm not hopeful) but it was still a fun ride for me and I hope for you as well for the most of it

[Singaboy]

In the name of digging deeper into flaws and shortfalls, the game has been decided to be a draw but played out longer, it seems.

So, here is China's T151:

The shocking news first. I thought, I had England's navy on their knees on this side of the world, but they somehow got even more frigates and managed to sink one of the battleships. In hindsight, it might have been better to combined 4 ships into 2 fleets and then chase the English. Well, I seriously didn't think they had more units arriving from the north.
Rome will have 2 fleets able to sail northeast and shoot those offenders as well as using the existing 3 battleships (2 of them can attack while one is used to form a fleet). I am guessing that England has maybe 4-6 frigates up there. I should be able to sink at least 3 of them if not more. I simply have to continue to chase them as long as Rome has the tech advantage.




Well, Nubia didn't attack at all, probably they also have their units scout and retreat. This enables China to make some crucial moves. A charge from the apostle and missionary wasn't enough to convert Napoli. It will happen next turn as currently the city has 4 Marco Polo versus 3 others. Crusade will be active then.

I go on a corps frenzy and combine a lot of troops. I rather have less troops at the front each with a lot more punch. It has the nice side effect of cutting unit maintenance. This is crucial as I still have to upgrade a lot of troops in the west as well as tanks here in the east. I have 5 cavalry corps with field cannon corps to back them up. I combined two knights which will later be upgraded to a tank corp. I rather have the knights combined for +10 strength now in case they get into some action. In hindsight I should have combined more troops in the west too for more gpt. Next turn. I am hoping to get 2 additional knights here for a total of 3 tank corps.

I will switch tech research next turn to await the Eureka from Rome. As China is not chasing submarines, I could choose the path to infantry.

 

No image of the core as things progress slowly. However, I managed to block the first of two access tiles to Lisbon with the second due next turn. Two builders are ready to harvest crabs for a bounty of gold for further upgrades. The battle in the west will be bloody for sure.

[Modo]

In the name of digging deeper into flaws and shortfalls, the game has been decided to be a draw but played out longer, it seems.

Yey, fun

But if no clear end date is agreed, this might drag on. If the game is officially over any group of people or individuals could take over, sounds more like experimentation at this point.

[Singaboy]

I just played the turn for Rome and sank yet another 5 frigates (out of 6), bringing their tally to 36 ships lost. Rome has lost 8 ships. Yet, Rome's war weariness stands at an amazing -28. I have not dug into the war weariness formulas, but they should have -60 or so? I'd say, unrest is the order of the day. It is a pity I can't see those red barbarian units popping up all over their empire. Good luck.