It's Chevalier's Thread and He Can Do What He Wants To

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Let's take a look at wonders, since I don't think I explored those much in PBEM8.

R&F introduced a bunch of new wonders, and altered some others. There's also a bunch of wonders relevant for naval games but not much else. So let's dive in:

Amundson-Scott Research Station
It must be built on a Snow or Snow Hills tile next to a Campus with a Research Lab.

• Effects:
  • +5  Great Scientist points per turn
    
  • +20%  Science and 10%  Production in all cities. If there are 5 Snow or Snow Hills tiles within 3 tiles of a city and owned by this player these yields are doubled.
    
• 
  1620 production, Cold War Civic. 
  

Casa de Contraccion
 It must be built adjacent to a Government Plaza.

• Effects:
  • +3  Great Merchant points per turn
    
  • Gain 3 Governor promotions.
    
  • All your cities on your non-home continent with a Governor gain +15%  Production, +15%  Faith and +15%  Gold.
    
• 
  920 production, Cartography
  

Great Library
 It must be built on flat land adjacent to a Campus with a Library.

• Effects:
  
  • +2  Science
    
  • +1  Great Scientist point per turn
    
  • +2  Great Works of Writing slots
    
  •  +1  Great Writer point per turn
    
  •  Receive a random tech boost after another player recruits a Great Scientist.
    
• 
  400 production, Recorded History
  

Great Lighthouse
It must be built on the coast and adjacent to a Harbor with a Lighthouse.

• Effects:
  
  • +1  Movement for all naval units.
    
  • +3  Gold
    
  • +1  Great Admiral point per turn
    290 production, Celestial Navigation
    

Colossus
It must be built on the Coast and adjacent to a Harbor. It cannot be built on a Lake.

• Effects:
  
  • +3  Gold
    
  • +1  Great Admiral point per turn
    
  • +1  Trade Route capacity
    
  • Grants a Trader unit.
    
• 
  400 production, Shipbuilding
  

Kilwa Kisiwani
 It must be built on a flat tile adjacent to Coast.

• Effects:
  
  • +3  Envoys when built.
    
  • When you are the Suzerain of a City-State this cityreceives a +15% boost to the yield provided by that City-State. If you are the Suzerain to 2 or more City-States of that type an additional +15% boost is given to all your cities.
    
• 
  710 production, Machinery
  

Kotoku-in
It must be built adjacent to a Holy Site with a Temple.

• Effects:
  
  • +20%  Faith in this city.
    
  • Grants 4 Warrior Monks (if player has founded a religionor if there is a majority religion for this player or city).
    710 production, Divine Right. Warrior monks cost 200 faith (~100 production), strength 35, move of 3. Not sure if boosted by Medieval GG or not.
    

Mausoleum at Helicarnassus
It must be built adjacent to a Harbor.

• Effects:
  
  • Grants a free Great Admiral.
    
  • All Great Admirals can use their retirement ability an additional time and Great Engineers have an additional charge.
    400 production, Defensive Tactics.
    

Statue of Liberty
 It must be built on the Coast (not a Lake), adjacent to land and a Harbor.

• Effects:
  
  • Grants 2 Settlers.
    
  • All your cities within 6 tiles are always 100% Loyal.
    
• 
  1240 production, Civil Engineering.
  

St. Basil's
 It must be built adjacent to a City Center.

• Effects:
  
  • +3  Relic slots
    
  • +100%  Religious Tourism from this city.
    
  • +1  Food, +1  Production, and +1  Culture on all Tundra tiles for this city.
    
• 
  920, Reformed Church.
  

Taj Mahal
It must be built next to a River.

• Effects:
  
  • +1 Era Score from Historic Moment earned after this wonder is complete if that Moment is usually worth 2 or more Era Score.
    
• 
  920 production, humanism. 
  

Temple of Artemis
It must be built adjacent to a Camp.
Effects:

• +4  Food
  
  
• +3  Housing
  
  
• Each Camp, Pasture, and Plantation improvement within 4 tiles of this wonder provides +1  Amenity.
  

180 production, Archery

Terracotta Army
It must be built on Grassland or Plains adjacent to an Encampmentwith a Barracks or Stable.

• Effects:
  
  • +2  Great General points per turn
    
  • All current land units gain a promotion level.
    
  • All Archaeologists from the owner may enter foreign lands without Open Borders.
    
• 
  400 production, construction.
  

A lot of wonders to dig through. A lot we can toss out right away - for example, Amundson-Scott is never going to happen, ditto St. Basil's. The Taj Mahal is possible but way too expensive for what it does. Kilwa Kasani is also too expensive. 

So, the list to dig through - in addition to the usual Pyramids/Petra/Colosseum/Stonehenge possibilities:

Casa de Contraccion
Colossus
Great Lighthouse
Great Library
Kotoku-in
Mausoleum
Statue of Liberty
Temple of Artemis
Terracotta Army

A lot of these I strongly suspect are overpriced - La Casa, Kotoku, and Lady Liberty in particular - but I want to do the math on them anyway. Lunch time now, these are the wonders I'll dig into this evening.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Some of these I am certain are not worth the cost.

For example, the Statue of Liberty. Let's allow the very unlikely scenario that the game reaches Civil Engineering and it's in such a state that I could spare 1200 production on something like the Statue instead of MOAR BATTLESHIPS or whatever the requirements of the day are. It's STILL not worth it. The Loyalty pressure is nothing - you'd have to build this in a strong production city, meaning almost certainly your core, meaning Loyalty is meaningless. So you're spending 1200 production for two settlers.

Obviously, then, you need settlers to cost 600 apiece before it's worth it. But wait! If we run Colonization (or the modern equivalent) and have the Ancestral Hall, our settlers are discounted 100%! So to account for the 100% discount, we'd need ONE settler to equal 1200 production before the Statue was a (slightly) efficient build! By my calculations, that point would be reached after we built...34 settlers. 

So yeah. The Statue of Liberty is never worth building, even in singleplayer. If you build the Chamber instead, you get 1.5 towards settlers, meaning you need one settler to equal 800 production instead of 1200, which works out to...24 settlers. Not gonna happen.

What about Kotoku-in?

Well, when you use JE or Valetta to buy things, you generally have to pay 2 faith for 1 cog. I BELIEVE units work the same way - not sure of the precise formula - which means that Warrior Monks, at 200 faith apiece, are essentially 100 cog units. Compare iwth the 90 production swordsman, which has the same strength but lower move points. I'm also not sure if the Monk can be boosted with Feudal Contract or with a Medieval GG. If so, then they're possibly worth building...apart from the fact that they can't be upgraded and are basically obsolete at the time they come out (put them up against Knights, go on, try it. Is bad day for the warrior monks). So you're spending 310 production to get +20% faith in a city, and 400 production on 4 units that you won't be able to do much with on an island map. 

So we can scratch that one, too. 

Okay, how about the Casa de Contraccion? It costs as much as the Venetian Arsenal does, but instead of endless free ships, you get +15% production, gold, and faith on non-hoem continent cities with governors, you get some great merchant points, and you get 3 governor titles. Now, you should have ~9 governor titles at this point (3 from the plaza and associated buildings, 6 from the tree), and your next promotions will have to wait for the Industrial era. So 3 titles is not to be sneezed at. But is it worth 920 production? I'm not sure. The production boost...almost certainly not. Even if you had a 100 production city on a foreign continent, la Casa just nabs you an extra 15 per turn - so it's 62 turns before you come out ahead. If you have THREE 100 production cities, it pays for itself in only 21 turns. But most cities seem to reach ~30 production or so (citation needed, need to go back and check old games), which is an extra...5 production (if we round up). That's 184 turns for one city, or 62 turns if we have 3. The faith and gold can help those numbers a bit, but not enough. So, not worth it. 

That leaves:

The Mausoleum
The Great Library
The Great Lighthouse
The Colossus
Temple of Artemis
Terracotta Army

I'm skeptical of the Colossus and the Temple of Artemis, so I'll look at those next. The other 4 I'm pretty confident of*, so I'll touch on those last. 

*the Great Library would be excellent to nab if Scotland is in the game, otherwise not so much.

[Ichabod]

I have some anedoctal evidence regarding the Hanging Gardens in PBEM3, that perhaps is worth thinking about. I was under the impression that my cities at the housing cap were growing faster than they should be, considering the 15% bonus from the wonder. There may be some strange math working there, but I'm not sure.

Anyway, it's not that bad of a wonder, I think. It may prove helpful in a low housing setting. If you are trying a test game, give it a whirl. I built it because it was costing the same as an aqueduct, while giving the same housing bonus and the growth one.

About warrior monks, they have some interesting promotions avaiable. But I doubt they are worth it, either way.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I think if the situation is right - I have a city in need of housing with a spare river tile - the Hanging Gardens are worth it in a later era, if still available. And again, this talk of housing made me think of Angkor Wat - +1 housing and +1 pop in every city. At 710 production, I could have 7 lighthouses instead for +7 housing, +7 food (and the food tile bonus), +7 GA points, +7 trade routes, and +7 gold - which frankly I'd rather have. But if I can make it out to 10 or 12 cities, suddenly Angkor Wat isn't a bad investment, a good way to grow cities. So let's add that to the maybe.

Of course, I won't get even half of these wonders - there's no way I'll have the spare production sloshing around. Judging by PBEM7, I can expect maybe 3. Which 3?

If the Archduke takes Scotland, I want the Great Library to counter him. Scotland can lock down Great Scientists absurdly, but with the Library every one he takes is a eureka for me, in addition to the science and writer points, all for the cost of 4 libraries. That seems roughly worth it in a Scotland game, maybe not otherwise.

The Mausoleum is nice to have, but I won't get many GAs - maybe only 1 or 2 at best. Probably not worth the production, unless I really want the free GA.

The Great Lighthouse I definitely want. Best naval wonder after the Venetian Arsenal, I think.

Terracotta Army, since it applies to naval units, is also really nice. First promotions are +7 combat strength or +1 movement. Tricky thing will be timing it - you want a good portion of your navy in the water for it to work best. However, you need an encampment and barracks to build it, and I'll probably only build one of those (discounted), mostly to enable the wonder and to get a GG. I still think a small Mamluk-GG army would be good to operate in support of my navy and hit inland cities.

The last wonder to prioritize...I dunno. Wat? Gardens? Pyramids? Stonehenge? Petra is a situational build. Colossus - 400 production for 1 trader and some gold doesn't seem worth it to me. A harbor would need to cost 300 production before the harbor+lighthouse cost even matched the Colossus, and you get the same benefit. You'd have to be really squeezed for space to make the Colossus a worthwhile build.

The Temple of Artemis - which, point of trivia, si the only Civ VI wonder I've seen in person, along with the Colosseum - actually looks worthwhile. 180 production for +4 food and +3 housing makes it as good as an aqueduct - and better than the Hanging Gardens, I think, because it has the bonus effect of bonus amenities for camps, pastures, and plantations within 4 tiles. Scotland would desperately crave this wonder, though. I might chase it for denial value, and if Scotland loses it, I can try to channel the failproduction into the Great Library instead.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Woden wants a pick, but I'm still not sure. Arabia or Rome?

What the hell, Arabia, unless one of my lurking cohorts talks me out of it.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Also stashing this on the front page, but here's the Moments guide for future reference:

Moment type:	Moment Description	Total Score	Age Obsolete
Final City Taken	Destroy a civ	5	-
First to Meet	Be the first to meet every civ	5	-
First to Trade	Be the first with a trade post with every civ	5	-
First to Circumnavigate	Sail around the world	5	-
First to Flight	Be the first to discover Flight	5	-

Moment type:	Moment Description	Total Score	Age Obsolete
First to Belief	Be the first religion to have all 4 belief slots filled	4	-
Unique Building	Build your first UB	4	-
Wonder	Complete a wonder	4	-
Rival Holy City Converted	Convert the Holy City of another religion	4	-
Capital Taken	Take another civ's capital	4	-
Unique District	Build your first UB	4	-
Unique Unit	Build your first UU	4	-
Emergency Defended	Sucessfully defend against an emergency	4	-
First to Continent	Be the first to discover a new continent	4	-
Unique Tile Improvement	Build your first UI	4	-

Moment type:	Moment Description	Total Score	Age Obsolete
Threatening Camp Destroyed	Clear a barb Camp within 6 tiles of 1 of your cities	3	Medieval
Religion Adopts All Beliefs	Your religion has 4 beliefs	3	-
Old Wonder	Complete a WW from an earlier era	3	-
Largest Civ	Have 3 more cities than the next-largest civ	3	-
City of Awe	Found a city within 2 tiles of a Natural Wonder	3	-
Enemy City Converted	Convert a city while at war with the owner	3	-
Splendid District	Build your first district of each type with 3+ adjacency	3	-
First Neighborhood	First neighborhood in the world	3	Modern
Successful Emergency	Participate in an emergency & win	3	Modern
Natural Wonder Discovered	First in the world to discover a Natural Wonder	3	-
First Tier 1/2/3 Government	First in the world to adopt a government tier	3	Varies
Patronage	Recruit a Great Person with gold/faith	3	-
First Religion	Found the first religion in the world	3	-
Met All Civilizations	Meet all Civs in the world	3	-
Flight	Discover Flight	3	-
Trading Posts	Have a Trading Post with every Civ	3	-
First Seafaring	Build the first ship in the world	3	-
Enemy Veteran Defeated	Defeat an enemy unit with 2+ promotions	3	-
World Circumnavigated	Uncover a tile in every vertical line on the map	3	-

Moment Type	Moment Description	Total Score	Age Obsolete
Barb Camp destroyed	Destroy a hostile barb camp anywhere	2	Medieval
City on New Continent	Found your first city on a specified continent	2	-
World's First Large/Enormous/Gigantic City	Be the first in the world to a city with 10/15/20 pop	2	Modern/-/-
Free City Joins	A free city joins your empire	2	-
First Civic/Tech of New Era	Be the first in the world to discover a tech in the new era	2	-
Neighborhood	Build your first neighborhood	2	-
World's First Corps/Fleet/Army/Armada	Be first in the world with the specified unit	2	Atomic/Modern
Next Government Tier	Reach your first Tier 1/2/3 government	2	Medieval/Renaissance/Atomic
First Inquisition	Be the first in the world to launch an inquistion	2	-
First Pantheon	Be the first in the world to adopt a pantheon	2	Medieval
City-State's First Suzerain	Be the first in the world to suzerain a specific city-state	2	Medieval
Levied Army Stands Down	Use envoys to convince a city-state levied army to return home	2	-
Enemy City-state Pacified	Use envoys to make peace with a city-state at war with you	2	-
City-state levied near enemy	Levy a city-state army near your enemy's cities	2	-
Religion founded	Found a religion	2	-
First master spy earned	Earn the first master spy in the world	2	-
Seafaring Unit	Build your first ship	2	-
First Strategic Resource	Be the first in the world to build a unit with a strategic resource	2	-
General/Admiral Victorious	Your GG/GA wins his/her first engagement	2	-
Casus Belli	Declare war with a casus belli	2	-

Moment Type	Moment Description	Total Score	Age Obsolete
Artifact Extracted	Extract an artifact.	1	-
Aggressive City	Found a city within 5 tiles of another civ.	1	-
Snow/Desert/Tundra City	Found a city on the specified terrain.	1	-
First Large/Enormous/Gigantic City	A city in your civ reaches 10/15/20 pop	1	Modern/-/-
First tech/civic	Research your first tech/civic of a new era	1	-
First armada/army/corps/fleet	Your civ forms its first unit of the specified type	1	Modern/Atomic
Tribal Village	Contact a goodie hut	1	Classical
All Governors Appointed	Recruit all 7 governors	1	-
Governor Fully Promoted	Give 1 governor all 5 promotions	1	Modern
Great Person Recruited	A great person joins your civ	1	-
Inquisition	Your civ founds an inquisition	1	-
Pantheon	Your civ adopts a pantheon	1	Medieval
City-state Levy	Levy a city-state's army	1	-
Met New Civ	You meet a new civ	1	-
First in the world - Space Race Project completed	Be the first in the world to launch a satellite/moon landing/Mars project.	1	-
Space Race project completed	Your civ completes a space-race project.	1	-
Master Spy recruited	You fully promote a spy	1	-
Trading Post established	You establish your first trading post with a specified civ	1	-
Distinguished Unit	A unit reaches 4 promotions	1	-
Enemy Formation Defeated	Defeat an enemy formation with an inferior unit	1	-
Strategic Resource	Your civ has its first unit with a strategic resource	1	-
Nuclear Project Complete	Manhattan Project/Operation Ivy	1	-

aetryn, I like the idea of a Dark -> Heroic age again. I didn't do a good job watching my era score in PBEM8, but here I might be able to better manage things for the slingshot. Monasticism in particular seems like a really great card to run for a while - we can try and catch up in culture in the Medieval Age with Pen, Brush, & Voice or something.

[Woden]

Here is your start...

[aetryn]

Lots of nice hills around that starting location. No reef, but not much coast in general, which is a decent tradeoff. Settle in place or settle on the inlet? Seems like in place is better for the fresh water, but the adjacency of the harbor is going to be terrible. Not a lot of forest, so heavy chop projects are probably out at this city.

[Banzailizard]

Personally I do not really like this start other than all of the hills.  What is really going to hurt is the lack of luxury resources for amenities.  The salt and crabs are both in the third ring.  Still I would not move closer to them because it moves you away from the sheep and stone. Finding aalux rich second city site will be important. The inlet means at least it will be hard to usefully bombard with frigates.

I would say this is the sort of city where you want to build the Temple of Artemis.  Try to build it big to use all those hills. The desert to the east is not encouraging either. Might be good for pyramids though.

Speaking of wonders, do we know if China is in the game? Maybe Sultan Mal Fet can enlighten his court on the matter of his opponents.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Emperor said he was taking England, so China's out. Japper took Gitarja ahead of me, and I don't know yet what Rowain and Archduke settled on. Leaning towards Scotland and Brazil, but I wouldn't be surprised to see Archduke take the Netherlands and Rowain could really take anything from his kind of lackluster stable.

As for the start...holy hills, Batman! Down the line, with Apprenticeship, this could be a real production monster. But that's mostly all it has going for it.

Choppable resources: 4 hills and 1 stone, and if we go for the Temple of Artemis we'll probably use those up really early.
Adjacencies: The harbor spot gets one potential crab. It looks like the mountain south of spawn extends one tile further, so potentially an okay Campus or Holy Site spot there. A few other mountains scattered about.
Food: Well, we have sheepies! Two sheepies, to be precise...Which presents me with a dilemma.

As I see it, there's two options: SIP, or move one tile west to the coast. Moving to other tiles around the lake or coast doesn't seem to do much, but let me know if I've missed something.

If we SIP: We get 6 housing, 5 first ring hills, first ring sheep and stone. Crab, bananas, sheep, and salt are all in the third ring. Second ring has nothing but a bunch of hills. I like the high housing and high production potential, but growth will be tough. At the capital, we were wanting some combination of Holy Site, Campus, Harbor, and Plaza - which would mean we have to hit size 10. In the meantime, building the districts we need would be tough. Delay the Plaza means delaying the Ancestral Hall, and the earlier that is up, the better. Delaying the Holy Site means delaying the religion - maybe possible if we don't feel like racing and don't feel like there's lots of competition, but I'd rather not go that way. Delaying campus makes it harder to hit the district discounts, and of course slows down science, but maybe possible. And delaying a Harbor means that we build NO ships from this city until late into the game. We can still make use of Maritime Industries, ironically enough, because we can build onto the lake.

If we move: We get 4 housing, sheep, stone, and crabs in the second ring, 5 first ring hills. We open up a potential second city site at the northern end of the long lake, which ahs a similar sheep/hills set up. 3 potential aqueduct locations to fix housing, though. Here, we have more limited housing, but we can hit our district targets easier - the Harbor can be safely be delayed, at least, since we can get exploring galleys out. Then we can go HS - Plaza - Campus perhaps, or HS - Campus - Plaza, as we wish. Hitting size 7 - well, we start with 4 thanks to the palace, a granary pushes us to 6, and then we need...hm. Harbor has to come for a lighthouse and that's out. Farms are really difficult to come by on hills. Mines don't add housing. Do fishing boats? They do, they add .5 (as do pastures), so two improvements there just barely gets us to 7. Size 10 will need an aqueduct.

Right now I incline to SIP. We'll be confined to our island for a while, but our second city can grab the sailing eureka. We have strong production at home, and housing will be a lot easier in this set up. Banzai, you're dead on about the Temple of Artemis - we have no luxuries at our start (third ring resources don't count), but the Temple could go on the flatland right next to our first-ring sheepies and it would fix our food and housing problems at the capital, plus provide +4 amenities, making it the same as a luxury. It's enabled at archery, so we'll either want an early slinger to try and land the eureka, or ignore the eureka and hard research it to get the temple up.

Wait, shit, it needs a camp, not a pasture. No camp resources in sight. So scratch that for now, but it'd be wonderful to have. No river, so the Hanging Gardens are also out. Pyramids, Petra, and Stonehenge all still possibilities.

Timelines...ugh. We have so much to do! Priorities:

1)Get out at least one scouting unit
2)Get a second city out
3)Get a HS up and start gathering points.
4)Get a builder - probably 2 - and start improving these tiles. Think about what we want to spend our 5 chops on.
5)Get the Plaza ->Ancestral Hall up preferably before settler #2. Chop both?

I think those are the 5 most urgent start-of-game things. With so little chopping resources and no real pressure to grab first religion, we might skip Stonehenge and do things the right way - we need a HS anyway for faith accumulation.