[Spoilers] rho21 follows the works of Homer... D'OH!

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Congrats on a good game, rho! You did great to keep pace for so long with a civ that had half the map. Ultimately the game was decided in the first 70 turns on the far side of the world, I'm not sure you could have done better.

[rho21]

I'm planning to give a quick overview of a few aspects of Greece and the game as a whole today and tomorrow. Then hopefully on Sunday I'll have time to write up a retrospective.

Well that plan went poorly. I'm going to carry on but without giving a revised timescale.

So let's have a look at Greece as things stand in T200, 1390AD.

In the west, the defensive wall stands strong against the Aztecs, as was very necessary earlier in the game. I really like how terrain can matter so much to combat in this game, without having to be a narrow pass or similar. The river really made it difficult for the Aztecs to advance.

By the same token the difficulty of making progress offensively against a well set defence really determined the course and length of the game; perhaps the balance isn't quite right in that area in the mid-game.

Note that Xenocrates is utterly useless thanks to war exhaustion. As a conquered city state, it always got the vast majority of my war weariness, and has been in revolt for ages now. A net -9 amenities means -60% to production. Ugh. Not a fun mechanic.

Off to the east we see that the opposite is true where navies are concerned. The loss of my port on this ocean was a heavy blow, Apollonius rather less of one. Bryson and particularly Meton have turned into excellent cities though. Striking oil was a great help here.

Lastly, my industrial heartlands. The mountains and hills here also had a huge effect on the progress of the game, giving me a chance to keep up in production and science. I doubt anyone else had three 4-adjacency campuses (not that that's very important by this stage of the game, but it was huge earlier).
Ruhr Valley is 5 turns from completion. Would have loved to see the effects on Aristaeus, currently working 10 mines and a quarry, so total production would have jumped immediately to somewhere around 75. Enough to push out an infantry in 4 turns with boost. That's despite losing 10% to low amenities for being my second city to receive war weariness.


Militarily I had:

• Melee
  • 1 infantry corps
    
  • 1 musket
    
  • 5 infantry in production
    
• Anti-cavalry
  • 2 hoplites
    
• Mounted
  • 2 cavalry
    
  • 4 horsemen
    
  • 1 knight corps
    
  • 4 tanks
    
• Ranged
  • 2 archers
    
  • 4 field cannons
    
  • 1 field cannon corps
    
  • 3 field cannon armies
    
  • 1 field cannon in production
    
• Siege
  • 2 artillery
    
• Support / Recon
  • 2 scouts
    
  • 1 battering ram
    
  • 1 outdated great general
    
• Ships
  • 1 ironclad
    
  • 1 battleship
    
  • 1 privateer in production
    

[suboptimal]

Hey there....first off, well played! I was able to get a quick skim through your thread (going to try a deeper dive this weekend when I should be home for most of it) and do have a couple of comments, questions, etc (don't know if you've gone through my thread or not, so I may be repeating things you've already read).

- I was wondering how or if you were managing war weariness and from the sounds of Xenocrates you were having some issues. With all of the fighting and my sprawl I had two cities at -6, two at -5 and one at -1 on T200. The only thing keeping them from rebellion was the Aztec's additional amenities and the Colosseum.

- Regarding the visibility at Apollonius, I had a spy in the city. It started out in Xenocrates (arriving Turn 149), arrived in Dinostratus on Turn 170, Apollonius on 181 and Xenocrates on Turn 193 (with a second spy in Menaechmus on Turn 199). Other than a listening post mission at Xenocrates I was using them to monitor unit movements in the target cities. That's how I had visibility on the inland unit. The listening post mission, while it was being run, also gave me enough diplomatic visibility to see your policy swaps. Other than the listening post mission I think that the other missions are not worth the effort. Their main benefit is being able to see what your opponent is doing in key cities.

- I never got far enough up the coast to see that Bryson was as close to the coast as it was. I also couldn't get a spy in there as I hadn't uncovered the city center to find out.

- You did a much better job than I did at getting boosts, particularly in the Medieval & Renaissance eras. I was too focused on infrastructure and military builds to go after them until it was too late.

- Geneva....yeahhhhh.....if the frigate isn't sunk or the musket doesn't upgrade that city was toast. How much of your science rate was due to Geneva at the end of the game? I'm guessing you had both Natural Philosophy and Rationalism slotted for most of the time.

- Ruhr Valley would have been a massive boon. That would not have been a pleasant notification to see at the start of a turn.

- Would you be able to post a screenshot of the city report screen just showing the city summaries? I'm curious to see how our yield outputs compared.

Once again, good game (and as much luck as I can wish you in PBEM 11 despite dedlurking on of your opponents ).

[rho21]

Hey there....first off, well played!    I was able to get a quick skim through your thread (going to try a deeper dive this weekend when I should be home for most of it) and do have a couple of comments, questions, etc (don't know if you've gone through my thread or not, so I may be repeating things you've already read).

Thanks.
I've not touched your thread yet, I'm still planning to write a retrospective first.

- I was wondering how or if you were managing war weariness and from the sounds of Xenocrates you were having some issues.  With all of the fighting and my sprawl I had two cities at -6, two at -5 and one at -1 on T200.  The only thing keeping them from rebellion was the Aztec's additional amenities and the Colosseum.

I think I had a total of -13 from war weariness at T200. Only two cities below content though, the ones where the game decided to concentrate the war weariness. Xenocrates has been really bad for quite a while now - I'm sure you saw some of the barbarian tanks that appeared there.

I was hurting for amenities for most of the mid-game. This was only really brought under control when I built a couple of zoos. A large part of the problem is the amenity distribution by continent: with no cities outside the eastern continent, I only had a few varieties of amenity available to me. (Nice as having different amenities on different continents is thematically, spreading a few more around seems to be something that should be added to the list for mapmakers.)

This certainly factored into how willing I was to throw units your way.

- Regarding the visibility at Apollonius, I had a spy in the city.

Aaaah. I wondered at one point if you might have used your otherwise worthless diplomatic slot to build some discounted spies. I concluded it was more likely you'd used it for extra envoys to contest Geneva though.

- You did a much better job than I did at getting boosts, particularly in the Medieval & Renaissance eras.  I was too focused on infrastructure and military builds to go after them until it was too late.

Yeah, I made reaching boosts a major part of my planning. More on that in the restrospective.

- Geneva....yeahhhhh.....if the frigate isn't sunk or the musket doesn't upgrade that city was toast.  How much of your science rate was due to Geneva at the end of the game?  I'm guessing you had both Natural Philosophy and Rationalism slotted for most of the time.

Not all that much by the end. Only four campuses (a big mistake), so only 26 per turn from the envoy bonus. And almost all of my trade routes had migrated to Kongo to bolster . Call it 1/8th of my science.

Back when you failed to raze Geneva it was a much higher proportion. That would have resulted in a much earlier concession, I'm sure.

I actually only had one of Natural Philosophy and Rationalism in place most of the time. Other things were always more important. I've covered how much each was worth in detail at most of the civic switches.

- Would you be able to post a screenshot of the city report screen just showing the city summaries?  I'm curious to see how our yield outputs compared.

I'll do that when I'm at home (writing this from work at lunchtime).

[suboptimal]

I think I had a total of -13 from war weariness at T200. Only two cities below content though, the ones where the game decided to concentrate the war weariness. Xenocrates has been really bad for quite a while now - I'm sure you saw some of the barbarian tanks that appeared there.

I actually never saw the tanks -- the spy was at Apollonius at the time and I had no visibility on the city's territory except for when I moved the battering ram to check on your Encampment.  Since they didn't attack or pillage anything (that I saw) I had no idea.

[rho21]

I thought they were adjacent to your borders for a turn. But now that I think about it, the game probably spawned them there at the start of my turn, then they moved away on the "barbarian turn" immediately before your turn.

[rho21]

- Would you be able to post a screenshot of the city report screen just showing the city summaries?  I'm curious to see how our yield outputs compared.

This one?

While I think about it, you're very welcome to have a poke about in game to answer any other questions you have. You can find it at http://rho21.aqxs.net/rb/PBEM10/Latest.Civ6Save. And I believe I have a full set of turn end saves if there are any others that would particularly interest you.

[suboptimal]

Yep, that's the screen shot I was asking about. I'm very interested to take a look at the last save and going back through your save archive might also be instructive. I'll let you know after I get to take a good reading of your thread. I've also got EoT saves going all the way back to Turn 1 (March 26th ) so if you see anything in my reports (or don't see something) let me know and I'll get you a particular save (the EoT199 save is in my thread -- Archduke had asked for it to catch himself up).

Right off the bat your four largest science-producing cities have a higher rate than my largest (Near Wild Heaven, 31.4 while running a project). I also had no city producing more than 13 . You were definitely more efficient in these departments than I was!

[rho21]

The specific great scientists we ended up with means that more of your effective science rate at this point in the game is coming from boosts, while much of mine is coming from truly absurd universities worth 20 each. Makes it difficult to compare directly.

My big culture rates are thanks to great works in those cities. Plus of course I have boosted cultural districts.

[suboptimal]

Ah yes...that's right. You had gotten Einstein and were generating great artists. I had about 30 or so from Geneva (when I could get it) and the rest was population and Campus districts (9, most of which had universities).