[LURKERS] Civ 6 PBEM 15: May the Odds be Ever In Your Favor

[williams482]

Suboptimal has paid lip service to eventual spaceports, and it seems likely that Wooden is going to try a culture victory given his civ's strengths and the far future wonders (Eifel) he has pinned.

I guess at this point in the game the lack of explicit focus makes some sense, as the options for quick military victories are very nearly ruled out by terrain and any other victory path is so far out that the best way to get there boils down to "get good and see what happens."

[Sullla]

You hit the nail on the head Chevalier: no one seems to be playing towards any particular victory condition, or even has much of a longterm plan. I think everyone is enjoying the process of exploring the gameplay in the second expansion for the most part. Aside from Woden's attack against Jester, it's been a highly cordial game between the players, far less cutthroat than a lot of the other MP games. I think this also explains the somewhat lower level of play that we're seeing here, everyone kind of taking it easy and playing a relaxing friendly match. Some of the oddities that I noticed include:

- Slow expansion across the board in the early turns compared to other MP games. Pindicator and suboptimal both had 3 cities on Turn 75 - huh?! Yes, growing vertically is more viable in the expansion due to the governors, but come on, it's not that much better!

- I don't understand why suboptimal is so focused on luxury resources. I mean, happy cities are nice and all, but more total cities with more total population is better than limiting expansion to keep everyone happy. (Did something change in the expansion here? The unhappiness penalty to yields was only 5% in the non-expansion game.)

- Everyone keeps talking about building Industrial zone districts which I don't understand. We tested this in the big PBEM7 game and the conclusion was that they were basically never worth building for anyone other than Germany with their half cost unique district. The production cost of the district just takes too long to pay for itself and eats up the opportunity cost of building something else more useful.

- Some questionable wonder choices here. Does suboptimal really benefit that much from the Oracle? How many resources is Woden going to invest into a Petra city that's going to have all of two desert hill tiles? (Remember how Chevalier built Petra in the last PBEM game and concluded afterwards that it had been a huge waste?) Now I think that Stonehenge/Pyramids was a great play from Woden and his Colosseum plan is also very worthwhile, but a lot of these other wonders are fairly weak.

- I don't like the way that the players have been spending their gold. Way too many tile purchases instead of saving up for key strategic objectives. Woden is buying granaries right now, and his first planned city is his capital which can surely build a granary easily.

It all reflects a laid-back, relaxing game of Civ6. I'm glad that they're posting (at least suboptimal and Woden are) because there's been very little Civ6 content here recently. We're probably not going to look back at this game for strategic advice later on though.

[Quagma Blast]

- Everyone keeps talking about building Industrial zone districts which I don't understand. We tested this in the big PBEM7 game and the conclusion was that they were basically never worth building for anyone other than Germany with their half cost unique district. The production cost of the district just takes too long to pay for itself and eats up the opportunity cost of building something else more useful.

I think this is mostly because of expansion changes which make IZs... not necessarily good, but at least interesting. The adjacency changes might make it easier to get a big bonus; Factories give better production bonuses once you get them powered; and Coal Plants can spread the IZ's adjacency bonus as well as being one of the better ways to generate power.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Suboptimal has paid lip service to eventual spaceports, and it seems likely that Wooden is going to try a culture victory given his civ's strengths and the far future wonders (Eifel) he has pinned.

I guess at this point in the game the lack of explicit focus makes some sense, as the options for quick military victories are very nearly ruled out by terrain and any other victory path is so far out that the best way to get there boils down to "get good and see what happens."

See, I'm not convinced that a quick military victory is out of the question. It takes time to build units in Civ, far more time than it does to actually capture cities. But everyone's hung up on the mountain passes and acting like that's decisive, but I'm not sure I agree.

Obviously I'm biased here. I'm pretty sure my plan in literally every Civ game I've played (other than PBEM12) has boiled down to "build a bigass navy and then go crush everyone else". I just have a tendency to think of water not as a barrier, but as a highway. Whoever gets control of that first has one of the most crushing advantages it's possible to get in a Civ game - one that, if science/culture/power rates are otherwise equal, is decisive all on its own. Equally obviously, there's no guarantee that it works, as we've seen from the fact that it's only worked well for me in one PBEM game. 

But no one even seems to be contemplating it. Suboptimal, who was behind pin and Woden in development, I feel like should have been finding a way to upend the table, change the rules of the game and put himself back in the running. But he doesn't seem to be searching for any advantage or edge, and instead is building as best he knows how. How will he pass Woden and Pin to launch the spaceship first? What's his plan for that? Is there a way he could use Tourism or Rock Bands to leverage Greece's advantages in order to push for a culture victory? If he's not pushing for a culture victory, what are all those Acropoloi getting him? 

Pin, on the other hand, isn't hampered by mountains really at all, with a bit of builder investment (fairly trivial to come by, with Liang). He's done a good job using the Inca's strengths to grow some good cities and build a great science infrastructure. I hope he's planning to use those two advantages - a tech edge and mountain passing - to try something decisive and not just sit on his heels until Woden wins. Just can't see enough of his thread to tell.

Woden is in the driver's seat, and if anyone can sit on their laurels, he probably can. But I think he'd be better served having a concrete goal. "How will I ensure my civ triumphs over all the others?" "What advantages do I have that they do not? How will I use them?" I'm not seeing that from him. i get he's using his religion to build faith to make civilian unit purchases, but why do that at the expense of spreading the religion itself? He cavalierly ignored a potential +15 attack bonus (making his units the equivalent of later armies) via the religion buff and his GG. Surely with his veteran military, his GG, the surprise war bonus movement, and those potential edges, it'd be worth at least exploring an attack on suboptimal or pindicator? The tech to transport units over water isn't that hard to research, and even a wasting raid to just put a few cities to the torch would be enough to settle things given his land edge. But he doesn't seem to even think of it as a possibility. Sure, he'll probably win if the game turns into a builder's paradise, but that's because his enemies are fools to let the game develop that way. He shouldn't rely on his enemies being fools to win.

- Slow expansion across the board in the early turns compared to other MP games. Pindicator and suboptimal both had 3 cities on Turn 75 - huh?! Yes, growing vertically is more viable in the expansion due to the governors, but come on, it's not that much better!

I'm not sure this was a deliberate choice entirely, since the early game is a bit slowed down in R&F (and presumably GS too). I don't remember quite the table of changes Firaxis made but I do remember that science and culture are harder to come by and so hitting key civics and techs takes a bit longer. Still, you're right, 75 seems absurdly late to hit 75 cities. There's no reason why you can't hit more cities sooner than that - I had 3 cities by turn 45 in PBEM12 after a very slow start, and I don't think much changed between expansions. No city-state captures hampers them some, but that should be all the more incentive to self-found their own cities. 

- I don't understand why suboptimal is so focused on luxury resources. I mean, happy cities are nice and all, but more total cities with more total population is better than limiting expansion to keep everyone happy. (Did something change in the expansion here? The unhappiness penalty to yields was only 5% in the non-expansion game.)

I noticed that, too. He's running 2 amenities policies in his 4-slot government, but is complaining about his lack of gold in the same post. Plus, he's put most of his building effort into Acropoloi instead of Commercial Hubs, while at the same time lamenting that his lack of gold prevents him from seriously contemplating an attack on either pindicator or Woden. He has only one hub completed, to my knowledge, and only just finished the trader for it a few turns ago. Two traders more than 100 turns in! Granted, you have to invest in Markets now, too, but the gold, food, and production for trade routes seem more useful than more chariots he can't afford to upgrade or amphitheaters. Or, yes, the Oracle.

- Everyone keeps talking about building Industrial zone districts which I don't understand. We tested this in the big PBEM7 game and the conclusion was that they were basically never worth building for anyone other than Germany with their half cost unique district. The production cost of the district just takes too long to pay for itself and eats up the opportunity cost of building something else more useful.

Thankfully, no one has built one yet. i wonder if it's because chopping is much weaker now - no production overflow anymore, Magnus is only +50%. It's good for targeted things, but cities have to stand on their own production much more in this version of the game. Personally, I'd do maybe one or two IZs at most, for eurekas, the aura, and the district discount, but otherwise I'd focus on in my opinion far more useful Commercial Hubs (or harbors) - trade routes can give +3 or more production with the right policies, plus food and gold, which is much better than an IZ zone + workshop in a city.

Factories are good, but you only need a few (and I think you only want a few in GS, because resource limits), and those are still probably 40 turns off or so. 

- Some questionable wonder choices here. Does suboptimal really benefit that much from the Oracle? How many resources is Woden going to invest into a Petra city that's going to have all of two desert hill tiles? (Remember how Chevalier built Petra in the last PBEM game and concluded afterwards that it had been a huge waste?) Now I think that Stonehenge/Pyramids was a great play from Woden and his Colosseum plan is also very worthwhile, but a lot of these other wonders are fairly weak.

No argument from me. I did the math a while back and came to the conclusion that, apart from a handful of biggies, almost no wonders are worth the cost, not even when the Statue of Liberty gave 4 settlers (which it does not in GS). The Oracle MIGHT make sense for suboptimal if he had a coherent plan for all the GP he's farming, but I don't see how having more Great Writers than you have slots for will help, and just the extra GS & GM points don't seem worth it. Especially when it seems his civ needs gold more than anything else at the moment, not great people.


Pindicator's Petra play seems dubious, as well. If I consult Woden's chop chart, Pin can get MAYBE 100 cogs from the single choppable tile. Then all he's got for production is the city center, that hill farm, and a desert hill - what, 5 production? I guess he can flip the iron, so if he gets the city up to 3 population + a mine he's all the way up to 8 production! Petra is 400 cogs, so we're still looking at 50 turns to build it. Dropping it to 300 from a chop - which seems generous - reduces that to 38 turns. He can probably run some trade routes to squeeze out more production, and of course I didn't take Magnus into consideration, which would slice off another 7 turns or so, plus some policies, but bottom line, Pin's going to be at this for a little while. In return he'll get +6 cogs, +12 food, and +12 gold from the desert tiles and hills in the first two rings. When you ignore the cost of the settler, he'll need the city to be around for 67 turns after completion before he starts seeing a profit - so this is a play with a payoff only around turn 200 of this game. I'm sure there's higher impact investments to make. 

And yeah, the gold purchases are rough. Suboptimal was even contemplating buying the forest tile next to pin's city "for denial purposes". Woden, on the other hand, has been in love with granary purchases since at least PBEM4. Thank God we had a monopoly on Valetta in PBEM7 so he could indulge himself that way, otherwise who knows what he would have done! I don't get it. I NEVER have enough gold in multiplayer games, and I obsessively build harbors and trade routes. Not my style at all. 

One last response:

Turn 115

It’s occurred to me that with the right policy combination and plenty of iron resources I’d be able to build 7 knights and upgrade two chariots, or build 5 knights, four catapults and upgrade two chariots in the space of 12 turns.  To me, that seems like an advantage over the others (real or imagined).  I can’t though, figure out how to try to use it, especially given the geographical layout.  I’d also break the bank and go negative income without having other builds (like banks) to offset the maintenance costs.  Therein lies another disadvantage – my economy is already the smallest of the bunch.  Lurkers, if you think I'm crazy or have ideas about how to use this please leave me a note in the lurker thread for later.  Gotta learn how to look/think about these things better.

In general, sub, it feels like you tend to lose focus on the big picture when you're making decisions. You'll focus intensely on one area and obssessively analyze it for a bit (often with amusing results - compare your analysis of Woden's luxury trade and your response with Woden's treatment of the same in his thread), and usually you'll come up with a more or less solid plan (apart from the time you launched your entire army at a city state instead of the neighbor bent on conquering you, or when you split your army in half in front of the Archduke's Macedon). But you don't integrate your analysis as a whole. In one area, you'll be dismissing military adventures as impossible due to lack of gold, while in another you'll build wonders or districts that may be useful in isolation, but don't solve your gold problem. You can sort of see this style reflected in your reports - lots of really intense detail on small areas that are treated in total isolation from one another. 

Now, you probably already know about how I'd use this ability to quick-build an army: I'd first fix my gold economy so it ISN'T the smallest of the bunch. I would explore the seas with an eye towards finding a soft spot on my neighbor, and hitting it. I don't get the appeal of catapults, but hypothetically I'd build 9 knights, get them in the water, and sail over to Persian lands (which I've scouted in the intervening time) and get loose in Woden's backlines - either his army is all concentrated for defense at the isthmus, OR he's got them scattered around his cities and I can beat them piecemeal. He may see me coming, but not in time to react - units are faster at sea, after all. I only need to hit a city or two to really set him back on his heels, and my follow-on attack can come via the shorter way over the isthmus, on the assumption that every available Persian unit is either converging on the seaborne invasion or heading for my own territory to retaliate. 

Does this open me to Pin? Well, yes. Maybe he can be tricked into a DoF, though people are getting smarter about that. More probably, he'd prepare to pounce on you at the same time. So I'd concentrate on razing Persian cities while devoting a very small handful of units to making it clear to the Inca that aggression will not be easy. Maybe it's a bluff, maybe I really mean it, maybe Woden's scary enough that pin will let it happen. 3-way diplomacy is hard as hell and this is a tough problem to solve. 

But every Persian unit killed is culture in the bank for me, and if it works I hopefully knock a competitor out of the running. If it doesn't, I'm out the expedtionary force, but I've still got my main army (your present forces) and can defend myself, especially with the tripod diplomacy thing. 

To sum up:

1)Fix gold.
2)Seaborne invasion of neighbor, either one works. 

PS. I'm really looking forward to you misinterpreting all the activity in the lurker thread in a few hours.

Thanks for the great updates and good luck.

[williams482]

Somewhat interesting that following this discussion Woden pops off an actual grand strategy post, and pindicator definitively admits that he has no grand strategic aims. The pessimism from all three players with regards to their win probability is rather striking, and probably related to the perceived lack of short or medium term opportunities to build a decisive advantage.

On Industrial Zones, they are definitely better now than they were in vanilla. The setup cost is steep, but if the players seriously believe a space race is in the cards, it feels well worth it (from a single player perspective) to get a couple high adjacency (duct+dam) IZs that can cover the rest of their empire while fueling their spaceport cities.

I should probably check the math on that though. Assuming no discounts and 20 techs guiding costs, the IZ (194), Duct (165), Dam (372), workshop (195), Factory (330), and Coal Plant (580) cost a whopping 1,836 production to bang out, although it's effectively a bit less because each build makes the next one faster. With a +6 adjacency on the IZ, that will get you 6 (adjacency) + 3 (Workshop) + 6 (Factory) + 6 (Coal) = 21 hammers per turn in the city and 12 hammers per turn in all adjacent cities. With the policy card those numbers become 33 and 18 respectively. Assuming four satellite cities in the IZs radius, the breakeven point on total production is 1836 / 69 = ~26 turns, or 1836 / 105 = ~17 turns with the card. Breakeven point on just the single city is obviously much worse, 87 or 56 turns respectively, but that's a tolerable price to distribute those resources and essentially defer production into future spaceship parts or the fandy dandy toys of late game war.

Speaking of, if we do get far enough along that a spaceship becomes viable, I bet the game is actually decided by whoever techs to and builds Giant Death Robots first. Those things are comically strong (130 strength, Mechs and Modern Armor are 90) and do not care about such puny things as "mountains." They are also comically expensive (1500 hammers) and require investment, but one of those things can pretty much have their way with an otherwise impenetrable defense force and would definitely be able to stop an opponent from launching (or adequately accelerating) their own spaceship.

Finally, on a purely personal note, I'm really enjoying the relaxed pace of the game given the regular reports. I'm sure things will heat up a little once we get a little further in the tech tree, but I'd be content with things continuing like this for a while longer.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

So now pindicator is building up to attack suboptimal, because he thinks sub's low gold generation makes him vulnerable. Meanwhile, suboptimal is persuaded that he outproduces pin and is building up to attack him, and Woden has been spooked by the GG and sub's scouting into building up in case he is the target. This is shaping up to be a hilarious comedy of errors. 

I predict both will see the other's build up and call off the attack as too risky. If they do fight, Woden is the likely winner (especially if he has an army to take advantage of either side's weakness).

[Banzailizard]

For convenience, here are the two images Suboptimal mentioned

The plan is to position three catapults and four knights in and around LFSR, upgrading three of the catapults to bombards (T139-ish) once they are close to their intended positions and all five catapults are completed. The forces would then move on Ralakesh’s Encampment while the two remaining catapults and knights 5, 6 and 7 move to the front. War would be declared around T147 and I’d upgrade the remaining catapults once I’ve accumulated enough niter (and possibly paying through the nose to do so). If I achieve complete surprise (aside from him seeing the ramp job in milpower) he’d have one turn warning before I should be able to raze the district. From there I’d turn most of the forces on the city center while trying to run a knight up the pass to defog Abberath’s city center. Once Ralakesh fell I’d regroup, position Victor in the city and then try to shoot my way through the pass. I’d have all five bombards and around 10 knights (minus casualties) in the area to try to force my way through. The battle at the pass could very well become a war of attrition but if my production and resource (iron) capacity indeed outpaces his I should be able to eventually punch through.

In support of this operation would be the following non-military units:

- The spy. I’m going to defog Tukohama Reborn and check unit distribution as well as better gauge the city’s production capability. It should also reveal the western part of Abberath’s land given the 3 range vision. From there it’ll move to Ralakesh to keep an eye on things and run a Listening Post mission for a promotion. If I can defog Abberath it’ll go there while I finish up at Ralakesh to monitor troop positioning and movement in the pass and to the north.
- Triple-A will remain just behind the front line troops, favoring the bombards, during the advance. His +20 healing will come in handy.
- El Cid will move with the troops. Siege units can still move and shoot on the same turn with a Great General in tow provided they only use 1 MP to get into position (2MP required to shoot).
- I should be getting a second Great General just before (T145/T146) I start the initial assault (T147). That will ease moving things around. It would also free up El Cid to form a corps out of something if needed.
- Xorshift’s horseman will arrive at Mixmax as it completes its second horseman. They will head into the desert, pick their way around Arakaali and then head into Incan territory. I may send Mixmax’s first one around Yerevan and the second two over land via the oasis (4 to 6 turns depending on routing). Their priorities will be to pillage out the niter, iron and terrace farm at Arakaali. Gruthkul’s Campus would be a bonus. If I can’t get through the pass at Ralakesh they will need to head for Abberath to defog it before doing any pillaging.
- If I take a city Victor will be assigned to that city. His added loyalty should prevent an immediate flip and after 3 turns he becomes a somewhat portable DotF for units on defense (+5 CS when defending within city borders). If I manage to take more than one city he’ll move with the front and I’ll backfill prior conquests with other governors to maintain loyalty pressure.
 

I do think you are right CMF, once they both realize this war will not end quickly or decisively, they will back off.  Any fighting they do without growing just gives Woden more of an edge.  That being said, maybe they can then turn those armies on Woden, if they can trust one another long enough for that.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

How does suboptimal have so many more envoys than Woden? Woden's got 2 up his sleeve, but the Greeks are sitting on fully six. He does that while maintaining suzerainty over Bologna. Is he not having to compete with pindicator for most of the city-states? Woden spread his out among all the contacts while sub mostly sits on Bologna?

[williams482]

Greece receives a free envoy every time they complete an acropolis. I imagine that's the bulk of it, plus maybe a few more envoys/first meetings/multiplier card placements.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Oh, duh, I forgot about the acropoloi bonus. I'm not sure how many he's built, but that definitely explains the lion's share of it.