[SPOILERS] scooter tries Civ6

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I guess swap the hill tile to Changsha and chop the walls? 3 turns is much too long, since enemy units can hit the city next turn. It sucks to delay the horseman 3 turns, since we desperately need the city strength - 5 40-strength swords will grind our cities down fast, walls or no walls - but losing Changsha is more or less instantly game over so I don't see that we have a choice.

Oh, no, it's first ring to Xi'an, we can't swap it.

Well, gg Alhambram I guess. :/

I'm obviously biased, but trying to be objective, Hungary STILL looks busted to me. Normally, to rush a player, you have to invest in it, and the other player can, with sufficient scouting and preparation, defend himself. It costs him, yes, but play and counterplay are involved. Here, though, I don't see what we could have done - Alhambram is hitting us with 4 40-strength 4-move swords and 2 4-move archers and it's not even turn 60. There's simply no possible way we could get out strength to match that, not with our own production. The extra movement and combat strength normally require a Great General, which means investing in an encampment and scraping up the points - all of which gives you +5 strength and +1 movement...to units within a 5 tile radius.

Now, maybe if we'd started singlemindedly preparing to be rushed by Hungary from Turn 1 we could have had something in place for this attack - although I'm not sure what, it's not like we were taking a lot of detours. Pyramids literally cost us nothing since we got the worker back, Stonehenge MAYBE but again that was just the cost of a single worker. If we'd built the Apadana instead of the Pyramids (I'm nto even sure when that unlocks), we'd have 2 extra envoys to sue...but we'd be down 5 worker charges from our present position, which is 5 wall/horseman chops at this point. 3 envoys won't be enough to flip any Hungarian levies, since he has to be suzerain at 3 to levy + he gets 2 more UPON levying to prevent shenanigans like that. Plus, if the simple existence of a civ requires dramatic alterations in your play simply to counter things that the civ MIGHT attempt - but might not - well, to me, taht's the definition of game-breaking. Alhambram could sit and tech peacefully away using his economic abilities and we'd still have no choice but to prepare for a rush out of nowhere.

Point is: It's not like we gambled with a skeleton military to shoot ahead in development and lost. We've played a pretty typical opening and I think swapped into war mode with commendable alacrity. But Hungary - again, at zero cost to itself! It's not Alhambram had to choose war or development, look at his yields! He clearly chose both! - can simply hit us so quickly with an overwhelming force that there's really nothing we could do to prevent that. It's to my mind exactly like Sumeria's war-carts, which were reason enough to ban the Civ from most of our early VI games.

Maybe I'm tunnel-visioned by our desperate straits and actually this attack was easily counterable and Alhambram is moving heaven and earth to get it done, but that's the view from the trenches here, at least.

[Sullla]

No, I don't see anything that you're missing Chevalier. This has in no way been a farmer's gambit opening or anything like that, scooter has as much military strength as any of the other players. The instant that it became clear that Alhambram was nearby, scooter started aiming for city walls in his border cities and teching toward horse units. I agree that there's just very little that can be done about this many enemy units - each packing an obscene +5 strength and +2 movement! - hitting this early in the game. Compare to the previous PBEM game that just finished on the same turn:




Woden has a military score of 66 and Jester has a military score of 90 on the same Turn 57. Alhambram has a military score of 326 (!!!) and that's not even counting the extra combat strength or the extra movement his levied units picked up. It's completely unprecedented in our PBEM games, no one has ever launched an attack this early with this many military units.

It looks like Alhmabram managed to find a civ that was wildly overpowered and none of us knew it ahead of time. Major kudos to him for making the discovery - sometimes all you can do is tip your hat and say GG.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I really look forward to learning how Alhambram got those yields, too - 

In your screenshot, Woden's at 11 science/9 culture, Jester's at 12/10 each. If I dig around in sub and pin's threads, we find pin at 16/12 (before he gets his absurd mountain campuses), sub at 12/6. That's our only other GS game for comparison,  and yet Alhambram's at 27/21! Making as much as Woden and Jester combined. Everyone in this game is higher, but scooter's 15/11 would have been perfectly on par in PBEM15. 

Oh, and as far as gold, Woden was making ~10 gpt, pin 4 (!), and sub similarly broke at 4. We don't know Alhambram's exact numbers, but he's levied at least 2, maybe even 3 city states. 

Even without this powerful attack, he's already looking like running away with the game with such an early snowball.

[Ichabod]

First look Hungary.

- The developers really do not know how to play their own game. I am not talking about the divergence between normal devs and hardcore fans, but seriously, what kind of saves are those. I know it is promotional, but still.
- Hungary actually strikes me as literally insane. Raise levies and free upgrade them. I think people underestimate them quite a bit. I would play them in MP, that is how strong I think this is.

It's not only the free upgrades. You also get +2 movement and extra strenght. That's pretty bonkers. The extra movement helps with the obvious main weakness of the ability, which is the possible counterplay of just taking all the CSs (which is something most players want to do, anyway). You also get two extra envoys when doing this, which prevents you losing the bonus by suzerainity changes (though I don't really know what happens when suzerainity changes while someone has units levied).

The problem with it is that it's random. CSs are random and gold generation is pretty random as well (at least that's how I feel). Gold mainly comes from tiles and you don't get to choose which tiles there are on the map (maybe that changed a bit in the first expansion? I never played it). Well, I'm mostly thinking early game here. Mid and late you get way more control through policies and districts. Perhaps this ability will help more with a mid game push then with an early rush.

But I agree, Archduke. That bonus alone seems pretty powerful. Imagine 6 move mounted units, 4 move ranged (the specific case of archers is notable, because archers can't even get the GG bonus - with this ability, you can get 4-moves archers with +5 strength - that's insane). The ability surely is affected by randomness, but if you can use it one time only, it's likely GG for an opponent.

Time to dig that levy cost formula. 

I will say that I called the power of Hungary (and Archduke as well). Those posts are from right after Hungary was revealed.

[scooter]

Mechanics question: if next turn in Changsha I chop the walls to completion - the chop value clearly exceeds the remaining cost of the walls - do the walls complete instantly? I've landed on my new plan, but it depends on getting the wall during my next turn via a second chop. I'd do it this turn, but the builder is on a tile that seemingly cannot be transferred to Changsha, so I have to move him back to the shared tile to chop that next turn.


I'm pretty certain the answer is yes, but I was pretty sure last turn too.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Yes, they will. Once I chopped 3 things to completion in the same turn and they all appeared instantly.

Unless that's something else Firaxis has changed in a patch while I wasn't looking...

[Woden]

Mechanics question: if next turn in Changsha I chop the walls to completion - the chop value clearly exceeds the remaining cost of the walls - do the walls complete instantly? I've landed on my new plan, but it depends on getting the wall during my next turn via a second chop. I'd do it this turn, but the builder is on a tile that seemingly cannot be transferred to Changsha, so I have to move him back to the shared tile to chop that next turn.

Yes, it will complete instantly.

[scooter]

Thanks Chevalier and Woden. I knew for sure I’d seen units complete instantly many times before, but I was trying to remember if I’d done it with buildings before. Also thanks for the explanation everyone on production timings. I was super tilted earlier due to the combination of dealing with this rush from this utterly broken civ + getting screwed by unexpected game mechanics.

Turn played, report shortly. Short version: yes, we’re sacrificing Horseman timing in exchange for getting the walls middle of next turn, so Changsha is going to be okay for the moment. Unless there’s another mechanic I’ve misunderstood, which is very possible. Anyway, let’s do a little post-mortem since this is all fresh on my mind.

I'm obviously biased, but trying to be objective, Hungary STILL looks busted to me. Normally, to rush a player, you have to invest in it, and the other player can, with sufficient scouting and preparation, defend himself. It costs him, yes, but play and counterplay are involved. Here, though, I don't see what we could have done - Alhambram is hitting us with 4 40-strength 4-move swords and 2 4-move archers and it's not even turn 60. There's simply no possible way we could get out strength to match that, not with our own production. The extra movement and combat strength normally require a Great General, which means investing in an encampment and scraping up the points - all of which gives you +5 strength and +1 movement...to units within a 5 tile radius.

<snip>

Point is: It's not like we gambled with a skeleton military to shoot ahead in development and lost. We've played a pretty typical opening and I think swapped into war mode with commendable alacrity. But Hungary - again, at zero cost to itself! It's not Alhambram had to choose war or development, look at his yields! He clearly chose both! - can simply hit us so quickly with an overwhelming force that there's really nothing we could do to prevent that. It's to my mind exactly like Sumeria's war-carts, which were reason enough to ban the Civ from most of our early VI games.

No, I don't see anything that you're missing Chevalier. This has in no way been a farmer's gambit opening or anything like that, scooter has as much military strength as any of the other players. The instant that it became clear that Alhambram was nearby, scooter started aiming for city walls in his border cities and teching toward horse units. I agree that there's just very little that can be done about this many enemy units - each packing an obscene +5 strength and +2 movement! - hitting this early in the game.

<snip>

It looks like Alhmabram managed to find a civ that was wildly overpowered and none of us knew it ahead of time. Major kudos to him for making the discovery - sometimes all you can do is tip your hat and say GG.

This is of course self-serving of me, but I agree . Honestly, I think my game so far has been basically fine and had a bright future, even if the start was a bit slow. If I try to find holes, here’s what I see.

* I was maybe a bit too conservative about the barbarians early on. I didn’t and to some extent still don’t fully know the mechanics of when they do or don’t attack. I think I could have left some parts more undefended in exchange for getting more scouting going where it felt like I was way behind where I should have been. Maybe if I do this, I find Alhambram sooner and can start preparing sooner. For a full 50T I genuinely believed I was miles away from everyone else because it took 50T to find someone. That lack of knowledge hurt me quite a bit. (Reminder: I seemingly got within a couple tiles of Alhambram's borders or something before turning around my warrior because it was too far from an empty Longxi.)

* Stonehenge timing is probably the most debatable thing, but like Chevalier said, it didn’t actually cost me much. There was also good reason to do it - it got me a religion sooner and stronger early faith generation, which in theory was about to pay off in a big way with golden age Monumentality. So I think that play had serious upside. Also, if I delay it and build like an earlier settler or district or something (which would have been where those would have gone), I don’t think that helps us even slightly against this rush. So I don’t think this is an issue either.

I don’t think I see any other big issues? That and losing that population in Longxi to a random event. Overall, I think Hungary is just broken. Even if I change the above things, I’m not sure if I can do anything to prevent this. Just sucks to be on the receiving end of one of the most broken/brutal rushes we’ve had here in my first competitive game of Civ6 in which I’m googling things every turn still. I literally had to google Apadana yesterday when it was mentioned because I didn’t remember what it did. The Civ6 player base here is too small to join a newbie game like frequently spring up for Civ4, so here I am. Ah well.


As for what it means for Civ6 here… I’m guessing stuff like this is why the community here is so loathe to play Civ6 games resulting in a very small player base to work with. There’s just so many broken things not to mention the turn order issue is very punishing which matters a lot when PBEM is the only viable option. It really feels like some sort of balance mod is really necessary here for the game to have much of a future here. I like so many things about Civ6, but the bad things are really bad. Future games ought to consider players given the opportunity to ban civs. So maybe each player gets 8 choices, but other players can ban a couple of their options. Something like that.

[scooter]

Turn 57

Here’s a very silly thing I had to do this turn!





I was planning to chop the Horseman out this turn, but now that that’s no longer possible, I found that by swapping to this truly silly configuration, I can get that Horseman out in 2T rather than 3T. So now my Horseman is “only” delayed by 2T. So that’s something. Future Horsemen will be chopped. There’s a small chance the chop next turn will prevent this from actually finishing in 2T by subtracting 1 production from the tile. I was still too tilted to bother checking into that, so we’re just gonna hope that we can afford losing exactly 1 production (plus modifiers) on this one.





Alright, so I started by firing at Alhambram’s forward-most Sword with Longxi’s walls and the Archer inside it both. That unit is the only one (PROBABLY) that can hit Changsha once prior to walls. I moved the builder that was scheduled to chop for Xian 1W back to the tile it was on last turn. So next turn it’ll chop the walls to completion instantly (ALMOST CERTAINLY). I was unsure where to place the Archer, so I positioned him behind the city on the Wheat. The idea is next turn if he does attack Changsha, I can hit it with a ranged attack without opening up my Archer to an attack on the following turn.

Finally, I started a Horseman at Longxi. I was pleasantly surprised to discover you can still work tiles even when enemy units are on top of them. That time may get extended by a turn if they pillage the stone, but I have enough useful unimproved tiles that it may actually be fine.


Side note: any thoughts on how to spend my gold?

[Banzailizard]

Keep the gold for now. If you get lucky with iron you may need it for upgrades.