TBS gathers his thoughts

[The Black Sword]

I've vaguely followed a couple of Civ 6 threads since PBEM13 and there's a lot of stuff I don't recognise. It seems like there's been quite a few changes/additions between the expansions and patches. Hopefully I'll learn a little bit faster this time, with a better base to build on.

My first round of picks are Ottoman, Cree, Dutch, India.

At a cursory glance over the civs I'm leaning towards the Cree. Their bonuses come online earlier and in my civ experience that's pretty important. Depending on how long I have I might be able to play some SP to get a better feel for it.

[The Black Sword]

Figuring things out in SP again and I encountered the overflow mechanics ... just depressed me. They had something that worked in Civ 4, I really wonder what their reasoning is to change it. I guess us people who care about it are such a small percentage of the player base that we don't matter, but by the same reasoning the great masses wouldn't care if you changed it to the intuitive way either right?

[The Black Sword]

I'll confirm Cree, in case it's holding things up.

[The Black Sword]

Going to collect some civ 6 mechanics in this post.

Production with bonuses seems to be best understood/explained as having a "base" part and the "bonus" part. The way they re-did production and overflow is to apply the base quantity first, check for completion, then apply the bonus amount. Only the base production will overflow. When a build is completed all unused bonus production is lost, regardless if it applies to the next build.

The example from the CivFanantics discussion, producing an Archer with Agoge and chopping for a base of 30 :

1) Production currently 35/60. Chop yields 30 + 15 bonus. Archer completes with 5 overflow (used 25/30 base)
2) Production currently 50/60. Chop yields 30 + 15 bonus. Archer completes with 20 overflow (used 10/30 base)
3) Production currently 25/60. Chop yields 30 + 15 bonus. Archer completes with no overflow (only bonus production remains and is lost)
4) Production currently 10/60. Chop yields 30 + 15 bonus. Archer now at 55/60.

Thread: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/i...ed.642113/

Cost=(1+9*max(percent of science/percent of culture) researched)*base_cost

base_cost=54,except for Aq=36, Government Plaza=30, Cost is fixed upon placement.

Unique District=50% original cost

Discounted District: The discounted district costs 60% than its original cost, 75% for government plaza. Doesn't apply to Spaceport, Aqueduct and Neighborhood.

1: a=number of tech/civics you have researched that allows you to build a district (except Aq/Sp/Ne)
2: b= district you have built (require full district instead of district bases, except Aq/Sp/Ne)

Condition(discount applies if both hold):

1: b>=a, if a>b no discount is applied.
2: b/a> your total number of that type of district(include full district and district bases)   (doesn't round fractions)

Also, a and b are refreshed if and only if you finish a tech or civic. Your "total number of that type of district (base+full)" is refreshed immediately.
Since tech occurs before production, if you finish a tech and a district on the same turn, b doesn't update until the next tech.

https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/d...sm.625743/

Food costs to grow: 15, 24, 34, 44, 55, 66, 78, 90, 102, 114, 127, 139, 153, 166, 179, ...

Culture costs to gain new tile: 10, 20, 35, 52, 72, 93, ...

Harvest Value=Base Value*(1+9*Larger of [100*(Number of Techs/67 OR Number of Civics/50)]/100)

What happens when you completely a settler(still not 100% on this):


Production occurs first - > settler is completed -> tile is lost.
Food is now recalculated based on current tiles worked & new amenity threshold.
If (Food at start of turn) > (new growth threshold) grow and then add new food to the box.
If (Food at start of turn) < (new growth threshold), add new food but don't grow(food box might be overflowing 26/24 for next turn).

Unit upgrade cost = 2*(hammer difference)+10 g                             (later eras still to be tested)

Healing: 5/10/15/20 hp per turn in enemy/neutral/friendly/district territory

Combat table: https://forums.civfanatics.com/threads/h...147/page-4

Trade route length:
a = Game Speed Multiplier (can be found from the GameSpeeds.xml)
b = Trade Route Length (explained above)
c = Number of trips
FLOOR = Mathematical floor: Rounds a decimal value down. Ex: FLOOR(2.3) = 2, FLOOR(3.9999) = 3

c = FLOOR((a / b) * 0.1) + 1
Amount of turns = c * b * 2

From https://forums.civfanatics.com/resources...ide.25529/

[The Black Sword]

Some thoughts on my civ choices.

In my last PBEM I played Russia of Cossack fame. But the game was already over by the time we got to Cossacks. Arguably they had actually hurt my chances by putting a target on my back. I'm generally skeptical of the value of powerful UUs because everyone sees them coming a mile away and (in a well-played MP game) prepares for them. They are often fun though.

The Russian ability that helped me the most IMO was the free initial border pop. You never need to put any resources into border popping, you get to work the best tiles immediately and you have more resources available to harvest. You get to pick better dotmaps too. And it starts helping you from T1. The earlier the bonus the more it snowballs throughout the game.

The Lavra was also useful, but I felt I had to work very hard to get it to help me. Religion did not seem all that great to me, so the bonus to religion given by the Lavra needs to be big enough to make religion better than whatever I would have put those resources into in a normal game and only after that do they start adding power to the civ. This is another general point, bonuses on things you don't normally build need to be really good to be worth something.

They're rather obvious points from any snowbally game really, and they seem to hold true in civ6 too.

Cree
Nihithaw - free trader at pottery, border pop any tile a trader moves in 
Mekewap - improvement at pottery +1h, +1housing(doubled at Civil Service), additional food and gold for adjacent resources
Okihtcitaw - Scout replacement - 20S, 3M, free  promotion
Leader Bonus - Trade Routes sent get +1f per camp/pasture, while trade routes received get +1c per camp/pasture at destination.

All this stuff comes online straight away, pottery is a quite reasonable choice for first tech to research. The first trade route will probably be to a City State, so 'only' +3gpt, but you're getting that at turn 10 ish and once you get you're own city down it's even better. In my SP game the free border pops are proving very useful too, particularly for the 3rd ring tiles that are often tricky to get. Trade routes are already a very powerful mechanic in civ6, you generally want to get as many of them as you can already, so adding buffs to them is great.

The Mekewap solves one big civ 6 problem - what improvement do you on your flatland tiles? You can build farms , but you're almost just growing for the sake of growing and even then they lose their efficiency as you run into housing problems. A couple of early Mekewaps in tiles adjacent to a bunch of resources seem good, gets you 4 yield tiles that add housing. Then Civil Service is a relatively early mid-game tech where you can almost spam them at +2h minimum. They give pretty much unlimited housing cap too. Food costs do get pretty expensive though at later sizes, might need to think about settling a filler city or two to work all the tiles. It does compete with other improvements you already want, like mines and the new lumber-mills, but it will definitely add something positive to the civ.

Finally we have the Okihtcitaw. I saw Archduke had the Cree option in PBEM 16 and turned them down due to this unit. It's not a UU that will allow you to conquer someone, but it is useful. You have a scout and a warrior rolled into one and then some, you don't need to choose between exploring and fending off barbs, you can do both. It just makes your early game more efficient. And again, early bonuses snowball.

[The Black Sword]

In comparison, my other options:

India - My primary issue is that they're based on powering up the religious game and I'm not convinced the religious game is good to begin with. It may be that it's got better in Gathering Storm but I don't want to bet my civ pick on it. Stepwell seems like pretty small step up from a farm, it can give you even more food, but you still have the problem of what to do with that food. The Varu is the only really big selling point IMO and it doesn't feel like enough. It locks you into the game plan of a Varu attack, otherwise it feels wasted.

Dutch - Trade route bonus seems weak. I'm assuming the loyalty bonus is not too important, though again that's only from a very cursory glance over the system. IIRC external trade routes aren't that useful until well into the mid-game, while the +1 culture would be most useful early. The Adjacency bonuses for districts seems good, but again they'll start coming online pretty late. You might complete your first campus T40 ish and start gaining 2bpt then? There's also no guarantee the river spot will match up nicely with your mountain spots. Polders don't come online until Guilds, I'm not sure how many tiles will satisfy the building requirements and they still only seem pretty decent tiles after that. The UU is a stronger Frigate, which could be pretty important depending on the geography. Still, the Russia game showed that if the game is going to be decided by Frigates, it's better to get there earlier than to have a boost when you do.

Ottoman - The new Governor does not seem to be especially more powerful than the base ones. Bonus to siege units sounds really meh.  They get 1 amenity and some extra pop in captured cities, well how am I going to get ahead to capture those cities? Maybe a city state but it sounds more like a SP ability. Corsair -  a cheaper privateer, not inspiring. Grand Bazaar - seems decent but super late, requires you to research the otherwise pretty useless Banking technology. Janissary - again the UU is the selling point, this sounds great but again it doesn't come online until the Renaissance era.

All 3 civs seem to pay a steep price for their (admittedly powerful) UUs, I think I'd just prefer free early game yields. It gives me a bigger snowball and then leaves me free to figure the game out and which direction is the best to go, rather than forcing me down one line from the start.

I did miss originally that trade routes now require a market in addition to a commercial hub though. So they are a bit weaker than I was thinking. Still, it doesn't change my decision.

[Woden]

Confirm: Cree

[Woden]

Here is your start...
   

[The Black Sword]

Thanks Woden, and thanks for all the rest of the work setting the game up for us!

[The Black Sword]

Pretty sure moving for the plains hill start is the play. There's a couple of negatives, losing first ring rice is bad for micro and we might have to buy the whales tile, but nothing for it. Looks like we'll have at least a 4b campus by the coastal reefs to look forward too. Seems like quite a strong start.

I don't see great uses for builder charges right now and chopping looks even worse than before with the new souped up lumber mills. So default plan is Oki -> size 2 settler.

For reference, my opponents:

TheArchduke: Russia
Alhambram: Australia
TheBlackSword: Cree
Kaiser: Greece/Gorgo
suboptimal: Nubia
pindicator: Khmer
Cormflakes: Rome

Might talk a bit more about them later. Let's start by wishing for no Rome/Khmer neighbours!