[SPOILERS] TheArchduke blasts into Space as Russia

[Sullla]

Excellent news on founding the first religion, apparently uncontested. I'm very glad that I didn't end up jinxing the process by lobbying so hard against running projects. As TheArchduke said, the first major goal of the game is now complete. Some of the PBEM games at Realms Beyond end up with little to no focus on religion from the players, and it looks like this might be one of those games. Someone else will probably build Stonehenge at some point, but a religion that lacks faith to power it generally doesn't do a whole lot. Just spreading it around to every city is tough to do without faith for missionaries, much less faith to purchase stuff like units and worship buildings. This isn't manifesting itself on the scoreboard yet but it's going to be a massive advantage for Russia down the line.

Let me do some long term theorycrafting here for a second. We can expect the Classical era to start around Turn 60 so let's assume 20 more turns until the Golden Age begins. (8 more era points should be trivial to pick up in that span of time.) TheArchduke already has 200 faith in the bank and more faith coming in at about 20/turn right now, a rate that's going to continue to scale up very quickly as more cities build Lavras/shrines/temples and more population points work tiles with the Earth Goddess boost. We can therefore expect Russia to have 600 faith at a bare minimum by the time that a Golden Age begins and Monumentality kicks into gear, and quite possibly a stockpile somewhere in the 700-800 faith range. That is a *LOT* of faith to spend! My general feeling is that you want one more hand-built settler to get up to four cities before the Golden Age, and then everything gets purchased with faith after that. So how much would those settlers cost under Monumentality?

Settler #4 (normal production) = 150 production
Settler #5 = 180 production * 2 (faith conversion) * 0.70 (Monumentality discount) = 252 faith
Settler #6 = 210 production * 2 (faith conversion) * 0.70 (Monumentality discount) = 294 faith
Settler #7 = 240 production * 2 (faith conversion) * 0.70 (Monumentality discount) = 336 faith

So at a bare minimum, that should be enough to instantly faith-purchase two settlers as soon as the Golden Age arrives, with a third settler arriving only a few turns later. This should very quickly slingshot Russia up among the leaders in expansion and make up for needing to invest into those Lavras earlier. And while other players have to pause to train settlers are their core cities, Russia can work on districts or units or whatever and keep right on going, with the lost population coming out of the newest and weakest cities. Not to mention, all builders even get +2 movement from Monumentality to essentially become Indian Fast Workers and put down their tile improvements much faster! That's another time saver that we've barely mentioned.

With regards to the question about Fogger: there's no need to delay finishing State Workforce to land the district discount for the Government Plaza because Fogger can't place the district until it hits size 4. Otherwise you would indeed need to do so, but no worries here. Definitely go ahead and finish State Workforce to grab Pingala and stick him in the capital sooner. On this note, I also like putting a pasture on the cows at Fogger because working that tile helps speed up growth to size 4. (Side question: what's next at Fogger? A trader? Another builder for the new city? We should discuss this.) And continuing further on the district discounting mechanic, you should place a Lavra instantly at the new city since there's no benefit to holding off on it. The Lavra will always be "full price" and not get the discount, which is fine because it's so cheap anyway. I'm assuming that there's a desire to build a Lavra at the upcoming Funky site - if not, then it would be better to hold off. I'm assuming that the initial core of four cities will all want Lavras though.

Low marks in science and culture on the rankings are concerning, likely due at least in part to not finding any science/culture city states. This was the reason to push for the Campus build at the capital and the purchased monument in Fogger - thank how much worse off things would be without that! Help is coming though, with a settler en route for the (somewhat delayed) third city plus a governor arriving in three turns plus that very cheap Campus finishing in four turns. Basically, the other players sacrificed districts to push fast expansion and that has them ahead for the moment. But those settler costs scale upwards for everyone, and they will have to stop pushing settlers and work on districts at some point soon, districts that will be substantially more expensive than the ones that TheArchduke has finished here. Once the Golden Age arrives and all this faith accumulation can start being spent, the lid's going to come off and Russia should surge ahead.

[TheArchduke]

Excellent news on founding the first religion, apparently uncontested. I'm very glad that I didn't end up jinxing the process by lobbying so hard against running projects. As TheArchduke said, the first major goal of the game is now complete. Some of the PBEM games at Realms Beyond end up with little to no focus on religion from the players, and it looks like this might be one of those games. Someone else will probably build Stonehenge at some point, but a religion that lacks faith to power it generally doesn't do a whole lot. Just spreading it around to every city is tough to do without faith for missionaries, much less faith to purchase stuff like units and worship buildings. This isn't manifesting itself on the scoreboard yet but it's going to be a massive advantage for Russia down the line.

Let me do some long term theorycrafting here for a second. We can expect the Classical era to start around Turn 60 so let's assume 20 more turns until the Golden Age begins. (8 more era points should be trivial to pick up in that span of time.) TheArchduke already has 200 faith in the bank and more faith coming in at about 20/turn right now, a rate that's going to continue to scale up very quickly as more cities build Lavras/shrines/temples and more population points work tiles with the Earth Goddess boost. We can therefore expect Russia to have 600 faith at a bare minimum by the time that a Golden Age begins and Monumentality kicks into gear, and quite possibly a stockpile somewhere in the 700-800 faith range. That is a *LOT* of faith to spend! My general feeling is that you want one more hand-built settler to get up to four cities before the Golden Age, and then everything gets purchased with faith after that. So how much would those settlers cost under Monumentality?

Settler #4 (normal production) = 150 production
Settler #5 = 180 production * 2 (faith conversion) * 0.70 (Monumentality discount) = 252 faith
Settler #6 = 210 production * 2 (faith conversion) * 0.70 (Monumentality discount) = 294 faith
Settler #7 = 240 production * 2 (faith conversion) * 0.70 (Monumentality discount) = 336 faith

So at a bare minimum, that should be enough to instantly faith-purchase two settlers as soon as the Golden Age arrives, with a third settler arriving only a few turns later. This should very quickly slingshot Russia up among the leaders in expansion and make up for needing to invest into those Lavras earlier. And while other players have to pause to train settlers are their core cities, Russia can work on districts or units or whatever and keep right on going, with the lost population coming out of the newest and weakest cities. Not to mention, all builders even get +2 movement from Monumentality to essentially become Indian Fast Workers and put down their tile improvements much faster! That's another time saver that we've barely mentioned.

With regards to the question about Fogger: there's no need to delay finishing State Workforce to land the district discount for the Government Plaza because Fogger can't place the district until it hits size 4. Otherwise you would indeed need to do so, but no worries here. Definitely go ahead and finish State Workforce to grab Pingala and stick him in the capital sooner. On this note, I also like putting a pasture on the cows at Fogger because working that tile helps speed up growth to size 4. (Side question: what's next at Fogger? A trader? Another builder for the new city? We should discuss this.) And continuing further on the district discounting mechanic, you should place a Lavra instantly at the new city since there's no benefit to holding off on it. The Lavra will always be "full price" and not get the discount, which is fine because it's so cheap anyway. I'm assuming that there's a desire to build a Lavra at the upcoming Funky site - if not, then it would be better to hold off. I'm assuming that the initial core of four cities will all want Lavras though.

Low marks in science and culture on the rankings are concerning, likely due at least in part to not finding any science/culture city states. This was the reason to push for the Campus build at the capital and the purchased monument in Fogger - thank how much worse off things would be without that! Help is coming though, with a settler en route for the (somewhat delayed) third city plus a governor arriving in three turns plus that very cheap Campus finishing in four turns. Basically, the other players sacrificed districts to push fast expansion and that has them ahead for the moment. But those settler costs scale upwards for everyone, and they will have to stop pushing settlers and work on districts at some point soon, districts that will be substantially more expensive than the ones that TheArchduke has finished here. Once the Golden Age arrives and all this faith accumulation can start being spent, the lid's going to come off and Russia should surge ahead.

Yeah, I also look forward to a faith based settler push.
Fogger should get another builder if possible, Maybe even Ilkum is an idea for Fogger and Hell March whilst Funky Swamp does its Lavra (to answer your second question). The quick return on investment of a lavra is just too high.
The builder for Hell March could be a lot of help to get Funky Swamp going. With Monumentality you can also faithbuy builders, but those should come from the gov plaza building which is also a priority.

Turn 40

Exactly one! tile from my initial warrior push this baby hide south. I saw it on settlervision one turn ago. First contact even, is there even a player to the south? There must be. (EDIT: Ok 3 tiles, but still)

   

This pushes our culture to the top of the line! Which means the field is incredibly tight. Everyone is inside a +2 culture margin. This is actually disappointing from Rome, and means that a third city has not been planted, or could it be that his population is that low? 

   

Apart from that I try to get rid of barbs and the slinger waits to escort the settler.

[Sullla]

Wow, mixed feelings about running into Mohenjo-Daro. On the plus side, great news! A major increase in culture/turn, State Workforce and Early Empire arriving much faster, and the boost for Political Philosophy now out of the way from an RNG perspective. On the negative side, the initial scout missed spotting the city state on settlervision by the tiniest of margins. TheArchduke could have found that city state 25-30 turns earlier, argh! Oh well, still a net plus. All three of these city states should be conquest targets down the road, although Russia will need a navy to attack since they can barely be hit from the land tiles. Think roughly 50 turns from now.

Really glad that the Campus is in production right now since science is the lagging output at the moment. (Culture is going to benefit from a Great Work in the Palace for another 4/turn in about a dozen turns, and that along with Choral Music will have it humming along.) I think that the first two governor promotions for Pingala will have to pick up the initial default +15% science/culture, and then the one that adds +1 beaker per pop point (Researcher). Fortunately science grows along with population and should keep picking up naturally.

Unfortunately the Cultural Victory rankings don't mean quite what you would think. It ranks everyone by tourism first since that's the win condition for culture, and Russia is the only civ in the world right now producing any tourism (thanks to the Holy Site where a religion was founded). Then it ranks by culture second after tourism. Long story short, that ranking doesn't really mean anything at the moment. But I actually think that Russia is at least even with all non-Rome players in culture, and likely starting to pull ahead of them. You're on pace for roughly Turn 55 Political Philosophy and that's solid for a non-Rome player that didn't find an early Cultural city state.

Last question for discussion: double builders with Ilkum in place when State Workforce finishes, with Hell March and Fogger both starting builders after the current items finish? That's not a bad plan honestly. Where would you use the six charges though? Horses for sure at Fogger and the double spices plus truffles at Funky would be a given. Anywhere else - farm the absurd 4/1 and 5/2 flooded tiles at Funky maybe? Or perhaps you only need one builder at the moment then (?) Worth thinking about how to play this, although I do like the idea of doubling up on builders with Ilkum in place, seems nicely efficient.

Oh, and I just thought of this: Lavra for Funky probably goes northwest of the city center. It's next to two forests for +1 adjacency, it can get another adjacency bonus from a Commercial district plus city center later, and it will boost the tile appeal of the southern spices up to 3. Not quite enough for Earth Goddess but only one away.

[williams482]

Awesome news on landing our target beliefs.

I see two decent places for the Funky Lavra. Sulla's suggestion, in addition to the factors described, bumps the grass hill 2N of the city center up to +3 appeal, which would be +4 if we cleared the adjacent marsh, and bumps the northern spice up enough that we could mine that hill without losing breathtaking status (although the adjacent 3rd ring PFH would lose breathtaking). I should note that the southern spice is only +1 appeal right now (+2 with the Lavra) because the floodplain tile the settler is currently on gives -1.

The other spot would be third ring, between the southern spice and the Plaza tile. That's a +1 adjacency now, +2 with the plaza, and +3 with any other district. The appeal benefit is marginal (southern spice gets the same bump as before, no other noteworthy changes), but the adjacencies are better and will allow us to get policy card boosts with just one other district (bumping the other site up to +3 requires placing three additional districts, which both defeats the benefit of any non-forest appeal boosts, and passes up the superior adjacencies of the Plaza).

Basically, a choice between improving Funky's 4th best tile by two faith very soon, or getting 1 and then 2 more faith adjacency, +50% on buildings from the policy card, and a different 4 yield breathtaking tile when the borders expand more. This is close, provided we go with knocking out two more builders. Slight preference for #2, but not sold.

[TheArchduke]

Wow, mixed feelings about running into Mohenjo-Daro. On the plus side, great news! A major increase in culture/turn, State Workforce and Early Empire arriving much faster, and the boost for Political Philosophy now out of the way from an RNG perspective. On the negative side, the initial scout missed spotting the city state on settlervision by the tiniest of margins. TheArchduke could have found that city state 25-30 turns earlier, argh! Oh well, still a net plus. All three of these city states should be conquest targets down the road, although Russia will need a navy to attack since they can barely be hit from the land tiles. Think roughly 50 turns from now.

Really glad that the Campus is in production right now since science is the lagging output at the moment. (Culture is going to benefit from a Great Work in the Palace for another 4/turn in about a dozen turns, and that along with Choral Music will have it humming along.) I think that the first two governor promotions for Pingala will have to pick up the initial default +15% science/culture, and then the one that adds +1 beaker per pop point (Researcher). Fortunately science grows along with population and should keep picking up naturally.

Unfortunately the Cultural Victory rankings don't mean quite what you would think. It ranks everyone by tourism first since that's the win condition for culture, and Russia is the only civ in the world right now producing any tourism (thanks to the Holy Site where a religion was founded). Then it ranks by culture second after tourism. Long story short, that ranking doesn't really mean anything at the moment. But I actually think that Russia is at least even with all non-Rome players in culture, and likely starting to pull ahead of them. You're on pace for roughly Turn 55 Political Philosophy and that's solid for a non-Rome player that didn't find an early Cultural city state.

Last question for discussion: double builders with Ilkum in place when State Workforce finishes, with Hell March and Fogger both starting builders after the current items finish? That's not a bad plan honestly. Where would you use the six charges though? Horses for sure at Fogger and the double spices plus truffles at Funky would be a given. Anywhere else - farm the absurd 4/1 and 5/2 flooded tiles at Funky maybe? Or perhaps you only need one builder at the moment then (?) Worth thinking about how to play this, although I do like the idea of doubling up on builders with Ilkum in place, seems nicely efficient.

Oh, and I just thought of this: Lavra for Funky probably goes northwest of the city center. It's next to two forests for +1 adjacency, it can get another adjacency bonus from a Commercial district plus city center later, and it will boost the tile appeal of the southern spices up to 3. Not quite enough for Earth Goddess but only one away.

I am anxious about Mohenjo Daro as well, but the warrior scouting SW felt natural and I needed the settler escort. The scout could have done the escort but could not have cleared the camp. It does show that the map CS were distributed fair it seems, but I was too stupid to find them. 

I think the double Ilkum makes sense, Fogger needs to wait on Pop 4 anyway. Hell March could do a shrine, but I would love to improve the spices. Earth Goddess means no chopping makes any real sense..

Coming back to the lavra, I think short term benefit in CIV is better then longterm.

Awesome news on landing our target beliefs.

I see two decent places for the Funky Lavra. Sulla's suggestion, in addition to the factors described, bumps the grass hill 2N of the city center up to +3 appeal, which would be +4 if we cleared the adjacent marsh, and bumps the northern spice up enough that we could mine that hill without losing breathtaking status (although the adjacent 3rd ring PFH would lose breathtaking). I should note that the southern spice is only +1 appeal right now (+2 with the Lavra) because the floodplain tile the settler is currently on gives -1.

The other spot would be third ring, between the southern spice and the Plaza tile. That's a +1 adjacency now, +2 with the plaza, and +3 with any other district. The appeal benefit is marginal (southern spice gets the same bump as before, no other noteworthy changes), but the adjacencies are better and will allow us to get policy card boosts with just one other district (bumping the other site up to +3 requires placing three additional districts, which both defeats the benefit of any non-forest appeal boosts, and passes up the superior adjacencies of the Plaza).

Basically, a choice between improving Funky's 4th best tile by two faith very soon, or getting 1 and then 2 more faith adjacency, +50% on buildings from the policy card, and a different 4 yield breathtaking tile when the borders expand more. This is close, provided we go with knocking out two more builders. Slight preference for #2, but not sold.

Hmm, the +50% on building is something to consider, but temples and worship buildings may be bought by faith anyway.

A very quiet turn.

   

Shuffling units around and an overview map. We are starting to get a lay of the land. We got a lot of land to grow into it seems. The southern area seems very bottlenecky.

[TheArchduke]

EDIT:

30 hours. Sorry just frustrated we once again slowed down to a crawl.

I will offer a bit of analysis as soon as we are up.

And my workpc really did a thing on me and does not want to load CIV VI, like at all.

[TheArchduke]

Turn 42

So with pindicator pausing the game I had a look over the score:

   

What are Kaiser and suboptimal doing? Their empire score is quite low, mine is artificially inflated by the lavras. 
No districts and a slow expansion means either they are chasing a wonder or attacking somebody.
I do not think that pindicator space out, he is a punctual guy, something happened. 

Continuing.

Yes, there are still NO districts except ours. We are not only building the first 2 holy sites in the game, but actually despite a 2nd settler will be the first to a campus. Couple that with that nobody has scouted us so far this makes for a strange game. Ideal for a farmer´s gambit however.

If I read the empire score right, Pindicator and Alhambram need to have 3 cities, no? Our empire score will jump quite a bit thanks to Funky Swamp and the campus finishing next turn.

I actually forgot to insert Pingala into Hell March.  I rushed the turn in the morning at home and writing my report just now.

So, our scout is a mountaineer now which should quicken up our exploration in the west by quite a bit.

   

Our southern warrior ignores a barb scout and continues south.

   

Funky Swamp has an excellent +4 campus near those 2 reefs and a decent holy site next to 4 woods.

We switch to Ilkum for a builder out of Fogger and another one out of Hell March. I want to enhance the tiles Funky Swamp can work asap and farm those juicy floodplains. The plan for Funky Swamp is to grow like crazy.

Definitely a back fill city, but quite a decent one is uncovered in the northwest.

   

All in all looking good.

[Sullla]

Yeah, the lack of districts from anyone else is pretty weird. I think we'll be seeing some finish soon for the State Workforce boost if nothing else but I'm puzzled that none of the other six players has finished anything that produces Great People points thus far. Either there have been some real barbarian struggles out there, or some players have gotten into an early war, or there's been a ton of pushing fast settlers without constructing districts. For comparison sake, Russia's "real" Empire score is 21 points right now after removing the double score granted by the Lavras and that's middle of the pack. But TheArchduke is going to jump up a whole bunch of points next turn with third city being founded and a Campus finishing at the capital. Also, Russia is right there on techs/civics researched despite pausing expansion to pop out three districts. What exactly are the other players doing (?)

Not too many other suggestions right now, we're in agreement on double builders while Ilkum is running and starting the Lavra in the new city. Only other suggestion is to make sure to assign Pingala in the capital next turn. And yes, there's room for another nice city in the northwest. A backline city can go there down the road. Looking good.

[TheArchduke]

Yeah, the lack of districts from anyone else is pretty weird. I think we'll be seeing some finish soon for the State Workforce boost if nothing else but I'm puzzled that none of the other six players has finished anything that produces Great People points thus far. Either there have been some real barbarian struggles out there, or some players have gotten into an early war, or there's been a ton of pushing fast settlers without constructing districts. For comparison sake, Russia's "real" Empire score is 21 points right now after removing the double score granted by the Lavras and that's middle of the pack. But TheArchduke is going to jump up a whole bunch of points next turn with third city being founded and a Campus finishing at the capital. Also, Russia is right there on techs/civics researched despite pausing expansion to pop out three districts. What exactly are the other players doing (?)

Not too many other suggestions right now, we're in agreement on double builders while Ilkum is running and starting the Lavra in the new city. Only other suggestion is to make sure to assign Pingala in the capital next turn. And yes, there's room for another nice city in the northwest. A backline city can go there down the road. Looking good.

So a Holy Site and a campus was finished on turn 41 (not sure how I missed the HS) and turn 42 by others players.

Yeah, Pingala was a bit of a brainfart.

   

Turn 43

   

Finally a third city, Funky is founded and I decided to put the Holy Site up next to the proposed gov plaza.

   

Overview wise, the cow is improved near Fogger so the gov plaza can be built in 12 turns.

   

Our scout finally explores at a decent pace.

Not much to say else, Ilkum lines up nicely.

The next builds out of Fogger and Hell March are the question now.

Hell march could do a 3rd settler with a +50% settler card whilst fogger maybe even snatches a shrine. I am tempted to do a library or a campus project. Even a granary is on the cards. The +2 cogs by the Industrial CS tempt me still.

[Sullla]

Good stuff, Funky's absurd food output should let it grow up to the housing cap quickly at which time it can swap over to some high production tiles. (There's several forested hills currently held by the capital that can swap over to Funky later on.) Looks like Lavra into Campus for the districts due to that excellent +4 beaker spot and otherwise the place can just grow grow grow.

I think settler after builder would make the most sense in the capital next, especially since the timing syncs up perfectly with the discovery of Early Empire to unlock the Colonization civic. That would get Russia out to 4 cities and that's probably enough until Monumentality arrives circa Turn 60 for faith-purchased settlers. For Fogger, I'll throw out either a trader (to boost Currency and get an initial road down) or possibly a shrine as the next build while waiting on growth to size 4. Once again, I'll strongly urge against running a district project at this stage of the game since I think it's a waste of production. Whether you land Hypatia or the next Great Scientist doesn't matter a great deal, better to invest production right now in furthering the growth curve.

What's the next tech to research? Remember that you can't finish a tech/civic that unlocks another district type if you want to get the discount on the Government Plaza. You could always research something like Bronze Working to near-completion though and finish it after the Government Plaza finishes. I think Machinery is the biggest longterm goal on the tech tree because there are a ton of forested tiles that would benefit from lumbermills, which are now worth +2 production and don't drop the tile appeal for Earth Goddess purposes. A long way to reach that point on the tech tree but something to keep in mind.