[SPOILERS] TheArchduke blasts into Space as Russia

[Sullla]

Another day with no turn had me thinking of the long term again for this game, largely in terms of how to keep leveraging faith to best effect. For the immediate future, the best use is clearly producing settlers via Monumentality. The current Golden Age should last rough 20 more turns, and with Russia already averaging 64 faith/turn (a number which will go up with time) it should be safe to assume that Russia will produce at least 1200 more faith before the Golden Age runs out. The last settler cost 320 faith so the upcoming ones will cost 364, 406, and 448 faith. That sums up to just over 1200 faith, and I don't think Russia's going to get 490 faith for another settler before the Golden Age ends. So Act On Instinct gets Russia to 7 cities, Spice Melange gets up to 8 cities, and there's probably enough for two more cities (up to 10 total) before the Golden Age ends. I would encourage thinking about pushing those two cities east towards Greece if at all possible. Vector and Line of Fire are safe spots that can be backfilled at any point.

So where does the faith go when the Golden Age runs out? Obviously it can go into more settlers/builders if another Golden Age follows but that's far from guaranteed. Let's assume that there won't be enough era points for further use of Monumentality after Turn 90 arrives. At that point, I think the goal is to start converting faith into units via the Grandmaster's Chapel. Unlike in base Civ6 where Theocracy government was the only thing needed to purchase units with faith, Gathering Storm requires a specific tier 2 government building that no one else is likely to have. Fortunately Fogger has nothing else important to work on and can prioritize the Grandmaster's Chapel after it finishes the Ancestral Hall. (The Grandmaster's Chapel can't be started until the player has a tier 1 government building finished and has adopted a tier 2 government but those are both approaching on the horizon.) Even if Fogger takes a little time to build the Grandmaster's Chapel, Russia can start saving up faith ahead of time and spend it once the building is finished.

The key government to adopt is going to be Theocracy. It has a nice distribution of policy slots (2 Military, 2 Economic, 1 Diplomatic, 1 Wildcard) and Merchant Republic was significantly nerfed in Gathering Storm as compared to the base game. Theocracy grants 0.5 faith per population point in cities with governors, and, more importantly, 15% discount on all faith purchases. It would be really nice to reach this government while still in the Golden Age, but if not it will be great for purchasing units with faith. The faith cost for units is the same as it is under Monumentality: double the production cost, half the gold cost. While in Theocracy government, the math works out to 1.7 times the production cost... and that opens up some real possibilities.

I think the win condition for Russia involves running over someone with cossacks before they're ready to fight back. Cossacks are unlocked at Military Science tech in the early Industrial era, and if you look closely at the Civ6 tech tree, this is a target that's very susceptible to beelining. If I'm reading the Gathering Storm tech tree correctly, Military Science can be reached not only with zero other Industrial techs learned, but with zero other RENAISSANCE techs learned! After Machinery, the player only needs Castles, Printing, and Siege Tactics to unlock this tech. So... why not emphasize this research path and try to unlock cossacks at a ridiculously early date? The boosts for Machinery and Castles are easy to unlock. Military Science (kill a unit with a knight) should be doable, against a city state if no barbarians are obliging. Printing (build 2 universities) probably isn't worth pursuing, and Siege Tactics (own 2 bombards) definitely isn't worth chasing after. Why divert all the way up to where universities are bombards are located on the tech tree? Just accept the wasted beakers and plow on through to the goal of unlocking cossacks that much faster.

Normally this kind of beeline wouldn't work because there would be some kind of cross-tree resource requirement blocking the way. But cossacks don't require nitre or any other Industrial era resources - they only require horses, and they only need 10 horses apiece, not 20 horses like normal cavalry units. Russia is currently making 12 horses/turn on this resource-heavy map so that's not going to be a problem. (Plus you could slot in the "Retinues" policy card alongside "Professional Army" when doing upgrades: the former is 50% resource discount on all unit upgrades just as the latter is 50% Gold discount on all unit upgrades.) The really awesome thing about this setup is that Russia can get cossacks in two different ways: both by purchasing them straight up with faith (their production cost is 340 so their faith purchase cost would be 580 in Theocracy) or by purchasing horsemen with faith ahead of time (at a scanty 135 faith apiece) and then upgrading them with gold into cossacks. That upgrade costs 400 gold apiece, or 200 gold with Professional Army policy running. I don't think Russia will have to spend much gold after purchasing the watermill on this upcoming turn and can save for a long time afterwards.

If this sounds appealing and you want to go down this route, I genuinely think Russia can reach Military Science as early as roughly Turn 110 and hit someone with a dozen cossacks almost immediately thereafter. Best of all, it's not like expansion and develop stop in the meantime. Russia still gets out three more settlers with Monumentality faith, to reach 10 cities, then starts stacking up faith for cossack purchases along with saving gold for horse into cossack upgrades. It all comes together sometime in the Turn 110-120 region at a time where everyone is still fielding Medieval armies and the cossacks just rampage. If you can get a city over near Greece to serve as a staging area, I don't see how Kaiser possibly has anything capable of stopping cossacks at such an early date. I mean, Woden won the last PBEM game easily and this is where he was on Turn 115:



Not in a position to deal with 67 strength (!) cossacks, that's for sure. I think this is the path moving forward, largely to focus on the bottom part of the tech tree and beeline hard for Military Science while setting up faith and gold to amass a huge cossack army as soon as the tech arrives. What do you think?

[TheArchduke]

Turn report first, then I am going in depth over my thoughts on the issue.

Turn 71

   

So the turn loads and we are greeted with yet another great writer, courtesy of our Lavras.

Stuff to do, first buy a watermill in Rise of the Atreides. This eureka-finishes Construction and thus inspires Games and Recreation nearby finishing it.
I switch Timbermist Woods to the rice which will get farmed next turn and farm another tile near Atreides so we can jumpstart the city further next turn at pop 2.
The bonus of a further +2 pushes us beyond Australia´s science rate for the first time. 

I also bring 2 archers and a third one down to Cardiff to block access north of the lake and prepare to defend and conquer Cardiff from the Cree.

   

In the east, both settler and worker are in position to get Act on Instinct going. First district will be a campus.

   

Misc. stuff.

Only Australia has GG points, +2 to be precise and is at 20 GG points overall. This rules out a peaceful win against Australia. I am quite confident that Alhambram with superior technology and a GG will disembowelwl his neighbours. One his DoF and one denounced. So we need to conquer our neighbors as well to stay competitive.
Noone has any commercial districts still! 
I spotted another roman settler. I am curious where he finds the space for more cities.

   

I am scouting out Rome diligently as I still see Cornflakes as my main headache this game.

I am unsure IF I want to settle Spice Melange as any coastal city in my eyes is quickly becoming a liability. What are your guys thoughts on this?
Amani pushes us to Suzerain this turn. Couple this with the proposed Cossack rush I have the following tech plan:

IW (1t), Engineering (3t), Machinery (4t boosted), castles (7t unboosted), Printing (11t unboosted and probably will stay that way) and then Siege Tactics (no chance to boost this) and then Mil Science (17t).

This means about 39 turns with increasing science about 37 turns when I beeline right now.

A Knight with a victory means a delay of 7 turns (6t Apprenticeship and 7t Stirrups unboosted) which are both boostable.

Shipbuilding for exploration purposes is a viable detour (4t unboosted)

Education (8t via Mathematics is probably not)

My current thinking would be to get Apprenticeships and Stirrups and then beeline for Cossacks, trying to hit Feudalism and walls asap.

Considering that ships could very well be a liability, maybe we should ignore them alltogether. Another problem is the issue is Cree or Greece as target #1. More on that later.

[Sullla]

Very nice, maybe someday you'll build a Theatre district and be able to use those Great Writers for more than scouting. Atreides should grow very fast with those 4/1 watermilled tiles to grow onto and there are tons of awesome forested hill tiles to be lumbermilled later. Really happy with how that city is looking. I also like the call to start with the Campus district for Act On Instinct (northwest of the city center at the spot with the +5 beaker adjacency bonus); it's going to take forever to finish so this might be a good spot to station Magnus down the road and toss a forest chop at the district. We'll see what happens there.

I think you'll be OK to stop building military for a little bit after this round of horses and chariots finish. Maneuver policy likely stays in for the moment and then comes out at the next civics swap (Defensive Tactics). Nice timing to get the Construction boost into finishing Construction into boosting Games and Recreation just barely in time. I think Hell March can knock out its Commercial district after the horse finishes and Funky can go for either a shrine or a builder. It wouldn't hurt to get some more use out of Choral Music and keep culture humming along.

I am unsure IF I want to settle Spice Melange as any coastal city in my eyes is quickly becoming a liability. What are your guys thoughts on this?

I mean, you know how I don't care that much for the Spice Melange spot. The terrain is OK but there's been better stuff elsewhere throughout this game thus far. I still like the idea of pushing east with settlers to be in a position to hit Greece when cossacks come online. Kaiser is much, much weaker than TBS and likely to remain so - he looks to be easy meat. Is there any chance you could post a screenshot of the terrain east of Act On Instinct? I'd like to take a look and see if any obvious city spots out beyond the frontier are available.

On the research path, I honestly forgot that you can't boost Military Science unless you have knights unlocked - whoops! Yeah, definitely worthwhile to pick up Apprenticeship and Stirrups since they're booth cheap and easily boostable. Knights are too important to skip. The Sailing/Shipbuilding pair would also be useful to pick up, both for exploring and because you might need to embark units for military operations. But otherwise I don't think you need much of anything in the upper and middle parts of the tech tree, not immediately anyway. Universities are so expensive that you're probably better off just building more cities and Campus/library pairs without going to the tier 2 science building. I agree with the idea of trying to conquer a neighbor first and worrying about naval tech afterwards. This just doesn't seem to be a naval-heavy map.

If Alhambram wasn't positioned to conquer his very weak neighbors, I'd say you were the favorite to win this game. But you have a very weak neighbor too, and if you can steamroll Greece with cossacks there's a decent chance that the other players will concede at some point. Keep expanding, keep teching, and get ready to target the weakest player in sight. (Poor Kaiser! It absolutely helps that he's totally checked out on this game. Why isn't Cornflakes hitting him with legions right now?)

[TheArchduke]

Turn 72

Pressed for time.

   

Yields continue to go up, Fez nets 120 science at Funky with the missionary! Switch to shipbuilding, apprenticeships is done after a boost.

   

   

[Sullla]

Hope everything is well with you, TheArchduke. This game for sure takes a backseat to everything else that needs doing in real life. As far as commenting on the last turn, things are looking pretty stellar right now. 120 free beakers from converting Funky basically paid back the investment cost into Amani right away. It was worth the governor promotion for that alone, everything else is gravy from this point on. Just Do It should be worth 60 beakers and then Act On Instinct (which will grow to size 2 in the intervening time) will be worth 40 more beakers. 220 beakers from the suzerain ability of Fez, who would have thought it! Russia is tops in science on this continent by a good margin and the military gap with TBS should be closed with the double horsemen and chariot builds finishing over the next few turns. You should be safe to go back onto infrastructure for the time being.

Gold income is a little low so Hell March going back and finishing the Commercial district seems like a good call when the horse finishes next turn. For Funky, I'll suggest working on a shrine when its own horse finishes. I think you can seize control of the cultural side of things by putting Choral Music to good use over the next dozen or so turns. We already know that Atreides is going to push Lavra into shrine into temple for a chopped Mahabodi over the next 15-20 turns. That's another 6 culture/turn from those two buildings with your religion (will need another missionary at some point to convert Atreides and Timbermist). If Hell March can get a temple soonish and Funky can find time for the shrine/temple combo, you'd be looking at another 10 culture/turn from the two of them. Long story short, emphasizing shrines and temples would get your culture up close to 50/turn and establish clear separation from the rest of the field. I think this would be useful to pursue while awaiting the arrival of Feudalism + Serfdom to get out another wave of builders for lumbermilling.

Shorter thoughts:

* You need road connections across your territory for movement purposes. When the current trader running from Fogger to Hell March finishes its route, I would try to get a road running from Act On Instinct back to Fogger. (Better to rebase the trader to Instinct to help its development along.) This will be needed for future military movement.

* An easily-captured barbarian camp near Act On Instict is a blessing. Yay free gold and era points!

* The last builder charge for the Act On Instict builder goes for a lumbermill on the tile northeast-northeast of the city, right? 1/5/2 faith yield will be spectacular and help get that Campus district down to a manageable length. I think with city growth factored in the district will take about 20 turns to finish, not too bad given that it will be worth 10 beakers/turn (!) when it finishes. Just Do It needs to get up to size 4 so that it can start working on its own +4 adjacency Campus.

* Faith output is unreal for this stage of the game. Already 73 faith/turn and going up at a steady pace as cities keep growing onto more Earth Goddess tiles. Do we know where the next settler is going yet? A screenshot of the terrain off to your east would be helpful if you have the time. I still like the idea of pushing towards Greece and preparing for a cossack-fueled attack down the road. Kaiser and his 16 beakers/turn certainly won't be able to stop you.

[TheArchduke]

No turn report for turn 73. I had a busy couple of days. I am working a military report and analysis of the strategic situation.

[TheArchduke]

Turn 74

To get the report out of the way.

In the west, I tentatively move the warrior west to cover settler next turn to Vector, I also improve the copper tile with a mine, which means we need one more mine for apprenticeship boostable at our leisure.

I also switch some worked tiles around to get gold income up to a decent amount as gold = military power and I sleep bad when I can not improve my military capabilities in an emergency.

   

We go for another horseman at Funky, whilst the capital gets a commercial district. The big question of the next turn is if we buy a settler with faith for the south (Spice Melange and Cree), west(Vector) or east(Eastern Rampart). 

The Waiting Game site are empty calories, only to be consumed if I have nowhere to go. Spice Melange means a defensive barrier and a jump point to Cardiff. Vector means another excellent city to boost our curve and Eastern Rampart is the start of a push east.

As you can see I am trying to race the Cree to Cardiff to prevent its capture or take it as my own.

Our fez fueled missionary shaves on turn off Shipbuilding and continues on to Act on Instinct.

[TheArchduke]

So overall strategy. As the guy with I think the most military kills under his belt in PBEMs, I must admit, that outright conquest in Civilization VI is not that easy. Especially in MP. Any military plan that does not involve a clear goal and how to get there is bound to fail. An UU is not a "I win" button as most other players think. It provides an edge but that is it.
 
That said Cossacks are a bit on the stronger end of the UUs, because they have 2 edges. Retreat after attack, which enhances their survivability and especially prevent clogging of attack routes and +5 CS strength.
 
Overall there are several ways to get an edge over your opponent in a straight up fight.
 
-      ) A tech edge, most units that are more advanced have an easier time to kill their opponents. This is in the ballpark of 10-15 combat strength. I will introduce edge points as a number. So this means about 2 edge points for tech advantage.
-      ) A Great General provides a nice edge of a +5 CS or a Great Admiral. 1 edge point.
-      ) Being on the defensive most often provides you with 2 edge points, as it provides CS boni in the range of 3-6 for fortification and 3-9 for various woods, rivers and other terrain defensive advantages.
-      ) Superior intelligence can range from 3-6 and can provide 1 edge point imo.
-      ) Superior numbers and thus flanking bonuses or support bonuses. Hard to pull off against a competent human player, 1 edge point.
-      ) Short supply routes or long supply routes provides about 1 edge point, as reinforcements are hard to come by.
-      ) DotF or Crusader are worth about 1 edge point imo. Crusader has a higher CS but is more difficult to achieve then the weaker CS bonus of DotF.
-      ) Unique units fall under a slight edge to a big edge, depending on the bonus 1-2 edge points.
-      ) Prepared defenses like city walls and units in place provide a huge edge as does the advantage of a suprise attack. 2 edge points.
-      ) Better maneuverability gives a slight edge. 1 edge point. May it be due a GG or having mounted units for instance.
-      ) Bottlenecks or less terrain to move. 1-2 edge points.
 
So in general if you ask my opinion you need to weigh the advantages or edge points of you versus your opponent and ask you if you can beat him decisively.
 
Not that if you have a UU and a general and you attack an opponent who sees you coming and prepares his defenses, I like his chances more then yours.
 
So next objective. Is it to
 
-      ) Outright conquest (thanks to the occupation rules this is high risk, high reward as you have to conquer all off an opponent, this is more difficult than you might think)
-      ) Destroy a specific target (one city, one CS or denial of a spot, easier)
-      ) Keep an opponent busy by waging war and thus from running away with the game.
 
Most of the time without a clear objective and a way to follow through, both sides get hurt and relatively the other sides win. Thus any conquest war in CIV VI has to be treated as a total war. The opportunity cost is too high. The probability of a limited war evolving into a total war out of spite is also very high.
 
Thus prepare yourself if you want to wage war.
 
This all feeds into my perspective for this game. With a beeline to Cossacks we have a decent edge to hurt one other player. But who should it be?
 
Supply lines dictate a neighbour as does the strategic situation. You can not wage a war somewhere else, win it and expect your neighbours to sit tight.
 
Thus the only viable targets are the Cree and Greece.

[TheArchduke]

So, looking at the situation, Greece is in terrible shape.

Despite an income of 24 gold, Kaiser is low on gold. His milpower is lacking, his overall development is lacking and his science is lacking.

The river mountain line is somewhat defendable, but I have plenty of space to get there and the probability of an unwise city plant in my general direction is very high.  An easy mark.
The probability of an overseas escape is also low.

   

Rome is a bit of a bigger problem, though.
I fully expect Cornflakes´ yields to explode soon. My main worry would be that I have to divide up Greece with Rome or attack Rome afterwards.

   

The Cree however are a problem. I can not conquer Greece with TBS at my side. His yields are good, he is basic competent to conquer CS quickly and decisively. He has a good gold income, great science and keeps his milpower up.

If I want to conquer Greece I have to wage a defensive war against the Cree at the same time in my opinion.

If I want to go against the Cree, I do not seem to have geographical problems and Greece is a nuisance more then a threat.

Yes, in my opinion as you can probably guess the better target are the Cree.

   

DoF Times:

Cree      Turn 51 -> Turn 81
Greece Turn 53 -> Turn 83
Rome    Turn 60 -> Turn 90

Next up attack avenues towards Greece and/or the Cree and defensive lines and measures.

[Sullla]

Once again I hope everything is going well with the busy real life stuff. This game certainly doesn't move very fast (or apparently get reported very well outside this thread and suboptimal's thread). I have some disagreements with both the small scale stuff taking place on the current turn as well as some of the bigger picture planning for the future, which you can feel free to follow or ignore as you prefer. First let's cover some of the small scale things taking place right now:

* Is Vector the best place to pick for the next city spot? It's certainly not a bad spot as there are several resources nearby and I can see two strong district placements immediately: a Lavra southeast of the city center (double adjacency bonuses with the forests and the city tile) and a Harbor two tiles north of the city for future shipbuilding at size 4. But Vector is a completely safe backlines spot that no one will ever contest and I'm not sure that this is the best spot for the next city. I'll continue to advocate pushing east towards Greece in preparation to crush Kaiser with cossacks later. You can always get the Vector spot later on but you might not have the same chance to claim the eastern wilderness. It's hard for me to see the terrain over there from the screenshots posted thus far; I would advocate trying to get something in the area of Eastern Rampart for now and then pushing another city after that at the Waimakariri River region which has some nice land. Do not place a city at The Waiting Game, that's bad local terrain and it's not necessary to have a city in that spot. Establishing control of this area is important to get some roads running (via trade routes) and speed military units later.

* Your income situation is slightly underwhelming but only because the current policy configuration isn't running the -1 gold/unit card (Conscription). Obviously this is one of the downsides to being in a Classical Republic government. If you're able to swap into this policy card at the next civics transition and finish the Commercial district at the capital, that should take Russia up somewhere into the 25-30 gold/turn region which is healthy for the moment.

* Shipbuilding tech finishing next turn is great! The Great Writer(s) can explore overseas to find that missing Scientific city state and hopefully contact the remaining two players eventually. But your Great Writer in the west is currently standing next to cliffs and will need to move back a tile to embark into the water. Shouldn't take more than a turn or two to meet that Scientific city state though.

* I strongly disagree with that second horseman in Funky and I think it was a poor choice. You absolutely did need to build some military since TBS had jumped out to about 220-230 power rating, and you managed to accomplish that by training two horses and a chariot. But adding a third horse is purely wasteful at this point: TBS stopped increasing his power, indicating that he was only interested in whacking city states, not conquering another player, and Funky is missing an opportunity to work on its infrastructure right now. *THIS* is the time to get a shrine or a monument finish to boost culture, while Funky is waiting to grow to size 7 and build its Commercial district. Russia has Choral Music available but it's not being used very well thus far - I think there's only a single shrine in the whole empire right now. There's no reason to be slipping behind TBS and Cornflakes on culture (they're both up around 35/turn now) when Russia has the option to get 2 culture per shrine and the big payout of 4 culture per temple. I mentioned in my last couple of posts that this was the time to have these cities get some shrines/temples going for culture purposes and I think not doing so is a missed opportunity.

Seriously though, what is that horseman going to do? What purpose does it serve? Russia isn't going to war anytime soon. Why build a horse that's only going to cost gold in maintenance each turn and delay useful city infrastructure (?)

* Now for the big picture theorycrafting, the most important part of the discussion. I have the 100% opposite conclusion with regards on who to be thinking about attacking: for me it's Greece all the way. Kaiser is incredibly weak both in-game and out-of-game. 17 beakers/turn is a total joke at this stage of the game and he'll never be able to field units better than knights/crossbows when Russia's in a position to attack with cossacks. (It goes without saying that 67 strength 5 movement cossacks will laugh off either of those units without breaking a sweat.) Kaiser is also totally checked out when it comes to playing this game, with zero posts in his spoiler thread over the last month. It's the very definition of "mailing it in" from a Pitboss/PBEM perspective.

And I can't emphasize this enough: yes, this really does matter when it comes to strategizing! We've seen endlessly over the last ten years that the surest path to victory is to run over a weaker/checked out neighbor and absorb their territory. In the big Pitboss games, the pregame discussion of who will win often turns on which players managed to roll weak neighbors for easy consumption. Conversely, if someone has a reputation for whipping/defending well in Civ4, that's a player who should be avoided if possible. You'd better believe that this was a major decision in the PBEM7 game when Singaboy and I went after Jowy as opposed to your Germany!

So Russia has the best possible neighbor here: a weak, checked-out, technologically-backwards neighbor who we can reasonably expect to fold like a house of cards when attacked. Why in the world wouldn't you want to set up a scenario where they get eaten up and annexed by Russia? I'm struggling to understand this desire to attack TBS instead. TBS has already shown that he's a strong player in past Civ4/Civ6 games and his Cree are doing the best of the non-Russia players on this continent by far. (I would currently rate the field as Russia, Australia, Cree, <big drop>, Rome, <big drop>, everyone else.) TBS has an excellent beaker/culture output, he just took over a city state, and he's tied for the city count lead if I'm reading the numbers correctly. Attacking the Cree would be a very difficult task and I doubt that a complete conquest would be possible at all. So why charge into that minefield if you don't have to?

I understand the worry about TBS potentially attacking your flank from the south. However, I completely disagree with the statement about "I cannot conquer Greece with TBS at my side." For starters, there's a decent chance that you can line up a Declaration of Friendship window that grants you 30 turns of immunity from attack. The current Cree DoF ends on Turn 81; if you can get a renewal until Turn 111, you'd be in a position to sign a new extention on Turn 111 right when cossacks are rolling out and you look terrifyingly strong. I think there's a decent chance that TBS signs that out of fear that he's a target. We've seen innumerable cases where players sign DoFs that they shouldn't and clear the field for a player to conquer someone else.

But let's say that doesn't happen: TBS refuses to sign a deal and you have to worry about a hostile Cree to the south. Serious question here: how dangerous is that really? Cossacks have 67 strength as a base value, then they get +5 combat strength for fighting in your borders... and then ANOTHER +5 combat strength from Defender of the Faith. TBS isn't going to be further than the Renaissance era on the tech tree around Turn 110 so he's going to be working with knights, cavalry, muskets, and maybe field guns as his best units at that point. None of them are going to do a darn thing to 77 strength cossacks that can attack and then move again after attacking. Like, how would he even hurt you in this scenario? Everyone is familiar with the changes to city walls in Gathering Storm, right? The ones that make it nearly impossible to attack without bringing siege units into the mix? Fogger and Funky would have defensive strengths of at least 60 once cossacks appear, and if you put medieval walls in those cities they'll be essentially impregnable to attack, because how could a bombard ever get into firing range without 77 strength cossacks one-shotting them and then dancing away to heal and attack again? I just don't see how this is possible. TBS isn't dumb: if he has a strong military around Turn 110, he's going to be hitting Cornflakes with it, not charging into cossack-wielding Defender of the Faith Russia.

That's the other piece of the big picture analysis that I think you're missing: Rome. You wrote "I fully expect Cornflakes' yields to explode soon". I disagree: what's the evidence for that? Has Rome been building a bunch of districts that I can't see because I'm not in-game (?) My feeling is the opposite: Cornflakes has stalled out and doesn't have a plan for what to do next. Rome's science rate is terrible and has been stagnant for the last dozen or so turns. He's been sitting around the 25-30 beaker range for ages now. Rome's barely even ahead in culture and that's a really dangerous sign - Rome should be WAY ahead in culture. Rome's advantages are all frontloaded and the player needs to snowball off of them from a position of leading the pack. This is what I did in the two PBEM games that I played, where Rome was leading in score for basically the whole game. Cornflakes might have a lot of cities but his science rate is poor, his military strength is bizarrely weak, and he's almost out of room for peaceful expansion. I have no idea what he didn't set up for a legion-based attack on Greece but clearly that's not happening now. I think Cornflakes gets run over by TBS down the road, I don't see him as a competitor at all. What am I missing here that makes you think Rome is about to take off (?)

Overall then, my recommendation is pretty much the same as what I outlined earlier: keep pushing towards cossacks ASAP, keep expanding eastward, be in a position to crush Greece and absorb Kaiser's territory. There is no situation more favorable than having cossacks + Defender of the Faith on hand so don't let the presence of the Cree stop you from making a move. (I had to expose my flank in the PBEM1 game to attack but it was worth the risk.) It's almost always better to hit the weakest player rather than the strongest player and this game sets up perfectly for that. I'd encourage you to push culture right now and get ready for a wave of builders afterwards once Serfdom is on hand for the 5 charge units. Hopefully this wasn't too much of a wall of text paragraph - as always, it is your game in the end. Feel free to tell me to shove off.