TBS gathers his thoughts

[MJW (ya that one)]

Talking about the game responses = spoilers. CMF talked about baseball and he got responses.

VCs could matter if it weren't for weak players feeding cities to others. This, among with no corruption system, makes the game tilt too fast for VCs to matter. You could think of it as a conquest victory but I think of it is getting cities to get stuff.

[The Black Sword]

War!

Took down Radio's walls in the first wave. Probably going to leave it alive so I can pillage the mines before taking it. I hope I can hold Radio whilst burning Spice Melange and his small fleet. 

Then I probably send 1 Caravel around his North to make sure he doesn't try to rebuild a Navy and evaluate coastal cities I can strike later.



Got two spears ready to be upgraded to pike and shots for each choke point. Will build a few more. I'll have a hull in each body of water. Feeling relatively secure vs incoming Cossacks.



If I can pillage these things I can cripple Rome, and get ~200g in the bargain too. With the chokepoints on our land border I don't see much of an issue with retaliation. Based on the yields of his fishing nets he doesn't have the tech for Caravels, let alone Frigates. I've found a route through the southern ice to send ships. I'm squeaking out a Quadrireme in Truthwatcher while my niter recovers. Then I can upgrade it to focus more resources in the area. Might try to do that again.

Australia is a bit harder to deal with. I can't just pillage their coastline because the production boost will probably just help them. Still, you can see his Military Power is only 200 and his low city count means low production. I'll need to organise a larger land force but it should be possible.

Initiate dogpile on self?

[The Black Sword]

Kaiser hit Civil Service! 



That's +5S for both of us against Russia, and we also share vision. He has a lot of units:



But Cossacks show up any turn now. Hoplites will get 25 + 10(anti-cav) + 10(UU bonus) + 5 (alliance) + 5(Congress) = 55 vs a S67 Cossack. Assume flanking/support cancels out, maybe with fortification and terrian modifiers he can hold them off. If he makes it to Pikes that is another 6S. My biggest worry is that Russia can just play defense after losing the two cities to me while he rolls over Greece. Maybe I should see if I can send anything to support. 



This is the setup over by Radio, I'm getting some of that juicy war econ going. I don't think I'll do enough pillaging to be worth the +50% policy card so I just take the 200g now. You can also see Archduke placed a lavra SW of Radio over a mine - denying me another potential pillage. I send a horse in ti pillage the last mine before I take the city. I'll also probably get to pillage the mines south of Spice Melange once I strip its walls.

For this turn I want to start taking down his fleet. My frigates should be able to one-shot his Quads while I'll need two strikes to finish a galley. I attack first with a Caravel and finish with a Frigate instead of vice-versa so that I don't end turn in range of city.



My Admiral Zheng He is rather pleased with himself and gives me some era points.

Also, I picked our 3 Zoo locations to cover my empire in case the game goes that long, placed two discounted to lock in the cost. Amenities are pretty good late game when you are multiplying high yield cities, so I think they'll probably be decent investments.

[Kaiser]

Hey TBS, thanks for the game. You were right I started falling behind when picking Magnus and Liang (and then losing a 4 build worker to a cat 5 Hurricane). I blame the single player me.

I shared your opinion regarding game position that Archduke and Cornflakes had good expansion options by conquering me.
That is why I built so many hoplites and tried to set up our alliance. I would never had a unit to defend against cossacks, I did not even had access to Pikemen yet due to my bad science rate.

I went for the hoplites buff with world Congress so they would also have better odds against shooting as they were my strongest :embarassed: units. I was assuming you have any cav units at hand and would benefit as well but did not think about your thought process. In the we turned out lucky but it still only meant to fight on equal strength knight - hoplite.

Thank you for the alliance and the great reporting

[The Black Sword]

GG Kaiser, it's always nice to have a friend in game!

I thought from pretty early on that we made sense as allies, since we had the same pair of neighbours. I thought at the end you might try pull out and DoF with Archduke though since I was getting ahead.

I think Magnus can work, I certainly did more chopping than I expected. But with Pingala you just drop him in and he does his stuff, you need a lot more active planning with Magnus to stay even.

[Sullla]

Wow, I am seriously impressed after reading through this thread. This is arguably the best-played game of MP Civ6 that we've seen thus far at Realms Beyond. I underestimated how strong the Cree proved to be as a civ, with those monster trade routes scaling up the performance of every new city. The housing benefits from the unique tile improvement were also insane; we've always known that housing was the primary limitation on city growth in Civ6, not food, and this game was a great example of that. It's too bad that the documentation around the mekewaps is so terrible! Along with the excellent choice of the camp-boosting pantheon (really strong choice for a last pick option), every Cree city started off at a roaring pace and took advantage of the infamous Civilization snowball without ever needing to look back.

But this game wasn't simply about the strengths of the Cree as a civ choice. It was a beautifully played game on the part of TBS from start to finish, and the Cree would have looked pretty pedestrian if we had dropped most of the other players on these forums into the same spot. The logic as outlined in this thread is wonderful to read, again and again focusing on the most important things to prioritize and knowing what could be safely delayed until later. One of the things that wasn't written about too much in this thread, but which was clearly taking place from the images, was a laser-tight focus on city improvement. Every city seemed to be working improved tiles all the time thanks to an army of builders and really smart use of the governors. I know that TBS mentioned moving around Magnus and Liang constantly and it definitely showed. There was that one roundup of images showing all of the cities around Turn 100 and I was stunned to see how much production every city had available. Every city seemed to have 20-25 production thanks to trade routes and mines and resource tiles. This is not a knock on TheArchduke but he posted a similar city roundup towards the end of his thread and the Russian cities were nowhere close to the same level of development.

So the Cree cities were larger across the board than the other empires, and they were working almost entirely improved tiles, and they had the super-powered Cree trade routes on hand. The net result was a civ that could do anything that it wanted: field a powerful navy that no one could match, mass-upgrade into pike/shot units to counter cossacks, churn out districts galore while also settling more cities than anyone else, etc. The gold/turn income advantage alone that the Cree had was ridiculous and it was snowballing this game in a huge way. TheArchduke was right: this game was completely over and it wasn't close. TBS could have walked over anyone else with ease. He was winning decisively when the game ended on Turn 105 and in another 20 turns the margin of advantage would have been disgusting. This was a tour de force of brilliant economic management that fans of Civ6 MP should be studying to see how they can improve. I'm both impressed and envious after reading through this. Really great stuff!

[VoiceInTheWilderness]

I'd've liked to see TBS "prove" the advantage before the game ended, though I do not doubt his ability. Alas. Very well played.