[SPOILERS] ljubljana embraces the dark side

[ljubljana]

This is a placeholder first post, and probably also a placeholder title, which I'll eventually update to something civ-specific (assuming that it's the convention to publicize our picks before the game starts).

I doubt I have much of an idea of what I am doing, but I'm very excited for this game 

The Spreadsheet

[Cornflakes]

Keep the thread title generic before the game starts, or reference your city naming theme but not the civ pick. Good luck!

[ljubljana]

So, normally it'd be premature to talk about a game plan before civs come out, but I do have some things in mind that I'm hoping to get a chance to try, so maybe it's worth talking about those so that any lurkers can get a sense of the kinds of civs I'm hoping to see on my list. Most of my SP practice games lately have been religious ones centered around trying to combine the new Work Ethic with one of the faith-boosting pantheons. This is very luck-based, of course, as with any pantheon-based strategy, but since I'm pretty unlikely to win this first game anyways, I feel like my odds are maximized by going for a high-variance strategy with upside high enough to compensate for my greenness if all goes well. Thus, if we manage to get a decent religious civ and start near desert or tundra, you can probably expect me to move towards it and position my initial holy sites under the assumption that we will in fact land the relevant pantheon. If that succeeds, we should get off to a strong start even despite my inexperience, and if not, oh well, we'll have a few weak starting districts, but I don't think that setback would be as large as the payoff if successful.

With respect to the gameplan itself, the initial goals would naturally be to get two holy sites up as fast as possible (ideally the map will support a warrior -> settler -> holy site build order in the capital) and push for a fast religion while trying to hit Political Philosophy and (especially) Theology as quickly as possible on the cultural side. Uniquely for a religious game plan, holy site projects more than pay for themselves if we successfully land Work Ethic with a strong setup, so I'll likely run a fair few of those to secure and accelerate Work Ethic; depending on the setup and our opponents, chopping out an early Stonehenge could also be in play following the same logic. The latter is also nice because it feeds into the second overriding goal of the Ancient Era, which is getting a Classical Monumentality Golden Age to make up for the very slow early expansion implicit in this gameplan.

If that's all or mostly successful, my plan in the Classical Era would be to catch up on expansion, grow as many cities as possible to size 4 for campuses, and push for a Medieval Dark Age rather than a second Monumentality GA. The synergy between Monasticism and Work Ethic seems incredibly strong, since every single city will have a holy site to power Work Ethic, which can then fuel very fast production of campuses, libraries, and universities once the cities grow to create a huge science boom when multiplied by Monasticism. My practice games with this strategy have not had a great success rate, since this approach needs both the right kind of map and the right pantheon, and getting a Classical GA in particular is very chancey (although it's probably at least somewhat easier in MP than against Deity AIs due to the latter's research cheats). When all of this does go right, though, the game totally breaks open, resulting in screenshots like this one:



That game had a very strong start and map (Mount Vesuvius at the capital, plus Sahara el Beyda off in that southeast corner), perfect GS luck (Hypatia, Hildegard, and Newton all before t100), and was able to run a skeleton military and extremely limited gold economy due to the AI's ineptitude and Gandhi and a weak Russia as my only neighbors, so I highly doubt a performance like that is even remotely possible in an MP game. That said, this basic approach seems strong enough to be worth trying, if only to see how well it can do in a more constrained MP setting.

As far as civs go, you'll see that I played Japan in that game, and I believe they're the strongest civ for this gameplan due to cheap holy sites and Meiji Restoration creating strong campus locations all over the place and further buffing Work Ethic. If I don't land them, though, Russia can also do well (of course), with Lavras further speeding religion and the free border pops making up for Japan's biggest weakness in this setting, which is the need for a ton of early tile buying. China could pull this off as well, with their easy Stonehenge, free Classical GA, and strong synergy between a few of the religious beliefs and China's wonder-centric game plan. Finally, I haven't tried this in SP yet, but an unorthodox choice could be Germany - they can build holy sites first in new cities without having to then wait a really long time for campuses and commercial hubs/harbors, Hansas + Work Ethic would yield a huge amount of production, and, since nobody expects a religious Germany, we might have an easier time than usual chopping out Stonehenge without being sniped on either the wonder or beliefs.

I'm sure other civs are viable too, but I think those are the main four that I'm hoping to see (though that doesn't mean I won't give analyses for every civ rolled). Feel free to comment with any thoughts or suggestions!

[ljubljana]

...wait, I just realized that posting about a strategy like this before the map is finalized could create serious problems for Kaiser if people discuss it in the lurker thread and they end up receiving spoiler knowledge. Do people think I should take this down until the game starts? If so, I'm happy to do so, and am super sorry for not thinking this through if I've already caused a problem of that nature.

[suboptimal]

Good evening. Your civilization pick list is:

Arabia, Brazil, Cree, Egypt, Holland, India/Chandragupta, Russia, Sumeria

Good luck.

[ljubljana]

ooh, well, would you look at that I have to admit, I was kind of wondering if today's explosion of activity in the lurker thread meant that I got either very lucky or very unlucky with my civ rolls

Given the above discussion, I'm almost certainly going to go with Russia, but I should probably read up on and idly contemplate some of these other civs before formally committing.

Suboptimal, do you have a timeframe in mind by which you'd like a definitive commitment?

[suboptimal]

Nope, not yet. Take your time. We're also waiting on Ioan76 to create a thread so he can get his picks.

[marcopolothefraud]

Hi ljub, I think your plan is pretty strong. Looking back at old PBEMs, there have definitely been a lot of faith-strategies with Arabia or Russia that have paid off really well.

You mentioned leaning towards a desert/tundra faith-based pantheon. What about an appeal-based pantheon? It worked out pretty well in PBEM17.

I'm skeptical that "chopping out an early Stonehenge" might work; I think you want to save your chops for a lot later when you're building a wave of settlers or an army. Same with spamming Holy Site Prayers - it might not return a good investment if you delay your Monument, or Settler, or Builder.

I wonder what your Governor strategies will be? You only get 2 Governor titles in the Ancient Era, plus 2 from the Government Plaza/Ancestral Hall, then another 2 in Classical Era. I'm looking forward to dedlurking you.

[ljubljana]

Hi ljub, I think your plan is pretty strong. Looking back at old PBEMs, there have definitely been a lot of faith-strategies with Arabia or Russia that have paid off really well.

You mentioned leaning towards a desert/tundra faith-based pantheon. What about an appeal-based pantheon? It worked out pretty well in PBEM17.

I'm skeptical that "chopping out an early Stonehenge" might work; I think you want to save your chops for a lot later when you're building a wave of settlers or an army. Same with spamming Holy Site Prayers - it might not return a good investment if you delay your Monument, or Settler, or Builder.

I wonder what your Governor strategies will be? You only get 2 Governor titles in the Ancient Era, plus 2 from the Government Plaza/Ancestral Hall, then another 2 in Classical Era. I'm looking forward to dedlurking you.

Yeah, Earth Goddess was very worthwhile for TheArchduke in PBEM17, and was probably worth more faith/turn by the endgame than all but the best Desert Folklore setups. That said, I think that map had both substantially more breathtaking tiles than is typical, and was also unusually fertile in allowing Archduke's cities to quickly grow onto those tiles. It's definitely uniquely good for Russia and their free border pops though (should I bow to the inevitable and commit to them), and I'll strongly consider it if the map conditions again make it a strong option.

'Chopping out an early Stonehenge' is...yeah, pretty silly, and was really just kind of a backup idea for how I could theoretically make something like this work with a civ like Germany that has various advantages that stack well with Work Ethic but no real business trying to found a religion early. There would really need to be a lot of woods on the map for it to make sense, especially since Work Ethic makes it pretty much mandatory to use at least one chop per city on the first-build holy site. For the inevitable Russia, weirdo Stonehenge plays are of course totally and blissfully unnecessary. As far as Holy Site prayers go, in my Japan games, they tended to cost around 35 production and would shave 7-ish turns off of the time to Work Ethic, so with two +5 holy sites they made back double their cost just by speeding up the religion. This delayed the 3rd city, but sped up the 4th and 5th city, which (qualitatively) seemed worth it in the absence of settling races. They're worse for Russia though, since they don't speed the religion by as much - I'll probably try to actually work through the math when I get to that point to figure out what to do, should I survive the barbs long enough to actually build a Lavra

Governors should definitely be Pingala 1 + Pingala 2 culture first to speed PoliPhil and Theology, but there are options after that. The other Pingala promotion is the default, but I sometimes find myself taking Magnus first to efficiently chop out the Ancestral Hall, then using that promotion for Pingala. After those it gets much less clear - the no-pop-loss-settlers promotion for Magnus seems strong with Monumentality, I guess? I also just discovered Black Marketeer like yesterday, which seems like it would help substantially with rushing units via Grand Master's Chapel in the (empirically common) case where one's faith supply far outstrips one's horses/iron supply (there is little sadder in this world than teching all the way to Cuirassiers and then being able to rush exactly two of them). I also really want Moksha to be good so district-rushing becomes a viable use of faith, but it probably costs too many titles to be worth it save for some pretty niche situations.

I am looking forward to being dedlurked by you, and hope to provide as entertaining and useful a lurking experience as possible given my extremely limited and heavily PBEM17-derivative Civ6 knowledge

[ljubljana]

So, the sum total of my experience with these civs amounts to exactly one game as Egypt, one game as India/Gandhi, a bunch of false starts with Russia that never really went anywhere, and I guess reading some reports about games that some of them were in? Thus, the ‘analysis’ that is to follow is therefore based almost entirely on hearsay and speculation, but I figured I’d go ahead and write it out anyways so you all can experience the re-derivation of Arabia/Holland’s mediocrity through the wide-eyed naïveté of someone who has literally never even looked at their traits or UUs before

Arabia (Archduke rating: Mediocre): Okay, so Saladin comes with cheap worship buildings and +10% to three different yields for every city that has one. That won’t be every city right away, since you need to chew through the full-cost holy site, shrine, and temple first, but several of these buildings, especially Wats and Gurdwaras, strike me as pretty solid and already worth building given the chance, so this is maybe a pretty good benefit for a religious game? It doesn’t really come online until maybe the Medieval era, though, which is probably too late to be practical in most cases. Unfortunately, the Madrasa’s not much faster, which is something of a shame, since it seems pretty strong if the bonus faith stacks with Natural Philosophy, which it probably does. Getting those out quickly with Work Ethic, as well as the temples needed to enable Wat-buying, is probably the most compelling thing about Arabia, and seems like it’d be a noticeable boost in the late(by RB standards)game. But the Arabian trait anti-synergizes with this quite badly, since Work Ethic will surely be gone by the time the last Great Prophet comes out. There aren’t enough players for all the good stuff to be gone, so it is probably a free Jesuit Education/Feed the World, which is not too bad. I think there’s another problem though...what happens if not enough players go for religion for the game to even reach the penultimate great prophet? That would never happen against the obsessive holy site craving of the AI, but in MP it’s probably quite plausible, unfortunately. Mamluks seem okay, but not especially remarkable...yeah, all in all, ‘mediocre’ seems about right. QED, I guess

Brazil (Archduke rating: Worst): Well, the extra Rainforest adjacencies are certainly strong in the early game, and could lead to Japan-esque turbo-charged holy sites if it stacks with Work Ethic and Sacred Path, which is the biggest draw, although of course it’s awkward that you can’t really cut them down to grow into campus range after that. MGs seem good if the game both goes that late and involves water, which will happen exactly sometimes...although of course any attempt at a Monasticism push will punt them into the unimaginably distant future. Carnivals, I’m not sure I’m sold on; half-cost districts are great, but I still struggle to see how even a quadruply-efficient entertainment complex will be worth building when the opportunity cost is a campus or commercial hub. Maybe you’ll want more than the usual handful for zoos in the Industrial Era, but that’s way late. Still, I definitely don’t think Brazil deserves their Worst rating; I imagine they’ll end up grading out as roughly average among this list once I finish reading about what these other civs do.

Cree (Archduke rating: Ridiculous OP): They were great on PBEM17’s unnaturally overdeered map and when played by TBS, but I bet they’re at least pretty good most of the time even in normal circumstances - Mewekaps are even stronger than documented, and, quite honestly, even a modestly-boosted free trade route at Pottery becomes a significant accelerant once you get the GP and a campus and maybe one or two pastures up. Ostensibly they’re blank for Work Ethic shenanigans, but actually not reeeally - one of the biggest problems with that approach is the difficulty of growing all your cities large enough to get campuses up early and get enough commercial hubs to not completely bankrupt yourself with universities. They’re probably in the same sleeper-good tier for this strategy as Germany, can do other things quite well too if that doesn’t work out, and their high variance with respect to map randomness makes them a good pick for noobs like myself who need a lot to go right to have any shot of competing with TheArchduke. I’d definitely pick them rather than reroll, hoping to chop out Stonehenge early (or quickly grow a strong city and just build it) and then play as the map dictates, or something like that. Picking them over Russia is something of a harder sell, though...

Egypt (Archduke rating: Worst): I was actually a pretty big fan of Egypt when I played as them that one time, though admittedly that was a month ago before I played the same Japan opening 40 times and developed whatever extremely vague understanding of how this game works that I might have now. Sphinxes seem pretty good with a floodplains start (and hopefully some, uh, actual floods as well), since speed to PoliPhil is such an important breakpoint, and it’s not like there’s anything else compelling to put on floodplains to make use of whatever strong yields they may randomly be awarded. 15% off on districts is worth what, maybe one-ish half-cost district’s worth of savings when amortized over the lifetime of a PBEM city, if we build them all next to rivers? That’s pretty okay, though it’s not really power-spikey, and I doubt it’ll be easy to find that many useful riverside spots. Maryannus seem solidly good, though pricey; Cleo’s ability seems a little too reliant on one’s friendly competitors letting one’s traders go about their merry way in peace to make much of a difference in MP. I don’t really think Egypt is bottom-tier, though I’m not sure I see any huge incentives for picking them either.

Holland (Archduke rating: Mediocre): +2 adjacency on riverside campuses (campi?) seems good! Polders seem...unfortunately pretty redundant with Liang’s fisheries, which any civ has access to in the kinds of situations where an improvement like that would really be needed. Wilhelmina’s ability is +1 loyalty for trade routes, which could maybe be useful for conquest if that were something like +4 and if the Dutch weren’t otherwise completely unsuited for conquest. Hmm. The riverside campus bonus is of the same order of magnitude as Japan’s bonus and comes online earlier, which is pretty good, but there’s not really much else here... although the number of PBEMs that have been decided specifically by how well frigates attack cities means I really shouldn’t blow off their UU like it was a Civ3 Man-O-War or something. I might think the Dutch seem more Good than Mediocre at first glance, and am interested in playing a game with them...although, admittedly, probably not this game.

India/Chandragupta (Archduke rating: Good): India/Gandhi has some conflicting incentives as far as religious civs go - not only do they not have any easy way to found one fast, but they actually lose 5 faith/turn in the late-game by doing so...but it’s not really clear what to actually do with the Satyagraha faith unless you’re making more from other sources like religious buildings. Chandragupta though seems much more militaristic (obviously) and much stronger, though I can’t help but wonder if 10 turns of boosted movement and strength is enough to finish a conquest before getting sucked down into the Endless Loyalty Swamp. It sure is a good thing that Varus don’t stack - I bet they were pretty busted back when that apparently used to not be true (!). Chandra also retains Gandhi’s ability to steal follower beliefs, which could be good if it weren’t so reliant on your opponents helpfully sending missionaries your way. I feel like I’d need some practice with Chandra before I can accurately rate him...that said, metagaming against my own MP inexperience, tactical combat is probably the part of my game most atrophied by prolonged exposure to the AI, so an early-ish rushing civ is probably not the best way to go until I’ve been murdered by Pítatis enough times to have some idea of how to do that to someone else.

Russia (Archduke rating: Ridiculous OP): A very strong civ for either or both of Work Ethic and Monasticism for a number of reasons. Lavras make Peter the favorite for the first religion in non-China games (and China players won’t always go for Work Ethic anyways), and one of the favorites for landing the first pantheon as well (especially with huts off and the religious CS faith nerfed). Lavras also help with a Classical GA, although not by as much as one would think since they don’t get ‘Splendid Holy Site’ Era Score points. The Tundra start bias is a little awkward, as Dance of the Aurora is inferior to Desert Folklore in general due to not being able to fit in productive cities on both sides of a tundra patch in the same way that you can with desert. It’s also inferior because Work Ethic’s bonus production is currently bugged and disappears forever if your holy sites get pillaged, which blizzards love doing...except to Russia, whose districts apparently are immune to that! Cossacks are of course a good unit, and they’re better than they appear too since costing only 10 horses makes them much easier to rush en masse with the Grand Master’s Chapel (which appears at around the same time and is the natural way to spend faith post-monumentality) than cavalry or equivalents. I don’t really think I can get to them particularly fast with as much off-path teching as I have planned (not fast enough to beat RB players, at least), but they do make a great defensive unit to keep me alive while teching to something that I can get fast, which is more than Japan can boast. (ljubljana rating: Ridiculous OP)

Sumeria (Archduke rating: Mediocre): I’m pretty skeptical of War Carts given the large distances that tend to be involved in PBEM maps and the vague rumblings of putting the 5 of us on a Small or even Standard map to give us noobs more space for TheArchduke’s hordes to chase us across. Are Ziggurats good, though? Sulla leveraged them all the way to space once with no campuses, but that was variant-land; that said, if scientist specialists are sometimes worth working, why not 2 food/2 science/1 culture ziggurats, which may be the rare tile improvement that successfully de-suckifies grassland? I do think these seem pretty solid as a glance, especially given (what I’m told are) the recent nerfs to campuses - they’re probably worth at least as much per city as the Dutch campus bonus, and I called that ‘pretty good’. You can also build Ziggurats immediately (so they don’t clash with the Craftsmanship boost like Sphinxes do), and they speed you to PoliPhil, and just three-ish ziggurats per city in the midgame is as good as another campus, albeit one that effectively eats three citizens’ worth of lumbermill production in opportunity cost. I’m definitely curious about and interested in trying to make Sumeria work - but again, maybe not in this game.