[SPOILERS] ljubljana embraces the dark side

[ljubljana]

Here are the picks in turn order:

Ioan - Rome
Thrawn - Nubia
TAD - Persia
CMF - Zulu
Ljubljana - Russia

Oh. OH. ...oh crap 

Well, we picked the only non-rushing civ (except maybe Rome, which merely can be a rushing civ) and are among the least experienced players, so we have a giant target on our backs and this is probably going to be a pretty short game for us. Hopefully the map is Continents or Archipelago to improve our odds of at least avoiding a t70 dogpile - if Rome, Persia, and Zulu all get drawn onto a continent together, I can at least imagine them getting drawn into a long and unproductive stalemate. If we end up on a Pangaea next to both Rome and Nubia, and they have nowhere else to go but to Persia or Zululand, we could definitely get attacked from both sides and crushed almost immediately.

As we've seen from past PBEMs, though, getting rushed before t70 by even one neighbor pretty much ends your chances to compete for the win, even with a successful defense. The one plausible scenario in which we can pull this out probably involves our opponents pairing off and engaging in mutually destructive early wars without a decisive victor. Thus, we're going to have to modify our gameplan as much as we can to look at least as prickly as these military civs and increase the odds of that happening, however small they may be.

Now, how do we actually achieve that? Good question . I think we still want an early religion, since Russia can make this happen before the non-Nubia civs will pick their targets, but we'll probably have to take DoTF instead of Tithe. This is a shame, as Tithe is so strong and it's really hard to maintain a strong cash economy with no Harbors/CH until size 7, but unless we have a strong reason to believe that we won't be targeted by someone otherwise, I'm not sure we have much choice. These other civs are so unlikely to go for early religions that we might even be able to pick up Tithe late with an early Apostle, if we get lucky, though our Monumentality snowball would obviously suffer for it.

What else do we need to do? Slinger first instead of warrior, maybe, and rush Archery after Astrology? Maybe...I usually really dislike doing this, since slingers are so weak and don't really contribute much to barb defense, but if there's any scenario where it's the play, this is probably it. Builder first instead of settler to avoid delaying Agoge? I really don't like doing that with a capital this strong, but if we neighbor Nubia, it may be the right choice. Move 1 NW instead of 1 W with the capital for defensibility's sake? That depends on what the warrior sees, but certainly we'll now need to be talked out of doing that by the scouting info rather than the other way around.

Well, hopefully we'll "only" border Rome and Persia instead of Nubia - if we have until swords show up at around t70, it's at least possible that we'll assemble a credible enough defense to serve as a deterrent. That said, the maxim is that the surest path to victory in a PBEM is to snowball off of your weakest neighbor, our opponents clearly all have this in mind, and we'll be the weakest neighbor of all of these civs unless we land DoTF and build lots of military. That's certainly possible, and I'm very glad we didn't take Khmer here...but I don't love our odds 

[marcopolothefraud]

What if you go slinger -> settler -> builder, and gold-rush a builder in the second city? You could rush Masonry (it's 73 beakers; 25 for Mining, then 48 for the boosted Masonry tech), then chop out Ancient Walls in your second city if necessary.

I know you have math anxiety, but we could put together an early-game build order plan. We know what tiles we can work, which means we know how many turns it takes to grow population. If we know how much population we have, we know how much science and culture we can get, which means we can time everything together. I'll put together a Google Doc (maybe Google Sheet?) to see when we can time what.

Some things to consider, now that we need to focus on early-game defense:
1. Do we go God-King or Urban Planning?
2. Do we research Astrology first (lock in a cheap/early Lavra), Archery first, or Masonry first? Do we wait for the Astrology eureka?

[ljubljana]

I'm not completely sure on this, but I think we still want to go slinger -> settler -> Lavra -> builder rather than delaying the Lavra until post-builder. That's the difference between a ~t40 religion and a ~t45 religion if the second city goes Lavra first, which is in turn the difference between getting DoTF slightly before and slightly after suboptimal's Nubia hit Pindicator in PBEM17. Early Great Prophet points are also the one way we might actually be able to deter Nubia and get them to go after city-states instead - if thrawn has Pítatis out at t30 but we're 10 turns from a religion, it should be pretty obvious that we'll take DoTF if attacked or even if scouted, which could be enough to convince him to go for a city-state or for pre-power spike Rome/Persia/Zulu instead. We should still have plenty of time for Craftsmanship and some Agoge-powered military builds with this order, assuming we tech Archery quickly after Astrology. Similarly, I'm inclined to think we should do Astrology first even if unboosted to guarantee getting DoTF up in time - we should still have time to then get AH and Archery by t40, and can build slingers to upgrade in the meantime depending on how dire we think the threat is. It's also at least conceivable that we should go Masonry before Archery, but I'm not sure; archers are easier to build en masse then walls, benefit from DoTF, and have some deterrent-at-a-distance value due to showing up in our MilPow numbers, while walls may be only modestly superior from a defensive perspective if manned only by slingers and warriors.

As far as gold goes, we may want to be conservative about its use until we identify the timescale of a likely rush. If we neighbor Nubia, we may end up using much of it on archer upgrades and rushes, or, indeed, on a builder depending on the chops situation. If we have until t70, though, monuments still might be the better call (as I think they are in most generic circumstances), since the kind of lagging culture you end up with by investing literally zero hammers/gold into it early-game translates into a serious drag on expansion and production once everyone else hits the first governments.

As far as God King vs. Urban Planning goes, I think this depends on whether the map ends up having a) a strong pantheon option and b) enough good early Lavra sites that it's feasible to get the pantheon without God King. If we had to run an OCC based on just the tiles we can see now, I'd run God King, since it would accelerate the pantheon by 12 turns with a Lavra up, and getting Lady of the Reeds and Marshes 12 turns faster would make up for the lost Urban Planning production. Hopefully, though, scouting will turn up a stronger Lavra site, which would change my mind...though if it also turned up lots of desert or a bunch of breathtaking tiles, that could re-change my mind .

Speaking of scouting, I'm considering the fairly unorthodox move of trying to mostly keep our scouts close, at least once we're far enough along that the Astrology eureka is no longer a concern. This would essentially surrender the (admittedly nerfed) free city-state envoys and the Political Philosophy inspiration, which are the arguments against it, but it could also delay contact with our neighbor Nubia until after the Pítati power period, which is the argument in favor. That said, though, it's not like Nubia's really going to rush someone unless their own scouts have found actual cities to attack, so maybe this wouldn't actually change the rush odds all that substantially and we should just stick with a more traditional scouting approach.

[ljubljana]

Okay! I know I asked for an evening timeslot, but that's just what's most convenient for me, not the only time I'll even be free - I'm a grad student in a CS-adjacent field, so my hours are pretty flexible. And it looks like all of the logistical things are set up and everyone else has taken their t1s...which means it's time to Play Our Damn Turn

Turn 1

We move the warrior 1W, revealing most of the red tiles. This also defogs some more blocking hills to the NE of their new position such that a second move to the NW would reveal little, so we go ahead and move W a second time. Our scouting info reveals quite a few extra forests and a lake to the west, but nothing even resembling a strong Lavra site; we also uncover more forests, some of them hilled, at the capital site, to compensate for the production loss that would be incurred by founding 1 NW. Luckily for me and my habitual cognitive laziness, all of these factors point in the same direction - toward the 1NW settler move, which gains defensibility and the possibility of a better Lavra site in the remaining fogged tiles, while retaining 5 tiles with 4+ foodhammers to work even without builder labor. We do give up the turn spent to move and the extra hammer from the plains hill plant, which are significant, but given the controlling need to look as unappetizing as possible to the early-rush crowd, my very qualitative sense is that this is the right move. Here's what that looks like:



As far as early demos look, everyone else founded t1, which is no surprise - nobody other than Russia would have an incentive not to with the start we got, and I doubt the mapmaker would give some civs but not others a start that requires wasting a turn. The GP screen is pretty tame, with Euclid/Zhang Qian as the starting GS/GM, neither of whom seem to require early attention in the way that, say, Hypatia would. 

One other thing that's worth mentioning is the appeal lens, which looks fairly promising from a Earth Goddess perspective, though not quite to the same degree as it did for TheArchduke in PBEM17:



Founding on the spot we moved to would probably drop one or both of the adjacent tiles out of Breathtaking, which is a shame, but we should be able to recoup that with a good Lavra placement; needing to build a +1 Lavra actually isn't too bad if its appeal buff yields +4 faith from Earth Goddess. ...but wait, the wording on the Civ6 wiki seems to suggest that, unlike vanilla holy sites, the Lavra might not boost the appeal of adjacent tiles. I hope that's not the case - if so, that would be a significant drawback to the settler move I made that unfortunately did not occur to me before making it. Either way, though, I note with some bemusement that Earth Goddess provides another argument for a theater square at size 7, which would not only yield 7 culture with an amphitheater by acting as a Great Writer sink but could also give +4 or +6 faith via Earth Goddess with a good enough placement by boosting the appeal of adjacent tiles. That's actually interesting, and might in fact be more worthwhile than a CH in a few places depending on the circumstances.

Anyways, we're one turn into the game, and I'm already wandering off on silly tangents about hypothetical theater squares in our hypothetical city, so I think I'll leave it there for now. Now to go get started on my spreadsheet

[ljubljana]

Turn 2

We move the warrior NW, exploring along the river to multitask on scouting by looking for city states/natural wonders and future city sites at the same time...or, that's the idea anyways, but then the river abruptly ends almost immediately. Oh well. We'll do some amount of deep-ish scouting for now, I think, then pull back by when the settler finishes to fend off barbs and scout more second city sites. We then found our capital:





I considered a number of naming schemes, and went with this one despite it being the least silly (if you can believe that) due to Pilcrow being just such a great name for an austere hilltop citadel.

As far as micro is concerned, I think we want to grow to size 3, then work production tiles to build the settler. This costs 10 more food compared to building the settler at size 2, and another 7-ish yield because the math works out to delaying the settler by one turn, but that should be made up for by working an extra 4-yield tile at the capital for 10+ more turns. If we go for Earth Goddess, I'm vaguely eyeing the spot 2N of the capital for the Lavra - it's only +1 faith right now, but requires no tile buying, reclaims three breathtaking tiles, and is in a good position relative to the eventual Government Plaza (which should definitely go at the capital since it has so much food and no good campus spot, and should probably go in the east towards the other future cities that are more likely to lack good campus spots). Another possibility is 1 SW of the capital, which would not benefit from the Plaza but which would reclaim more Earth Goddess tiles (note that some of the tiles that the other spot 'reclaims' could be boosted to breathtaking just as easily by cutting down some of this marsh). Those plans are obviously very contingent on both scouting information and successfully landing Earth Goddess, but if that fails, Lady of the Reeds and Marshes is still a decent backup, with now four marsh tiles in range of Pilcrow. SIP definitely would have been stronger if we do end up going Earth Goddess, which is a shame, but I guess that's what learning is like - if we do go that route, I will certainly pay very close attention to how many breathtaking tiles are destroyed by future city sites

[marcopolothefraud]

Awesome report dude! Is it a good idea to plan for a Commercial Hub as the capital's third or fourth district? The advantages would be an easy +4 adjacency bonus, which would be converted into +4 science by a Golden Age. However, according to your current plan, we wouldn't pick up the "science from commercial hub" Golden Age bonus until the Renaissance Era, which we can expect at around turn 130/140. The +100% card would make it +8 potential sceince, but that's only available at the Guilds civic. We could also plan for an Encampment, Harbor, or even an Industrial Zone if we can get a good adjacency bonus. (An IZ seems pretty unlikely, though.)

Is it feasible to plan for City Parks to help our Earth Goddess game? They're unlocked by Liang's 4th governor title. We can expect City Parks after unlocking 10 governor titles - Pingala (x3) and Magnus (x2) seem almost mandatory to unlock before Liang, while Amani (x1) would be very useful. (Even though we're doing a religious game, Moksha seems very weak.)
According to https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Governor_(Civ6), Ancient Era civics give us 2 governor titles, Classical Era civics give us 2 governor titles, and Medieval Era civics give us 2 governor titles. A Government Plaza, Ancentral Hall, and <insert Tier 2 Government Plaza building here> give us 3 governor titles. So by the time we get to Medieval/Renaissance era (in civics, which are probably slower than in the tech tree), we might barely have enough titles to get City Parks. That seems too late in my opinion.

If we go Lavra->Government Plaza-> Commercial Hub in the capital, it seems wise to put a Lavra 2N of the capital, a Government Plaza 2NE of the capital, and a Commercial Hub 1NE of the capital. It might also work to put a Lavra 2W of the capital, to boost three tiles around it to Breathtaking. I would discourage a Lavra 1SW of the capital, because it would only realistically boost 2 tiles to Breathtaking. (Maybe 3, if the city grows to the woods 1SE of the sugar.) The stone tile is probably not worth pushing to Breathtaking - its yields are too low, especially if we're going to leave it unquarried.

In my opinion, this start looks better and better! How many turns is it until you grow to size 3? How much production can we make before switching over to a settler?

[suboptimal]

Awesome report dude! Is it a good idea to plan for a Commercial Hub as the capital's third or fourth district? The advantages would be an easy +4 adjacency bonus, which would be converted into +4 science by a Golden Age. However, according to your current plan, we wouldn't pick up the "science from commercial hub" Golden Age bonus until the Renaissance Era, which we can expect at around turn 130/140. The +100% card would make it +8 potential sceince, but that's only available at the Guilds civic. We could also plan for an Encampment, Harbor, or even an Industrial Zone if we can get a good adjacency bonus. (An IZ seems pretty unlikely, though.)

You need to keep in mind that the various dedications come and go as the game progresses. Free Inquiry is only available for the Classical and Medieval Ages.  When the Medieval transitions to the Renaissance the Free Inquiry and Pen, Brush and Voice dedications are no longer available and are replaced by Hic Sunt Dracones and Reform the Coinage. 

The wiki has a list of the dedications and their availability by age: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Age_(Civ6)

[ljubljana]

Awesome report dude! Is it a good idea to plan for a Commercial Hub as the capital's third or fourth district? The advantages would be an easy +4 adjacency bonus, which would be converted into +4 science by a Golden Age. However, according to your current plan, we wouldn't pick up the "science from commercial hub" Golden Age bonus until the Renaissance Era, which we can expect at around turn 130/140. The +100% card would make it +8 potential sceince, but that's only available at the Guilds civic. We could also plan for an Encampment, Harbor, or even an Industrial Zone if we can get a good adjacency bonus. (An IZ seems pretty unlikely, though.)

Is it feasible to plan for City Parks to help our Earth Goddess game? They're unlocked by Liang's 4th governor title. We can expect City Parks after unlocking 10 governor titles - Pingala (x3) and Magnus (x2) seem almost mandatory to unlock before Liang, while Amani (x1) would be very useful. (Even though we're doing a religious game, Moksha seems very weak.)
According to https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Governor_(Civ6), Ancient Era civics give us 2 governor titles, Classical Era civics give us 2 governor titles, and Medieval Era civics give us 2 governor titles. A Government Plaza, Ancentral Hall, and <insert Tier 2 Government Plaza building here> give us 3 governor titles. So by the time we get to Medieval/Renaissance era (in civics, which are probably slower than in the tech tree), we might barely have enough titles to get City Parks. That seems too late in my opinion.

If we go Lavra->Government Plaza-> Commercial Hub in the capital, it seems wise to put a Lavra 2N of the capital, a Government Plaza 2NE of the capital, and a Commercial Hub 1NE of the capital. It might also work to put a Lavra 2W of the capital, to boost three tiles around it to Breathtaking. I would discourage a Lavra 1SW of the capital, because it would only realistically boost 2 tiles to Breathtaking. (Maybe 3, if the city grows to the woods 1SE of the sugar.) The stone tile is probably not worth pushing to Breathtaking - its yields are too low, especially if we're going to leave it unquarried.

In my opinion, this start looks better and better! How many turns is it until you grow to size 3? How much production can we make before switching over to a settler?

So as far as districts go, I definitely think the third district at the capital should be the campus, which should probably go 1 NE to hit +3 once the GP's "fat hexagon" of surrounding districts is filled in. This campus would provide the same +8 bpt with a library under Natural Philosophy (which is pretty mandatory starting in the midgame, IMO), which becomes +14 under monasticism and +21(!) if we add a university - not bad for a city with exactly zero mountains/geothermals/reefs . This difference is the basic reason why I believe Monasticism beats the Free Inquiry GA for Russia in Medieval - the capital's not going to hit size 10 for campus + CH in a while, and many cities will never get both of them out in the Medieval Age, but every city will build a Lavra, and Monasticism also boosts other sources of science such as population points/scientist specialists/Hildegard. CH is definitely a good bet as the fourth district though, or potentially a theater square depending on how the local appeal math shakes out.

City parks! I've never even contemplated this in even the vaguest terms, but it's a pretty solid idea - our governor promotions are very free (especially since Earth Goddess may actually mean we should skip Magnus) and the rest of Liang's kit has decent general-purpose utility. One relevant thing that I don't know - do the parks provide their appeal boost to adjacent tiles as well, or just to the park tile itself? The civ wiki seems a bit conflicted on this issue; they're worth considering either way, but in the latter case they seem at first glance to be actively very strong with Earth Goddess.

It should be 7 turns and 31 production until size 3, if my math is right. We then have a choice of either saving up food for a few turns to minimize the time spent at size 2 or swapping to production tiles ASAP; the former seems better in terms of raw foodhammers at the capital (by which metric any turn spent working our one 5-yield tile is a small win), but perhaps the quicker settler time will prove relevant enough to sway that (my math says the difference is t17 vs t19).

Awesome report dude! Is it a good idea to plan for a Commercial Hub as the capital's third or fourth district? The advantages would be an easy +4 adjacency bonus, which would be converted into +4 science by a Golden Age. However, according to your current plan, we wouldn't pick up the "science from commercial hub" Golden Age bonus until the Renaissance Era, which we can expect at around turn 130/140. The +100% card would make it +8 potential sceince, but that's only available at the Guilds civic. We could also plan for an Encampment, Harbor, or even an Industrial Zone if we can get a good adjacency bonus. (An IZ seems pretty unlikely, though.)

You need to keep in mind that the various dedications come and go as the game progresses. Free Inquiry is only available for the Classical and Medieval Ages.  When the Medieval transitions to the Renaissance the Free Inquiry and Pen, Brush and Voice dedications are no longer available and are replaced by Hic Sunt Dracones and Reform the Coinage. 

The wiki has a list of the dedications and their availability by age: https://civilization.fandom.com/wiki/Age_(Civ6)

Yeah, to be honest, the Renaissance golden age options strike as much weaker than the Medieval ones, which is a shame since the obvious follow-up to a Medieval dark age (should the game go that long) is a Renaissance heroic age. It's still better than nothing, though, and a second wave of Monumentality builders would certainly not be a bad thing.

[ljubljana]

Turn 4

Not a whole lot to talk about. The warrior explores, as warriors are wont to do, revealing what looks increasingly like a very solid candidate for a second city site from an Earth Goddess perspective:



I did also mess up my logic with the 2N lavras placement - the marsh is only +2 appeal, so it only redeems two breathtaking tiles. It's still probably the right choice for GP adjacency reasons, though - I don't want to totally sacrifice the actual faith adjacencies of the lavras either, since Work Ethic might actually still be the strongest belief with the doubling card in play if there are enough woods and mountains to get +3 or +4 lavras in most cities.

[ljubljana]

Turn 4

Our warrior does warrior things, establishing formal relations with all sorts of diverse ungulates on behalf of the Russian diplomatic corps. I'm not sure which direction to explore medium-turn - my inclination is to continue W, then loop around to the SW and have the slinger explore along the eastern river. The edge of the map is pretty close to us in the south, though, so it's possible that this isn't actually the right decision. On the other hand, though, that also makes it a likely barb trouble spot, since it's less likely that city-states will be nearby to help keep their numbers down.



CMF is up to 4 era score points now, despite not having founded near terrain that gives any (unlike all of the other opponents, who are at 1 ES each). Is that a new continent, or a natural wonder + some other 1-point thing? Probably the former, but the latter would certainly bode well for our own Astrology eureka odds, since I'm sure balance dictates that the distance to the closest wonder is roughly similar for all players. Either way, we fire back by seizing their record for the fastest turn with a 9 minute submission here . They're still first in the overall turn time rankings, but we're starting to close the gap, and should catch up further when we get conquered in the midgame and have less stuff to do than anyone else .

A few high-level thoughts about our second city site are probably in order at this point. Landgrabbing concerns encourage us to settle NW by all those breathtaking tiles. However, there's another important thing to consider - we're way behind in Era Score, and may end up needing the +3 from a breathtaking campus in the Ancient Era to make the Classical monumentality gameplan happen. There are just a few places by the doubled mountains where that's theoretically possible if we perfectly position the Campus next to both the city center and a Lavra; this also would require the city to hit size 4 quickly, which is most easily accomplished by borrowing the sugar tile from the capital. We'd also like to settle on one of these lakes if the ES situation does not improve, since that allows us to build or buy the world's most useless boat if we're two ES short around T55-T60. Unfortunately, the only site I can see that unifies all of these considerations is 3W of the capital, which is just barely locked out by our city placement. That's a decent reason to regret not going with SIP in retrospect, although I do think that, in addition to the defensibility concerns, the forested hills and decent GP complex we moved towards make ours a stronger capital location on its own merits.