[SPOILERS] ljubljana embraces the dark side

[ljubljana]

Turn 10 overview 

(Who, me? Too much free time on my hands? )

We open the save and scout SE:



So thrawn's found MT, which could set up a settler race for this area between the two of us, should we decide to go for the (increasingly unwise-looking) early pinkdot plan. Here's the loyalty view:



I'm not super well-versed in the loyalty mechanics in Civ6, but I know loyalty pressure extends 9 tiles out from the city center. Does that mean thrawn's capital is exactly 9 tiles from that -2 tile? That would put it a bit south of our original estimate, likely behind the mountain range, and would mean the scout would have had to pretty much beeline in our direction to scout us like this. That's also further away than I feared though; we're closer to MT than they are, and should be the favorites to win a settling race, should we decide to go that route.

Here's the appeal map of the same area, since marcopolothefraud was curious:



Thrawn's also denounced us, hm. That wasn't true last turn, and I click on the Nubian leaderhead to discover that this may have resulted from a mistake I made:



Does Civ6 really not notify you of proposed deals in hotseat games unless you enter diplomacy with every leader individually to check at the end of every turn, Civ3-style? That's unfortunate, and could mean that I seriously dropped the ball here, if thrawn proposed this last turn as some kind of MP 'we have friendly intentions' signal, and then denounced us when we failed to immediately accept . Well, I accept this anyways, for whatever that's still worth . Hopefully I've been outspoken enough about my noobishness in the public thread that there's at least some chance they'll recognize this as stemming from mechanical ignorance rather than hostile intentions. Anyways, the denunciation itself is somewhat good news for us mechanically, since it means we can now declare Formal War when rushed without needing to time a denunciation, though there's some chance its lapsing on t39 will end up being a bit too early to pull this off. Speaking of which, I should pin that date somewhere near Pilcrow like TBS does next turn when I pin all the scout position tiles like I forgot to this turn .

Pilcrow hits size 3 this turn, and we swap over to production configuration:



Finally, the science and civics trees. HBR is not visible in the former, since Civ6's tech tree is so awkwardly wide, but it'd take 42 turns unboosted at our current rate.





I still haven't had time to work out the build order math, but I'll get keep working on that and either update this post or add another once I've made progress. We're surely putting the next few turns of production into a settler regardless of the overall plan, so we should have a few days' worth of time to contemplate our broader strategic position.

[suboptimal]

Does Civ6 really not notify you of proposed deals in hotseat games unless you enter diplomacy with every leader individually to check at the end of every turn, Civ3-style?

The game will provide you with various notifications in the lower right at the start of your turn.  If you look at your first Turn 9 screenshot you've got four notifications - the one at the top of the list is the "deal pending" notification, with the tech eureka earned, historic moment and met new civ notifications below it (in order).  Mousing over a notification will open a tooltip window that describes it.  Right-clicking will remove the notification from the screen, left clicking will take you to the "location" of the notification.  For meeting a civ or city-state it will center the map on the tile you met them, for a pending deal it will take you to the deal screen and show you that deal, for a great person you'll enter the great person screen, etc.

[ljubljana]

Does Civ6 really not notify you of proposed deals in hotseat games unless you enter diplomacy with every leader individually to check at the end of every turn, Civ3-style? 

The game will provide you with various notifications in the lower right at the start of your turn.  If you look at your first Turn 9 screenshot you've got four notifications - the one at the top of the list is the "deal pending" notification, with the tech eureka earned, historic moment and met new civ notifications below it (in order).  Mousing over a notification will open a tooltip window that describes it.  Right-clicking will remove the notification from the screen, left clicking will take you to the "location" of the notification.  For meeting a civ or city-state it will center the map on the tile you met them, for a pending deal it will take you to the deal screen and show you that deal, for a great person you'll enter the great person screen, etc.

You're totally right - thanks for the heads-up! My apologies to any lurkers that I may have disappointed with this extremely nooby slip-up .

Turn 11

We make a slinger, and explore N with them and SE with the warrior:



Looks like our MT spot would have a +3 campus on a silver platter in addition to a +5 Lavra (with campus + city center adjacencies) on the rice 1E of MT, making me even sadder about how bad an idea it likely is to claim it second. Then again, that Lavra placement requires Irrigation to clear the rice anyways...maybe that makes this more natural fit for the third city anyways? I'm inclined to doubt that Thrawn will really reach 12 tiles away from the capital to claim a second city way out here with both weakish production and substantially fewer long-term benefits for a non-Russia civ. I'm also very pleased to find water to the east of MT - this could form the basis of a very strong defensive position at the choke point to the east, if we manage to place a second city in that area such that only one or two Pítatis can get into firing range at a time.

Thrawn's military score also jumped to 45, indicating a scout - slinger opening! That means one of two things - either they're really struggling with barbarians due to going scout-first, or they're so dedicated to this rush that they're going to try to do it on just one city. I'm not sure the latter makes all that much sense - it's true that settling a second city may not pay for itself in terms of military production by t35, but if that's their play, why not open slinger - slinger or warrior - slinger? I haven't seen any milpower fluctuations indicative of barbarian struggles yet either, though...if those do start occurring, we should be able to breathe at least somewhat easier.

Internationally, first techs have started rolling in over the last two turns - us and thrawn are the only two to lack a first tech. Our is of course explained by the pricey Astrology research, while thrawn's is due to a slow-growing capital and will probably come in over the next turn or two.

Here's something resembling a possible build order for the next 25 turns: 



There are lots of uncertainties here, but it seems like a reasonably useful starting point, at least. I'm pretty confident that putting four turns of sugar food into Pilcrow pre-settler is the right play, since another version of this build that did not do so ended up substantially slower on multiple fronts, so I go ahead and do the first of those now. I'm still considering moving the Lavra up to before the settler, depending on what it ends up costing once Astrology comes in, since we don't end up getting DoTF until t42 or so with this plan. Finally, this doesn't take into account God King/Urban Planning, between which I'm still torn - it'd be pretty damaging long-term to miss Earth Goddess, and the cash from GK partially pays for itself by cutting down on the number of turns we'd need to work the copper tile to get a third archer upgrade, but UP is clearly better in a generic situation. I'm pretty likely to run UP if we take the MT site second, but I could be swayed by GK otherwise.

[Kaiser]

How are you liking the map so far?

[ljubljana]

How are you liking the map so far?

It seems great to me! I'm definitely a fan of all of the interesting strategic decisions it has posed so far, even this early in the game

Turn 12



Our warrior reveals a deer and that the body of water at the choke point is a lake, which is a good sign for the growth rate of a prospective city there but something of a bad sign from a defensibility perspective, as it implies a land bridge to the south. Our slinger, though, has found some really strong tiles just NE of the capital - if there's a campus spot up here, this site could be the best of both worlds, being sheltered from the ravages of thrawn while also possessing the strong yields needed to make a builderless start viable. Internationally, thrawn finishes what I can only assume to be AH, and Ioan becomes the second player with a size-3 capital.

Hmm...I'm just spitballing here, but I wonder if thrawn might be receptive to a different sort of disincentive to attacking us, namely outright bribery? If we offer something like 3GPT straight-up at t30, or whenever the first Pítatis start coming out, that imposes a small but nonzero cost for attacking us, while also signaling clearly that we noticed what just happened and are not the kind of unsuspecting target that rushes like this work best against. Moreover, if thrawn rejects this, they'd be showing their hand pretty clearly, since I doubt it would be worth it for them to turn down actual cash just to force us into non-economic moves if an attack were not on the way.

[marcopolothefraud]

"Finally, this doesn't take into account God King/Urban Planning, between which I'm still torn - it'd be pretty damaging long-term to miss Earth Goddess, and the cash from GK partially pays for itself by cutting down on the number of turns we'd need to work the copper tile to get a third archer upgrade, but UP is clearly better in a generic situation."

It seems like you have two choices. First, you pick up GK on t15, run it until t31, and then you get a pantheon on t32 through Lavra faith. Or you finish your Lavra on t23, which gives 1 faith/turn, and get a pantheon on t48.

In scenario 1, you earn 16 gold and 16 faith. Archers cost 60 hammers, or 35 hammers for a Slinger + 60 gold to upgrade - that means your 16 gold from God-King is worth 6.67 hammers. However, by getting that 25 faith early and unlocking a pantheon, you get a 16 turn headstart on Earth Goddess. By then, you will probably work 2-3 breathtaking tiles in Pilcrow, and who knows how many in Pilcrow II. This means that you will have ~80 more faith in the long run by going GK first. (Earth Goddess gives +2 faith/breathtaking tile.) More importantly, if you pick up UP, you might not get the pantheon before Ancient Era ends, meaning that you won't get the +1 era score.

I would go God-King, I guess. You miss out on about 9.3 hammers (16 hammers from UP minus 6.67 hammers), which is about 1 turn of Pilcrow's production. Is it enough to change the tide of a war against thrawn? Maybe. But an 80 faith headstart is *definitely* enough to change the entire game in your favor.

"I wonder if thrawn might be receptive to a different sort of disincentive to attacking us, namely outright bribery? If we offer something like 3GPT straight-up at t30, or whenever the first Pítatis start coming out, that imposes a small but nonzero cost for attacking us."
Hmm...this is very unconventional. "Danegeld", if you'll let me borrow a historical term, hasn't ever been used in Civ 6 PBEM before. I'm just worried that losing the cumulative sum of 90 gold is a pretty big dent to our snowball and a pretty big bonus to thrawn's snowball. He might just take it, sit on it while he builds a science advantage over us, then come back with crossbowmen. I would advise against it.

[ljubljana]

Hmm, I think the pantheon situation with UP wouldn't be quite as bad as that, since the second city is also likely going Lavra-first and would speed the pantheon considerably depending on its adjacency bonus. That said, I'd certainly trade 10 hammers for even a significant fraction of the 80 faith figure you mentioned, so I guess I'm also leaning towards GK, though with the typical lack of enthusiasm that such a decision always seems to elicit .

You're right that the Danegeld plan (as a huge fan of the History of England podcast, I love that reference, by the way ) would be a substantial hit to our growth curve and a substantial benefit to thrawn's, on the order of a net swing of a builder between us. However, I'm not sure that's enough to let thrawn build all that much of a science advantage over us just by itself, especially since they seems to be off to the slowest start growth-wise based on demographics tracking and on skipping a settler as the second build. Moreover, if the bribe does let us avoid an early war, it might actually pay for itself by letting us take Tithe instead of DoTF and then try to pick the latter up with an early Apostle rather than the other way around (though perhaps the wisdom of doing so on this continent full of warmongers can be fairly called into question).

[ljubljana]

Turn 13



Looks like our Lavra cost estimate was pretty much right on the mark. I go ahead and lay this down at our planned site to lock the cost in, but switch back to the settler as per our earlier logic, since this only delays DoTF by a turn or so (since it delays the first Lavra but speeds up the second) while making a significant difference in the 'how strong do we look' calculus. Also, the barbs in the north ran away, so it looks like we're just a few turns removed from having enough scouting information to make an educated decision about the second city site, which is not-so-unintentionally also about as much time as we have until the settler comes out. I'm still very torn between a number of possible sites in that respect, so hopefully some significant information will make itself known in the NE or SW and save us from having to think too hard .

[ljubljana]

Turn 14



Hmm...that mountain formation is promising, and opens up a few possible routes to a +3 campus up here, though the ones I can see all have various awkward drawbacks as well. We could found 1W of the rice, which gets us most of the strong tiles in the region fairly quickly, and campus 1E of the GP, but our Lavra would then need to be 1 SW of the city in a weak +2 spot that doesn't redeem any Breathtaking tiles. We could also found on the rice and get a nice triangle with the Lavra 1E and Campus 1 SE of the new city, but the tiles there are so much weaker that I don't think the tradeoffs are worth it from what we can see now. Either way, if a city in this region works a +3 food tile for the entirety of its existence, it'd still take (15 + 24 + 34) / 3 ~= 25 turns to hit size 4, so we'd run some risk of not actually getting the campus up in time, though I think we could pull it off with smart play and a late builder to either farm the rice or harvest the GP marsh into the new city. The appeal in this region is fairly weak, unfortunately, which is a significant disincentive to a second city here...but given thrawn's brooding presence on our western border, the defensive nature of such a settlement, coupled with the strong tile yields, might be enough to outweigh such faith-based concerns.

Thrawn scouts our capital this turn, which is probably a good thing, since they already knew where it was from the loyalty view but they now also know of its strong defensive terrain. Thrawn's capital also hits size 3 this turn, as does Archduke's, leaving CMF as the only one still with a size-2 capital - I guess this map really is just too strong from a food perspective for a settler build at size 2 to make much sense.

[Sullla]

Both west of the rice and northwest of the rice look like good spots for a city. They get the 2/3 deer tile available immediately and then the Russian extra borders should pull in the 1/3 forested plains hill tile and the pair of 2/2 forested grassland hill tiles to the west. One question for you: there's been a good bit of discussion in your thread about the religious bonuses that you want from founding early Lavras. Have you thought about what your pantheon might be? That should arrive earlier and there should be a number of useful options. Any idea yet?