[Spoiler] Kaiser has a plan

[roland of gilead]

you are also wasting niter just now. need to stop that.

Encampment placings tlook good so they need built and get a musketman started even if you only startt hen stop.

Why cartography?

[roland of gilead]

We should look into going after that great scientist.

CMF has no chance of getting it and 2 of the other 3 need to work on war.

If we get it it catapults us forward tech wise 1250 science. near 12 turns worth.

get that to take us to rifling perhaps or cannon get cores and you walk over CMF and onto whoever next.

would need to throw everything at getting it.

[Kaiser]

Sorry, the slower turn pace due to Ichabod taking sometimes more than 24 hours for his turn lead to a delay in me posting my overview.
I like quite some of your points and redecided on where to move my troops midway this week, I will get to that in the report.

State of the Empire:
I think we were up to a quite good start thanks to our position within 4 important early city states and close city placement. However, there are 2 major mistakes I see myself making in this game:
- Getting nervous with Ichabod executing his Wombo Combo
- Fighting the war against CMF at Bruins for way to long

While I could have denied the first by taking Sacred Path instead of my half assed God of Craftsmen, I was worried that he would be running away with the game and I needed to make a bold move myself. The bold move was attacking CMF to conquer, which was swatted away by CMF despite the tech disadvantage. I was completely underestimating the support CMF was getting (I guess roughly 500-800 from all other players and the neck breaking military alliance) and ended up loosing way to much military without making any gains.
Due to this war effort, I neglected the settling of 4 cities, which we will have remedied in 6 turns from now, egalizing Woden's city count. However due to the late settling of these, we are clearly on the backfoot and have to play catch up right now.

Game situation:
While we are not out of the competition, we are in a difficult situation being the only player attackable by all 4 players (well Suboptimal has to go via sea or through Geneva). Luckily Suboptimal and Ichabod have difficult/narrow access only to our lands.
We also have started catching up with settling 3 of the 4 settling spots and still remain competetive in science and culture, however our military starts to be lacking.

As long as Woden keeps our military Alliance protecting our vulnerable NW flank, we are in a good position, however we are about to tie him in cities in a couple turns and I do not expect him to be able to hold more than 1 of Ichabods cities in the long term. In fact he seems to be utilizing his fleet right now to go for San Luis and maybe Venice to raze them as well as razing Recife. This will potentially free him up to backstab us in worst case and we have to prepare for that possibility.
His fleet my turn once around the Pangea and raze all coastal cities it can get to to force a concession

Ichabod has lost 2 cities already, 1 to me and 1 to Woden. Recife was conquered by Woden but is rebelling next turn and I expect him to raze it when in rebellion. He has two more cities in danger of Woden's fleet, one is already bypassed by Woden but I expect San Luis to fall as well. He is still sitting on an extremly productive core though with a couple new cities added in. I doubt that Woden will be able to conquer him on land without a significant technological edge, but he is punishing Ichabods farming game hard, he still has not caught up significantly to Woden in military power.

CMF has had a rough game, mostly due to me keeping him down where possible. I have to compliment his defense against me and I fear what will come next time we attack but he is out of the competition and the question is if we can conquer the most important cities (Bruins and Kings for an Eastern defense) without getting backstabbed or Suboptimal beating us to the punch. We will want at least Bombards and Pike & shot before attacking him again.

Suboptimal has buildered himself into 3rd position, surpassing us because he continued settling while I waffled against CMF. I do barely know anything about his land though, so he might have settled everywhere and is preparing an attack on either me or more likely CMF. At least his military score indicates this. If Woden wants to force a concession, he might be the next target of the 4 Frigate + Frigate Fleet Navy Woden is currently moving around south of Ichabod.

We are not that much in danger by Woden's Death Fleet as we have basically only Alara Kitan in danger of being directly attacked, with EM and its Campus as well as the Campus from GM in ranged attack by sea.

Going forward:



After you mentioning Sao Luis needing naval support to be conquered, I rechecked this and believe you are right. I was moving my units here earlier this week to get a better border with Ichabod and Woden, however we likely won't be able to conquer it easily and I believe Woden's fleet is already on its way here.

Venice was also on the menu, as it powers Ichabod and Suboptimal up right now, but it finished a Musket and with DoF it is way to strong right now for us to attack. These two cities would also be a nightmare to defend against Woden's Death Fleet, so I hope he razes them. We want Venice to die if possible, but we have to look at this later.

So I fully agree to let Woden and Ichabod fight, while we consolidate and prepare for conquering CMF.



Our MA with Woden runs out in 8 turns and I am not convinced he is giving us another one if he can peace out by then with Ichabod. While we have a very defensible mountain range as border, we need to fortify it further and I redirected my units to conquer Vilnius. Last time it build walls the minute before we attacked, I hope it will not finish a Musket in the next 5 turns so we can conquer it succesfully.
The force consists of 2 Muskets, a Ram, a Catapult to become Bombard and 3 MYC. If we manage to conquer it, I want to get the marked encampent down quickly as it controls this area nicely. We later can support here with a 2nd encampment from Cassius if necessary. CF Encampent will help protect here as well and we should even be well defensible here when mountain tunnels show up to the limited space and good encampment coverage.




The NW is a different thing, we are wide open here to Woden, however we could block him nicely at Moria and Bologna if we can avoid him positiong his units way before this. Another city here is possible but would be weak and barely a stepping stone. Instead can use the exisiting rivers as defensive positions and I am speeding up Alliance visibility with trade routes so we can see him moving units up in time.
This will only work if Woden signs up for another MA though, so this will be a big tell on where we have to focus. He probably should not give us another MA, but it is also a 5 strenght swing for Ichabod if he does not keep ours.



Here is the only vulnerable area by sea in our empire, the most painful would likely be the two Campus from EM and GM, however they are both on hills and can be protected against naval assaults by Siege weapons, we just need to make sure to get them here in time. Alara Kitan is the only city we have which is conquerably by sea, it is a good city but we can live with loosing it. Having a state of the Art defender and Siege here in time will be great but of less importance than protecting EM and the Campus.

Isaac will become an encampent to the South to close the mountain pass near bruins, if we can conquer Bruins this will be highly redundant, but if not then it is a necessary precaution.



This is where we should attack as soon as possible with Bombards and Pike & Shot better even Curassiers and more advanced units. We need to execute fast here and avoid Suboptimal getting Bruins and Kings, as these two are immensely important for us to hold as defensive positions agains Suboptimal.

I fear that CMF will throw everything he has at us (justified, we made this game probably unenejoyable for him, sorry for that but I believe it was the right strategy to keep you small, I just wasted to much units in our fight instead of settling my final cities first while pushing for a bigger military edge) opening the backdoor to Suboptimal.

The good thing about CMF cities is that they are all landlocked, meaning safe from Woden's Death Fleet if we should manage to conquer them.

Some answers to your remarks/questions:
I am currently researching cartography as we wait for a catapult to finish at Bortus, as soon as it is ready we will finish Metal Casting and then Printing (boosted next turn) for upgrading our two catapults and another +3 Strenght swing in our direction.
We will need Cartography later as it is a stepping stone to other techs and it is highly unlikely that we will even start a 2nd Harbor anywhere, so that is why I am currently working on it.

EM can run a science project starting next turn to rush for the Scientist, I need to check though if we can still get him with it and how we can best arrange the boosting with the overflow.

Niter wasting was a mistimed policy switch to upgrade the musket for the Vilnius attack, we are going to use 40 more niter for the Bombard upgrades and I started getting Knights and Coursers out to optimize the other resources as well.

We have a big issue with money though, as we need to upgrade units and buy the tiles at Vilnius and Sphinx Paradise (the niter) quickly to lock the campus and the only good production tile down. I have no good solution yet, besides sending our trade routes to Woden to increase our income (and speed up the alliance level development)

What do you think, where should we attack CMF first assuming Bombard and Pike & Shots as the first wave?
I will need to get more Pike&Shots out as well!


  (PYDT) Play This One!.Civ6Save (Size: 1.29 MB / Downloads: 1)

[roland of gilead]

Kings the blues and Blackhawks are the easiest to attack cities.

You may need cores to take him out. Certainly it would really help.

I would go all out for the scientist then into encampments into land army build with cores.

IMF may attack but that is a route to you taking him easier.

A lot depends what side does next but you arent the next biggest target. Eleanor is and almost certainly has more sea cities. Ultimately if he controls sea and you land then you probably win

[roland of gilead]

Run through everything piece by piece. What are you doing with science. Culture. Faith military. Offense defence. Great people. Gold. Etc etc and try to line it all up. Where will we be in 5. 10 20. 30 turns.

What are each of the others doing etc.

[roland of gilead]

its to late to get the scientist.

Shame as that could have been useful

[Kaiser]

Here is  the save, I will focus on unpacking here for the moment but will get back to your questions the coming Weekend.

We are still in build up and I want to LumberMill all the Rainforests we have.
We also still need one workshop in GM and best case the finished theatre district in EM, however I think we will skip this for more units after its Builder. It is putting a turn of in a musket to avoid wasting the Niter


  CLEOPATRA 127 275 AD.Civ6Save (Size: 1.31 MB / Downloads: 2)

[roland of gilead]

Good stuff. I agree you spend some turns building up then take some cores at cmf then we see.

A lot depends now on the other players though.

[roland of gilead]

had a look. not much to say.

Do you buy that merchant for the civic boost? probably with faith. not ideal but perhaps worth it. not a brilliant merchant unfortunately.

agree you get the lumbermills on rainforest before cores.

[Kaiser]

sorry for disappearing again, our move was more intense than expected which clearly was me underestimating how quickly we were able to set up properly. By now I am getting some more spare time to dedicate to this game. We are at T141, in a fresh new dark age and are fine with loyality which was my biggest worry as I had no time to test how it would turn up.
Vilnius is ours and we have our Army near it and Bruins/Kings to be flexible.

Woden is more and more opportunistic against us:
- stole a barb camp we cleared around T70
- settled the Cities NW of our capitol, which I delayed as they were low ROI for us. They are high ROI for him, but a very bad precedent and reason for tension
- Voted against us in the council (no scientific suzerain bonus, while we were the only civ suzeraining scientific CS)
- starting an emergency against us due to us conquering Vilnius

I completely understand his reasoning here, and I even followed it in my own sense (voting against suzerain bonus of scientific CS), but he pushes me against him instead of leading me on to attack Canada while he consolidates his Brazil conquests. Ichabod faltered harder than I expected, mostly due to not being able to defend by sea against the frigate fleet. Woden conquered 2 cities and keeps 2 in eternal revolt as he cannot hold them due to loyality.
He might make gains land base on Ichabods East front as well, which worry me greatly as this might be the final piece to send Ichabod failing his resistance and Woden wins this game when he can conquer and leverage Ichabods cities. I was betting on Ichabod to hold stronger than he is and I will likely have to switch alliance to Ichabod from Woden to keep his survival chances high. This will keep the game open, but force me to pull my military to my Woden border and maybe even reach out the the NW cities to distract Woden from Ichabod.
I fear I will get backstabbed as soon as I do so by Suboptimal, but not doing anything serves the game Woden and I really would like it to continue as it had been a tight game (sorry CMF) for 4 players with Ichabod the now contained runaway.

here is the save


  CLEOPATRA 141 600 AD.Civ6Save (Size: 1.34 MB / Downloads: 2)

I also have a question, we are about to land the next GS next turn



While Emilie is a good GS, we can get most of the industrial boosts conventionally. The only interesting ones would be 
- Steam power (we will not get this one)
- Ballistics (we can get it in about 15 turns, Woden already has the tech and it is a good millitary advantage)
- Sanitation (we can get it ourselves but it is unlikely that I will do so in time, even though this is a low priority tech at the moment

We also currently have a 40 science lead over Woden due to him loosing Free Inquiry, so we should be moving forward more quickly than him for quite some time, especially regarding the great Campus locations we still have available for us in contrast to Woden or Suboptimal.

So, Emilie is the short term benefit, hoping to hit Ballistics and Steam Power with an early usage with the risk of getting Military Science, Economics which we will get conventtionally in the next 10-15 turns. Waiting so long to use her means we could get Ballistics conventionally as well which we want earlier, so hard researching is the alternative.

Instead of trying to hit 2/5 Eurekas when unlocking 3, we can also consider



Skipping her in hope of hitting Newton instead, this is a 50/50 risk of getting a huge long term science bonus (I probably will only need one further Campus with him). Ichabod will get the next GS in roughly 8 turns, we could use that time to build 2/3 of a Campus to use Newton.
The risk here is to get Ibn instead (why does he have a cross next to his name?) who is a complete flop due to the already negative amenity situation in my empire. Another risk is that I do not know how the game decides if the next GS will be from the Renaissance or Industrial Era. We are about to finish Industrialization as our first Industrial Era tech in 2 turns, can anyobody explain me how the game decides from which era the GS will be picked?

The Industrial GS are all decent, we do not have a good NW for Darwin as we only have a one tile wonder in reach (Matterhorn), the other 2 are slightly worse than Emilie.