[SPOILERS] Chevalier Mal Fet and Marcopolothefraud lead a Soviet Down Under

[marcopolothefraud]

Australia for me. I'm worried I might bungle the religious management.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

No problem at all. 

For my part, this will be my basic gameplan:

Warning: incoming wall of text.

I had the spare time to type up a bit of a big picture post today and thought I'd share some of my musings. Leaving aside food and production for the moment, there are four major currencies that get spent in Civ6: science, culture, gold, and faith. Let's take a look at how these might apply to TheArchduke's Russia in terms of emphasizing general civilization development and district production. I'm going to run through these currencies in the order that makes sense for Russia, not necessarily the order of individual importance.

Faith: We'll start with faith as a currency. Faith is one thing that Russia should have in spades throughout this game. The unique Lavra district is in the conversation for best overall district in the game, a half-cost Holy Site that produces double Great Prophet points and a small trickle of Great Writer/Artist/Musician points. The Lavra virtually guarantees Russia the first religion in any non-China game and with luck TheArchduke will land the first religion here. (It's tough to beat 4 Great Prophet points/turn as early as Turn 30.) From what I remember reading, there was a small change in Gathering Storm that made the Lavra even better: after recruiting a Great Prophet, excess Great Prophet points are converted into faith. This will instantly add another 2 faith/turn to every Lavra that gets built as those Prophet points magically become faith. Since it should be possible to place most Lavras with some kind of adjacency bonus, these very cheap districts should be worth 3-4 faith/turn apiece. There's really no reason not to build one in basically every city.

Faith also comes from TheArchduke's Earth Goddess pantheon, which grants 2 faith to every tile with an appeal of 4 or greater. This may well end up being the best pantheon in the game before all is said and done, even better than the culture on plantations since it affects so many more tiles. Taking full advantage of Earth Godddess will require careful planning of tile improvements and districts, but it should be possible to get lots and lots of tiles up to 4 appeal with some micromanagement. We've already mentioned how Lavra and Campus districts add +1 appeal to neighboring tiles, and there's going to be a huge incentive to get 3 promotions onto Liang to unlock the city park improvement (+2 appeal to all neighboring tiles). The city park doesn't have to be worked by a population point to provide this benefit, it also adds +1 amenity to the city if placed next to water, and it remains even after Liang herself gets moved somewhere else. Again, with help from williams and myself on the planning front, I think we could get potentially dozens of tiles up to 4 appeal for the Earth Goddess bonus to kick in. It's enough that I'll probably play another cultural victory game again at some point to take advantage of Liang's city parks for tourist resort abuse (something I didn't know about the last time I did such a game).

So what is the purpose of all that faith? The obvious first use would be to grab apostles and pick up additional beliefs for the religion. If Choral Music and Defender of the Faith are taken upon the religion's founding, that leaves slots for the follower belief and the worship belief. I'm of the opinion that the worship building has a low priority; it doesn't benefit from Choral Music and there will be tons of faith coming in from other sources. Better to invest production into libraries and universities as opposed to wats for this game. But the founder belief spot has the awesome Church Property belief to grab (+2 gold per city following the religion) which would be a major target if it doesn't get picked up by someone else. If that's gone then Tithe (+1 gold for every 4 followers of the religion) or Stewardship (+1 beaker/+1 gold per Campus/Commercial district following the religion) are decent fallbacks. Some faith will also have to be spent on missionaries to spread the religion and convert other Russian cities, although with an early religion in place there should be a fair amount of natural spread.

But by far the best use of faith in Gathering Storm is the Monumentality dedication unlocked with a Golden Age. The first Classical era Golden Age should already be a lock at this point and I don't think it will be too hard to land one for the Medieval era as well. Monumentality of course unlocks purchasing settlers/builders with faith and further discounts their purchasing cost by 30 percent. Since rushing things with faith already costs 2x production instead of gold's 4x production cost, this represents a massive form of savings. The current settler being trained at the capital costs 110 production by virtue of being the second settler; this would cost 440 gold normally but only 154 faith. TheArchduke could spend 10 turns building this by hand at his capital... or he could faith-rush it with 10 turns of accumulated faith, leaving his capital free to work on districts and buildings. It's obvious which is the better option.

Now someone might correctly point out that the Colonization policy unlocked at Early Empire boosts production of settlers by 50%, and that therefore it's somewhat wasteful to spend faith on purchasing settlers instead of something else like builders. While this is a fair point, it overlooks the best aspect of purchasing a settler instead of building it naturally: the *LOCATION* where the purchased settler appears. If you've played a fair amount of Civ6, you're probably familiar with the scaling food costs in this game. It only costs 15 food to grow from size 1 to size 2 but it costs close to 100 food to grow from size 9 to size 10. The scaling math means that settlers are cheap to produce in terms of food cost at smaller sizes but highly expensive to produce at larger sizes. Conversely, due to the scaling cost of settlers whereby each one is 30 production more expensive than the previous one, players are normally forced to build the settlers in their oldest and largest cities anyway. A new size 1 city just can't finish a settler that costs 210 production or whatever in any kind of a decent timeframe. And new cities need to get their districts up and running anyway if they're ever going to be useful.

Monumentality offers a loophole that gets out of this situation entirely. Suddenly *ANY* brand new city on the frontiers of the empire can faith-rush out a new settler as soon as it hits size 2. The growth of that city is almost unaffected because the food costs to get back to size 2 are so cheap (especially if a trade route has been routed there). The new settler furthermore doesn't have to waste long turns walking out of the heartland off to the corners of the empire, using the exceedingly slow movement system that we all know and love from this game. Instead, the new settler pops into existence right where it needs to be, then has a short walk to its intended destination. Furthermore, there isn't much need to spend faith on builders via Monumentality because every new city should be getting a builder for free via the Ancestral Hall. (Just make sure to be running Serfdom once it's available so that they all pop out with 5 charges.)

We haven't seen this yet in a Civ6 Multiplayer game, but if done properly, I think that accumulating mass faith via Lavras and shrines/temples and Earth Goddess could fuel a tidal wave of rapid expansion across the map. This seems to be a pretty large map with no one close by, making it a perfect test case. Ideally, TheArchduke never builds any settlers by hand after the first few (before Monumentality unlocks with the first Golden Age). All of the settlers come from faith purchases - all of them. It should be really easy to get up to 20, 30, 50, eventually even 100 faith/turn and pop out the settlers left and right. The Archduke is already at 15 faith/turn with a mere 2 cities, and he isn't even having the Great Prophet points get converted into faith yet! All of this is super exciting, and best of all, it synergizes perfectly with the next currency as well: culture.

Culture: TheArchduke has repeatedly pointed out the importance of culture in Civ6. We've seen over and over again in these PBEM games how the player leading in culture hits all of the key civics and policies first, thereby snowballing to an eventual winning position. There's little question that some kind of strategy is needed for picking up extra culture, and the obvious solution for Russia comes in the form of the Choral Music belief. This causes shrines and temples to produce culture equal to their faith output, in other words causing shrines (70 production) to have a value of 2 faith + 2 culture per turn, and temples (120 production) to have a value of 4 faith + 4 culture per turn. The temples in particular are absurdly valuable under Choral Music, converting production into culture at a 3:1 ratio (plus adding faith as well!) Compare the cultural conversion rate of the poor buildings in the Theatre district by way of contrast: the Amphitheatre costs 150 production for 2 culture/turn (7.5 to 1 ratio) while the poor Art Museums cost 290 production for the same 2 culture turn (14.5 to 1 ratio). Of course those buildings can hold Great Works from Great People for additional culture, but that requires having the Great People to begin with as well as building the Theatre districts themselves. Long story short, culture is great to have but difficult to get, and Lavras with Choral Music-boosted buildings are one of the best ways to obtain it.

Since every city is going to be building a cheap Lavra anyway for faith purposes, they can also go ahead and build a temple and shrine as well to cash in on culture via Choral Music. There's no reason ever to build a monument (60 production) when a shrine kicks in extra faith for a slightly higher cost (70 production). The temple costs double the monument but also provides double the culture, along with that hefty 4 faith/turn output as a bonus on top. Again, since cities ideally won't have to waste time training settlers or too many builders, there will be more space available for knocking out shrines and temples. Cash-rusing a quick shrine in new cities would also be a great way to get them up to speed quickly and contributing to the wider empire. The positive feedback loop here practically speaks for itself.

Now that I've written this, I have surely doomed TheArchduke to losing out on Choral Music to a self-destructive Stonehenge build from another player.

Science: One of the other great currencies of Civ6 comes in the form of beakers. As we've seen repeatedly in past games, science is not optional for serious Multiplayer. You basically need a Campus district in nearly every city to be competitive with the other players, as falling behind in military tech is a sure recipe for disaster. Fortunately TheArchduke will hopefully be able to pick up both faith and culture simultaneously from his cheap Lavras, allowing him to construct a Campus district as the second choice in nearly every city. There's nothing particularly clever or fancy here, just a need to keep emphasizing science by building lots and lots of Campus districts. Don't chase after Hypatia or worry about any individual Great People at this stage of the game, quantity > quality for the most part. More cities with more population and more Campus districts are the way to go.

Gold: That takes us to the last major currency in Civ6, money itself. We've also seen that gold is extraordinarily useful in Civ6, both for purchasing things via cash-rushing and (arguably more importantly) for upgrading units. That's been toned down in Gathering Storm by introducing the stockpiled resource requirements, but a quick upgrade of units remains very important for military considerations. Basically, players need lots of money and and as many trade routes as possible. This makes for another obvious point: every city should get either a Commercial district or a Harbor district to unlock its own trade route, most commonly as the third district at size 7. Maybe some cities want this district as the second choice but that should be the general pattern: Lavra, Campus, Commercial/Harbor. What about all of the other districts? Don't build them, they aren't worth it. Just get one or maybe two of them to unlock their related boosts and nothing more. One or two Industrial/Entertainment districts are plenty to spread their benefits around to neighboring cities. As for the others, Encampments are only helpful if you're going for early conquest (which this game doesn't appear to be doing) and Theatre districts are just bad in general. These districts can be squeezed into the few cities that grow above size 10. For everything else, the Lavra/Campus/trade route district trio should be the way to go.

One other thing that does bear mentioning is how much better Harbor districts have become in Gathering Storm. These districts were basically garbage in the release version and have been vastly buffed over time into quasi-overpowered status. Aside from letting inland cities build ships, the first tier building in the Harbor district (the lighthouse) now grants +1 base food, +1 food on all water tiles, and +3 housing if the district is placed next to the city center. This essentially means that cities can be settled anywhere along the coast and have decent housing even if there's no fresh water anywhere nearby; base housing on coastal tiles is 3 and a granary + lighthouse combo takes that up to 8, more than enough to get the city to size 7 and three districts. (If you add an Aqueduct to that same dry spot, it's worth another 3 housing and the city can make it to size 10! Dry coastal spots near mountain peaks are now totally viable for large cities in the second expansion.) So overall then, inland cities on rivers want Commercial districts while the cities on the coast will want Harbors. With some planning it should be possisble to get the district discount on those Harbors too and help make them cheaper to build. (Churning out lots of Lavras helps activate that discount formula quite nicely.)

Conclusion: So what would this look like in practice? I'm envisioning a setup where a steady stream of new settlers are being faith-rushed at the borders in little size 2 and size 3 cities using Monumentality. The settlers move quickly to their destinations and receive free builders upon settling from the Ancestral Hall. These builders use the huge borders granted by Russia to chop/harvest a tile or two that won't interfere with the Earth Goddess bonus and knock out the cheap half-cost Lavra almost instantly. As soon as the Lavra is finished, the new city either cash-rushes or chops/harvests a shrine to get some faith and culture flowing. Trade routes back to the capital city (worth at least 3 food and 1 production thanks to the Lavra/Campus combo) ensure that rapid growth to larger city sizes where more tiles can be worked that pick up the Earth Goddess faith bonus. Meanwhile, the inner core cities are working on more districts, more buildings, and enough military to keep everything safe. The whole enterprise is an exercise in snowballing, taking advantage of the lack of maintenance costs in Civ6. The only slowdown comes in the form of more expensive settlers, but if you faith income keeps snowballing right alongside the rising settler cost, there's very little to stop the whole process. (This is basically what I did in my Mansa Musa game on Livestream, only using gold instead of faith; if anything, the cheaper faith-rushing cost should be even more effective.)

Hopefully I didn't ramble on too much there. I don't know how well this will work in practice but it's something that I'd love to see in action just to test it out.

My belief is that as long as we emphasis strong development with careful military defense, we should be fine. Archduke would ahve won this game in a landslide if TBS hadn't been playing. 

Having read through ljub's thread, now, I don't feel too threatened by him (famous last words!). Criticisms of other players:

Archduke/Kaiser: Much less threatening than Archduke/thrawn. Thrawn's bubbly fountain of ideas pairs well with Archduke's straightforward competence. Now, my writeup of Archduke for PBEM19 remains true - he plays a strong early game and is good at focusing on his goals, but he can get sidetracked on weird obsessions (like his desire for a shrine in PBEM17), and will get bored without military success. You need to stay prickly and convince him to go elsewhere, but he can be outbuilt. Kaiser got thoroughly manhandled in his first two PBEMs, but he's done a decent job with Egypt in PBEM18. I think he's destined to fail there, though, and his military abilities were not impressive (see our PBEM18 thread for details on the criticism there). The two together might cover each other's weaknesses, and it looks like thrawn is dedlurking still, so definitely the favorites, I think. 

Woden/Ljubljana: Woden is slow, deliberate, and cautious. He is a very competent builder, but his tactics are stolid and conventional. He'll grind away to victory, eventually, if you let him. He's not aggressive but WILL attack if he sees weakness. Did a fantastic job in PBEM18 expanding and then racing ahead in science, too. Can't wait to read his thread. Ljubljana is energetic, like thrawn, but shows his lack of experience. He narrowly focused on a Nubian rush of himself and was willing to sacrifice his long-term prospects for a short-term boost (paying the Danegeld?), plus he tends to overinterpret other players (every interaction with Ioan and thrawn). He was also slow to expand and pretty poor at scouting - he never knew about thrawn's middle cities, for example, and generally was unaware of the larger game state. Only Archduke, thrawn, and myself were apparently keyed in to the game. Woden will cover his weaknesses, and I'm curious to see how they use their civs, which are geared towards aggression at sea. 

Suboptimal/Roland: Sub loves obsessive planning, but still makes mistakes. He really is a great SP player, but his strengths of very careful micromanagement and evolving of complex, sophisticated plans don't work so well in multiplayer - he tends to cut margins too thin and gets sidetracked on long-term goals often in favor of short term gains. Sub's biggest weakness is still correctly choosing what is the best, most important choice out of myriad options - generally staying focused. Roland is a black box. No idea what to expect. 

Me, my weaknesses are a total lack of attention to detail. I micro poorly, don't carefully engineer civics swaps, and my tactics are sloppy. I compensate by generally trying to have a good read on other players and choosing solid gameplans. I could definitely improve, though, and if I microed as well as sub or Woden I think I'd be as good as any player on this forum.

[marcopolothefraud]

I haven't gone through the PBEM17 thread myself - I read through Sullla's report on his website and left it at that. This was a wonderful writeup. though. Two things:

The Lavra virtually guarantees Russia the first religion in any non-China game and with luck TheArchduke will land the first religion here.

Unfortunately, this is a game with China and Indonesia as potential faith contenders. Japan could be a religious dark horse too, though it remains to be seen.

Indonesia will get the first pantheon, and we need to prepare for them to take Earth Goddess. There are no other faith pantheons that are nearly as good as Earth Goddess. There are pantheons that give the Holy Site adjacency bonus from Rainforest, Desert, or Tundra - but we want to clear Rainforest, and we don't like to settle cities around Desert or Tundra.

There's also
- Stone Circles (+2 Faith from Quarries, odds are we want to harvest our stone instead of improving it)
- Religious Idols (+2 Faith from Mines over Luxury and Bonus resources, very map-dependent but potentially useful)
- Fire Goddess (+2 Faith from Geothermal Fissures and Volcanic Soil. The former is not very good terrain to work, but the latter is. You will want to settle around Geo Fissures and Volcanoes anyway.)
- God of War (Combat units killed near Russian-owned Holy Sites give Faith. Too unpredictable)
- God of Craftsmen (+1 Production, +1 Faith from improved strategic resources, very map-dependent but potentially useful)
- Initiation Rites (Faith from clearing Barbarian outposts, trash.)

China... Roland of Gilead has joked about having stone in his starting location, if I recall correctly. I hope Roland and Suboptimal will just sit out the religious game entirely and focus on the infrastructural world wonders (Pyramids, Temple of Artemis, Petra, Great Library has some value on a tech-shuffle map).

If not, then I guess China will go for Sacred Places (+2 Culture/+2 Science/+2 Gold/+2 Faith in cities that have at least one world wonder), Divine Inspiration (+4 Faith per World Wonder), and all the other standard good religious beliefs. Those beliefs are uncompetitive for everyone else, and give China a real potential to snowball. However, this is also a religion that gives no production bonuses, and China can't trade any excess faith and let Indonesia buy some ships. Let's hope they're militarily vulnerable.

That should be the general pattern: Lavra, Campus, Commercial/Harbor. What about all of the other districts? Don't build them, they aren't worth it. Just get one or maybe two of them to unlock their related boosts and nothing more.

Well Sullla, we need to brace ourselves to boost as many Technologies and Civics as we can. This is a tech-shuffle map and we need all the boosts we can get.

Take Square Rigging (490 - 660 Science, depending on where it is in the tech tree), the tech that unlocks Frigates and one we desperately need to rush. We need to "kill a unit with a Musketman" to boost it.

Musketmen are from Gunpowder (490 - 600 Science, depending on where it is in the tech tree). We need to build an Armory to boost it.

Armories unlock with Military Engineering (275 - 390 Science, depending on where it is in the tech tree). We need to build an Aqueduct to boost it, not to mention an Encampment + Barracks.

Aqueducts come from Engineering (120 - 200 Science, depending on where it is in the tech tree), which requires Ancient Walls to boost.

Almost a thousand beakers are up for grabs if we do this right, even though it's such a massive production burden. That means we will likely chop and harvest a little bit to build all these Eureka-making prerequisites. To optimally build Musketmen, Armories, and Ancient Walls, we need to unlock the correct policy cards. That most likely means getting as many civic inspirations as possible too. We have to prepare for Engineering -> Military Engineering -> Gunpowder -> Square Rigging to be on opposite ends of the tech tree, which may mean that both of us have to share the production burdens.

There are also some asinine boosts like "Construct 3 different specialty districts", "Build 2 Markets", or "Build a Classical-Era or later wonder" that are just too impossible to even bother. One of us will have to hard-research those techs/civics and let the other one coast.


EDIT: Here's why I say "almost a thousand beakers". By fulfilling the boosts, we're not only receiving a 40% discount. We're also discovering the tech's location on the tech tree and doing less guesswork on chasing dead ends. I have played Random Tech Tree on singleplayer a lot of the time, and I find it super important not to stumble around.

[marcopolothefraud]

Civ 6 just announced its December patch, and it seems like it will take effect within the next 1-2 weeks.

There are only two things that strike me as important:
- Melee units only have +5 combat strength against anti-cavalry units, reduced from +10 combat strength. Given that barbarian encampments often have Spearmen in them, this will make them much harder to defeat. I think the chances of Barbarians overrunning us are a little higher now - and this may mean we need Archers earlier.

- Industralization technology only requires 2 Workshops to boost it, down from 3 Workshops. I give it a 30% chance that the game will end before we research Industralization - its coal will be useful for us to get Ironclads. This may mean that one of us will have to plan 2 Industrial Zones and get those Workshops, probably Australia because it has higher population to sustain more districts. Given that the Venetian Arsenal is banned (it requires an Industrial Zone to build), it's a little unclear how useful Industrial Zones will be in this game.

PBEM18 Spoiler

Industrial Zones and Great Engineers are surprisingly competitive in PBEM18. Perhaps this is because it's a land-based map, though, and not many players have access to Shipyards and the production that they can bring.

[Cornflakes]

Take your time with the first turn since starting screenshots have not been posted to threads. Better to hold the turn for a day at the beginning than get stuck with a suboptimal game. With team the first of you in turn order should be able to see both starting areas. Quick thoughts on the start:

My general preference given blank non-resource start is working production over food (1/3 PFH). If you have a 5 sugar then it is usually better to grow first, but generally I find production trumps all. Get that first Warrior > Builder pair out as quickly as you can, and the quicker improvements will more than make up for the delay in growth. I always build warrior first, never slinger as I find the slinger get always chased back to the capital by barbs and can't adequately defend the first builder.

Moving a turn to get a plains hill city center is always worth the lost turn (makes up about 3 turns) absent of outside factors like resources, fresh water, etc.

Given your island starts, builder first instead of warrior might make sense (for at least one of you). Maybe the starting warrior from one of you could move over and help defend a builder-first start from barbs. Maybe something like
- Player A: Builder > Warrior > Settler [starting warrior circles closer]
- Player B: Warrior > Settler [starting warrior defogs the area between the starts and generally edges towards Player A to help defend the builder from barbs]

[marcopolothefraud]

Player A going builder first is a very good idea. That player can knock out 3 eurekas (if the terrain is good) and Craftsmanship eureka. Then those techs and civics will be revealed on the tech tree and we won't need to do so much guesswork.

I disagree about the Slinger. There is some merit to getting a Slinger and the Archery eureka. I find that Slingers can almost always kill the first Barbarian scout that wanders nearby, because the Barbarian AI code is not very smart. Only if the scout has a consecutive flat-land path to escape (i.e. it can move 3 tiles and immediately run away back to its camp), it's going to be hard to kill.

Finally, I think our capital cities should be coastal, but only touch 1 water tile and not 2-3. The more water tiles it touches, the more naval melee ships can invade at a time. Barring a Heavy Chariot (or stronger) present in the capital city, or Ancient Walls, I think two enemy ships can easily invade the city and take it as long as they have an opening of at least 2 water tiles.

Altogether, I think that turn 1 decisions are important but not challenging enough to merit holding the save for hours on end. It's 9pm in my timezone and I'll stay awake for another 4 hours - if I can't play the save tonight, everyone else may have to wait for me to wake up, and that's not something I want at all.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Never go slinger first. Early slingers are fine, but they need a warrior in support.

Generally, the turn one build in my opinion has two possibilities:

warrior first
builder first

If your starting tiles are fantastic without improvement, I'd go warrior first usually. Then you can roll into the settler once you grow to size 2. If they need some love, I'd go builder first (to make building the next settler easier).

Agreed on coastal settles - one tile is essential, two is a bit uncomfortable. But we need access to the sea before Harbors. This was a big deal in PBEM12 - Rowain settled inland out of paranoia and was never really a factor in the wider game. You need to accept the Norwegian/Phoenician risk for the rewards of expansion.

I'm also a fan of Cornflake's production emphasis. Before PBEM17 TBS, I thought his PBEM11 build (the one with two 3-person continents) was an ideal map of civilization development.

[Cornflakes]

I disagree about the Slinger. There is some merit to getting a Slinger and the Archery eureka. I find that Slingers can almost always kill the first Barbarian scout that wanders nearby, because the Barbarian AI code is not very smart. Only if the scout has a consecutive flat-land path to escape (i.e. it can move 3 tiles and immediately run away back to its camp), it's going to be hard to kill.

The beaker value of the archery eureka is small though, especially if you do not intend to research Archery right away. Warrior generally takes only 1 more turn to build. I have just been burned too many times building a slinger first, and Warrior first is a hedge that trades some science for security and maintaining the snowball. (anecdotal example: in my PBEM 11 I had 3 early barb camps spawn within about 5-7 tiles. Slinger first would have been disastrous, but since I built a warrior first I had an easy 120 in barb camp plunder and hassle-free development)

[Cornflakes]

Also it looks like the turn just passed to marcopolothefraud (do you have a preferred abbreviation? Marco?). I'm headed for lunch and can crunch some quick numbers on a spreadsheet if you post a starting screenshot.

[marcopolothefraud]

4am as I upload this. I don't feel too sleep-deprived and I think my decision making was okay, but I hope my next turns will come at a more appropriate time of day.

First, a view of tech trees and civic trees. At least for Industrial Era and before, the civic tree has no bottleneck. And the tech tree only has one bottleneck (though there's this moment where it narrows down to 2 tech paths, in Renaissance I think. In 4 hours, when I wake up for real, I will reopen my save file and look.

   
   
   

Sorry about the small image sizes. I had to scale each file size down to 20% of original size because the maximum image size is only 500KB.

There are 3 leaf technologies in the Classical Era, and it's entirely up to luck as to whether they are important technologies we still need to research, or useless ones that we can hold off pretty much forever.