Sorry for going rogue on you, marco. That was wrong of me, and I should have done a better job consulting you first. Let me explain everything that wouldn't fit in Monumentality Settlers here:
First, the DoF. With ljubljana's denunciation, and Suboptimal having the highest military score in the game and the first really dangerous unique unit, I felt we would want to lock down one of our flanks to make sure we have as manageable a war as possible. Furthermore, you want ot be able to settle the East in peace without the cities being threatened. Accordingly, this felt logical - we guarantee peace with Australia's nearest neighbor, so Kaiser can't make mischief as Marco settles the peninsula. Further, we free up any Japanese and English garrisons to focus entirely on slowing down Phoenicia and Norway. Finally, this also serves a signal to the other two powers that we won't be distracted and will hopefully serve as a minor bit of deterrence.
My ships find Norway, a conquered city-state:
He's throwing up walls, which honestly might be the next move for me at Shikishima and Hong Kong once their current builds are finished. Anyway, this means Norway is WEST of us, near Hong Kong, and suboptimal is NORTH of us, opposite Shikishima. I modified my pins accordingly.
I also now know everyone's pantheons:
Suboptimal: Earth Goddess
Roland: Our Lady of Reeds and Marshes
Kaiser: River Goddess
Archduke: Fertility Rites
Woden: Goddess of Pantheons
ljubljana: God of the Open Sky
Chevalier: Dance of the Aurora
Marco: God of the Forge
So they both took culture-boosting pantheons, which explains why Archduke had to settle for the free builder.
Religious update. Conversions are proceeding well, as I manage my pop carefully to avoid growing out of conversion, like I did with IA:
Hong Kong wont' convert for another dozen or two turns yet, but I hope Navarin and Petropavlosk bring that number down once they're founded.
No sign of intelligent life on the large island, which is large indeed. I have pinned two tentative cities, but this land looks better for Australia than Russia so I might gift these cities:
Finally, I recruited Amani and sent her to Yerevan, with some waffling. My thinking was that I could use the boost to my shrines more than the extra worker charge in the immediate term. My next title will definitely be Liang, though. I'll have lots of shrines and temples soon, and Amani will double my faith output from those.
It's all good with the "going rogue" thing. I can't think of a single argument against declaring friendship with Japan/England.
If I remember correctly, 2 governor titles into Liang will unlock Fisheries. You have the Government Plaza and the Ancestral Hall, right? So any future revenue of governor titles will come from civics - probably Medieval civics. I think we should find those governor-giving Medieval civic inspirations, so we can beeline those civics (and therefore those titles) as soon as possible.
If the Shikishima-island is truly uninhabited, chances are that it'll spawn barbarians pretty soon. I think we should kill a Barb with a Quadrireme and another with a Spearman to knock out both of those Eurekas/inspirations.
That's a good point. I'll find room in the queues for a quad and a spearman - the big island west of Hong Kong also some barbs prowling around on it.
As for titles, I'll also get one more title from the Grandmaster's Chapel as soon as I can, because with this sort of faith income the ability to pray for a new unit every 2 turns roughly will be spectacular. I shouldn't need to use any "real" production on military units at all, in fact, and can concentrate outer cities on ships and inner cities on infrastructure.
Horseback Riding has been researched, opening up the Medieval techs. Stirrups and Education are both leaf techs (and frankly, don't really matter too much on a water map). Four techs (highlighted on the screenshot) lead to just one Renaissance Era tech. Military Tactics and the one right after Military Tactics lead to another Renaissance Era tech. So in theory, we could just get Military Engineering and then the bottom two techs, and luck out into discovering Square Rigging (for Frigates) as the very next tech.
(I think CMF is building an Aqueduct, so I'm only researching Military Engineering up to the boost. I will switch to either Castles or Military Tactics next.)
EDIT: CMF, do you have 3 Mines in your empire? Maybe you can help me pinpoint Apprenticeship.
Brief overview of the rest of my empire. My ship didn't see anything noteworthy.
Correct, Knyaz Suvurov is working on an aqueduct, which is due on turn 85. HBR is due on 84, and I'll be growing a fair bit in pop, but overall Military Engineering should be finished ~93 for me. I also don't have three mines YET but I will in the next ~10 turns. Castles I expect to be able to boost via Monarchy, as soon as I can locate it (working on temples as we speak to boost settler faith purchases, boost monarchy, and enable apostles for emergency era score). So be sure not to finish that one. Stirrups and Military Tactics I expect neither of us will be able to boost, so those are good science dumps in the meantime. Don't discount Education, though - especially at my interior cities with high production but limited population the ability to dump off production into universities will be a great boost to my science down the road.
Cartography I will boost...not SOON, but hopefully in <20 turns. Borodino is getting a Harbor before the era change but the other cities will take a while before they qualify (or have the production to build it, like Shikishima). (Note to self: Place Harbor at Shikishima). That and Square Rigging are our other three key techs to enable a military capable of beating Jongs.
We also will want to locate, on the civics tree, the Merchant Republic civic, since that has the ship production card on it. The boost is two caravels, so I figure it'll be sensible to go Harbor x 2 -> Locate and research Cartography -> upgrade caravel x 2 -> locate and research Merchant Republic.
Anyway, I'll research Military Engineering first, and then work on Castles, and pass both boosts along to you ASAP. Russian science is starting to not lag so far behind their Australian brothers. In fact, team-wide research is starting to look decent in comparison with everyone else.
I still have Burning Bridges in my head, for the record.
Turn 82
My friends all tried to warn me, but I held my head up high...
That would be Sevastopol converting. That makes 6 cities - Borodino, Knyaz Suvurov, Imperator Aleksandr, Oryol, Sevastopol, and The Blueprint - converted, with several more on the way. Tithe makes up nearly 1/3 of my income and a majority of my profits at the moment, which is a very nice reward for doing something I was going to do anyway.
Theocracy isn't a bad government for me. Where is it? ...Ah:
One of the two gateways to the Industrial Era. There are two more leaf techs and one other stem line through the Renaissance, but I still have most of the medieval tree unrevealed still. No sense planning that far ahead yet.
Here was my boneheaded move from earlier, rectified:
I move Magnus to Shikishima, of course.
A few word of explanation for my forehead smacking earlier:
In my planning, I had assumed that I would eventually park Magnus in Imperator Aleksandr and pump settlers using plain ol' production out of there, powered by Work Ethic, the Ancestral Hall, and Colonization - a perfectly decent plan that would at least let me sort of keep up with Phoenician settler-spam. I hadn't really expected settlers to be this cheap under Monumentality, nor for my faith income to be so titanic that I can purchase one every five turns or so, though, and never really updated my mental plan. However, I CAN spit out settlers every 5 turns from any city in the empire, quickly enough in fact that I think I'll get one settler out of Imperator Aleksandr (for Petropavlosk) and otherwise it'll shift into another infrastructure city (Grandmaster's Chapel, fill in lavra, hit size 7 and build out a campus, basically, using Sugar+2 fish resources).
So, OBVIOUSLY Magnus shouldn't be parked in Imperator Aleksandr if I'm going to be using Monumentality. Hell, even using Monumentality, I had sort of thought "oh I'll just buy from IA 'coz that's where Magnus is," but that's obviously stupid. Why buy a settler and spend ages marching him across the map? Instead, move Magnus, you dummy. He'll teleport anywhere in five turns. Found a city - for now it'll be Shikishima - grow to size 2 and then I can recruit settlers right on the front lines to fill out an island. For now, I intend to recruit 3 settlers out of Shikishima to fill out the island due south of it, which is small and easily secured by my navy. I also want to stretch out and establish a toehold across the straight, but I haven't got the military up here yet. Once I have a small defensive force, I'll cross the strait and begin filling in the jungle island, too.
Then, probably at era change, move Magnus to Hong Kong. Buy 2 settlers for the tundra island to the west, move Magnus, and the instant one of those 2 cities hits size 2 we start spamming settlers out of there. That will give me ~4 islands settled, plus maybe some of these smaller ones, and that should be a powerbase no one else can match. If anything, I'll need to restrain my settling so my military expansion can keep up and not leave me vulnerable. As it is, though, with my army and navy both near full health I'm the strongest power on the board. I will monitor suboptimal and Woden for power spikes, and need at least 2 quads of my own to sail west and start hunting barbs. This is all probably incredibly obvious to the lurkers, but I overlook things like this all the time.
One last thing I do at Shikishima is place my harbor before it gets more expensive. It SHOULD serve as a bridge to easily transfer units between all 3 islands, as well as controlling the straits for Russia:
We will finish our monument repair and throw up some walls before we start on the harbor, of course. For now my galleys use this as a base but this is the most vulnerable city in the empire. I'm counting on a few factors for its defense:
1)My high military score intimidating possible opponents to stay away
2)Woden and ljubljana tied into a bloody war with a pissed-off Archduke on the other side of the map
3)suboptimal's frequent passivity and inertia - sub is not an especially reactive or aggressive player. If his plans didn't already include an attack on Nazca, then I don't think he'll rapidly shift gears to make me his new target. He'll keep going with his initial plan, whatever it was.
4)The constricted terrain - I can spam ships and block up the sea lanes while the core cities to the south throw out ships rapidly to sail to the rescue.
tbh though even getting one or two settlers out will mean the city has more than paid off my investment - I risked nothing in its capture and will lose little with its loss.
Close to home, Sissoi Veliki is founded and I work a little two-step with the builders:
The first builder harvests the deer for 56 production into the city, which I dump off into a monument - we'll finish the monument on the city's second turn of existence with .5 overflow. More importantly, though, the SECOND builder steps onto the forest. Next turn, with the monument finished, I can chop the forest straight into the lavra for another 56 production, and then polish off the remainder over 3-4 turns - just in time for the city to convert and the lavra to become productive. Thus, we speed the completion date (12 production for every turn it's operational!) AND don't waste either our deer or our forest. Nice.
Also, note that later, Sissoi Veliki and Sevastopol can become shipbuilding cities - I need only build a canal out of Sevastopol or Borodino to open them to the sea, so in the late game, these will still be contributors.
In the west, Hong Kong is 17 turns away from conversion.
I hope Navarin and then Petropavlosk (due in ~12 turns) will bring that down a little, but it is what it is - I'm not spending more faith on a missionary when that's 1/3 the cost of a settler. I miiiiight recruit an Apostle for Wats and another for Religious Colonization, which will end this whole conversion nonsense once and for all - but that's 800 faith, or another whole settler, and the attendant era score. I'd like to wait until the Medieval Era unless I desperately need the score. Once there, though, I think those are both worthy investments to make, worth delaying a settler for the ~5 turns it'll take to regain that faith. That way the 3-4 cities on the islands will settle without my religion, which is fine since there's no tundra up there, but then the ones out of Hong Kong will have it right from the start (and Petropavlosk, but it'll be surrounded by my pressure and should convert naturally on its own).
Abroad, ljubljana founded his 7th city - I think 5 self-founded ones and 2 conquered city-states, counting the one he took off Archduke. Um, Kaiser finished a splendid district, likely a harbor since he's already got a campus and holy site and why the hell would he build a theater square? We'll see next turn in his Income and the GA page. I think suboptimal ALSO finished a splendid harbor.
I found Rapa Nui and pin it as a potential liberation target for Australia in the distant future. I'd figure the Russian navy would pound the city into submission and Marco can just sail a ship in to double his production for 5 turns.
Woden...still has built only the one holy site, as far as I can tell. Bold move. They're depending entirely on on-map science and ljubljana's Golden Age Cothons to keep afloat in research, and it'll be neat to see what happens if they don't get a medieval golden age. Sub bought a builder last turn, which seems kind of bizarre when a settler gets you a city AND a builder - but wait, does he not have an Ancestral Hall yet?? I bet not! Ahaha. Glorious, glorious. Long live mother Russia.
Overview:
I think everything I'm building is self-explanatory? Lemme know if you have questions or criticisms.
All these burning bridges that are falling after me
all these lonely feelings and the burnin' memories
Everyone I left behind each time I closed the door
Burning bridges lost forevermoooooore...
Welcome back, my friends, to the thread that never ends -
We're so glad you could attend, come inside, come inside.
To the report!
Next builder pops out of Borodino. Its main purpose is to harvest that marsh so as not to waste food when I place the aqueduct - with districts to precious to me I want as much growth as possible. Its other task will be to reconnect my sea turtles as amenities are growing tight, with so many mouths to feed. I was going to plant a lumber mill on the forested hill, but, well, I have other ideas that I think are slightly more efficient. More on that later.
We harvest and get Borodino 5 turns from size 7, when it can plant its harbor:
With the remaining time, I could either build the aqueduct - which I place to lock in the cost - or go for a temple. I opt for the temple, for a few reasons:
1)More faith = more settlers! Plus I will soon have Yerevan under control and it boosts temples.
2)I want to be able to recruit apostles soon. The settler surge has probably raised antennae across the world, and if the others haven't caught on already, they certainly will this turn after I settle 3 cities in 2 turns.
3)With another temple, it'll boost monarchy and speed us on our way to a tier II government.
Our housing lasts til size 7, at which point we can build a harbor and a lighthouse and largely solve the issue, long enough to get the aqueduct down anyway.
Our second chop of the turn is at Sissoi Veliki:
56 production knocks the lavra time down from 14 turns to only 4...coincidentially, the city converts in 4 turns, too.
Now, I mustn't go mad with power. The biggest danger to us at this point is provoking a union against us (and Jongs). I need to keep a little under the radar, need to play cautiously, and reach Frigates as rapidly as we can. Assuming we can avoid an attack by two teams, or a concerted Jong offensive, until that point, we SHOULD be in the clear. My mediocre research has helped iwth that, but regrettably we're creeping up there - we are now third in science, behind Kaiser and Marco, and third in culture, behind Woden and Roland. A silver lining to Australia's slow development is that we are, thankfully, on bottom of the scoreboard so we don't look TOO scary...I hope.
In the tundra* great white nothing, my archers shoot up a warrior:
We need to intercept and kill that scout before he reaches the camp or we'll have a huge frickin' headache of barb swords and archers to deal with.
My ships start to scout the areas near Shikishima. Lots of small islands here, worth settling.
Regrettably, though I have the ability to, I think it's unwise, as it'll leave me stretched too thin and will provoke a union against me. I should let these go for later and concentrate on easier to defend islands. I also need to coach myself to get out some quadriremes after the essential infrastructure is done at KS and Borodino - I will go into Maritime Industries when D&P comes in, and kick out a goodly squadron until I'm comfortably in the lead on military strength. Right now my only real plan for Jongs is "muck up his pathing with lots of units and wear him down while racing for superior tech", which isn't fantastic but do you have better ideas? The good news is suboptimal has problems of his own - his income is low enough that I think he'll only be able to afford to upgrade about half a dozen in ~15 turns (I expect them at the era change), although Roland could mess with that timeline. And producing jongs is - well, they're 300 production apiece, with no card in sight. Imperator Aleksandr, my best city, would take 12 turns to build a single one. And a blessing in disguise of their lack of niter is that sub will NEVER be able to build quads to upgrade after he unlocks them, no resource constraints - so the initial wave of half a dozen or so is all we have to weather.*
*
In theory, Sub could use his civilizational ability to faith-purchase jongs. However, at the 2:1 conversion ratio, jongs would cost 600 faith. At present, that's enough for...1 jong every 12 turns, empire-wide. In 12 turns my entire empire could churn out about 12 quads. Place yer bets.
I don't think I can overbuild military at this point, so after the Aqueduct and Harbor finish at my two main cities I'll try to get out a force of 10 or so quads, which should slow down 6 jongs that can't use the ocean long enough for emergency programs to bring up reinforcements. That's my anti-jong plan!
Sub is very close to Shikishima indeed:
He's settling the large island, and is probably using Monumentality here to steadily fill it up. He won't be as effective as me, since his faith income is half mine, he doesn't have an ancestral hall, and that in turn means he has no Magnus+Provision, so he won't be as quick. However, I do know he has at least one sword on the map, since about turn 76, per the spreadsheet. So I daren't set foot on that island without a sword of my own. The plan is to swap to iron working in 2 turns, hitting 20 iron just as I unlock the tech, and I'll upgrade my warrior in the area. Then we'll cross and seize the southern tip of the island, which has good terrain, and use that as a shield to settle Novaya Zemyla. My fleet will concentrate at Shikishima and that will defend the main approaches to Russia, with a weak flank at Hong Kong exposed to Norway (but that coast, apart from Hong Kong, is difficult to attack).
Since it will be divided between Russia and a foreign power, I have dubbed the large island Sakhilin.
Side note:
I spotted sub's great prophet last turn sailing south of the island. Apparently he's being used as a great scout??? Then why go to all the trouble of building Holy Sites??? What a waste of production! You could at least found a religion and deny some of the good beliefs to the other teams!
Actually, I think I know what Sub and Roland are up to. Their plan was probably to get Choral Music, so Indonesia could build holy sites that give both faith for ships/civvies and culture for Mercenaries (Jongs), thus solving a few problems. However, when I took Russia, they realized that Indonesia wouldn't get Choral Music in time, so they had to grab their key faith with China instead. That sort of works, but there's so many problems they created for themselves as a result:
1)China had to take the (for itself) suboptimal Choral Music belief instead of the much better Divine Inspiration, which would let Roland get faith from all these wonders, which he could use to purchase Chinese superbuilders.
2)Indonesia has no access to the Sacred Places founder belief, so Sub's stuck with a gimped religion.
3)Founding a religion and converting Indonesia would require Roland to spend faith on missionaries to stamp out the new Indonesian religion and let sub pick up Choral Music again.
4)Both civs now have to build Holy Sites to properly exploit the religion, but that diverts valuable Chinese production from things like Harbors and ships.
So the end result is that they GOT their Cultural Holy Sites for Indonesia, but at great cost: Indonesia has a mangled religion that he can't fully exploit, and China either has to build holy sites so as not to "waste" Choral Music OR waste his own follower belief so he can focus on the more important harbor+warship combo that would actually make China dangerous. Each civ is stuck with half a religion, effectively.
I think it would have been better for Roland to just take a Chinese-centric religion with Stonehenge and trusted to luck and the Force with the other half. Racing Japan would have been difficult but not impossible if they had to have Choral Music, and if Russia took it, well, then I would ahve foolishly left Work Ethic on the table and my entire gameplan is built on Work Ethic. OR Sub could have ignored religion entirely, relying on his Indonesian abilities and Earth Goddess to give him a bank of faith to spend on ships, and otherwise played a conventional game with harbors + Free Inquiry. I think he would have been much more dangerous that way.
As it is, China has great research rates but I don't think he's going to really do anything with it (anyone expect a Chinese frigate rush? Roland's built like two military units all game), instead building a glorious, wonderful island and being more or less irrelevant there. Sub will have a handful of jongs but that's his entire bolt, and once the era of those passes in ~30 turns he'll have to rely on his own expansion.
Tentatively, I think I can take the Grandmaster's Chapel, and once I'm satisfied iwth my settler count, I can pray for an army around Shikishima and sweep over Sakhilin in a tide of blood, while all my cities spam ships. My main plan to win is to smash every other opposing navy one by one if possible, THEN start reducing islands. Don't invade an enemy island UNTIL I've got total naval superiority, then the game will be basically locked up.
Wow, that digression on my suspicions of Rolandoptimal's strategy got so long I needed to stuff it into a spoiler. You can read it or ignore it as you like, lurkers. Actually, that's true of everything I write, so never mind.
Let's turn to the home front!
We found Navarin...
Navarin starts its Lavra, but has no good chops within reach. Instead, I'll build it the conventional way, hooking up seafood to speed growth to size 2 and bring down the completion time.
...and Olsyabya, giving us 3 cities to our nearest rival's 7, good for some era score:
PLEASE pay no attention, everyone else. Keep your petty wars over marginal city-states, keep sending ships to the bottom by the bucketload. Sub, decide I'm too hard a target, but that you can definitely catch up if you just attack someone else with jongs. If you do that, my friend, I think I can run away with this thing, because I don't think either Wodenjana or the Central Powers can stop me on their own.
With the initial island largely settled (Petropavlosk should be settled ~t95, 7 turns to build and ~5 turns to walk), I move and begin planning my medieval empire. I think I can get Borodino to size 10 in reasonable time and possibly Knyaz Suvurov as well with creative use of food tiles. At the capital I plot a proof-of-concept IZ:
It would have a +4 adjacency, I think - 2 from the aqueduct, 1 from the quarry, and 1 from the pair of mines. A lumbermill/mine combo MIGHT also give +1 but I'm not confident of that, and it might be better to use a builder to chop out that forest into the IZ and then mine the remainder. The zone would reach Navarin, Imperator Aleksandr, Knyaz Suvurov, Borodino, Oryol, and Sevastopol.
Now, on the whole, I don't like Industrial Zones. They typically cost far more than their return provides and take ~100 turns to repay their costs, not worth it, especially not if you go crazy and slap down one per city. BUT if you use the radiated production, then the return on investment comes down a lot, and if the game goes late a coal-powered factory hitting 6 cities would really juice the production.
So, I pin 6 possibles, but I shall likely build only 3, each covering a minimum of 5 cities. On the main island are 4 possibilities:
3 here and 1 over by Oslyabya that's unlikely to ever be built (can't manage more than a +2 and food is limited over there). I'll possibly only build 1 or none of the western zones, which would be largely redundant - one reaches Petropavlosk and the other reaches that city AND Hong Kong, but has half the adjacency.
Overseas, I pin two possibles on my islands:
Actually, the Novaya Zemyla zone should go one tile northwest, which lets it hit Shikishima. Oops. The one on the mainland is purely speculative since I havne't scouted that terrain yet but it would hit an envisioned southern island enclave, and be a base to push north against Indonesia.
Finally, purely for fun, in the Atomic Era I could get a +9 theater square in the great white nothing at Oryol:
*technically all of my cities save 3 are in the tundra.
Actually, hang on, I could get a +5 zone west of Navarin. Slap the aqueduct southwest of the city on the tundra hill. With the harbor, a +3 IZ becomes available at size 7, reaching just short of Borodino to the east. Late game, if I have the spare hammers, I could build a canal on the flats north of the city, which would only be useful for the +2/+4 hammers it provides...so probably not worth it, not sure how much canals cost but if it's even 200 hammers then it would take 100 turns to repay its cost. Ah, well. The +3 might be worth it, though.
What a great analysis of the Chinese/Indonesian religion! I don't have anything to contribute, but I think you were spot-on.
Ultimately, I think faith tends to be an opportunity-cost trap in civ 6. You have to devote a large amount of resources to it in hopes that you can succeed. On the Realms Beyond forum, Russia's been used so frequently that everyone knows how to avoid most opportunity-cost traps. (Not always, though - look at Ljubljana in pbem 19). However, for other faith generators like Indonesia, China, Japan, Arabia etc. there's so much luck involved that it's hard to successfully pull off a faith-generation strategy.
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