[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[civac2]

This constant struggle to scrounge up production somewhere is quite fascinating. Is this a feature of Civ6 or would that be different for a non-crippled civ?

[civac2]

I got that from other threads. My question was if procuring it always requires so much improvisation and resourcefulness or if this is a special case due to suckiness (sorry ) .

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

a large portion of it is because Canada sucks. Late-game units cost hundreds of hammers, but modern developed civs should have Industrial Zones and factories and policy cards and trade routes boosting their hammers, we largely do not and are still dependent upon on-map production. In order to survive each crisis we have to cut corners to juuust barely get what we need juuuuuust barely in time - but of course the cut corners then come back to bite us in later crises. Williams has done an amazing job keeping so many plates spinning in the air at once, but eventually they'll come crashing down.

[williams482]

Firaxis' balance pack is coming out very soon, and unsurprisingly they did give Canada some much needed boosts. It's not going to solve our problems in this game, but it will help, and it could have made a real difference 200 or so turns ago when we were first settling the tundra:

Canada:
- When placed on Tundra or Snow: Mines and Lumber Mills gain +2 production, and Farms and Camps receive +2 Food.
- Mounties are cheaper, have additional combat Strength, and 1 additional National Park charge.

Well, the Mounties are probably still useless. but the food and production is nice!

EDIT: I just hope this update actually affects existing tiles. I'll be quite peeved if our current yields don't update.

[roland of gilead]

i wouldn't bet on it updating current yields.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

yes, that extra production and the buffed mounties are just what we need to break this thing wide open

(Khmer tho)

[roland of gilead]

we will be able to keep all civs open for picking in PBEM's so many so strong now.

[williams482]

And now, let's talk Era Score. Right now, everyone is in a Golden Age except us. If they drop to normalcy and we fall into darkness, we fall behind because our natural loyalty pressure is halved (1.0 per pop to 0.5 per pop) while theirs only drops by 50% (1.5 to 1.0). However, constant B&C projects will give us back an extra +0.5 per pop, plus 20 loyalty bursts when they complete, and Wild and Bruins are both excellent producers. With English loyalty greatly reduced, I believe we can hold those cities, but it will be close. A normal age would definitely be preferable.

The actual threshold for normal/golden ages in Gathering Storm is the following:

Normal Age: Era score at the start of the era + 5 * past golden ages - 5 * past dark ages + 1 * number of cities (not including the capital) + 14
Golden Age: Normal Age threshold + 14

Rise and Fall used 12 instead of 14 for the constants there, and the ancient era does not appear to conform to this exactly, but that one doesn't matter because it's the same for everyone and the game states it pretty explicitly. More to the point, here are the thresholds for all our rivals, with a little bit of estimation about prior ages:

Woden: 278 for NA, 292 for GA, 306 accumulated. Guaranteed golden.
Ichabod: 232 for NA, 246 for GA, 244 accumulated. Extremely likely to hit the threshold, but ultimately not important to us.
Suboptimal: 233 for NA, 247 for GA, 230 accumulated. He'll probably hit normalcy again, but in the middle of a fight for existence, I doubt he can rack up 17 era score in the next 8 turns. And in that case, we can probably keep any cities we capture.

That's a good thing, because I don't think we can reach a normal era this time around. Here are the Historic moments we could plausibly achieve in the next 8 turns:
- 2 for killing a unit with our Great General in range
- 2 for our first mountain tunnel
- 2 for winning the diplomatic victory resolution
- 1 for appointing all governors
- 1 for killing a unit with a "superior formation"
- 1 for a city placed within 2 tiles of a Volcano (Lightning qualifies)
- 1 each for completed trade routes
- 1 each great people

I have no idea if there are any great people in claimable range, or any trade routes on track to complete before the deadline, but if at least one of those is true then this is technically possible. However, it requires declaring war on Suboptimal before we are ready, spending our governor promotion on a useless Moksha instead of Victor's very useful anti-air promotion, successfully winning a diplo victory resolution this interturn without spending so much faith that we can't propose and then vote through the betrayal emergency, and a handful of other slightly tricky or somewhat inefficient achievements.

I think this coming era we're just going to have to live with a dark age, and hope that doesn't ultimately hurt our chances.

[williams482]

Turn 250 World Congress:

Two resolutions up for a vote, plus the diplo victory point resolution:



Fascism is the government Ichabod and Woden are running and we intend to pick up as soon as possible. Suboptimal is inexplicably running Communism. Boosting fascism seems most likely to pass, so I'll put one vote into that.



The only civ which has a wildly different great person profile than the others is Suboptimal, who is doomed. He needs more writers and musicians, if he still thinks he can make a culture push which he definitely cannot. Or he might want to use some of these guys as great scouts, I dunno. I'm essentially picking out of a hat here, but I'll got with boosting great musicians and hope he decides to actually put favor into that.

Last time the diplo victory resolution went through, Woden and Ichabod both voted to dock points from Kaiser, who was both the diplo leader and at war with both of them. Suboptimal, Kaiser, and I all voted for ourselves. I would vote for Suboptimal, because I am investing no diplomatic favor here and will lose ties due to turn order, but I don't want to give him free era score if I can avoid it. I expect everyone to just vote for themselves because nobody is close, so I mostly arbitrarily put a vote in for Ichabod.

Final tally:

[williams482]

Turn 251:

Some pretty wild results in the world congress, by the standards of such things:





Losing merchant points sucks, a little (we were about 10 turns away from scoring Levi Strauss), and Ichabod voting extra policy slots to Suboptimal's government is a little weird, but by far the most important thing here is that Suboptimal has spent his favor, and our emergency is still on the table. There will be no one to stop us this time.

On the Punic/Brazilian front, Osgiliath and Belém are both gone:



Our spy loses not only his job, but his life. Which likely suggests this city was destroyed by nuclear hellfire, not mere armies. How many more of those things can Woden possibly have? He's got Uranium for days, that's for sure. 247 stockpiled. Gondor is still building a nuke, still five turns out.

Woden also has a deal for us:



Yup, we'll certainly take that. Thanks bud!

Suboptimal's milpower has surged up a touch to 1374, slightly higher than the 1366 we could see deployed last turn. We now see an additional tank army plus a single tank that were not visible before, so expect another milpower increase for next turn. Tactically, Suboptimal appears to be pulling back to defend his capital at the expense of his smaller coastal satellite cities, but Glenda has taken no damage, and our ironclad has not spotted any Phoenician ships coming around the cape.

Suboptimal is probably suspicious of our troops snooping around as overtly as they are, but there isn't much he can do about it, and I can't imagine he's anticipating an emergency declared on him for his alpha strike half a dozen turns ago.

The loss of the cheaper unit resolution is plainly evident. Kings and Bruins will complete AA guns in 7 turns, simultaneous with the completion of Flight. Penguins is 8 turns out and cannot be easily microed past that, which leaves me with a slight conundrum. In 7 turns I'll be at 435/455 on the AA gun, and could finish it with a 199h chop, overflowing 179h into the 240h balloon build, which from there would need two turns of natural production to complete. Not fast enough. Instead I'll have to swap to the balloon immediately, chop it directly, finish with natural production on the following turn, then swap back to and complete the AA gun. Delaying that unit is fine, we have two others and the third isn't urgent.

Scores: