PBEM21 [Lurkers] can we beat the duration of PBEM18?

[Sullla]

No, it's a game over situation for sure, and it probably was on the setup screen. Thrawn has been the first player to take the same sandboxing strategy that our best players employ for Civ4 Multiplayer and move it over to the realm of Civ6 Multiplayer. He recreated the map and then exhaustively tested different options until settling on an opening that had the best returns while continuing to go back and tweak for better optimizations along the way. I've done this a number of times for Civ4 games and it makes a gigantic difference when compared to other players who aren't sandboxing their opening moves. It simply isn't possible to compete against someone who's devoting their time to optimizing an opening if you're just winging things on the fly; TheArchduke has done about as good of a job as possible with that mindset and he's getting decisively outbuilt. The other players are so far behind they have no chance and even Korea can't compete against a Germany where every city is rocking 30 production/turn. Thrawn's doing a perfect job of alternating between expansion and internal development, always timing his civic changes for best optimization, and once his Hansas are all ready he'll jump out quickly to 15-20 cities. That's probably when the game gets called if it doesn't collapse before then.

This has very little to do with Germany, by the way, and everything to do with Thrawn's meticulous approach to the setup. He would be just as far ahead with half a dozen other civs though this is a particularly good setup for Germany. (My biggest takeaway from this game has been the usefulness of early Magnus promotions as opposed to Pingala, that strategy seems to come out ahead through faster total expansion on any map with heavy forests/jungles.) Anyway, you're looking at the future of competitive Civ6 MP here. Either learn how to sim out the early turns or get annihilated by those who do. The same thing happened in Civ4 MP ten years ago and it's been a characteristic of our games ever since.

[civac2]

I got the impression meticulous sandboxing/spreadsheeting gains you a bigger advantage in Civ6 than it does in Civ4. The policy cards, chops (more impactful than Civ4 chops after the immediate start), relative lack of worker labor and the nature of technolgical advancement (eurekas/tech era discounts) all reward meticulous micromanagement.

[williams482]

I'm of two minds about this. On one hand, the results of this sort of meticulous planning are impressive and the reports are highly educational. On the other hand, it puts an enormous burden on players to invest a lot of time to keep up, and not everyone has the head for numbers or even the time to invest to get those kinds of results. Even Thrawn has talked about burnout from digging so deep on these things.

Obviously you can't reasonably ban being good at the game or investing a lot of time into planning, but when that's the only way to have a credible chance at winning games, there are going to be balance problems. Our Civ VI community is notably smaller and more casual than the Civ IV playerbase, and how we try to figure out how to keep games fun when not everyone wants to invest a bunch of time into micro planning is going to be a tricky question.

Or, people get used to not having much chance of winning from the beginning. Maybe Suboptimal has the right idea after all.

[MJW (ya that one)]

Banning "work harder" isn't possible but here are some other ideas:

Ways to cripple Thrawn
--Not allow him to join the game. This usually happens in reverse like Mike4All/Japper, that guy who give plako a settler in civ4 pitboss 4 and that horrible player who was worse than AI in pitboss 16. But we can go the other way.
--Handicap game. Give him worst start or force him to delete starting warrior.

Ways to make dogpiling easier

--Pangea, to make it easier to attack and still get stuff
--Public diplo thread.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Yeah, I just don't find the spreadsheeting/microing/simming fun, which is why I never did get into Civ IV. I like the high level strategic/operational decisions, and to a lesser extent the tactical wargame side. The city planning stuff is just an engine to set up fun campaigns for me. :P So the simming approach becoming de rigeur would basically knock me out of future games. Oh, well. I feel like Civ Vi is approaching the end of its multiplayer lifespan anyway, maybe we can all move on to Humankind together or something.

[Amicalola]

I haven't followed the game much but I found this conversation very interesting. I think players can be mostly competitive (if disadvantaged) in Civ4 without simming/spreadsheeting, although micro to some extent is pretty crucial.

I have the same impression as civac - it looks like simming/spreadsheets actually have a bigger impact in Civ6, where the individual bonuses are larger. I do hope the community doesn't inevitably become hardcore in that sense, although I'm not sure how it would be avoided.

[Bruindane]

It's a multiplayer game, so there balancing there. Unfortunately, it usually is about who can swallow their 'weaker' neighbor fist, and not about banding together to take down the strongest.

There's been a lot of discussions on how to balance the civs, the starts, teams, etc, but honestly for an interesting game for a range of commitments and skill levels, you need asymmetrical starts. I'm not too proud to accept a handicap, and still play to win.

Thrawn asked what he could do to make the game more interesting before mass concession. He could declare war on everybody, always-war style. The exposure of the suzerained city states may be more meaningful than the combined military threat.

[williams482]

That would be pretty funny if he did.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

one thing I wish was easier in Civ VI was a dogpile-on-the-leader syndrome, like in Diplomacy. Sure, it's a recipe for stalemates and forever wars if it's implemented badly, but as it is, once someone gets a sizeable lead in Civ VI, there's basically no levers to pull to bring that person down for the other players - the game is effectively over. You can't coordinate with others, 1UPT makes military cooperation difficult, and joint research is impossible.

Is there any instance of a player in Civ VI blundering away a clearly winning position, or being brought down by provoking all the other powers against him?

Even if thrawn declared war on everyone else right now, he'd still win in a rout. Marco and Alhambram can't get units to him, and sub and Archduke can both be outproduced and held off easily. They couldn't even do enough damage to force thrawn to build units instead of infra, letting the two 'militaristic' powers catch up.

[civac2]

That seems to be due to the map though?