[PBEM22] Friends with Benefits

[Krill]

Told you to stop trying to micro so tightly.

[Krill]

Thrawn I need you to take a step back right now and reconsider that everything you posted ignores 2 things: the warrior could have cleared out that camp by now, and a different galley could come to the Adab turtle.

I am not convinced that the current plan takes these threats into account.

I think we should swap Uruk to a builder. It is cheaper and the turtle gives far more yield than the monument.

[roland of gilead]

Sore one on the Turtles but you win some you lose some. The flip side to the Relic.

Saw the other day CPL bans trading of relics before turn 50 to stop monopoly of pantheons BTW.

[Krill]

I'll play in a bit

[Krill]

What is your plan if the barb galley by BB tries to interfere?

[roland of gilead]

Always possible the galley doesn't pillage the turtles i have seen stranger behaviour.

[shallow_thought]

I'm enjoying following this, although I stopped trying Civ VI long enough ago that some of the mechanics have changed, or been added to (or I've just forgotten!).

As for the annoying galley, the question is not whether the decisions have been right for this game, but whether they would have been "right" over the space of all possible games; this could just be one of the outliers where the best move was "wrong". Also worth bearing in mind that the actual aim is to enjoy the game, on average - winning is a part of that, but cannot be everything or misery is guaranteed.

That said, I still fully expect you to win, of course .

[Krill]

Thrawn I need you to take a step back right now and reconsider that everything you posted ignores 2 things: the warrior could have cleared out that camp by now, and a different galley could come to the Adab turtle.

I am not convinced that the current plan takes these threats into account.

I think we should swap Uruk to a builder. It is cheaper and the turtle gives far more yield than the monument.

Very good call on the builder. I shouldn't have tried to play quickly last night. Managed to come up with a much better plan this way and used the delayed EE to get cheaper GP and campuses.

Re Adab do you think the new ship should go that way? It will arrive 3 or 4 turns before a ship from BB can. I like the fleet deployment better otherwise, but there is an argument that BA has poor yields and is more in the back, so it's better to get the cultural CS up and running faster.

Always possible the galley doesn't pillage the turtles i have seen stranger behaviour.

Fingers crossed but I don't have high hopes for it...

Fingers crossed here as well, but what else could it do? Run at the long boat in some AI all seeing map hack, or attack the city? I didn't think the barbs would (or could) attack the capital city but this would be a problem if the long boat wasn't there.

Regarding Adab, let's be precise on this: what are our goals? My understanding is we want to grow Sumeria to a be a sledgehammer to break an opponent at a specific point in the game, and then go on from there based off the game state at that point in time.

Sumeria has a lot of conflicting routes to get there: get boats out to share pillage rewards early, get land units out to claim barb camps for random free stuff, build a solid productive core (which is based off harder to defend coastal tiles given pantheon choices and the Harbour game), and support Norway to cripple people so when the sledgehammer lands it is on a weakened, fractured player and not someone who is a prepared defender.

To do this we need to cut corners and one of those is defence, but we also need to make sure that Sumeria is not in turn weakened by a maurauding opponent or the barbs.

We know that Norway has a separate but connected goal: weaken those opponents, possibly remove one of them from the game. The CS are one way to grow Norway rather than settlers (but then later Colonialism may be a really strong option but that is not a specific goal, just an observation). But does Norway need to take out all of the CS? Probably, not like any of them are game breaking if we keep them. I'd argue that the culture CS is more important because getting it up shields Adab from barbs and other players meandering galleys (combined with BB it's a really effective breakwater and they will be size 4 and can provide covering longboats if needed). What does BA give us? Nothing that matters right now, and it might even be worth delaying the capture until I have a galley to help soak up XP (how much quicker would it allow a potential run at an opponent if we delayed taking out BA?)

Part of the issue is that barbs can always come down from the north. We can't picket, or use a sentry net to stop them. We are going to need to use an actual unit to stop them, and the most cost effective way to do that is to keep a longship nearby. Even once Norway gets Shipbuilding a land unit can't interdict or stop a barb galley and is at the mercy of a barb quad, which can start spawning because someone has Shipbuilding! I don't see a way around paying this cost, not as I am due to start putting down Harbours (and I get extra value from fishing boats, in otehr circumstances it might have been cheaper to just not pay this cost and focus on something else but we're committed now).

tl;dr: I think taking out the culture CS is more important and would consider skipping BA for now.

[Krill]

How many charges left on that builder? One?

[Krill]

I know you're joking, but there are upper limits to what you can keep in a visual field - after a certain point you just get neck and eye strain.

Going to use those builder charges on both turtles but what do you think about having a little wander up that one tile wide coastal water path which Kaiser has conveniently added so that players can interact.

I'd complain, but the idea of anyone using that path to attack Norway is an hillarious way to lose a game.