Boosts religion, does nothing to help you get one or generate faith to attempt to use it. Bonuses for being on a non-starting continent, doesn’t help you get there.
Yes. YES! YEEESSSSSSS!
Just kidding.
Under the Gathering Storm rules this civ is largely a builder civ with some good naval benefits. Given the pooh-poohing of Industrial Zones by the lurkerati in PBEM 15 I don’t know that this is high up on my list.
This one’s another hunker down civ, though Encampments and Commercial Hubs come early enough that these abilities could matter. Having the early wildcard slot vs. a military one could be useful. Winged Hussars show up at Mercenaries but need to be built from scratch. The relic bonus is, I believe, useless in MP. There’s been 16 PBEMs here and...zero relics. Intriguing, though.
District production bonus, ranged unit production bonus, yield bonuses to mines on resources and an upgraded archer. The Nubian Pyramid comes too late to help get a pantheon and is likely a situational improvement. However, getting to Craftsmanship fast to unlock Agoge and spamming archers (and a few warriors) might be a good way to take out a couple of city-states (or even a player) relatively early. The production bonuses to districts and ranged units are multiplicative with Magnus – a harvest for a district is worth ~2/3rds of the district cost (close to 80% with a Nubian Pyramid) and getting out quick archers and crossbows becomes a breeze, especially if the relevant policy is slotted.
Call this the favorite out of the starting gate. Time to do some experimenting in SP.
I will jump in dead lurking as well. I like your reporting style. Probably will be too busy to contribute much but I can try. As for your civs, you are right Nubia is far and away your best choice. Production is king in civ 6 and they have it early and in spades. Victoria would probably be a second choice mostly because the royal dockyard is still good, navies are still important, and extra iron stockpiling could be helpful. I am a bit wary of Poland. Military slots are useful, so I am not sure you will get much by converting one to a wildcard. I guess it means you could run Oligarchy effectively for a mid-game push with GG? Extra gold from TR is nice I suppose.
Guesses for what others will pick in order from most to least
Alhambram: Persia, Australia, Korea, Inca - actually a hard one. Korea is a good builder, and Australia is maybe even a better one, but I think Persia is just too good to pass up. Inca can be great but are very map dependent.
Cornflakes: Rome, Macedon, Japan, France - Rome is the best choice but Cornflakes might go warmonger and grab Macedon, Japan has been lackluster in most of the games its been played, France is just not very good
Kaiser: Indonesia, Mapuche, Greece, Mali - Indonesia can get an early religion, Mapuche are strong warmongers +10 vs Golden Age, Greece is ok, but the other choices are better, Mali is great...in SP but too slow in MP
Pindicator: Mongolia, Kongo, Sweden, Georgia - I think Mongolia is the only real choice, Kongo could be ok with early improved neighborhoods but its not great otherwise, Sweden and Georgia...ehhhh?
TheArchduke: Phoenicia, Russia, Germany, Scotland - I think he will pick Phonetician, mostly because he has played all the rest and seems to like to cycle. The rest are a toss up, but best guess as to the order.
TheBlackSword: India, Ottoman, Dutch, Cree - Chandragupta can be very strong with India, Ottomans abilities come a bit late but could be strong, Dutch are ok? like the adjacency bonus and extra culture are nice, Cree are more of a SP civ.
I played a few games through T50 or so with Nubia. Agoge + God of the Forge + Nubia = Lots of Archers. General opening was slinger x 2 -> settler then either warriors or a builder depending on how fast I was accumulating . Buy the first builder if gold was plentiful, build it otherwise. Could usually upgrade the initial slingers, build a warrior + 3 archers and start killing city-states shortly after that. Unless the city-state went on an archer spree 3-4 archers and a warrior are enough to take a city-state.
If you keep this, Nubia is almost certainly the strongest choice. Use archers to roll over nearby city-states early and get a boost. Gold should be plentiful from mines, and that can probably be enhanced. Pyramid is situational but one at home for the government plaza and other important districts might be handy. Does it boost buildings, or just the district itself?
Also, remember you can reroll. I'm not sure what your odds are there - we can work out which civs aren't featured in any sets and which you're likely to draw, then decide if that's better than Nubia.
Sorry, I was hit with some pretty grievous personal news on Friday and I've been distracted. So posting will be low for a while. But I still want to participate because I could use the distraction!
CMF, sorry to hear that. I'll try to do my best to offer some distraction.
Regarding Nubian Pyramids, they do not boost the district but rather "adopt" the yield of adjacent districts. For example, a pyramid between the city center, a Campus and a Commercial Hub will yield 1, 1, 1 and 1, plus whatever yield the tile has. It seems that the best place to put these are on desert floodplains between districts so that the food cost of working the tile is covered. I can't see putting one of these on bare desert and working it unless that city also had Petra. It also gets no adjacency boost from the Government Plaza.
Gold isn't a guaranteed "easy": the mine has to be on a lux/bonus resource to get gold.
Banzai, I just about agree with how you see opponents picking. Archduke might be inclined to take Germany given his violent tendencies towards city-states. I think Pindicator will either take Mongolia or re-roll. The good news there is that the resource requirements slow down Mongolia a little bit unless they do a chariot "rush".
Regarding the map my inclination is to focus on land-based warfare first and perhaps use the second settler to get a coastal city down. Alternatively we could plan to stay strictly land-based, attempt to take over the entire landmass and then turtle and work towards a culture victory. Thoughts?
Edit: I just suffered a Turn 1 defeat moving my settler through a floodplain. It was killed on the interturn by a 1000 year flood. Load the attached save and move the settler into the floodplain to the southwest. The shame is that barring the floodplain there's a good site down there (Cliffs of Dover, religious city-state, 32 bananas).
While strategy will ultimately be dictated by the map, I think both turtling and neglecting your navy is a bad idea. If there are two things everyone has learned in these PBEM games it should be civ 6 is an aggressive game (not recklessly attacking but its expand or die), and navies are very powerful. Last game specifically should have been a lesson in that. You tried to invade Persia without a Navy and paid badly for it. Turtling might work if you had terrain like Pin last game, but even then, he was Inca and was able to keep up in yields. Second settler does not have to be sea based, or even the third, but you should be looking for a good spot sooner rather than latter.
Something else that should have been learned from last game, everyone's expansion was too slow.
I like CMF's idea of figuring out what you might get from a re-roll.
(November 17th, 2019, 23:18)Banzailizard Wrote: BanzailizardWhile strategy will ultimately be dictated by the map, I think both turtling and neglecting your navy is a bad idea. If there are two things everyone has learned in these PBEM games it should be civ 6 is an aggressive game (not recklessly attacking but its expand or die), and navies are very powerful. Last game specifically should have been a lesson in that. You tried to invade Persia without a Navy and paid badly for it. Turtling might work if you had terrain like Pin last game, but even then, he was Inca and was able to keep up in yields. Second settler does not have to be sea based, or even the third, but you should be looking for a good spot sooner rather than latter.
Something else that should have been learned from last game, everyone's expansion was too slow.
I like CMF's idea of figuring out what you might get from a re-roll.
Hah, as you can see from my totally flat and wrong Nubia comments, my mind isn't all the way there. I'll try to shake off the cobwebs and get back up to speed.
But the key to a reroll is going to be working out the odds of getting a good civ, and then weighing that against Nubia. So let's see...
Quote:Alhambram: Inca, Persia, Korea, Australia
Cornflakes: France, Macedon, Rome, Japan
Kaiser: Mali, Greece, Mapuche, Indonesia
Pindicator: Sweden, Georgia, Kongo, Mongolia
Suboptimal: England, Poland, Spain, Nubia
TheArchduke: Phoenicia, Scotland, Russia, Germany
TheBlackSword: Ottoman, Cree, Dutch, India
Sirs Not-Appearing-in-this PBEM:
America
Arabia
Aztecs
Brazil
China
Egypt
Norway
Zulu
Canada
To simplify the math, assume everyone else doesn't take a reroll but keeps theirs (big if).
I'd say the best of the bunch remaining are probably China and the Zulu. Neither is clearly better than Nubia. The odds of drawing either of those, too, is 9 C 2, (I don't have a calculator handy to figure that), but it's north of 50%. So, not bad odds - do you think a ~50% at choosing Zulu or China (or whoever) is better than Nubia?
; played in Civ VI PBEM 4, 5, 15; DL suboptimal Civ VI PBEM 17
. Buy the first builder if gold was plentiful, build it otherwise. Could usually upgrade the initial slingers, build a warrior + 3 archers and start killing city-states shortly after that. Unless the city-state went on an archer spree 3-4 archers and a warrior are enough to take a city-state.
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