Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[Sullla]

Believe me, I understand not wanting to post and unintentionally give something away to the players. We definitely had issues with that in the early history of our MP games here. I do appreciate the support though, and as always, feel free to ask away with mechanics questions since Civ6 is still new to most of us.

Turn 46 was waiting me for when I returned home from work:



I lost vision on TheArchduke's scout this turn, and that means it can only be one place: on the southern coast, sitting on the tile between the fish and stone (two south of the spices where my slinger is standing). Well, this isn't the way that I would have preferred it, but that scout is going to have to die now. I can't have a 3-move unit running around in my back lines to threaten builders and settlers and the like. Sorry TheArchduke, but I gave you ample chance to move your scout away, and I moved up a slinger last turn as a warning. You chose to run deeper into my back lines, and that scout will have to pay the price. I should be able to corner this unit with the slinger on the spices and my additional slinger coming out of the capital in 3 turns. Beyond that, I have another slinger and two warriors further out to cut off the escape routes. There's no way that unit is making it out alive at this point.

The one bright side: I have a good chance to trigger the boost for Archery tech (kill a unit with a slinger), which I didn't think would happen in this game.

The capital finished a builder this turn, which I moved onto the grassland hill tile. I want to get this tile mined right away, before that enemy scout can move into the area and potentially look to capture it. Roma will work on the aforementioned slinger next, sadly without the Agoge bonus in place (sigh). On the plus side, there is a food growth bonus for being in positive happiness, and that's driving regrowth back to pop 5 faster than expected. I will probably go for another settler next at the capital for the southern coastal location, after swapping back into Colonization civic at the next policy swap.



My other builder completed a plantation on the bananas this turn, then vanished since that was the final builder charge. The +1 gold is nice, but the real reason for improving the bananas was to get the half point of housing, which together with the spices plantation allowed Ravenna to get out from under the housing penalty. That will last for three more turns, and then the city will be back to the housing penalty again. This city needs a Bath district in the worst way, which will add a free amenity and four more points of housing. Someday...

By the way, I don't know if anyone noticed from the screenshots, but the builder in Arretium was 3 turns away from completion last turn, and again 3 turns away from completion this turn. That's because finishing the builder in the capital scaled up the cost of the other builder in Arretium. Each successive builder costs 4 more production; the first one costs 50 production and they keep going up from there. It's an interesting way to do the balancing, and it works pretty well in practice. I've never felt like the builders were too expensive in the late game, and it keeps them from being disposably cheap the way they get in Civ3 or Civ4 once cities have started to max out.



Here's a wide angle shot of the map with the settling lens turned on. You'll note that most of the map is already a sea of red in my part of the world: no eligible city locations allowed. The oasis is a critical spot to control because it's the last source of freshwater available anywhere near my start. Once I claim that spot and the southern coastal location, there's almost nowhere else a city can go. The inland locations that lack fresh water are almost useless, since they hit the housing penalty at size 1! Only with an aqueduct (or better yet a Bath) can they become viable.

The spot northeast of the oasis is particularly useful to claim. It will grab the easternmost of the two horses on the first border expansion, and there will be almost no way to claim the western horses location because the city will lock out any other cities within 4 tiles distance. There's exactly one spot remaining for another city: the tile northeast of the iron resource, and I do plan to put a city there later in the game. It's next to a mountain and can therefore build a Bath district, which immediately makes that spot viable. With all of the desert tiles nearby, it could even be a potential Petra location - it's not like there's going to be much competition for Petra on this map with so little desert.

Only one notable thing in the score tracking this turn: Yuris' score went down by a point, which means he finished a settler. All three of the other players therefore have settlers out on the map somewhere right now. I guess I should have expected that, since everyone else picked up Early Empire and Colonization policy about 8-10 turns ago, used it to build a settler, and now have them moving around on the map. We'll see who gets what spot - I think I'm in pole position to claim the oasis based on what I saw from teh. Yuris is probably in the best overall shape of my competitors as a result of capturing that city state. He'll be able to join me at 4 cities despite only building 2 settlers, and that's accelerated his start considerably. At least he lacks free Rome culture and doesn't have any envoys with Cultural or Scientific city states.

EDIT: Oh, and yes I swapped from Currency to Archery tech this turn to avoid wasting beakers. Forgot to screenshot that!

[antisocialmunky]

What are your thoughts on the settling restrictions in Civ6? Do you like that its much harder to find even feasible city spots now or do you feel like all the restrictions with freshwater/settling distances/minimal viable production detract from the game?

[shinghand]

Thanks for the updates, appreciated as always

You mentioned grabbing the tiles adjacent to Mount Everest for the +Faith - how important do you think faith is for a Civ 6 MP game?

[Sullla]

Excellent questions. Antisocialmunky: I think the settling restrictions are a great idea for Single Player games, and together with the scaling cost of settlers/builders, they work to put a brake on expansion that avoids the punishing penalties from Civ5. There are no downsides to expanding in Civ6: no corruption, no maintenance costs, and per-city penalties as in Civ5. Bigger is always better, and that's exactly how a Civ game should play. However, in the early game you can only realistically settle cities next to fresh water, and that limits where you can put settlements. As the game progresses, you get the technology to put cities pretty much anywhere, if you're willing to cash-rush buildings to provide housing and send trade routes to provide production. Rather true to real-life history, for what that's worth. I'm also OK with cities having to be 4 tiles apart, because this game's One Unit Per Tile rules means that you need more separation between cities.

Now the key question: does this work for Multiplayer? I think it does, but MP games are going to need maps that are carefully crafted to have a lot of freshwater spots. This map simply doesn't have enough of them, and it therefore places a primacy on the few spots that do have fresh water. Basically, once we have a real Civ6 map editor, just make sure that there are rivers all over the place and I think this will take care of itself. Alternately, you can have games like the one we have here, where city placements are critical and players can lock one another out of large sections of the map. That's not entirely a bad thing either, as long as everyone knows what they're getting into. (Keep in mind too that this is a Tiny map size; much larger maps won't have as much of this issue.)

Shinghand: the short answer is that I don't think faith is very important for a MP game. Or a Single Player game, for the most part - religion could use some buffing to make it more powerful in Civ6. Poor faith. That's not to say faith is completely useless though; Great People can be bought via Patronage using faith, and if you have some passive sources of faith coming in, that's nothing to sneeze at. A Classical-era Great Person costs 750 faith to purchase via Patronage, and the cost goes down as you get Great Person points of that type. If I'm racing someone else to a Great Person we both want, the passive faith generation that I have rolling in could make the difference. And there are some elements of religion that are genuinely helpful to have; Work Ethic gives a percentage-based production bonus that's very good in the late game, Jesuit Education lets you purchase Campus and Theatre district buildings with faith, and of course my pantheon required faith to establish, which has been a gigantic help throughout this game. So generally speaking, faith/religion are not that great, but they do have their uses.



Turn 47 arrived this morning, and it was another quiet turn. No cities grown, nothing finished in the production queue, no new techs or civics. Here in the center of the map, I'm using my slinger and warrior to screen the path ahead for my settler. I don't want to lose a turn of movement due to the city state randomly walking a warrior into a tile I want to stand on. None of the other players appear to have units in this part of the map either; my settler's insane vision would be able to spot them. So all looks good to have my new city founded on Turn 50 as planned... hopefully!

Note that I've started moving my warrior who had been camped out on the plains hill tile east of Arretium. That warrior is heading for the roads towards Ravenna, in an attempt to block the retreat path of TheArchduke's slinger.



That slinger is still invisible at the moment, but it must be on the tile east of the iron hill. That's the only logical place where it could have moved, since it was northeast of the stone resource last turn. I intend to pin that unit between the slinger on the southern coast, the slinger coming out of the capital, and the warrior moving down from Arretium, with my third slinger currently guarding the settler as another backup unit if necessary. Now the slinger will likely move north towards my capital next turn, but it can't attack and capture the builder because of Civ6's movement rules - with only 1 movement point left, it can't climb the hill tile to capture the builder. (I will rule out the extremely unlikely case that this scout has already earned enough experience for a promotion somewhere and has the "can move through hills" promotion. You can see if an enemy unit has a promotion in Civ6, so even this would only be possible if TheArchduke has earned the XP for a promotion and not used it. I'm willing to take that risk.)

The other thing I wanted to highlight was the growth bonus for being in positive amenities. There is a +10% bonus to food surplus (not total food) when a city is happy, and that's causing the capital to have +5.5 food/turn instead of +5 food/turn. This is enough of a benefit that it's quite useful to have your cities in the green on happiness, especially since those food boxes get very large very fast in Civ6. My builder is going to improve the jade resource next; I wanted to get the grassland hill mined first because Roma is about to grow onto that tile (I prefer 2/2 yield over 2/1 and 1 culture yield) and I had to get the mine finished before the scout shows up.

The only item of note in the score tracking was TheArchduke regrowing his capital to size 5, where he fell into unhappiness and started working the tea resource for 2/0 and 1 beaker yield. As I said, a quiet turn.

[Sullla]

We did manage to get through two turns today. Here's Turn 48:



The center of the map remains quiet, very much the way I want it right now. I have my warrior camped out on the spot where the city is going to ensure another unit can't stand there and deny it from me, while the slinger protects the settler from a random scout or something wandering into it and dealing me a catastrophic setback. Otherwise not much to comment on here.



Back in my core, TheArchduke's scout moved pretty much the way I expected and now sits between my first two cities. He was not able to attack my worker on the grassland hill as I predicted. Meanwhile, my pair of slingers and warrior are converging on this scout's location in the hopes of attacking and killing it. Remember, TheArchduke can't move through my borders without declaring war, and that limits where this unit can go. (I would be happy if he did declare war to try and run his scout away, as that would trigger the boost for Defensive Warfare civic.) I also swapped off Archery tech in case I can land the boost for killing a unit with a slinger; I think there's a decent chance I'll be able to pull that off here. If I'm wrong, I simply get Masonry tech a little sooner than otherwise, and Apprenticeship a couple turns slower. Not a huge deal.

After a few quiet turns, a lot of things are going to finish in my cities in the next few turns. I'll also be getting two population growths and planting a new city in the next couple of turns. The big news in the fog is that Yuris planted a city with his settler, making him the first to four cities. Of course he did that by whacking his nearby city state, but that's still a nice coup for him. I would love to do the same with the city states near me; perhaps I can manage it with just my warriors and slingers. (I can't upgrade to legions because if I finish researching Iron Working tech, I lose the ability to train warriors.) However, if I finish Masonry tech and could get a battering ram or two done, that might be enough. I'll need battering rams for my future military campaign anyway. Worth thinking about, especially since capturing the Holy Site district at Yerevan would also push me towards founding the first religion... worth thinking about in the upcoming turns.

[shinghand]

With turn 50 soon coming up, how well do you think you've done for yourself? Is there anything you feel you could have done better, etc. Also, how do you think your competition has done so far?

[Sullla]

That's an excellent question shinghand. From my perspective, things have gone almost exactly the way that I planned before starting this game. In order, those goals were something like:

1) Meet at least one city state in the center of the map first for the free envoy. (I almost got both of them!)
2) Land the Lady of the Reeds and Marshes pantheon. This has been worth close to 100 production already after factoring in modifiers at all of my cities.
3) Successfully claim the spot I wanted in the northern double river region. This was the closest thing to a failure - thanks TheArchduke for settling where you did!
4) Be the first one to the governments, and use the early policies to my advantage. I was the first one to a government by a wide margin.
5) Successfully claim the spot I wanted in the central oasis region. This will be achieved next turn.

The only thing that didn't go according to plan thus far was the need to purchase that one tile at Arretium, and the fact that I ended up losing the copper tile to TheArchduke. Still, if that's the biggest setback to date it's been a very good initial 50 turns.

Among the other players, Yuris has done the best with that capture of the nearby city state. It's essentially allowed him to run even with me in city count instead of being a full city behind, like TheArchduke and teh are. Since I haven't met Yuris yet, it's hard to know more than that, but he's definitely running close with me for first place position. The biggest weakness for Yuris is culture; he has 4 civics researched to my 8 civics, and he still needs a while before he can reach a government. I put TheArchduke in the next position, as Roman culture and the free envoy he scored for meeting the Scientific city state have done a good job of snowballing his techs/civics research rate. I will say that I do not like TheArchduke's city placements though, for what that's worth. Teh has played the weakest game to date at this point, which is surprising because he was the first to two cities. He does have a settler out on the map somewhere, but he still doesn't have his third city established yet, and the map is filling up fast. Teh is looking more and more tasty as a target for attack down the road.

I'll post a picture of the score rankings next turn on the Turn 50 dot exactly. For the moment, we're still on Turn 49:



In the middle of the map, I am prepared to establish my fourth city next turn, right on the tile where my warrior is standing. I'm glad that I had the foresight to claim this tile with my warrior, in case one of the city state units happened to wander up here by mistake. It would be a shame to lose a whole turn due to that. By claiming this spot, I also hope to lay claim to Vilnius down the road; ideally, I would like to wait for the city state to build a Theatre district first (which it will since it's a Cultural city state) and then take it for myself. Once I have legions, it will be trivial to conquer this spot.

Meanwhile... what's that at the top of the screen?



TheArchduke's settler has found its destination at this city of Arpinum. The location is very odd; I'm quite sure that the northern half of this map is mirrored like the southern half, which means that Arpinum is located one tile away from the oasis. Try looking at the other screenshot above; the Arpinum location is the equivalent of being on the tile northwest of my current settler. I don't know why TheArchduke would pick that tile; perhaps Yuris has a city nearby that excludes him from the oasis? But no, if Yuris had a city on the northern oasis, then the Arpinum location wouldn't be valid either. I'm going to assume that there's some reason for planting a city one tile off the oasis that I can't see, because on face value this decision makes no sense at all.

Remember, cities planted inland with no fresh water hit the housing penalty at size 1! That's -50% growth from the turn they are founded. Then even if they do manage to grow to size 2, they get hit with an even more severe -75% growth penalty at size 2. Yikes. I suppose TheArchduke could cash-rush a granary there to help Arpinum, except wait, no, he just spent almost 200 gold buying tiles for Mediolanum and has all of 50 gold in the bank right now. Granaries cost 240 gold so that isn't happening. Arpinum does have good tile yields but it's going to be stuck at a runt size for ages on end. For that matter, TheArchduke still has no luxuries connected in his territory, which means both his capital (size 5) and Mediolanum (size 3) are unhappy right now. So while this represents a good job of claiming territory, TheArchduke is working way too many unimproved tiles and needs more builders desperately.



In my core, there's a good bit happening right now. Tactically, I'm trying to corner TheArchduke's scout, a surprisingly difficult task given their 3 movement points. I have a slinger in position to deny movement along TheArchduke's preferred southern coastal route. This will drive him to the north, and I think I can block the three tiles southeast of Ravenna, which along with the city itself will make it almost impossible to escape. I would love to see TheArchduke declare war on me in an attempt to escape, which would trigger the boost for Defensive Tactics civic and save me an awful lot of culture. That's a civic I plan to pursue next and it's an expensive one at 175 culture. I'm curious to see where TheArchduke goes next from here with his unit.

Ravenna grew to size 5 this turn, re-triggering the housing penalty, and picked up the fish tile for another 1 gold/turn. There's little point to working the 3/0 rainforest tile over the 2/0/1 fish tile; the difference was 14 turns to grow versus 16 turns to grow. What Ravenna needs is a Bath district, and that's still some time away. It will eventually limp its way to size 6, and that's plenty for right now. There are no more good tiles for this city to claim anyway. Arretium finished its builder this turn and farmed the floodplains tile to take it to 4/1 yield. That helped the city's growth noticeably, and now I can go mine the copper tile and the plains hill tile with the other two builder charges. I want to have Arretium start on a Commercial district for its next build, however I don't have Currency tech done yet. I have the city putting its production into a warrior for the moment (without Agoge policy again, sadly) for lack of other things to build.

The capital completed the new slinger that you see east of the city. I'm going to have it work on the Encampment district for the moment until hitting the next civic swap, then work on a settler for the southern coastal spot as soon as I'm back in Colonization policy. In other words, we'll go Encampment into settler then back into Encampment, and then Roma will likely have to start gearing up for my projected war after that. I'm going to want about 7 warriors total (5 more since I have 2 already) and a pair of battering rams. With luck, I can do the battering rams a little bit earlier and use them along with some warriors to capture Yerevan down there in the south. I would love to have that city state under my control sooner rather than later.

Major changes in score this turn, with TheArchduke founding his third city (following Yuris founding his fourth city last turn) and teh completing Political Philosophy this turn. Teh is therefore my first competitor to reach the early governments, and he's elected to go into Classical Republic like me. No way to know which policies he's picked, but they must be fairly peaceful given the non-Military slots of that government. I ended up having a government to myself for 12 turns; hopefully that proved to be a large advantage. Time will tell.

[Tyrmith]

How big an army do you think the Aztecs need to be a serious threat to anyone? How big a window do they have to do damage with their unique unit you think? Everything's so crammed together on this map they don't have to travel far it seems.

[Sullla]

Tyrmith: Yuris definitely has two luxuries connected by now, which means his Eagle Warriors are strength 30, and that's enough to be a major threat while everyone else has only slingers and warriors. If I'm reading the numbers correctly, he has 3 Eagle Warriors right now, and that's definitely enough to take a city off someone if they aren't prepared. Cities only have a base strength of 10, and while there is a penalty for units attacking cities if they don't have a battering ram or siege tower in place, the strength 30 versus strength 10 difference is pretty massive. If all three Eagle Warriors showed up next to me, I'd be hard pressed to defend my cities. Now with that said, the window for the Eagle Warrior rush is starting to close. Everyone should be getting access to archers in the next 10-15 turns if they don't have them already, and archers are amazing against warriors, and still good against Eagle Warriors. If I had my three slingers in position and upgraded them all to archers, they could probably stop three Eagle Warriors from capturing a city. It would depend on the tactics involved, of course. I'm hoping that since I'm the furthest one away from Yuris, and also have significantly higher power rating than either TheArchduke or teh, I won't be a target here in the early game.

It's the big Turn 50, and a major turn for my civ:



I founded my fourth city by the oasis, just as planned from the beginning of the game. So far, so good. Interestingly enough, not one but two of teh's units appeared this turn: a warrior in the west by TheArchduke's territory and a slinger over in the east. That must mean that my unit tracking was incorrect: teh doesn't have 2 warriors and 1 scout, he has 1 warrior and 2 slingers. Interesting; he has only built two slingers the whole game. Also of interest: teh has settled his third city, and it's just visible peeking out from the fog off to the east. In fact, because this map is mirrored, I can tell that he went for the identical location as my Arretium off to the west. We have the exact same three city sites thus far. But I have four cities to his three, and my third city was planted 13 turns earlier, which means that I'm definitely running in front on empire development. If I were teh, I'd be concerned about Yuris on my northern border, because with only 2 slingers his cities have to look pretty tempting to those Eagle Warriors. (Teh's warrior is off there in the west; his new city is completely helpless if the Aztecs tried to attack right now. 2 slingers would be worthless against Eagle Warriors. Umm, please don't tell Yuris that lurkers!)

I also finished a trader in Ravenna this turn and shifted its destination over to the new city. I want to get a trade route between Arretium and Aquileia for movement purposes, and the new city can use the +1 food / +1 production more than the older city. It even speeds up growth to size 2 by one turn, dropping it from 5 turns to 4 turns. Of course, the trade route will also boost Currency tech and allow me to finish it next turn after a delay of several turns.



TheArchduke's scout moved in a way I didn't expect, sliding right past my slinger on the coast. What the... Oh wait, since we're not at war he can move through my slinger. Argh, I forgot about that. That means I'm not going to catch this guy, and perhaps that's for the best anyway. As long as the scout leaves my territory I guess I can live with it. Saving 25 beakers on Archery tech isn't worth the diplomatic headaches by creating an enemy with my northern neighbor. Well, I certainly looked like a fool here, but them's the breaks. (There's another piece of information from TheArchduke that I'll get to in a minute that mitigates against being too aggressive with him.)



Elsewhere, my capital is continuing work on the Encampment district at the moment, before switching over to a settler next turn when I can policy swap back into Colonization again. Roma is getting a very nice 14 production/turn right now, plus another 5% bonus from being in positive happiness, and that will be 22 production/turn with the Colonization bonus. Settler finishes in 7 turns with some sizable overflow back into the Encampment district on the last turn. The builder is going to hang out for the moment with that last charge and improve something at the new southern city on the coast when it gets founded (probably mining the iron resource). Ravenna is now starting on a builder for that same city, as I'll want to improve the iron, cows, spices, and chop a forest to produce a pair of galleys for the boost on Shipbuilding tech. All of that is still a ways away, of course.



Internationally, the biggest news is that teh has founded his third city and TheArchduke reached Political Philosophy to select his government. Teh opted into Classical Republic like me, but TheArchduke has chosen Oligarchy. That's the weakest of the three options if you're going for peaceful development, and the most dangerous by far if you plan on attacking someone. Oligarchy has a passive bonus of +4 strength for melee units, and it's something I plan to make use of myself down the road. Is TheArchduke planning on pushing for Iron Working tech and then attacking someone? It's hard to know at the moment. However, this is the other reason why I'm now backing away from getting frisky with his scout. I don't want an angry Oligarchy-touting Rome to my north. TheArchduke doesn't have enough gold on hand to try and upgrade warriors into legions, and he doesn't have enough production to train legions at any kind of fast speed. Still, I'm going to have to be careful here, and I want to stay on good terms with TheArchduke if possible. We've had mostly friendly relations thus far, and I'm happy to keep things that way.

It really looks like teh is drawing the short straw here for a future attack. Yuris and TheArchduke both look like they'd be significantly harder to attack. No need for a final decision any time soon, but that's the direction I'm leaning. Now for some Turn 50 comparisons:

Score
Sullla: 61
Yuris: 56
TheArchduke: 52
Teh: 51

Here's how that score is broken down:

Cities/Pop
Sullla: 4 cities / 13 pop
Yuris: 4 cities / 12 pop
Teh: 3 cities / 10 pop
TheArchduke: 3 cities / 9 pop

The map is mostly full at this point, which means that a lot of the pop growth is going to have to be upwards from here, not outwards.

Techs/Beakers Per Turn
Sullla: 6 techs / 13.5 beakers
Yuris: 8 techs / 10.4 beakers (?)
TheArchduke: 8 techs / 9.8 beakers
Teh: 7 techs / 9.4 beakers

Civics/Culture Per Turn
Sullla: 8 civics / 15.3 culture
Teh: 6 civics / 10.5 culture
TheArchduke: 6 civics / 9.3 culture
Yuris: 4 civics / 4.6 culture (?)

I have the most beakers/turn and culture/turn by good margins. Poor Yuris in particular has weak culture since he's not Rome and didn't start near a Cultural city state. He may have built a monument by now, I can't tell since I haven't met him yet. I'm still officially down in techs researched, but I will be able to complete 3 techs in the next 5 turns and that should sort that out nicely.

Military
Sullla: 85 power (2 warriors, 3 slingers)
Yuris: 84 power? (I suspect 3 Eagle Warriors; my power is listed as higher than his at the moment)
Teh: 50 power (1 warrior, 2 slingers)
TheArchduke (2 warriors, 1 scout)

Overall, I'm pretty happy with how things stand. I think I'm in the lead or close to it in the major categories, and so far my big picture plan for the game hasn't been throw off yet. I hope the next 50 turns can go as smoothly.

[antisocialmunky]

How does the government system work in Civ6? You can't switch back to a government you've abandoned right? And the bonus you get from a former government is proportional to how long you kept it right?