Singaboy and Sullla's team thread

[Sullla]

Uh, Singaboy... one of those Cultural city state warriors is standing on the desert tile where we intend to plant the second Chinese city. But I'm sure it will move away next turn... right? Let's hope so.



The southern barbarian saga finally came to a close this turn with the barbarian horseman suiciding on my warrior. With that being the third barbarian kill for Rome, I picked up the boost for Bronze Working and even scored an envoy with Lisbon since that was apparently the quest they had offered. With the Mysticism envoy, I can become the suzerain of the city state. Too bad Lison's unique ability is pretty useless (trade routes can't be pillaged on water tiles) but the visibility up there in the north would be helpful. The warrior actually increased in health this turn from 32 to 38 HP, which means that the barb horseman did all of 4 damage, heh. I moved onto the plains hill for vision and will wait there for the settler to arrive in a few turns.

Craftsmanship civic completed and I swapped out Discipline for Agoge:



This is a bit on the dangerous side because my units have no strength bonus against barbarians and both of them are injured. The hope is that we can ride out the next few turns for the moment without getting into too much trouble. The southern camp and that northern wandering barb scout were both eliminated just in time. My plan is to grow the capital to size 4 (for the Early Empire boost) while turning out four straight slingers, then flip into Colonization policy and get out more settlers. The four slingers will all upgrade to archers and then attack and capture the Industrial city state in the south. While I'm building the slingers, I hope to clear the barb camp in the east and get a kill with one of the slingers to boost Archery tech. That's the immediate plan for the next dozen or so turns; we'll see if I can make it happen.

No district building for me any time soon! I might place a Campus or Encampment district but I won't be building either one for a while.



Here's an overview screenshot. I'll move the northern warrior into the city center next turn, healing there for 1 turn back to full strength, and then head east to poke around the barb camp and get warning of anything incoming. I really want to scout more in the southeast and southwest to see what we're dealing with in those areas, which should be doable as slingers get completed and the two warriors finish healing.

Not a single score change from any of the other teams in between turns. Singaboy and I have retaken the score lead for the moment. While that doesn't matter all that much at this stage of the game, better to be ahead than behind. And having 3 civics finished each while most of the other teams only have 1 civic done is pretty significant.

[Singaboy]

Good job eliminating the southern barbarians while getting an envoy and the Eureka. Spotting a warrior from Lisbon is also a little more reassuring that danger from the north should contained.
I am wondering whether it makes sense to move your green warrior back into the city to heal. You are wasting tree turns that way, move heal move. Wouldn't a simple two turn heal do the same job while having slightly more tiles uncovered?

My worst fear has become real. Antananarivo has so far caused more trouble than done anything good. Let's hope that dreaded warrior will move. Those warriors are most likely chasing the barbarian scout. I will check what is the most sensible move now. Need to provide space for them to move while making sure they don't keep on occupying that 'golden' spot. Looking at our target finish time for Stonehenge, a one turn delay won't be a disaster, but annoying nonetheless.

[Singaboy]

Turn 21:

The dreaded situation. Let's hope that warrior moves away and is not replaced by the other. In the meantime, my warrior is healing while being promoted. It can start moving again in 3 turns. However, I might need to guard the stone so that none of the warriors can occupy it. I am planning to move the slinger north to chase that scout.

State workforce has been started but will be taken offline before getting to 40% of course. As I have no need for Agoge at the moment, I left the +5 strength against barbarians in play. Might turn out to be pretty handy.




Unfortunately, as I expected, the cost for tile purchases has gone up by 5 to 60 gold.



By the way, in the worst case, I could settle in place but would have to buy two tiles for an additional 90 gold (we have it but would rather spend it for other stuff). It might be a consideration if that warrior is still blocking access to the planned settling spot. Oh another issue, I rather work the oasis than the cattle for an additional 1 gold. We better take whatever we can get

[Sullla]

Yeah, there's no reason for me to move my northern warrior into the capital to heal. He can move southeast, heal on top of the hill tile there while providing vision off to the east, and still be in the same spot as he would have been otherwise. Thanks for the suggestion. Regarding the idiotic city state warrior, it's not the end of the world if we get delayed by a turn on the city being settled since we have those "turn not building Stonehenge" lines in our current micro plan. Obviously it's something we would prefer to avoid though. In a pinch, the tile to settle would be the one WEST of the oasis; we would then put Stonehenge on the plains tile another tile west, and the Pyramids on the original city spot tile, and so on. The main disadvantage of founding there is that it kicks the horses tile out into the third ring; otherwise it's essentially the same city.

If the tile is still blocked next turn, I'd move onto the oasis tile and then take whichever of those two tiles is unoccupied on Turn 23. And I agree, keeping the warrior on the stone tile for now to prevent it from being blocked (and working the oasis over the cows tile on the first turn) are both good ideas.

Here's some useful information from another thread about Jesuit Education:

I also confirmed that faith purchase cost is half the gold cost and twice the production cost.

180 for Library
500  for University
300  for Amphitheter
580  for Art/Archaeological Museum

That makes the research lab and broadcast center both cost 1160 faith if for some reason we would get that far. It's a fantastic conversion ratio and a major reason why we want Jesuit Education so badly.

[Sullla]

It's nice having Fridays off from work. When the turn arrives in the afternoon, I'm already at my computer and can play immediately.



This was a really dull turn for my civ. I moved the northern warrior onto the hill for visibility and will heal there for the next two turns. The southern warrior fortified on the plains hill tile down there to heal as well. And... that was basically it. Irrigation tech finished for me, and completing the tech sent the boost over to Singaboy, who also finished the tech via China's 60% boost trait. He'll be getting those spices and sugar resources connected shortly, and that's a big deal because we can use the boost from being in positive amenities. My capital needs the +10% growth bonus pretty badly; getting 4.4 food/turn instead of 4 food/turn would help a lot. Everyone else only has 2 techs completed to our 3 apiece, with the exception of Mikeforall's Khmer who appear to have met a Scientific city state and also have 3 techs done. Looking good here, Mining queued up next en route to Bronze Working.

Now for the big question: did the city state warriors decide to be a huge jerk to us?



Nope! Singaboy will get to settle his city as planned right on the turn we planned it. Thank goodness this worked out. Note that the settler's insane vision radius has also revealed a barbarian scout off to the east. With the city getting planted this turn, Singaboy will be free to send his slinger off to the east in the hopes of getting in a clean shot, which I think would do enough damage with Discipline policy to claim the kill. The warrior can hold position on the stone tile until we get the cash-rushed builder up there, healing in the process, then go off to the north in search of the barb camp that spawned this scout. I'm really glad we spotted the barb scout again; it would have been super annoying to have this unit pop up at Xian with no warning right when the current builder being trained finished.

By the way, are we interested at all in some kind of naming scheme for our cities? This would be the time to think about that with our first new settlement going down.



With such a slow turn, let me show you the scoreboard. Both of our civs actually have 20 score points for a total of 40; the score tracking always misses anything that happens at the start of your turn, or during your turn, and therefore doesn't include the tech that both of us discovered this turn. We're actually in first place by score, for whatever that means, and about to get further ahead when Singaboy picks up 6 more score points (5 for the city and 1 for the pop point) on his turn.

Singaboy was not the first one to get a second city down; Chevalier Mal Fet did that last turn, landing his second city on Turn 21 to Singaboy's Turn 22. This explains why he was stuck at pop 2 for so long, as he finished a settler on the same turn as population growth. I believe TheArchduke is doing the same thing; his capital has been stuck at size 2 ever since I took over from Brick. I expect he'll found his second city this turn or next turn. The difference is that Singaboy was able to get his capital all the way to size 4 while still cranking out a settler just as fast as they did at size 2, which means significantly more science and culture from the additional population. Both Chevalier Mal Fet and TheArchduke are at 2 techs / 1 civic to Singaboy's 3 techs / 3 civics. Now a lot of that is due to finding the Cultural city state and having China's 60% boosts to discount costs, but it's still a noticeable difference.

It's hard to tell who's doing the best right now. The Japper/Mikeforall Team 0 is doing the best by score, but they look like they'll be a bit slower to get their settlers out by virtue of going for an early Holy Site district on Mikeforall's Khmer and what looks like a builder from Japper, though I'm not sure of that. EmperorK and TheArchduke (Team 1) have been slow out of the gate to start, which is to be expected given their civ picks. Their score is somewhat inflated because the Lavra district from EmperorK's Russia was worth 6 points instead of 3 points, so scores of 17/13 points are more appropriate for them. If Archduke plops down a city as I'm expecting, they're probably doing fine though. I think the team in the most trouble is Woden and Chevalier Mal Fet (Team 3). Their score only looks good because they have a second city and no one else does, which will be changing in the next few turns. They have a total of 6 population points across 3 cities, and both of their leaders have 2 techs / 1 civic done. Unlike the Russia/Germany pairing, they don't have awesome lategame civ abilities to fall back on. Nubia hasn't even gotten out an early district yet with their civ ability. I think they're the most likely candidate to fall behind the rest of the pack at the moment. We'll see if that prediction holds true.

[Singaboy]

Turn 22:

Very nice turn indeed thanks to the good news delivered by Sulla. Antananarivo is a great city state, didn't I always say that
I am free to settle the city, buy the stone tile and the builder and go broke at the same time. The city works the Oasis for a turn before switching to the stone tile as per spread sheet.
I send the slinger after the scout in such a way that it could potentially cut the path if that scout tries to move south. I sure hope I can block it or eliminate it.

I am now leading in score with 26. This will surely get the rest of the teams to see us as a top priority to eliminate. Anyway, mining also drops a turn via the added science. The city is automatically named Changsha. I have not thought of a naming convention the way i did in PBEM4. Do you have anything in mind Sulla? Wwe can always rename our cities.



I proceed to assign the bananas instead of the sugar to get the builder to be done next turn but even the new UI doesn't update that. It still shows the builder done in 2 turns when clearly, the hammers should be sufficient. This is quite annoying. To test whether this is due to some rounding issue, I assign a 2 hammer tile and clearly, 40 +11 should produce the builder next turn but the interface doesn't want to agree. Strangely, it correctly updates the growth numbers.

I change the citizen back to the bananas and I should get the builder done next turn. In any case, the city will still grow in 2 turns as the food will be at 28.8 and that's enough to get the city to >33 the following turn. I am really curious whether I will get that builder out.
On an after thought, could it be that the builder now actually is 54 hammers as I just purchased one and the cost increase is yet to be reflected? This could well be the reason though, I still am not sure whether a purchase also scales the cost. I has to be the reason as the cost for a builder has gone up by 15 gold as well. I should have known that, but in the heat of the moment, I couldn't find a reason for the strange UI.




Finally, a look at the Great People to ease my mind about the Great Prophet race. Both competitors, Emperor K and Mike are more than 20 turns away from getting a Prophet. We should be getting our Religion in 12 turns. Some buffer left here.

[Singaboy]

Another question

Sulla, you mentioned for my warrior to move north to smoke out a barb camp there. I had initially planned to send that warrior south to explore the territory there a bit more in detail. However, if your southern warrior will do that job, I can well send my warrior north to go after that camp that certainly has to be somewhere there.

[Sullla]

On the worker question, this is another case where Civ6's interface doesn't explain what's going on. The cost to produce a worker in Xian went up by 4 production as soon as we cash-rushed the worker in Changdu, so it now costs 54 in total instead of 50. That's intended by design, and the problem is that the interface doesn't update to reflect what's taking place. Perhaps we should have waited 1 turn to rush the builder and simply paid 15 more gold in Changdu; we certainly have enough money on hand. Oh well. I think we still have plenty of time to get the builder over there and drop in its last two charges for the Stonehenge construction project. We can have the Chandu builder put in the first charge on Turn 32, then move it out of the way to have the Xian builder drop in a charge on Turn 33, then use the final two charges on Turn 34. In other words, I don't think this will delay the wonder's finishing date, and we have a lot of extra leeway there anyway before anyone else gets their religion.

Two different rivals sitting there at 2 Great Prophet points/turn is interesting, I hadn't seen that previously. We know that EmperorK's Russia innately gets 2 Great Prophet points/turn from the Lavra, but Mikeforall's Khmer is more interesting. I wonder if he cash-rushed or built a shrine in his capital to keep pace with Russia? The only other option would be getting to an early pantheon and picking Divine Spark, which would also be fine with us. In either case, that team is scrambling to get to the first Great Prophet. We might see Russia or Khmer try running a Holy Site district project to make sure they beat the other one. Both of them are going to be really sad when we yank the first Prophet away from both of them while investing far fewer resources.

Regarding exploration: yes, I was thinking of having my southern warrior, the one that's healing at the moment, go west and explore along the river down there once it's back to full health. That would free up your warrior to try and stomp out the barbarian camp that must be up in the north. I think that's the best use of those two units right now.

[Singaboy]

By the way, if you look at the spread sheet, we are still on schedule even with the builder out on T24, spices improved T25 etc. The builder was never planned to be out on T23 anyway.

[Sullla]

That's good to know that the builder isn't delayed any later than what we thought. Looks like Xian can go back onto a heavy food diet this turn and get right back to size 4 again.



What an uneventful turn for me. Both warriors are healing, no barbarians in sight, no techs or civics close to finishing. The settler will be next turn though, and it will head for the plains hill tile where the southern warrior is healing. ETA on the settling date is Turn 27. Then I can finally get started training slingers for a while until Early Empire civic is done and I can adopt Colonization for some more settlers. Singaboy, my upcoming plan is to have the capital train four slingers then a settler, and for the second city to open with a trader build for the Currency boost, followed by a settler as well. Then after putting out the double settlers, I'll do a round of builders to improve tiles at those cities. The hope is to have four cities plus the conquered Industrial city state in hand by Turn 50.

There's more interesting news over by Singaboy:



The barbarian scout decided to attack Singaboy's slinger for some reason. That will set up an easy kill for the Archery boost and Singaboy's second barbarian kill. The city state units were even kind enough to move out of the way so that the Chinese warrior can start moving north to explore for a barbarian camp up there. All good stuff.

In terms of score tracking, there was a lot of action last turn. In addition to Singaboy founding his second city, EmperorK and TheArchduke also founded their own second cities as well. If you want proof of Russia's strength as a civ, look no further than this: EmperorK was able to build a Lavra and still get out a settler for a Turn 23 second city. Those things are disgustingly cheap when placed at the start of the game. Now there was a tradeoff for those fast settlers from them, and that tradeoff was no quick builders. Their team went settler before builder from both players, unless they did something like builder into settler which feels like it would be crazy for a game with barbarians on. But maybe, I'm just reading the numbers and making inferences. I suspect neither of them has a builder out though because both of them have only 1 civic researched, i.e. no early Craftsmanship. We could have done the same thing but that would have meant no boosted Craftsmanship, no fast path to State Workforce for Singaboy, and therefore no early Corvee policy to rush Stonehenge and Pyramids. It also would have wasted the early game culture coming from Rome.

So we essentially traded a second city being 4 turns slower from Rome in exchange for the Craftsmanship boost. Was that worth it? Hopefully the answer in our specific case is yes. Those fast settlers seem to confirm that EmperorK and TheArchduke will be our biggest competition in this game. They have very powerful civs and they know how to execute an opening well.