Okay, so what is going on with Indonesia's missing pantheon? Suboptimal is right, nobody else got a pantheon first.
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Lurking the Seven Seas
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So I've been watching this for the last few weeks and wondering: will roland actually be able to build Stonehenge here?
 The stone tile no longer seems to be present after settling directly on top of it. I seem to recall that bonus resources like stone disappear if you settle directly on top of them although I could be misremembering (or it could have changed in the expansions). Curious to see what happens here.
The stone is still there, but the graphic disappears. Archduke just settled on a grass cow tile, and now has a 3/1 city center with no graphical representation of the cows.
Interesting that Woden didn't even consider attacking the Chinese capital. He doesn't know quite how thin Chinese defenses in the area are, but he does know his longship is strong enough to do serious damage. That's a chance to set an opponent back a few dozen turns even when the city ultimately flips, which seems well worth the risk of losing a boat.
Easy for me to say when I can see the fog, of course.
February 3rd, 2021, 16:04
(This post was last modified: February 3rd, 2021, 16:06 by Alhambram.)
Thoughts about first 50 turns from all players:
Starting with team 1: Woden and Ljubljana are doing well and both are about to enter golden age. As I can see, Ljubljana's lands has room for 6 or 7 cities depending placements and each of them is going be strong productionwise, especially when lumbermills and extra production for mines are unlocked. I do question his 2nd city choice a bit, it is a fine city longterm but shortterm it suffers from lack of housing and lacking decent food tiles, I would have settled #2 city SE of sheeps which picks up 2 wheat tiles in 1st ring and setlle mercury city as #3 city. When Magnus arrives, Ljubjana can solve food problem by sending all trade routes from his cities to city where Magnus is established and allow his cities grow like a weed. Also I am bit suprised that Ljublana have current plan to use government plaza for industrial zones instead excellent placement around campuses at his post #108. Industrial zones comes in medieval age with apprenticeship and with current tech suffle we don't where apprenticeship is located, maybe at bad place at end of medieval age tech tree, till that time government plaza isn't giving any yields to other districts. Therefore it makes more sense to pair government plaza with districts that arrive in ancient or classical age and his initial campus layout was very good, each of them 4 or 5 yield and with natural philosophy it gets doubled. I think that Ljubljana is missing a good opportunity to run away with science with combo of his excellent campuses and free injuiry boosted Cothons. Woden at other hand is suffering from lack of production in his lands, he can plant 9-10 cities but all of them is not very strong productionwise. Reaching construction and apprenticeship do lighten the burden a bit but Woden is probably better off to do following three things: -Conquer city states. -Settle at sites with better production output outside his main island instead filling up his dotmap of his main island completely. -Raid other player's tiles for science and culture boost to make up for longer district/buildings build. At this moment till arrival of caravels/frigates, their fleet should be strongest of all teams and they should make fullest use of this advantage. Team 2: Roland and Suboptimal are doing both also decently well, plently time for both to hit golden age. Suboptimal did make excellent choice with his pantheon. Earth Goddess is a strong choice at sea maps, since coasts do give +1 appeal towards adjacent land tiles. Big problem for Suboptimal as I can see, is that he has just 5 decent city spots including his capital, so he should go on island hopping soon and his lastest posts indicates that he is planning to do this with faith buying settlers. He is favorite to settle majority of big empty island middle in the map, he just need to protect his settlers against Ljubjana/Woden fleet. Roland is handling China well, getting 1st religion with Stonehenge is good start. Scared Places belief is a new one for me and fits China like a glove and Choral Music seem less good at first view. But if it is for denial values against half priced holy sites from Japan and Russia, it is good trade off, also it allows Suboptimal gain extra culture if he starts building holy sites which is also a plus. Only little nitpicking thing is that he didn't chop forest before placing Stonehenge there. Overall it seems that he can settle 6 decent and 3-4 suboptimal cities. I am wondering whether he keeps building wonders and don't forget to build some navy too. Team 3: Poor dedlurker Cornflakes, I can imagine him becoming bald after pulling out his hair about how it went with this team. Marcopolo's moving his settler to SW and have no good 1st ring yields is a little disaster. I understand that he wants 1 coastal tile next capital out fear of Woden/Ljubjana, in that case one more tile W is also option and that is no problem for Australia due its housing bonus. In that case Marcopolo still need to buy one more stone tile, Chevalier picked Russia and with extra land borders he can easily give Marcopolo all gold needed for tile purchases. But honestly settle in place and creating a defense in form of archers and galleys is better option. Marcopolo fell for a pitfall that I also (and probably many players playing Australia) often fell for it: extra yield for campuses are more important than extra production for snowballing, my settling of Newcastle in PBEM 17 middle in desert is good example of this. Extra early science is nice, but what do you gain from it if your more modern units takes forever to build, against time that your units are finished, other players already have taken your cities with force. Aside that, Marcopolo also has tricky lands to settle. There are cities with good food output but poor production (his 3rd city) and at other side good production but with low food (his 2nd city). In total of 9-10 cities is possible. Also with Australia having starting bias around horses, it was excepted that horses whould appear close, yet here mining was chosen as opening tech instead animal husbandry. Pantheon hasn't picked yet, having a pantheon is always helpful. I hope that I am not too hard about Marcopolo since he is relativly new at PBEM, Marcopolo should use this as learning experience. Chevalier then, he did open with animal husbandry, yet I think that he should have opened with mining and builder in city, there are tundra hill, stone quarry and wet rice lined up for improvement to help his production poor capital in beginning. His lands is tundra barren, it seems a poor area at first, however if Chevalier manages to grab Work Ethic belief, then combined with lumbermilling all that forested tiles, his cities becomes a monster cities, cranking out 30-50 production per turn in roughly 8-9 cities. With this Chevalier should able to crank out frigates every 3-4 turns with Press Gangs policy set in every cities. Big weakness of his cities is that food is mainly from sea and eventual pillaging of seafood resources is going hurt Chevalier greatly. And as bonus Chevalier should spread to Marcopolo, Australia can also gain high yield holy sites, especially around Eye of Sahara. At this moment this team look be least likely to win of all teams but Chevalier's Work Ethic belief might turn around things. Team 4: Man this team got roughest starting position. Starting island lacks farmable resources, so they have to hard research Irrigation or Feudalism unless they invade/settle city next farmable resource. Also their main island lack a natural wonder, so Kaiser had to hard research Astrology. Snaky form of their main island also means that their cities are more exposed to naval aggression from other players. Kaiser got fairly flat lands as starting position, Meij resoration is very helpful here! Athough I do question chopping out forest at his capital a bit due already low production of his capital. TheArchduke lands is opposite, plenty production but low food till he improves sea resources and build RND's and lighthouses. I also think that it was better for TheArchduke if he settled 3rd city directly west of his 2nd city, but he didn't do it due barbs? His current 3rd city completely lacks any more than (improveable) 2 food resources in 1st 2 rings. Both players have roughly 6-7 cities to settle for themselves. I think that both players should go expand outside their main island as soon as possible, conquering city states and settling at other islands.
Archduke seems uncharacteristically unprepared for Phoenicia/Norway to contest his conquest of Akkad. That looks to be a very important early game battle upcoming.
 Feels like a major strategic blunder that Norway/Phoenicia allowed Akkad to be captured by TheArchduke without a fight. They will never be stronger than this era where they have double naval unique units and they conceded a strategically critical location without contesting it (despite having plenty of ships available). Geneva could be taken whenever they want - retreating from Akkad to take Geneva seems like a poor choice in hindsight. I'm well aware that the players in-game have less information to work off of but it seemed like there was plenty of time and vision to make a different choice here. Now that the early game is out of the way this should be a fun one to watch. I don't know who the favorite is yet and things seem pretty open still.
Not much commentary on this game but I wanted to highlight this:
 I hate suboptimal's propose city placements on the big island. Why? None of them are located on the coast! This is the Civ6 equivalent of planting Civ4 cities with the resources out in the second ring. None of these cities can train ships until they expand borders and then build a Harbor district which will be a looooong time. It also removes one of the greatest benefits of the Harbor district in Civ6's expansion: a lighthouse adds +2 additional housing to the city but ONLY if the city center is next to the coast. If the city is coastal, the Harbor + lighthouse combo is worth 3 housing and basically means you never need an aqueduct since the lighthouse + granary combo gets the city to size 7. The non-coastal city is simply slower in every way possible. True, the inland city is safer from enemy attack, but if you can't defend your stuff with ships you aren't winning the game anyway. Looking forward to the upcoming showdown at Akkad... 
So, here it is, battle of Akkad. I argee with Sullla that it was blunder that Woden/Ljubljana didn't strike Akkad sooner.
Instead attacking Geneva they should have taken Akkad sooner or even better: attempting to backstab TheArchduke when majority of his fleet was weakened after attacking Akkad. Instead a easy conquest of Akkad and destruction of TheArchduke's fleet, it is going cost them a arm and leg now to deal with TheArchduke's promoted Twilight Valor boosted fleet around Akkad now and the city itself. Regarding Suboptimal's city placements, with this he also forfeits +2  per city for being coastal due being Indonesian civ, which potentially can be used to purchase ships in future.
I agree with Sullla as well. There's really no reason for such defensive measures considering the game state. Graceland would be virtually unconquerable by early boats if settled in coast, as long as Sub got walls or even a few archers (there's only one tile to attack from). He'll have a headstart in the next generation of boats due to Jongs, so in that era he needs to think about offense, not defense.
It's even worse considering that China has no naval bonuses and is totally focused on development. Finally, it's not a case were he'll have few harbors and would get discounts for them. He'll have to pay full cost for them, most likely. |
