The First Civ6 Lurker Thread

[Sullla]

Thoughts and comments on reading the lurker thread for PBEM1:

* MJW is as accurate as ever, suggesting immediately that there would never be another Civ6 PBEM game, and offering up this nuggest about Rome as a civ:

Rome. I think both players who picked this don't understand how bad melee units are in MP. The new movement rules are horrifically painful on offense. So they are useless for a timing push but they are still great for defense. This is a solid pick but their are better options for a sim-city civ.

Yep, if we learned anything in this game, it's that Rome is useless for a timing push. And if you're spamming another thread with posts just to try and cause a reaction from me... seriously, you need to find some new hobbies.

* This thread was on top of the "settling on coast" phenomenon from the start. Without beating a dead horse any further, that was definitely one of the biggest decisions in the whole game. Both TheArchduke and Yuris were behind the curve for the rest of the game, and never really caught up. Teh and I were the main competitors to win from the start of the game for that very reason.

* The posts in this thread also read the situation between myself and TheArchduke very well. I was constantly worried that TheArchduke would choose to use his early game unit advantage more aggressively, and he never did. The lurkers were all over that, and they were correct. Bacchus in particular had a lot of excellent posts in this thread that are well worth reading, like this one on player mentality:

What is really worrying is that Archduke doesn't seem to be thinking about Sulla's position, plans, strengths or weaknesses at all. Sulla's just there, he is scary, can't win a war against him. Even a very simple analysis of "I have sunk these cogs into an extra warrior, which Sulla hasn't, which means that I am ahead of him on military but seriously far behind on economy" would give his gameplay so much more purpose than it appears to have at the moment.

I'm glad that you weren't ded-lurking TheArchduke in this game, Bacchus.

* Regarding the discussion that popped up about when I placed my capital's Encampment district on a jungle tile without clearing it: the short answer is that I had no builder labor available to clear that jungle tile. The longer answer is that I wanted to lock in the cost immediately to keep the district from scaling up. There was no builder available to clear that tile in time, and wouldn't be a builder available for a long time thereafter. My first two builders were very tighly planned out with their initial six charges: the initial rice farm, horse pasture, and plains hill mine, then the second builder from the capital was needed to mine the jade resource and then mine two grassland hill tiles. I didn't think that I could spare a charge to chop that jungle tile, not least because I would have wanted to put the clear bonus into the Encampment district itself, which is very hard to set up (and something I didn't even know about until we discussed it later at Ravenna).

Could this have been managed better? Almost certainly yes, and I agree that I could have likely gotten more out of chopping forest/jungle in this game (although now that I've read the other threads, I think I did get significantly more from chopping than the other players). This was simply a situation where I wanted to use limited early game builder charges on other issues first. Arguably that was wrong, but that was the logic at the time.

* One genuinely new thing that the lurkers pointed out: becoming suzerain of a city state and then levying its military to attack. I barely thought about this while playing, and this would have been a very nasty surprise if it had happened. I never had enough gold to try this because I was always sinking it into unit upgrades. Spending gold on levying a city state's military though, yeah, that could be a game-changer. Really smart of this thread to pick up on this, which I don't think any of us playing the game did.

* I know that there was some discussion about lurkers overstepping their boundaries in this game, as seems to happen any time that I take part in one of these endeavors. For what it's worth, pretty much all of the most helpful suggestions came from individuals who were dedicated lurkers in my thread, especially Athmos in particular. We've always considered dedicated lurkers who only read one thread to be effectively part of the player's team, and I don't think anything in this game crossed the line. Beyond that specific point, however, this was also the first Civ6 MP game at Realms Beyond, and there was bound to be a lot of discussion about how the mechanics worked. Trying to shut that down would have been highly counterproductive and killed interest in this game for no good reason. There was nothing that a lurker posted that had a serious impact on how this game worked, and the conversations were part of the reason why this game attracted so much attention. I know not everyone agrees with me on this, but I think the lurkers behaved themselves just fine in this game, and added a lot to the overall competition.

* I did think some of the criticism of TheArchduke was over the top in this thread. Again, it was the first ever game of Civ6 MP and it's much harder when you don't have the advantage of seeing everything globally in the lurker thread. TheArchduke played no worse than Yuris in this game, he just had the misfortune to be the victim of a well-timed attack. The criticisms of Civ-related moves are always fair, it just felt like some of the posts were a bit harsher than needed. I did see that there were a number of other posts defending TheArchduke, and I think they were the right response.

* Mardoc made an interesting post that I want to respond to:

I see one more factor that I find concerning about Civ6 MP balance: I don't see much of any way to react to a foe.  Sullla went from being weaker than a city state to 3x the next closest in the course of something like 2 turns due to the power of upgrades.  From where I'm sitting, it appears that TheArchduke immediately went for his best counter, starting the research of Iron Working, building warrior(s), and trying to keep an eye on Sullla.  But he couldn't accelerate his research in any way, couldn't really rush production, and has no real way to boost his gold either.  Further, I don't see much of any way he could have had warning, other than 'this is about the time that Rome could get to Legions'.  Contrast to Civ4, where you can generally keep an eye on an opponent's Power, can emergency whip/draft an army, and can build enough units to keep a scouting network out where it will do some good.

How do you counter a timing attack like this except to get there first?  Suppose TheArchduke had built a dozen warriors, that still wouldn't let him fight off Legions.  If he raced Sullla to legions, and won, shouldn't he have attacked?  In which case it would be Sullla dying a couple turns before he could fight back.  I don't really think that a quick-draw duel is all that interesting of a strategic game.  It seems like large jumps in effectiveness between generations + upgrades combine to allow extremely large jumps in combat power that can't be matched by any other means.

The answer here is that you have to anticipate threats ahead of time, since you can't swing your civ to react on a dime as in Civ4. That's both a good thing and a bad thing. While I'm a strong supporter of the flexibility in Civ4, I feel that at times it can be almost TOO reactive. We've all seen the player who fails to anticipate an attack coming and then goes into a whipping/drafting frenzy to respond. You can't pull off that same kind of response in Master of Orion, and Civ6 works the same way. Big picture strategy in this game is going to be about seeing that attack coming and being ready before it hits. As some of the other posters responded, that means keeping some units on hand ahead of time (maybe older units ready to be upgraded but at least having something in place) and probably holding on to gold for emergencies. I think that in the future we won't see too many players running on zero gold as much as we saw in this game. It leaves you very vulnerable when surprises pop up. Anyway, this is absolutely a key difference from Civ4, and I think it will deserve more strategic thought as we move forward into future MP endeavors.

* The Yuris declaration on teh has been discussed quite a bit by this point, and I don't want to rehash that argument again (I'll probably include the best lurker posts in the website report laying out the different sides of the case). What I did want to respond to was this line that I posted at the time in my thread:

From a metagaming perspective, this is probably the best move that Yuris could make. Yuris is critically short of territory; he is sitting on 4 cities right now and zero room for further expansion through peaceful means. He must take over land from someone in order to remain competitive, and teh was the only realistic option due to the placement of Frankfurt. So from Yuris' seat, this is likely his best chance to become a major power. However, it's also undeniable that this attack heavily swings the larger picture in my favor. Teh's attack was the only thing that threatened my ability to finish conquering northern Rome and running away as the game's superpower. By plowing into teh, Yuris relives most of the pressure on my civ. In other words, this makes it more likely that Yuris will finish second, but it also makes it MUCH more likely that I'll finish first. Some people would approve of this as making the most of his position; after all, why is Yuris under an obligation to help teh stop me from winning the game? Other people would say that anything other than finishing first makes you a loser, and would condemn this move. I'll let the lurkers debate the merits of this in the lurker thread, I'm just happy to take advantage of it.

There were a lot of lurker posts saying that I was only evaluating this from my own perspective of what would help me win the game. That wasn't my intention though, and I genuinely do think that this wasn't a terrible decision by Yuris to make himself a player again in the game. However, I'm referring to the DECISION to attack teh, not the execution. The execution of the move was very poorly done, and doomed to failure immediately. Yuris should have been preparing for conflict at least a dozen turns earlier, and he simply put himself in too weak of a position when the time to strike came. When I was writing at the time in my thread, I had no idea what kind of units Yuris had in the area, since that was all fog of war for me. I assumed that Yuris had brought a decent attack force, enough to take Frankfurt and potentially Mainz as well. Similarly, Yuris could not see teh's army (since it was in the fog for him), and he thought that his little 2 Eagle Warrior + 2 archer force might be sufficient to make gains.

Now those of you in the lurker thread could see that Yuris' force was much too small, and that this attack was clearly going to be a failure. From that omniscent perspective, Yuris' attack looked foolish and like it was handing the game to me, and my comments looked like patting myself on the back in a gesture of self-congratualtions. But for those of us in the game, none of this was anywhere near as clear. I thought Yuris had a bigger army, Yuris thought teh had a smaller army, and a lot that was written ended up being taken out of context. I'm highlighting this as another example of how different things can be when engaged in the game itself. It's definitely a lot easier when you're watching from the sidelines!

* Also, the lurkers had a somewhat overestimated impression of my army in the later stages of the game, like repeated suggestions that I could easily walk right over teh and Yuris at the same time. I mean, I'm flattered if everyone had that impression, but taking on teh by himself was hard enough! I would have been hard-pressed to take on both of them at once. If Yuris had possessed an actual military and intervened earlier, it would have been touch-and-go for sure. Teh actually did a fine job of defending, with only very minor tactical mistakes. If he had been given 10 more turns to build/upgrade more crossbows, I don't think I could have pulled off the attack. I would have needed to wait for muskets and come back with superior units. It was a near-run thing despite all the advantages that I had. (Again, despite what this game might have suggested, it's difficult to break a defender's position in this game.)

Anyway, I'm glad that the lurkers had a lot of fun with this game, and happy to see that it seems to have sparked an interest in Civ6 Multiplayer. There were a lot of very insightful comments in this thread, and the discussion was highly entertaining for me to read after the fact. As a number of you mentioned, the biggest thing we need know is a formal map editor - come on Firaxis, it shouldn't be that hard to deliver!

[MJW (ya that one)]

You trashing Archduke like that doesn't prove anything! I even called it in the very same post! The real test is to ether use Legions without the gg or face someone down like teh who can take proper action against the Encampment (you can get around people figuring out your gg-less timing push by letting the warriors sit in the production queue). Now I have say you would have easily been about to take out Archduke without the gg but only because of the 4-leaf clover map, which allowed access to an empty capital, which won't be used again.

I'd admit dropped the ball on this being the only game. 4-leaf clover would only last for one game and random maps are unacceptable for a PBEM format. I overlooked the ability for someone else to generate random maps until you get lucky (edit: this was done in Civ5 but the random map maker in 6 is far worse; I overlooked someone rolling until the stars aligned not just blasting off 3-salt starts). Even Civ5, a much worse game, got more than one PBEM. This one was more of a dig against Firaxis. (Edit: Post #64 in this thread shows that I knew how bad the map-maker for this game was before you posted about it. Also, was pretty sure that someone would call me out on the title right away but that didn't happen.)

Nothing else in the lurker thread comes to my mind.

[shinghand]

I agree with almost all the points made here Sullla, will just add a few thoughts:

Re timing pushes - I very much agree with you about how difficult it was to attack teh, and it was not as straightforward a stomp as many people think. I'd also make the bigger point that tech (and $ for upgrades, as a smaller point) is the most important thing that influences fighting ability.

Looking at the few conflicts or almost-conflicts we have in the game, in chronological order:
1. Yuris thinking about attacking teh with 3 eagle warriors, but didn't because he saw teh's archers - slingers get absolutely mauled by Eagle Warriors, but they cannot take out archers unless in overwhelming numbers.
2. Sullla attacking TheArchduke, quickly eliminating his core but slowing down considerably when Archduke got out legions - this was mainly because of the increase in city strength civ-wide
3. Sullla attacking and demolishing teh just before crossbows could come into the field - teh only had 1 crossbow for Sulla's initial strike which took out most of his archers, leaving him unable to mount a credible recovery afterwards

I'd conclude that tech is important due to:
1. The large jump in strength in between units, and the way combat works in Civ 6 (e.g. 20 str warriors to 40 str legions)
2. How easy it is to upgrade units in the game, which only gets cheaper when Professional Army is unlocked
3. The large strength jump empire-wide once a single unit is built

Is this a good thing? I'd say YES, because as much as tactics are important, you still can't ignore the strategic element of it. YMMV

[TheArchduke]

Mardoc post is pretty onpoint.

Yeah I should have been more aggressive when Sullla settled towards me, but somehow I did not manage to get enough production going to just keep up.

My warrior was an immeadite face palm from myself as soon as I did.

[fahbs]

I think the big jump between military tech generations (straight from pikemen to bazookas? straight from bronze age swords to 16th century firearms straight to WWII infantry?) and ease of upgrades need to be toned down a bit.

I guess the warning that an attack from Sulla was coming would be in the great general screen. Nobody is going to race for an ancient/classical age great general then just sit back.

And back to upgrades, it's kind of silly that the optimal play they encourage is to deliberately hold back to one turn from completing a military tech. That way you can continue to build the older, cheaper, lower maintenance (zero in the case of ancient units) units, then finish the tech in one turn, instantly upgrade the next turn. That's 2 turns you can leap ahead with no prior warning. Being behind just 3 turns in research can really screw you.