Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[Mardoc]

It would be nice if more of these turns came around to me in the evening instead of 5:50 AM, but the alternative is holding up the game for 12 hours until my work day is over, so early mornings it is right now.

FWIW, you probably can relax this urgency if/when you run out of time in the mornings.  PBEMs seem to always end up with someone holding the turn for 18 hours, and if you rush your turn, that just means that someone else gets to hold the hot potato.  You don't generally get more turns out of it except on weekends where everyone can play outside their normal window.

Of course, the flip side to that is if you hold your turn even just a couple hours past your promised window, that often results in a full day's delay on the cycle.  The most important factor in PBEM turn pace is reliability, so that everyone has the turn available when their promised window opens up.

[Sullla]

Oledavy: completely agree, the value of a pantheon is always situational depending on the surrounding terrain. The ones that directly boost tile yields are not surprisingly the most useful options, since Civ has always been a game about maximizing tile yields. Regarding Divine Spark, high difficulty in Civ6 warps the gameplay in the same way that it did in Civ4, where a whole bunch of the Deity Single Player strategies would have been idiotic plays in our MP events. You couldn't really chase after a self-founded religion on Deity in Civ4, and going for a self-founded religion on Deity in Civ6 should be equally difficult in my opinion.

Mardoc: while I see your point, it's way too easy for PBEM games to get bogged down when players start delaying turns that they could have played. As long as PBEM games maintain about a turn per day, interest stays high and things keep moving along. Once the turns drop to every other day, or every three days, interest craters and players have to start being replaced. Beyond that though, I enjoy these games too much to delay the turns even by a few hours. I used to check Civstats dozens of times per day for Civ4 Pitboss, and I find myself bringing up the PYDT client over and over again for this game. What, teh's had the save game for 45 minutes? Argh, when does it get back around to me again!!! Too much fun to sit around delaying for half of an entire day when the turn could be cycling back over to me.

Anyway, let's look at the current turn:



Well, there's not really that much news in Rome on this particular turn. I moved the warrior another tile back towards the capital, ready to sync up with the settler next turn when it pops out. Early Empire civic hits 50% of the culture needed - or more precisely just shy at something like 49.9% needed - and that caused me to swap to State Workforce to avoid wasting culture. I'll pop the boost for Early Empire when the capital regrows to size 4 and the second city grows to size 2. Otherwise there was nothing going on in my lands this turn.



That means it's time for more C&D speculating. All four players now have different scores for the first time all game. Here's a quick breakdown since it doesn't all fit into the screenshot:

Sullla (19 points): 4 pop, 2 techs, 3 civics
TheArchduke (18 points): 3 pop, 3 techs, 2 civics
teh (17 points): 4 pop, 2 techs, 2 civics
Yuris (16 points): 5 pop, 2 techs, 1 civic

Score changes for this turn were teh growing his capital to size 4 and Yuris growing his capital to size 5. As usual for Civ games, early score can be pretty deceptive. I think I'm in the best position by a small margin, with teh close behind me and TheArchduke clearly in last place. My brother Romans have score points from being Rome (extra culture) and stumbling into a Scientific city state. TheArchduke's actual civ development is quite a bit behind. Teh is mirroring me closely from what I can tell, between scoring the early Cultural city state to become pseudo-Rome in the early game, going builder-first, and having his capital grow at almost the identical turns as mine. He was one turn behind on growth to size 3 and growth to size 4. I wouldn't be surprised if he was going settler after builder as well, since his power also has remained locked on a single warrior and nothing else to date. I would love to see a military unit pop out from his on the Power tracking, but since that hasn't happened, I suspect he's working on his own settler.

Yuris is another story. His capital grew to size 5 this turn, which means that he's a full size ahead of me again. In Civ4 terms, this would be a crushing advantage over the rest of the field. Here in Civ6... I dunno. The problem is that Yuris is hitting Civ6's harsher point of diminishing returns on city growth. His size 5 capital is now hitting the housing cap, which means that half of his food surplus is now going up in smoke. His luxury resource is a plantation one; I suspect the citrus one, but it doesn't really matter. Every starting position other than the southwest one (which I have) contains a plantation resource for its luxury. Without a luxury connected, Yuris will suffer the 5% penalty to all yields with his capital at size 5. Yuris has only two techs researched, which means that he probably doesn't have Irrigation tech yet to unlock plantations and solve his housing/amenities issue. Alternatively, if he opened Pottery -> Irrigation research, the he has no Animal Husbandry or Mining techs, and his production will be simply awful. So either he has a size 5 capital with housing and amenities problems or he fixed that problem only to create another one for lack of production. Both options feel significantly weaker than what I have here.

I continue to think that production > food, generally speaking, in this game. There are too many diminishing returns on high food in this game that didn't exist in Civ4. And I'm not entirely sure it's a bad thing either; food/production/gold may be better balanced in this game, believe it or not.



One other noteworthy item for this turn: TheArchduke showed up with horses connected on the trade screen. That's big news because it confirms that he went scout -> builder in his capital. TheArchduke isn't doing some kind of crazy early settler rush, he's just developing really slowly because he started with that scout. He's six turns behind on pasturing the horses and about 70 production behind on the first settler (I'll be 89/80 at the end of this turn and I estimate he's at roughly 16/80.) Even counting the 30 production invested into the extra scout, TheArchduke is still something like 40 production behind here. Civilization is a game that snowballs quickly kids.

This information is enough to change my plans. Now I think I'll take the close city spot by the bananas for my second city, because there's no possible way that TheArchduke can get a settler up into the middle of the map in the immediate future. I have enough time to settle a nearby city and then walk my warrior back up there, where I can block the one-tile choke point on his side of the map and delay long enough for my third settler to claim the region. That's assuming that TheArchduke would even beeline his first settler into the middle of the map, which he probably won't do. But if he does, I can run interference and stall long enough for my next settler (which will come out VERY fast) to get up there and claim the spot I want. And the bananas spot is much better from a growth curve perspective, since it lets me finish Early Empire civic about 5 turns sooner, get into Colonization policy 5 turns sooner, and then churn out the settlers for city #3 and city #4 that much faster.

More posts coming on this in upcoming turns. I have plans brewing.

[Sullla]

Another new turn this morning to report:



The main news for Turn 21 in my part of the world was the completion of the first settler. This dropped the capital's population down to size 3 again, and temporarily decreased science and culture to match. Of course, I will get that pop point back again when the new city is founded; settlers in Civ6 don't really take a population point away so much as transfer it to another location on the map. Since I'm playing as Rome, I'll also get a free monument the moment that new city is founded, and combined with the Cultural city state it will take me to 8 culture/turn at a time when no one else is getting more than 4 culture/turn... and poor non-Rome, non-Culture city state Yuris is stuck at 2 culture/turn. I could very well reach the first governments 25-30 turns faster than him.

I've chosen to build a slinger in the capital next. Slingers (35 production) are slightly cheaper than warriors (40 production) and I'll want at least three of them for upgrading to archers later on. Depending on whether I see anyone else building military units, I may build another slinger next or go right onto another settler again afterwards. I had been expecting that I would need to build more units, but everyone else seems to be going farmer's gambit thus far, and that means I don't need military either. In the entire game to date, TheArchduke has built a scout, and that's been it. I'll actually be first in military power when the slinger finishes, believe it or not. What a peaceful group we have here.

Mechanics note: I'm curious how the production overflow is going to work here at the capital. The settler finished with 89/80 production and so the excess 9 production will go into the slinger. However, will the Agoge bonus apply to that 9 production overflow, or only to the production that the capital is putting out this turn? I believe that Civ6's production overflow is a bit screwy and doesn't apply the modifier of the current build to the overflow in the way that Civ4 does; in other words, if I have +100% production on something and am getting 10 production/turn, and I go from 19/20 to 39/20 production to finish something, the next build will get that 19 production overflow even if the new build lacks the +100% bonus. We'll get a good test of this in practice next turn. The slinger should either be at 22/35 or 27/35 depending on how this functions.



Here are some rough plans for upcoming movements. The yellow dot is where I'm planning on sending this settler, the safe bananas location. It's the most obvious place to put the second city, although it's a bit of a weak location due to lack of production early on. The red dot is where I plan to put the third city, and where I was originally planning on walking this current settler. The spot is much stronger, with the downside of being more exposed and taking longer to walk up there in transit. I'm confident based on how this game is playing out that I can get my third city up there before TheArchduke can claim the region for himself.

I'll ensure that this works out by using my warrior and upcoming slinger. The warrior will go fortify on the northern white "X" in that picture. You can see how the terrain on this map script is mirrored along the equator, so by standing there I can force a potential settler to walk the long way around the mountains, denying the middle territory between the two rivers. By the time TheArchduke can do that, I'll have my own settler already founded on the red dot. The other white "X" in the east is where I'll put my slinger for vision purposes; it will be able to spot anything moving over in the east that might be headed my way. A little early game sentry net with just the two units.

In truth, I don't expect much competition from TheArchduke in this area, at least not right away. Based on when his builder completed, he should still be in the early stages of producing his settler; I'd guess another 5-6 turns at the bare minimum. He doesn't have my pantheon and he's not running Urban Planning, all of which combine for much less production. He would then have to walk his settler all the way up to the middle of the map, and then walk around the warrior I have in place blocking him... and that's also assuming that he doesn't just take the more obvious nearby spot by the bananas. On my end, the next settler will be a very fast build; the second settler costs 100 production, but with Colonization policy in place for +50% production, that's actually cheaper than the first settler! I think I can have it done by Turn 30, and that should be good enough.

One final small reason why I'm leaning towards the closer spot for the second city. In Civ6, once you reveal a tile on the map, you can see if a city is founded there even if it's in the fog of war. TheArchduke has already scouted the middle of the map, which means that he'll see if I put my second city there and react accordingly. But he hasn't scouted the territory near my capital, and if I go there first, he's unlikely to have any idea that he's in a race for the middle of the map. Better to keep him in the dark for a little longer if possible. Like I said, another small point but perhaps a minor bonus.

[T-hawk]

if I have +100% production on something and am getting 10 production/turn, and I go from 19/20 to 39/20 production to finish something, the next build will get that 19 production overflow even if the new build lacks the +100% bonus.

That is how it works in Civ 5.

In Civ6, once you reveal a tile on the map, you can see if a city is founded there even if it's in the fog of war.

This is also true in Civ 5.

[Sullla]

T-Hawk: useful information to know, thanks. Most of my comparisons on mechanics are geared towards Civ4, since that's the game that we know best as a community.

TheArchduke has had the save for almost 24 hours now, although he did let us know about the delay in the tech thread. Still waiting on the next turn.

[Sullla]

The Realms Beyond forums are actually down right now as I type this. Well, in the meantime I'll save this and post whenever we get them back up again. [Of course, if you're reading this now, obviously the forums are back up again.] Here's Turn 22:



Well hello there! TheArchduke's warrior is back again. I thought that his warrior headed off to the north back towards his homeland, but it looks like the warrior actually circled around to the east and kept coming south. That's a little bit irritating for me but shouldn't cause any serious issues. My settler will plop a settlement down on the tile where my own warrior is standing next turn, and there's nothing that the Archduke's warrior can do to stop me. (A single warrior is no threat to a size 1 city, as the city will keep healing back the damage dealt each turn. You need at least 2-3 warrior for capture.)

Now the interesting thing is that my warrior actually can't see TheArchduke's warrior. It's my settler that has vision on his unit, weird as that might sound. I've noticed this before as well, that settlers seem to get extra vision beyond what other units get. Try this: start a new game of Civ6 and then see the difference in vision before and after settling. You can see further with the settler than you can with the city after it gets founded! This is something I need to explore in more detail (especially if there are any other units that get this benefit; we all know how useful the Sentry promotion is in Civ4).



The production overflow mystery is resolved at the capital: the slinger sits at 23/35 production. (Looks like my 22/35 number from last turn was rounded up or had a fractional amount of production that I couldn't see.) This confirms that production overflow in Civ6 works the same way as it does in Civ5, where the production modifier is *NOT* divided out of the overflow build in the way that Civ4 works. In this particular case, it means that the +50% Agoge bonus did not apply to the production overflow from the settler build. I suppose in a more perfect scenario I could have tried to avoid that minor inefficiency. However, any production overflow from this slinger build would indeed get the Agoge bonus, even if I don't build another unit next. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how to use this efficiently; it would be enormously easier if Civ6 would do a better job of displaying the actual production numbers involved! I probably should have built another warrior here instead of a slinger, as I would have gotten significant Agoge overflow production into whatever I did next. (The slinger build will finish at 37/35 with minimal overflow. Building the warrior would have taken one more turn and overflowed at 50/35.)

Now I have to sit down and consider what to build next with this Agoge production bonus overflow in mind. I was thinking to go right onto another settler, but maybe I can abuse the production overflow to go warrior -> settler and lose almost nothing due to landing the Agoge bonus on the overflow. Hmmm. Well, after a little mathing, I don't think it's worth it; I don't gain enough back to justify starting a settler 3 turns later. But it would have been better to train a warrior here instead of a slinger, and then run a high production configuration on the last turn to overflow the maximum production possible with the Agoge bonus. This is a learning game, and I'm still picking up tricks... even if you won't see anything like T-Hawk's "build a shrine / sell a shrine on every other turn" production overflow abuse from Civ5.



The biggest news of all this turn comes from the score tracking. Yuris finished his second civic, which means he has either Craftsmanship or Foreign Trade done at this point. TheArchduke finally hit size 4 at his capital this turn, six turns after me (and eight turns after Yuris). His development has been noticeably slower than the rest of us. And teh's population went DOWN this turn, which means that he finished a settler this turn, one turn after me. Our build path has been identical thus far (builder into settler) and with his Cultural city state making him pseudo-Rome, our tech and civics have been mirroring one another closely too.

I was expecting teh and Yuris to be on settlers at their respective capitals. They pretty much had to be, since neither of them have built any military units yet, unless they were foolishly going for a super early district or something. Teh definitely looks like the strongest competition in this game right now, with his settler only a single turn slower than mine. Thank goodness I managed to reach the Cultural city state in the south central part of the map before him! That would have been disastrous, him getting a double Cultural city state advantage up on me. Whew. Since my only realistic options to attack someone are teh or TheArchduke, it already looks like TheArchduke is more likely to be my target later on. Very early still and that can change, but that's the most likely scenario down the road.

Next turn brings city #2 for me. Any thoughts on names?

[T-hawk]

I've noticed this before as well, that settlers seem to get extra vision beyond what other units get. Try this: start a new game of Civ6 and then see the difference in vision before and after settling. You can see further with the settler than you can with the city after it gets founded!

I bet this comes straight from Civ 5 too.  All units have more vision than all cities.  All units (that don't have a vision penalty) see two spaces away if not blocked by a forest or hill, and some terrain cases allow three.  A tile owned by a city only ever sees one space in all directions, regardless of any terrain.  This is different from Civ 4, where a hill or mountain in your territory does see two spaces.  (A city itself has no vision, it's tiles in your territory that do.)  This is why Civ 5 AIs are so bad about losing workers to barbarians, since they can't see that second space away from their territory, so they will run a worker into a tile where a barb is two spaces away.

I'd be surprised if settlers have any extra vision over other units, though.  If that were deliberately true, it would be completely obvious like a Sentry promotion.  I bet it's merely edge cases that you just happen to notice more for settlers because you pay more attention to what's around a settler.

Civ 5 also has a few cases where it will continue to show an icon for a unit in the fog, if you just saw it move there.  I wouldn't be surprised if that same code is still present in Civ 6, and that you notice it more often for settlers.

However, any production overflow from this slinger build would indeed get the Agoge bonus, even if I don't build another unit next. I'm still trying to wrap my head around how to use this efficiently

This is how I internalize it: you get the +% modifier not exactly on the modified item, but on turns on which you're building that modified item.  If you can tweak that item to take one more turn, you get an extra turn worth of bonus.  If you compress it a turn sooner thanks to previous overflow, you get one less turn of bonus. The bonus applies per turn, not per item.

Civ 4 did this correctly.  Dividing the overflow by the previous production modifier then multiplying it by the new modifier is the step that corrects the process from "turns building that item" to "hammers spent into that item".

[oledavy]

I'd be surprised if settlers have any extra vision over other units, though.  If that were deliberately true, it would be completely obvious like a Sentry promotion.  I bet it's merely edge cases that you just happen to notice more for settlers because you pay more attention to what's around a settler.

Can confirm Sullla is correct from my own SP experience. They seem to have 3 tiles of vision.

[Sullla]

Everything T-Hawk said is logical and is the way that the system should work. But as oledavy mentioned, Civ6 doesn't appear to work that way in practice. Check out the results of this turn:



TheArchduke moved his warrior back a tile NE onto the desert hill on his turn. I thought he would take a step towards me, but I guess TheArchduke had something else in mind. There's a little tidbit of information tucked in just this move: all units have the southwest-facing animation at the start of a PBEM turn, regardless of what direction they actually moved last. There's no other way that the graphical display of TheArchduke's warrior makes sense otherwise. I guess that also makes sense from a programming perspective, with me opening up a new savefile and all that, I simply noticed it because Pitboss game of Civ4 didn't work that way.

Anyway, it looks like my warrior is the unit that has vision on TheArchduke's warrior. I mean, obviously it's not that settler a full tile further away, right? Well...



I put down my city, and voila! Vision on TheArchduke's warrior disappears. Like I said before, not the most logical system of vision. (Now I wonder if it's actually worth bringing a settler along for military operations late in the game purely for vision purposes. Maybe something worth considering much, much later on when settlers are cheaper.)

Ravenna makes me the first to two cities, which is slightly more impressive since I'm the last to play in turn order. There's a good chance that teh will settle his own city next turn, if he has the same location in mind on his mirrored side of the map. I would prefer if he did take that spot, as opposed to racing for something closer to the center. We will be competing for that oasis spot off to the east, and I hope he isn't planning on sending his very first settler there. Teh has Yuris (and his Eagle Warriors) to worry about though, and he hasn't even met me yet, so hopefully not.

Ravenna is a city with a lot of food but not a lot of production. I'm having it start on a builder right away, which will take about 15 turns or so to complete, and finish roughly around the time that I have Irrigation tech in hand to build plantations. This builder will likely improve the stone, spices, and banana tiles for its three actions; the spices and bananas each provide half a point of housing, and together will let this city reach size 5 before hitting the housing cap. The crippling weakness of this spot is a lack of any hill tiles at all, which means that nothing is going to build very fast initially. If any spot needs a production trade route back to the capital, it's this one. That said, Ravenna will grow population very fast indeed, and that's not negligible in the early game. A size 5 city is worth 3.5 beakers and 3.5 culture (with Rome's free monument) per turn, not bad at all. This city will also allow me to reach the boost for Early Empire faster than any other potential local site; it will arrive in 4 turns when I have 6 total population across both cities (size 4 capital and size 2 Ravenna). It takes 15 food to reach size 2, so I'm working the +4 food bananas for the moment and I'll swap over to a production tile in a few more turns. This is another place where my pantheon makes a noticeable difference; at size 2 I can work the 4/1 spices tile (which will quickly hop into my borders) and the 3/1 marsh tile for at least 3 production/turn, 4 production/turn with Urban Planning in place, although I will drop that for Colonization in a few turns. Without the pantheon, that marsh tile would be almost useless.

This is one of the purest examples of why it's so awesome to be Rome in Civ6. Normally the new city would be producing 0.3 culture/turn at size 1. Instead, it produces 2.3 culture/turn with the free monument, over seven times the normal base value. This also lets new cities grab additional tiles enormously faster, saving money on having to purchase them with gold or else wait forever on the slow border pops. While this benefit decreases in time as the game progresses, right now it's a huge advantage. I have double the culture of anyone else in the game (I have 8.2 per turn and TheArchduke has 4.2 per turn; Yuris has only 2.5 culture/turn!) And more culture translates directly into production-boosting policies like Colonization and the first governments to increase the snowball further.



Cities are worth 5 score points, plus another 1 point for the one population added, which caused my score to shoot up to first place this turn. TheArchduke picked up his third civic and his fourth tech this turn (still benefiting from the Scientific city state beakers there), making him the early leader in the tech race. Everyone else has 3 techs researched, which I would also have if I weren't on the expensive and unboostable Bronze Working. (I will need to go Pottery -> Irrigation next for the spices and bananas at the second city. If the builder at the second city gets done early, he can always head over to the capital to mine the jade and connect my first amenity.) I wonder if I'll start seeing TheArchduke's local amenity on the trade screen soon? He probably researched Irrigation or Writing in addition to the three initial cheap techs. Note that he can see how much population my cities have right here on the trade screen by mousing over them, which makes score tracking a lot easier.

The weird thing for this turn is that my military score didn't increase with the slinger build completing. I think this may be delayed a turn on the Domination power list; if there's no increase in military score next turn, then something strange is going on and a lot of my assumptions about what the other players are building will have to be called into question. I tested how the military score formula worked pre-patch, but I know they tweaked it to remove the 12 gold = 1 power component. They could have tweaked other parts of the formula too.

Finally, I should mention that I started another settler in the capital after finishing that slinger. No one else appears to be building much military yet, and with teh already having a settler on the map, I'd better get a move on for the contested spots on the map. Yes, it's inefficient to be building another settler before I have the Colonization policy in place for the +50% production bonus, but the alternative appears to be building additional military units that I don't seem to need right now, and I'd rather get the jump on the settler to finish it 2 turns sooner, even if it's slightly inefficient. If I'm doing the math right, I think the settler can be finished at the start of Turn 30 since I'll be getting the Colonization bonus starting on Turn 27. This would all be a heck of a lot easier if Civ6 would display the actual numbers for everything instead of all those "3 turns remaining" notices. Really wish some of those interface mods would get incorporated into the base game, at least as an option. Maybe someday.

[shallow_thought]

I'd be surprised if settlers have any extra vision over other units, though.  If that were deliberately true, it would be completely obvious like a Sentry promotion.  I bet it's merely edge cases that you just happen to notice more for settlers because you pay more attention to what's around a settler.

Can confirm Sullla is correct from my own SP experience. They seem to have 3 tiles of vision.

Huh. Oddly I think this was also true of the FFH Civ IV mod - at least for the initial settler (a deliberate decision to encourage thinking about alternatives to SIP).

Enjoying the thread. Civ VI looks quite fun, overall. Am shaking the piggy bank to see if I can afford a computer capable of running it...