Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[Sullla]

We had an extremely fast turnaround today, with the save getting back to me in about six hours. That means another update today for Turn 24:



TheArchduke moved his warrior off into the fog somewhere. Perhaps he's heading east to go make contact with teh on the other side of the oasis; I'm pretty sure that the civ he met was Yuris, somewhere up at the top end of the map. Or perhaps he's bringing his warrior home finally to escort an upcoming settler build. Regardless of where that warrior is heading, I'm mostly glad that it's not going to hang around my new city and try to harass builders or other domestic units. Once Ravenna grabs the spice resource in a few turns, I'll have full visibility of the entry to my southwestern peninsula. (That won't spot any units on the water, but I won't have to worry about that for some time.) My slinger is going to move onto that desert hill tile I posted about a few days ago, the same one where TheArchduke was hanging out last turn. If he doesn't spot anything incoming, and the rest of the players continue to not build military units, I might go over to the east and make contact with teh. More information on him would definitely help.

My own warrior is going to head up towards TheArchduke's territory, to block the one-tile chokepoint if needed against his potential upcoming settler. Again, I don't think I'll need to buy those few extra turns for my own settler to reach the double rivers region by the copper tiles, but better safe than sorry.



Here's a picture of the capital. I checked the status of the settler build, and it has 10/100 production in the box. (Note: the first settler costs 80 production and each future one costs another 20 production more, 100 then 120 and so on. Similarly, the first builder costs 50 production and the following ones scale up by an additional 4 production each. Unlike district costs, this is unaffected by your techs/civics researched.) I swapped the capital over to the plains hill tile since it did not affect the growth to size 4 (two turns in either case). I thought that this would allow me to get the settler finished one turn sooner, but after doing more number crunching I think that I still fall just short. The problem is that Early Empire civic is sitting at 49.5% completed, and I need to invest another turn's worth of research to complete it. However, I have to wait until I get the boost in place to do that or I'll end up essentially wasting a full turn's worth of culture. Since I'm not going to do that, Early Empire civic won't complete until Turn 28, and I won't be able to adopt Colonization policy until that point in time.

So it looks like the next settler will pop out at the start of Turn 31, and that I should have continued running the high food configuration this turn. Ah well, hopefully not a huge deal. I will put the production overflow into another settler even if I don't build one immediately following this current settler. I plan on seeing how much military everyone has in a half dozen turns and making a decision from there. This current settler should be done start of Turn 31, and reach its destination on Turn 37.



Fortunately the power rankings screen did update this turn. My power went up by 15 from the slinger and I'm now in first place, for the small amount that's worth. I'm actually in first place in three of the four categories... and last place in science. I actually have the same amount of beakers/turn as teh and Yuris (all of us having 5 total population), but the Science ranking is done by number of techs discovered first and then beakers/turn second after that. Everyone else has researched at least 3 techs while I continue to plug away on Bronze Working. It'll be done eventually...

Of course, the biggest news of the turn was teh founding his second city. I'm sure he put it on the exact same tile as me, since it's the natural place to establish a city near the capital. Our games continue to mirror one another in an almost eerie fashion. If I didn't know better, I'd say he's reading my spoiler thread. More likely, we have mirrored starting terrain and the strongest moves have been obvious to both of us thus far. Great minds thinking alike and all that.

[Sullla]

This morning's turn was pretty quiet:



No visibility on TheArchduke's warrior or where it's headed. Off to the east somewhere as best I can tell. My own warrior is heading north to keep an eye on anything incoming from TheArchduke and potentially run a Civ3-style settler blockade if needed. My slinger is moving northeast as well to provide more vision on anything incoming from the east. Pretty quiet here right now, and that's fine with me. (I remain first in power again this turn; TheArchduke built the one scout at the start of the game, and no one else has trained a single military unit in the whole game to date.)

There were no score changes at all this turn, no one gaining a pop point or a civic or a tech. So let's use this turn to discuss some city planning:



At the capital, I am back onto the high food configuration after figuring out that working the plains hill tile did not actually speed up the settler by a turn. I might as well grab a little bit more food in that case, for regrowing back to size 4 faster after the settler is done. The settler will finish in six turns, at the start of Turn 31, and there's nothing I can do to speed it up faster.

The districts that I want to build are laid out here with letters. The first consideration is where to put the aqueduct (or more properly the Roman unique Bath district). Aqueducts must go in the center ring touching the city itself, and must also border either a source of fresh water or a mountain. The best location is the tile southwest of the city, which I'll hold off on developing for the purpose of adding the unique Bath district later. That will allow me to put the Commercial district northwest of the city, on the river for the +2 gold/turn bonus and also next to the water, where I will eventually add a Harbor district. Yes, I know the Harbor won't add another trade route with the Commercial district already present, but the idea is to have all of the districts that boost trade route production located in the capital, so that every other city can run a +1 food / +5 production trade route back to the capital. The Harbor district will get an adjacency bonus from being next to the Commercial district and from being next to the fish tile, making it a worthwhile investment even if I don't add any further infrastructure on it.

EDIT: I had two more paragraphs here about the Encampment district and the Industrial districts that were eaten somehow while posting. I'll have to come back and discuss them more another time.



At Ravenna, I went ahead and dropped a single turn (2 production) into a trader unit. I did this because I think it will lock in the cost of that trader unit at 47 production; traders scale up in production cost throughout the game, and although I don't know the exact formula, it seems as though researching techs/civics makes them more expensive. The plan is to go builder -> trader at Ravenna, and by dropping a single turn's worth of production into the trader, I'm hoping it will stay at that 47 production cost. (Does Civ6 have production decay? We're going to test and find out here. Not that I even care about losing the 2 production, I just don't want the trader to become more expensive.)

I've thought a lot about what to do with this city before deciding on the current builder into trader path. When I tested an early district build here in some of my Single Player experiments, it never seemed to go very well. The Ravenna location just does not have enough production, and there's nothing in the terrain here that would demand a certain type of early district placement. (This is one of the oddities of this map: no good location for a strong early Campus, no location with a bunch of nearby mountains or anything. This is also partly why I feel comfortable skipping an early Campus.) Oftentimes I will have new cities begin with either a granary or a monument, or later on I typically begin with a district of some time. In this game, however, the city already has a free monument, and the granary seems like a weak option when I'll be able to build a much superior Bath district at roughly the same cost later on. For that matter, because I skipped early Pottery tech I can't even build granaries yet!

In practice, getting a faster builder out for the spices, bananas, and stone came out as the best option, followed by a trader unit to trigger the boost for Currency tech. I don't actually need a trade route itself, as I get free roads by virtue of being Rome, just the boost on a very desirable tech. Ordinarily I would have the capital do some of this, but the capital will be occupied with building settlers and then the early Encampment district to trigger the Great General that I need. There's no room in there for a trader, or builders for other cities. (The capital is going to need one additional builder for the jade and to mine some more of its hills, otherwise it will be on settlers/Encampment/military for a very long time.)

Of course we're still in the early stages of the game right now. But in a game with no Slavery civic and limited production, planning things out ahead of time is a good idea.

[Sullla]

We had another turn cycle through this afternoon. The turn pace of this game has been excellent, especially on the weekends.



Northern warrior moved up two tiles towards TheArchduke and prepared to cross the river next turn. You know, if TheArchduke actually does have a settler popping out in the next few turns, and he doesn't have a military unit around to escort it, well, my warrior might be in a position to be a jerk and delay his movement a bit. I doubt I'll be lucky enough to swipe an unguarded settler, but hey, you never know. Let's keep pushing north for now and see what happens. Ravenna's borders and my slinger will give me vision of anything incoming from the east, and that means I have a free hand over here for the moment to be a bit aggressive in my stance.

The red dot is where I intend to place the next city. The settler for it will be done in 5 turns, then unfortunately I have the slow transit speed that will take another 6 turns for the actual city founding. The only good news: everyone else's movement speed is equally slow right now due to Civ6's dumb movement rules. (That's the one thing I truly dislike about this game, the movement rules. They slow the game down for no good reason whatsoever. There is nothing strategic about units crawling around the map one tile at a time.) The red dot location is a little bit low on food, but the floodplains tiles can be irrigated to become 4/1 tiles (with my pantheon) and the double copper resources provide some excellent production. Hopefully I can land this, and it will be a strong producer for me. With the warrior to run a blockade for me, I think I'll have enough time to get here first. (More likely still is TheArchduke settling a spot closer to his core, not even realizing that he's in a race with me for this land.)



Ravenna currenly has 12/15 food in the box, which allows me to work the 3/1 marsh tile and still grow to size 2 next turn. I'll happily pick up the one extra point of production for the moment since it doesn't slow growth to the next size. For the curious, here is the food needed to grow to the next size in Civ6:

Pop Food to Next Size
1 15
2 24
3 33.82842712
4 44.19615242
5 55
6 66.18033989
7 77.69693846
8 89.52025918
9 101.627417
10 114

I believe those round down to the nearest whole number, although I don't know for sure. As in Civ5, the food requirements scale up sharply as population increases. While in Civ4, it takes 22 food to grow from size 1 to size 2, and 28 food to grow from size 4 to size 5, in Civ6 it takes only 15 food to grow from size 1 to size 2... but then 55 food to grow from size 4 to size 5. Instead of 27% more food, it costs 400% more food! And there's no granaries either, or percentage based modifiers for production or science (outside of Ruhr Valley and Oxford University). As a result, Civ6 de-emphasizes food since the cost of growing additional sizes scales up by so much. More population is still always good to have, but food alone tends to be less important than bringing in production or some other tile yield.

Ravenna is mostly here just to grow population and supply the ambient beakers and culture from that additional pop. Without the free monument, I almost certainly would have gone further north for my first city. As it is, that 2.3 culture/turn is very nice indeed, speeding me along to more civics at a faster date. Next turn brings size 2 and the boost for Early Empire civic; Colonization policy here we come.



No score changes this turn, but there was interesting information in the Demographics regardless. I have slipped from first place to third place in the power rankings, with Yuris now in first and teh in second. That means both of them finished military units this turn. I'll start with teh, who continues to mirror my build order at a slightly slower pace. He went builder into settler into military unit at the capital, identical as me, and he finished either a slinger or a warrior this turn. If it's a slinger, then we have the exact same power, and I should pull ahead of him in this ranking if my score jumps ahead of him. (Teh currently has 2 more "score" points than me from researching an extra tech.) If it's a warrior, then he has 40 power to my 35 power and will remain ahead for the time being. Of course, when we make contact I'll be able to see his military power directly and know right away. For now, it's enough to know that he also has two military units like me. (At a guess, I would say he built a warrior, because his settler was done 4 turns ago, and I think he likely would have finished a slinger one turn sooner.)

Yuris is more interesting. I was definitely not expecting him to finish a military unit - I thought for sure he was doing the same builder into settler opening as myself and teh, because if he had gone builder into military unit, it would have popped up much sooner. I was expecting Yuris to finish a settler instead, and thought it would be popping out any turn now. Instead, he finished a military unit, which could be either a slinger or an Eagle Warrior. No way to tell because Eagle Warriors have 28 power instead of 20, putting Yuris in first in power by a good margin. So what exactly was Yuris doing all this time then? I think he may have gone builder -> builder -> military unit. It's the only way I can explain him not getting another unit out sooner, and it would also make some kind of sense given that his capital is size 5, hitting both the housing and amenities penalties. Perhaps he felt he needed a second builder to solve the amenities crunch and connect his luxury resource?

Now again, this is all speculation, but if that's actually true... man, Yuris is BEHIND at this point, even further behind than TheArchduke. I have a city on the map and another one almost halfway done, and he doesn't even have his first settler started yet?! Oh man. I hope for his sake that's not true. Yuris, how about you go send your Eagle Warriors over to teh and slow him down a little bit, because right now it looks like you're in some deep trouble. As for me, I'm glad right now to be on the opposite side of the map from the guy who likely has a pair of Eagle Warriors and not much to do with them.

[Sullla]

Another morning, another turn:



The highlight of the turn on my end was Ravenna growing to size 2 and triggering the boost for Early Empire civic. The civic is now 99% complete with the boost and I'll finish it along with State Workforce in the next 3 turns. The first governments at Political Philosophy now look set to arrive on Turn 37, which may be the earliest that I've ever reached them. Good news all around here.



Here's the view from my two units this turn. I think I'll move the warrior one or two more tile north, and then start retreating back home for safety concerns. The main thing is to reveal the terrain where TheArchduke's second city will be placed, so that I have visibility on it whenever it does get planted. I just about have enough tiles defogged to make that happen. The slinger will hop onto the desert hill tile to the northeast and keep an eye on any hostiles incoming. I would dearly like to send one of these units off to make contact with teh, but I need them to stay close by for fogbusting and defensive purposes. A slinger is a profoundly defensive unit, and not one that should be wandering the wilderness. One of Yuris' Eagle Warriors could practically one-shot the slinger (which has 5 melee strength!) if it was caught out in the open and attacked.



Aside from landing the boost for Early Empire, the other big news for the turn is in the Demographics. TheArchduke's military power rating jumped up from 30 to 50 this turn, which means he finished a warrior this turn. It also means that he was not building a settler in his capital. That's wonderful news for me! TheArchduke now cannot possibly reach the middle of the map with a settler before I can. My current settler is halfway done, plus I'll be in Colonization policy next turn for the +50% production bonus. Settler ETA is 4 more turns, with the city itself getting planted on Turn 37. It's going to take northern Rome at least 6-7 turns just to build a settler, and then the travel time would need to add another 6 turns to reach the middle of the map. It's just not happening. I will now get the spot I want and lock TheArchduke out of the river region in the center of the map.

This also confirms that my next build in the capital will be another warrior, good to have clarity on that. I will watch TheArchduke and see if I need more military than that to be safe. Right now, his 2 warriors and 1 scout don't pose much of a threat against my own 1 warrior and 1 slinger. I just need to keep a warrior inside the city itself (which will raise its defensive rating from 10 to 20) and a slinger nearby for defensive fire. Now if TheArchduke keeps producing more military units, then yes, there could be cause for concern. But with more cities and more population and a production-boosting pantheon, I should be able to match anything he can do. Plus I would have the defender's advantage as well, and the middle of the map is a tough region to attack into with all those rivers. Anyway, I don't think this is the prelude to an attack, just a very defensive build order from TheArchduke that's putting him very far behind economically. Rome's biggest advantage in Civ6 comes from fast expansion using those free monuments and free roads. Slow building settlers is a waste of that advantage.

Interestingly, Yuris' capital grew to size 6 this turn. I wasn't expecting that... It would seem to confirm that he did indeed go for two builders in his capital, as I doubt he could have reached size 6 so quickly otherwise given the housing and amenity issues his city would be experiencing. Yuris therefore triggers the boost for Early Empire at the same time as my civ, although in a different way. He must have a pretty nice capital over there, but his expansion is severely delayed as well. I expect teh to claim most of the contested land between their civs as a result. (The list on the Demographics screen also confirms that Yuris built another Eagle Warrior last turn for 56 total power. It's probably a good thing that he isn't next to me right now.)



One last thing: TheArchduke has now met teh as well as Yuris. I suspect that's why he posted in his spoiler thread this morning. I hope to make some more contacts in the near future as well, although score tracking is giving me a pretty good picture of this game regardless. As far as I know, there's no "known tech bonus" in Civ6. If anyone has heard that there is, please let me know.

[Tyrmith]

How far do you think you are from going on the warpath, what kind of force do you need in civ 6 to actually take a city?

[Sullla]

I am a long way from going on the warpath. My target has been a timing attack around roughly Turn 80-85 with a bunch of upgraded legions and a Great General. Right now, I've been playing the econ game and trying to get away with as little military as possible. With luck, that won't come back to bite me in embarrassing fashion. As for how many units are needed to take a city, well, it all depends on how well the city is defended. A city that lacks walls can be a very fragile target indeed in Civ6; three warriors can usually pull it off. On the other hand, archers in good defensive position can shred an incoming attack without much trouble. I would compare attacking in this game to attacking another human player in Civ4. If you have a generation's edge in military tech, or you can hit the other player by surprise, taking territory isn't that hard. In contrast, a direct frontal attack against someone at the same tech level is usually going to fail.

Also, yes, we have another turn already.



I finished Early Empire civic, which is one of the most useful ones in the early game. Aside from the excellent Colonization policy (+50% production on settlers), this civic also establishes the concept of borders for the first time. Prior to discovering Early Empire, anyone can walk through your territory and there's nothing you can do about it. Afterwards, they need to sign Open Borders or declare war to move through your territory. This civic is always one of my big targets in the early game to get settlers out and rolling as soon as possible.



I had to give up Urban Planning this turn in order to take Colonization. That loses 1 production at each of my two cities, in exchange for 5.5 production/turn into the current settler build. A definite win there. I'll have to decide if I want to swap back in two turns when State Workforce finishes. Of course, soon enough I'll be able to run both policies when I hit the first governments in about nine more turns.



The other news for the turn is enemy military units. Multiple enemy military units. TheArchduke's new warrior has appeared up near his capital, and the other warrior appeared on the desert hill tile where my slinger was planning to move. This is the sign for my warrior to start coming back home again, now that I have vision on TheArchduke's likely second city location at the mirrored Ravenna location in the far north. My slinger moved a tile west into the jungles of Ravenna, where TheArchduke will have to declare war if he wants to follow. Hopefully he's just poking around and doesn't plan on doing anything more aggressive. I think that with my own warrior + slinger combo, I should be OK to escort my settler to the spot I want, especially with the bonus vision that settlers apparently get in Civ6. I strongly suspect TheArchduke is working on his first settler right now, and this is more a probing investigation than anything genuinely hostile.



I checked the trader unit this turn, and look at that: the cost still scaled up anyway. It was previously at 2/47 production, and now it's at 2/49 production. So much for investing a turn into the trader to try and lock in the cost. I guess that works for districts, but apparently it doesn't work for traders. Worth the experiment though.

Internationally, teh grew a pop point at both of his cities and now matches me at 6 total pop. That means he also picked up the boost for Early Empire civic; TheArchduke is the only one who lacks it, and he's going to be a long way away since he has a single city at size 4 right now. He already has the basic 3 civics researched too, which means he's going to be wasting culture on Early Empire soon due to inability to lock down the boost. Teh's power also grew this turn again, exceeding TheArchduke's but still lower than Yuris. I suspect he finished a slinger this turn, giving him 2 warriors and 1 slinger for 55 power. At a guess, I suspect he built two units with the Agoge bonus while waiting for Early Empire to deliver the Colonization boost, and now will go onto a settler build. That's the most efficient way to play things from a production standpoint. I went for the faster second settler because no one else had any units at the time, and I wanted to get a jump on the contested land to my north. Now I'll need to backtrack for at least one military unit after the current settler completes. My route was better from an econ perspective (especially as Rome with free monuments) but also riskier. I don't know if I would have tried it with Yuris as my neighbor - his Eagle Warriors are much scarier than normal warriors.

The good news here: I'm nearing completion of my second settler, and the other players all appear to be just starting the second settler (or their first!) I like the position I'm in.

[Sullla]

Today's turn was pretty quiet.



In the south, TheArchduke pulled his warrior back over the desert hill again and out of vision. That was very kind of him; does he know that slingers are almost worthless as combat units? The only value of slingers is that they can be upgraded to archers later on, and archers are awesome units in the Civ6 early game. He could have been a lot more aggressive here. Of course, I'm very happy to see TheArchduke politely backing off and respecting my territory. If I don't see that warrior again, I'll (finally) take the desert hill tile with my slinger next turn for the vision it grants.

In the north, TheArchduke has his warrior fortified on that grassland tile next to the river. I took advantage of his immobility by moving a tile west, defogging just a touch more terrain up there. I'm not entirely sure why TheArchduke is playing so passively up there - does he really think my warrior wants to attack his warrior 1 vs 1 a million miles away from my cities? Perhaps TheArchduke has another reason for fortifying in place up there. I suspect he's going to plant his own second city on that spot, the mirror of Ravenna, once his settler finally completes. In any case, my warrior will start pulling back to the south next turn, with my current goal accomplished. I wanted to reveal the lands where TheArchduke's second city will go, and I now have all sources of fresh water defogged.



Just to give you an idea of what combat would look like, here's my warrior hovering over a potential attack on TheArchduke's warrior. The river crossing penalty gives him +5 strength, and then he gets another +6 strength from fortifying. (I think it takes two turns to get the full fortify bonus, so this unit hasn't moved in the last few turns.) That adds up to +11 strength and turns an equal matchup into a nightmare for me, if I were foolish enough to attack. Civ6's combat formula works entirely off of the difference in strength between the two units. The actual numbers are irrelevant, only the difference between them (the delta). The official formula looks like this:

Combat damage
Random(24-36 hp)* e^(Strength difference * 0.04) * Wall factor
e is 2.71828....
Wall factor is 15% if melee attack on walls, 50% if nonseige ranged attack on walls... possibly 50% if ranged attack by walls on units

Kudos to our own Hans Lemurson for investigating and figuring this out. In practice, this means that even small differences in unit strength add up quickly. A unit with 10 more combat strength deals 50% more damage and takes 50% less damage in turn. In this example, my warrior would take about 45 damage while TheArchduke's warrior would take maybe 15 damage or so. That's the power of something as small as 11 points of strength difference. So if you go back into the first posts in this thread and read about how I'm hoping to attack with strength 49 legions in a coordinated invasion later... well, I think you get the idea. If TheArchduke doesn't have horsemen or crossbows or his own legions deployed by Turn 85, he will get smashed.

(By the way... the attack I'm hovering over is even worse here, because TheArchduke's unit would also heal between turns from not moving, while my unit would not. I'm hoping to take advantage of this same math if my own cities come under attack in the early game.)



At my capital, the settler is due in 2 turns, not that the interface does a good job of showing this. Production reads 11/turn, but of course it's magnified to 16.5/turn with the Colonization policy that I'm running. I was thinking about going back to Urban Planning next turn when State Workforce finishes, however now it looks like I'll lose too much production if I drop Colonization. I will hit the first governments at Political Philosophy in 7 more turns, and I don't think I want to spend the next 6 turns out of Colonization, as much as Urban Planning would help my second city. Ideally, I would build a warrior followed by another settler at the capital, although I don't know if I want to get quite that greedy. More likely, I have to train a warrior and then a slinger, giving me a warrior/slinger pair at both of my frontline cities. Still, no need to make the decision yet - I can build the warrior first and see how much military everyone else has. I'll continue to be as greedy as I can until someone calls me on it though.

The Demographics were quiet again, no score increases and no changes in the world rankings that I can see. I suspect most of the other players are on settlers or builders right now, since we had a wave of military units pop out recently. One cool thing: I'm going to finish 5 civics (worth 240 total culture) before Yuris finishes 3 civics (worth 100 culture). It's good to be Rome.

[Ituralde]

At my capital, the settler is due in 2 turns, not that the interface does a good job of showing this.

You know this might stem from my inexperience with Civ IV or from my lack of micro-oriented play, where I don't automatically add up the production values and figure out turns from there. But the interface to me shows very clearly that the settler will be done in 2 turns. Once on the large map next to the city name and once more on the top right.

Now what I can agree with, is that it's not clear WHY it will be finished in 2 turns.

Sorry for the derailment, but for a casual player like me the interface shows exactly what's up. Thanks for the extensive reports. Looks like you played yourself into an economic lead!

[Rowain]

I guess Sulla meant the "unclear why you finish in 2 turns"

The hidden modifiers in the messages you get from the interface are a problem. It tells you that you finish the settler in 2 turns , it tells you that you are at 71 of 100 hammers and it tells you that you make 11h/turn. And you are left wondering since when 11*2 became 29 (or more).

That makes it difficult to decide what you can change and still get the settler in 2turns

[Sullla]

Rowain did a better job of explaining this than I did. Civ6 is great at telling the player how many turns are left until something is finished, whether it's production or growth or research or whatever. However, as Rowain pointed out, it's awful at explaining why anything is happening. In the screenshot example above, the city interface lists 11 production/turn, and there's no indication of where the additional production is coming from to finish the settler in two turns. Mousing over the production won't tell me that the bonus is coming from the Colonization policy, or even what the total true production happens to be. For that matter, the actual production invested in the settler is buried two menus deep and virtually hidden in the top right corner of that menu. And I can't find out anywhere how much actual food is invested in a city's growth bar, or how many beakers/culture I currently have invested in my science/civics. You can't even see how many hit points an enemy unit has remaining after combat, only that little circular graphic! Everything is "2 turns left" with no greater specificity. I keep expecting patches to fix these interface problems - which are trivially easy to add and have been done repeatedly by modders - with nothing yet from Firaxis. Perhaps at some point we'll agree on a minor interface mod here at Realms Beyond to address this. There's no excuse for hiding this information from the player when it's so easy to display.

We did get another turn this morning, the round-numbered Turn 30:



In the north, TheArchduke continued to fortify his warrior in the exact same spot. I'm strongly suspecting that he plans to settle that location whenever his settler pops out, which would be perfect for me. He can take that production-weak location while I lock him out of the central double river region with the much better terrain. (If he settles on the Ravenna mirrored site, there is literally nowhere where he can go in the center of the map once I plant my own settlement. Every spot will be ineligible for a city due to the four tiles distance rule for cities.) Anyway, my own warrior moved two tiles south and will probably hang out here for a few turns to hold the one-tile chokepoint.

TheArchduke's other warrior is still hanging out in the area as well, moving onto the copper tile this turn. That allowed me to take the desert hill with my slinger for vision purposes. I'll probably stay in this general area with the slinger for the time being, keeping watch on anything that might try to slip in from the east. I don't want a random unit showing up next to Ravenna unexpectedly. The capital will train a warrior after this current settler, and I'll probably send that guy over to contact teh, then double back to protect my fourth city. The current warrior/slinger pair can defend the upcoming third city in the north.

State Workforce civic finally completed this turn as well, and that's the really expensive one in the early game. It costs 70 culture and the boost is to construct a district, something that you normally don't want to do right away. I would be thrilled if my competitors stop to build Campus districts for +1 beaker/turn while I'm churning out settlers, builders, and units. This lets me move on to the first governments at Political Philosophy, which costs 110 culture but which I managed to boost down to 55 culture by meeting three city states. There's a reason why I sent my initial warrior up to meet Stockholm earlier in the game. 6 more turns to the first governments at an extremely early Turn 36 date.

Also note that I nearly have Bronze Working tech as well, another highly expensive early target. Bronze Working is 80 science compared to 25 science for Pottery/Mining, and 50 science for Writing/Irrigation. However, that second list of techs are very easy to boost, which means that in practice they cost 25 science as well. The boost for Bronze Working is to kill three barbarians, which will never happen in this game, and as a result the tech is about triple the cost of the other early game techs. I'm guessing this will deter the other players from pursuing it, which is great for me. Encampment districts and the first Great General, here we come. (Even better, Bronze Working isn't a mandatory prerequisite for anything else useful economically, and it leads directly to Iron Working. From playing Single Player games, I can tell you it's very easy to skip this part of the tech tree in favor of markets and Industrial districts and so on elsewhere. If TheArchduke does not pursue Iron Working for his legions, he'll be easy prey later on for an attack.)



Here's the capital this turn, now with 87/100 production in the box after gaining 16 production last turn. I'm also pleased at how much food the city has been able to accumulate while turning out the settler; I think I can grow back to size 4 in just a few turns after the settler finishes. Too bad I don't know exactly how much food I have in the box right now! I'll have to deduce that next turn and then shift tiles around accordingly. Anyway, warrior next and then we'll see about a slinger or yet another settler. (With Colonization in place and my capital at size 4, the 120 production settler takes about 7.25 turns at 16.5 production per turn. And once I hit the first governments, I can run Colonization AND Urban Planning to get that up to 18 production/turn for a little extra boost.)

The only score change this turn was Yuris finishing both a tech and a civic to increase his score by 4 points. He has three civics done at this point, likely the initial trio of Code of Laws, Craftsmanship, and Foreign Trade. I am extremely far ahead of Yuris in culture, and since the policies translate directly into boosted production, hopefully ahead on the growth curve by a good margin too. Yuris' position isn't very good at the moment, but at least he does have a size 6 capital with six improved tiles from producing double builders. The one that's really in trouble is TheArchduke: he still has a size 4 capital and has produced no settlers to date. Unlike Yuris, who has the bigger capital and two Eagle Warriors for some legitimate early game punch, TheArchduke has 2 warriors and 1 scout, which will scare precisely no one even if they all try to attack together. My pathetic warrior/slinger combo would be enough to hold against that. TheArchduke's score looks good enough for the moment because it's being propped up by free Rome culture and free science from meeting that city state and scoring the envoy. However, his actual civ development is falling further and further behind with every turn. I'm up an entire city on him and we're only 30 turns into the game. The snowball is only going to get worse with time, especially once I lock him out of the center of the map with this next city. With luck, I'll trap him into his starting peninsula here in the early game and then come back in force later.