Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[Sullla]

That's true Rowain, but none of my cities are happy right now. In fact, Ravenna is actually suffering from negative unhappiness at the moment. There's no reason why those numbers should be appearing - as I mentioned yesterday, the numbers clearly don't add up. I suspect it's another case of sloppy interface design, which is one of the great problems with this game. I can work around it because I enjoy the gameplay, but there's no reason for everything to be so opaque and unresponsive.



There was little unit movement here on Turn 34. TheArchduke looks content to stay north of the river on the one-tile chokepoint, and I'm fine with him staying there. Those two warriors up in the north aren't posing any threat to me. I have my slinger on the familiar desert hill tile in the east for fogbusting purposes, and there's nothing immediately incoming from over there. The Cultural city state has a warrior moving around but that doesn't count. Next turn I'll move up the settler and cover it with the slinger, just to avoid any miniscule chance of a surprise, and move the warrior down from the north when the city is about to be founded. Nice and simple over here.



The capital finished a second warrior this turn, which I'm planning to send off to the east to make contact with teh. It's about time that I get some more information about the other teams; everyone else has met one another so far. I thought this over last night and decided to follow up the warrior build with a 2t slinger. There's two motivations here: first, it's probably not a good idea to attempt to settle over in the east in a highly exposed position with only 2 warriors and 1 slinger. I've been pushing my luck already in this game with minimal defenses, and I don't want to get caught and lose a city somewhere.

Second and more importantly though, the slinger slots in here very nicely before I reach the next civic and the first governments. I can build the slinger in two turns using the Agoge policy for +50% unit production, then swap into Classical Republic and use the Wildcard slot for another economic policy while building a settler in the capital. I'm planning on running Urban Planning, Colonization, and Ilkum together, which is about the most economic setup possible in the early game. I'm actually intending to use all three of the early governments at some point in this game (first Classical Republic, then Autocracy, then Oligarchy), and going slinger into settler simply lines up much better with the policy swaps than going settler into slinger. The fact that it's also a safer move is a nice side benefit.

The cost, of course, is that the fourth city gets built two turns later. It gets settled Turn 50 under this plan instead of Turn 48. However, given how slowly the other players are settling the map right now, that doesn't look like it will be an issue. Teh is my competition for the next planned location, and he hasn't even finished a settler yet for his third city, much less his fourth city, not to mention the slow transit time needed to walk to the actual city location. As you can see from the picture above, the settler doesn't take that long to build: with Urban Planning and Colonization in place, I get 18 production/turn and can churn out a 120 production cost settler in 7 turns. I think it pops out on Turn 43 under this plan. Unfortunately it takes another 7 turns to walk to the actual location and found the city, much like we've been seeing with my current settler. Still, that slow movement applies to anyone else trying to claim the center of the map as well, and I think I'll be OK.

The biggest news for the turn comes from score tracking: Yuris has finally finished his first settler. It's going to be interesting to see if he takes the nearby Ravenna mirrored location or tries a more aggressive plant towards teh. He could probably get away with something very aggressive here, since Yuris is tops in power and has a pair of Eagle Warriors to play with. If I were him, that's what I would be looking to do. My hope is that Yuris takes the less aggressive Ravenna spot though, since that will induce teh to put his third city towards Yuris and not towards me. I want the two eastern players focused on each other and not thinking very much about what I'm doing. Not until it's too late anyway.

[Tyrmith]

 (Note as well here the key difference between city states in Civ5 and Civ6. In Civ5, city states give free food and free military units. In Civ6, city states give you a small flat benefit initially, and then everything else requires an investment in districts. Not to mention, the envoy generation mechanic is infinitely better than the "dump 500 gold for 100 influence" payouts. Civ6 has an active system, not a passive system, and that makes all the difference.)

How exactly does this mechanic work with competition- is it a zero sum game, or can pretty much anyone get anything they want if they're willing to invest sufficiently for it (excepting the suzerain bonus I guess)? Do you feel like you'll be able to get more out of the city states then everyone else? Does that affect your willingness to keep them around?

[Sullla]

Also a good question. For city states, everyone can collect the three tiers of benefits for having 1 envoy / 3 envoys / 6 envoys. In other words, if TheArchduke and I both put 3 envoys into Stockholm, we will both get the initial flat bonus of +2 beakers in the capital and +2 beakers in every Campus district. The unique bonus of each city state is their suzerain benefit, and only one civ at a time can gain that, whichever civ has the most envoys in that city state (minimum of 3 envoys). The city state will follow the suzerain into peace and war status with other civs, and some of the suzerain bonuses can be quite powerful. In a MP game, that would absolutely affect whether or not to keep a city state alive on the map. Even if I'd like to keep a Scientific city state like Geneva around for the Campus district bonuses, if I have no prayer of becoming suzerain and someone else is getting its sweet bonus (+15% science when not at war), I might want to attack and conquer the city state just to deny someone else that bonus.

As far as whether I'll be able to get more out of the city states than the other players... well, I have an advantage from having more culture than anyone else. You earn envoys in a couple different fashions: some can be earned from the random quests given out by the city states, some come from researching civics on the culture tree, and (the main way of generating envoys) they are produced based on the government you're in. The earlier you reach the first governments, the faster you start generating points towards envoys. (Technically you do generate points in the default Chiefdom government, but it's only 1 point/turn and you need 100 points for an envoy. The governments generate 3 points/turn and open up policies that can add another 2 points/turn.) So I can't control the random quests that the city state grant, but I can research the envoy-granting civics faster than anyone else, and I'll be in the first governments at least ten turns before anyone else, maybe more than that. At the very least I'll have a significant lead, enough that I think I can maintain suzerain status with Stockholm without too much trouble.

On to the current turns. I played a turn last night and then another one this morning, and they were very different turns indeed. When I opened up the save for turn 35, this is what I saw:



What the... where did that settler come from?!? I was completely flummoxed when I spotted TheArchduke's new unit. I've been tracking everyone's population each turn for the whole game, and TheArchduke's population has never decreased to pop out a settler. There's no possible way that he could have gotten one out of his capital. Unless... looking more closely at the population numbers, his capital had been at the same size for the previous 13 turns. I thought that TheArchduke might have been working some kind of low-food / high-production configuration at his capital, but it seems that wasn't the case. He must have grown to size 5 and then completed a settler on the same turn, immediately dropping back to size 4 again. Which means that all of the assumptions that I've been making for the past few turns were all in error. I had 90% of the information in place, and then an unfortunate coincidence in the last 10% of the data threw everything else off.

Dang it, dang it, dang it. This was really bad. I could have blocked that one-tile chokepoint where TheArchduke's warrior is standing in the above picture, I even fortified there in place to make sure that no settler could slip in and take this land away from me a couple turns ago. I even wrote that I would be a fool if I moved away from the tile and then a settler walked in a few turns later and sniped it away from me. But no, I didn't see any population changes from TheArchduke and so I naturally assumed no settler was forthcoming, then moved away like an idiot. TheArchduke was probably laughing away when he offered that horses for horses deal and saw me walk off in the other direction. What was I thinking?!

I should have been tipped off by the activity in the lurker thread. Everyone knows well enough now to avoid posting "how many turns until your settler arrives?" like we had a couple times back in the day, but there were a lot of posts in there over the last week. Something must have been going on in the game to attract that much attention, and I think I know what that was now. I'm kicking myself for not simply settling in the double rivers region with my initial settler. I had to be greedy and take the close spot first, thinking I could still claim this area with my second settler. I bet more than one lurker thought that was a mistake, and it looks like they were proven correct. See, the issue is that Civ6 has very strict rules about placing cities. They all must by 4 tiles apart, and any location without fresh water is extremely weak in the early stages of the game. You need granaries and aqueducts to make the dry locations worthwhile, and that requires more techs and trade routes to accelerate the development of later cities. In the picture above, only the dark green tiles have fresh water, and any city settled on one of them locks out everything else within four tiles.

Now there was one small piece of good news here. If TheArchduke tried to settle south of the river up there, I would beat him to the spot by a single turn. Similarly, if he settled on the jungle tile where the settler is standing or the tile east of it, then I would be OK, since my desired spot would be 4 tiles away and therefore allowed. I suspected that his goal was the tile where his warrior was standing, which he could reach on the next turn and would then lock me out of my own city spot. Even if he planned to settle south of the river, he would see my own settler incoming on his Turn 37, and he would likely opt to settle in place rather than be shut out. So one way or another, I expected him to plant on the one-tile chokepoint where his warrior was standing, and that would be disaster for me. The only silver lining is that a city on that tile would prevent a city from being founded at the mirrored "Ravenna" location and would be rather poorly situated with the rest of TheArchduke's starting peninsula.

Still, there was no way around it: this was a bleak development. I went ahead and moved my settler forward as previously planned, on the off chance that TheArchduke would do something unexpected, but without much hope. I would just have to shift all my planned cities up in founding order: city #4 becomes city #3, city #5 becomes city #4, and so on. This was a setback but I will carry on and find a way to make everything work. Getting a jump on settling territory over by teh might not even be the worst thing in the world.



The only other picture that I took this turn was the capital. Slinger done next turn along with Pottery tech and Political Philosophy civics. I was pretty bummed out, but hey, at least the first governments are arriving next turn. That was something, right?

[Sullla]

When I opened up the new turn this morning, all of my feelings from last night were completely reversed:



TheArchduke settled on the same tile without moving!!! That means that my desired city spot is only 4 tiles away and therefore still completely legal to settle! Hallelujah, we are free at last, free at last. Thinking back on this to last turn, I did think it was a little bit odd that TheArchduke had used up a turn moving onto that jungle tile next to the coast. If he wanted to settle on the one-tile chokepoint, why waste a turn moving into the jungle by the coast that didn't lead to that spot? Well, I guess this turn answered that question. Let's take a closer look at Mediolanum first:



This is a questionable spot for a city. The biggest issue is that there's no production available: every tile in the first ring has zero production. Plenty of food, but no production. Nor are the prospects much better down the road either, with some flatground plains tiles and a desert hill tile in the second ring, and that's about it. The copper tile in the third ring will be snapped up by my city 4 turns after founding, which means the only way Mediolanum ever gets that tile is if TheArchduke wants to burn his whole treasury purchasing it and the tile next to it. The iron resource that TheArchduke can't see yet is in the fourth ring and therefore inaccessible. If the terrain is mirrored as I expect, there's a fish resource west of the bananas in the fog, but even with a workboat and his pantheon, that only becomes a 3/1/1 tile. Ravenna looks like an industrial powerhouse compared to Mediolanum. How is this city ever going to build anything?

The city spacing with the capital is also rather strange. Mediolanum is 6 tiles away from TheArchduke's capital, and that's an awkward distance because he can't put any cities in between the two of them by settling rules. That leaves a lot of wasted tiles in between the two of them; there's a reason why I'm cramming my cities at the minimum possible 4 tile distance to try and squeeze out as many of them as I can. Mediolanum is also strangely placed given the resources on the starting peninsula. The furs are located in the third ring (and therefore won't be grabbed forever by the tile picker), the stone resource is in the third ring... I don't quite get it. The one thing I will say in favor of this spot is that it's extremely defensive in nature. With rivers on both sides and a one-tile chokepoint to the south, there's no way I'm conquering this city any time soon. If I do attack later, it will be via the sea, not over land. Overall though, definitely a bit of an odd choice.



I've now happily moved up my settler and will claim my desired spot next turn. What a wild ride to get to this point! I really like this screenshot for some reason, my warrior/settler pair and the slinger next to them look intimidating to me. They're having a stare-off with TheArchduke's warrior as we partition this section of the map between us. By the way, you should be able to see where the next settler is heading from this picture. If I can land that spot over by the oasis as well, I'll be very pleased with the way this game is heading. Securing the border with TheArchduke had to come first though.

Note to future self: don't be so greedy in the future. I got lucky here, very lucky, and that's not going to last as the community becomes more familiar with Civ6.



Almost overshadowed this turn was the arrival of Political Philosophy civic and the first three governments. This is civic #6 for me on the tree, on the direct beeline that everyone pretty much always takes in Civ6. Teh has just picked up his fourth civic, and TheArchduke and Yuris both have 3 civics researched. So this is a significant edge for me, getting to open these up before the other competitors can do the same. Out of the three options here, my preference in Single Player games is usually for Classical Republic, since it offers the most possible Economic policy slots and has two other useful benefits in the Great Person point bonus and the amenities for cities with a district. Autocracy can also be really nice, since it ditches the fairly weak Diplomatic policy slot in favor of another Military slot, although it also trades an Economic slot for a Military slot which tends to be bad in Single Player. Here in Multiplayer those Military slots become a lot more useful, since you can't simply ignore the combat side of the game due to the feeble AI. The one government that rarely gets used is Oligarchy because all of the benefits relate to combat, and it's easy to win against the AI without those benefits. Against other humans though, the +4 combat strength for melee units is quite strong indeed, and even the experience bonus is no laughing matter, especially if combined with units that were built using a barracks (which grants +25% experience).

In this game, I'm going to start with Classical Republic to get my economy off and running, then switch into Autocracy when I initiate my military buildup, and then finally switch into Oligarchy for an actual attack. At least, that's the plan for right now.



Here are the policies that I picked in my new government. Urban Planning is always great in the early game and helps new cities out tremendously, Ilkum helps my new cities get their workers done faster, and Colonization stays while the capital works on its latest settler. When the settler finishes, I'll probably swap out Colonization for Agoge again in the Wildcard spot, or potentially the Great General policy that I'll have from researching more civics. A lot depends on how much military power the other players have half a dozen turns from now.

The Diplomatic slot is the interesting one for the moment. I'm taking Diplomatic League over the normal Charismatic Leader, since I'm going to research Mysticism next for the free envoy it awards. When that finishes in 3 turns, I'll drop the envoy into Stockholm and get 2 envoys instead of the normal 1 envoy, then swap into Charismatic Leader to generate the next envoy faster. This way I only spend 3 turns running Diplomatic League, which of course I want to minimize time spent in.

Some of the other policies here will be useful later on, especially Caravansaries and Conscription, but there's no need for either at the moment.



Ravenna is probably the biggest beneficiary of the government swap. The borders just expanded to grab the stone tile (I swapped off the bananas tile to the stone) for +1 production, Urban Planning picked up another +1 production, and then Ilkum kicked in the +30% production bonus. Now the builder finishes in just 4 more turns, timed very nicely just after Irrigation tech completes to build a plantation on the spices. The builder will connect the spices, then quarry the stone, then put another plantation on the bananas. Plantations do provide 0.5 housing each, and together will therefore increase the housing cap by a point. That's enough for the time being; Ravenna will be able to reach size 6 and work all of its good tiles, then build a Bath district later on.



Finally, here's the capital as I place the Encampment district on the jungle tile to the northeast. This was the whole reason for pursuing Bronze Working early on, allowing me to lock in the district cost before it scales up too far. The capital is actually building a settler at 12 base production / 18 modified production per turn. The third settler costs 120 production, and so this will take 7 turns with an ETA of Turn 43. The city itself will be founded on Turn 50 if all goes according to plan.

Overall then, what an eventful pair of turns. I couldn't be much more pleased with how things turned around this morning - thank you TheArchduke for settling where you did! In his defense, I don't think he's ever seen my settler yet. It's going to be a surprise when it appears today upon opening the savegame. I suspect he might have taken a different spot if he knew I was able to pop my own city down in the same neighborhood.

At the very least, I hope we're giving the lurker thread plenty of material to discuss!

[Sullla]

We are flying through the turns right now. Another turn this afternoon and likely another one before the end of the day. Here's Turn 37:



I was finally able to settle my desired city. Whew, what a relief after all the recent shenanigans with TheArchduke. Arretium is up and running now, and hopefully this will prove to be one of my stronger cities down the road. Like Mediolanum, this will also be a difficult city to attack, largely because the city can't be put under siege without placing an enemy unit on the tile to the southwest of the city. Ranged units of mine can also get in a free shot at anything crossing the river to the north; the territory just above Arretium is a flatground killing zone if I set up enough defensive units. Anyway, it looks like we have a nice stable border now, and I wouldn't expect either one of us to bother the other player for a long time to come. As long as TheArchduke stays on his side of the river, I'll stay on mine.



I also went ahead and purchased the circled tile north of Arretium for 70 gold. I was thinking about this throughout my morning, and ultimately decided it was worth the gold. There are three interlocking motivations for spending this gold. The first is defensive; controlling that tile makes attacking me even more difficult, as I get additional vision into TheArchduke's territory and make unit movement more difficult for him. He can't enter my territory at all without declaring war or signing Open Borders (which I will not sign), and so controlling this tile makes movement more difficult for him. Second, I want to own this tile to secure control of the northern copper tile. That will be the first tile grabbed by my city when the borders expand, since it's the only resource tile in the second ring, and I don't want TheArchduke purchasing over to the tile to swipe it away. With the circled tile under my control, he would have to purchase the mountain tile first and only then could spend the even higher gold amount needed to grab the copper tile. I don't think he'll see that as a worthwhile gesture, whereas it might be worth it for him to grab the plains tile and then the copper.

If that was all, I wouldn't bother purchasing this tile for the 70 gold. However, the circled tile is also where I plan to build my Commercial district for this city down the road, and that tipped the scales for me. I want the Commercial district to be on a river for the +2 gold/turn bonus, and that only leaves three eligible tiles here. It can't go on the floodplains tile because districts can't be built on them; only Egypt can build on those tiles. I also can't build on the plains tile west of the city, the most obvious location, because I need to save that spot for the Roman Bath district later. The only other place the Bath could go would be on the southern copper tile, and that's way too good of a tile to waste. So it has to be one of the two river tiles in the north, and the one next to the copper tile is the more valuable one to control. This purchase will pay for itself 35 turns after the Commercial district is finished, for what that's worth. And if this purchase secures me the northern copper resource, well, that's another 2 gold/turn tile which I will be working the moment this city hits size 3. So this might be debatable if it means upgrading one fewer warrior into a legion later on, but I think there was enough in favor of the purchase to make it worthwhile.



Arretium is working the 3/1 floodplains tile for growth to size 2 in five turns. (Gotta love that pantheon: I have at least one tile at every city getting the production bonus. It's adding 4 base production/turn right now; all worked tiles combined have a base production of 11/turn. Yes, it's taking me from 7 to 11 in terms of raw tile yields - pretty nice.) Builder currently says 14 turns, which will drop to about 10 turns after considering growth and the addition of the amenities bonus once the spices get connected. The goal here is to grow quickly to size 3, with the builder farming the floodplains to get it to 4/1 yield and then mining the two copper tiles, which gets them to 1/3/2 and 1/2/2 yield. Next item will be a Commercial district after the builder, although I might not have Currency research completely done at that time, in which case I'll dump a few turns into a warrior for later on.

I swapped Ravenna off the stone tile and onto the bananas for this turn since allowed the city to grow next turn and didn't slow down the builder's ETA. The city will hit the housing penalty next turn but that's fine for now, as it has no other good tiles to grow onto. Adding plantations will let it grow another size and that's all it needs in the early game. I'm not pausing to build a granary here when I can build a Bath instead a bit later for much more benefit. Much better to go for a trader unit next to boost Currency to completion.



The capital keeps churning along on its latest settler. It looks like I had 5 overflow from the slinger, and another 18 production went into the settler after adding all of the various production modifiers. Meanwhile, the new slinger is going to explore the southern coast before escorting the forthcoming settler to its destination. I knew there were no sources of fresh water down there on this map script, but we might as well map it out fully while there's some extra turns to kill for this unit. The tile east of the iron is where city #5 will be going, on the coast with a nice collection of local resources. That spot will land me the boosts for Sailing and Iron Working, and hopefully Shipbuilding as well; I plan to burn a forest chop there with the +100% production for naval units policy card in place, and use that to produce a pair of galleys for the Shipbuilding boost. This is all a long ways away, but I want to have the embarkation ability before a potential military attack.



Finally some score information. Yuris settled his second city this turn, and that means everyone has expanded beyond their capital. Although I haven't seen another settler out of teh yet, my guess is that he'll have one relatively soon since he was also so fast to two cities. The map will be filling up fast. Adding Arretium has moved me into first place in score, for what that's worth, at 43 points to TheArchduke's 38. I am first in culture by a wide margin: 11.2 per turn compared to TheArchduke's 6.6 per turn. I'm first in Power for the moment, at 70 military score compared to a likely 56 for Yuris in second place. (I have 2 warriors and 2 slingers, hardly a great army, but apparently more than anyone else right now.) I noticed that TheArchduke is now ahead of teh in power, which is good to see since my next city is going towards teh. I thought teh was ahead of TheArchduke before - did he lose a unit to Yuris at some point (?) Hard to tell without contact.

Officially I am in last place in science because I have only researched 4 techs. However, I'm second in beaker/turn rate at 7.5, in compared to TheArchduke at 8.8 right now. However, TheArchduke is getting 2 free beakers from the Scientific city state, which I will also have in two more turns, and he's getting another beaker right now from working his (unimproved) tea resource at his capital. I can tell because his population went up a point this turn and his beakers increased by 1.3, more than the population point alone would account for. The northwest starting position has tea as the resource at the capital, which is worth 2 food / 0 production / 1 beaker if worked. TheArchduke is also suffering the unhappiness penalty at his capital, which is why his beakers didn't go up by the full 1.7 this turn. I think I'll be able to take the beakers/turn lead shortly, and at that point it's only a matter of time until I claim the most techs researched lead as well.

Finally, one other odd tidbit. TheArchduke has founded his pantheon and he discovered a civic this turn. It must be Early Empire because now his borders are filled in and can't be passed through. But even though he picked up a highly useful policy in the form of Colonization, it looks like TheArchduke is still running the terrible God King policy in his economic slot. The Religious ranking screen here has him making 1 faith/turn when I hover over it, which would only come from that policy. Perhaps the ranking screen doesn't update until next turn (?) Regardless, there must be something better than God King to put in that slot. Urban Planning would be a huge upgrade for his new city if nothing else.

Let's see if we can get in three turns in one day today.

[Sullla]

We did not manage to get through three turns in one day yesterday. There was still a new turn waiting this morning though:



This was a quiet turn overall. The most interesting thing about this turn was TheArchduke purchasing that useless mountain tile to the southeast of Mediolanum. This was a real surprise to me; I did not think he would invest 70 gold into purchasing a tile that his city can never do anything with. This immediately raised the question of whether to purchase the northern copper tile for Arretium, and after some thought this morning, I decided that it wasn't worth investing more gold into tile purchases. My city will expand to grab that tile in 4 turns anyway, and based on what tile purchases in the third ring cost for me, it should cost him either 110 or 115 gold to pick up that tile. I checked the diplomacy screen and TheArchduke has 93 gold after that mountain tile purchase. He made +5 gold between turns, so in four turns he'll be right around 110-115 gold. This is close enough that there's a pretty good chance I will claim the copper tile with natural border expansion before he can amass the sum he needs, and if I'm wrong, well, I'm OK with TheArchduke spending almost 200 gold here on tile purchases. Arretium still has other good tiles to work. With luck, TheArchduke won't be aware of how fast my city will grab that tile and won't spend the gold on purchasing it (or he won't manage to save up enough in time).

My units in this area are spread out in a defensive fogbusting position. The slinger is revealing some of the coastal tiles, including that crabs resource that no one will ever be able to use, and my warrior is on a hill to watch anything incoming from the east. The southern warrior is heading off to explore further east... although in retrospect, I should have moved the southern warrior up to cover Arretium on the roads, and sent the northern warrior off exploring. I would have had about one turn's extra head start that way. Ah well. I think I'll do that starting next turn since it still makes more sense to do things that way.



Ravenna grew to size 4 this turn and is my first city to hit the housing penalty. Because the population is one less than the housing cap, growth is reduced by -50% in this city. Instead of +7 food/turn, Ravenna is getting +3.5 food/turn. If this city were to grow to size 5 without gaining any more housing, the growth would be reduced by -75%. Poor Ravenna is therefore both unhappy and unhealthy; fortunately the builder that comes out in 2 turns will be able to rectify both issues.

Irrigation and Mysticism both finish next turn. I came up about 0.1 culture short of finishing Mysticism this turn, which would have been nice to get the free envoy a turn early. I'll be the first to crack double digits in both beakers and culture.



Since there wasn't anything else of note taking place this turn (no score changes in the Demographics), I'll go ahead and show one of the city state screens since we've been discussing them recently. Yerevan is the Religious city state to my south, and it's already built a Holy Site district northeast of the city that I'll be happy to take away from them down the road. The three tiers of bonuses are listed on the right side of the screen, along with the unique suzerain bonus: your apostles can choose from any promotion instead of receiving a random promotion. This makes Yerevan the best city state in the game for pursuing a Religious victory, and fairly useless in an actual MP game against humans. I've been watching the "influenced by" graphs with the three city states that I know, which allows you to see the number of envoys invested by each civilization with the city state. So far, it's just the free envoys that TheArchduke and I picked up for making contact.

Two final notes on this turn. TheArchduke is still showing up with 1 faith/turn on the Religious comparison screen, so he's either continuing to use God King policy or he found another source of faith somewhere on the map. And Yuris' power increased over mine, which means he likely built another Eagle Warrior. I'm content to have him be the furthest one away from me on the map here in the early game.

[Sullla]

Good morning everyone! It's the start of Daylight Savings time here in the USA, which means one fewer hour of sleep this morning traded in exchange for more sunlight in the evenings. As far as I'm concerned, worth it. Here's the latest turn from last night:



This was mostly a quiet turn again, which was fine with me. From a unit movement perspective, the most amusing thing was this city state warrior standing on the iron hill tile and blocking movement east. Well that settled the movement plan I floated last turn: the northern warrior heads off to the east to contact teh while the southern warrior goes up to help protect Arretium. Another movement issue I'll point out while we're on the subject: the road from the capital to Arretium genuinely does save some turns getting up there. Roads before the Industrial era often tend to be a waste of time, but with all those bridges over river crossings, this really will help reinforcements flow to the north a few turns faster. Hopefully it won't be needed any time soon.

The biggest news for the turn was finishing a tech and a civic. With Irrigation tech in hand, my builder will be able to construct a plantation on the spices and get poor Ravenna out from under the happiness penalty it's been suffer under for ages. Perhaps more importantly, Mysticism civic awarded a free envoy:



That's the whole reason I went for the civic, since I didn't care about any of the policies it unlocked, and it leads only to more religious stuff at the bottom of the civics tree. With a free envoy to award, I went ahead and dumped it into Stockholm for the +2 science, and since I was running Diplomatic League policy, the first envoy counted as two envoys. Now I only need one more to reach three and become the suzerain of Stockholm.



Here I am making use of the free civics swap to replace Diplomatic League with Charismatic Leader policy. The new policy takes me up to 5 envoy points/turn, and I'm currently at 44 envoy points. I get another envoy at 100 points, so in 12 more turns I can become the suzerain of Stockholm. I have nowhere else to put the envoys and Stockholm has a highly useful suzerain bonus, so that's the plan for now.

Mysticism's new policy cards are Revelation and Inspiration, two of the Wildcard slot policies that award Great Person points. These tend to be some of the weakest options in Civ6, but like anything else they can be situationally useful. If you do plan on using them, the correct time is as early in the game as possible, because on Turn 40 that +2 Scientist points/turn directed towards a Great Person that costs 60 GPP is pretty good, while on Turn 150 that +2 points/turn directed towards a Great Person that costs 400 GPP is almost completely useless. My civics research is going into Military Tradition next, which awards the Great General version of that same policy. I'm going to run the policy card for at least some of the time to help me generate the first Great General. Now that my early game goals for policies have been realized, I have to think a bit more about when I want to do my next swaps and which policies/governments I want to be in.



Finally, here's the score ranking for the current turn. If you look closely, you'll see that my score for the current turn is actually 48 and not 44; for some reason the scoreboard always sums my total on the following turn after an increase, not on the turn it happens. The score breakout is correct, but not the sum at the top. It's correct for all the other players though. Anyway, that means I'm 10 points clear of the field right now, and because the scoring in Civ6 seems pretty logical, I'm taking this as a good sign. Teh is the closest on empire development and not far behind there: he has 8 pop to my 9 pop, although he hasn't established a third city yet. TheArchduke is the closest on techs and civics, and he still has two more techs researched than I do. However, I passed him in beakers/turn with the placement of that envoy; he has 8.8 beakers/turn while I have 10.2 beakers/turn now. Yuris is the only player with a size 5 capital, and he has the strongest military power in the game right now. I suspect he has 3 Eagle Warriors although it's possible he has some other combination of units. It's an interesting dynamic in the game where everyone is good at something slightly different.

Still, I have the most cities, the most population, the most beakers/turn, and the most culture/turn. This is a pretty good position to be in overall.

[Sullla]

Yuris had the turn for a bit longer than usual, and after logging into the game, I found out why:



An unmet player has been defeated! That misleading message doesn't mean that one of the other players has been eliminated, but it does mean that Yuris has conquered the city state next to his starting position. Whichever type it was, he decided he'd rather have it as one of his cities than get the city state benefit. I agree completely with that decision; whatever the city state may have been granting him, an entire city is clearly more valuable. Yuris' score went up by a full 7 points this turn: 5 points from the city and apparently 2 points from capturing the city state at size 2. Yuris has now equaled me in the population and city count! Very nicely done.

Now there are two caveats I'll add to what was clearly a strong play overall. The first is that Yuris whacked his city state before it could build any districts for him. The city state will always build a district associated with its type (for example, my city state has already completed a Holy Site district) if you leave them alone long enough. It's almost certainly better to simply have the city itself at an earlier date, but I do need to point that out. The other small issue is that Yuris suffered losses of some kind in taking the spot:



His power dropped to last in the game in the score rankings, below TheArchduke and below teh. Now that doesn't mean that he actually lost units; Civ6 seems to carry over Civ5's military power formula where injured units decrease your total military power, and promotions add to the score. If Yuris didn't lose anything and just needs to heal his units back up to full, then this was a very easy city capture indeed. It's one of those moves that only a civ with an early game unit like the Aztecs could have pulled off. Yerevan next to me has a city defense strength of 26, and my warriors at strength 20 wouldn't have much luck capturing that spot. I'm going to need something stronger to capture this location, either legions or some horses down the road. Yuris has at least one luxury resource connected, which means his Eagle Warriors are either strength 29 or strength 30, and with three of them built, he definitely had enough power to make this city conquest happen. Like I said, well played on his end. It single-handedly rescues his game from also-ran status into a contender again.



Over in my neck of the woods, TheArchduke spent 105 gold to purchase his way over to the copper tile at Mediolanum, presumably to give himself another tile to work at size 2. I thought it would take him another turn or two to save up enough gold here, but it looks like I was wrong. He now has 0 gold in his treasury, which means no gold purchases from him any time soon. All told, I'm somewhat disappointed with how this whole sequence played out. Although I wish that I could have controlled that copper tile, I could not afford to spend more money here on tile purchases. If TheArchduke was willing to drop 175 gold into picking up a single resource tile, I can't stop him from doing so. Now I have to cross my fingers that the cultural tile picker will grab the plains hill tile 2 east of the city sometime in the next thousand years. More likely, it will grab the rainforest tiles that the cultural picker inexplicably thinks are good tiles. I really, really wish that Civ6 would let you select which tiles you want...

Ravenna finished its builder this turn, started a trader unit that should take about 10 turns. Thanks to stupid unit movement, it's going to take 2 more turns to reach the spices and connect them. Capital is 2 turns from growth, 3 turns from finishing the latest settler. My warrior/slinger pair is more than strong enough to keep TheArchduke from doing anything stupid at Arretium, while the other warrior is moving off to try and make contact with teh (or Yuris). Not the best turn for me, but so far, so good.

[Sullla]

Another new turn today, this time Turn 41:



I found TheArchduke's scout for the first time off to the east. That's reassuring to know that my number-tracking was based in some degree of reality after all. Since the terrain on this map script is mirrored, I'll move my warrior east for a few more turns, make contact with teh, and then turn around and start heading back home to escort the upcoming settler into the center of the map. The oasis tile is where this next settler is going, and then I'll be looking to backfill additional city locations from there. Because the fresh water locations are so limited on this map, it's going to be critical to control the best spots before anyone else can settle them.

Note the city state warrior is STILL blocking that iron hill tile, heh. I'll position my slinger on the northern desert hill to make sure the upcoming settler doesn't get delayed when it has to move through here in a few turns.



Arretium is going to grow to size 2 and pick up another tile next turn. I'm hoping and praying that the interface here is correct and that the highlighted tile is actually going to be chosen when borders expand. That's a plains hill tile with 1/2 yield, and it would easily make up for losing the northern copper tile to TheArchduke's tile purchases. The tile picker has been jumping around to different tiles for the last few turns, which means it's another one of those random cases as to what I'll actually get. This is one of the really, really dumb aspects of Civ5/Civ6: there's absolutely no reason why I shouldn't be able to stipulate which tile I want next. The game values them all equally - that's why the tile picker keeps jumping around all the time - so why can't I tell it which one I want? Frustrating. Needless to say, it makes a very big difference whether I have a potential 1/3 mined plains hill under my control versus a crummy 1/1 flatground plains tile that I can only farm over. I might get the plains hill under my control next turn... or I might have to wait 35 turns for borders to expand three more times. All I can do is hope for the dice to be kind.



Here's the wider view of my civ's heartland. The builder has finally reached the spices tile and will be able to add a plantation next turn. This lines up perfectly with the capital growing to size 5 and therefore avoiding the amenities penalty. Can't say I planned it that well, more of a lucky coincidence of course. The settler in the capital is two turns away from finishing, and I'll squeeze out a builder and a slinger next while still running the Urban Planning/Ilkum combination. Then we'll see about either getting out yet another settler or finally starting the Encampment district itself; it will depend on what policies I'm running, I think.

Writing is about to finish and then it's on to Currency next. My current tech goal is Apprenticeship, which I want to score for the +1 production on mines as soon as possible. Forget about the Industrial districts: useful as they are, the passive production bonus on all mines is much better. Currency is listed as a 12 turn research right now, which I'll be able to cut in half when Ravenna finishes that trader for the boost. So I'll have to divert research for a few turns in there to avoid wasting science, and Archery is the obvious target because it's a pre-requisite for Apprenticeship as well (at least since the most recent patch). Of course, I want to get a third slinger built before Archery completes, since I won't be able to build the cheaper and maintenance-free slingers once the tech is done. I need three slingers so that when I upgrade them into archers it will unlock the boost for Machinery tech later. And having one more slinger on hand for defense in the center of the map won't be the worst thing either. Therefore the immediate path forward seems clear: builder then slinger at the capital, a mixture of Currency and Archery for research, and pushing towards Apprenticeship on the tech tree.

One other note: I always get the loading screen for teh's German civ, and this turn it changed to use the Classical era text on the loading screen. Sure enough, teh also completed a tech in the Demographics score tracking this turn. It's almost certainly Currency, as that's the easiest Classical tech to research first and it's part of the aforementioned Apprenticeship path, which Germany absolutely wants to prioritize for Hansa unique districts. That's good news for teh. The tradeoff is that I don't know if he built any slingers yet, and if he's going for Archery next, he'll lose the chance to build cheap slingers and upgrade them to archers later. Probably worth it though - Germany wants their Hansas in play ASAP.

[Sullla]

The last turn was particularly slow to arrive; about 36 hours before it reached me again. It stood out since we've had such an excellent pace to date in this game. I hope it's not a sign of future turns to come, as I've been enjoying this game quite a bit. Then Realms Beyond was down for the rest of the day when I tried to post... Not the best combination for updating this thread.



First the scouting information for the turn. My warrior hasn't run into anyone in the east yet, but next turn I'll be able to climb the hill tile and likely make contact with teh. He has to be somewhere nearby based on the way that this map is mirrored. My Ravenna location is only three tiles away from that iron hill on the other side of the map. I plan to move onto the hill, then start doubling back towards my territory to escort the impending settler out of the capital. I don't trust escorting a settler with a slinger unit alone, although in a pinch I could move the other warrior down from Arretium if needed. The planned date for my city by the oasis will be Turn 50 if nothing pops up to disrupt it.

I highlighted the double unhappy message above. Roma grew to size 5 this turn and joined Ravenna in needing a source of amenities to avoid the unhappiness penalty. (Normally cities will be unhappy at size 3; the capital gets one free amenity from the palace and therefore doesn't need a luxury until size 5.) Fortunately, my builder was in place to connect a luxury resource for the first time:



Plantation on the spices tile, just what the doctor ordered. Plantations themseves are a lousy tile improvement, adding half a point of housing and 1 gold/turn. (They eventually get +1 food at Scientific Theory and another +1 gold at Globalization, both much later in the game.) In a major distinction from Civ4, adding most improvements to a tile does *NOT* remove forest/jungle status. Forest tiles provide +1 production in Civ6, so I have the option of bulldozing the forest for an immediate production bonus. However, that would remove the forest for the rest of the game, and it would require another builder charge to do so. I do not think it would be worthwhile in this case.
Anyway, I was able to add the plantation without removing the forest, and so this tile went from 4/1 yield to 4/1/1 yield, picking up a single gold piece in the process. If you've been wondering why I mostly ignored plantations to date, this is the reason. They are not very useful in the early game compared to mines and farms. That said, I did need the happiness, and Ravenna will benefit from the housing when I also add a plantation on the bananas. For that matter, I need the gold as well; I need to save up another 500-600 gold in the next 40 turns for my planned unit upgrades. This was a good fit for what my cities needed right now.

With the unhappiness penalty removed, my cities saw small increases to all of their various yields. Roma and Ravenna lost the unhappiness penalty, which Arretium gained the happiness bonus of +5% for being in positive amenities. When the interface eventually updated, I increased to 11.8 beakers/turn, 12.4 culture/turn, and 8.1 gold/turn.



The cultural picker from last turn held true and Arretium grabbed the plains hill tile that I wanted. I guess that you can trust it on the last turn before borders expand. This was a major break of luck for me, since Arretium will now be able to work the farmed floodplains tile with my pantheon bonus (4/1), the mined copper hill tile (1/3/2), and the mined plains hill tile (1/3). That gets the city to 8 production at size 3, and 10 production after I reach Apprenticeship tech for the mining yield boost. Very good stuff indeed, enough to build units and an early Commercial district in something approaching a reasonable time frame. The plains hill tile is even nice to have from a tactical standpoint, letting my warrior hang out within my territory and hold vision on anything that tries to move through this part of the map.

If there's a weakness at this city, it's a low food total here in the early game. The cultural tile picker doesn't like floodplains tiles and won't be picking up the other floodplains any time soon. Expect to see everything else in the second ring get selected first. I'm going to help out Arretium by running my first trade route from here to the fourth city, which will add +1 food and +1 production to the city. The other reason for running a trade route between cities #3 and #4 is to build a road between then for fast reinforcements. With a road, I'll be able to move units between the two cities in just 2 turns in response to threats. Since I'm Rome and get to have roads everywhere else for free, it seems like the best place to use the first trade route.



The capital completes its settler next turn and goes back to my familiar configuration at size 4. I checked the current build and the settler was at 113/120, which should mean some significant overflow into the next project. I think that I'm going to turn out another builder next, to take advantage of the Ilkum policy while I'm in it. The timing here on the civis is also excellent, as I will be able to drop Colonization policy next as the settler completes, swapping it out in favor of Strategos to work on producing the first Great General. The civic swaps get a little more murky after that, as I'm going to be pursuing more expensive civics that will take a while to research. The biggest weakness of my setup is that I won't be in Agoge for the next 10 turns, and that means I don't want to be doing much unit training. I'm first in power right now and I'll have the ability to upgrade slingers into archers in an emergency (once I research Archery tech), so I think it'll be OK.

Techwise, we're beelining for Apprenticeship and the passive mining boost. That means Currency right now until we have half the tech researched, then Archery tech after that until a trade route is established to finish boosting Currency to completion.



Here's an interesting note from the most recent patch. Not only can you see the population of other civ's cities on the diplomacy screen, you can also see their districts as well! I haven't built a Campus district in Ravenna, obviously, but I did toss one down to lock in the current cost before it scales up any further. Ravenna will want a Campus at some point down the road, even if it won't be building one for ages. I wonder if TheArchduke will see this and get confused, thinking I already have a Campus finished? Heh. The district really shouldn't appear on this menu until it's finished.

I've been watching TheArchduke each turn and he hasn't hooked up a luxury resource yet. He'd better connect his tea resource soon, since his capital is unhappy right now at size 5 and his second city will quickly hit size 3 to join it. Mediolanum is a weak city but it does grow quickly. TheArchduke also completed a civic this turn, adding State Workforce. He'll now start Political Philosophy and should have the 55 culture he needs in about 6-7 more turns. The other players both have 4 civics researched, and are likely slowly working on the very expensive State Workforce civic as we speak.

If I do manage to contact teh next turn, I'll have more information to work with. Here's hoping.