With the game being over, I guess it's also appropriate to do a review post. I want to do that before the events of sandbox mode drive the earlier game out of everyone's mind.
With apologies to John Julius Norwich:
I. The Early Turns - turns 1-50
Okay, so Woden and I's gameplan at the start, in consultation with oledavy, was to divide up the labor between our civs. The main areas of focus are basically science, culture, gold (faith, to a lesser degree), and underlying all of it, production. Woden took Nubia with the first pick, while I had some hopes of getting Russia with the last pick (Rome, China, and Germany were never going to happen). Unfortunately, of course, Emperor took the strong Russia civ, so I had the following options:
1)Expansion/DLC civs were out, since those were limited to one per team. No Australia or Persia or anything like that.
2)Vanilla civs left:
- America
- Arabia
- Brazil
- England
- France
- Greece (both)
- India
- Japan
- Norway
- Spain
Not too horrible a set. In retrospect, I really should have considered Japan, Gorgo, or Arabia, all could have been really strong picks. At the time, though, I was fixated on finding a trade route synergy with Woden - some way to generate gold to complement his science. I'm not sure why I so cavalierly dismissed culture - I don't even seem to discuss it. Obviously, in the end culture came via Nan Madol, but we struggled in the early game for sure. Greece would have countered that nicely, and Gorgo's early rush potential COULD have seen us go right for Khmer's capital with Nubian archers to back us up. That's only obvious in hindsight, though, and we could just as easily have started between Rome/China on the one side and Russia's DotF on the other.
I also wonder if Arabia would have been a stronger choice. We never did make good use of religion, and Arabia's religious/science strengths could have done well, while Woden concentrated on gold and culture generation. However, this probably would have blown up in our faces - the early religious race was intense and I think the only reason we were competitive at all was that we spent early hammers elsewhere instead of in a futile chase for religion. IF things played out the same way, we would have gotten the same lame beliefs but have invested a lot more in getting those beliefs.
So, England was probably the most solid choice (Japan would also have been great, but I had just dedlurked oledavy through PBEM4 and didn't want to do Japan again), but I had the wrong gameplan. It took a VERY long time to get Commercial Hubs AND RNDs up and running - in fact, it never really did pay off. To be fair, I did a horrible job building districts this game, but even a more skilled player than I would probably have had a tough time getting this set up in a reasonable timeframe. Instead, England's best gameplan is the one that I defaulted to: Spam RNDs for trade and Great Admirals, monopolize the oceans, and use sea control to win the game.
I think this plan could have worked, and had I done a better job keeping up in the science race, probably WOULD have worked. I had some bad luck with the map - my continental bonus never mattered a damn, and I've been over the canal situation (
), but you can't count on the map helping you, obviously. Sullla also did a fantastic job building a navy to meet me, and racing towards Steel (I need to doublecheck when oledavy unlocked battleships in PBEM4 - it was right around the same time, but maybe a little later). Steel gave Rome a decisive edge in the naval fight, obviously, as the sandbox turns proved.
Anyway, overall my only regret with the civ pick is that I didn't do a good enough job exploiting England's strengths to the fullest. I also wonder what might have been had I taken Japan.
Let's move on to early development and city-placement.
I don't have too much to say about my early hammers. I think that I let Kabul/Valetta sucker me into building too many military units, though - I should have gotten a campus or monument down much earlier than I did, and while I kept up okay-ish in settlers at the start, I probably didn't have enough builder labor, and I gradually fell behind. Having built the military, I probably should ahve gone all-in at Khmer. We needed to get more out of our early units than what we did, and we were basically chasing the leaders the entire time because of it.
City-placement, though, I think I learned a lot. My early city sites were suboptimal, and hampered me for the rest of the game, I think. Salamis, for example, took a long time to grow onto its productive hills. Actium's low food and fresh water situation meant it took
ages to get the pop to do anything useful, Leyte NEVER paid off...Basically, 6 months ago I was too SP-focused on city placement - assuming I had plenty of time to develop cities into useful things, focusing on the late game modern ages when they'd have high pops and ideally placed districts to use everything in 3 tiles. In multiplayer, it's really only the first ring and some important second-ring tiles that matter. Everything third ring will have to be purchased to be used, and that's a hefty investment, so it better be worth it!
So, my early cities could have been a lot better. I think in general I did a poor job with expansion in this game - I talked a lot before about what a huge mistake not continuing to push settlers through the '60s and '70s was, so I won't go into that again. The other issue is that my poor city placement meant that my cities took
forever to build anything, which pushed me away from the massive time spent building districts and more towards cutesy chop moves and hte like. That ate up a lot of builder labor, while it did grow my navy and get my RNDs and traders out quickly, and furthermore it made my pantheon totally useless. Just about every RND before the late game was chopped. I could have done a MUCH better job with my pantheon - taking the culture for plantations one, for example, would have been great with the luxuries I had, and would have made us competitive in culture long before Nan Madol.
The last part of the early game was the war with Khmer. Khmer planted - unwittingly, I think - right in my face, and Woden and I just happened to have the military to do something about it. The war itself went well, no major comments to add, but I guess the major decision at that point was whether to press on to
MikeCornflakes' capital, or call things there. Woden and I felt that pushing with warriors and archers into walls and the joint defense of Ngao Mbebas and remaining Khmer units would not have worked. We had no GG advantage, we had no tech advantage, only a paltry edge in numbers and would ahve been pushing into thickly jungled terrain - ideal for Japper's Ngaos. I think we made the right call in not pushing things, but if we took Cornflake's capital early, we would have been in a much stronger economic position later.
It would also have probably turned Russia/Germany against us, so there's that.
My only real comment on the whole Mike fiasco is that it indirectly worked against us, in the end - Mike's erratic play would have made him much easier prey for Woden and I later on, as opposed to Cornflakes, who did a great job making a hopeless last stand against tough odds in Woden. I SHOULD have followed Woden's tactics in that war more closely, but frankly, I did a poor job carefully keeping track of Woden. We didn't work together nearly as well as we should have, and it's mostly my fault - my brain was usually worried about my own things, and I'd do a cursory glance through Woden's territory. Our communication was great the beginning, and gradually dropped off.
II. Apogee - turns 51 - 80
After the war with Khmer, we reached our highest relative position in the game. I got out to 6 cities, taking Kabul, and quickly chopped out RNDs at every city. In this early period, the RND was a monster district. Foreign traders brought in gold, science, and culture. I also grabbed Nan Madol at this time. England quickly roared ahead with culture, Woden was developing nicely, and the trade-based science also pushed my own research rates into rivaling Rome/China's.
In the end, though, this lulled me into a false sense of security. I thought htings were going better than they really were, and while I knew that my civ's strengths rested on shaky-ground, I thought that I could quickly build up to make things more firm. This is when I conceived and started chasing the Venetian Arsenal, I grabbed the Mausoleum using some quick chops in a sort of test-run for hte more important wonder, and I started to build more military to finish the job with Kongo/Khmer.
Except for the VA prep, I made a lot of mistakes. I was not generating enough gold to upgrade the military units I was building, so the research rates meant nothing. I let the fact taht I was leading or tied in most important categories lull me into not pushing more cities and settlers, and I did a poor job developing the cities I had. THIS was the time to push for Syracuse, Savo, and Jutland as settles, this was the time to get Campuses and Commercial Hubs down and building, but I neglected all that. My civ peaked briefly and then started to slide down, down, down.
I've already talked about the lessons learned here, so I don't have too much commentary beyond my thread. My early trade-science DID make my pursuit of the VA possible, and the fact that I was able to arrive at Mass Production a mere 6 turns or so after Sullla is the only reason that Rome/China didn't squash the rest of us flat at the end of the game. Really, the VA is the only reason the game ended in a draw and not a one-sided rout (note that even WITH the VA I was still decisively beaten by the end).
III. Decline and Fall - Turns 81 - 151
Okay, so the last half of the game was a long, slow slide for me. I've noted a lot of the problems already -
- Lack of new cities
- Lack of growth in old cities
- Negligence of districts
These three things gave me a small, weak civ by turn 100. I was aware of it, and spent most of the rest of the game working to correct it, knowing that I could never 'catch up' since the other teams would grow just as fast or faster, but hoping I could stay within striking distance and exploit an opening.
The big play, of course, the game-saving play, the one thing that kept Singaboy and Sullla from just running over everyone else, was snatching the Venetian Arsenal. The neat thing about htis is that I did most of the work building the wonder before I ever unlocked the tech. I didn't reach Mass Production until t106 and I didn't start the wonder itself until t110. Instead, I needed to quickly prebuild some ships, chop those into an Industrial District, then rebuild my ship charges and ancient walls to load up the VA chops themselves.
Navarino helped, as it was the perfect city - no less than 3 stone tiles nearby. I had to buy a lot of tiles to get everything set up - basically the money that would have gone to knight/crossbow upgrades. That ~700 gold stung a lot, but it was worth it to land the wonder. I was also fortunate that I never built walls in the city, saving the Limes chop for a time like this, and I had the ability to build 2 different ships with Maritime Industries. I therefore had a dream scenario: 3 100% boosted Stone harvests for maximum overflow, and a handful of jungles and forests afterwards to rush the last bits conventionally. However, all of this took a tremendous amount of logistical work to set up beforehand, getting the district in place and the walls and ships built BEFORE I finished Mass Production. I started the work on turn 80 and I still barely finished in time (waiting for Monarchy to squeeze an extra 50% out). I was also neatly urged along by my visibility of Sullla's own progress over in his city. Thankfully, he didn't seem to grasp the true idiocy of chop overflows quite yet, and he settled for slow-building the thing over 20-odd turns - which, to be fair, is the way it had always been done. I think everyone knows, now, that you can't do that and hope to land a wonder anymore. A RB mod really needs to address chop overflow, because it dominates the game and frankly, I hate it - it's not very much fun to play around and I imagine it's not fun to read about, neither, but you've got to do it or else you fall behind your rivals.
I also scored a diplomatic coup the same turn the Arsenal finished, landing a DoF with Sullla/Singaboy. I still think this was a boon to our team - I had next to no navy in the western ocean at all, most of my ships had been built in the south. As soon as the VA completed, I founded 3 cities in the west and started chopping out ships. In retrospect, I maybe should ahve prioritized Midway and Lepanto more than Savo and Syracuse, since that would have meant a handful more ships produced and that could have been the difference.
However, at the time I founded those cities, I was counting on a joint war with Russia/Germany to take down the leaders. Yes, I had landed the VA, but I expected Archduke and Emperor to see that that merely compensated for an abysmal research rate and a low population, not to see me as a threat to win the game. However, I felt that with the VA and Woden's archers/GGs on our side, and Cossacks/Hansas on the other, we'd stand a good chance of taking down Rome/China before their massive science rate ran away with the game.
That, of course, didn't happen. I stand by most of my rant at the time Germany allied with Rome/China. I can understand Archduke's play, I guess - he didn't want to face Rome/China alone, and why not take the guaranteed peace? Send the big dog after the other guy, then come in later. It's the same play Woden and I were planning on, but I think Archduke was mistaken, because of that crucial edge the other team had in research rates. Consider a war where Rome/China go after Germany on turn 135, still 15 turns out from Steel and Combustion, fighting with frigates, knights, and muskets against similar tech, including Cossacks, on one side, and a horde of frigates boosted by the VA on the other. That was the war I was angling for. By signing peace, Germany pushed hte war back 10 turns, and by the time he and Emperor could ahve come in, England was in ruins (more due to tactical blunders on my part, though, that didn't HAVE to happen) and Cossacks were obsolete. Totally different complexion.
As for the war itself, I don't have much commentary - I think I've noted all the major points in previous posts already. In the interests of completeness, though -
1)I think my strategy going in to the war was a good one - lure Sullla away from his key city, strike it and raze it in the first 2 turns of the war, then turn and confront his fleet. As I envisioned it, I would hit the city while his fleet was down around Nan Madol, unable to sail back in time. After the fall of Genova, we'd be on an equal playing field regarding fleet production, and then I could use my Venetian Arsenal to overcome his scientific advantage.
Parts of the plan went well. Not defending Nan Madol was the right call - I did force Singaboy to burn some envoys on it to boot me out before hte war started, but I still kept the culture right up until the first turn of the war itself, which was the best case scenario. With the Roman first strike potential I could never have held the city longer than I did, and if the Genova plan had worked I could have retaken it at my leisure and restored my culture. I also got most of the fleet in position on the right turn, and I was able to save most of my decoy fleet.
Ultimately, of course, the plan failed as initially conceived. Why? Couple of reasons.
1)Lack of canal - This meant that Rome could build using twice as many cities as I could, which effectively negated the advantage of the Venetian Arsenal. When war broke out, we had a modest numerical advantage, but not a 2:1 ratio - it looks like it was more 4:3. Adding in my second fleet in southern waters, like Sullla could, would have made the ratio closer to 7 or even 8:3 in my favor. That would have decided things even if nothing else changed. My not having a canal city was
decisive in this game.
2)The Terracotta Army - this was a great move by Rome. In one neat move, he negated my Great Admiral advantage and then some, with +7 promotions on every ship. My qualitative vanish disappeared overnight, and suddenly all I had was my own modest numerical advantage against Roman ships just as strong and very near battleships. No excuses for missing this play - I could have built the damn wonder myself, but I didn't think to.
3)Rome's first strike - the fleet battle was effectively decided on the first turn of the war, when Rome sank half of the "real" navy in one blow before I even had a chance to move. That's why the war isn't tactically too interesting - Rome won because he got to move first and I did not. If the shoe had been on the other foot, we could ahve sunk 10 Roman frigates on the first turn, and gotten the rest before he was able to upgrade them to Battleships (Woden's reporting is fuzzy here, but by turn 151, I was facing battleships all over the place, which means the upgrades came on turn 149 or 148). Why did Rome get first strike? I'll break this down, too -
a)I was a moron and couldn't count. Deployed my fleet too close to Rome's, thinking I had a one-tile greater buffer than I did. This si the biggest reason. Huge blunder on my part and ultimately it
should have cost me the game.
b)Rome knew where my Sea Dogs were all along - which meant that he knew where most of my fleet was, since the Sea Dogs were the nearer screen of the fleet (duh, since they're invisible...right? Wrong). This meant that he didn't blunder into the main fleet with a few ships after moving most of 'em, he went straight at it with his whole force.
c)Rome gets to move first. No way around this one.
If any one of those three facts change, Rome doesn't get to sink my fleet before I even have a chance to fight back, and we have a proper fight, one I think I could have won. Ah,, well.
As we know, once the fleet was gone, the war, and the game were effectively decided - I had no means of defending my coastal cities (I could blast those tanks to scrap with frigate fleets if I had won), and with the loss of half my empire Woden and I were out of it. Except...
Singaboy and Sullla didn't see that way. My desperate chopping of anything that moved, burning down my civ in a bid to take as many Romans with me as I could, worked, but not as I envisioned - instead of weakening Rome/China so that Germany could have an easier go at them, they were convinced that it was impossible for any of the remaining three teams to be conquered. This has to be a combination of the endless waves of VA ships I threw at them, with Woden's strong army showing on his front. And so, with Sullla wanting out, they offered a draw. What we couldn't do on the gameboard, we COULD do to the minds of our opponents. That's what matters, in the end.
Naturally, Rome/China were wrong about this - as the last 5 sandbox turns have shown, Rome was on the very edge of victory. I had no more ships left and nothing to save my cities, and once my units were gone the rest of my stuff toppled lightning quick. I marvel that we're in a position to shrug at this.
IV. Conclusion
I came into this PBEM with 3 goals:
1)Enjoy myself!
2)Don't embarrass Woden and drag him down to defeat with poor play.
3)Learn as much as I can
This was my first game of Civ VI multiplayer. I had dedlurked oledavy in PBEM4, but otherwise I had no experience at all with playing against anything other than the stupid robots - and I never really played above King or Emperor even then. Economically, I had no idea how the systems worked (still don't, obviously), I had only the vaguest notions of how to build an empire, tactically I'd never faced a competent opponent (I still really haven't, since Woden played the war turns!). I did have a bit of spectating under my belt, and I felt that I had a decent overall strategic sense - I could tell what the metagame demanded at any time, and I could set overall goals pretty well. So, I wanted to learn to play better, and in the course of events not become an anchor to Woden. And if I didn't have fun, the whole exercise was pointless.
Overall, I think I met all three of those goals. I learned a LOT about how to play Civ VI. The early turns were a few stumbling blocks, but I set some achievable early goals and met those. I made a LOT of mistakes, enough to eliminate me in most PBEMs, but I was lucky in a great partner in Woden and in initially weak neighbors. And I learned (I think) from those mistakes. Lessons learned:
1)Keep pushing expansion. Don't ever sit and think you have "enough" cities for now - you should always be planning to grow more, either through conquest or through settlement. I think the single biggest error I made was stagnating on 6 cities for 50 turns, damn near 1/3 of the game. If I'd settled Jutland, Syracuse, and Savo earlier, I'd have had a much stronger, more competitive economy.
2)Don't overspecialize. I ignored campuses for far too long (and was even nervous that I'd tread on Woden's toes with the single campus I built early). My thinking was "Woden handles science, I handle gold generation." What that
should have meant was that I built maybe 3-4 campuses to Woden's 6-7, not that I ignored the district entirely. We also struggled with having enough gold on hand, because I couldn't generate enough for both teams. In the war with Khmer, our weak gold hurt us as I was unable to upgrade and so unable to assist Woden, slowing things down. Starting at about that time, and getting worse thereafter, my weak science hurt us. The main reason I had to try and win the war right away on turn 146 instead of playing cautiously was the looming specter of battleships.
3)City placement! I think I'm much better at spotting good city spots now. My early spots were kind of weak - not enough good 4 or 5 yield tiles. I was kind of hurt by the land in this game, but I am certain I could make better use of it than what I did. Leyte, for example, has never been a very impressive city. Maybe I should have skipped it and settled Aboukir first, which blossomed quickly.
4)Don't ignore growth! I stagnated on low population for way too long. Partially this was due to my utter lack of fresh water on my half of the continent - most of it was over in Woden's lake area - but I could have focused on granaries or lighthouses sooner than I did. There was always something "higher priority," but most of that could have waited. Low pop meant that I had low production, and instead of getting stronger over time, my cities stagnated, I couldn't build more districts, I had a harder and harder time getting builders out anywhere but Trafalgar, which in turn made it harder to improve the terrain...you always want your pop growing and your cities getting stronger!
5)Do the research. In this game and PBEM8 I continually get burned when I should have known better. I'm a lazy player, and I don't look up all the mechanics I should. If I'd just bothered to look up default unit movement, instead of trying to hack it by reasoning backwards from my own ships, we'd have had a proper war at the end there, instead of a one-sided slaughter. I also bump into things like overflow mechanics (additive, not multiplicative), wonder requirements, not being able to chop forests you plant (say what you will, timmy, I think the endless builder wave would be HILARIOUS), and so on. The wiki isn't always reliable, but it works for most things. And you can always ask.
6)Don't ignore monuments. I sort of wish that Nan Madol hadn't been in this game - I was never forced to learn how to reliably build up culture generation because I (quite correctly, to be fair) identified the potential of the city, grabbed it, and then thoughtlessly led in culture generation the rest of the game. I didn't build as many monuments as I should have, again, because something was always higher priority. I've done better at monuments, but past that, I'm not sure how to boost culture - I guess I really do need some theater squares, eh?
7)Plan way in advance for eurekas/inspirations. In the late game, I had to hard research a ot of things. I was way behind in research, more than even my weak science output should have accounted for - I should have been relatively close behind China, who only started outpacing me by 20+ beakers after turn 125 or so. Instead, he's been at steel and combustion for ages while I'm, uh, not. Part of the discrepancy, I suspect, is that Sullla and Singaboy probably did a great job splitting up inspirations between them and used that to surge ahead even more. No doubt, I got clobbered in this area. It's
worth it to take the time to build for an inspiration, even something you don't normally want to do.
8)The trade economy: I think that making heavy use of trade routes is a great way to
supplement a more robust economy, it cannot
replace campus-based science (for example). Trade apparently increases linearly as your routes expand, while Campuses start to go exponential at Natural Philosophy/Education/Rationalism. I did a good job keeping up until those key policies and buildings were reached, then I was left in the dust. However, if you do a better job keeping up with your campus count, then I think England's cheap RNDs can make it quite a powerful research civ with the correct use of trade routes. Other civs with cheap Commercial Hubs - are there any? - or bonuses to trade (the Cree) can get a science edge this way, too.
In hte end, I had lots of fun. I learned a whole lot, I got to see what Sullla is like in action - when I stumbled across his site 5 years ago looking for Civ V tips, I never imagined that I'd one day find myself staring at hordes of his battleships across an ocean and trying to figure out what I was going to do about them, so that was neat - and I think I didn't
completely humiliate myself. Overall, it was a great experience! Thanks to Woden for being a great teammate and showing me the ropes - sorry my noobish tendencies let you down sometimes, bud, but you were a great ally. Look forward to playing with you in the future. Thanks to oledavy for dedlurking us at the beginning, and for his help resolving the Mikeforall situation, and for hte words of encouragement later - that really helped me stay motivated. Thanks to the other players, particularly Cornflakes for helping keep the game going, and for everyone staying civil and friendly and keeping a fairly good turn pace throughout. Finally, thanks to everyone following along at home - more than anything else, I was motivated to keep putting together good reports for you guys, and I hope I didn't let you down.
To close, let me borrow a phrase from the Romans (with apologies to Sullla):
valete et plaudite
"Goodbye -
and applaud us!"
