Nothing to add here. Please consider one slinger for the archery eureka as HBR is behind archery.
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[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot
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Typing this on my phone on the bus so quick update. Pictures to follow tonight when I am home.
- Recalling scout still, will meet settler north of The Blues. - Cleared camp, no unit spawns, scout is missing. Our warrior has 14 hp and must heal for a few turns before we can risk a hostile encounter. - Slinger at capital is motionless. If it is from the first camp it should start to suicide on the city in the interturn. - no major score changes but Kaiser has 3 civics already.
I Think I'm Gwangju Like It Here
A blog about my adventures in Korea, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
Here is hoping for the suicide slinger.
The warrior should probably retreat cautious by way of hill scouting return and hill up in our territory to waste less time.
Turn 24
Save was available for quite long. Quick turn, scout returns home, warrior moves to a defensible hex he was the turn before. Probably better to heal 1-2 turns, then go back and heal up full.
Yeah, let the warrior heal up a bit so running into an unexpected barb won't doom him.
Other question is - slinger or warrior? A warrior is more useful, I feel, but also takes a bit longer, and speed matters right now. Every turn we're trapped in our city by a slinger of all things is a turn we're losing production and culture from the sheep pasture - 2h/2c a turn right now (to say nothing of the wasted craftsmanship boost...why didn't we just go ahead and research foreign trade to completion instead? Then we could have finished craftsmanship as soon as our builder can build the pastures in a few turns. It feels like we missed out on some culture there, not sure I follow the logic). A slinger is less useful and only good for defense of a city or unit, but that's just what we need. Killing a barb would also be nice to pick up some beakers towards Archery. Accordingly, I lean slinger ->warrior for our next two builds in the capital at least. Use the slinger to drive away the barb slinger (who is indeed from a new camp, since he's not suiciding, alas), then the second warrior will give us some homeland security at last. We can keep rolling north with the scout after founding Kings and resume exploration, and send our two warriors to clear the nearby camp and then scout west and east.
I Think I'm Gwangju Like It Here
A blog about my adventures in Korea, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
Slinger in my opinion. It enables an eureka. Slinger->Warrior and then things become fuzzy. I am not sure if we should build a 3rd city at all but go into war mode if we find a good target over the next 10 turns. Problem is our scouting which took a nosedive thanks to the barbarians.
I'm typically a fan of warriors over slingers because slingers are so useless in any situation where they can be attacked by an enemy. They make for awful explorers with their 5 melee strength and their 1 tile range can make it hard to get an attack off. The cost argument is also not convincing for me because slingers cost 35 production and warriors cost 40 production - that's not much of a difference given that warriors are far more useful for exploring and fighting anywhere outside a city setting. With that said, this could be one situation where a slinger is better because it can sit inside the capital and shoot at the enemy slinger across the river. I would watch and see what the barb slinger does in between turns; if it starts suicide attacking then I'd go for a warrior, but if it stands in place firing at the capital then a slinger is probably the better way to clear it.
Fully agree with healing the southern warrior, I wouldn't try moving that guy until he's at 50 HP. Losing the warrior would be an utter disaster right now and safety needs to come first. TheArchduke Wrote:Slinger in my opinion. It enables an eureka. Slinger->Warrior and then things become fuzzy. I am not sure if we should build a 3rd city at all but go into war mode if we find a good target over the next 10 turns. Problem is our scouting which took a nosedive thanks to the barbarians. I think any attempt to launch an early attack would be a disaster, throwing away any attempt at winning the game for no reason. It's clear that no one else started nearby and that makes a horseman rush impractical. It's way too easy to spam out defensive archers in Civ6 and operating at the end of 20-tile supply lines or whatever is a nightmare. Suboptimal had the super-powered Nubian archers in the last PBEM game and he still couldn't pull it off. Furthermore, even if we were able to capture a city, how could we ever hold it thanks to the stupid loyalty mechanic in Gathering Storm? We could raze instead of capturing but that would be completely pointless, investing resources to hurt one other player while also hurting ourselves in game with three other competing players. By all means feel free to try it if you want but I can't endorse a hopeless plan like that. I don't know how to put this delicately so I'm just going to bring it up. The current state of this game feels... unfocused for lack of a better word. Sometimes it's Chevalier playing the turns, and sometimes it's TheArchduke playing the turns, and no one's exactly certain who's going to be grabbing the next turn or making the next major decision. Obviously Chevalier has limited access and it's wonderful that TheArchduke has been helping out with the turns to keep the save moving. My point is that there's not a lot of consistency here and I think that might end up having a negative impact as the game gets more complicated. I don't have any thoughts or solutions here, just pointing out something that's been on my mind during the recent turns. Not sure what, if anything, needs to be the response. 
June 25th, 2020, 22:34
(This post was last modified: June 25th, 2020, 22:35 by TheArchduke.)
Afaik Chevalier´s play situation will get better.
If there is any doubt about what to do Chevalier will do the turn. Also I am not going to force my idea of an attack on this game, it depends if we can find an opponent and scout him out anyway. Which does not look like it will happen soon. I disagree with the early rush. Suboptimal made numerous mistakes which I already pointed out. A rush is difficult but in no ways impossible. (June 25th, 2020, 18:49)Sullla Wrote: I'm typically a fan of warriors over slingers because slingers are so useless in any situation where they can be attacked by an enemy. They make for awful explorers with their 5 melee strength and their 1 tile range can make it hard to get an attack off. The cost argument is also not convincing for me because slingers cost 35 production and warriors cost 40 production - that's not much of a difference given that warriors are far more useful for exploring and fighting anywhere outside a city setting. With that said, this could be one situation where a slinger is better because it can sit inside the capital and shoot at the enemy slinger across the river. I would watch and see what the barb slinger does in between turns; if it starts suicide attacking then I'd go for a warrior, but if it stands in place firing at the capital then a slinger is probably the better way to clear it. Hopefully warrior vs slinger won't matter too much in the long run - a slinger should be enough to drive off the barb slinger, and then we just need him to escort our builder to the pastures and defend that territory. Slingers can't aggressively attack barbs, but unless it's barb horses they can defend themselves just fine, and a slinger represents free beakers for archery. Second, I totally agree that a horseman rush right now is entirely premature. We're slow to a second city, yes, but that's nto going to be necessarily fatal (more on this in a moment). Launching an attack using only two city's worth of production as a base, over rough terrain, towards opponents we haven't even found yet, is doomed to fail. Horsemen can't attack cities anymore (not fast enough to avoid being shot to death by archers, to say nothing of walls), can't hold the territory we take, etc. I think the proper path for land warfare in GS is a military designed to cripple an opponent, not conquer - basically, our game winning move is to knock the others out of the running by razing a key city or two and forcing a concession. It's a mid-to-endgame play. Before that we need to get ourselves into a position of advantage. As for how to do that, the lack of focus is my fault. I have spent two or three weeks now dashing out quick reports while hurrying around here in Korea in my closing months. I try to leave detailed intentions for Archduke, but I haven't done a very broad strategic overview...well, ever. This whole affair has been rushed and I do think Team Canada needs to pause, take a deep breath, and carefully evaluate our best path to a win. So let's do that. Right now, my main intentions don't stretch beyond the midgame. I don't have a detailed win state of "launch the spaceship" or "conquer everyone." None of Canada's "strengths" really apply, so we're playing an almost totally vanilla civ with the joyfully added benefit that we can't attack city-states, the easiest way to give yourself a shot in the arm in the midgame. Thus, my plan is instead more flexible: I want to a)reach the midgame without falling significantly behind in terms of expansion or total beakers/clefs, b)exploit opportunities during the midgame as they arrive to c)hold a position of advantage in the endgame to push for whatever chances for victory reveal themselves. So, we play the next 30-50 turns as best we can without necessarily having a determined plan like "build the Venetian Arsenal" or "spam seowons everywhere and run away in science." Right now, that looks to me like getting Dry Kings up and running, followed by our megapolis of plazas and commercial hubs, and in the meantime expand to the other 4 city-sites identified at Bruins, Capitals, Penguins, and Blackhawks. The details I haven't worked out - like if we should wait, chop an Ancestral Hall, and then do a settler push. Those builders are sorely needed everywhere except Bruins. In the midgame, we focus on just playing a tight game. We keep expanding even into marginal areas until settlers become too expensive that new cities won't repay their costs before game end. We should be strong in culture with Brazil, and competitive in science and gold. I'd also like a modest military - I think there's an opportunity if people get careless with suzeraintys to conquer our city-state neighbors that way, especially if someone on the opposite side of the map vassalizes, say, Yerevan. Free cities is free cities. This will be a challenging phase considering our only advantage is that...we get +1 food on tundra farms. Yippee. x_x Speaking of, though, let me segue. The religious belief changes are out and I think we need to evaluate if pushing for a religion is viable. There are 3 available I believe? Unless our map size settings mess with that. Here are the summary of changes, courtesy of sub in the Civ VI thread: Quote:(NEW) Sacred Places – Founder: +2 Science, Culture, Gold and Faith for each city following this Religion that has a World Wonder. Church Property has been combined with Tithe, to create a new belief that was stronger than either. That makes it a very strong belief. Cross cultural dialogue is stronger, but I'm not sure if it's strong enough. Let's check in on my Arabian game, PBEM12. That was my strongest religion game (and I think one of the stronger religion games in general in our PBEMs. Alhambram PBEM2 and oledavy PBEM4 also come to mind, Singaboy PBEM7 as well). On the final turn of the game, turn 161, I had 45 followers of Esky Magic spread around my cities. I had 2 conquered cities with no followers, but my core was fairly well saturated and couldn't really be boosted much by missionaries. That would have meant an extra 11 science added to my total of 97 science (which is itself a fairly weak science performance on the whole, I could ahve done more with policy cards to really juice that up). So about a 10% boost for a fully mature civ. Not to be sneezed at, but not game changing either. Eh. I don't think this by itself justifies a religious push. World Church takes me from 50 cpt to 60 cpt. Religious community: International trade routes are weak. I think this belief actually got worse, especially since you can only have at most +2 gold per international trade route! This is worse than caravanserais! Pilgrimage: Would have been worth about +20 faith in my Arabian game. Not bad, again, nothing gamebreaking. Boosts me from 71 fpt to 90 fpt, and I again didn't do enough with policy cards to maximize faith output. I was really focused on gold and ships in that game. Work Ethic: now this is interesting. It's fairly easy to get very high holy site adjacencies with appropriate beliefs/cards. Check this out:  That's a population 2 city with 27 production, 47 turns into the game! We can't take Dance of the Aurora, regrettably, or Desert Rites (easy way to build Petra there!), but maybe there's a way to make this work for us? Other ways besides Pantheons to get good adjacency Holy Sites? I'm not sure after this review that religion is ultimately a viable path to take, but there's definitely room for, for example, Ichabod to bust the game wide open right here. Hopefully he isn't paying attention?
I Think I'm Gwangju Like It Here
A blog about my adventures in Korea, and whatever else I feel like writing about.
Turn 25
Okay, most actions have already been discussed, so I don't have a lot of new information to give. First, Craftsmanship finishes and I start down the road to State Workforce, presently due in 14 turns though that will come down as our pastures go up. I slot in a better government, ditching the rotten God-King (uh oh, forgot about the gold, hope that don't mess up the builder timeline. Oh well, it's not worth staying in God-king just for a trickle of gold. The builder will come when it comes) and picking up Urban Planning and Agoge - discipline would be nice to have but it can hardly compare to the boosted production for our upcoming military units. We'll finally get a grip on these barbs, push out exploration again (boost political philosophy on the way) and get a grip on things. It's a very slow start compared to everyone else, but we're okay.  The settler finishes, but the direct path to Kings is guarded by the barb slinger - I believe ranged units can capture unguarded civvies. I can't keep the settler and the builder in the city, so I send the settler northwest, adjacent to the scout, who has arrived to escort it. Kings is due in 4 turns marching time assuming a horde of barb horsemen doesn't come over the horizon. That, uh, that would suck, so knock on wood.  After deliberation, I settle on a warrior. I know the arguments for the slinger, and I know this is horribly vacillating on my part, but both take exactly 3 turns, so there's no advantage in speed either way. A warrior can be more aggressive and can go after that camp in the fog, while a slinger would be stuck on home defense. So I plan to chase the slinger away with a warrior, then will build a slinger to follow up and provide home defense while the warrior is out camp hunting (or scouting west? Haven't decided what to do after the homeland is safe). In the south, I fort up on our trusty forest, which is littered with the skeletons of hundreds of barbarians, and start to recover strength. We'll heal for 4 turns or so and then start north on the turn Kings is founded with 54 hp in hand.  Overview of the situation. I would say things are stabilizing except that would guarantee we get a wave of barbarian horsemen and I'm not fucking stupid enough to do that...yet. Weekend turns, Archduke, will probably just be marching the settler towards the Kings site. If there's a window to get the builder out to build pastures without risk, then getting those a turn or two early would be nice. Obviously don't take chances with our only builder, though.
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