( No Players )[Lurker Thread] CIV VI PBEM19 Beginner

[Kaiser]

So Armagh is really interesting. I've never seen anything like it before:




It's on a 7-tile island, off freshwater. Now, city-states always spawn on water of some kind, unless they're hand placed. I remember Cornflakes going over this when I did my stint in mapmaking (Darrell's advice is best, though). That means Armagh was hand placed there, and unless I'm totally insane Kaiser gave it a custom island. In turn, it seems likely to me that each civ ALSO got its own private city-state. Did he give us all different types, or just let random chance decide? 

Anyway, if I were making a map like that, I'd put the "pocket" city-state in a pocket. With the coast, and the CS where it is, I think it's safe to conclude I'm in the west, near the jungle belt - just a shade in the northern hemisphere, if I had to guess. Forest north of me. (But forest south, too! ...but also more jungle). So, my two scouting warriors should head east to find other players and our 'neighbor' city states. I got lucky finding mine, because the warrior spawns west of the settler. We'll go northeast and southeast with our guys and see what we can turn up.

He is correct, it also has cliffs on all tiles without the two furthest away, these were meant to be hard to conquer and should bring a pay-off to other CIVs investing in Galleys to scout, as this would be the likeliest way to find a neighbor backpocket CS.
The middle though is juicy CS land, with these aggressive picks maybe a bit too juicy, but luckily they don't know

Thrawn by the way seem to scout around the middle, which will neither help him finding his backpocket nor any other CS

Ljubljana thinks that Ioan and me might have become an easier start, but in the end chance decided on the starting positions.
The setup idea was:
- everyone bordering 2 CIVs
- a 20 distance capital placement
- a central desert with CS blocking access to the other players
- a relatively lush map

There is no particular bonus to the new players apart from their CIV choice advantage. I hope Ljubljana will avoid to be rushed by thrawn, then this will be an exciting setup.

[suboptimal]

I haven't been able to turn up the relevant lists easily on Google, but my initial thoughts are that this most likely means CMF's Zulus are in this direction, which wouldn't be the worst draw civ-wise.

I figured I'd check here just in case, but I don't believe it's out of bounds for a genlurker to point him to the game files where this stuff is listed, correct? He'd still have to do the dive himself (and I won't be posting until after his next turn so he sees that he's met Thrawn).

[suboptimal]

Thrawn & Williams482, I'm putting this here since I used Thrawn's reporting of the noise and Archduke's turn report to check it.

It appears that the sound effect played when you hit end turn is the sound effect related to the "first" notification the next player will receive when they start their turn. For example, you heard the "barbarian camp sighted" sound when you ended your Turn 9. Archduke, who plays after you in the turn order, did sight a barbarian camp on his Turn 9 and his turn screenshot shows that notification was received first. The notification icon stack at the lower right is in the order they occurred with the first one at the bottom.

I believe what is happening is that when you hit end of turn the game processes all of the "pre turn" stuff (civ meets, city yields, production, pop growth, unit healing, etc) and then includes that pre-calculated in the save file so the next player is load and go. One way to check that would be to look in the debug log files after the turn is over (if you have debugging mode active) but since that would give you information that's not accessible in-game that's a .

[Sullla]

We've played enough Civ6 PBEM games by this point to have a pretty "standard" opening set of moves. It's usually opening unit -> builder -> settler or alternately opening unit -> settler -> builder depending on the local terrain. This is due to the fact that it's rare to have a district unlocked this early and players usually want to boost the Craftsmanship civic with a quick builder. Thrawn is doing something very different in this game. His build order has been:

Scout -> slinger -> builder -> settler

The double military units to start is a pretty big delay to the more economic-focused builder/settler options. He's been unlucky that the city states have been placed in odd spots on this map such that the extra scouting information (Thrawn has far more of the map defogged than anyone else) hasn't resulted in any extra yields. Of course, Thrawn did find Russia early on and that information has definitely been valuable for his plans. He also uncovered several natural wonders and I think that may have been negatively valuable:




If I'm reading the spoiler thread correctly, the current plan is to send the first settler to the Tsingy location about 10 tiles away from the capital. The local terrain is strong up there by the natural wonder; I think this is the exact spot:




But is it really worthwhile to send a settler that far away for a second city? It certainly doesn't feel like it to me, especially not with this being such a lush map with lots of good terrain everywhere. This is not the Apolyton Demogame where Realms Beyond had dreadfully low quality land everywhere. It's also a little strong to go builder before settler given how many unimproved 4 yield and 5 yield tiles there are on this map. When the map is lush, it's better to get a settler out quickly to work those high yield tiles ASAP. The big problem is that Thrawn's settler is due to establish a new city on Turn 37 - Turn 37! After 11 turns of transit time! That's an eternity in a game like this. Compare to Chevalier's current plan for his second city:

Anyway, settler pops out on turn 19, short walk, then Bromhead should found on turn 22. It'll race to size 2 by turn 27, then pick up the deer and be a productive city.

Chevalier opened warrior -> settler -> builder. The second city gets founded on Turn 22, grows in five turns, and immediately becomes a useful contributor to the empire. It will be enormously far ahead long before Thrawn's Tsingy city can even be founded. It's one of the more important lessons to learn for both Civ4 and Civ6: it's all about the early snowball. A great longterm city isn't as useful as a good city that's immediately useful. The Civ4 city that has three food resources in the second ring but no way to expand borders is a net drain on resources. The Civ6 city that doesn't add production immediately doesn't help your wider empire develop. Single Player doesn't necessarily punish you for this but Multiplayer absolutely does.

What makes this even stranger is that Thrawn is also planning to rush his neighbor Russia at a very early date. So he's going to settle a city 10 tiles in the opposite direction, one that won't be able to contribute anything to an early rush, while also building Nubian archers for an attack? Huh? The map above also shows how far away each player is from one another and how rough the terrain is between them. How could anyone take and hold territory at that distance in the early game? Everyone also has horses at their capital in this game and even Nubian archers don't do very well against horsemen. ljubljana seems to be well aware of the risk of a rush and he'll have plenty of time to see a power spike incoming ahead of time.

The general gameplan for Thrawn seems to be a bit of a mess to me. I love seeing unconventional stuff and I'm prepared to eat crow if I'm wrong here, I'm just struggling to see how this works out well.

[suboptimal]

I expect that he's either going to realize that the Tsingy location will completely shut down any chance of pulling off a spud gun rush OR he's going to completely abandon the rush idea. Never mind the delayed settlement and long transit time for archers from Tsingy to Russia, if he settles Tsingy now and has most of his military attacking Russia then CMF stands a good chance of just waltzing in and relieving Thrawn of his city.

[Azoth]

I've not played Civ VI MP, but thrawn's build order seems fine for a rush:
Scout first to find city-states and rivals to conquer.
Slinger next to protect the capital and maybe get lucky with the Archery eureka. (Thanks to Nubia's bonus, a Slinger is about half the cost of a Warrior.)
Builder after that to get the Craftsmanship inspiration (thus Agoge) ASAP.
One Settler, then non-stop Pitati and Horsemen provided an appropriate target has been found.

(The benefit of Builder-Settler over Settler-Builder here is that Agoge is ready to go straight afterwards, and gold from the Nubia-enhanced Copper mine has been accumulating throughout. If thrawn ends up building a Monument before Pitati, then Settler first might have been better after all.)

That said, settling 10 tiles away in the opposite direction from his target does look like a mistake. The second Horse/Copper pairing near his capital would be a much better spot for the second city.

[Kaiser]

Turn 15

 It's interesting that our continent is called Pangaea Ultima, a very fitting name so it might not be accidental.

It is not :D

There are 7 different continents, all players started on Pangea Ultima, each has an island CS nearby on his own continent and the CS desert in the middle is a continent as well

[suboptimal]

The slinger

The slinger receives 48 damage and heals 10 leaving it at 62 health. This is a little worse than average. Remaining fortified and hoping for a better outcome next turn so we don't have to withdraw.

If that spearman gets a slightly above average roll that slinger is likely dead. If it survives it'll likely be under 10 damage. Wonder what he'll do if the slinger does become a casualty?

[Kaiser]

CMF solved the CS position mystery quicker than I expected. He might end up meeting 6 CS first, especially as thrawn skated just south of 2 of the central ones already and is about to miss a 3rd one (on the western edge of the desert).

[marcopolothefraud]

Man, CMF might just run away with the game here. With an envoy in so many city-states, he could shuffle Amani through all of them to get quick suzerainty, seeing even more of the map and getting exploration era score. Not to mention he'll probably get Political Philosophy civic first. Yikes!