Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[fahbs]

So the only thing Yuris did with the crazy good early eagle warrior advantage was capture one city state??

[RFS-81]

Guess I'll come out of hiding too! I've had a lot of fun reading along. Which space do I need to watch if I want to join the next PBEM match?

This city is also not on fresh water, and can't qualify for an aqueduct either; Mount Everest doesn't count as being a mountain for purposes of building an aqueduct.

Did you learn that the hard way in a singleplayer game or does the game mention it anywhere and I didn't notice? I would have expected this to work...

[Dark Savant]

This city is also not on fresh water, and can't qualify for an aqueduct either; Mount Everest doesn't count as being a mountain for purposes of building an aqueduct.

Did you learn that the hard way in a singleplayer game or does the game mention it anywhere and I didn't notice? I would have expected this to work...

I'd be prepared for that in Civ 6, because Civ 5 natural wonders are also an ad hoc rules tangle that don't always behave as expected, like Civ 5 Lake Victoria only being sort of a lake.  (It's not a lake tile, it's a Lake Victoria tile -- which may or may not be similar to an actual lake tile.  It sounds like Civ 6 works the same way.)

[Sullla]

Fahbs: yes, that's all that he's done with the Eagle Warriors to date, capture the Commercial city state next to his capital. Yuris didn't exactly go all-out with them either, building exactly two Eagle Warriors to go along with his starting unit (he has three total). I think that this might be Yuris' own unfamiliarity with Civ6, as I'm guessing he didn't realize just how powerful they can be in the early game. The window for their use is just about closed now, barring something truly unexpected. To be fair, Yuris is actually in a pretty good position at the moment, tied with me for most population in the game. It's more than he's out of expansion prospects and his position moving forward doesn't look nearly so bright.

RFS-81: Welcome! The place to watch for new Multiplayer game announcements would be the Civilization General Forum here at Realms Beyond. Anyone planning on starting up a new game is likely to post there; we have a Civ4 Pitboss game that's just wrapping up the organizing stages over there at this very moment. With regards to the Mount Everest question, I have not verified that personally, but I recall reading at some point a forum post where someone claimed that Mount Everest doesn't count as a mountain for aqueduct purposes. It's one of those things where from a visual perspective you would think that the natural wonder would count as a mountain, but it's probably coded in a completely different fashion under the hood. Still, I could very well be wrong on this one. If we ever get control of Frankfurt down the road, we can test it out.

This is going to have to be a short turn report, because Turn 60 didn't roll over to me until late and it's time for me to head to bed.



The big news for the turn is that I planted Hispalis as expected, making me the first player to five cities. This is my first city not on fresh water, and therefore there are only 3 points of housing here. Hispalis will trigger the housing penalty at size 2! I can fix that temporarily though: a plantation on the spices and a pasture on the cows each provide 0.5 housing, so together they let the city grow to size 3 before becoming unhealthy, and I should be able to grow through the housing penalty to size 4. That's enough to work all of the good tiles: spices, cows, iron, and stone. It won't be too much longer until I can start throwing down Bath districts, and that will get this city up to 9 housing (!) Again, the plan is to skip granaries and build Bath districts instead to save on precious early game production.

I've also already thrown down the Commercial district to lock in its cost. One really nice thing about Hispalis is that it will be able to share the grassland hill tiles to the west with the capital, which could be highly useful down the road. I will need more builders, as always! Also note that the founding of this city boosted Sailing tech, and I swapped back to it after investing research into Apprenticeship next turn. After thinking about it, I'm pretty confident that I can have everything in place for a roughly Turn 75 attack, and so I'll be delaying Apprenticeship tech to push for Shipbuilding and Iron Working next. It's going to take some tricky builder/techs/civic management to line everything up, while I'll be detailing over the next dozen or so turns.



Aquileia also grew a size this turn, unfortunately outpacing its cultural expansion onto the grassland hill tiles. I have to work the crummy 1/1 plains tile for the moment, blah. When this builder pops out, I will improve the horses tile first, then chop/mine the forested grassland hill tile to the west. It looks like this forest chop will arrive around Turn 67, which should finish the city walls I plan to build here and overflow to (almost) complete a horse unit. I should have just enough time to finish the horse and have it ready to attack with my upgraded legions.

The other big news for the turn: TheArchduke founded his fourth city! I don't know where he got the settler from, as his population has never seen a drop in recent turns. I guess his capital grew and produced a settler on the same turn for the second time this game. No idea where the city went, but it's likely located somewhere on his north coast, in a location that's probably a close mirror to Hispalis. Like Yuris, TheArchduke is now very likely out of room to expand. Teh has room for one more city, and that's about it.

Finally, teh upgraded another slinger to archer. He's been doing one of those upgrades per turn - perhaps to disguise them? - and has almost finished converting all of his slingers into archers. I'm really hoping he doesn't have designs on me; please just give me 5 more turns to get walls in place in Aquileia, ok? In just a little bit more time, I will be virtually impregnable, but if he sent all his archers after me right now it would be dicey. Fortunately, teh still only has 1 warrior, and that makes it very tough to capture anything, since you can't put cities under siege without melee units to exercise zone of control. Again, I don't really think he's planning to attack me here; I think he just wants to protect his own aggressive city at Frankfurt while he can tech up and build Hansas. But I'll be slightly nervous until I can get walls in place in Aquileia.

[Sullla]

Another fast turn around during the night. A new turn was waiting for me this morning:



Despite what the cursor hover might be showing here, I used this builder to construct a plantation at Hispalis. As I mentioned before, the 4/1 spices tile is the best one to work at size 1, and therefore I might as well improve it first. I also want to improve the spices and the cattle tile quickly (using the other builder that just popped out of Ravenna) to avoid hitting the housing penalty at size 2. The new builder will improve the cows, then the iron, and then use the final builder charge on a forest chop. I highlighted the chop here to demonstrate the amount of production that I'll be getting from chopping a forest. It increases every time I discover a new civic, just like how the districts scale up in cost, so I will be getting slightly more production when I do the future forest chop. Probably about 55 production, something like that.

Why do I want to chop a forest here? Well, I need Shipbuilding tech to embark units, and the boost for Shipbuilding is to own two galleys. I need to trigger that tech boost to drop the cost of Shipbuilding tech from 200 beakers (14 turns) to 100 beakers (7 turns) to speed up my planned attack. The galleys cost 65 production each, and Hispalis is the only city that can build them because it's the only one of my cities actually located on the coast. So the plan is to funnel a forest chop into Hispalis using the Maritime Industries policy card (+100% production for naval units) and use that to trigger the boost for the tech. That forest chop will arrive on Turn 68, and so I will have to manipulate the civic swaps to be in the Maritime Industries policy on Turn 68. It's a lousy policy otherwise, which means I'll also try to set things up to leave that policy immediately thereafter. In the meantime, since I need 130 production for two galleys and the forest chop will only produce about 110 production, Hispalis started on a galley this turn. With its own native production, it will be able to make up the ~20 production that the chop falls short on providing.



I keep talking about this planned attack, so I should talk a little bit more about how I intend to set it up tactically. It all comes down to attacking in an unexpected direction. TheArchduke has warriors watching the front door to Mediolanum and Arpinum, and the terrain around Mediolanum in particular is difficult to attack into. Lots of rivers and hills and rainforest tiles, and in particular there are two one-tile choke points to the south and east of the city that would be hard to force my way through. Rather than trying to crash through the front door, I'm hoping to slip in through the unguarded back door. If you look carefully at the water tiles in this screenshot, you can see that almost all of them have the 1 food / 1 gold yield. That means that they are coastal tiles, not ocean tiles, and therefore embarkable by land units at Shipbuilding tech. See how the water just above my capital is all coastal tiles? This is a mirrored map, so it must be the same for TheArchduke's capital. And the distance by water, with my units moving 3 tiles per turn, is actually quite short indeed. Borders in Civ6 only see 1 tile away, and that means I can move almost the whole distance while remaining in the fog of war. What's TheArchduke going to do if he opens the save one day and there are 4 legions + 1 horseman + Great General all a tile away from landing next to his capital? With all his units off guarding the borders, and with Civ6's extremely slow movement rules? Hopefully nothing. Even better, TheArchduke's capital is by far his best city, and the only one that has any kind of serious production capacity. If I can snap it up at the outset of a war, he'll be effectively helpless thereafter. Lot of "ifs" there, but we'll see what happens.

I had Ravenna start a warrior following its builder. I will be in Agoge policy again next turn, and I need another unit for this upcoming attack. There simply isn't much time remaining; I'm hoping to put my units in the water around Turn 70 and launch the attack around Turn 75. Arretium has a warrior mostly done that it will finish, Ravenna produces another, and the capital should be able to do two more; that leaves me with 6 total warriors, 4 of which I will be able to upgrade with immediately and use for the attack. The other two I can save for later when I have more gold on hand. I set the overflow from the Sailing research into Iron Working, which I want to research almost to 50% without actually reaching 50%, so that when I build the iron mine in a few turns the boost won't quite finish the tech. Remember, I can't build warriors once I finish Iron Working tech. So I will almost finish Iron Working, research half of Shipbuilding tech, then go back and finish Iron Working. Who said this game doesn't have micromanagement?



Aquileia requires another complicated coordination exercise to get everything to come out the way I want. The plan is to use the forest chop on the grassland hill to complete Ancient walls (80 production) and a horseman (80 production) for the upcoming attack. This has to be lined up very carefully to work, however. First I need to build a pasture on the horses to be able to train horsemen at all in Aquileia. Therefore the builder has to do that before the forest chop. Second, the forest chop is only going to produce about 110 production even with the Limes policy (+100% production towards defensive buildings) in place, and that's quite a bit short of what I need. What I'm going to do here is take advantage of Civ6's wonky production overflow mechanics. Unlike in Civ4, production modifiers are not divided back out of overflow into the next build; in other words, I will still get the +100% production on overflow from constructing city walls even if the next build has nothing to do with city walls. So here's the plan: swap into Limes policy next turn, have Aquileia build towards Ancient walls with that policy card in place, but DO NOT FINISH the walls, and then use the production overflow from the chop to knock out the horseman in a single turn. I'm essentially getting +100% production towards the horseman by virtue of how overflow works. And with doubled production, Aquileia should be able to make up the gap of ~70 production needed on its own, since it will be getting 8 base production -> 16 modified production with Limes in place. Forest chop comes in on Turn 67, I swap out of Limes and into Maritime Industries on Turn 68 for the other forest chop, and the horseman hopefully finishes on Turn 68, in time to scamper over to the coast and embark for the upcoming attack.

I also went ahead and posted a picture of the current score breakdown. If you add up my score, it's actually 82 this turn; the top-line summed score never updates for me until the following turn, although the score breakdown itself is correct and updates in real time. I'm pretty happy with how things stand here, although I want to point out that Yuris grew two more population points this turn, and he has a population of 19 overall to my 17. His capital is size 7! A production of having that 4 food citrus tile and only building two settlers to date. I'm not sure what he's been working on over there, but he does have a lot of vertical growth, if not much in the way of total land.

I should have just barely enough gold to reach 440 for four warrior -> legion upgrades. I definitely could have used that other copper tile with its +2 gold yield at Arretium!

[Ituralde]

Thank you for the report. I always admire the careful planning and micromanagement that you put into these things. I could never be bothered to plan everything with that amount of detail, but it is very statisfying too see someone pull it off!

[Sullla]

Thanks Ituralde! The main test is yet to come in the next two dozens or so turns though. We'll see if I can pull off this attack I've been yammering about since the initial post.

Turn 62:



Here's the overview of my territory at the start of the turn. I had one piece of bad RNG luck between turns: Ravenna's border expansion grabbed the forest tile SE-SE of the city, instead of the tile S-S of the city the way it had been suggesting for the last dozen turns. I have no idea what happened to flip the border expansion on the final turn, but this means I can't chop the forest I was expecting to use for the two galleys out of Hispalis. I will probably have to chop the forest on the spices tile now because it takes too long to get over to that forest tile. Even worse, I can't assign that forest tile to Hispalis because the culture doesn't connect to the new coastal city; if the tile picker had grabbed the forest tile to the west that I was expecting, I could assign it to either Ravenna or Hispalis. It's a real pain in the rear that now I have to reduce the yield on my spices tile to make this whole thing work. No way around it though.

Defensive Tactics completed, which means it was time for both a policies swap and a government swap:



We are now in Autocracy for our government, which has no Diplomatic policy slots at all in exchange for more Military policies. The passive benefits of Autocracy are +15% bonus to wonder construction (useless here) and +1 to all yields in the capital. Not tile yields, yields: you get exactly +1 production, +1 culture, +1 beakers, etc. Autocracy is generally pretty good in Civ6 in the early game, since the Diplomatic policies are weak and this government can still deliver 2 Military and 2 Economic policies. I think Autocracy will be even better in Multiplayer where the Military policy slots have a lot more value. Sadly, I will only be in this government for about 10 turns before switching over to Oligarchy for the combat bonuses.

I've picked up the same policies that I mentioned in yesterday's post: Agoge to help train some warriors for upgrading, Limes to build the walls in Aquileia and exploit the production overflow sort-of-bug into a horseman, and Urban Planning because it still remains an awesome policy. I considered dropping Strategos from the Wildcard slot, but I still need about 19 more Great General points for completion and the Encampment isn't quite done yet in the capital. There's nothing else too urgent that I need in that Wildcard slot right now, so better safe than sorry. I'll run Strategos until the next policy swap and then pick up something else.



At Arretium, I swapped the battering ram back to the partially completed warrior now that I'm Agoge policy again. Notice how the battering ram is one turn away from completion? I don't want to finish the thing because it will immediately start costing me 1 gold/turn in maintenance, and that's bad because I'm desperately trying to save up to 440 gold for 4 warrior -> legion upgrades. I will hold off on completing the battering ram until after my next policy swap, where I can pick up Conscription: unit maintenance reduced by 1 gold per turn. That essentially makes units that cost 1 gold/turn in upkeep free (like rams and archers). After the warrior is done, I will either train another warrior, an archer, or perhaps go back to investing production into the Commercial district, which I would like to finish sooner rather than later. We'll see how things look in a few turns.



Aquileia's borders have expanded and I can now work the much better 2/2 + 1 faith grassland hill tile over the crummy bare plains tile. The next border expansion will grab the other grassland hill tile, although once again I will outgrow my capacity for cultural expansion. If you think this is bad for me, try playing as someone who isn't Rome, where the borders expand MUCH slower. I think the default rate of cultural tile acquisition should be higher in this game, as it simply takes forever to grab tiles in the early stages of the game. With Limes policy in place, I'll be getting about 16 production per turn into the city walls, and that along with the forest chop will be enough to give me an overflowed horseman.

Internationally, teh picked up a tech (I suspect Horseback Riding en route to Apprenticeship and his Hansa districts) and also dropped an envoy into Vilnius:



Either that or he completed a city state quest here, because he didn't have this culture previously. Teh and I are the only ones who have been meaningfully competing for the city states thus far, and we're both reaping some major advantages as a result. Teh is currently at 13.6 beakers and 12.3 culture per turn (compare to my totals at the top of the screen), which is excellent for someone who doesn't get Rome's free monuments to lean on.

The other big news is that Yuris has finished the first district of the game. It's a Campus district, reflected in his tech rate going up by exactly 1 beaker/turn despite no population changes. (It could be working a luxury tile that produces beakers for its yield but Yuris doesn't have any of those in his territory.) This is pretty much why I've stayed away from any early Campus districts: on this map with few mountains, they look to be weak in the early game. Investing 120 production for 1 beaker/turn is a terrible return initially. Now you do want those Campus districts eventually, because libraries are worth 2 beakers/turn, universities are worth 4 beakers/turn, and research labs are worth 5 beakers/turn, plus the beaker yield of all buildings is doubled with the vital midgame Rationalism policy. You can't rely on raw population forever in Civ6, you do need the districts at some point. However, while there's still free land on the map to claim, building upwards with the districts is a bit of a sucker's investment from what I can see. Better to push outward and claim more land, then go back and build upwards with districts in the midgame. Teh and I have been following that philosophy, and I think we're the best positioned for this game in the longterm. It would be different if this map had one of those mountain ranges that allows for a 5 beaker Campus district bonus, which could then be doubled to 10 beakers with the Natural Philosophy policy... but there's nothing like that here.

We'll see who does better down the road. This whole game is a big experiment to see what works and what doesn't.

[RFS-81]

RFS-81: Welcome! The place to watch for new Multiplayer game announcements would be the Civilization General Forum here at Realms Beyond. Anyone planning on starting up a new game is likely to post there; we have a Civ4 Pitboss game that's just wrapping up the organizing stages over there at this very moment.

Thanks, I'll keep looking then. I'd rather play Civ6 because I'd be on a somewhat more even footing with the rest of the community. I only really got into 4X games a couple of years ago (with GalCiv2 Ultimate Edition, and then MOO 1+2 based on recommendations in the GalCiv forums). I've also bought Civ4 some time ago but didn't get around to play it a lot. Civ4 seems to be more popular around here, though. Do you think a complete noob can get up to speed in reasonable time in Civ4?

EDIT: I think I'll enter Civ6 Adventure 4 in the meantime.


Anyway, back to Civ6: I have to say, I'm not a fan of the "build ancient trash, then upgrade as needed" approach. I mean, I see why it's the right way to play (at least with no barbarians), and I don't think it's anywhere near cheating. I just don't like that the game rewards it that much, compared to building more advanced units. In particular, rewarding the player for stalling certain techs seems kind of bizarre in a game like Civ.

[Sullla]

Hmmm, Civ4 has been around for a long time, and there's a huge amount of community knowledge that's been built up in that time. It also doesn't help that most of the current Civ4 Multiplayer games aren't even being played on the base game, but on a mod that Krill designed. I'm sure that you could learn enough to join in a game, just bear in mind that you'll be at a knowledge disadvantage compared to some of the old hands. I wouldn't let it stop you if Civ4 Multiplayer looks interesting.

With regards to Civ6, the upgrade mechanic is something that feels a bit overpowered. It should probably be a little bit more expensive to upgrade units, or I would also be OK if the unit upgrade mechanic were removed entirely. That said, it does highlight how accumulating gold is very important in Civ6, and a crucial part of building your overall economy. This might be something that we will need to tweak if we end up doing a Civ6 community mod down the road. Anyway, on to Turn 63:



The latest builder is done in Aquileia, and now comes the trickiest part of this whole little micromanagement plan. I need to pasture the horses before chopping the grassland hill forest, since otherwise I can't build a horseman unit in the city. (You need two copies of a strategic resource to build the relevant units in Civ6, unless you have an Encampment district in the city, which only requires one copy of the resource.) This means that I need to pasture those horses northeast of the city, and that requires putting my builder in an exposed position next turn. Technically I could move onto the horses this turn, but I might as well stop here one tile away since I couldn't move-and-improve on the same turn. I've gone ahead and moved up my warrior and all three slingers to provide cover for next turn's pasture improvement. With luck, teh won't try to initiate combat by shooting at my warrior with his archers. While I don't expect trouble, I'll play things as safe as I can here.

Here's something that those of you lurking this game can check out in the other threads: how many improved tiles does everyone else have? This is the sixth builder that I've produced thus far, and I also have my pantheon belief that effectively turns oasis/marsh/floodplains tiles into a version of an improved tile. That's a lot of boosted tile yields. I think that I have a pretty nice lead here over the other players, but from my perspective it's hard to tell. For that matter, are builders even a good idea to emphasize in the Civ6 early game? While I did have Ilkum policy (+30% production) in place for most of these builders, I don't have the Pyramids or Serfdom for any extra builder charges. Is this a good idea? Again, I think so, but we need some more games for additional data.



In my core, the most noteworthy event this turn was a pasture completing on the cattle tile at Hispalis, just in time to bump up the housing cap before the city grows to size 2. I'll mine the iron next and then go chop the forest on the spices tile. Note that I swapped from Iron Working (the tech in the first picture above) since it will be boosted to near-completion when the iron mine is finished. Next up is Shipbuilding to allow my units to embark; it looks like both will be finished right around Turn 70 as I hoped.

A whole bunch of things are one turn away from completing. Ravenna and Hispalis will both grow next turn, and Arretium will finish its warrior next turn. The capital ended up exactly 1 production short of finish the Encampment district; if Civ6's interface made it easier to see what's going on, I probably would have noticed this and swapped over to the quarry tile to get the district done a turn sooner. Not a huge deal or anything, but I don't get any production bonuses on the district and it's better to minimize the time spent building it. I should get the Great General in about 5 more turns.



Speaking of that, here's the Great Person screen. Teh is going to claim the first Great Scientist in about a dozen more turns, and Yuris shows up for the first time as a result of his Campus district finishing last turn. Otherwise, there has been no movement here on any of the other Great People. So far, there hasn't been a lot of interest in this side of the gameplay.

Only one score change this turn: TheArchduke completed a civic. I think it's either Construction or Drama and Poetry, one of the two. Neither is particularly impactful as a civic, but I'm hoping he went for Drama and Poetry because it puts him further away from Defensive Tactics, the civic I just finished. Maybe it will become clear in time, maybe not. The clock is ticking and TheArchduke still doesn't have any legions on the map, nor has be built any more units in recent turns. Right now, it's just 2 warriors, 2 slingers, and a scout. I think I can deal with that force.

[shinghand]

Now that most of the land's settled, what are your infrastructure plans for most of your cities? What districts are going to be placed in each city, location of districts etc.

Although I suppose most of your focus right now is on landing that T70 - T80 timing attack.
It has been very interesting to see how you have been balancing expansion, tech and arming up for your attack - hope you'll be able to come out ahead!