Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[Sullla]

Fortunately Yuris was able to play his turn (and even posted about it!) shortly after I wrote in this thread. So here's Turn 4:



Very little of note to discuss this turn. I moved the warrior east then northwest, since I couldn't move two tiles east as a result of Civ6's silly movement rules. I want to keep pushing east past that patch of desert and mountains, which is where a city state and the middle of the map is located. It will take a few more turns to reach that point still. At my capital, the borders expanded to pick up the horses tile, which I'll start working next turn at size 2. I didn't want to drop the 4 food rice tile this turn when I can work both of them next turn. (I don't know if Civ6 tracks production the same way as Civ5, where growth happens before production and cities get the tile you grow onto for "free" anyway. I'll have to test this at some point.) I expect everyone else will also grow to size 2 next turn; if someone is doing something weird, it will show up in their score next turn. Like Civ4 Pitboss, you can always see everyone's score in a Civ6 MP (or even SP) game.

Since there's not much going on right now, I'll use this post to do some opponent analysis.

TheArchduke: Rome

TheArchduke has the same civ choice as I do, which means that there's not a lot to say there. Everything that I posted about previously regarding Rome will still apply for TheArchduke as well. My hope is that he won't be able to leverage our shared civ to the same extent. As far as MP history goes, TheArchduke took part in one Civ4 MP game (PBEM37) and it was a total disaster, which can perhaps best be summed up by TheArchduke's decision to build Stonehenge while playing as a Creative civ. Not the wisest choice there. TheArchduke also took part in the Epic One game for Civ6, the only Civ6 game report available from him, resigning after 176 turns because AI Kongo was too far ahead in culture. I'm not going to pile on the poor fellow here (TheArchduke seems to be a really nice guy), only say that I think I have an edge here based on prior game history.

Yuris: Aztecs

The Aztecs were the preorder bonus civ that everyone fortunately now can access for free. (Everyone who owns Civ6 should download the Aztec civ if they haven't already; Epic Two and all events going forward will include them.) I would rate the Aztecs as an above-average choice overall, albeit one that falls short of top tier. I'll start with their best ability for a MP game: the Eagle Warrior. This is a warrior replacement that starts with 28 strength instead of 20 strength. Due to the logarithmic combat model that Civ6 uses, that 8 strength difference is gigantic. An Eagle Warrior will deal about 40% more damage when attacking a normal warrior, and take about 40% less damage. A warrior vs warrior combat will typically do 26 damage to each side; an Eagle Warrior vs warrior combat will go about 36 damage to 18 damage in favor of the Aztecs. This is then compounded by the Aztec luxury bonus: Aztec units get +1 strength for each unique luxury resource improved in their territory. Here on this map there are two unique luxuries in each quadrant of the continent, which means that Yuris will be able to count on at least +2 strength on his units. The single most dangerous thing that Yuris could do would be to rush out 4 or 5 Eagle Warriors with the Agoge policy (+50% unit production) and crush one of his neighbors.

Fortunately, I don't expect that to happen. The players in this game don't strike me as the sort who would go for the immediate Ancient Age rush, and if Yuris would try to rush me, hopefully I'll be able to see it coming and get my legions up in time to counter. The problem for the Aztecs is that there's not a lot for them to fall back on after the early game rush potential wears out. A player who can get 3-4 archers out on the field can shut down Eagle Warriors without too much trouble, as 28 strength doesn't defend that well against the 25 ranged strength on archers, especially when factoring in the defender's bonuses and the awkward movement rules in Civ6. Melee units typically need a Great General (for the third movement point) to be effective. So the Aztec's greatest strength is the super early Eagle Warrior rush, but the starting positions on this map make that tricky to pull off, and Yuris doesn't seem like someone who's going to adopt a choking strategy. By the time Turn 50 rolls around, this early game advantage is mostly over. (And frankly, if you want to go for the early rush, you want to pick Sumeria or Scythia, who can both do it much better.)

The other unique feature of the Aztecs is the ability to use builder charges to complete part of the cost of a district. This works in the same fashion as how China can use builder charges on early wonders: each charge completes 20% of the district cost. It's a really cool feature of this civ and I'd like to try another Single Player game at some point to explore this further. However, the ability doesn't become cost-effective until the midgame, and doesn't truly become useful until the endgame. Early on, using builder charges for district building is a clear waste: 50 production for a builder to knock out 3/5 of the cost of a 60 production district? Not worth it. This becomes a lot more viable after hitting Feudalism and being able to slot in the Serfdom policy for the extra 2 builder charges, and even more so with the lategame policy that grants both +2 builder charges and +30% production on builders. The Aztec ability is most useful for getting new cities up to speed quickly in the lategame, when districts cost 200-300 production and mature cities can churn out builders in a hurry for use by new colonies.

However, that's an ability that plays best on large maps where everyone can place lots of cities. This is a Tiny map where all of the land will likely be claimed in the first 75 turns, if not sooner. In a scenario where everyone has 4-5 cities and the land is settled quickly, this Aztec ability is a lot less useful. That goes as well for the Aztec luxury bonus: they receive 6 copies of each luxury resource instead of the normal 4 copies. Great for larger maps and big empires, but I'm not so sure it will be that useful for this setup. Finally, the Aztecs have some kind of unique building (Tlachtli) that replaces the arena. It produces a Great General point and extra amenities or something like that. This isn't very useful because players generally don't build a lot of Entertainment districts in Civ6 - a modest bonus, at best.

Yuris has a long history of Civ4 MP games at Realms Beyond. Unfortunately it is not a particularly distinguished history; Yuris is best known for starting multiple games at once, reporting for the first few weeks, then disappearing off the face of the earth and eventually finishing near the bottom of the standings. I don't mean that as a harsh criticism, only as an observation of past practices. He is also one of the players in the ongoing Civ5 PBEM game, and here's a quick spoilered thought on that game:

Yuris has been one of the best players in the Civ5 PBEM, and it's been a very solid showing overall. However, Yuris' biggest issue has been a failure to read the game situation correctly, which caused him to lose a city to Nicolae early on, and he continues to believe that he can win from his current position. Some of this is due to the poor Demographics information available to the player in Civ5, but this has been a common problem for Yuris in his Civ4 games as well. (And believe me, this is hard to do - I've certainly been guilty of disastrous misreads of the game situation myself!) That said, in the current game Yuris thinks that he's reasonably competitive with Ichabod, when Icabod in actuality has quadruple the beaker output of Yuris and an entire continent to himself. That's a serious failure of analysis.

I would be pretty happy with having Yuris as a close neighbor. As long as I could avoid the early Eagle Warrior rush, I think that I'd be in good position moving forward to pull off a successful attack at some point.

teh: Germany

teh is playing as Germany in this game, and since he's the host of what is technically a Hotseat game, I see the Barbarossa introduction every time that a savegame file is loading. It's a little weird. In the initial release version of Civ6, Scythia was the most overpowered civ because of the ability to construct double horsemen with the +100% cavalry production card and then delete them for insane amounts of money. After that was removed in the first patch, Germany became the game's strongest civilization. Germany gets the half-cost unique Industrial district in the Hansa, which was "free" to construct because it didn't count against the population requirements for districts, then Germany would get ANOTHER free district that didn't count against the pop requirement via their unique ability, plus an extra Military policy slot, plus a combat bonus when attacking city states... yeesh. With Industrial districts stacking their factory/power plant benefits and Germany getting them at half cost, plus *TWO* districts that didn't count against the population requirements, they were clearly the overpowered builder civ. The CivFanatics crowd was playing Germany left and right to abuse these abilities, and I kind of wish that I had tried at least one game back then just to see what it was like. Germany was way too strong and needed to be toned down.

With that said, Germany was nerfed harder than anyone else in the December patch. The nerfs to the Industrial district were a major blow, changing the Industrial district from something every city needs to construct into more of a situational choice. The unique districts were simultaneously changed to make them count against the population requirements, which hit marginal districts like Russia's Lavra and Brazil's Carnival especially hard. Germany was shielded against this somewhat because Germany's unique ability is to get one district in every city that doesn't count against the population limit, so the player can still build a "free" half-cost Hansa in every city if desired - and they almost certainly should do so. This is where Germany gets its power right now, and Germany is still well above average in Civ6. It's just no longer as ridiculous as getting two free districts, and then being able to stack overlapping factories everywhere for a production advantage that no other civ could match.

Aside from the free half-cost Hansa district, Germany also still gets an extra Military policy card slot. This is also an excellent ability, even if the Military policies tend to be the weakest ones in Civ6. Here in a MP game, they have some extra value since it's not possible to ignore the combat side of the game the way that Single Player games can quite often do. And after those two excellent abilities, that's about it for Germany. The civ also gets a +7 combat bonus when attacking city states (whatever) and a U-Boat submarine replacement that comes uselessly late in the game. teh will be most vulnerable in the early game, since he has nothing to accelerate his start compared to some of the other choices here. (Well, aside from that Cultural city state who happened to pop up next to his capital - that was a lucky roll of the city state type.) Think of this Germany pick as somewhat like a Darius pick (Financial/Organized) in Civ4, where the economic advantage of extra production will eventually start to make its weight felt. Production is still the most important aspect of Civ6, and Germany does it very well indeed once they reach their Hansas.

As far as player ability goes, teh is the most dangerous opponent in this field because I know nothing about him. As a new poster here at Realms Beyond, he is a complete blank slate, and that's always a threat. I'll be doing my best to watch him closely and hope for the best. With no early unique units or bonuses to combat abilities, Germany would be the most ideal candidate to hit with a Legion-based timing attack, before the Hansas are up and running. We'll see if geography and the game situation make that possible.

I want to stress that no one has made a bad choice here with their leader and civ. We don't have anyone rolling Spain or France or America, something useful only for flavor purposes of when the player is deliberately playing a variant. All three of the civs here are above average choices, with Rome and Germany being top tier civs. I'm also extremely glad that we all stayed away from Sumeria and Scythia, the rush civs of Civ6, without having to deliberately ban then. I'll see if I can do a future post about why they're so strong, although if anyone read Behren's game thread for Adventure Three, they should have a pretty good idea about Scythia.

[Sullla]

We had a very healthy turn pace since the weekend started, with new turns coming in about every 12 hours. If we're able to do that routinely over the weekends, then I'll avoid any griping during the week. Here's a recap of the mostly uneventful turns taking place.



I did a check on Turn 5 to see if production in Civ6 worked in the same fashion as Civ5, where production took place after growth and you could pick up a tile for "free" every time that a city grew. Fortunately, the game does not appear to work this way, at least not in Hotseat MP mode. Note that the capital has 12/50 production in the box on Turn 5, which comes from four turns of 3 production/turn each. If the capital had picked up the 2 production horses tile after growing at the end of Turn 4, then the worker would be sitting at 14/50 production in the box. Now that is a good thing overall, even if it would have resulted in 2 additional production here, since it means that I don't need to do tedious micromanagement of every city every time that it grows a population point or lose out on the potential for additional production. Definitely a good thing from a sanity perspective.



On the following Turn 6, I picked up the boost for Foreign Trade civic by discovering another continent. This is a very easy boost to pick up, since it only requires reaching the middle of the map. The 4-Leaf Clover map script produces two "continents", which are separated by a diagonal line down the center of the actual pangaea continent. I'm sure that all of the players will pick this up in time to avoid wasting civics research unless they are truly deficient in their scouting. Still, nice to have sooner rather than later.

The turn that I just played was Turn 7, and it was slightly more eventful. First the new scouting information:



There's a city state just to the southeast of those mountains. This map script always puts one there, just as it always puts one next to each player's starting position. If I'm lucky, I'll make contact with one of the city state's units next turn with my exploring warrior. If I'm not lucky, I'll make contact with the city borders itself in two more turns. I'm crossing fingers that I'm the first one to make contact and score the free envoy; there's only one other player I'm competing with, whoever has the start directly to my east. No one else could get here faster. However, that player to the east will win the race for the free envoy if he headed straight here, since the eastern starting positions have a 2 turn advantage in racing for the center of the map. It's one of those very small things that gives the two eastern starts a minor advantage. There's also the question of what city state type is over here; any of the bonuses are good to have, but I'll repeat again that I think the Cultural and Science ones are the best in the extreme early game. A Cultural city state would take me from 3.8 to 5.8 culture/turn, while a Science city state would take me from 3.6 to 5.6 beakers/turn. For non-Roman civs that only start with 1.4 culture/turn, getting an immediate Cultural city state envoy is the biggest benefit possible, since it more than doubles your starting culture output. Teh was lucky to find one next to him.

I also finished Code of Laws civic this turn and had my option of the first policies:



For the moment, the military policy slot is irrelevant. There are no barbarians to fight with the Discipline policy, and I have no recon units (scouts) to benefit from the Survey policy. I slotted in Survey because I had to pick something. The Economic policy slot is a lot more interesting, and I've chosen God King there over Urban Planning. Let me make something clear: Urban Planning is a MUCH better policy choice than the lousy God King policy. The extra production point would take my capital from 5 production/turn to 6 production/turn, a noticeable difference here. I also intend to use Urban Planning quite a bit later on, as it's especially good at getting new cities up and running faster. However, you need 25 faith to unlock your pantheon in Civ6, and God King is the only guaranteed way that I have of producing faith in the early game. (I would be very happy to find a Religious city state first and score the 2 faith/turn from the first envoy. Then I could drop God King on my next civics swap.)

If I want a pantheon, then the correct time to get it is immediately, while Urban Planning (and the other excellent Economic policies that follow it) would only be benefiting a single city. God King sucks and if you have to run it, better to run it with only a single city and not a bunch of them. There's also the issue of each pantheon only being available to one civ, on a first-come first-serve basis. Once they're gone, they're gone, and that means I can't dawdle here. As for the pantheon that I want, the clear choice from my test games is Lady of the Reeds and Marshes: +1 production from floodplains, marsh, and oasis. Timmy opened my eyes on the usefulness of that pantheon in his Epic One game, and it will be extremely helpful if I can land it here. The rice at the capital is on a floodplains tile, so a farm and the desired pantheon would make that a 5/1 tile. There's another marsh tile at the capital (which goes from 3/0 to 3/1 yield), and several more such tiles at my planned first couple city sites. Lady of the Reeds and Marshes takes those fairly useless 3/0 FP/marsh/oasis tiles and makes them vastly more desirable at 3/1 yield, in a way that adds up a lot over time. In other words, I am taking a temporary hit to the production of my capital by running God King over Urban Planning right now, in the hopes of getting +1 production on a whole bunch of tiles for the rest of the game later on.

If I'm lucky, the other players will either ignore pursuing an early pantheon or will have something else in mind. If I'm unlucky, one or more of them will spawn next to a Religious city state and get the 2 faith/turn for free from meeting the city state, establishing a lead in the first pantheon race that I can't beat. I'll just have to see what happens and react accordingly.

[Sullla]

I was hoping we would get through two turns on a Sunday, but instead I ended up getting the turn back at exactly the same time this morning as yesterday. Oh well. One turn per day is still pretty decent.



Here's the new terrain revealed this turn. Unfortunately there were no units from the city state visible wandering around to make contact. The city state should be just south of that oasis, and I'm keeping my fingers crossed for contact next turn. There's also a good chance that we'll be running into one of the human competitors pretty soon, as I imagine they also sent their starting warrior to the center of the map. I'm also curious about what build the other players decided to open with. I'm hoping some or all of them went scout-first, which will slow down their development compared to the more risky builder-first opening. I'll be able to tell via military power tracking as soon as I make contact with someone else.



Here's the other small news for the turn. On the Religious victory listing, I am in third place, not in second or fourth place. The religious ranking lists civs by number of cities converted to their self-founded religion (which is zero for everyone right now of course) and then by faith per turn. I'm now listed in third place, behind TheArchduke and teh but ahead of Yuris. This can only mean one thing: both TheArchduke and teh are also running the God King policy and are also producing 1 faith/turn. (Because I am the fourth player in turn order my civ is always listed last for any ties.) If nothing else happens to change the situation, TheArchduke will hit 25 faith first, followed by me on the same turn, and then teh one turn later.

This is also a good example of how much teh is being helped by having that Cultural city state next to his start. Ordinarily, his non-Rome civ would be producing culture at the same rate as Yuris, and would still need another 6 or 7 turns before reaching Code of Laws and unlocking the first policies. Instead, teh was only a single turn behind the two Romes to Code of Laws. That city state has accelerated his start noticeably. The other two players either haven't met the city state next to them (somewhat unlikely) or have some kind of city state that isn't Cultural or Scientific. Either one of them would have showed up in the Demographics by now via a faster tech or civic discovered.

Next turn I will spend 50 gold to purchase the plains hill tile at the capital. With luck, this will also make contact with the city state to my south and we'll find out what type is down there. After that, I hope to be saving gold for a very long time for unit upgrades. Hopefully I'll discover two city states on the next turn.

[oledavy]

Enjoying the thread so far, keep up the good work. 

As an aside on your decision to move inland, I wish coastal tiles were just a little stronger in Civ6 - perhaps harbor buildings (or a wonder) adding food/gold to water tiles.

[Sullla]

Thanks oledavy! I also wish that water tiles were more viable in Civ6. I think that this is a carryover from Civ5, where the developers wanted to tone done the yields of the water tiles so that players couldn't work a whole bunch of them to pick up lots of gold. The Brave New World expansion in particular seemed to be trying to starve players of gold wherever possible (and force the use of trade routes to produce gold). That didn't really work, and as a result all our MP games of Civ5 seem to feature players losing money constantly. By contrast, in Civ6 it's pretty easy to rack up a large income through the use of Commercial districts and trade routes, to the point that the yields from water tiles certainly wouldn't be a problem. And yet coastal tiles still have a yield of 1/0/1, which is just awful. Even the fish and crab resources are barely worth working, only marginal improvements over land tiles of any kind. They could certainly use a little buffing from Firaxis.

There was a long wait for the save to get back to me, but it was worth it. Turn 9 proved to be very eventful for this early in the game. In the center of the map, my exploring warrior moved two tiles southeast and found the prize I'd been looking for:



A Cultural city state was sitting there, and I was the first player to make contact! That scored me the free envoy worth 2 culture/turn in my capital, a very big deal indeed this early in the game. Right now the bonus took my civ from 3.8 culture/turn to 5.9 culture/turn, and while the relative impact of that bonus will fade over time, it's going to have a major effect during the first 50 or so turns of the game. (The Cultural city state bonus tends to be better than the Scientific city state bonus since each population point is worth 0.7 beakers but only 0.3 culture. Thus getting 2 culture/turn early on is worth more than 2 beakers/turn.) Now my Rome will accelerate past TheArchduke's Rome and teh's own Cultural city state-boosted Germany. If nothing else, getting here first denies the opportunity for one of the other players to claim this bonus instead. Excellent news all around.

From a macro standpoint, the fact that I made it here first also suggests that whoever is off to my east probably doesn't know the map layout as well as I do. All they would have to do is playtest a few games on the 4-Leaf Clover script to know the lay of the land, since the map changes little on each new game. While I don't want to assume anything, this also appears to be good news.



At my capital, I also ticked over the 50 gold margin this turn. I found out from my practice games that it was worthwhile to invest that 50 gold into purchasing the plains hill tile southeast of the horses. My capital never picked the plains hill tile for this border expansion on Turn 10; most often it grabbed the marsh tile next to the rice. With my capital growing to size 3 next turn, I want to make sure that I can pick up another 2 production tile to get the builder unit out as fast as possible.

Now is it worth spending 50 gold to pick up the plains hill tile instead of working one of the 2/1 grassland hill tiles instead? I think so, for two reasons. First of all, the builder micro lines up perfectly with that plains hill tile in mind. The first builder farms the rice tile, then pastures the horses, then moves onto the plains hill and mines it. No wasted turns, no wasted movement (although this is somewhat less important in Civ6 with the builder charge system). Second, this capital city has plenty of food already. The rice tile will be 5 food once it's farmed, and the plains horses are food-neutral at 2/2 yield (2/3 yield after being pastured). Then there are the 3/0 marsh and rainforest tiles available as well if there's a desire to increase growth. Long story short, this capital will grow fast enough on its own. It's more important to get production up and running, and the plains hill is the only tile that can reach a 3 production yield in the early game. As I wrote in a previous post, I want the 5/0 rice tile, the 2/3 horses tile, and the 1/3 plains hill tile, which will give me a total yield of +4 food and 9 production (with the center tile and Palace) at size 3. With luck, I'll also score Lady of the Reeds and Marshes for my pantheon, which will turn the rice tile into a 5/1 yield, and turn the marsh tile into a 3/1 yield. That would give me four excellent tiles to work at size 4, with no need to invest in another early builder. But I don't want to get too far ahead of myself just yet.

One last reason for purchasing the plains hill tile: it will reveal more tiles to my south. As I hoped, this made contact with the city state that I knew was down there:



And it rolled Religious on the type - yes! That is legitimately great news. Short of landing a Cultural and Scientific pair, or double Cultural / double Scientific city states, this was about as good as I could hope for. The free envoy for making contact first granted an immediate 2 faith/turn, and with the God King policy in place, that obviously adds up to a total of 3 faith/turn. Hopefully this means that I'll be able to land the first pantheon; I know from the Demographics information that no one else has met a Religious city state to date (outside of the extremely unlikely scenario that Yuris met one on the exact same turn as me). Best of all, I can now dump the lousy God King policy ASAP and get into the far superior Urban Planning policy to speed up my early builds. I actually swapped from Craftsmanship civic onto Foreign Trade civic since it will complete faster. I can have my pantheon on Turn 19 if I swap right away into Urban Planning, or on Turn 17 if I hold onto God King for a few extra turns. I'll see how things look in a few turns and decide then. No need to make that choice just yet.

All in all, the path is looking pretty clear to get my desired pantheon, and to pick it up at an extremely early date to boot.



Finally, here's the Demographics screen after the interface updated to reflect the city state bonuses. I'm now leading in Culture and in Religion. The first one is obvious (Rome + city state bonus) but the second one is more interesting. Last turn I was in third place, almost certainly due to a tie at 1 faith/turn with TheArchduke and teh via the God King policy. This turn I'm now in the lead, which is why I'm pretty sure no one else has found a Religious city state. I suppose it's possible that TheArchduke found a Religious city state early on and DIDN'T adopt the God King policy, but that seems unlikely. If I meet one of the other players, I'll be able to see their actual faith output (and culture/science/etc.), not simply where I stand relative to them in the rankings.

One other reason why meeting a Religious city state is such a good thing. There are only 4 players in this game, which means that there will be 3 religions available for founding. (Number of religions is half the total civs in a game plus one.) Yerevan is guaranteed to build a Holy Site as its first district by virtue of being Religious in nature. Later on, I will attack and conquer the city state, followed by making use of its Holy Site district to found a religion. If I can kill or cripple one other player in this game, then there's no rush at all - I'll be guaranteed to get a religion of some kind eventually. And yes, I realize that a bit of a big "if" there. Still, I don't want to waste precious early game production on Holy Site districts or other faith related stuff, and this will provide an opportunity to get a potential religion later on with minimal investment. That's a big win.

[greenline]

What era do you expect the decisive military action to take place in?

[Molach]

Some questions about warfare.
What do you think is a good mix of unit types (melee/ranged/horse/bombard) in an offensive/defensive army? I suspect ranged units won't be quite as good versus human players as AIs. I also suspect that Rome might lean more on Legions than other civs. Can massed ranged defeat human invaders?

Second, how do you think the purchase system impacts combat. Can a player with a sentry net and cash in the bank feel safe from invations by rushing defending units in his border?

[antisocialmunky]

I have to admit I do want to see how you properly conduct a military campaign in vanilla civ6. I usually end up pulling my hair out because of the terrible movement rules.

[Sullla]

More interesting questions. I'll do my best to answer them, while stressing again that a lot of this is theorycrafting. I haven't played any Civ6 MP games yet either, only watched some of the games from the online community and thought about how things might play out. This could all go disastrously wrong in practice.

Greenline: I think a decisive war will happen pretty early in this game, largely because this is a small map setup (official size is Tiny). My big picture gameplan has been a timing attack based around the use of Legions, making use of the warrior -> legion upgrade path. Legions are Classical era units, which means that any successful attack would have to be pretty early. I've been aiming for roughly Turn 80 in my planning so far. If that looks like a bad idea, my fallback plan is to use the chariot -> knight upgrade path instead and hit with knights instead of legions. That's a significantly more expensive upgrade and as a result I would need the Professional Army policy at Mercenaries civic to pull that off successfully, which is why the invasion would have to come later. Attacking with knights instead of legions would arrive later, but arguably would hit harder. The tradeoff is that by attacking later the defender would be much more likely to have crossbows in place. My goal with an early legion attack is to hit while the other player only has archers, since legions can one-shot archers with the right promotions in place. We never see this from the AI because the AI has no idea how to use the combat system in Civ6. That doesn't mean that the system itself is broken though, just the AI's ability to use it.

Overall then, I expect the decisive military action will take place in the late Classical or early Medieval eras. If we were playing on one of those obnoxiously huge maps that seem to be all the rage in Civ4 Pitboss games right now, then military action would come much later because there would be so much more room for expansion. Conflict in MP games is generally driven by a lack of room to expand, not anything on the tech tree itself, and that's consistent across Civ games.

Molach: I've also theorycrafted that archers won't be quite as good against human players as against AIs. That said, massed ranged units absolutely should be able to defeat a human player who simply tries to walk in the front door without the element of surprise. Archers and crossbows are very powerful defensive units; we've certainly seen that in the Civ5 MP games that have taken place on this site. As in Civ4, you never want to launch a frontal attack against someone who has equal power and equal tech. The defender is always going to win in that scenario. The key to winning is either having a major edge in power at the same tech era (i.e. catching someone by surprise) or being one generation up in military technology. Again, this is the same dynamic as in Civ4. The AI's general badness at the combat system in Civ6 tends to obscure the enormity of being a generation ahead in military tech. With the logarithmic way in which differentials in power operate, crossbows absolutely destroy archers, knights crush horses, and so on. You can work around being behind in tech in Single Player because the AI will run its units around in circles getting shot down by archers, but it simply doesn't work that way in MP games. If you're behind, you're in serious trouble.

One of the real keys to pulling off a successful attack in MP seems to be having a Great General present. I wrote this before but it bears repeating: the biggest bonus granted by a Great General is the +1 movement, not the +5 combat strength (although the latter is certainly nice too). Archers cannot escape from legions that have 3 movement points instead of 2 movement. As far as what I plan to bring to an attack, I'm hoping to have about 7 legions and 3 archers for cover fire support. I'd also like to bring 2 battering rams, which will bring down any wall defenses almost immediately. If the defender doesn't have crossbows and city defenses ready ahead of time, there's not going to be much they can do to stop that force, especially if it hits as soon as Turn 80.

Oh, and the other key element is surprise. I don't plan on walking in the front door like an idiot. Moving over terrain is difficult in Civ6 because of the wonky movement rules. I plan on invading by sea, embarking my forces and disembarking them right next to the enemy capital. If done correctly, there will be no warning until my units are landing on the beaches next to a likely undefended capital city. Should be fun if I can pull it off.

With regards to your last question: having some money in the bank definitely helps in responding to unexpected attacks. That said, units past the Ancient age start getting very expensive very quickly, and there's no slaving or drafting to pop out emergency units. Civ6 places a much higher priority on seeing an attack coming ahead of time and preparing accordingly. You can't magic up an army in a turn or two, for better or for worse. The best use of gold is not purchasing units outright, but rather to build cheap units from an earlier era and then upgrade them to their newer equivalents using money. I think upgrade costs are too cheap in Civ6 right now, especially with the Professional Army policy in place for half cost upgrades, but as long as it's in the game I'll make use of it. So what you can do is build some very cheap slingers early on and sit around with some money in the bank, then turn them all into archers/crossbows when an attack rears its ugly head. That's much better than trying to cash-rush a new crossbow for 700 gold or whatever.

By the way, we have a new turn as well on a fast turnaround! I'll put that in another post.

[Sullla]

First up the exploration news for the turn:



Not too much new this turn. I haven't found anyone else's units yet, although there's a good chance of stumbling into a warrior any turn now. You might notice the faith on those tiles to the northeast of my warrior - that's Mount Everest, which always spawns in the dead center of the 4-Leaf Clover map script. I should spot it next turn and pick up the Theology boost, although I doubt I'll be finishing that particular tech any time soon. I have no need for Holy Site districts or shrines right now. My warrior is heading next for the other city state that always appears on the north side of the continent, mirrored in the exact same position to the north of Mount Everest. That will get me three city state contacts for the Political Philosophy boost, although someone else will almost certainly have scored the free envoy for first contact by the time I get up there. Then my warrior will return back home for defensive purposes, exploring the western coast of the continent as it goes. (This is again why I didn't have a need for an early scout unit: I already know the main features of what this continent looks like, since it barely changes from game to game.)



My capital grew to size 3 this turn, now working the rice, horses, and plains hill tiles for a total production of 7 per turn. The tile picker chose the grassland hill south of the capital when the borders expanded, which it didn't always do in my test games. One additional nice thing about meeting that Cultural city state is that the borders will now expand even faster at my capital, avoiding the need to waste gold on more tile purchases. Growth is slow at the moment, but the builder will pop out in 2 more turns and farm the corn to take Roma from +3 food surplus to +4 food surplus, and that will be enough in this Slavery-less game for growth. Too much food will simply cause me to grow pointlessly into the housing cap penalty. What I really want is production, and I've set up the capital to have as much as possible without doing silly things like dropping the rice tile for a 2/1 grassland hill.

One small note: by hitting size 3 without a luxury resource in place I've reached the amenities cap, and that means that I lose the small bonus for having positive amenities in the capital. Last turn I was making 5.9 culture, and even after growing another pop point (worth 0.3 culture) I'm still at 5.9 culture, having lost that small bonus. Obviously it is still worth it to grow onto another tile for the production bonus, just pointing this out for the curious.



And now some interesting Demographics stuff. Based on the score screen, I can tell that Yuris grew his capital to size 3 last turn, one turn sooner than I did. In contrast, teh and the Archduke did not grow their capital to size 3 on the same turn as me, even though they play before me in turn order. The starting positions on this map are all mirrored with the exception of the luxury resources, which should cause minimal divergence in opening moves. What's going on here?

I think that I can explain Yuris. He probably has the northeast starting position, the one that contains a citris resource with 4/0 yield as opposed to my jade resource, and he likely worked that tile to reach size 3 slightly faster. Assuming that's the case, it feels like a mistake to me, trading 2 food for 2 production here in the very early game. (At size 2, I had +4 food/turn and was making 5 production/turn, while Yuris would have been at +6 food/turn and making 3 production/turn.) In Civ4, you would almost always want the higher food output to grow faster and then whip that population into something via Slavery. However, here in Civ6, it's unclear to me what the advantage would be from reaching size 3 a single turn faster. Surely a single turn's worth of 0.7 beakers and 0.3 culture from having one extra pop point isn't that valuable, right? And any production gained from hitting size 3 a turn faster was surely lost during the 5 turns spent not working the 2/2 horses tile. I should be able to complete my builder unit 3 or 4 turns faster than Yuris, which will then accelerate my prouduction edge further. (If he's going scout-first or something similar, then I'll be REALLY far ahead.)

Again, it's all speculating in the fog at the moment, but the 2/2 horses tile seems like an obvious choice to work over the 4/0 citris tile if you're already working the 4/0 rice tile for food purposes. You guys can pop over to Yuris' thread and see if I'm on the money or spouting nonsense here.

TheArchduke and teh are harder for me to figure out. I expected them to grow to size 3 on the same turn as I did, but no, they were still only at size 2 this turn. That means that they ended up with less food output than I did for some reason. I can only guess that they swapped from the rice tile to the horses tile when their capital expanded borders on Turn 4. However, the 2 production they gained that turn they lost this turn by growing to size 3 a turn later, so that tile micro didn't end up helping them. (Yes, I tested this earlier.) Small peanuts of course in the grand scheme of things. I expect them to grow to size 3 on the upcoming turn, and if they don't, then something truly strange is going on.

I'm glad that lurkers are enjoying reading about this game. I'm having fun so far too.