Suboptimal IV: Indonesian Insanity

[suboptimal]

Turn 64

The joys of watching the Steam Updater’s countdown clock vacillating between “15 minutes” and “6 hours” while downloading Gathering Storm with a limited amount of time to download, configure and play my turn in the start of my window, rather than at the end of my window. Yes, I bought it. No, don’t judge me. Had to do a full reinstall to get the save loaded, though, so perhaps serves me right.

Open the save, looks like someone (Archduke) captured another city-state. Also waiting for me – I have the Claim Great Person prompt. Interestingly, despite having unloaded CQUI the pins I placed still have CQUI’s icon set. I also see some of the graphical improvements:




The colors seemricher and note the coloration of my fortified units’ flags by Nan Madol – they’re transparent. Woden also threatens my unpromoted sword with an archer. I back both units up one hex into the mountain pass – as far as I know he thinks there’s only one swordsman down here.

While I’m over here I move the galley down the coast. It looks like I might be able to skirt past Nicodranas to the north by crossing here.




On the mainland I cross the river along Scotland’s borders to move away from Australia. Archduke has a 2-charge builder right next to my unit. A poach is tempting here, though it’d be quite a while before that builder got anywhere useful.

I continue closing in on Pella and find a fortified warrior blocking the northwestern approach. That’s fine because I’ll go around him with the warrior and then close with the swordsman.

In the southeast my quad and Archduke’s galley continue their little game of leapfrog. I stop on the coast just west of genius cows. Warrior on the island moves next to the camp. It’s on a swamp so the spearman is -2 to combat strength. To the north the galley exposes most of the island it’s found and barely sees an island in the fog to the north. There is something sticking out of the fog on the eastern tip of this island, though, so I need to investigate that first:




The new land is W-NW from the galley’s position.

Back home it’s time. I click on the GP prompt and open the GP screen and recruit John the Baptist. He appears in Sound. The cost of the great prophet remains at 60 GPP. That’s….different. I would have figured it’d be 120 points since we’re in the Classical by any measure (techs or Eras). Odd. I move him to the Holy Site and will found my religion next turn. Pindicator would need to get 22 points between now and next turn to beat me to the first religion.

I open up Sound’s production screen to start a shrine. They’ve changed a few things here, too…




I put it into the build queue, move the builder to the hill and chop for 70. Shrine completes, start a chariot, 4 turns to completion.

Over at Old Friends I mine a plains hill and the builder at Punky’s uses its last charge on a farm. Three farms to go for Feudalism. Need to get some housing in here at some point because the city will take 37 turns to get to 5 Pop.

In one last bit of housekeeping I change up my techs and civics. Switch to Masonry from Celestial Navigation and back to Games & Recreation from Drama & Poetry. One other thing that’s struck me – when I recruited the great prophet the GP screen now says “Cannot Recruit” but Revelation didn’t obsolete.

With the turn done I figure there’s one more piece of eye candy to show. The new fullscreen minimap:





Something to Investigate

I am seeing one or two posts on CivFanatics indicating that the new pillaging values are a bit...crazy. I’m not sure if this is carried over to the patch or not but perhaps I need to load up an old save and see what the pillage values look like. I hope they didn’t scale it to the same mechanism that districts and harvests are scaled to. That could get...egregious.

[suboptimal]

Following up on pillaging another poster on CFC (Lily Lancer) and one or two over on reddit have stated that pillaging is now the new paradigm. Lily Lancer posted a screencap showing a science pillage worth 364 while researching Rocketry and Professional Sports. I tried to fit that into the Cost Progression Game Progress formula using a base value of 15 per the patch notes and came up with a scaling value of 29 (districts & chops use 9 in that formula, projects use 14).

If this holds out (or even bears only a slight resemblance to the new reality) then there needs to be a major strategic shift in war planning. Mobility for pillaging will become key.

Update: It appears that scaling is identical to district scaling, with base values of 15 for /, 25 for and 50 for . If the chatter pans out I'm going to send the Carthaginian sword to Hattusa, declare war and pillage the Campus. That "should" be worth 40 by the time I get there (6 turns). It also means that there would be 120 in pillaging around Stockholm. If this is the case is it worth forgoing the +2 per turn and losing the envoy for a big slug of that is effectively renewable and increases in value over time as long as we're the only ones on the island? It also means that I should complete Military Training (6 turns from now) without the Encampment - I could get +30% production at Old Friends and the Raid policy - that makes the pillaging around Stockholm and Hattusa worth 320. It also means that Civ 6 is broken, as the first one to the Raid policy that has a "captive" city-state or two can pretty much run away with things.

[suboptimal]

Cornflakes – this pillaging situation seems “to ridiculous to be true”. Given that I expect my turn to arrive towards the end of my window I’ll have time early this evening to load up an old SP save (maybe one of my PBEM 10 test runs) to see how much pillaging has changed. If my current understanding of pillaging is correct this is going to somewhat change the plan over the next 10-15 turns. Everything that follows assumes that I’m currently correct and may turn out to be pure fantasy if I'm wrong.

Update: I've found a CivFanatics thread that was discussing the pillaging values in one of the livestreams from mid/late Janaury. The devs wanted science & cultural pillages to scale to be about 1/4 of a tech or civic throughout the course of a game. They are indeed using the same mechanic as districts and harvests.

City-States

I’d maintain suzerainty at Carthage and Nan Madol until the knight upgrades. Stockholm just got renamed “The City of Renewable Science” and I’ll be declaring war on it as soon as my warrior clears the barbarian camp and Raid is slotted. I’ll probably drop my envoy into Hattusa for the science. Lisbon will become a trading partner once the island city gets its trader out and I’ll put Amani there for the suzerain bonus.

Nan Madol is currently worth 12 per turn (out of 18.7). I don’t expect Woden to be able to take the city-state before Turn 80 given how constricted it is and the presence of the two swords.

Civics & Policies

Cold-research Military Tradition before anything else. That’ll take 6 turns but gets us the Raid policy. After that I’ll do Defensive Tactics and then Feudalism to inspiration minus 1 turn. There isn’t any available pillaging culture – if I happened across any I’d put it into Mercenaries.

With the current policy change I’ll be proceeding as previously outlined: Colonization → Urban Planning and Revelation → God King. When Military Training completes I’ll replace God King with Raid. When Defensive Tactics completes I’ll replace Urban Planning with Caravansaries. When Feudalism completes I’ll replace Maneuver with Maritime Industries.

Techs

The current tech path is unaffected. Pillaging science would go straight into Cartography, perhaps after completing Irrigation. Once Stirrups completes I’d beeline Cartography for ocean travel and the extra embarked movement. After that I’d beeline Mathematics (for increased ocean movement).

Builds & City Yields

Builds would continue as planned, with chariots getting built until Feudalism is completed, at which point it’s swords and a couple of rams, along with some infrastructure (Monuments instead of walls).

The trick will be getting the trader out as fast as possible, but I think I’ll take the Granary chop at island and put that into a trader instead to solve that issue.

The North

The Carthaginian sword can either go to Hattusa to pillage the Campus or try to get to Pella’s pasture for an apparent crapton of gold. It could get to the pasture in 7 turns the direct way, or take the long way and get there just before the levy expires. I’d take my chances with the direct route as the risk-reward (200+ vs. losing a levied unit with less than 10 turns left) is worth it.

The Island

The warrior will kill off the camp then head for Stockholm. As long as we’re alone with the city-state on the island it represents a renewable resource for science. It has a promotion available so I’d hold that, start pillaging and use the promotion to heal when the city-state counter-attacks. Getting up to 240 “now” vs. a +2 drip per turn from the envoy is a reasonable trade.

Military

I’d move two chariots to just west of Carthage and two more to the SW of Nan Madol while waiting for Stirrups to complete, then decide which pair gets upgraded based upon the strategic situation at the time. Upgrading at Carthage would allow a direct attack into Woden’s core, particularly if he doesn’t build walls. Upgrading at Nan Madol would be cramped but should result in keeping the city-state around for a while. That would leave a couple of chariots in reserve at the core.

[Cornflakes]

Wow   Pillaging does sound powerful. Don’t spill the beans in the public threads 

I definitely agree that the lump sum chunk of culture from pillaging Stockholm is better than the trickle of +2/turn. Once you finish pillaging you can retreat the warrior so that the CS repairs everything and then rinse and repeat.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Hm, I wonder if it'd be possible to do a no-Campus science game as Scythia - spam your horsemen and pillage your way to the spaceship?

[suboptimal]

Wow   Pillaging does sound powerful. Don’t spill the beans in the public threads 

I definitely agree that the lump sum chunk of culture from pillaging Stockholm is better than the trickle of +2/turn. Once you finish pillaging you can retreat the warrior so that the CS repairs everything and then rinse and repeat.

Yes.  And if I need a builder for improvements I can try to capture it and then wait for them to build a new one...

I think it changes the MP game dynamic in two ways.  First, if as here someone can get to Raid well ahead of the others it becomes a self-enhanced snowball.  Pillaging yields -> more science/culture -> more techs/civics -> higher pillaging yields.  Second, it makes getting Military Tradition first as important, or even more important than, Political Philosophy.  Once again, city-states hold the key - you can take them for being cities, you can raze them to deny or you can milk them for all they're worth.

Hm, I wonder if it'd be possible to do a no-Campus science game as Scythia - spam your horsemen and pillage your way to the spaceship?

In a vanilla or R&F game it should be quite possible.  In a GS game, not so much - you'd be limited with the new resource system.  The other issue is that if you're rapidly scaling up in techs/civics you're in danger of leaving your ability to produce to far behind to be meaningful.  Of course, against the current AI, who cares?

I have a feeling that what we may see here is that we play games under the GS ruleset but using a limited set of civs (e.g. vanilla).

[suboptimal]

Turn 65

First off, followng up on my previous posts I had a PBEM 10 practice game save that was at Turn 52. Techs/civics were the same as here – 11 and 9. I completed a few more and then declared on a neighbor to test the pillaging. Yep, the numbers are real. I think I’d almost prefer a mechanism where pillaging was able to provide and to nearby cities rather than and . That would help with later stages of the game.

Open the save and Games & Recreation is complete, as is Masonry. Also get a notification that one of my policies is obsolete. Quickly check the GP screen, the next Prophet remains at 60 GPP. Switch to Military Training and Archery. Seven turns for the former, one for the latter. I also see that Alhazard has reached my column on the civics tree – he is now in an Oligarchy. I make the civics swap, putting in Urban Planning and God King.

At Sound I activate John the Baptist. I introduce Feelin’ Groovy:




Culture increases by 2 per turn, bringing me up to almost 21 per turn, and I get 3 era points for founding the world’s first religion. Sound and Punky’s convert, Theology is now boosted. While I am focused on Sound the builder embarks and I’ll put down a Kampung next turn.

I move the quadrireme up to just outside Punky’s borders and buy a settler at Punky’s. I have enough faith right now for a missionary so I go ahead and make that purchase. That takes me down to 19 left in the bank and making 14.6 per turn. I’ll have enough for a builder on the island once that city is founded. The missionary will take 5 turns to reach Nan Madol and can start converting the city on Turn 71.

Over on the island I attack the barbarian camp, taking 29 damage and giving 30 damage. Up north the galley reveals that the thing sticking out of the fog was a misplaced cliff graphic. The path here dead ends to the east as well, so I’ll turn back to the northwest and go check out that other island.

At Old Friends I decide to put down a farm rather than a mine. That will get the population growing faster, which will get me more things here in the long run. It also means that I only need two farms from builders instead of three, one of which would have been going here anyway. The city grows next turn and I’ll put the second population onto the new farm. That’ll grow the city in three turns and then I can start working the hills.

Northwest of Pella I close in on Woden’s warrior. HE will be able to see the swordsman on his next turn, but that’s OK with me. With no interference I’ll be on the pasture in 5 turns.




The coastal passage I though existed does not, so I’ll head south and go along the southern coast of the other main land mass. In Scotland I uncover the city of Emon:




Other than a builder I have not seen any scottish units. The urge to declare and pillage here is...strong. That’s a 63 plantation. However, I don’t think the situation warrants it. Now, if I had Raid active that’d be a different calculation – that’s a builder or half of a quadrireme right there.

Back at Nan Madol there’s a logjam that I can’t do anything about right now:




That archer’s in a bad spot and Woden’s archer can see both of the northern hills. The good news is that if that warrior would clear off the mine I’d be able to move onto their with the unpromoted sword and then take Tortoise after it took a hit or two. For the time being, though, I’m stuck spectating. If I can get in there I’d be able to force a withdrawl and/or kill a unit or two.

In the city micro department Sound has hit the 50% housing penalty. That’ll change with the Kampung next turn so I won’t swap the sugar over to Punky’s just yet. I do move the citizen from the chopped hill out to the lake tile now. That’s 2 and 1 and every bit helps right now.

I’m also debating going ahead with the DoW on pindicator. On the one hand it’s a good strategy from my perspective. On the other hand, given how he’s been commenting on it in the other thread he might throw his computer across the room (or rage quit).

In international news Archduke now has 12 techs completed. Woden has completed his UB in both barracks but fortunately lags in both science and culture.

Cornflakes, I'm thinking about taking the island warrior's promotion just before finishing off the barbarian camp (or next turn). My reasoning is that I'd be able to go into Stockholm with Battlecry active and earn XP for the level 2 promotion while fighting my way in (or out). OTOH I don't know if Stockholm has an archer or not. Gotta look back through the EoT saves to see what was there when my galley went by.

[suboptimal]

Hmmm..Pasteboard's embed server seems to be down. The links are correct.

[Rowain]

I’m also debating going ahead with the DoW on pindicator.  On the one hand it’s a good strategy from my perspective.  On the other hand, given how he’s been commenting on it in the other thread he might throw his computer across the room (or rage quit).  

I guess you mean Archduke not pindicator as rage-quitting.

[suboptimal]

Yeah...Archduke would go bonkers, I think. Had a bit of pronoun trouble there...