[Spoilers] Chevalier Gives You Something to Cry Aboot

[Sullla]

Great! I didn't want to post anything in this thread without your approval ahead of time. As I said with scooter and TheArchduke previously, feel free to disregard any suggestions.

Alright then, so what do we have here for Canada in this game. I absolutely love Canada as a country; I've visited eight provinces during my travels and been fortunate enough to catch Canada Day (twice!) and be on hand for a fleet review by the queen back in 2010. Unfortunately Canada is definitely the worst civ in the game when it comes to Civ6, essentially a blank civ that offers nothing in the way of benefits beyond pointless Single Player nonsense. Canada is actually worse than having no benefit at all since they can't declare war on city states and devour them to snowball ahead. The diplomactic favor from tourism is basically useless and my advice would be to ignore it. That's Single Player garbage and it's delusional to think that it will make any real difference. In game after game, players post at the start of their threads about how they're going to work for a cultural or religious or diplomatic victory condition... and then every game ends in the same fashion as usual, one player pulling ahead in the tech + power rankings causing the rest of the field to concede. My advice is not to fool yourself that this game will be any different. Focus on the typical goal of getting ahead in tech + military power and forcing the other players to concede since that's what will actually happen in this game.

What else does Canada have to offer? Tundra terrain that's slightly less terrible and can be farmed - great, just great. (Once again Civ6's designers seem to think that farms are great tile improvements instead of something that should be avoided nearly all of the time.) Mounties come too late to be useful and have a strength bonus based around... national parks?! Oh come on! The tile requirements for placing national parks are absurdly specific and nearly impossible to use. It's hard to think of a more uselessly SP-centric design for a unit if you tried. Even the ice hockey rink, which is supposed to be the best part of Canada, comes far too late on the tech tree and can only be used in tundra terrain, which, as we all know, is terrible by virtue of being tundra. Is it even worthwhile to use a builder charge on an ice rink tile for something like 1 food / 1 production / 3 culture yield? Maybe? But still basically worthless. Yikes this is a bad civ. What were the designers thinking?!

I guess you'll have to play the living daylights out of this game if there's going to be a chance to win. I think Brazil is a solid civ and Phoenicia is genuinely good; I'm not sure what Phoenicia was doing on this list given all of their various bonuses. Egypt and Eleanor/England are more of what I would expect to see from this group of civs. If there's good news it's that the opposing players are not the top of the playerbase amongst the small RB Civ6 community. This is not a knock on Ichabod, Kaiser, suboptimal, or Woden who are perfectly fine players. But the top Civ6 players in this community seem to be TBS, Cornflakes, Alhambram, and TheArchduke in some order - none of whom are playing in this game. Take the superb performance by TBS out of PBEM17, for example, and TheArchduke is winning in a walk as he crushes through one of his neighbors with cossacks. If you have to go into battle with a terrible civ, it helps being able to dodge the deadliest competitors in the arena.

Thoughts on the starting position: this would be a good roll for a random game but it looks weak by Realms Beyond standards. I really hope that no one else has a start similar to what everyone received in PBEM17 because there's not much production to be had here. Compare for example to TheArchduke's capital in the last game:




The starting tile on a plains hill had the 2/2 starting tile, plus a 2/3 deer tile to grab at size 1, plus a 5 food farmable rice tile, plus *FOUR* 1/3 forested plains hill tiles to work as the city grew! TheArchduke was already up to 13 production/turn less than ten turns into the game and off to a crazy fast start. That simply won't be possible here because the terrain is so much weaker. Now that's not a problem if everyone has mirrored terrain or something similar so we'd better cross our fingers that that's the case. It's going to be almost impossible to do anything with a blank civ if the other players have better capitals.

What does this start need? Production, production, and more production. There are no 3 production tiles to be found anywhere and even 2 production tiles are scanty. This is a city that absolutely must go builder before settler because the production output is so weak. (Training an 80 production settler at 5 production/turn or whatever is a non-starter.) It's a real shame that the luxury at the capital is wines and not something that can be connected through mining to add a production point; the ideal resources to connect with the first builder are double sheep since each pasture is +1 production. But that only leaves one remaining charge and there's a real need both to farm the rice (for the Irrigation boost) and to plantation the wines for the amenities connection. Otherwise the capital becomes unhappy at size 5 and that's a significant loss with only one city. Would it be worth skipping the Irrigation boost and not farming the rice tile to improve wines + double sheep? Worth at least thinking about depending on how things play out. (If there's a Scientific city state out there this would be more viable.)

Ideally this city would be working double pastured sheep along with both 2/2 forested grassland hills at size 4. That would result in 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 (palace/center tile) = 11 production/turn. Unfortunately that requires having both sheep in range and improved, plus purchasing over to that 2/2 forested grassland in the third ring by the wines. Hopefully exploration will turn up other, better tiles somewhere in the third ring that may be worth purchasing.

Two other immediate thoughts:

* I don't like the scout build at all, especially for such a low production start. If barbarians pop up in higher than average numbers, you're left with a single warrior that can function militarily paired with a capital that has almost no production capability. Better hope nothing unexpected happens in that scenario. I know that some people love the scout opening but I much prefer an early warrior who can actually fight and clear barb camps. (I do think scout first is better than slinger first; slingers are terrible at revealing the map and they wilt instantly in melee combat with their base 5 strength.) You probably want to follow up the initial unit with a builder into a settler, then get more military after the settler finishes and Agoge can be slotted into place. So that's why I think the scout opening is bad: the timings don't line up very well for the build queue and you're forced to either slow down the growth curve with a second early unit or stick with a single warrior for far too long.

* Why is the initial research into Pottery? Surely Animal Husbandry is a far better initial choice, right? It's needed for the sheep anyway (at least one builder charge is guaranteed to be used on a sheep) and the tech also reveals horses. If there are horses anywhere near this capital, that's a very big deal indeed! Is there a need for Pottery here that I'm missing (?)

* Followup to TheArchduke's post: early rushes are bad in Gathering Storm because of the loyalty penalty. See the suboptimal/pindicator war from PBEM17 for the textbook example of this. Early wars can only burn down cities, not capture them, and that's no good in a game with five players. It's way too easy to drag out and stalemate a war with cheap archers/horses/swords and then you've only destroyed your own game to no purpose, again like suboptimal in PBEM17. Comparisons to any pre-Gathering Storm PBEM games are pointless because defenses have been significantly buffed since then and the (horrible) loyalty mechanic added. The only successful early conquest we've seen in Gathering Storm was Alhambram using the broken city state levies from Hungary and Chevalier won't have that as an option here. I think heading down that road would be a mistake.

[TheArchduke]

I kinda agree on the scout. Longer reply when I have the time. But I would heavily consider going AH and worker as well.

Disagree on the early rushes alot. Suboptimal waged that war badly, I happily provide a deeper analysis as well leter.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Oppo Research:

Start bonus, not unlike our own are most of the times ignored or nullified by a mapmaker, so I am not too worried about Brazil. Ichabod seems to be the most dangerous on an aggression standpoint to me.
The more we play CIV VI MP, the more the scientific (science) and commercial districts (upgrades/military) become dominant. Being an entertainment district, I would devalue the entertainment district. The patronage is underwhelming as well. Money is always tight and faith even more so with GTS (settlers).

Woden took Phoenicia and rightly so. The best thing about unique districts is that you can take better advantage of the district discount and can establish districts quickly in new cities. An harbour is excellent for that. The Bireme I would dismiss. The settler bonus on the cothon is nice though and a decent boost compared with the other civs around here. Thankfully it is Woden so he is not a military threat.

Suboptimal has all the advantages of a unique district as well. Apart from that? MEH. I am not seeing a culture pressure game as realistic. Especially as you need to store Great Works somewhere and you have to do so in suboptimal districts. England is like Phoenicia only less dangerous.

Kaiser as Egypt. Egypt is an interesting choice and one I would have taken. I think the Maryannu Archer is underestimated. Please do consider that it has 35! Ranged strength. I know it costs and arm and a leg, but in the right hands it can be devastating. I am not too impressed by Kaiser yet, I have no idea how he handled PBEM 17 that badly.

Do notice that I see other civs and players always through the lens of danger and aggression. YMMV.

A military victory over a human player is not as difficult as you think it is. Most players around here suffer from builderitis and micromanagment excess and ignore the military side of the game at their own peril. The only saving grace are two problems which I identified back in PBEM 2:

- You have to conquer someone whole. Anything else is a total waste of ressources and time apart from very specific punitive expeditions to set someone back by burning a city.
- The earlier you do a war the better.

I think you are perfectly setup with dedlurkers. What Sullla rightly pointed out in his critic on me is the disfocus. Either you got military or you just leave it alone. I would suggest to keep an open mind. Noone would expect a canadian rush.

While you both insist that any victory other than Domination is impossible, I think you're both a bit wrong. The main thing ending games, it seems to me, is exhaustion and the belief that one player has clearly won, and the idea that catching up is impossible, why play out the last 100 turns? I think this is so for both PBEM15 and PBEM17, our only two full length GS games - Woden wasn't going to invade and conquer sub/pin, but he could reach space before either of them. 

I think the changes to conquest in GS make a Domination win basically impossible, which in turn opens the door to the other three main victory types: Culture, Space, and Diplomacy. Now, Culture seems impossible against a determined foe. A human won't allow Open Borders, Trade Routes, or Rock Bands, and it's easier for them to catch up than it is for you to pull ahead. Diplomacy is...well, probably impossible. I don't think there's just any way to reach 16 points and build the Statue of Liberty on Emergencies alone - you need to vote yourself victory points, and not lose them while the Statue builds. And have someone else not beat you to it. 

But the statue is looking impossible with our start anyway, unless there's some seriously good seaside production nearby. Which in turn makes the DP impossible.

Oh, well, it was a nice dream.

Right now it looks like we're going to have to force concessions by razing everyone else's cities. I think low-cost punitive raids, as Archduke describes them, might be possible, without full on wars to the death, just to knock opponents more or less out of contention. 

Great! I didn't want to post anything in this thread without your approval ahead of time. As I said with scooter and TheArchduke previously, feel free to disregard any suggestions.

Alright then, so what do we have here for Canada in this game. I absolutely love Canada as a country; I've visited eight provinces during my travels and been fortunate enough to catch Canada Day (twice!) and be on hand for a fleet review by the queen back in 2010. Unfortunately Canada is definitely the worst civ in the game when it comes to Civ6, essentially a blank civ that offers nothing in the way of benefits beyond pointless Single Player nonsense. Canada is actually worse than having no benefit at all since they can't declare war on city states and devour them to snowball ahead. The diplomactic favor from tourism is basically useless and my advice would be to ignore it. That's Single Player garbage and it's delusional to think that it will make any real difference. In game after game, players post at the start of their threads about how they're going to work for a cultural or religious or diplomatic victory condition... and then every game ends in the same fashion as usual, one player pulling ahead in the tech + power rankings causing the rest of the field to concede. My advice is not to fool yourself that this game will be any different. Focus on the typical goal of getting ahead in tech + military power and forcing the other players to concede since that's what will actually happen in this game.

What else does Canada have to offer? Tundra terrain that's slightly less terrible and can be farmed - great, just great. (Once again Civ6's designers seem to think that farms are great tile improvements instead of something that should be avoided nearly all of the time.) Mounties come too late to be useful and have a strength bonus based around... national parks?! Oh come on! The tile requirements for placing national parks are absurdly specific and nearly impossible to use. It's hard to think of a more uselessly SP-centric design for a unit if you tried. Even the ice hockey rink, which is supposed to be the best part of Canada, comes far too late on the tech tree and can only be used in tundra terrain, which, as we all know, is terrible by virtue of being tundra. Is it even worthwhile to use a builder charge on an ice rink tile for something like 1 food / 1 production / 3 culture yield? Maybe? But still basically worthless. Yikes this is a bad civ. What were the designers thinking?!

I guess you'll have to play the living daylights out of this game if there's going to be a chance to win. I think Brazil is a solid civ and Phoenicia is genuinely good; I'm not sure what Phoenicia was doing on this list given all of their various bonuses. Egypt and Eleanor/England are more of what I would expect to see from this group of civs. If there's good news it's that the opposing players are not the top of the playerbase amongst the small RB Civ6 community. This is not a knock on Ichabod, Kaiser, suboptimal, or Woden who are perfectly fine players. But the top Civ6 players in this community seem to be TBS, Cornflakes, Alhambram, and TheArchduke in some order - none of whom are playing in this game. Take the superb performance by TBS out of PBEM17, for example, and TheArchduke is winning in a walk as he crushes through one of his neighbors with cossacks. If you have to go into battle with a terrible civ, it helps being able to dodge the deadliest competitors in the arena.

Thoughts on the starting position: this would be a good roll for a random game but it looks weak by Realms Beyond standards. I really hope that no one else has a start similar to what everyone received in PBEM17 because there's not much production to be had here. Compare for example to TheArchduke's capital in the last game:




The starting tile on a plains hill had the 2/2 starting tile, plus a 2/3 deer tile to grab at size 1, plus a 5 food farmable rice tile, plus *FOUR* 1/3 forested plains hill tiles to work as the city grew! TheArchduke was already up to 13 production/turn less than ten turns into the game and off to a crazy fast start. That simply won't be possible here because the terrain is so much weaker. Now that's not a problem if everyone has mirrored terrain or something similar so we'd better cross our fingers that that's the case. It's going to be almost impossible to do anything with a blank civ if the other players have better capitals.

What does this start need? Production, production, and more production. There are no 3 production tiles to be found anywhere and even 2 production tiles are scanty. This is a city that absolutely must go builder before settler because the production output is so weak. (Training an 80 production settler at 5 production/turn or whatever is a non-starter.) It's a real shame that the luxury at the capital is wines and not something that can be connected through mining to add a production point; the ideal resources to connect with the first builder are double sheep since each pasture is +1 production. But that only leaves one remaining charge and there's a real need both to farm the rice (for the Irrigation boost) and to plantation the wines for the amenities connection. Otherwise the capital becomes unhappy at size 5 and that's a significant loss with only one city. Would it be worth skipping the Irrigation boost and not farming the rice tile to improve wines + double sheep? Worth at least thinking about depending on how things play out. (If there's a Scientific city state out there this would be more viable.)

Ideally this city would be working double pastured sheep along with both 2/2 forested grassland hills at size 4. That would result in 2 + 2 + 2 + 2 + 3 (palace/center tile) = 11 production/turn. Unfortunately that requires having both sheep in range and improved, plus purchasing over to that 2/2 forested grassland in the third ring by the wines. Hopefully exploration will turn up other, better tiles somewhere in the third ring that may be worth purchasing.

Two other immediate thoughts:

* I don't like the scout build at all, especially for such a low production start. If barbarians pop up in higher than average numbers, you're left with a single warrior that can function militarily paired with a capital that has almost no production capability. Better hope nothing unexpected happens in that scenario. I know that some people love the scout opening but I much prefer an early warrior who can actually fight and clear barb camps. (I do think scout first is better than slinger first; slingers are terrible at revealing the map and they wilt instantly in melee combat with their base 5 strength.) You probably want to follow up the initial unit with a builder into a settler, then get more military after the settler finishes and Agoge can be slotted into place. So that's why I think the scout opening is bad: the timings don't line up very well for the build queue and you're forced to either slow down the growth curve with a second early unit or stick with a single warrior for far too long.

* Why is the initial research into Pottery? Surely Animal Husbandry is a far better initial choice, right? It's needed for the sheep anyway (at least one builder charge is guaranteed to be used on a sheep) and the tech also reveals horses. If there are horses anywhere near this capital, that's a very big deal indeed! Is there a need for Pottery here that I'm missing (?)

* Followup to TheArchduke's post: early rushes are bad in Gathering Storm because of the loyalty penalty. See the suboptimal/pindicator war from PBEM17 for the textbook example of this. Early wars can only burn down cities, not capture them, and that's no good in a game with five players. It's way too easy to drag out and stalemate a war with cheap archers/horses/swords and then you've only destroyed your own game to no purpose, again like suboptimal in PBEM17. Comparisons to any pre-Gathering Storm PBEM games are pointless because defenses have been significantly buffed since then and the (horrible) loyalty mechanic added. The only successful early conquest we've seen in Gathering Storm was Alhambram using the broken city state levies from Hungary and Chevalier won't have that as an option here. I think heading down that road would be a mistake.

The Pottery research I regretted as soon as I hit end turn. THe idea was to unlock IRrigation, but that's obviously way premature. Plus I kind of hate wines anyway since you just get food and gold from them - I think they're the weakest plantation resource by far.   I plan to swap to AH next turn to get those sheep, as they're basically my best tiles.  The choice of sheep vs. wines...well, I'd say an early settler would avoid amenities but we're going to be slow, slow, slow building him. Not sure about the solution here yet.

As for the scout, I actually went back and forth a lot between him and warrior first. Slinger I never considered. I was hoping to explore the map early, find city-states first, and get a leg up on the competition in the diplomatic game. It does leave me vulnerable to barbs, because I hadn't really considered how poor my production was - it will take a long time to kick out a warrior. Partially I'm influenced by playing practice games on Online speed, to rush through as many iterations I can, when you can spit out a unit in a mere 5ish turns when barbs show up, which is no biggie. I do think there's value if I can get the first envoy in a culture or religious state from the scout. 

On the other hand ,there's value in not having my initial builder trapped in spawn while I wait for a warrior to show up to chase away the barbs. I'll see what the new turn brings before deciding that.

[TheArchduke]

@Sullla

Well, you get Canada if the choice is between Sweden and Canada. I think the no dow against CS rule is not as bad as it is made out to be. People went absolute nuts saying conquering CS is the new meta. That is just wrong. Even those conquests need an investment in units and time.

I concur that Canada could be pulled off in this game. Thanks to player and civ composition.

With 2 turns into scout, it would be a waste not to use him by now, though. I would strongly consider builder next. Your fear of barbs is overblown but yeah a slinger would have been better then the scout. Let´s hope for some luck in the CS finding game then.

I totally disagree that early rushes are not possible. Especially with 1-2 and even 3 cities, loyalty pressure is neglible. What exactly is the problem if you loose a city to loyalty? Your opponent lost it, it becomes AI and you take it at your leisure.

Right now we are in scouting mode anyway, Suboptimals´ conquest in PBEM 17 failed for 3 reasons:

- the terrain was terrible making movement and reinforcements a slog.
- no reinforcements after the intial push
- the defensive terrain was excellent

Even as Pindicator was totally oblivious, the long, long road made a swift conquest impossible. People also get blinded by the UUs thinking they are "I win" buttons, they are a small edge nothing more.
I think the right call was to call off the rush on turn 36 or 37. There is no good inroad into Khmer:



Anyway, I am not advocating an all out attack. This decision is something done when we see the terrain. I can only tell you that my gameplan as Canada was to take it, and do an unexpected Ancient or early Classical rush. 

@Chevalier

Civilization has no rubber band mechanic. The only thing that you could count on is other players ganging up on the leader and most of the times a significant tech edge is enough to sail away with the game. Most often by having a rather big or small early frigate navy if water is around. Pangea could decide the game against navies, but I remain unconvinced about that.

Any plantation is good for gold, which is a godsend in the longrun. 

I advocate to finish the scout even if I think builder first would have been better. Maybe the RNG God is merciful and grants us a mil CS. Do however scout heavily with both units to open up CS and give us the lay of the land. I stand ready to provide a war plan, whilst Sullla will happily point out your economical opportunities.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 3




Can I squeeze two paragraphs of content out? Well, let's see...Naturally, I swapped research to Animal Husbandry. The nice thing here is that there's no time lost - we will need Pottery eventually and we'll still have AH in before our builder pops out. As for the great warrior vs. slinger vs. scout vs. monument debate...It's nice to see that pretty much everyone rejects monument first and slinger first. Slingers are just too slow and fragile, good mostly just for the archery bonus, I feel. I do strongly believe in the power of a warrior first, especially as insurance against barbs; however, I feel that to really have any chance we're going to have to take risks to try and pull ourselves ahead. A scout is higher risk/higher reward, from early city-states, natural wonders, and, importantly, a foreign continent for foreign trade. That's a lot of era points/science/culture/free envoys to leave on the table. Will we get much more from a scout than a warrior? Eh, I don't know, but I think the risk is worth taking.

Plus, swapping now after we've got 2 turns invested would be an unconscionable delay in getting any scouting units out on the map. Imagine showing up one turn late to a juicy religious or culture state! 

Speaking of, you'll note we'll make our first CS meeting next turn. Just across the desert we've got settled tiles, so the third ring of a CS (or else the third ring of Egypt...does the Nubian Desert mean that Egypt has scouted this patch of desert, or does it mean Canada inexplicably [] has no native desert names and so is already pulling from the master list?). I'll bounce up there next. I'll be happy with anything save an Industrial state, I think (-knocks on wood-). Militaristic will boost our early unit builds, religious woudl be nice to lock in a pantheon, culture is really useful to have early game, and more gold/science never go amiss. 
QUICK EDIT TO ADD:


I took this shot 2 turns ago, as you can see by the turn counter, but keep forgetting to share it. Here are the great people. More thoughts on them later but I gotta ration my content while we're scouting.

Anyway, part of the reason loyalty mattered for sub's rush failing was that he initially tried to go to massive lengths to hold the city after capturing it, which tied down his units when I believe he should have thrust hard straight for Pin's capital. The delay between the terrain and the loyalty was fatal, but I feel like a steady pipeline of Potatoes should have cut through pin's warriors faster than he could build them. The other option, razing, would have been an option, but it wouldn't ahve done much to boost suboptimal ahead. In retrospect, perhaps he should ahve razed the city and then pushed straight for Nazca, Kabul, and other city-states, returning to finish the job down the tech tree. Regrettably we cannot do that.

The reason conquering city-states is so good is that you get developed, large cities right when you're running out of cheap settlers. It also takes something you need to build anyway - military units for state security - and puts them to productive use. Look at history of PBEMs here:

PBEM1: Sullla conquers you, mops up city-states after and easily runs away with the game. Here, the conquered Roman cities did a lot of the work.
PBEM2: Alhambram catapulted from also-ran to contender and ultimately winner after taking the city-states between him and Woden.
PBEM3: Ichabod eats Kaiser. Snowballs to win.
PBEM4: A little unusual, but ultimately Archduke would have won this game after conquering his city-state neighbors EXCEPT that oledavy built the Venetian Arsenal, which let him build up a navy large enough to fight Archduke's GA-led fleet AND Woden's Minais Gerais fleet at the same time (helped by poor coordination between Brazil and England). Anyway, the city-state conquest (Operation Sudden Strike, yeah?) was what made Archduke a contender.
PBEM5: Pindicator didn't actually conquer any city-states, did he?
PBEM6: Macedon takes Australia early, no need for CS conquest.
PBEM7: Everyone save Japper's team eats their local city-states. Japper instead inexplicably lets England suzerain Nan Madol.
PBEM8: Chariot rush. Mongol snowball.
PBEM9: Don't recall this one well enough. Rho 21 wins after an early conquest of Pin's Aztecs, I think?
PBEM10: Sub rushes Egypt, snowballs.
PBEM11: Maybe this was the one with rho21? Can't recall.
PBEM12: Archduke and Chevalier trade city-state conquests, which are necessary to keep in contention with each other. 
PBEM13: TBS actually builds so well that he doesn't need to conquer a CS. 
PBEM14: aborted
PBEM15: Woden wins off early rush, snowball.
PBEM16: Alhambram wins off early rush.
PBEM17: TBS wins, conquers two key city-states (Russia takes one). 

In most games, the winning civ padded their city count either by conquering a neighbor early OR by conquering city-states in the early midgame to give themselves a boost. The only example I can find of a civ doing neither of those things and still winning is TBS in PBEM13. It really goes to show that a)TBS is a stupid good player and b)you really need that kind of boost to keep up.

[Sullla]

Spotting an early city state is indeed great news. As Chevalier said, anything other than Industrial is a good pickup. Ideal order is probably Militaristic > Cultural > Religious > Scientific > Commercial > Industrial for the type. It would also make for a great future conquest target except, you know, Canada.

It's definitely better to finish the scout after investing 2 turns into the unit and then to go on to builder next. My logic was that the build order is almost certainly going to be initial unit -> builder -> settler, and if you're heading down that path, then I think a second warrior provides a lot more safety and flexibility than the warrior + scout setup. The scout is only good for defogging the map whereas a pair of warriors can be used for barb suppression or exploration. Still, it's a fair point that there's a need for some risk-taking here with such a weak civ. I really hope that this is one of those games where the barbs barely show up at all instead of a game where there are double horse camps before Turn 25. (It's one of my biggest pet peeves about the Civ6 early game: barbarian activity varies enormously from game to game.)

This map doesn't seem to have many hills or forest/jungle tiles so there's going to be a need for tight micromanagement of cities to build anything. That's probably a good thing honestly since it creates a higher total skill cap for this game and that's a place where player talent may be able to make a difference.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Let's say worst case scenario and a scout shows up next turn with the ! of doom. What then?

To my mind, finishing the scout and then proceeding to warrior next has to be the play, right? We can't build a builder (ugh) since he'll only risk capture and pillage if he tries to make improvements. Security is necessary. But we also still have all the reasons for finishing the scout that we had before. An alternate solution is to send the scout out, start a builder, and recall our own scouting warrior, who is, after all, only 4 turns away - he'd arrive sooner than a freshly built warrior would, around the same time the builder emerges. At that point it's as if we started with a scout instead of a warrior and then went warrior first.

[TheArchduke]

I think scouting with the warrior is going to be important. We need a clearer picture and fast. More important than the low risk of our builder running into problems.

I still do not think that the CS conquest is the new meta is a thing. It largely depends on the quality of the city site itself. There are also very worthwhile CS out there, Geneva, Valetta, etc..

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 5

Quick response with just a screenie since I'm meeting a friend downtown for dinner.

While I wait for the game to boot, here's my process for playing turns:

1)Leave work, head to apartment. About a 30 minute walk.
1a)Forgot this step. Retrieve SSD from apartment.
1b)Walk to PC bang. 5 minute walk, not bad at all.
2)Log in to PC bang PC, plug in micro-SSD while computer boots (needs to be an SSD to keep loading times acceptable).
3)Run Steam, FRAPS, and PYDT from SSD.
4)Log in to PYDT, find token, copy and paste into client.
5)Adjust Steam directories to include SSD.
6)Boot Fraps and set keyboard shortcuts and screenshot destination.
7)Download save, boot Civ, play save, pass.
8)Log off, type up turn report, upload images. 
9)Sign out of PC and head home. 

Then it's an hour long bus ride to downtown. I just wanted to share. So no commentary - the game is loaded and I need to get moving. Screenshot (which I haven't even taken yet!) below:

lol:



Figures.

Better news:



Quest is Masonry eureka.









Okay gotta run downtown, so commentary will come in a few hours.

In the meantime amuse yourselves by speculating on why I might have included some of those possibly cryptic screenshots.

[TheArchduke]

Hmm, that is a shame. My money would be on wasting two turns to get the warrior south and get rid of a barb camp which hopefully does not involve horses.

Or we waste time on a slinger.

Interesting process to play turns by the way. If things are that complicated it might be easier for you to dedlurk and me to play?

July and August ist tough however as I am out on the country and in the city all the time.

A culture CS that early is a godsend and compensates quite a bit for our crap production site.

Whose position changed? Woden´s or Kaiser´s?