Civ6 PBEM: Sullla of Rome

[fahbs]

Oh, cavalry count for boosting city defense? All this time I thought it was your strongest melee unit.

That really doesn't make sense from a logical or balance perspective. What good is a cavalry charge inside a city, and don't cavalry already have enough advantages over melee that they don't have to let them boost city defense?

[shinghand]

Oh, cavalry count for boosting city defense? All this time I thought it was your strongest melee unit.

That really doesn't make sense from a logical or balance perspective. What good is a cavalry charge inside a city, and don't cavalry already have enough advantages over melee that they don't have to let them boost city defense?

I thought it was fairly intuitive - the strength of your defences is linked to the approx strength of your military, which can be measured by your strength of your strongest unit. Also prevents people who have horses but lack iron from being screwed over in the mid game.

In theory, cavalry have counters, which is spears/pikes but I do agree the long absence of anti cav units in the mid-late game is an issue.

[kjn]

What, did you expect historical or real-world tactical accuracy out of a Civilization game?

From a game perspective, it makes decent sense, your city's ability to defend is related to your best unit capable of taking cities, and its ability to shoot is related to your best ranged unit.

[Sullla]

That's correct: the determinant of city defensive strength is based on the highest melee (i.e. non-ranged) strength of your best unit, minus 10 points. If a unit is standing inside the city itself, then the city's defensive rating will increase to match the strength value of the unit. I also think it's a bit ridiculous that a single unit build anywhere in your empire can magically increase all the defenses everywhere, but for now, that's the combat system we have. Melee units certainly could benefit from a boost in this regard, since they tend to get overshadowed so much by the mounted units. Aside from the Oligarchy +4 strength bonus, I'm struggling to think of anything they can do that the mounted units can't do better.

This was the start of Turn 91:



No new units from Stockholm, and unfortunately the city state AI is intelligent enough not to move the sword out of the center tile. I would much rather be attacking this city at 37 strength than 47 strength. The plan here was to move the injured legion on the hill a tile northeast, and then pillage the farm for the +50 HP bonus. When I made that move though, the game would not allow me to pillage the tile, which didn't make much sense to me. I thought that pillaging cost 2 movement points, and I had 2 movement points remaining. Was I unable to pillage because of the city's zone of control (?) This didn't make much sense to me.

I thought that I took another picture here, only I didn't see it after playing, which means I'll have to describe what I did in terms of unit movement. The injured legion therefore moved a tile northeast and had to wait there without doing anything else. The legion with the battering ram crossed the river, the legion with the Great General moved a tile northeast, and the horseman rested in place to get back the minimal 5 HP that units heal in enemy territory. The archer on the oasis tile moved northwest and upgraded to a crossbow for 100 gold, while the other archer moved northeast onto the forested hill tile. I'll be able to soften the city a bit using the crossbow and archer pair, although with the penalty to attacking cities they won't be too effective. I may have to rotate in some of the other healthy legions and pillage the farms for health restoration to make this attack work. Stockholm is quite well defended - I'll get it done though, I should have enough forces available. It's really a shame that I don't have a naval unit to put the city under siege though; perhaps I'll embark a pair of units eventually to occupy the two water tiles, which I think would stop it from healing.



The Aquileia front was more eventful this turn. Teh managed to recapture Frankfurt using a chariot and shot my archer on the hill tile with two of his own archers. Moving the horseman up to the front lines revealed this ridiculous archer spam, with an archer unit on nearly every single tile. Based on power tracking, this should be nearly all of teh's military, although I bet there's at least one more archer hidden out of view. This is a good example of why attacking in Civ6 can be so difficult; it's easy to load up on archers and then shoot away at incoming invaders. Yuris appears to have been outgunned over here, unable to respond to the waves of archers coming out of teh. Keep in mind that this is despite the fact that I killed two archers already, and I think Vilnius killed another one, while losing no units of my own thus far. I need to remember that Germany will always have crazy production from their Hansas, and with Agoge policy the archers are very cheap indeed to build.

I could break this position using a coordinated assault from my legions backed up by the Great General. However, those units are off fighting Stockholm at the moment, which I need to capture quickly before teh can gain any more ground. As a result, I pulled back with my units to defend Aquileia:



I certainly wasn't going to attack one of the archers with my horseman, which would only trade the life of the horse for one archer. Not worth it, obviously. Right now, I hope that teh decides to push his luck and tries to shoot the horseman, since I'll be able to counterfire from within Aquileia and take out at least one archer, possibly two. Don't forget that Aquileia now has the strength of a crossbow, and strength 40 ranged attack against 15 melee defense of an archer is a very one-sided proposition. I will defend my city from within the two-range shadow of Aquileia and wait for more military support to come down from the north.

Depending on how things go in this region, I may have to postpone any more attacks against city states in favor of dealing with Frankfurt. With control over Arpinum, I can pincer the city from two sides right now, and controlling that spot could be strategically useful, rather than needing to wrap around the center mountain. It's too early to say though. I have one legion and a fresh archer moving down to support Aquileia, and a lot depends on how much time it takes to conquer Stockholm. This is an area where the tactical movements will have to remain somewhat fluid.

For what it's worth, Aquileia completed its Bath district this turn and I'm going to start it on the Industrial district as the next project. 11 turns is a long task, but the district will be worth +4 production immediately (+2 from the adjacency bonus and another +2 from Hong Kong) and potentially more than that as I collect more envoys with the city state. I think my military is strong enough for the time being, and I can make these kind of investments for the future.



I also wanted to show off Arretium, probably my best non-capital city. I'm working on traders for the Medieval Faires boost right now, and I'll probably try to get the Industrial district done here as well after they complete. Mediolanum is going to grab that plains tile two west of the northern copper next turn, and it will (eventually) build a Commercial district there, putting my two Commercial districts next to one another for a nice adjacency bonus. I'm very pleased with how this region is developing, although (as always) I need more builder labor to keep improving additional tiles.

Yuris accepted my iron resource for 5 gold/turn deal, and my income is starting to look quite healthy at 23 gold/turn. That's despite paying to maintain a very large military, which is dragging my income down by something like 10 gold/turn right now despite Conscription policy. This is how Civ6 eventually counters the spam of low-tier, cheap military units: each new generation of military tech significantly outperforms the previous one in combat strength, while also being much more expensive to maintain. Those archers cost teh nothing in maintenance with Conscription policy in place, but if he wants to turn them into crossbows, they'll cost 2 gold/turn each. Since teh's income is about 12 gold/turn at present, he'll need to improve his economic infrastructure or else face bankruptcy. Now teh should be able to do that because he's Germany and those Commercial districts won't be very expensive with Hansas in place. Nevertheless, I hope that's a way of pointing out how the tradeoffs of economic vs military work in this game. You need to keep building up your infrastructure or military support costs will quickly crush your empire. (Similarly, you also need to get some kind of Campus districts in place or else research will stall out from pure population alone.)

I'm not sure that teh can win the game from his current position, but he's not going to make it easy for me to finish things up either. Turtling up with archers/crossbows can be a difficult puzzle to break. I think we might be at this for a while longer.

[kjn]

That's correct: the determinant of city defensive strength is based on the highest melee (i.e. non-ranged) strength of your best unit, minus 10 points. If a unit is standing inside the city itself, then the city's defensive rating will increase to match the strength value of the unit. I also think it's a bit ridiculous that a single unit build anywhere in your empire can magically increase all the defenses everywhere, but for now, that's the combat system we have.

To me, it makes about as much sense as when a new tile improvement is researched, all the workers (builders) in an empire that takes several turns to cross knows how to build it. Or similar with units and buildings.

So it makes sense as a form of abstraction, researching a tech isn't only about researching it, but making it widely known. Building the unit would work on a similar role, all the cities knows how to build it and receives the infrastructure needed to improve their defences, but that process is abstracted down to a single unit being built.

Could you build a better system? Sure. But it is nicely abstract, makes some sort of sense (at least to me), and doesn't require any extra effort on the player.

[fahbs]

Regarding pillaging: from my experience it takes the same movement as crossing a river: either 3 or the unit's max movement, whichever is lower. Not sure what the exact formula on that is (3/4th your max movement, rounding up?).


Also, ranged units defend against ranged attacks using their melee strength? I didn't know!


I guess the one and only advantage melee would have over cavalry is a more convenient tech path. Melee is in the middle connected to a bunch of other useful techs, while cavalry is on its own path that doesn't really hook up with anything until the modern era. Plus the biggie is you have to go through the religious techs/civics to get cavalry going, and religion is  pretty much a waste right now (beyond founding a pantheon).

Which leads to a reason I think anti-cavalry is a joke (besides not being strong enough to actually counter cavalry!): the tech path stinks. The pikemen tech doesn't give you anything else AND it's a dead end (I think it's the only dead end tech in the entire game! With Naval Tradition being the only dead end civic). Theology might be pretty useless, but at least it leads to useful stuff. Pikemen should be moved close to something useful like Apprenticeship.

The cherry on top of the useless anti-cavalry sundae? Cavalry getting a promotion bonus against anti-cavalry!!! One game the AI cavalry had that promotion and I couldn't kill it with 2 full strength anti-cavalry units of the same generation. Ridiculous.

[Sullla]

Tonight I played my usual turn when I arrived home, and then surprisingly we cycled through another turn quickly enough that I played another turn a few hours later. This game's turn pace has been consistently excellent throughout. I'll start with Turn 92:



The big news of the turn was located down in the bottom corner of the screen: Yuris sued for peace with teh after the reconquest of Frankfurt. That immediately raised the question of whether I should also negotiate a peace treaty with teh and end my own war with Germany. I'll get to that in a minute though. First up was the attack against Stockholm. I started by having my ranged units bombard the city state, then sent in the melee units. Here's a composite shot of the action:



I'll begin with the crossbow down there in the corner. Crossbows are medieval units and therefore do benefit from my Great General (which boosts Classical/Medieval units), making them very powerful units indeed. Archers do not get the boost because they are Ancient era units. (By the way, Great Generals do stack in Civ6, or at least they did before the most recent patch. When I get the second Great General, that might be the time to go after teh, with 50 strength / 4 movement crossbows.) That fortifications penalty is rough though. My crossbow did 11 damage followed by my archer doing 6 damage, and I was probably lucky to get that much.

Then it was the turn of the legions and the horseman, and without a strength advantage, this was a grinding battle of attrition. The problem was made worse by having to attack across the river with the two western legions, although unfortunately there was no way around that. When the dust settled, the city state was below half health:



Of course, Stockholm would heal up 20 HP between turns because the city wasn't actually under formal siege. Still, the city was definitely weakening, and was set to fall on the next turn barring anything weird happening. That was a good thing since my units were also starting to weaken from all that damage! A couple of them were on the verge of promotion though, and so far teh didn't seem interested in trying to make a move over here. Stockholm would fall soon enough.



Not much to report at Aquileia this turn, as teh did not send his units forward against my city. He seemed to be healing up and resting from his duel with Yuris, and that made a lot of sense. I promoted my injured archer and healed it, while moving the northernmost archer east onto the hill tile and moving the legion forward. With the city walls, four archers, a horseman, and a legion, I'm pretty confident that I can hold here for the time being.



Now for the real question: peace with teh? He did not offer me a peace deal on his turn, for what that's worth. I spent a while thinking this over, and went far enough as to offer a treaty at one point. There's much to suggest in favor of signing peace: a chance to go conquer the remaining city states, a chance to go settle the offshore islands, and a chance to develop the northern Roman cities. Time is almost certainly on my side in a game where I have 11 cities to teh's 5 cities. This is also the direction that my impulses lean towards the most, since I'm generally a peaceful builder at heart. All my instincts were leaning towards signing peace and going off into builder mode for a while.

However... the counter argument is that I'm much stronger militarily than teh right now, so why should I give him breathing room to develop a stronger military? Why not keep the pressure on him and keep him sweating rather than letting him develop all those potential districts? Germany's crazy production can stack up a lot of peaceful buildings in a hurry, after all. (Just look at all those districts queued up in Cologne! Although I think the Hansa is the only one actually finished.) I ultimately made my decision based on a more prosaic concern: I was worried that if I signed peace now, it might also count as peace with the Stockholm city state and teleport all my units outside of Stockholm's borders. That would be a disastrous result from a tactical standpoint.

Anyway, so we'll remain at war for now and see what happens. I'm going to take Stockholm, heal my army, and then see if I can move on Frankfurt in a pincer movement. If the odds don't look good, the I can always back off, sign a treaty, and do the peaceful development thing. But as long as I've got all these units, I should at least poke teh a little bit and see what happens, right?



Finally, here's an overview of northern Rome as it slowly develops. This area needs builder labor and the coastal cities need Bath districts, but in time this will be a strong addition to my empire. Lugdunum and Constantinople will both be good cities with some development. For now though, Bath districts all around.

[antisocialmunky]

At the risk of upsetting the lurkers, I would love to see you just conquer everyone. I would hate to see the enthusiasm you built with the game so far to fizzle out. Besides you are Rome, it would be most flavorful for you to conquer everything. :3

[Sullla]

One of the weird things about the Hotseat format is that I can hear the sound effects of the interturn after I save the game and send it on to teh. Usually nothing takes place, but I can hear the movement of city state units and their attacks if I happen to be near one of their units (since city state movement takes place during the interturn). I thought I heard one such attack after playing Turn 92, and figured that the sword inside Stockholm had attacked out of the city against one of my units. Did I lose my redlined horseman? That seemed like the most likely outcome, although I thought the city state AI wouldn't move its last unit out of the city center tile. It turned out that I was mistaken:



Stockholm actually finished city walls on the interturn, then fired on my archer (?) between turns. What rotten timing here; even one turn later and this wouldn't have mattered. On the other hand, if Stockholm had finished walls a turn sooner, this would have been much more difficult. Since Vilnius has been sporting walls for some time now, I suppose I should count myself lucky I had this much time.

Anyway, the walls did not make capturing Stockholm any easier. The saving grace was that batting ram that I've been lugging around the whole game without having a use for it. First I shuffled the redlined legion and horseman on the northern coast into the water. By controlling the tiles northeast and northwest of Stockholm, I put the city under a formal siege - thanks for the clarification from one of the posters (Athmos I think) that embarked units exert a zone of control on their own tile. No more healing for Stockholm now. Then I linked the legion to that battering ram, and smashed them against the city walls:



That knocked the walls down to about 1/3 health, just like that. Don't overlook those battering rams for siege operations, they're probably a little too effective right now. With the walls heavily damaged, I could then have the crossbow and archer get in some pinpricks of ranged damage. The crossbow was quite effective even with the city penalty, taking off another 7 health from the walls and allowing the legions to finish off the rest. After all of the attacks, I dropped Stockholm into critical condition without quite being able to finish it off:



That city will not heal, so it's toast next turn. Finally. It should be size 5 or size 6 after capture, and will come with a Campus district intact. Along with those awesome Galapagos Island tiles to the north of Stockholm, this city is going to be very strong indeed, especially from a science perspective. It will also decrease teh's science output by 4 beakers/turn upon capture, so this should be something like a 10 beaker swing in total. I will also pillage the cattle pasture next turn before capturing the city, then upgrade the archer to a crossbow to give myself a pair of them (before swapping out of Professional Army policy via the free civics swap). That archer has a promotion pending, and I like the idea of having a pair of upgraded crossbows (with +5 ranged strength) with the Great General bonus pumping them up even further. Yes teh, let's get in a shooting match with my 50 ranged strength crossbows, with their 3 movement points, shooting at your 15 melee defense archers. Should be one-shot kills if the math works out the way I expect. Let's heal up this group and poke around a bit at Frankfurt. (Antisocialmunky should enjoy this idea, haha.)



Situation is pretty much the same at Frankfurt; teh has 5 archers around the city and 2 chariots (the second chariot is northwest of the city on the horses tile; I spotted it while moving one of the legions in the Stockholm area). This should be the bulk of teh's military right here, with another archer or two out of view. I'll continue holding at Aquileia for now while the Stockholm operation continues.



This was slightly annoying. I rebased this trader to Arretium last turn so that I could run a trade route to Hispalis and get a road over the desert hill with the iron resource. Instead, the trader decided to swing off to the west and run through Ravenna, which meant that my projected route wouldn't create a new road at all. I think the trader took this route so that it could pass through the trading post in Ravenna and pick up an extra gold/turn. Well, rather than rebase the trader again, I just ran the trade route back to Roma for the 1/3/1 total yield, and that wasn't bad at all. Aquileia went up to 18 production/turn and the Industrial district ETA dropped to 8 turns.

I have another trader waiting in Roma for Stockholm to be captured so that I can run a 2 food / 1 production trade route up there to help the capital grow. And I'll also swap into Caravansaries next turn for the extra gold boost; converting 4 trade routes into 8 gold/turn is a pretty helpful policy right now. Oh, and Ravenna finally finished its Bath district and can grow again for the first time in ages! I immediately started a builder; that city has done almost nothing but crank builders and grow population all game, and that's been very helpful indeed.



Finally, I chopped the forest at Arpinum and used it to complete the Bath district immediately. TheArchduke apparently completed a granary in here earlier, and I can use the Bath production overflow to repair the granary in a single turn, which I think is worthwhile to do. Not for the housing - for the +1 food. Arpinum has a low food surplus and will benefit significantly from that granary, going from +3.3 food to +4.4 food. I'm hoping the culture picker will grab the oasis to give me another 3 food tile. It looks like it's going to grab the grassland hill tile to the south though, and I'm fine with that as well. Longer term, I want a builder here to chop the jungle and harvest the bananas, which will jump up this city in population by 2 or 3 sizes. Then I can farm the three plains tiles to the west for a nice Feudalism triangle. That will require 5 builder charges to pull off, but it will transform Arpinum into a very strong city indeed. I'll try to set that up over the next ten turns or so.

The other amusing thing is that the borders expanded here and trapped Yuris' exploring Eagle Warrior. I am not of a mind to give him Open Borders, because I don't want him exploring through my back lines and contacting the Hong Kong city state. So... that Eagle Warrior might be stuck there for quite some time. Poor guy - he should have headed for home a long time ago.

[fahbs]

I'd say keep pushing until he gets up matching crossbows.

You wouldn't even have to capture the cities. Simply pillaging those Hansas would be a fatal setback to him.

Plus it's not like you'd have to do anything different. You've already switched your production to development. The only difference between peace and war would be your existing army sitting on its ass vs. continuing to use it while it's dominating. There's no upside to peace while continued war has nothing but big potential gains.

Unless there's big amenity penalties from war weariness I'm not seeing?