Godking

[DeckerdJames]

Lol, at least there is debate about G-d king versus city planning.

What about discipline vs survey? I struggle to ever find a use case for double experience for scouts in the early game, versus the usefulness of combat bonus against the ridiculous whack-a-mole barbs with their mysteriously advanced technology (as an aside, why are barbarians generally technologically superior in Civ6?)

If you are going to produce a couple of scouts to open the game and look for villages, civilizations, and natural wonders then survey will get them double xp for villages and natural wonders. I don't believe they get xp when meeting a civ but it would be interesting if they did. Usually, there isn't enough villages or natural wonders to be able to promote two scouts to rank three. If i get lucky then an early level three is possible. Ideally, you could get both scouts to rank three and promote them along different paths and then make a corp out of them to have a very advanced recon unit in the late game. It would probably work more often if they got triple xp, but if the card was useable in later eras, after military academies, it would promote very quickly. Maybe too quickly.

I have not tried to yet but hey could get quick level 1 promotions by fighting barbs if they don't have it yet when encountered. Also, if you are generating great general points, one of the great generals will give a single free promotion. I use that sometimes to get to guerilla (+20 combat strength in all situations).

The thing is that you have to be very careful with scouts or they will die and it is hassle. To be more useful you need to upgrade them to skirmishers. That means you need machinery, or rifling if you go to rangers, and that might not fit your long term tech goals. If you upgrade to skirmishers to slowly, they remain vulnerable. If you built a single military academy and produced a recon unit in a later era, it would level up much faster, especially with survey, and probably safer if embedded with other units in a war or something.

 

[rocksinmypath]

Survey is usually superior to Discipline in every way as your first military policy. On a Pangaea map, the marginal value of the second scout is extremely high. Assuming the second scout is what you need to secure a golden age, you're looking at value equivalent to easily upwards of 400 gold. Why is that? The first builder you acquire in a game costs 50 production or 200 gold. Every subsequent builder after that is 4p more expensive than the one before. Assuming you made 3 builders in the ancient era, the first builder in the classical era should cost 62p or 245g. With monumentality bonus, you get a 75g discount to 170g. Say you get 5 builders in the classical era. (You should aim to get a lot more than that.) Without the bonus, you're probably spending around 1350g. With it, only about 950g. That's a difference of 400g. Monumentality builders are also faster, and it's not crazy to assume that you can spend your build charges 3 turns more quickly on average. If each improvement nets you 2g per turn, with 5 * 3 = 15 build charges, you're looking at a gain of 90g. If the extra scout XP you get from the Survey policy helps your scouts eek out the last few era points you need to secure a golden age, whatever you'd gain from obtaining a golden age is part of what you gain from running the policy.

Extra scout movement can also help you meet other civs more quickly, which, aside from yielding extra era points, provides you with a wider market for your strategics and luxuries. That could also net you a few hundred gold. The value of the gold you get this way possibly dwarfs what you can expect to get from entering a golden age, because the benefits of the golden age are deferred by probably around 20-40 turns.

The main reason people prefer Discipline to Survey is that Discipline helps you defend better against barbarians. I'd argue that Survey is usually better for this purpose, too. It's extremely helpful to have enough map vision to know where barbarian camps are. Scouts are also not bad at defending against barbarians because the most important thing about barbarian defense is to prevent barbarian scouts from spotting your city and returning to their camps to start spawning units. Your warrior isn't quick enough to catch fleeing barbarian scouts. It's better to hunt them with your own scouts, and you might as well use that opportunity to level up your scout. Also, in cases where there are multiple camps near your city, it's unlikely that your warrior can shift from one camp to the next quickly enough. You're better off buying a slinger with gold to deal with the second camp, and you're more likely to find more gold early game with high-level scouts.

There are only a few cases where I'd start a game without intending to open with Survey. On naval games, I may choose not to get a scout at all. I also don't open with a scout with Sumeria since war carts can do everything scouts can do and more. With the Cree, I think it's also fine to choose Discipline instead, since their unique scout starts with a free promotion, and you're pretty much guaranteed 8 era points in the ancient era.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

Survey is usually superior to Discipline in every way as your first military policy.

Well that's highly debatable, more of an opinion than a fact if anything.
Your napkin math here is essentially an argument as to why monumentality golden age is good (it is), but that is assuming that survey leads to a golden age, which is a somewhat dubious claim.
Survey is no such guarantee, can also work counter productively in a lot of cases if your goal is era score, while being restricting for the early build order.

I'll give a more proper reply later on.

 

[Oberinspektor Derrick]

So, survey vs discipline - here's why I'm not a fan of survey:

1. It forces you to open Scout first. Now some people might do that blindly every game and do fine with it, but I much prefer to have the flexibility to open up with other things as well, because sometimes there are more optimal (imo) choices depending on the map layout. In my preferred order, I usually open up with Slinger, with a warrior on second place and builder/scout on third place. The reason for this is that because I play on Deity to Deity++, slinger is just a much safer option. It gets my military score up higher, making it less likely that I get declared war upon in th early Ancient era. It also allows me to get an early Archery eureka, which is usually an important tech early on for defensive or offensive purposes. And since I already have a Slinger built, it upgrades nice and cheap into a "free" Archer that I can either defend or attack an AI with. The Warrior is an even safer opener, as it gets my military score up even higher, and allows for a second unit to roam around clearing camps, while being a strong defensive unit against an aggressive AI. The builder/scout is my third option, and is essentially my "greedy option" for when the immediate layout makes me feel somewhat safe. Typically if I have coastline near my settler (especially so if tundra) because it means I can generally only have neighbours in one or two directions, making it much easier to know where any threat will be coming from. This still depends on me having hills and woods around my capital, because a capital situated on complete flatfland on all sides is gonna get steamrolled by an AI if they decide to attack me, no questions asked. In this case though, a builder is the most greedy option (but can set up a nice early snowball), whereas the Scout is somewhat greedy as well (because it has limited value in terms of military score, and is a gamble on whether it pays off enough compared to the guaranteed payoffs from a builder). Typically a warrior or slinger start allows these units to be used as limited scouts as well, so there is even less of a reason to pick a Scout if you just need to look for decent settling spots and know your closest neighbours. Either way, in any case where I don't open scout first (the majority of my games), survey is essentially worthless by definition.

2. It can make it harder to get era score, not easier. On the highest difficulty settings, it is a gamble on whether or not you get enough era score payoff from a Scout to make him worth the investment. Whether or not a scout is worth it in terms of era score depends primarily on the number of tribal villages you can pick up, which are usually quite scarce on Deity or above because the AI tends to scoop them fast. You can also get some era score from meeting neighbours and finding a lucky natural wonder, but since you can use a Slinger or Warrior to scout a bit with as well, the marginal value drops on the Scout. Meanwhile, another warrior or slinger will let you clear barbarian camps much faster. Not only because you didn't build a scout, but because you have discpline together with your extra slinger or warrior. And since barbarian camps are a very consistent source of early era score and gold, this opener (slinger/warrior with discipline) lets you get those sources fast, while also doubling down on a safer start against potential surprise wars from an AI (because your military score is higher). Now you will usually get a bit more era score from a Scout if he meets more neighbours and/or spots a natural wonder, but this comes at the cost of being much more vulnerable and much less able to clear barbarian camps for era score and gold. The main reason people use Discipline is maybe "to defend against barbs" for players on lower difficulty settings, but on Deity and above most players know how to defend against barbs indirectly without extra combat strength. In this case, the extra combat strength from discipline is to clear barbarian camps faster and more consistently for extra era score and gold.

3. Survey adds very little value in itself for era score, as is your main argument. You can still open up with a scout while running discpline, the only drawback here is that your most important promotion (the first terrain one) is a few turns later. That's it, that is essentially all you gain from Survey, getting the terrain bonus a little earlier. On the flip side, any stray barbarians are that much more likely to kill or cripple your scout, so that it's really up in the air on whether even Survey is worth it over just Discipline, even if you open scout first.


The rest of that napkin math of yours (where you essentially try to draw a direct causal link between time spent on a scout into raw gold cost on saved builders from monumentality in the next era) is so dubious that I'm not going to answer that further.

 

[rocksinmypath]

Yes, I'm sharing my opinion like everyone else in the thread. I'm not really sure what made you think I was forwarding my arguments to be accepted as facts by others. You don't have to start your sentences with "I think..." to signal you intend to express an opinion.

Of course, Survey doesn't guarantee you a golden age, but Discipline doesn't guarantee the sort of return you hope from it, either. I acknowledged as much in my post. I said that, IF the extra movement you gain with Survey helps you eek out the required era points you otherwise wouldn't have, the gains from monumentality could be directly attributed to the policy. I'd love to know what you find so dubious about this logic or the math. You could, of course, establish a similar connection between Discipline and monumentality bonus if it helps you get enough era score. One of my arguments (certainly not the only one in favour of Survey) is that Survey is a more reliable source of era score, and thus, the expected value of the marginal utility of monumentality is higher for Survey than for Discipline.

I think you and I stand different on the following couple points:

1. Number of available tribal villages
I play on Deity, and my experience is that there are usually enough of these (on Pangaea and similar maps at least) to a) level up my scouts early, and b) continue acquiring them afterwards. The AI might start with more units than the player, but just like everything else it does, its ability to explore the map is significantly worse than the player's. Survey helps you exploit that advantage. My expectation is, with two scouts, to be able to grab at least six of these in the ancient era. If I were to open with a slinger instead, I'd probably expect about two or three huts. With Survey, you're guaranteed a promotion with the first two huts. Sometimes, one is enough if you can get a couple hits on a barbarian scout.

2. Discipline helps you clear camps significantly more quickly
I don't doubt that Discipline helps you clear camps more quickly, but I doubt it helps you clear them fast enough that you can rely on them to generate extra era score. As I said, camps usually spawn far from one another, so it's more a question of how many turns my units will take to get from wherever they are to the next camp than of how many hits and turns of healing I need to clear a camp. For a slinger opener + Discipline to be a more reliable source of era score than a two-scout opener + Survey, I expect the former to result in at least 2 additional camp kills. Why is that? As I said earlier, I expect the latter to get me at least 3-4 extra huts. I also expect to meet at least one more player with it than the alternative. I can see being able to clear one extra camp from time to time with Discipline, but two seems unlikely. Besides, I'm not advocating that players never use Discipline. I'm arguing that Survey is usually the better opener. Usually, the goal with the Survey opener is to get your scouts one promotion each, and once you achieve that, the value of the policy drops significantly. I can switch to Discipline at that point and hope to maybe score an extra camp at the end of the ancient era.

Also, my argument for Survey extends well beyond how much it helps with attaining a golden age, and the marginal utility, converted to gold, you can attribute to it as a result. As I said, it's also very valuable to meet other players early in the game so that you can sell them your resources. I even mentioned that the value you receive from this may even dwarf what you'll eventually receive from monumentality because the benefits are much more current.

Another thing that Survey gets you is extra map vision, whose value is harder to quantify but certainly very high. You said that a lot of players blindly choose scout openers. For me, I prefer opening with scouts because that's the one that I believe has the highest expected utility. I make this judgment based on what information I have at the beginning of the game: map settings, the abilities of my civ, etc. You could characterize it as a "blind" decision, but how can you do better with so little information? You can only hope to do better in the future, and that's what scouts help you do.

 

[Kotofei]

God King all the way, because the pantheon is frequently an early force multiplier, (even a free builder can make a big difference) but I can see how Urban Planning would be good for a low-production start.

lol this should be a poll.