[Vanilla] King - winning on

[Archon_Wing]

you missed the part where I said I rerout them later in the game.

Oh, I dunno. I read:

Running internal TR later in the game will do that for you.

But I guess you're already on board with external routes so, all good.

 

[knighterrant81]

Why is it not worth it? You're not giving an argument here, just stating an opinion. I don't think every Eurekah is worth it either, I often times don't build two Galleys for example, nor do I build a fort in most of my games, because they have close to zero economic benefit. The housing from a Neighborhood however allows for more pop, meaning more centralized production, which is literally your bottleneck for space victories. I reckon building one aqueduct, one neighborhood and six farms is almost a must in most games, though the Neighborhood is the least valuable of the 3, simply because it comes online so late. I skip it in maybe 1/10 or 2/10 games.

The first question at hand is, is it worth it to build a neighborhood for its own sake? Another way to ask this is - is it worth to put your Production (and a presumably high-Appeal tile) into producing additional Citizens? That's really what you are doing when you build Housing. The answer is not really, because after 10 pop, it is better to put your production into something else - e.g. military or Builders. That's something objectively provable with math. That includes centralized production. You see that Royal Society and that clump of Woods tiles? That's my centralized production.

Now, granted, I could be wrong. You'll just have to back up your argument with math to prove it. Check the bottom of the post, I'm working on the math myself - again, could be wrong. But it is math, not opinion.

That's not what we are arguing about. I never invest more than necessary for Eurekahs/Inspos into housing/food, as I've stated three times now, so bringing up this argument is just futile and unnecessary. Please try arguing in good faith. I probably play one of the most violent/expansionist playstyles on this entire forum, you're barking up entirely the wrong tree. In fact, you're not even in the correct dog park.

I'm totally arguing in good faith. You're arguing that it is worthwhile to invest into housing and food for Eurekas and Inspirations, I am arguing that it is not worthwhile. By all means, change my mind! You'll just need to do the math.

The only thing you have established as a "cost" for growing past 10 is less amenities, which I have agreed is one negative factor. There is not a single other "cost" out there and you know it. There is literally no downside to growing your cities past 10 pop if you are doing well on amenities. And if you straw man "growing past 10" into "investing in housing/food" one more time you'll step onto a Lego piece and hurt your foot.

I'm trying to keep this as calm as possible. I'm not trying to start anything, honest. You are missing one big cost, however - opportunity cost. The question isn't whether more population is good or bad - it is whether that production is better spent on something else. Is it better for me to spend that Production on Housing, or on military? Or another Settler? Or a Builder?

I popped up a random old save - Turn 182, Hungary, Diplomacy Victory game. All the cities above size 10 have Housing improvements - Aqueduct/Dam/Farm. There's 4 of them (out of 17). They're all foreign cities I captured, either city-states or Spanish cities. 1 of them is mine (Gyor) - it is size 10, has 0 housing Districts (it does have a Granary), and will grow in 330+ turns...that looks perfect in my book.

You're wrong on every level and your smugness is not just unjustified, but kind of embarrassing. You've not only not provided a single succinct argument besides amenities as to why growing past 10 is bad (which was your initial claim, after all), you've strawmanned yourself into a corner and are holding up the flag of "optimal play", and of "objectively better", "spreading misinformation to newer players" when you're simply wrong.

You literally say "you're missing the point" twice while completely missing the point yourself and arguing against a windmill. I don't know what it is you're trying to accomplish, but it's not working.

Growing past 10 population, for all things considered, is in almost every scenario beneficial. End of discussion.

Investing in food and housing is, in almost every scenario, and aside from Eurekahs/Inspos, not optimal play. I'd be the first person to tell you that. But that is completely irrespective of our discussion. These statements are not mutually exclusive in any way, shape, or form.

I'm not arguing that population is bad. I'm arguing its not worth investing in past size 10, even for Eurekas and Inspirations. That's it. I mean, our arguments aren't that different, it really just boils down to whether the Eureka for Conservation is worth getting or not.

I'm looking at Conservation in game, says 1540 Culture. Half of that is 770 Culture. District Production cost is....complicated, but I popped up that Hungary game again (turns out I was 9 turns away from researching Urbanization, perfect!) The cost was 365 Production for a Neighborhood the moment I finished Urbanization. So is 770 Culture worth 365 Production into something otherwise we agree is not worth building? Of course, that's only half the answer - the other half is opportunity cost. What could I be building instead of a Neighborhood, and will that other thing help me win faster than the Neighborhood? Gyor has its 10-pop District slot open, and has no Trade Route building. It is also finishing a Dam to boost the adjacency of a nearby Industrial Zone. The question is not just whether Gyor should invest 365 Production into a Neighborhood. It is also should Gyor build something else first? In game, I probably wouldn't think about this so directly. I'd probably look at my choices and go "Ahh! I can get another Trade Route after I finish this Dam!" lock in the cost for a Harbor, and move on.

Like I said, I could be wrong. 770 Culture is a lot of Culture. But just remember the opportunity cost.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

You're arguing that it is worthwhile to invest into housing and food for Eurekas and Inspirations, I am arguing that it is not worthwhile.

Our original argument was about whether it was worth it to grow a city post 10 pop, completely independant of building housing and or getting Eurekahs. You've moved the goalpost. I am not arguing what you say I am arguing, you're just misrepresenting my position. That is exactly what one calls arguing in bad faith

I'm trying to keep this as calm as possible. I'm not trying to start anything, honest. You are missing one big cost, however - opportunity cost. The question isn't whether more population is good or bad - it is whether that production is better spent on something else. Is it better for me to spend that Production on Housing, or on military? Or another Settler? Or a Builder?.

You've literally repeated this exact same argument four times in a row now, completely ignoring the fact that it's not about opportunity cost, since the argument is not about building housing, but about growing cities. I think we've finally concluded that one, since you say that population in itself isn't bad in the next paragraph, which was my original point that I've tried to hammer through.

I'm not arguing that population is bad. I'm arguing its not worth investing in past size 10, even for Eurekas and Inspirations. That's it. I mean, our arguments aren't that different, it really just boils down to whether the Eureka for Conservation is worth getting or not.

I'm looking at Conservation in game, says 1540 Culture. Half of that is 770 Culture. District Production cost is....complicated, but I popped up that Hungary game again (turns out I was 9 turns away from researching Urbanization, perfect!) The cost was 365 Production for a Neighborhood the moment I finished Urbanization. So is 770 Culture worth 365 Production into something otherwise we agree is not worth building? Of course, that's only half the answer - the other half is opportunity cost. What could I be building instead of a Neighborhood, and will that other thing help me win faster than the Neighborhood? Gyor has its 10-pop District slot open, and has no Trade Route building. It is also finishing a Dam to boost the adjacency of a nearby Industrial Zone. The question is not just whether Gyor should invest 365 Production into a Neighborhood. It is also should Gyor build something else first? In game, I probably wouldn't think about this so directly. I'd probably look at my choices and go "Ahh! I can get another Trade Route after I finish this Dam!" lock in the cost for a Harbor, and move on.

Like I said, I could be wrong. 770 Culture is a lot of Culture. But just remember the opportunity cost.

Now this is an argument that actually makes sense, that I can get behind. I am honestly not sure that the Eurekah for conservation is worth it. You act like there is one mathematical formula which will give an "objectively correct answer", which is just bogus - It's all entirely dependant on your situation. If I find myself in a game where centralized production is great, but culture is utterly abysmal, I will then value my Inspirations much higher, according to my circumstances. If my culture per turn is so high that I literally cannot help but miss some Inspirations, then I value getting the inspirations far lower. If I have five city state quests that call for a neighborhood, I might build it. currently though I personally do not build a neighborhood every game, nor do I get the 10/15pop Inspiration every game. The only food/housing related ones I get pretty much always are 6 farms and one aqueduct.

There is no Civ game in a vacuum. There is no objectively optimal choice, no matter how much math you do. There are strategies that work better than others, there are strategies that will statistically almost always outperform other strategies, all that is good and well. If you start insisting that your approach is objectively correct, that is just fellating yourself for no reason.

However I do really appreciate your enthusiasm and your quick math on the Conservation Eurekah. I myself do that all the time, so thank you for taking the time on your end to put some data behind your claims (even though I wasn't even doubting them in the first place).

 

[zxcvbob]

Not sure if I've posted in the thread eariler, or just marked it as being watched, but I've reading thru the posts several times. I haven't played much Civ 6; hated the game when it first came out, dabbled with it occasionally, but now I finally have a laptop that will run it and it has been patched into something worth playing -- so I'm trying it again and not having much success. I go for one type of victory (doesn't matter which one) and someone beats me on another front by just a few turns. I just won a culture victory tonight and it feels good. It was only at prince level, but I built only one farm (on a wheat tile) and no neighborhoods. Settled a few more cities than usual but didnt worry much about food or housing. Only one city had a holy distict and two had campuses. I founded a religion but never bothered to enhance it -- but I did defend it (one apostle with Debater promotion) just to keep someone else from getting a religous victory. Otherwise Montezuma might have won. Eventually I built a theater district in every city (only a couple at first) and the wonders that help with tourism. I kind of went crazy with harbors and commercial districts, so I had tons of gold. Used gold to buy buildings and great people. I never did do much with my faith; that's a part of my game I need to work on.

TL;DR. In other words, thank you for this discussion! It has helped me quite a bit.

BTW, I thought they had fixed the "warmonger penalty" but I guess not. It never seems to decay. Peter settled a city 5 tiles from my capital and used it to launch a surprise war against me. Industrial era, I think. It was late enough that I unexpectedly couldn't buy a battering ram or siege tower even tho' I hadn't researched Steel yet. My Rough Riders and a couple of field guns and a ranger killed all his units, then w/o any siege units (because I had no niter) I sacked his emcampment and then captured his city. He ceded the city in the peace treaty; I thought I was being generous just taking that and not going after his capital. For the rest of the game, *everybody* hated me for being a warmonger. Nobody cared that Peter started a surprise war after the classical era; in fact they were friends with him. (I know part of that is the usual double standard; whatever the human does is unforgivable; whatever another NPC does, we look the other way) Sorry for the OT rant.

 

[knighterrant81]

BTW, I thought they had fixed the "warmonger penalty" but I guess not. It never seems to decay. Peter settled a city 5 tiles from my capital and used it to launch a surprise war against me. Industrial era, I think. It was late enough that I unexpectedly couldn't buy a battering ram or siege tower even tho' I hadn't researched Steel yet. My Rough Riders and a couple of field guns and a ranger killed all his units, then w/o any siege units (because I had no niter) I sacked his emcampment and then captured his city. He ceded the city in the peace treaty; I thought I was being generous just taking that and not going after his capital. For the rest of the game, *everybody* hated me for being a warmonger. Nobody cared that Peter started a surprise war after the classical era; in fact they were friends with him. (I know part of that is the usual double standard; whatever the human does is unforgivable; whatever another NPC does, we look the other way) Sorry for the OT rant.

The warmonger penalty will stay there forever (you can see it by checking your relationship status, it'll say -18 for occupying their city). That's not really what people mean by the warmonger penalty. The old version used to punish war later in the game more in general, not just whether you occupied a city or not. Your options to counteract this penalty are 1) Don't occupy enemy cities (you get plenty from pillaging.) 2) Conquer the ENTIRE Civ. Yes, everyone else will denounce you because they get a big negative modifier for "grievances against another player" but once you conquer that Civ, that all magically goes away (you can't have grievances with a player that doesn't exist). 3) Don't worry about it. Depending on your victory type, the AI's opinion of you may or may not matter.

The only thing I don't like about this system is that it really incentivizes the player to either take ALL the cities or none of them. I generally do 2, usually no later than Gunpowder unless I'm going for Domination.

 

[zxcvbob]

The warmonger penalty will stay there forever (you can see it by checking your relationship status, it'll say -18 for occupying their city). That's not really what people mean by the warmonger penalty. The old version used to punish war later in the game more in general, not just whether you occupied a city or not. Your options to counteract this penalty are 1) Don't occupy enemy cities (you get plenty from pillaging.) 2) Conquer the ENTIRE Civ. Yes, everyone else will denounce you because they get a big negative modifier for "grievances against another player" but once you conquer that Civ, that all magically goes away (you can't have grievances with a player that doesn't exist). 3) Don't worry about it. Depending on your victory type, the AI's opinion of you may or may not matter.

The only thing I don't like about this system is that it really incentivizes the player to either take ALL the cities or none of them. I generally do 2, usually no later than Gunpowder unless I'm going for Domination.

I expected Peter to hate me forever, even tho' he shouldn't because he ceded the city. The problem was everyone else was also denouncing me for being a warmonger for the rest of the game -- but it wasn't a big problem, just an annoyance.

What if I raze the city? I know that starts out a lot worse, but maybe that penaty does decay over time?

 

[knighterrant81]

I expected Peter to hate me forever, even tho' he shouldn't because he ceded the city. The problem was everyone else was also denouncing me for being a warmonger for the rest of the game -- but it wasn't a big problem, just an annoyance.

What if I raze the city? I know that starts out a lot worse, but maybe that penaty does decay over time?

Again, if I do go to war it is usually to conquer the whole Civ. As I recall, though, no you still get the penalty. Ceding does pretty much nothing. The denouncing thing is what I'm talking about - they have a "Grievances against another player" modifier because you have a negative modifier with Russia. Since your negative modifier with Russia never goes away, their "Grievances" modifier never goes away either. It leads to a bit of immersion breaking where the other AIs hate you and denounce you while you are conquering, but the minute you take the last city, their attitudes shift because they lose that modifier. You don't automatically become their friend, but their warmonger modifier starts to decay fairly quickly. I had a game the other day where I finished conquering Russia and the same turn I took his last city, Teddy congratulated me for keeping peace on the continent (he had denounced my warlike ways approximately 20 turns earlier when I started the war in the first place).

That's why its really much better to either take 0 cities or take all the cities.

 

[zxcvbob]

I'm playing another game; Gandhi and Gilgamesh declared a formal war against me in the medevial era. (I hate Gandhi) After 10 turns or so I accepted a peace deal with Gandhi without ever taking any Indian cities. But I exterminated Sumeria. It's a little to soon after to know how the diplomacy will work out, but it seems to be okay. (I'm going for science victory this time, but I knew it would be violent) Gilgy took an instant dislike to me because my science was low (I was building settlers at the time instead of campuses) Gandhi just loves war as long is he can blame someone else for starting it. The funny thing is, when the war started i was 4 techs ahead of Sumeria.

 

[zxcvbob]

I won that game last night; science victory. Everybody hated me; even my friends hated me, LOL. Interestingly, Teddy Roosevelt will still make fair trade deals even while denouncing you

When playing a wide empire of 7-pop cities that eventually grow to about 10 or 11 pop, how do you deal with it taking 60 turns to build a space port? I was 15 techs ahead of the NPCs and somehow was also the culture leader, and I had the strongest military, (nobody was pushing religion very hard in this game) so victory was assured eventually. I beelined whatever tech lets you build the space port because I knew it would take a long time, and I could balance out the tech tree while it was building. But 60 turns? I must be doing something wrong. That was my highest production city at the time (my Petra city eventually overtook it) and it had an industrial district and a harbor and mines. My capital had the only airport and was building fighters.

I had merchant Republic government for a long time, then Democracy until I bought all the space race scientists and engineers (there may have been one more engineer in the queue that hadn't come up yet) then I switched to Communism for the 10% boost to production. I saved a few turns by chopping forests and jungles (then I replanted trees and built lumbermills) but that didn't get me much. I also split the Mars projects between 2 cities; I had a 3rd space port for backup, but I only really needed 2 because Carl Sagan built one project in a single turn. Maybe I could have used him for the Moon landing instead, then built all 3 Mars projects at the same time...

Any suggestions?

 

[KKirrin]

higher culture would have probably helped a lot here, the Ecommerce policy from globalization is pretty clutch in vanilla as it adds 5 production and 10 gold from each international trade route, so depending on how many cities/comm hubs you built that would have cut your build time down drastically.

tbh though i always found the spaceport build to be kinda clunky on vanilla so I usually just played aztecs to cheese it

 

[zxcvbob]

higher culture would have probably helped a lot here, the Ecommerce policy from globalization is pretty clutch in vanilla as it adds 5 production and 10 gold from each international trade route, so depending on how many cities/comm hubs you built that would have cut your build time down drastically.

tbh though i always found the spaceport build to be kinda clunky on vanilla so I usually just played aztecs to cheese it

I had 10 trade routes (down from 12 with Merchant Republic) so that might have doubled my production in that city. Might have still been 12 when I first started the spaceport. Thanks, that would have helped tremendously. I had a few internal trade routes from that city for the extra hammers, and most of my other traders were at my capital because it had the Great Zimbabwe and a spy in the commercial district.

 

[zxcvbob]

I just finished another game; I was going to try a religious victory but the map made that look too difficult (at the end I had >30000 faith in the bank and nothing worth spending it on, and that was after faith-buying both Kwolek and Sagen) because it was hard to get to the other continent and another religion was entrenched over there. So I switched to science victory again. My culture was pretty good but not great. At that point I beelined Globalization to hook up the eCommerce card, then went back and picked up all the earlier era policies I'd skipped, and I built more harbors and commercial districts for the extra trade routes. eCommerce sped up my moon landing and Mars projects tremendously; probably cut the times in half.

 

[zxcvbob]

I'm still playing at Prince but that's getting too easy (thanks in much part to this thread) and I'm about to move up to King. Is there a howto guide for religious victory? I can dominate my continent, but then how to I take over the other continent that has 1 or 2 entrenched religions? Missionaries don't do much. I assume I want mostly debater apostles and a few proselytizers, and go pick fights on the other continent with the debaters. I end up switching to culture or science when it looks like that will be faster than religious.

I have found that Hojo can get the first religion very easily, and even an early pantheon without God-King so I can take the extra hammer instead I think Japan might be a good candidate for religious victory. Previously I was trying Arabia; hold my Last Prophet until I conquered my neighbors and leisurely built lots of holy districts (campuses and a few commercial hubs come first.) Then when I have at least a dozen holy sites (many of them captured) I found my religion and all the cities switch instantly. But that takes a while; meanwhile the other religions are gaining strength.

Also I have been playing on the Seven Seas map a lot and I think that might not be a good choice. It takes too long to find about a third of the other civs. Pangaea or continents with low sea levels might be better.

 

[zxcvbob]

Another question about city states: Do you kill them? I am conditioned from playing Civ 5 (and BNW, especially) to be nice to CS's and they'll give me free stuff and help me control the world congress. But in 6, they are mostly annoying and quite often really screwup expansion of my empire. And they can be very fickle during wars, changing their alliances without warning. I'm thinking I should still nurture them in general, but if one is badly-placed and messing things up for me I should take them out quickly and not feel bad about it. Obviously if i'm playing a science game I should think long had hard before killing a scientific CS, etc.

 

[yung.carl.jung]

Another question about city states: Do you kill them? I am conditioned from playing Civ 5 (and BNW, especially) to be nice to CS's and they'll give me free stuff and help me control the world congress. But in 6, they are mostly annoying and quite often really screwup expansion of my empire. And they can be very fickle during wars, changing their alliances without warning. I'm thinking I should still nurture them in general, but if one is badly-placed and messing things up for me I should take them out quickly and not feel bad about it. Obviously if i'm playing a science game I should think long had hard before killing a scientific CS, etc.

I never kill CS. It could theoretically be worth it, sure. Or if they are in a really bad position for you. But generally speaking I would not even kill them if I already had my army there and a victory guaranteed in 3-4 turns. A good rule of thumb is this:

If you have very few cities, CS allies are worth less to you (they scale with # of city/district), and additional cities are worth more to you, so conquer if the land is good.

If you have like 20 cities then you get massive bonuses from CS, and one more city does not do all that much for you. never conquer in that case.

Also, I never conquer scientific, cultural or mercantilistic city states ever, they are simply too strong. Military, Industrial or Religious can go.