Realms Beyond PBEM4: Six Players, Six Openings

I'll use this first page to outline the opening strategies of all six players at a general level, before the following pages dive into the juicy details of the major conflicts. We'll start with oledavy of Japan, who was the most prolific poster in this game and therefore will likely have the most screenshots included in this report. (Oledavy alone had nearly as many posts as the five other players in this game combined.) Here's a quick look at Japan's capital and opening strategy:

Japan: The City Planner

Japan opened with a slinger -> builder -> settler production path with a builder chop going into the settler as seen above. That sped up the settling of the second city at the cost of delaying the Craftsmanship boost. Generally speaking I'm not a fan of this decision for anyone other than China, since the value of forest chops scales up as the game goes along and there's no particular benefit to taking them earlier rather than later. Still, it did get a faster second city for Japan on Turn 27. The presence of a Religious city state on the Japanese starting island unlocked a very early pantheon, and that became God of the Open Sky for +1 culture on the cow and sheep pastures at the capital. Using the Maritime Industries policy card for +100% naval unit production, oledavy would produce two galleys at an early date for the Shipbuilding boost and to get valuable map information from exploration. The image below illustrates the core of Japan's city planning in this game, the "Jovian Megapolis" since oledavy was naming his cities after Jupiter's moons:

The colors above are designed to correspond to the respective district colors in Civ6: white for Holy Sites, blue for Campuses, yellow for Commercial districts, purple for Theatres, and then the teal color for Habors. Japan's unique civ ability grants a standard adjacency bonus for each district of any type placed next to another district, and this becomes very powerful when combined together as oledavy outlined above. The one Campus district in the center would produce +6 science by getting an adjacency bonus from every single tile surrounding it, and that could then be doubled further with the National Philosophy policy card for +12 science from a single district with zero buildings completed! Of course, that required having all the other districts finished to get the adjacency bonus, but this was a powerful usage of Japan's unique civ ability. Combined together with cheap half cost Holy Site/Theatre/Encampment districts and Japan's +5 combat strength for all units next to or on coastal tiles, this was a strong overall package.

Meanwhile, Singaboy's Germany had arguably the best land around his capital and was making the most of it:

Germany: The Explosive Start

Singaboy was able to grow to size 2 very quickly on a 5 food sugar resource, then pick up a 2 food/3 production deer tile after growing, and then further pick up a 3/1 horse resource and a bunch of 2/2 jungle tiles and a stone tile. To be perfectly honest, this was an unfair advantage from the map and Cornflakes likely should have toned this down a bit, although we were still in the early days of Civ6 Multiplayer and this was less clear at the time. Having two different unimproved resources with a foodhammer yield of 5 was a giant edge for one of the players, and Singaboy took full advantage of it. He found a nearby Militaristic city state for an even greater edge, gaining +2 production/turn while building units, and decided to open with a slinger into a settler. That was the correct call here: with so many strong tiles already available, Singaboy had no immediate need to improve tiles and could train his initial builder after a settler was completed. Like oledavy, Singaboy was already planning his districts to get the maximum possible benefit from his unique Hansas down the road:

Germany's unique Industrial district, the Hansa, receives +1 production for each adjacent resource and +2 production for each adjacent Commercial district. By planning out the location of his Hansas and Commercial districts ahead of time, Singaboy was setting himself up for a gigantic production edge down the road. With a very early second city and that godlike capital with the Militaristic city state boost, Singaboy now began accelerating past the rest of the field in his growth curve. He had the clever idea to embark a one-charge builder onto the water to do some exploring of the nearby seas (builders can embark earlier than all other land units) and found nearby Industrial/Cultural/Commercial city states close by, scoring the free envoy for first contact with all of them. Singaboy was able to get the Oral Tradition pantheon (+1 culture on plantations) at a late date, which was a perfect fit for the many sugar and banana resources in the German heartland. By Turn 53, Singaboy had finished discovering Political Philosophy civic to open up the first governments, reached four cities, and was in the process of attacking the nearby Militaristic city state using Germany's +7 strength bonus against city states. Here's an overview shot from that date:

Germany was producing 15 beakers/turn, 10 culture/turn, and an impressive 18 gold/turn at this date. All of these were above the rest of the field of players, and the other civs were starting to take notice of the growing power of Singaboy. Japper was the player who was most interested in doing something about that, as he had declared war and decided to attack with his passing Viking longships. This wasn't intended to be a prelude to conquest, just a way to score some free gold and science via pillaging tile improvements and districts located along the coast. Singaboy had units on hand to defend, however, and was able to chase away the Norwegian units without any serious difficulties. This raises the question of what Japper had been up to, so let's back up for a moment and examine the Norwegian opening moves to reach this point.

Norway: The Religious Acolyte

Japper opened with a fairly standard production order: slinger into builder. Then he chose to train a second slinger, perhaps due to his background on the MP ladder where nearly all of the games are tiny-sized Duel map pangaea starts where rushing the other player is the standard move. After the second slinger, Japper decided to pursue the first religion of the game by going for a fast Holy Site district, followed by producing a settler for a second city. This is indeed the kind of prioritization needed to get one of the first Great Prophets, but slowing down the growth curve by delaying the second city for so long was a questionable move in a game like this. The Holy Site completed on Turn 25 and Japper began a settler next, which took several turns to reach its destination in the south, finally getting established on Turn 36. Unfortunately, Japper's low population and lack of any sources of culture was causing his civics research to lag badly; he was still only producing 2 culture/turn for his whole civ, and Craftsmanship civic didn't complete until the same Turn 36. That's a long time to be lacking the extremely helpful Agoge and Ilkum policies.

Furthermore, by this time oledavy had completed two Holy Sites at the half cost rate that Japan pays for them. Japper was racing him to the first Great Prophet and decided to burn his treasury for a shrine purchase to stay ahead in the competition:

Ouch on the investment of all that money into a shrine. That could have been a builder, or it could have been used to upgrade those slingers into archers. Japper was heavily committed to the religious race now and needed to get something useful out of the investment into the early Holy Site and shrine. To give an idea of how his civ had fallen behind, here's a picture of one of the coastal raids against Germany on Turn 50:

Compare the science/culture/gold output at the top of the screen here to those same categories in Singaboy's empire at the same time pictured above. This was a bad sign for Norway, and declaring war against Germany, creating an enemy in the process, was a very dangerous move. Poking the bear like that had the potential to backfire in a big way. Unfortunately for Japper, oledavy had completed those two Holy Site districts in his first two cities, and then rather than building shrines in them, he had both cities produce Holy Site district projects that together resulted in about 30 Great Prophet points and the first religion:

Oledavy took two of the most powerful beliefs in Jesuit Education and Defender of the Faith. This would allow him to purchase Campus and Theatre district buildings with his faith income, along with making it very difficult to attack Japanese cities that had the Mormonism religion present. Throughout the game, other players would be hesitant to fight a battle anywhere in Japanese territory due to Defender of the Faith. As for Japper, he was the big loser in this whole process. When his own Great Prophet finally arrived on Turn 63, Norway ended up taking Feed the World and Wats for the two beliefs. Feed the World had limited use on this food-plentiful map, while Wats would take a long time to become helpful. Japper would need to construct more Holy Sites and then shrines and temples before he could plant Wats for the +2 science benefit, and even then the Wats themselves wouldn't be cheap to build. Oledavy had clearly gotten the better of the religious race.

The naval raid that Japper launched against Singaboy had been the first conflict of the game. Another naval attack was impending though, this one an opportunistic strike from having ships in the right place at the right time. The target this time was Jester's Spanish civilization, so let's take a short look first at how Jester chose to play the opening moves.

Spain: The Unfortunate Victim

Jester began the game with a scout followed by a settler. The scout was a bit of an odd choice given that everyone knew this map would take place on an archipelago of some kind. While scouts can be a very useful opening build to defog more of the map, their usefulness was limited here given the smaller starting continents. This was also a capital that would have benefitted from an early builder, with the potential to gain +1 production from pastures on the sheep and cows, along with another +1 production from a stone quarry. Still, the extra income from working the truffles tile allowed Jester to purchase a second builder and he did get a second city planted very quickly on Turn 22. Snagging Goddess of the Harvest for Spain's pantheon was also a nice pickup for one of the later civs to choose a pantheon.

The biggest problem for Jester was no obvious way to found a religion. This is always a problem for Spain in Civ6, with their civ having several abilities related to religion and yet nothing to help found a religion in the first place. With oledavy and Japper pushing hard for their own religions, Jester's Spanish civilization was left out in the cold. When the initial two Great Prophets were taken, the third one leaped up in cost to 120 Great Prophet points and that meant a long haul indeed for Jester if he wanted his own faith. Stonehenge might have been a good choice here since it had never been claimed by anyone. Instead, Jester decided to work on Holy Site district projects in his third city, the only one with a Holy Site district, which was going to be a very long enterprise indeed.

Jester also struggled badly to grow his cities to large sizes. His home continent lacked a lot of high-food tiles for his cities to work, which meant that he needed to emphasize food output to keep pace with the other teams. This is one place where Feed the World would have been a pretty good choice for a religious belief. Instead, once his cities made it past the first few population sizes that need little food for growth, his cities began to stagnate in population. This was particularly acute at Ponce de Leon, which badly needed some imported sources of food from trade routes or granaries, and the non-freshwater city of Cordoba. This was not immediately apparent to the players in the game, since Jester's numbers looked good in comparison to the other teams. 13 beakers/turn, 10 culture, and 10 gold/turn were all very solid for this point in time. However, the stagnated situation of these cities was about to keep Jester in low gear while other teams began to accelerate past him.

The other problem was the city of Pizarro at the northern edge of Spanish territory. That city was separated from the rest of the Spanish core in an exposed position, and Jester had never built a unit stronger than a slinger, which meant that his cities remained at a defensive strength of only 10. Oledavy had two galleys moving through the area, saw an opportunity to hamstring a rival, and took it:

Pizarro was burned to the ground, leaving no opportunity for Jester to recapture it. Note the +5 strength on oledavy's ships due to the combat taking place in shallow waters. That was Japan's unique ability in action, and it would see a lot more use before this game was finished. Losing Pizarro was a devastating blow for Jester, with the Spanish growth curve fatally damaged. Losing a settler or a city is particularly harsh in Civ6 because the cost of each settler keeps scaling up; that is, the next settler is still 30 production more expensive than the previous one despite the loss. Jester would never fully recover from this setback. As for oledavy, he had dealt a major blow to his closest neighbor at the cost of making a permanent gamelong enemy. While Japper's raid against Singaboy had achieved little of consequence, this strike was one of the most important actions of the early game.

Oledavy was also starting to put his religious beliefs to good use:

This was the first time that Jesuit Education was leveraged, which oledavy used here to purchase a library. He would add more libraries at his other Campus districts and, eventually, faith-purchase universities as well. This allowed Japan to keep pace on science with some of the other players despite a rather slow opening in terms of expansion. Only having three cities on hand as late as Turn 63 wasn't exactly tearing things up in that regard. The early science leader was in fact Woden's Brazil, which had played an opening designed to maximize Brazil's rainforest bonuses.

Brazil: The Environmental Researcher

Woden opened the game with a slinger into a settler for a fast second city as several other players had done, then went back for a builder as his third choice in the capital. This was a solid decision as Woden didn't have much in the way of tiles that immediately required improving at his capital, just a horse resource that could use a pasture and nothing else. He had found a Commercial city state just to the east of his starting point, and the extra gold from the free envoy was a helpful boon in the opening turns. Unfortunately, most of that early edge went up in smoke when Woden was forced to purchase a warrior to defend against barbarian horsemen coming down from the northwest. Military units are one of the worst things to purchase in the early game because they get such a large production discount via Agoge policy. Still, sometimes you need a unit right now and those barbarian horsemen appearing was certainly a case of bad luck.

One of Brazil's unique abilities in Civ6 is a full adjacency bonus provided to Campus, Commercial, Holy Site, and Theatre districts when placed next to rainforest tiles. This can be a powerful ability in the early game, especially since Brazil has a start bias that usually places them in jungle areas. It's not my favorite ability though, largely because you normally want to cut down jungles in Civ6 for the food/production bonus, and Brazil ends up actively hurting themselves whenever they do this. Anyway, Woden researched Writing early on at the unboosted rate, then began placing Campus districts for the maximum adjacency benefit in the rainforests near his start, investing a forest chop into the first one to boost it to completion. Picking up Divine Spark for Brazil's pantheon was a natural choice to synergize with these Campus districts. Woden also had the good fortune to find Stockholm to the north of his territory, scoring the free envoy and preparing to get the benefit on each Campus district with additional envoys invested. This resulted in the game's best science rate:

Check out that science rate: 19 beakers/turn on Turn 51, wow! The Campus district at Mangueira was next to two mountains and three jungle tiles, for a total bonus of +5 beakers purely from adjacency bonuses. However, Woden's civ was highly unbalanced at this point. For all that he had that huge science rate, his culture rate lagged behind badly at less than 4 culture/turn. He had no monuments completed and no culture-boosting abilities or pantheon. As a result, a lot of the benefit of that science was being lost due to an inability to adopt more advanced policies. Woden was also in a bit of a stagnant position, a bit like Jester's Spain, and his overall growth curve had been slowed due to putting so many resources into those early Campus districts. Getting 19 beakers/turn on Turn 51 was amazing... but Woden was only getting 24 beakers/turn on Turn 66 and that was a lot less amazing. The explosive opening on scientific research was not sustained, with Woden needing to pause to build monuments and get more builders and military units out of his cities. In his defense, Brazil did benefit from excellent scouting and found many of the other players at an early date. Still, this unbalanced opening sequence delayed the discovery of Political Philosophy and the first governments until Turn 70, and that's a very long time indeed to be stuck on the initial two policy slots.

As the players continued exploring the seas of this planet and began to meet one another for the first time, the biggest story remained the explosive growth of Germany. Singaboy was leading in almost every category, and he further extended his lead by capturing the city state of Valetta on Turn 57:

Singaboy was greatly aided in this conquest by the German unique ability that grants their units +7 strength against city states. That was worth more than a Great General, and it made conquering poor Valetta relatively easy. With the addition of a fifth city, Singaboy had most of his starting continent settled and was now dominating on the scoreboard:

Apprenticeship tech and the Hansas it would unlock were in the pipeline, something that gave every other team more reason to be very afraid. Singaboy had also finished an Encampment district and began running the Strategos policy (+2 Great General points/turn) in the Wildcard slot. He had noticed that Norway wasn't located very far away across the waters to the northwest, and was thinking about a possible military campaign against the opponent who had declared war against him earlier:

Germany would stop to build Hansas when Apprenticeship tech finished, but after that it was time to train more horsemen and upgrade warriors into swords. The game's first real war was in the planning stages. This would come as news to Germany's other neighbors and especially TheArchduke's England, who was located to the northeast of the German homeland. We'll finish this section by looking at the English opening to see where TheArchduke stood as the game launched into the first major conflict.

England: The Shipping Tycoon

TheArchduke began his game by starting with a builder, the most economic opening possible. The builder was a good choice for this starting position with double stone, cattle, and wheat resources to improve, which together would unlock a whole bunch of tech/civic boosts. TheArchduke then followed up the builder with a slinger into a settler, therefore still starting out with the most common three initial units in a slightly different order. He was fortunate to have a Militaristic city state on his starting continent to accelerate the training of those units, and it was the best Militaristic city state in the base game of Civ6, Carthage. TheArchduke also made a bit of an odd decision in this game, choosing to delay the placement of his second city in order to move his settler down to the southern coast and get vision on a city state that he knew was across the water. The meeting with Valetta is pictured above, and of course that was the same city state located on Singaboy's starting continent. England and Germany were fairly close together, separated only by that narrow body of coastal tiles. TheArchduke's second city would end up going on the "Copper Dot" tile indicated above, a low-food location not settled until Turn 33. Was it worth the delay in settling that city? Probably not, particularly since TheArchduke didn't get a free envoy with Valetta by virtue of Singaboy already meeting them. Just as in Civ4, it's usually not a good idea to delay settlers from reaching their intended spot and establishing a new city.

Like Woden, TheArchduke was also tormented by a group of barbarian horsemen raiding down from the north of his capital. He was able to push them back without too much trouble though, relying on a pair of slingers in good defensive position, only to have even more barbarian horsemen come charging out around Turn 50. As a result of those barbarian troubles, TheArchduke was off to a rather slow start and his civ didn't look very impressive as of Turn 63:

The 13 beakers/turn and 9 culture/turn were unimpressive by this point in time, and the 3 gold/turn income was simply sad. TheArchduke had no religion to prop up his civ and seemed to be a complete nonentity at this stage of the game. However, England's power in Civ6 is heavily tied to their unique district, and TheArchduke was about to unlock his Royal Dockyards with the imminent completion of research into Shipbuilding tech. England's unique district grants +1 movement to all naval units built inside and +1 trade route even if the city already has a trade route from a Commercial district. It also builds at half the cost of a normal Harbor district and provides double the Great Admiral points. TheArchduke would begin churning out Royal Dockyards at all of his cities, and just like magic, his civ began a rapid turnaround. I can't go into much detail about this because TheArchduke didn't update his spoiler thread very often, but the transformation over the next 25 turns was dramatic:

Check out that moneybags income at the top of the screenshot: 51 gold/turn and 6 available trade routes! TheArchduke's civ was on the rise, and his uncontested control over the early Great Admirals would grant him a huge advantage on this naval-heavy map. England was still in the process of internal development, but would soon be a force to reckon with down the road.

For the moment though, it was still Germany leading the pack and Singaboy dictating the action in the game. He claimed the first Great General on Turn 82:

That image is a nice summary of the various differing Great Person emphasese of the six players. Germany claimed the first Great General, England was the only one chasing after the Great Admirals, while Germany was similarly certain to get the first Great Engineer via those Hansa districts. Brazil and Spain had taken the first Great Scientists with Japan chasing after the latest one, Spain was still slowly crawling towards a religion, and there was a free-for-all when it came to the first Great Merchant. (No one had built a Theatre district yet and would not for some time.) With that Great General in hand, Singaboy was drawing up plans for his invasion force:

The attack was timed to arrive just before Turn 90. Germany's claiming of the first Great General and rapidly increasing military power were not going unnoticed by the other players. For example, oledavy wrote in his spoiler thread at the time:

The writing was on the wall that an attack was coming towards Japper's Norwegian civ. Japper didn't seem to be terribly worried though. He had been spamming out settler after settler without bothering to add tile improvements via builders or districts. This resulted in a score that looked decent in the world rankings but which was badly overstretched and economically inefficient. Japper had relatively few units to defend his seven low-infrastructure cities, and had sent some of his Viking longships off to harass Jester's Spanish civilization, who now became the victim of another raiding party:

Poor Jester, raided again from the ocean! Needless to say, this was not the ideal place for the Norwegian ships to be located with a German army preparing to sail across the waters separating their civs. By Turn 87, the German military was in place and the action was about to begin:

Was Japper prepared for the assault? Would Singaboy's audacious gambit pay off? The Norwegian Campaign, and the first major conflict of PBEM4, were about to begin.