Joey/Parkin get up and slam

[WilliamLP]

I really like how they left the original site intact as a living fossil of the Web in 1996.

[Lord Parkin]

That was incidentally the first movie I ever saw at a cinema.

[Lord Parkin]

Thoughts on opponent picks:

*retep - Washington (Cha/Exp) of Inca (AGR/MYST, Quecha/Terrace)
*suttree - Catherine (Cre/Imp) of China (AGR/MIN, Cho-Ku-Nu/Pavilion)
*Azza - Suryavarman (Cre/Exp) of America (AGR/FISH, Navy SEAL/Frontier Post)
*zanth/Bacchus - Victoria (Fin/Imp) of Ottomans (AGR/WHEEL, Janissary/Hammam)
*GermanJoJo/Lord Parkin - De Gaulle (Cha/Ind) De Scandinavia (FISH/HUNT, Berserker/Trading Post)
*Barteq - Hannibal (Cha/Fin) of Zulu (AGR/HUNT, Impi/Ikhanda)
*Gavagai - Gandhi (Phi/Spi) of Rome (FISH/MIN, Praetorian/Forum)
*Gawdzak/BaII - Zara Yaqob (Cre/Org) of Byzantium (MYST/WHE, Cataphract/Hippodrome)

retep - I've already mentioned my feelings about Washington of Inca; decent leader but I'm not fond of the civ. Will be interesting to see what retep does with it though.
suttree - Identical to Plako's pick from PB4. Two solid choices: nice starting techs, nice UU, fast expansion and quick borders. Minor synergy with the Pavilion UB and Creative trait.
Azza - Sury's still good, but I'm not sure about America. I mean the new UB (Frontier Post) is good, but the UU is still unchanged. Wonder if Azza will be happy with his random picks.
zanth/Bacchus - Both decent choices, Victoria's pretty good and the Ottomans are always nice. One of only two civs with the Financial trait, so will probably be towards the front in tech.
Barteq - Snagged the best leader available (IMHO), kudos to him. Pretty nice civ choice too. Could be a tech monster.
Gavagai - The only Philosophical leader, so the one who can benefit most from the Pyramids. Rome might deter any would-be early game attackers, and the Forum would help a little with a great person focus.
Gawdzak/BaII - Not convinced Zara was the right choice as leader, but he's not bad. Byzantium is a little better with the most expensive starting techs, though still a bit slow off the mark. Catapracts will be nasty later though.

[Lord Parkin]

Trait breakdown:

CHA - 3
CRE - 3
FIN - 2
IMP - 2
EXP - 2
PHI - 1
ORG - 1
IND - 1
SPI - 1
PRO - 0
AGR - 0

A nice balance, everything except AGR and PRO picked (which were banned). CHA/CRE most popular, followed by FIN/IMP/EXP, with PHI/ORG/IND/SPI bringing up the rear.

Starting tech breakdown:

Agriculture - 5
Fishing - 3
Hunting - 2
Mining - 2
Mysticism - 2
The Wheel - 2

Interesting difference to PB20 where almost everyone picked a Hunting civ - only us and Barteq this time. Agriculture's the most popular tech despite being equally cheapest with Hunting now. Fishing is slightly more popular than the remaining techs. Gawdzak/BaII and retep have the best shot at the early religions being the only nations starting with Mysticism.

[GermanJoey]

I really like how they left the original site intact as a living fossil of the Web in 1996.

holy shit this is SICK

[GermanJoey]

I don't have a lot of time to post thoughts right now, but I feel like the fact that we start with Hunting tech and nobody else does should give us a huge early advantage. This has been my feeling about it from the start of PB20, although in that game, like you said, almost every civ started with Hunting so its probably difficult to ascertain by the lurkers how much advantage it really gave. Interesting to see how well it works out this game.

I'll try to type up some more thorough thoughts on the plane tomorrow!

[SevenSpirits]

Thanks for pointing me to the trait/tech distribution, Lord Parkin. Very interesting! For judging popularity with people I will personally subtract 1 each of EXP, CRE, Fish, Agri though. That leaves CHA perhaps a bit overrepresented, along with agriculture. Keeping an eye on CHA.

[Lord Parkin]

Thanks for pointing me to the trait/tech distribution, Lord Parkin. Very interesting! For judging popularity with people I will personally subtract 1 each of EXP, CRE, Fish, Agri though.

Right, due to Azza's random picks.

That leaves CHA perhaps a bit overrepresented, along with agriculture. Keeping an eye on CHA.

Still very map dependent, but in my opinion right now it's only a below-average trait on a very richly resourced map. With an "average" start (say 1-2 of the 5 Hunting/Mining happiness resources accessible per player), it's a pretty good trait. With a particularly harsh start (no early happiness resources), it's a superb trait.

[Lord Parkin]

Finally bringing you all up to date on our PM conversation.

would you be interested in teaming up for PB21? I was thinking that if we took turns in the driver seat every 5-10 turns or so, it wouldn't be too bad.

I'm quite keen on lurking a TOW game, but it would also be neat to team up with you. You might need to do the majority of the turn playing, but I could probably play every now and then. And of course I'd be glad to discuss strategy options in the thread.

Any thoughts on which leaders/traits you'd like to try, assuming AGR/PRO are banned?

If you'd like to lurk, that's cool with me. I'm fine with even doing 3/4 of the turnplaying, as long as you'd be willing to contribute some thoughts on strategy and micro. Also, I'll need some help in mid-August; although I can surely spare an hour every evening for some civ on most days (or more likely, a half hour in the morning and then again at night), it would be a great help if you could a bit more in this period if only so I can keep reporting my other games well.

Assuming AGR/PRO are banned, I'd actually like to try Cyrus again, heh. Lets just say traits aren't really coming into play much in PB20 for my game, but I'd love to try this guy again if given opportunity to REX a bit. I think Cha and Imp are both really strong in ToW and very underrated from what I've read of other people's reactions so far. The four PB20 score leaders are one of the other, for example. Runners up would be Suleiman (Phi/Imp), Washington (Cha/Exp) (especially if Seven buffs Exp before the game, as I think its a bit weak right now on its own, although I love this combo), Hannibal (Cha/Fin), Victoria (Fin/Imp) or Degaulle (Cha/Ind).

What do you think?

Also, just saw Commodore's comment about a "little more nautical" - we could go HC (rush Colossus), Roosevelt (Ind/Org), or Napolean (Cha/Org), although a lot of the guys I mentioned are also good for watery maps.

Sure, I'd definitely help out with the strategy and micro. Also military planning if we happen to be getting involved in any wars. I enjoy meticulously planning out the micro decisions, especially in the opening 50 turns or so. Happy to cover you in mid-August, shouldn't be a problem.

I think with AGR and PRO banned, the strongest leader is probably Hannibal (FIN/CHA), though perhaps he's a bit bland. I'd definitely like to have at least one trait out of FIN, CHA or IND. FIN is great of course (it's not really nerfed all that much), though I've played with it a lot before. IND is always fun, though it sounds like the map may be a little more cramped than usual so perhaps not as good a choice as usual. Also I'm trying to wean myself off from relying on that trait too much. Qin (PRO/IND) would be great fun, and in fact I almost picked him in PB20, but of course PRO is banned. CHA is pretty fun, and I think of the three traits I mentioned I like it the best. Pyramids happiness from the start, and with Aggressive gone it's now the only trait that directly aids units.

So with a preference for CHA in mind, I really like the idea of picking Cyrus... especially if we can nab Mongolia as our civ. Stacking CHA, IMP and Ger bonuses would make for a hell of a lot of fun with mounted units - whether Keshiks, Knights or Cavalry. Washington would be good too, though I'd prefer to have at least the faster Harbors back before picking EXP. (I mean it's still good right now, just feels really bland is all.) Hannibal's a great option, though perhaps somewhat boring. Huayna is good but might not be so strong on a cramped map. De Gaulle, Victoria, Roosevelt and Napoleon are all fine but hopefully we can do better. Not so keen on Suleiman, think I'd have more fun with one of the other combinations.

Vikings could also be nice if it's likely to be a high water map.

Yeah, totally, they're unnerfed and a hunting-fishing civ, which are totally legit starting techs in ToW. Lets tentatively plan on Vikings+Hannibal or Cyrus+Mongolia? We'll see where we are in the snake pick first I guess, I think Hannibal at the very least will be highly desirable here.

Yeah... I agree on tentatively planning for Cyrus/Mongolia or Hannibal/Vikings. I suspect Vikings will be popular, so depending on our place in the snake pick they may be hard to get unless we pick civ first. Will wait and see anyway.

http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showthread.php?tid=7052 [starting screenshot]

Vikings are a go?

Yeah, I reckon. Especially CHA Vikings, only need 1 XP after Wharves to get Navigation II. Four move Galleys and six move Galleons sound good to me.

In fact I'd almost say pick Vikings before leader. Only eight teams so it's not a huge game, and honestly I think we can do well with any CHA or FIN leader (though hopefully CHA). Just hope we're early in the snake pick...

Excellent, agreed agreed. Here's what I wrote in the thread before you sent this via PM... I guess we can be a bit clandestine here, before game starts.

Vikings would be beautiful if we can nab them. This is as good as Fishing/Hunting looks, at any rate: 7 turn work boat working the 1/2 tile, then sink a turn into the worker while the WB moves, then 3 turns to grow (7 food in the bin already from the WB), 5+8*7=8 turn worker. So we'd be Size 2, with a worker and an improved food tile at T18, only a turn slower compared to if our best food tile was a wet rice or something. Meanwhile, we have enough time to research Agriculture->AH->Mining I think, because of the extra Fish Commerce and the prereq discount on AH. I haven't simmed that out though. If we want to go worker first, we'd need to grab AH as first tech and then ignore Agriculture until much later.

Alternatively, if we want to grab a leader first, then, assuming Vikings are gone by the time we get to them, we could get a fishing/mining start, which is Carthage, Rome, or Portugal, and beeline straight for BW. It doesn't look like there should be anyplace a copper could appear in our BFC according to the Torusland mapscript, which tries to avoid adjacent resource placements, but it could always be placed. 8 forests is not shabby... this doesn't necessarily look like an ideal start for chopping out a workboat, though. The worker wouldn't have anything to do but mine and chop for awhile. Teching Hunting->AH and then doing the same WB->Worker build as above is better in this case, I think.

Also, although this is not a Toroidal map, it is Emperor maintenance. Organized wouldn't be bad here. (Cha is also better at higher difficulties, easier to get the HE with more intense barb action)

Hehe... I don't really mind if we post in the thread, but it's kind of amusing now we've got Commodore on the hook.

Agreed - I was already thinking Vikings because of the map description, and then we get a seafood/livestock start? Couldn't more clearly be pointing towards a Fishing/Hunting start. My only concern is if several other civs got a similar (or identical) start, Vikings will be extremely popular and we might not have a shot even with 4th pick. Here's hoping the default mentality of "pick leader first" still prevails even in a situation where it's not necessarily the best decision.

Is it Torusland? All I saw was "natural looking non-mirrored map, worldwrap Toroidal". Either way I wouldn't rely on default map script constraints on stuff like Copper on a hand-balanced map... could end up anywhere.

Forgot about Emperor difficulty... Organized wouldn't be too bad, yeah (Napoleon right?). Though Financial is still superior if we can get Hannibal. Let's see what happens anyway.

I'll create a full sim of the start later today, and post the file so we can both test it out and try to optimize our approach to the first 30-50 turns.

Sounds great! I don't think its a Torusland though: I asked in the tech thread and Commodore specified it was Large/Cylindrical. Who knows...

Hey, I created a sim of the start. I was curious to see how it would play out. Here's the 4000BC save:

http://www.mediafire.com/download/wbrw6w...dSwordSave

and here's my first attempt to t38, which has a size 4 city, 3 workers, a workboat, and a settler.

http://www.mediafire.com/download/of4npz...dSwordSave

The leader is Napolean, as his traits wont affect any yields, although we can change that by saving it as a worldbuilder file once we pick our leader.

Neat, looks good. I fixed up one minor error with the river (shouldn't have affected your playthrough at all).

Corrected T0 sandbox

I managed to improve a bit on your start by staying at size 3 - I think with 3 very good tiles there's little reason for us to grow to size 4 before the first Settler. My build path was Work Boat (switching to 3 hammer tile upon border expansion) -> Worker (improve Sheep first then Cow) -> Warrior -> Warrior (for 1 turn to get to size 3) -> all remaining Workers and Settlers. Tech path was Agriculture -> AH -> Mining -> Bronze Working -> The Wheel -> Pottery.

T36 with 3 workers, 1 settler, 1 warrior, 1 work boat (basically same as your start but with 2 turns shaved off)

Next I tried delaying Agriculture, since that lets us get to Bronze Working sooner - even though it means we miss out on a couple of beakers later.

T35 with 3 workers, 1 settler, 1 warrior, 1 work boat (another turn shaved off)

Three Workers is quite a lot before the Settler without the Productive trait though, so I tried starting the Settler after 2 Workers.

T32 with 2 workers, 1 settler, 1 warrior, 1 work boat (a further 3 turns shaved off, with Worker #3 due on T35)

Finally for completeness I tried doing just one Worker before the Settler, even though I suspected it would be a bad idea.

T31 with 1 worker, 1 settler, 1 warrior, 1 work boat (only 1 more turn shaved off at an extreme cost to development)

Personally I like the T32 settler option (with 2 workers) best.

Hey, this is pretty cool, and thanks for finding that error, it woulda taken forever before I noticed it myself. Unfortunately, your T35 save is a broken link, which is unfortunate because that's the one I'm most interested in... I think a 3-worker start is actually really strong with Charismatic because you end up working a lot more tiles in the early game. We don't need to do 2-pop whips here, we can stack up as multiple 1-pop whips especially once our Granaries come in. (for Cyrus OTOH, we'd want to work lots of mines, but hopefully Hannibal will still be there when the snake wraps back around)

That said, I was able to improve my 4-pop attempt a bit with a double whip. On T37, we had a settler, 3 workers, workboat, warrior, 4pop; key here was immediately getting 2nd worker after the first to shave a turn, and skipping Agriculture to speed up BW. I think you're right that its totally worth skipping it early, even though getting it first almost pays for itself by the time we get both AH and Pottery. What's interesting about this attempt is what comes next: T37 revolts into slavery, and can double whip another settler on T39 (or T40 for more overflow into a Granary). By T50, we can be working 10 improved tiles, assuming our second city has a seafood nearby, including 3 or 4 cottages, with 4 workers, a granary in the capital, and a 4th settler ready to whip should we want it then. Something to consider!

Hmm, that's really weird with the link. Looks like it's inserting a nullspace character in there somehow.

Try this: right click the link, click "Copy Link Address", paste into the browser but don't hit "enter"... first delete the "%E2%80%8B" which crops up in "CivBeyond%E2%80%8BSwordSave". Hitting enter after you do that should make it work right. Pretty strange...

Regarding whipping the capital, I tend to try to avoid that in the opening turns where there are plenty of forests (and resources) around the start. I'd be hesitant to 2-pop whip before size 5, just because the Fish/Sheep/Cow combo is so strong. But worth testing anyway - the only way to possibly improve upon our start is by trying different approaches.

Once the first half of the snake pick is over we'll be able to nail down with much more certainty whether we'll have traits like EXP or IMP available to pair with CHA, and possibly speed up our start even more. Shame there's no CRE/CHA leader really, that would also be a pretty sweet combo now that the Monument happiness is removed.

Yeah, we'll just have to see. Probably not too good to sim too much now; better to do these kinds of T35-T50 sims around turn 5ish, when we'll see enough of our surrounding land for the sim to mean anything. (e.g. right now we're pushing out a workboat but we have no idea if there's a seafood to the northeast!)

You know, I was just checking the sim again, and a Hunting/Mining start is actually identical to Hunting/Fishing start from our perspective. Hunting/Fishing goes AH -> Mining -> BW, while Hunting/Mining goes Fishing -> AH -> BW. Identical beaker counts and no delay on the pastures if we're hooking up the Sheep first (which I believe is the correct move).

I still think Vikings would be great fun, but if we wanted to give the new Russia or Germany a whirl it'd actually be zero difference from the perspective of our opening.

Hmmm that's interesting... but I'd still greatly prefer Vikings too I think... if we want Hunting/Mining, / Cyrus would do it best I think, going with an AH->BW->Fishing opening, accelerating a settler at size 2 w/ chops after a worker-first start. Not even sure if that's any good at all, its super late here and I have to get on a plane in a few hours, heh. But, it seems like it could work because that's (3+4+2-4=5)f + ((2+3+1)*1.5=9)h, 14hpt yield, or a 5 turn settler with a chop... although of course it wouldn't quite work out like that because the second pasture wouldn't be completely finished by then. Settler would be due T22-T23ish? Not shabby, especially as the worker could immediately move with the settler to improve new tiles at the new spot. I don't know, I'm just rambling at this point. Vikings are so much cooler on a water map...

I think Fish is sufficiently powerful relative to our land resources that it'd be a mistake to delay it with any leader. If we had better land resources (i.e. more food) we could consider avoiding a Work Boat for a while, but with this start our hand is forced into Work Boat first if we want to play optimally. Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I also think Vikings are sufficiently cool for this map that we should just pick them regardless. Wish the other players would hurry up on the snake pick, would be nice to (a) confirm we'll get the Vikings and (b) select our leader so we can play the sandbox out further.

First pick going to Zara is good news for us - no CHA or FIN. We're now guaranteed to get a CHA pairing with some leader if we want, even if every other team picks CHA from now on (which is unlikely).

Also just checked Worker first -> WB for completeness. Regardless of whether we go Sheep first or Cow first, it's inferior to building the WB from T0 (delays our Settler by 2 turns). So first builds of WB -> Worker are a given.

Optimal build path for the first 16 turns:

T0: citizen on 1f/2h tile, build Work Boat
T5: borders expand, citizen on 3h tile
T7: finish Work Boat, citizen on flood plain tile, build Worker
T8: net Fish, citizen on Fish
T16: finish Worker, move to improve Sheep first

Agreed, that's what I've found too.

[GermanJoey]

My random thoughts:

suttree, azza, zanthus all seem like hard REXers. suttree and zanthus are fairly straightforward picks, with strong starting techs, fast early game traits, and something to kick them up again in the midgame. suttree should be the early game leader, but zanthus also has some late game power, with a cheap Wall Street. They should be looking to found a religion earlyish, possibly with CoL, so they can better choose the location of their shrine; a potential Oracle threat because of that. Azza should be able to REX pretty well too, although unfortunately I don't think his random civ pick really gives him much synergy here. The frontier post seems pretty good for firing off some mid game trade missions or to help speed up a pre-lib golden age, but you probably need a Phi or Fin civ to make it worth anything.

OTOH, there's two Mysticism civs here, retap's Inca and GawdaII's (team Gawdy, heh) Byzantines, but I don't think we'll see a opening religion nor a very early Oracle attempt from either of them. GawdaII have no useful worker techs, which sort of suggests that he's planning to get by on something simple and straightfoward; for example, perhaps a pair of Agriculture resources, or a deer and a sheep or something like that. Trying to find an early horse would be a big help for dealing with Emperor barbs. I don't think he can grab a religion without at least getting Agri+BW or Agri+AH+BW on top of what he has now, or else his expansion will be stalled, and thus the earliest he could reasonably start on Meditation would be T30ish. As an Organized civ he'll want his CoL for the cheap courthouses, and Cre/Org means he'll want to be pretty fat in the midgame, so I'll definitely mark him down as an Oracle threat.

retap, on the other hand, also needs to get by via Agri resources, because he will want to beeline BW and chop out a granary ASAP in his first two cities or else his Inca pick is useless. Now, he could try for med/priest after that, keeping his population low and stacking up a LOT of 1-pop whips, and eventually chop the Oracle for.... I'm not sure what. None of the traditional Oracle targets (MC/CoL/Monarchy) would be that amazing for Washington to chase, I think, other than maybe HBR for a close neighbor.

Gavagai wants the Pyramids. Duh. Not much to say here; he's gonna bulb Math and chop out the Pyramids at some extremely early date, tech CoL soon after, and then bulb Philosophy. Let's hope he runs into trouble before he gets the full Spi dreamland online. He might try to Oracle CoL if he's around a lot of trees, but more likely is that he'll be fairly stingy with what he has. He'll want at least 10-12 math chops into the mids if he doesn't have stone, and thus any extra should go into workers and settlers.

Barteq picked the leader we wanted; pressumably, he'll try to rush for Compass to get some wharves online. I'm glad he didn't our civ, the Vikings, or Portugal to pair up with them; 4-move ocean go-ers in the BC years would be completely terrifying.

Us - an extremely flexible pick, but we'll have to choose whether we want to dominate on water or on land.