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[SPOILERS]PB34:Burnin' Daylight - DMOC/gsorel/Ichabod
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AGG/IMP Zulu is certainly a top pick. AGG/PRO is pretty good too. I think we need to use Impis pretty aggressively early; not to go to war, but to threaten other players and secure more than our share of land. AGG/IMP has to get a good start, because we can't compete with late game ORG.
 ![[Image: AeCLjB8.jpg]](http://i.imgur.com/AeCLjB8.jpg) OK - I did it. Nice to have things move so fast! Definitely have some thoughts on how to turbocharge that start! I think Ichabod is right about focusing on the big picture. Will post later today.  (June 12th, 2016, 17:39)Ichabod Wrote: AGG/IMP Zulu is certainly a top pick. AGG/PRO is pretty good too. I think we need to use Impis pretty aggressively early; not to go to war, but to threaten other players and secure more than our share of land. AGG/IMP has to get a good start, because we can't compete with late game ORG. I agree with your thoughts, though getting off to a good start is absolutely mandatory in these games regardless of Imp or not, since the high skill level of even "casual" players means players can't easily coast to wins anymore. By the way, here is the final selection. Note that our leader selection is the same as GermanJoey's in Pitboss 25, so we could look at his thread for comparisons. 1. Borsche - Mehmed II of Carthage 2. Gawdzak/Chumchu - Julius Caesar of Russia 3. GSorel/DMOC/Ichabod - Genghis Khan of Zulu 4. Nicolea Carpathia - Brennus of Korea 5. Elkad - Asoka of Sumeria 6. DTG/picklepikkl - Mao Zedong of Inca 7. OT4E - Bismark of Ottomans 8. wetbandit/ipecac - Winston Churchill of China 9. StarDoor - Shaka of Arabia 10. dcodea - Joao II of Khmer 11. NylesStandish - Wang Kon of Aztecs 12. pindicator - Suryavarman II of India I will post some brief thoughts in a few days once my work schedule eases. I'm hoping there will be a few days allowed for the first turn timer, because it will probably be Friday or Saturday when I have the time to run more full-blown simulations of the start. Our initial moves, however, seem obvious in terms of worker actions (sheep --> corn --> cow, unless we wanted to do either cow before corn or put in a chop/road somewhere but that doesn't seem logical) and the technology. Should our first three techs be some combination of {The Wheel, Mining, Bronze Working}? Note that our worker will only finish the sheep, corn, and cow *after* all three of those have been researched, so it doesn't matter if we go Mining -> Bronze Working -> The Wheel, or if we do The Wheel -> Mining -> Bronze Working. Edit: never mind, I tested the above simulation on a duel-sized map. If this is a larger map that might increase technology expenses, if I recall correctly. (I set the simulation above on a duel sized, prince map with one other AI for simplicity.)
Haha - sorry for not getting out a longer post yesterday. It do think that tech costs will be higher than my initial guess - start a 12-player-large-fractal map:
77 Mining 184 Bronze Working 92 The Wheel 123 Pottery I think these are the costs. So we get the three of Mining, BW, the Wheel only around t31 or so. I sketched out a two worker plan (on an envelope  ) so I'll play it out and post the screenies here. I'm not opposed to chopping in to IMP settlers, so using food to over-build workers and using the resulting chop-hammers to build settlers can make sense.I did notice that civic costs kick in much later on Prince difficulty so I'm really liking Genghis. We can make any plan a bit faster by putting those 7 insurance hammers in to either a settler or a second worker. IE we grow only as food resources come on line (one turn on the unpastured sheep 3f + four turns on the pastured sheep 20f = 23f and size 2 in 5 turns, three turns on the sheep/grain 8f = 24f and size 3 in 3 turns. That's 8 turns total and exactly one warrior with 1h overflow. Unless our scout dies really fast, I kind of lean this way 'cause our warrior will be nearby guarding the second city site and we can always build a second warrior in 3-turns. Also we are aggressive Zulus so it should be top of mind for any neighbour that we can make their early game very mess very cheap. I'm tempted to say that mining->bronze working is preferable independent of whether we bust out a quick settler or build a second worker. A road segment might speed the second city by a turn, but a revolt to Slavery while the settler is in transit is guaranteed to save a turn. I figure we start tech on Mining and then re-evaluate on turn 8. I think we should ignore the religious line entirely to start. We get no benefit from Mysticism and so could spend those beakers better elsewhere. We get our culture from guns  I like the range of picks: Brennus "Triple Promotion" of Korea (?) competing with super-synergy Asoka of Sumeria for religion. Bismarck of the Ottomans seems super strong as the only IND civ. Pure expansion civs like Joao and Suryavaraman taking advantage of low costs to grow grow grow. Cottages represent with about as good a FIN civ as you can get in Wang Kon of the Aztecs. The power-picks of Mao/Inca and Genghis/Zulu. The solid but uninspired ORGers. I do question Shaka of Arabia since AGG and Madrassas seem to push in opposite directions. But all good! Fun!
OK here is an album with a sketch of a two worker start with the tech costs I posted above. I know DMOC may be offline during the week, but I thought it couldn't hurt to just throw this stuff at the wall so that when the game actually starts it will have accumulated in a goopy (but accessible) mess of data. Here I assume we have a viable city site to the south, but the general idea is the same if we settle North or West. Some adjustment if we settle East.
T8:Mining is complete. Select Bronze Working. T12:First worker is complete. Select second worker. T14:Pasture is one turn from completion. Start growing on a warrior. T19:Grow. Switch back to a worker for one turn. T20:The farm is complete. Continue growing on a warrior. T23:Bronze Working is complete. Select The Wheel. T23:Grow. Warrior is complete. Return to worker. T26:We delay the second settler but speed the third through chops. T27:Second worker is complete. It will chop. T29:First chop is in. T30:Second chop is in. It would be nice to get a shared mine up. T31:First settler is complete. Research in to The Wheel is complete, so workers can build roads if it helps. We revolt to slavery. T32:Earliest turn we can settle our second city. The settler for our third city is built t36, even if a southern city borrows some food to quickly grow. Note that if the map is lush and costs are low we can delay a granary in the cap and quickly spam two or three more settlers: T0: +9 f/t, +5 h/t - Grow to size 4 on a warrior T3: +16fh/t with a mine - Warrior is complete and moves to city site. T7: ~20fh/t with IMP bonus - Worker is complete and moves/roads to city site. Start settler. T10: Whip settler. T11: Settler is complete and moves to city site. Overflow can be used as needed. That's it for now!
Just briefly checking in. Looks good from what I can tell.
Quote:I think these are the costs. So we get the three of Mining, BW, the Wheel only around t31 or so. I sketched out a two worker plan (on an envelope I probably wasn't clear about this in my last post, but I think chopping for settlers is the right thing for us to do early in the game. We'll get extra bonuses on the chops, after all. So having two workers out before the first settler is fine (and is what I was leaning to today). Quote:I think we should ignore the religious line entirely to start. We get no benefit from Mysticism and so could spend those beakers better elsewhere. We get our culture from guns We don't have to prioritize the religions line at all, but I was just pointing out (putting on my game-theory hat ... ) the possibility that others might neglect that religious line, thinking that there are so many other players and that players at Realms Beyond tend to delay religious stuff. In addition, we don't really need anything beyond The Wheel, Mining, and Bronze Working immediately (and Pottery as well). But OT4E might aim for The Oracle ... I was hoping we could get many cities out quickly and then get The Oracle by turn 65 to help us with technology, but that is probably too much to ask. Definitely getting the massive amount of cities is more important and we can reevaluate once we see more of the map. (June 14th, 2016, 18:49)DMOC Wrote: We don't have to prioritize the religions line at all, but I was just pointing out (putting on my game-theory hat ... ) the possibility that others might neglect that religious line, thinking that there are so many other players and that players at Realms Beyond tend to delay religious stuff. Good points! We'll have to keep our eye on things in case the Spi civs delay nabbing a religion. I guess I think of the Oracle as a way to pay for the longer-term investment of an early religion, and I'm not sure we're in a position to secure an early religion. With at least two players inclined to head in that direction, there should be pressure for them to prioritize Priesthood - both players would prefer to delay the Oracle and Oracle-ize something awesome, but both players stand to get little or nothing if the other makes the Oracle a priority. So they race - or at least they ought to. Again, I guess we'll have to keep our eyes on things. I realized that I made a mistake in the above 2-worker plan  If we build a quick settler, it is better to pause and grow only as the sheep comes online since two turns on a settler at size one (2*8=16fh) is better than an extra turn at size three before the cow is online (14fh). But I didn't do the math for a worker - two turns at size one (2*5=10fh) is actually worse than an extra turn at size three before the cow is online (11fh). So we can eke out a few more hammers.I did notice that a middle option is available. We could build the second worker at size two instead of size three. This does get the first settler out t30 since the extra worker turns speed the chops. Using this approach, it becomes better to pasture the cows before the grain - the wasted turn moving back to the grain from the cows is paid back with interest by saving a turn on the second worker who helps finish farming the grain and provides the second chop that finishes the settler. So we have three options depending on the map! (1) A quick first settler (2) Build a second worker at size 2 (3) Build a second worker at size 3 We could even pasture the cow first and build the second worker at size one, but I don't think we need that many extra worker turns and the commerce from the sheep is pretty important. /gsorel 
I think we need to explore the map before deciding about those plans.
Ideally, the second city will use either the corn or sheep when settled. It's also a good idea to have workers ready to improve the second city new food resource when it reaches size 2. In this scenario, it would be nice to have a mine already in place, so the Capital could keep working improved tiles, even after losing one of the food to the second city. Being IMP, we should try to use food tiles for cities that are growing, so heavy tile sharing is advisable. By the way, in the 2nd worker at size 2 plan, could you perhaps mine the non-forested plains hill instead of farming the corn (perhaps even chop+mine the forested one)? So, at size 3, for the settler, you work cows, sheep, plains hill mine? It gets more hammers on the settler, but I guess it probably takes a turn or two more to grow to size 3. |
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Is that character a variant? (I just love getting asked that in channel.) - Charis |
