PB81 - Continental Drifters (TBS)

[The Black Sword]

Not super worried about Dreylin's Willem of Rome, think Praet rushes are rather telegraphed, and at 50h in CTH they're not that hammer efficient vs axes anyway. Fin is also probably the slowest trait to get going, so not suited for a rush. It is really hard to attack into Praet's though, I'd imagine he's just using that to help him develop.

Nauf's Boudica of Portugal has me scratching my head. Really not sure what the plan is there. But I don't think an early rush is too scary either when he has no extra production in the early game.

MJMD's Caesar of Zulu is the scariest. Impi rushes can be fatal if you don't get copper secured. This is what leans me the most towards an earlier BW. It's just a very strong peaceful combo too, claim a lot of land and then have Org+Ikhanda.

I like Catherine of Byzantium for SD too. Byzantium's weak techs aren't that bad when we start with another free one. Clear game plan to snowball with two good early traits and hit someone with Phracts.

Gira's the only Ind civ, and has fast workers for chopping, so will presumably be wonder-whoring. I think our Pyramids timing will be pretty hard to beat anyway.

Xist is potentially trying to rush too? Agg Vultures and Pro to keep tech afloat?

Have to see the rest of Greenline's combo, but should be slow without any early hammers from his traits.


There's a lot of Pro and Agg picks, which I've already said I don't really like. No Expansive picks either is pretty surprising. I don't expect starts to be mirrored, but I imagine everyone else has an equivalent to our 4h ivory tile. Between that and the extra tech, it's ideal conditions for EXP.

[The Black Sword]

I played a run through until Metal Casting to see how it would go. 

- I hit MC EOT63, which results in in T67 Engineer and T68 Pyramids.

-I had two turns spare, could have hit MC T65 without overrunning the Library gpp. 

- I built one cottage during that time, worked it 13 turns so it got 16b, about a turn's research. Cottages feel pretty bad. Definitely nothing wrong with putting worker turns into farms as they move around.

-The land I was playing on was pretty poor by RB standards, in particular no real extra sources of commerce. I didn't have any OBs either. I had 5 cities and 2 about to settle by the end. 

-I played through starting with Mining instead of Wheel, and felt I missed the roading. In particular, it took me ages to connect my 2nd city to the capital and get trade routes going. Copper spawned in a bad location that didn't help the snowball here though.

[Zed-F]

Would it be worth simming a start where we pick wheel & mining & delay hunting instead?

[Hitru]

I think it does. Without river to connect our 2nd city we need roads early, so slight delay on ivory could be acceptable.

[The Black Sword]

Not a big fan of that scenario. Worker finishes the cow on T21 and has 10t until T31 when BW comes in/new city will be founded. The only useful thing he can do is road, and that's too much time roading.

There might be a saving grace in some 3rd ring resource we can pre-improve for our 2nd city, but then we're not making use of the copper knowledge anyway.

I think growing to 5 is too weak also, 28f to grow, probably another 15+h in warriors to get not really impressive tiles.

[Hitru]

I agree that 4 pop looks like the sweet spot

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, nothing wrong with throwing them out there. I just think it will be hard to beat the current opening. My intuition is that WB first is bad, since you need to go WB->worker, and you are only improving from 6hpt->7hpt by working fish over ivory. 

The three options I see are:

Start with Mining, try deal with the delay in roads as best we can. It's not the end of the world, we do get some compensation by getting to chop one of the forests earlier instead of roading to the city site, accelerating the next worker 1t. Plenty of time to refine the micro once we get map knowledge.

Start with Mining, but go for a 2nd worker before the 1st settler. I think he should come out just as BW comes, so he can chop. Gives us a surplus of worker turns which could maybe result in getting the roads in quicker. I think the fundamental problem was that Wheel comes in just as the 2nd city is settled and our workers are busy improving its resources. This is a bit like 1a. anyway, loads of time to make this decision. In general I'm always a little skeptical of building a worker just to chop though.

Start with Wheel, go for copper with city 3. Looks like a better opening to me, but I'm not clear yet how close it is. More beakers=earlier Mids too. If no Zulu in the game, I'd be fine with it. How scary are Impis? It's pretty likely we'll neighbour them on a 4 person continent. I'm not sure if Tarkeel is still doing 2 Pangaea for each continent, but I rolled a small pangaea yesterday, was ~120 tiles per player. I tend to think Mjmd would take the opportunity to choke us if he could, even if it's not necessarily the best economic play for him in a vacuum. Is there any contingences we could build in where we pivot to that if our scouting suggests Impis could be a problem? Growing to 5 to delay the settler, but then I would probably prefer to be back in the Mining first scenario.

[Tarkeel]

I'm not sure if Tarkeel is still doing 2 Pangaea for each continent, but I rolled a small pangaea yesterday, was ~120 tiles per player.

Here's what I said in the signup thread.

Sure. The map consists of two small pangeas spliced together, and I'll set the nominal size to standard.

[Hitru]

I think Mjmd would choke us if he can. I have not done any micro myself so can't really comment, but I would at least try quite hard to get mining opening working

[The Black Sword]

Yeah, your WB first, start with Mining scenario has its temptations. 

Right now, my idea with the worker is

Wheat-> move to cap -> 1t into farm -> Cows -> 1t into farm -> Ivory -> Move to forest to chop -> Do something for the 2nd city.

We don't know which forest is the best to chop though, we might be moving away from the copper. Maybe we waste one more turn into the farm, so we see copper before moving to the forest. That would mean WB first would be only 1 real worker turn behind. But delaying the settler 1t is still probably too much.

Having to settle for copper in the 2nd city is really quite restrictive, in addition to the difficulty in planning the worker micro we also might have to pass up a better snowball location. Hopefully Creative will be some help. Having looked at some pangaeas, it seems quite possible for an opposition civ to spawn in Impi rush range though. So I'm not inclined to risk it, especially when I feel our combo is so strong.