[SPOILER] [PB38] OT4E plays this one because lurking around takes too much time

[OT4E]

Chumchu, my friend, Carthage is following you, heh.

In general I think it is very good luck that we've got it after all. I didnt expect to get top tier civ in the first round because it should be thrown by two previous owners or remain unassigned after both rounds.

Right now I think that my ranking of nationa lies because in fact Agri+Fishing is not that bad and only not having neither of Agri and Mining could screw our start.

Carthage has nice bonuses for military and eco. I believe the map will have significant water presence since I cant believe it can be balanced between 25 players without natural bareers.

[chumchu]

They can follow me beyond the pillars of Herakles and I would not mind. I'm hoping for some numid action this game.

[OT4E]

Everything is up to us. I think numids are very powerful, smth like WC.

There are some powerful combos like PRO-mali (rolled in last round). We are somewhere in the middle as I guess we were supposed to be with our choice.

[chumchu]

Mehmed of egypt in the hands of Gavagai sounds scary as well. Over all, a lot of exp and org leaders. Two other ind leaders is better than expected even if I am suprised by Augustus being chosen.

[OT4E]

True, Mehmed is top1 leader in my ranking and civ is great as well.

August was chosen from the couple with Huyana FIN/IND, so I guess it is not really surprising for me since some people rank FIN as the worst trait in RTR.

TBS with Pericle PHI/CRE surprised me because it is the worst combo in my classification. Mackoti with Suleiman PHI/IMP also. Both had one more up to reroll or TBS even had Washington EXP/CHM to choose instead.

[chumchu]

It's a good sign that there still is a lot of disagreement among good players about the most powerful traits.

About our plans: Carthage does not change our sims as I see it. It may change out larger strategy though with its heavy naval orientation. A lot of it is up to the map but I would suspect a lot of water as well. If you combine Carthage with IND you get a very tempting situation for the Colossus. [to a lesser degree TGL as it should be be heavily contested, hard to get open borders with TGL and cothons and it is more off our tech path]. Early metal casting should be good for hammers and happy and the Colossus addresses our biggest weakness which is economy. Oracling machinery and getting colossus sounds slightly crazy but oracling metal casting and getting colossus might be doable. Straight teching metal casting is not impossible either. We can potentially use an engineer to bulb machinery if we have metal casting.

[OT4E]

Few words about overall strategy. I know it is almost useless to discuss it before we get vision and understanding of the map, but some general obvious things can be stated.

1) Early stage.
Try to grab a piece of land and establish fronts with neigbors giving us opportunities to attack. Also keep eyes open to what opponents do and use them if they are not thinking about consequences. In most games I try to make one aggressive front trying to plant others as save as possible.

2) Development.
I think we can try to focus on one of the key wonders. This can be Oracle, Pyramids or TGLH. Others we grab only if they are untaken for long.

Since we have got cheap granaries we must have more cities to make this bonus work better. Alternatively we use it to rush somebody possibly with early HAs.

If nothing special happens we must go for early Metal Casting for cheap forges.

3) Midgame
I want to try "special" economics. I already mentioned this.
GE for Machinery or Engineering or even both worked fine in my previous civing experience. Machinery opens mills, Engineering opens castles, we have cottons. I think they key for mid-late is balancing good relations with distant civs and terrifying close ones with hammer superiority. With 25 players this can work.

[OT4E]

So less cottages and more farms/mills, and stop slaving as soon as possible.

I am thinking about leaving uncottaged tiles where we can make watermills in starting cross. Later on I wanted to use river tiles for farms and cottage up common ones. I think each city requires 2-3 farms in the addition to the base food sources. So we will have higher pop and better trade routes. But in the same time rivered. Farm can still give coin and it plays its role during golden ages.

This is small but I dont expect to get top GNP but I need not to fall back first of all.

[OT4E]

Oracling MC is the most common pattern I think. But there are many cons:

1) MC is cheaper than it is in plain BTS
2) Requires wrong tech path. We unlikely want Monarchy before MC so if we lose Oracle we will make our route to MC much bigger. I think we go for Animals right after pottery and there is no room for religion path in this plan.
3) Many contenders. Oracle is cheap wonder and EXP leaders have better odds on completing it first than IND.
4) Requires sacrifices to be first. After builsing Oracle you might find yourself be not ready to build forges and get better outcome from settlers.
5) Wrong GPP generation. Imho 100% GE for Machinery and lets say 70% GE for Engineering can be worth.

[OT4E]

Something like this:


The idea is not to make cottages on the tiles we can use as watermills later. We can make farms there and another idea is to have plain cottages. They give both extra hammer and commerce during golden age.

The main problem I see is how to make people happy with those food extras early. So we either hook some luxuries in the addition to ivory or share it between several cities.