Team Bring It!™ Planning Thread

[Twinkletoes89]

Its not really gimping either to be honest.

It means that if we find a good cottage city, it has financial to boost it. If we find a food rich city, we could turn it into a full on GP pump and it has philo to boost it.

We pick a combo set up for a cottage econ only, or a specialist economy only and the map turns out to not suit the one we have chosen, it is immediately working at less than optimum, which will lead to problems.

I think that we pick what I have suggested and we may well make our other neighbours a little worried and that is a good thing.

[Twinkletoes89]

bob - protective is a big no no imo now. We can only pick 6 traits and picking protective would be a big, big waste.

I think that Rome does have a part to play in this game, even more so if they are AGG boosted and production of them boosted by half price forges. They have the same strength as maces and are buildable almost straight away with Iron guaranteed to be within 5 tiles of the starting position.

We need to take a chance imo, and this one looks like a good one to me!

[Jkaen]

Ok, I think we have got to a stalemate.

You want 1 tech 2 military and to rush somebody possibly with praets
I want 2 tech 1 military and to play defensive and let everybody else weaken themselves with wars while we tech up

Shall we let Kuro act as tie breaker?

EDIT: Just to stress in the first game last night, my economy was in ruins when I beat you. worked as it was 1v1, but was WAY behind you

[Bobchillingworth]

Protective does have some limited uses. Cheap walls / castles + protective X-Bows or L-Bows means that Spain can be a brick wall while pumping super siege for whoever is going to be doing the real righting. Conquistadors mean that Spain has something reasonably valuable to contribute once the situation stabilizes and you get into the late-mid game techs. Use Spain's second trait to take advantage of the excellent defenses- IMP to be the team city spammer, Ind to be the Wonder Hog, whatever. Not necessarily the *best* choice, but I wouldn't rule it out of hand.



Rome sounds... sub-optimal to me, to put it nicely. Machinery and Bureaucracy are available very early, and both give hard counters. People have tried Aggressive Rome games many times before on RB, and they always fail because they attack when people have counters. You will be starting a game where people are one-tech away from one of those counters. And praets are slow, too. The UB is mediocre. I just don't see the point. Take Japan if you really want powerful melee. Plus there's a profusion of UU that counter Praets well. Korea, HRE, Japan, anyone who is protective or has aggressive maces.


Edit- if you want to rush someone, you also already have mongolia. Do you really need two early rush civs? Is paring slow praets with fast Keshiks going to make any sense?

[Twinkletoes89]

We may well have to let Kuro decide

What I will say to your reasoning is this:

We pick 2 full econ guys and one warmonger to 'tech up while others weaken themselves with war'.

What makes you think that we will avoid these wars? What makes you think that that strategy is not so patently obvious that if others pick two military and 1 econ that they will see us as weak (especially as we are seen as the noob team) and go after us to gain land instead of an attritional war against someone like Spulla?

[Bobchillingworth]

And another post / point. Mongolia is meant to be your main attacker, right? So why not pair them with someone who can actually help out- Like France to cover their mounted stacks? Or Spain, who has a mounted UU too. Arabia helps out Mongolia some by having a mounted UU to contribute, so that could be nice (although just regular knights are about as good).

[pindicator]

wow, i wake up and find a lot of reading to catch up on

While Pacal of India is lovely there is something about it which worries me. I have seen in all my medieval games that Philosophical is really helpful in this game but it needs spiritual to work at its best.

What I am thinking about right now is whether we compromise and go for something like this:

Lizzie (Fin/Phi) of something - Arabia/England/France/whatever.

and

Bismarck (Exp/Ind)/ Shaka (Agg/Exp) / Washington (Exp/Cha) of India

There we minimise Philo a bit, but we have a full on econ person who can do a hybrid economy which would mean it could adapt best to whatever the map produces.

We also then instead use India's fast workers (at half price expansive) to chop out an army and/or wonders. Using Bismarck as an example, we could use half price workers to chop half price forges and then we build up a solid production based player quite quickly which can then be used to rapidly build a supporting army to Cyrus or some targeted wonders (like HG).

This is more along the lines of what I am thinking -- the leaders aren't going to pick our play so much as the map is. So what is wrong with having Gandhi of France/Arabia produce units? Or Pacal of India for that matter? No, you don't have a shiny UU to send out in the field, but if you have a more solid economy you're going to support a larger army, and eventually support a more advanced one.

At times it sounds like we get stuck on the idea that a war civ that produces units has to have a trait with Agg/Cha/Imp/Pro in it. Likewise, just because we're picking a leader with "econ" traits doesn't mean that civ needs to run a full blown specialist economy. And it's just best to avoid terms like CE and SE and decide how many cottages and farms we put down based on the map and the game situation.

As for the leaders TT listed above, I would only add that I think we have to include Spi in there somewhere. The civics flexibility you get with Spi is too good to pass up. So what about Montezuma (Spi/Agg) of France and then Liz (Fin/Phi) of India? (And I'm not trying to contradict myself! I don't see Montezuma of France as a war civ, but as a combination that lets us econ or war depending on our needs.)

And another post / point. Mongolia is meant to be your main attacker, right? So why not pair them with someone who can actually help out- Like France to cover their mounted stacks? Or Spain, who has a mounted UU too. Arabia helps out Mongolia some by having a mounted UU to contribute, so that could be nice (although just regular knights are about as good).

I rather like France as a civ combo for this reason. (Also, great artists are going to be useful in an AW game, so i don't mind any artist pollution caused by observatories.) I wouldn't mind England either because I fully expect us to be alive and relevant when rifling is researched and it will be nice to have lategame options then. But it's not necessary.

[Kuro]

I'm considering the options right now. I will try to have a post up shortly with my thought.

[pindicator]

i suppose we could always try a vote if we can't come to a decision.

though to be honest, i'll play with anybody. Give me Gilgamesh of America and I'll still be happy

[Kuro]

Locked in:

Gandhi of Arabia/France
Cyrus of Mongolia

We've got Gandhi covered. Personally, I would prefer to have Arabia over France and have France as the third member(See below).

I also think Cyrus of Mongolia is locked in. The Ger basically means all of your horse units are UUs and that's good. A tech path to Musketeers + Knights would also put us close to Curassiers and 3 promo Curassiers before enemies get Rifles are just plain scary, especially if Musketeers back them up defensively(Guerilla II Musketeer defends stack. WH4T NOW?)

Which leads to the swing vote you guys wanted me for...

The Options:

Ragnar of France
Wang Kon of France
Tokugawa of France
Pacal II of India

Yes, I AM going to continue to argue Protective is not worthless this game. Spulla is afraid to attack Protective civs(PBII he specifically extolls the foolhardiness of attacking Protective Musketeers. PBIV he attacks Adlain late because of Protective Longbows). And nobody wants to attack the team with Protective Longbows before Knights or Protective Musketeers and so on. The boost will last the whole game.

And we might even be able to use the Walls/Castles bonus, Walls are only 25 hammers w/ Protective so they can be whipped in threatened cities and Castles are only 50 with Protective. Castles aren't an especially bad build for the Espionage bonus either, since we've seen how good an Espionage boost can be here and we might not go after Economics for a while, so +1 Trade Routes too.

The idea with any of the French civilizations is to attack at Knights and later Musketeers(Or soon after, since Gunpowder does not take long to research. Also note a Musketeer is 10 hammers less), with Camel Archers which can be produced without hooking up resources and, more importantly, have a 15% withdraw rate(Give some Flanking II and they have a 45% withdraw rate!), 3 promo Knights from Mongolia, all protected by Musketeers which can promote up to stop stuff and gain defensive bonuses, making Pike counterattacks hard.

And all two moves.

Therefor, I propose we, in a shocking move, Skip taking India. I personally prefer taking Tokugawa, for triple promo + more Musketeers, Protective and the fact Spullla will have an aneurysm when we take him combined with the rest of our fairly non-standard choices.

Behind Tokugawa Ragnar or Wang Kon are both fine. And Pacal II of India is still there, but skipping him will be both fun and potentially an edge.

Also, random thought: Building a Guerilla II Musketeer or two for annoyance could be great, basically just rush all over their hills and pillage shit, threaten to snipe Workers, take a lot of work to dislodge, etc.