RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Speaker and Sullla

[Sullla]

Hey. This is going to be our spoilers thread for the Pitboss #2 game. This first post will be left blank of information, in case anyone accidentally clicks here from the other teams. So with that in mind, here are some unrelated pictures to fill space:







It's going to be a fun game, I can already feel it!

[Sullla]

Table of Contents
Courtesy of Voice of Unreason

(home) (latest draft)

Overview

* Map
* Turn 50
* Turn 78
* Turn 124
* Turn 150
* World Map: Turn 177

Pregame Show

* Choosing a Leader
* Unique Unit
* Unique Building
* Starting Techs
* Leveraging Philosophical

* Analysis of opponents (part 1)
* Analysis of opponents (part 2)

Peacetime Management

* Micro Spreadsheet
* Research Overflow
* Production Micro
* Currency vs Code of Laws
* Great/National Wonders
* On Binary Research

Cloak and Dagger

* Spying on Production
* Spying on Improvements
* Technology Deduction
** ... by research cost
** ... by Tech Screen (Foreign Adviser)
* Cloak and Dagger Spreadsheet

War Management

* The Sentry Net
* Visibility
* Line of Sight
* Cool Game!

Interesting Times

* Dogpile Buildup
* War <Turn:98>
* The final strike
* Multiplayer Defense
* Mutual Defense Pact?
* Sulla's rankings <Turn:160>
* The Three Turn War <Turn:161>
* Midgame Review
** ... Speaker/Sulla
** ... Kathelete
** ... Nakor
** ... Dantski
** ... Slaze
* War with Kathlete <Turn:206>
* War with Nakor<Turn:222>

Post Mortem
* Post Mortem Maps <Turn:228>
* Analysis
** Byzantium
** Greece
** Rome
** Mali
** Ottoman
** Korea
** Inca
** Holy Rome

[Sullla]

So the first topic to address is, why did we pick Elizabeth for our leader, and India for our civilization? By way of answering that, I'll post some of the email correspondence between Speaker and myself leading up to our selection.

Originally Posted by Sullla

Hey Speaker, I'm moving the discussion to email, since the PMs have a strict character limit (and you can only save 50 of them before the inbox is full).

It looks like most of the polls are already set: 24 hour turns, Normal speed, No Tech Trading. I think we can both live with all of that. The only ongoing discussion concerns the question of Unrestricted leaders and Duplicates; my tendency is towards avoiding duplicates and to have the normal Restricted leaders, but like you, I don't care all that much. I think we can function just fine under either situation.

Since the current poll is pretty uninteresting, I'm going to pick up your point on game "style" and overall big picture direction. First and foremost, we should make it our goal to WIN the game. Everyone thinks that we'll be such nice guys, doing lots of pictures/descriptions/analysis (which we will do, of course) but lurking underneath that is our fiercely competitive streak. Looking over the field of teams, the only one that looks dangerous is the sunrise/darrell/regoarrarr triplet. None of the others intimidate me at all, unless one of the new unknown players turns out to be highly skilled. At the very least, we should make it our goal to be one of the dominant teams!

Now as I'm sure you know, a No Tech Trading game means two major things: self-research becomes extremely important, and tech beelines become very, very powerful. In a teamer game like the current RB Pitboss venture, it doesn't matter too much that Krill has a civ with relatively weak research power, because he can be fed money and techs from the others. But that won't be possible in this game, so we should try to lean towards civs/leaders that can research up the tech tree quickly. As far as the second point on tech beelines, in this game no one will be able to gift techs to one another to defend, so a relative military advantage should be able to carry teams very far indeed. The only way to defend will be to self-research the counter military techs, which could very well be impossible! (Or pull in allies, but again, if you have nothing to offer allies, they'll be somewhat less likely to help.) Therefore, I see definite room for military aggression in this game if we play our cards right.

In terms of civ traits, I think that three stand out as the power traits: Financial, Expansive, and Creative, in some kind of order. Financial will be key in a game of self-research, Expansive needs no explanation with its cheap workers/granaries, and Creative gets the free border pops and cheap libraries. All great stuff. I would put Spiritual, Philosophical, Aggressive, Organized, Imperialistic, and maybe Industrious in the next tier down. These are all situationally useful, and we could leverage them in combination with one of the power traits if it came with a good civ, but not something worth going after in and of themselves. Charismatic and especially Protective are largely garbage, and not worth considering. No one should ever use Protective in a free-for-all environment under any circumstances.

Assuming for a moment that we have Unrestricted leaders, my #1 civ would be Byzantium. If we were to land them, we could bend our gameplay around an early Guilds beeline (and people forget how quickly you can get there if you ignore the top of the tech tree!) and then a cataphract rampage that terrorizes our neighborhood. With no way to trade techs, we could find someone who was totally screwed militarily and then run over them. As you well know, there's a reason why Byzantines are banned in most of those medieval/Renny games! Otherwise, the traditional suspects (India, Inca, etc.) are good choices. I would prefer to focus on a civ with a medieval or renaissance unique unit if possible though, since I think attacking earlier than that is self-destructive behavior (even if you win, everyone sees you as an "aggressor" for moving so quickly).

Anyway, let me know what some of your thoughts are, and we can keep moving from there.
Sullla

Originally Posted by Speaker

My apologies. I assumed that strong desire to win was inherent. I'm a cut throat ladder player, remember. I hate to lose!

As you already pointed out, tech in a no-tech trading FFA is paramount. With that in mind, I see three different types of economies:

1) Cottage
2) Great Person
3) Trade Route

With #3 being possible to incorporate into 1 or 2. Personally, I prefer cottaging. A GP economy relies heavily on getting the Pyramids and Parthenon early, which is a huge use of resources, and a big risk in a game of SP-players. In an FFA, I usually don't even worry about any great wonders except for the Mausoleum (totally awesome wonder), Notre Dame (necessary if you want to get out of Hereditary Rule into a better civic), Oracle (if no one builds it, so it is sufficiently-late enough to get Feudalism or Civil Service with it), and Taj Mahal. Other than that, maybe the Colossus and/or Great Lighthouse might be useful depending on the setup, and The Great Library is nice, but I tend to avoid that part of the tech tree, at least early enough to get the wonders.

The biggest problem I have with a specialist economy, aside from the early resources, is that you rely heavily on food, and you have to stunt your growth/production to work the specialists.

I agree with you 100% on the traits. For an epic-style game, Financial is #1. We should definitely get financial. I rank Expansive slightly above Creative, but would be happy with either. In general, however, I really like expansive because the cheaper workers and granaries help you get going faster, and the health is a nice side benefit. I can't believe it was a 50% bonus to worker production in Warlords. Talk about overpowered! Creative is great too though, being able to not worry about planting your city next to a resource or have to build a monument for a quicker border pop than a full-price library.

So I'd rank the leaders that we'll want as:

1) Pacal (Fin/Exp)
2) William of Orange (Fin/Cre)
3) Elizabeth (Fin/Phi)
4a) Mansa (Fin/Spi)
4b) Peter (Phi/Exp)
6) Ragnar (Fin/Agg)

Would love to hear your thoughts here as well.

I'm happy with Byzantine in theory, though I think the Snake pick may influence us here a bit. If we get stuck with the first civ pick (I say "stuck" because I much prefer picking traits first), I think we have to take India. After that, I need to think about it a little, and get back to you. I'll try to make a top 5 or top 7 list today and send it over. I agree with your thoughts on attacking during the late Medieval, early Ren time frame. Much earlier than that, and you sacrifice development, and run into some defensive nuts that are tough to crack (hilled/walled cities with archers or longbows = meh, risk the Ivory lottery (meh, Elephants + Catapults are insane on defense), or risk getting labeled as the game's Shaka/Monty personality. That's where my idea of playing/writing with panache early, and then pulling off a totally ruthless play in the middle, appeals to me. Something that we don't refer to in any public forum, and then when we do it,
everyone says, "holy crap, they did *that*???"

Without any logical way to end this essay, I'll just pull a Monty Python, I think, and uugggggghhhhh...

Originally Posted by Sullla

OK, now for the more elaborate response that addresses metagaming issues:

I'm completely on the same page with running a cottage economy. I've never had much success trying to make things work with specialists; I think that's one of those things that works better against the AIs than other humans. Furthermore, in a 10-team game it's definitely crazy to rely on landing the Pyramids. Without stone on hand that's a bit of a sucker's build anyway, and who knows what resources we'll have in a game like this? Better to expand and build 2 settlers and 3 workers instead of the Pyramids.

> The biggest problem I have with a specialist economy, aside from the early resources, is that you rely heavily on food, and you have to stunt your growth/production to work the specialists.

I couldn't have said this any better myself!

As far as the other wonders, I'm also thinking along the same lines as you, about mostly ignoring them and concentrating on other parts of the tech tree. Let everyone else hit the top of the tree and go for Great Library while we grab the military techs at the bottom and give someone a big surprise later on! We'll have to wait and see the map before deciding on whether to target any wonder in particular. Financial/Colossus could be very powerful, for example, if we happen to get a lot of water and want to push the Metal Casting part of the tree.

Fortunately, we seem to have thinking along the same lines in terms of leader choice too. I would rank Willem (Fin/Cre) above Pacal (Fin/Exp) personally, but they would be my top two. Either one would be really strong, and Elizabeth would rank very highly for me too: Financial, Philosophical, and a game of self-teching, yummy! (We would definitely target the Mausoleum if we were to get Elizabeth.) Mansa (Fin/Spi) is always a great choice too. I'm less sold on Peter though, as I don't think I value the Philosophical trait quite as highly as you do. Let me throw out some more names for you: Suryavarman (Exp/Cre) gives up Financial, but otherwise is a very solid choice. If we were to get a pick in the 8-10 range and all of the good Fin leaders were gone, I would look to him as a real option. I'll also throw out Huayna (Fin/Ind) and Darius (Fin/Org), with the Organized trait becoming more desirable if we do play on a higher difficulty level. On Noble, definitely not worth it.

My list would look something like this:

1) Willem (Fin/Cre)
2) Pacal (Fin/Exp)
3) Elizabeth (Fin/Phi)
4) Mansa (Fin/Spi)

<significant drop-off>

5) Suryavarman (Cre/Exp)
6) Ragnar (Fin/Agg)
7) Darius (Fin/Org)
#8 Huayna (Fin/Ind) -> go for early Metal Casting/forges

Other possibilities: Peter (Exp/Phi), Hatshepsut (Cre/Spi), Isabella (Exp/Spi), Catherine (Cre/Imp), Victoria (Fin/Imp)

Since you have more experience with Beyond the Sword and FFA games, what is the general sense of the Imperialistic trait? That's the one that I don't have a good feel for, since it wasn't present in the original game (and we know that Cha/Pro are not desirable traits). I know it's not top tier, but if we get a low pick, would it possibly be worth pursuing?

While we're on the subject, let me throw out some thoughts on desirable civs. I've already expressed an interest in Byzantium because of their unique unit; I was looking at their unique building today in the Civilopedia, and the hippodrome is one damned good building too! Free happy face, a second free happy face if you have horses (easy), and it works twice as good as a normal theatre, +1 happy for every 5% culture rather than every 10%. Would make warring extremely easy (I've never actually played as Byzantium before). I'm holding out hope that we can get this civ pick, because Byzantium was actually the 8th civ picked in the first Pitboss game (!) And Inca was the 11th (!!!)

Anyway, obviously much depends on the leader that we choose first, but here are some strong civ options:

- India (duh)
- Byzantium (cataphracts FTW)
- Inca (to be paired with an Expansive leader; Pacal + Inca would be unbelievable!)
- England (would be really nice paired with Ragnar; race to Rifling and draft an unbeatable army)
- Ottomans (surprisingly good: excellent unique building, and unique unit is dominant when it first appears)
- HRE (pair with Organized leader, but honestly, this civ is way overrated even with rathaus)
- Rome (rush civ, so we probably should avoid unless there's no other choice)
- Korea (not great but better than people think: unique unit holds value for a long time, and unique building is excellent. Pair with Phi leader; Liz of Korea is quite strong)
- Khmer (terrorize horse units with unique unit and unique building is solid. Sucks if you have no ivory though)
- Mali (OK, not great. Take Ind leader if possible and rush to Metal Casting)
- Zulus (worth mentioning, but we don't plan to rush and unique building is overrated. Take Agg leader if we do pick)

That's 11, so we probably don't need to go any further. Just for fun, I also couldn't make up my mind over what was the WORST civ possible, and I had a tie between Celts (useless unit/building) and America (uselessly late). What are your thoughts on the civ side of thing?

I like the idea of "totally ruthless play" in the mid-game, although let's try not to violate any agreements unless it's necessary. Diplomacy does mean a lot in these games!

Sullla

After some more shared discussion, we came up with this list:

Here are the two lists of leaders we came up with. What are you thinking at this point?

Exp/Fin (Pacal)
Fin/Phi (Elizabeth)
Fin/Org (Darius)
Fin/Cre (Willem van Orange)
Exp/Phi (Peter)
Exp/Org (Mehmed)
Fin/Spi (Mansa)

1) Willem (Fin/Cre)
2) Pacal (Fin/Exp)
3) Elizabeth (Fin/Phi)
4) Mansa (Fin/Spi)

Speaker's list of civs:
Ottomans
Byzantine
India
Inca
Maya
Babylon

Since Willem and Pacal were off the board, we went with Elizabeth as our leader. When the snake pick got back around to us, we had a choice between India and the Ottomans, and as much as we liked the Ottomans, we felt that the Fast Worker offered too much value to pass up. (I had assumed all along that we would be picking too late to get India.) I should add that we're both extremely pleased with our leader/civ combination, since we got our #3 leader and our #1 or #2 civ despite picking in the 6th position for both!

Once all of the other teams finish picking, we can start doing some analysis of their selections. Early response: there are some excellent pairings, and some silly ones thus far.

[Rowain]

Hi

Wish you Good Luck :-)

I do have 1 question: Can you tell me why the Fast Worker is better than the Hamman+Jani combo?

[Sullla]

Uh, because the Fast Worker can move into a forest and start chopping the same turn? Seriously though, it was a very close decision for us between India and Ottomans. We had them ranked at the very top of our board as well. Nevertheless, the Fast Worker is *REALLY* powerful if you are careful in your micro actions, and in a slow game like this we can definitely manage that. With the three movement, the only time you ever waste a turn of worker action is by moving onto a forested hill tile; in every other situation, you should be able to do something. Consider all of the time that normal workers waste moving onto forests and hills, and the Fast Worker's advantages should start to become clear. It's a shame we're not on Quick speed, where the Fast Worker is even better!

As good as the Jannisary may be, it doesn't have the same shelf life as a worker unique unit that can be used from start of game to finish with great value throughout. The Hamman is definitely a very good unique building, just not enough to tip the scales in Ottomans' favor. At least that was our take, we could turn out to be wrong!

[ej801]

I'm going to follow just you guys. More fun that way.

[novice]

Any thoughts on which leader/civ/player combos will be your toughest opponents?

Can't wait for this game to get started.

[Dreylin]

Looking forward to following you guys ... even if you didn't pick the Ottomans!

[Rowain]

Thanks for your explanation :-)

Originally Posted by Sullla

Nevertheless, the Fast Worker is *REALLY* powerful if you are careful in your micro actions,

And this is most likely the reason that I don't see the power of the FW in my SP-games.
I do look forward to your game and your reports

[Sullla]

Originally Posted by ej801

I'm going to follow just you guys. More fun that way.

This is up to all of you lurkers. If you choose to just follow our game, you can take a much more active role in planning and discussion, but the tradeoff is that you don't get to watch the other spoiler threads. Your choice! Just remember that if you are spoilered, you can't make *ANY* comments/suggestions using your spoiler knowledge! Careful.

Originally Posted by novice

Any thoughts on which leader/civ/player combos will be your toughest opponents?

Can't wait for this game to get started.

Yes, excellent question! I was waiting to see the full opponent roster before typing this up, but now's the perfect time to do some metagaming on our opponents, both their leader/civ selections and the players themselves. Hopefully Speaker will have a chance later to chime in with his thoughts as well; I'd like to hear the Multiplayer (MP) perspective on some of these picks too. We'll go in player order:

Team #1: athlete4life and kalin, Willem of the Ottomans. I know these two players from their involvement in the previous Realms Beyond PBEM and Pitboss games. Without spoiling too much information from those games, both players ran into some difficulties in their previous endeavors. athlete was one of the weaker players in the PBEM game, and kalin got into a bit of a brinksmanship showdown with Krill in the Pitboss #1 game, which didn't end too well for him. In terms of pure Civ4 skills, this is probably not the most dangerous team out there.

On the other hand, they've managed to land a very strong combination of civ and leader picks. I had Willem (Cre/Fin) ranked as my top leader, and Speaker had him ranked second, so this is a very strong pairing of traits. Financial is golden for a self-research game like this, and Creative provides both free cultural expansion (skip monuments) and cheap libraries. Those libraries are key, as they get the early research advantage and that snowballs into other first-to tech tree bonuses later on. Furthermore, athlete and kalin managed to pair Willem with the Ottomans, a civ which unfathomably remained until the very last selection! We already explained above why the Ottomans are an excellent choice with their musket (draftable!) unique unit and +2 happiness unique building. Plus, athlete and kalin will benefit from being the only Creative team in the game, meaning their borders can dominate all comers.

I think this team will do OK in this game, all things considered. The experience that athlete and kalin got in their previous games will no doubt come in handy.

Team #2: Broker33 and Plako, Gandhi of Korea. I have some contact with both of these players as well, Broker from RB Pitboss #1 and Plako from Team Saturn in the CivFanatics Demogame. Broker did well in that game to get into a strong diplomatic alliance, however his civ's development has been a little on the weak side. Plako was (and is) one of the major voices and turnplayers for Team Saturn, but that's maybe not a strong recommendation as Saturn is the last-place team in that game and has really made a mess of some things. (Apologies to any Saturn readers, but it wasn't a well-played game!) This is perhaps not the most fearsome team either.

Unlike the first team, Broker and Plako didn't get a power combination of civ and leader. Gandhi (Phi/Spi) is simply a weak choice with the #2 leader pick; maybe OK for one of the last leader selections, but there were MUCH stronger options with that second pick. There's no Financial to boost commerce, no Expansive for quick workers/granaries, and no Creative for the border pops and cheap libraries. That is, none of the 3 top-tier traits that I had in my own personal ranking, which is probably a bad sign. That's not to say that Spiritual or Philosophical are bad traits (heck, we have Philosophical as well!) just that there were better leaders out there with that early pick.

Korea is actually OK for civ pick #10, since most of the best selections were already gone. Not as good as the Ottomans, of course, but not bad. Pairing the seowon with a Philosophical civ isn't a bad way to go, although the unique building comes pretty late in the game to be decisive. The hwatcha offers a minor advantage, nothing special. Since this team doesn't have much in the way of economic advantage, it's going to be their Civ play that makes the difference. With no disrespect intended to Broker and Plako, I don't think this will be one of the power teams. We'll see if they can prove me wrong!

Team #3: Jowy and Yazilliclick, Pacal of Greece. I don't know anything about these two players, so nothing more to be said there. They are true wildcards entering this game, which could make for some excitement. Their selection of Pacal (Exp/Fin) was an inspired choice; I had Pacal rated #2 and Speaker had Pacal rated #1. We really would have liked to get this fellow, for the awesome combo of Financial along with cheap granaries and workers. Two of the three power traits, you can't do much better than that!

The Greeks are a much weaker civ choice. There's nothing particularly special about either the Phalanx or Odeon, so I really wonder what the inspiration was for this choice. It seems like there were much better choices out there; aside from the Ottomans, I also would have looked to the English perhaps as a better pick. Inca would have been the perfect combination, but of course they were already long taken. Anyway, as the previous paragraph indicated, I just have no clue what to expect from these two. I expect they will surprise us!

Team #4: DMOC and Nakor, Darius of the Holy Roman Empire. I know DMOC from Team Saturn in the CivFanatics Demogame, where he is another active participant in their team forum. Given Saturn's fate, that's perhaps not the greatest endorsement in the world, but who knows, this game could well be different. I don't know Nakor at all, another newcomer and wildcard to Realms Beyond.

This is one of the obvious Unrestricted Leader pairings, Darius (Fin/Org) with the Rathaus of the HRE civ. While no doubt it's a good one, in all honesty I think this pairing is overrated. Organized may be a good trait, but it's not uber by any means, and on only Monarch difficulty the maitenance savings aren't super useful. Honestly, I think the cheap lighthouses and factories are as good as the cheap courthouses, and with us turning off most Espionage for this game (no spies), that cuts down the value of having cheap access to Espionage Points significantly. The Rathaus, while good, is severely overrated in my opinion: on paper it looks incredible, yet in-game the effects never seem to be all that noticeable. When I played as the HRE myself in the past, I was underwhelmed. Getting faster Rathauses doesn't make all that much difference either. So yes, this is a strong economic pairing, but it's not as good as you might think right away. Watch the game and see how it plays out in practice; hopefully I'll be proven right on this. All in all though, these were not bad selections, just a little predictable.

Team #5: Iamjohn and Kodii and Zeviz, Mehmed of Inca. Here we have the triplet team, which took forever to make their civ/leader selections! All of these players are longtime RB veterans who have been part of numerous ventures in the past. Zeviz is probably the one I've spent the most time with in the past, and made some good contributions to the Apolyton Demogame team. Zeviz leans a little bit too much towards one main theme ("build more cottages!"), which may end up hurting a non-Financial team. Kodii has some great games in his past, yet he is/was part of the mostly_harmless/Kodii team which played a very silly opening in the RB Pitboss #1 game, and really should have been eliminated early on by their nextdoor neighbor. Overall though, I think this is a solid team composition, one of the better ones in this game.

Kodii's bunch was the one that made the unusual selection of Inca with the fifth pick, opting to forego their leader until second. The obvious reason was to get the Terrace, the best unique building in the game, which practically serves as a mini-Creative trait with its broken free culture. Unfortunately that meant that this team got the 10th and last leader pick in the game, and that really did hurt them. To take Inca with such an early pick means that you need to grab Expansive with a leader, for the cheap granaries, yet they were really hurt by seeing so many of the good Expansive leaders fall to other teams: Pacal, Peter, and Shaka were all off the board by the time it got back to them. The next-best Expansive leader left was Suryavarman (Exp/Cre), yet that would have been a waste for them because Inca nullifies the desire for Creative trait. Thus they made the best of a bad situation by taking Mehmed (Exp/Org), which is not terrible, but the Organized trait can't be what they wanted. Losing out on Peter (Exp/Phi) to sunrise's team was the real blow, since that would have been the perfect selection for them.

Overall this team should be fairly strong too. Inca is pretty good and they do have the cheap Expansive granaries (err, terraces) so they should be OK. In their situation, I probably would have argued for ditching Organized and going with Joao's Imperialistic trait for full-out city/worker spam mode, but I'm glad they didn't do that! Even if the maintenance costs would be rough, it would still have been tough to play against.

Alright, I'll do the last four teams later on. This post is long enough already.