[SPOILER] Catherine of Maya - Greens - Kyan

[Kyan]

I'll put some random pictures here shortly to avoid accidental exposure to my nuggets of knowledge (ha).

So... i'm going to be flying solo as:

[SIZE="7"]OF[/SIZE]

[Kyan]

Targets:

Win. Unlike Babylon game where i just wanted to have fun and avoid being a 'non-factor', i intend to win this game.

Simples!

Right, so how best to do that?

That's a long way away, let's play for a bit and see what happens.

Civ Choice:

Maya. I like Maya, i wanted them for PB3 but they got picked before the list came back to myself. Nice unique building. Unique unit is good if being choked or perhaps to assist an early rush- irrelevant if not.

Definitely wasn't the best pick there. I get the impression this Civ was picked by Speaker with the Vets game in mind. Useful for Always War.

Starting techs are mining and mysticism. Mining is obviously great. Myst... hmm.

Tricky one. I probably won't pursue a religion out of the gate but that's mostly because of my leader choice. Myst isn't great as i am already creative so don't need to tech it for monuments anyway.

Will likely research whatever tech is needed to hook up my food first.

Overall i'm happy thought. On the plus side, i'm not pink anymore! :2dance:

Leader choice:

I'm fairly gutted to be honest. The only leader without financial or philosophical in a no tech trading game. Going to make life fun.

Creative is useful of course and i will make good use of it. Imperialistic isn't top notch BUT those 2 in correlation do lend themselves to massive expansion.

super fast settlers combined with fast popping borders = super land grab time.

Also worth noting that creative means i can build the Mayan ball court half price which is nice.

====

Overall: I think this is the worst out of the 6 combinations by a small margin but that's no problem. Makes it more fun

[Kyan]

Hmm, the more i think about my combination, the more i like it. I guess i was just a wee bit disappointed not to get either philo or financial in a no tech trading game.

[SIZE="5"]The Grand Mayan Plan[/SIZE]

shh don't tell anyone!

[SIZE="4"]Phase 1:[/SIZE]

Operation Gerrof My land

Utilise imperiaistic and creative and make a massive land-grab. Build enough military to stop anyone getting ideas without ever having a strong army.

Have sufficiently sized core cities that, if necessary, i can whip emergency defenders out of.

Be everyone's friend and use the potential threat of holkans to get NAP's out of anyone and everyone.

My tech rate won't be the best so this is very risky but i'll just have to ensure i grow and micro the cities efficiently. This is NOBLE on inland sea (meaning it's very likely to not have world map as that would defeat the strategic value of the sea). Maintenance costs are nigh on irrelevant. The Mayan Empire will be huge.

Aim to have the biggest empire of anyone (from both games) initially. Bear in mind the vets have always war on so this is a lot easier to do in the greens game.

Key things to watch out for:

Don't cock up and die. This is the major one, if people see my land growing like mad and want a piece of me. That's where diplo and the like will come in.

Make sure i have enough workers. I'll try to keep at least 1.5 workers per city as much as possible. Workers are immense on multiplayer as there's just so much for them to always do.

[SIZE="4"]Phase 2:[/SIZE]

Don't Be Krill

Be nice to people and avoid a dogpile. All the while growing vertical and becoming a powerhouse. If i can get to this stage and not get the rest of the world against me then i'll be in a very strong position.

Key things to watch out for:

Malakai and Jowy. I expect Malakai to attack me in this game. There will be no exploit/dler funny business here. And we all know how Jowy loves dogpiles

[SIZE="4"]Phase 3:[/SIZE]

It's about time

Decide on the best way to win this game. Do it.

Key things to watch out for:

Not doing it.

[Speaker]

Don't Be Krill

This is a really good plan!

[Kyan]

Ok, apologies for the delay (i'm sure you'll get used to it if you read the pb3 thread for my team haha).

So, without further ado. The start:



first impressions: Wowzer. Speaker, where have you been all my life??

Key thoughts: settler is currently on a plains hill which would give a lovely production bonus. BUT, and this is a big [SIZE="4"]BUT[/SIZE]...

I would give up the wet corn.

Not bloody likely. Maybe in the Always War game, that would be the best bet to settle on the hill - i'm not the expert.

I used the warrior to move SE onto the hill to see if anything else interesting was to be seen.

[Kyan]

I found stone. Now, i had the option to move SW, SE with my settler and get all 3 food resources into the first ring- as well as a lovely floodplains i discovered by moving the settler SW.



Stone isn't as 'big' for me as it could be though. It's not an amazing tile and it has plains tiles around it. Pyramids aren't amazing for me as they would be for a philo civ, great wall is useless and so is stonehenge.

I decided it wasn't worth the turn to move to settle on the hill and settled next to my lovely food resources.

Also, with this being quick speed and us being creative now, i'd be able to get it hooked up soon if i wanted to anyway.

[Kyan]

Lurker question:

I'm really confused. See the above screenshot, shows me researching mining. I had agriculture and wheel as my two starting techs. Don't Maya normally get the mysticism and mining?

Maybe this has been caused by the data editing that had to be done to get the game going?

[Swiss Pauli]

I guess it must be a data editing problem. I wonder whether you've got some other civ's lovely starting techs and they're stuck with Mining & Myst

[Kyan]

I guess it must be a data editing problem. I wonder whether you've got some other civ's lovely starting techs and they're stuck with Mining & Myst

Haha wouldn't that be a shame?



Borders popped. revealed Silver just south of my capital and that i'm on the western edge of the map.

From my testing and for the sake of fairness i would expect the set-up to be either:

X.....................X.............................X

........SSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEAAAA........
X......................X.............................X


or...

...............X.....................X................

.X......SSSSSSSSSEEEEEEEEEEAAAA.....X..
...............X.....................X................


Wow, those are some real technical drawings but you get the idea i hope. I'll try and find out which of the 3 possible combinations i am as soon as poss. If the map is similar to diagram 2- then i need to explore both north and south extensively, and ensure i am sufficiently defended on both flanks.

[Twinkletoes89]

Those drawings are almost as primitive as mine :-)

Good luck and enjoy it!