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Welcome all to follow my progress.
As always don't read further, if you don't want to get spoiled or can't keep a secret. 
January 4th, 2011, 01:31
(This post was last modified: January 4th, 2011, 03:35 by plako.)
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Why Catherine:
I would have taken Wang Kon, if still available and I had made a decision not to take Philosophical leader after playing one in the PB2 and PBEM11. That left mainly Creative and Expansive leaders as potential ones. Catherine striked out as the most fun for me. Creative is good to have especially when there aren't many Creative leaders available. Imperialistic isn't optimal pair in Monarch difficulty, but not totally useless either. Having a fast early expansion will be beneficial assuming I can find some way to fund it. I would have preferred Organized over Imperialistic, but then I would had to give up Creative or Expansive and I didn't want to do that.
I also had some email correpondence with Antisocialmunky concerning nation pick and below is my reasonings for the nation pick.
Quote:China has best starting techs. UU and UB are mediocore at best, although half priced Pavilions are very good bargain, if we need to fight cultural war and somehow end up having Drama  .
My main candidate was Greece, but they were taken long ago. It would have made Catherine's fast start even faster with no need to invest on early spears and Odeon would have been reasonable UB for Creative leader, allowing us probably to ignore religious line a bit longer.
In this game I want to try to get very fast expansion and try to avoid the temptation to collect early religions and wonders. Catherine's main problem is economy after settling several early cities and I hope to overcome this via spamming libraries and hiring Scientists and tech to early Currency. After that everything is open.
Some thoughts about alternatives that were still available when I made my desicion:
Quote:Aztecs and their cheaper Altars would be alright, but terrible starting techs just doesn't appeal me.
To me China's main available competitor was France. Good starting techs. UU and UB are quite late, but I just want a fast start here and agri+wheel is very good in that respect.
Arabia doesn't fit well to what I'd like to accomplish although Madrassa would probably be quite useful to get either early prophet or Scientist + higher culture that alongside with Creative would definatley give us upperhand in early culture fights.
Antisocialmunky pointed out that nation with Mystisicm would give guaranteed shot at religion, but I decided not to go that way at least right from the start. However after BW we probably have a good shot, if we really want to try to get Religion (assuming we've farmable food).
Antisocialmunky also recognized that Egypt will almost certainly get one of the early religions and Arabia is the main competition although it might be they aren't both trying to land religion immediately.
At last here is small extract concerning Lord Parkin that I somewhat know from our past games:
Quote:Lord Parkin will compromise a lot to get early stonehenge. I actually know Lord Parkin from earlier games. We were in the same team playing a multi team demo game in CFC and I played also with him in the internal team game. He is strong in diplo and his style will appeal at least inexperienced players. His thread will surely be entertaining for the lurkers as long as he keeps spamming.
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Oops. Our thread had already dropped to last position so I better add some material in a hurry.
So here is our lineup:
1. Mackoti + Ioan76: Roosevelt (Ind/Org) of the Netherlands
2. Adlain + DL-Mania Muse: Wang Kon (Pro/Fin) of Arabia
3. plako + DL antisocialmunky: Catherine (Cre/Imp) of China
4. Locke + Cervantes: Isabella (Spi/Exp) of England
5. sunrise089 + DL-Rego: Shaka of the Zulu`s
6. Luddite + Atlas1998: Bismarck (Ind/Exp) of Sumeria
7. Lord Parkin: DeGaulle (Cha/Ind) of Egypt
8. WarlordDr: Washington (Exp/Cha) of Greece
9. Nakor + Gaspar: Asoka (Org/Spi) of the Vikings
10. Sleeping Moogle + DL-sciz: Louis (Cre/Ind) of Babylon
Here are some comments concernign our competition:
Mackoti + Ioan76 - Netherlands are useless in the beginning and very powerful after Astornomy and Steam power assuming lot of water tiles. He needs to succeed in diplomacy to avoid early conflicts. Mackoti has played pretty solid game on PBEM's so one more reason to hope he doesn't get to build up his economy peacefully. Roosevelt isn't the top leader which is understandeable, when you're last one to pick. However I'm not sure, if taking 4th industrious was really good idea. There will be real competition of the best wonders although Forge bonus is always alright.
Adlain + DL-Mania Muse: Wang Kon (Pro/Fin) of Arabia. Arabia is only nation starting with Mystisicm so they could pick one uncontested, but I'm not sure they do it. Wang is quite solid choice in this lineup. His economic potential is best of the and having some buffed Archery units early game isn't that bad at all. Now that I've met Adlain in PBEM11 and had a one chat he feels a bit inexperienced, but it is just one chat so I might be totally wrong .
More to come. We've plenty of time for pre-game analysis, if we decide to wait until 15th before starting .
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Locke+Cervantes: Totally new to me so no idea what they're up to. Isabella is good pick. England is nothing special early game, but if they get to Rifling in good position they've a good UU.
Sunrise+Rego: I'm glad they decided to join. They've the skills that should make a very powerful team. Rego has excellent MM and demographics skills and Sunrise is good at military tactics. I also suspect they're not making the mistakes of previous games again. Shaka is good leader and when they made their pick Zulus were probably the best pair for it. Agressive Impis are something that really needs to be taken into account, if I found them close by. They make nasty pillagers and copper needs to be hooked up fast and kept online, if they're close.
Luddite+Atlas: Luddite appears pretty knowledgeable although he hasn't been around in these forums that long to really know how his skills. Bismarck is alright. Forges are useful and, even if they lose some of the wonder races they'll get a bit more gold out their hammers. Main synergy with Sumeria is probably Priesthood to rush for Oracle and enables Ziggurats.
Lord Parkin: I've shared already some thoughts about him earlier. Maybe I could add that he is a tough negotiator and sometimes might need a reminder of some minor details of the deal especially, if they're unfavourable to him. At first glance De Gaulle seems a weak pick, but he was obvivously looking for maximum synergy to leverage Stonehenge and possibly continue in religious techs to use the Great Prophets. I obvivously don't have a big enough sample size, but I suspect he is more of builder than warmonger at least during early parts of the game.
WarlordDr: New player brought in by sunrise. Wild guess: he is a ladder player so I probably need to be cautious, if I found him close by. Haven't posted much. Sadly he took Greece that was my top nation. Odeons are not extermely useful for non-creative leader, but their UB saves early hammers.
Nakor+Gaspar: Asoka doesn't have expansion traits, but Organized will help their economy. Vikings is wild card and Org provides their UB half priced. Lot of water and they are good. I guess there will be enough of it to make Vikings useful especially when Krill has indicated this.
SleepinMoogle: If I remember right he did win PBEM7. At least above average player then. He took Babylon that has useful UU e.g. for handling Impis and for Creative leader reasonable UB. Bablylon would be my 2nd pick, but obvivously my favorites did go early.
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I didn't realize it started already(kinda did anyway). Well I expect at least one player to be out of the running quite quick with Shaka of Zulu(is this the first correct pairing in a RB PB?) unless there is a lot of water.
Hopefully that isn't us! If not, we could be set up for quite a nice early game with all the potential wonder chasing.
Not sure what are the strengths of us. I'm not particularly good at Civ level uber micro though I've played my fair share of diplomacy based games including Diplomacy.  Thus, you may or may not find me advocating somewhat realpolitik spins on situations.
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
January 7th, 2011, 00:56
(This post was last modified: January 7th, 2011, 03:01 by plako.)
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antisocialmunky Wrote:Hopefully that isn't us! If not, we could be set up for quite a nice early game with all the potential wonder chasing.
Zulu's are dangerous and finding them close by would be bad and probably forces us to focus on our military and city positioning more than I would like to. However Impis are manageable as long as we've a metal hooked up and have sufficient power level.
antisocialmunky Wrote:Not sure what are the strengths of us. I'm not particularly good at Civ level uber micro though I've played my fair share of diplomacy based games including Diplomacy. Thus, you may or may not find me advocating somewhat realpolitik spins on situations.
Catherine's and also China's main virtue is fast start up that usually leads to good production and food, but bad GNP when compared to others after the 1st expansion phase. Catherine works pretty much like Sury early game. Creative allows good city positioning and saves 30 hammers in most cities immediately and as Imperialistic she can have core cities planted very fast.
Assuming 3 food tile I'll probably start building warrior and tech BW. Plan is to switch to worker at size 2 and whip it when BW is ready. Obvivously this might change depending on our capital location.
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Do you ever world builder start positions? That was a fair amount of fun with Cyneheard to optimize our start for the last PB.
Yeah, our GNP will be poop though like you said, the libraries should help quite a bit for research. I just hope that the map is food rich enough to support the gameplan.
In Soviet Russia, Civilization Micros You!
"Right, as the world goes, is only in question between equals in power, while the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must."
“I have never understood why it is "greed" to want to keep the money you have earned but not greed to want to take somebody else's money.”
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Joined: Oct 2009
antisocialmunky Wrote:Do you ever world builder start positions? That was a fair amount of fun with Cyneheard to optimize our start for the last PB.
Early game yes. Later it becomes too tedious to maintain. At least for me .
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plako Wrote:Early game yes. Later it becomes too tedious to maintain. At least for me .
Seconded. After T50 or so in PB3...I gave up. And in that game we had all of 3 or 4 cities (Normal Speed) by then.
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Cyneheard Wrote:Seconded. After T50 or so in PB3...I gave up. And in that game we had all of 3 or 4 cities (Normal Speed) by then.
Or you could be like Maya in that game and have an accurate WB until practically the end of the game (man that was impressive and slightly ridiculous).
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