[SPOILERS] MYKI: Fiction or Science

[MYKI]

MYKI welcomes you to His thread on AlaePB1. Fashionably late, as ever, but since He has recently come into contact with Zanth’s warrior He felt His humble people may be of some interest to lurkers...

By way of introduction (since this is my first appearance in RB, despite having followed Gavagai’s PB12 and Bacchus’ PB13 efforts closely and read through some of the classic games – I particularly enjoyed the PB8 exodus), this is my second PitBoss, both with this group of players and ever. I am partly writing to prove to Gavagai that I am real and not a construct created by Bacchus to taunt him (more on that later), but also to learn. On a good day I win SP as an Emperor (more good days now since I have learnt that the farmer’s gambit is not always the way to go). If, therefore, I’m doing something stupid – and, let’s face it, I am - please do not hold back in telling me so. Get rowdy.

Anyway, it’s T45 at the moment. As it happens, I took some screenshots at T1, so I am able to provide a bit of context. Not much, but a bit...

[MYKI]

PREVIOUSLY ON ALAEPB1...



This is where I eased into consciousness, as Pacal of the Mayans. Financial/Expansive, with Holkans and Ball Courts. I was third to choose leaders, having, er, not come out of the last game terribly well (more later). Had a choice between something with Agriculture or the last remaining financial civilisation. Since I am still something of a rookie, and since this is vanilla BTS, I went financial.

Wet corn; dry rice. And only a warrior to explore. I sent him south onto the hill. Found nothing, so without wishing to delay further I settled in place. Error.



One East would have been great, wouldn’t it. So great. Ah well – I’m still working on a dot map that can bring these bits in. But let’s not cry over spilt milk.

I started with polytheism, reckoning that I could win the Hinduism race and then do agriculture before my first worker had mined that hill. This I did. Then to BW, then wheel, and I am now soon to finish fishing. Then I’ll try priesthood and see if I can’t get an Oracle.

As for production, I went worker. Then, though a misclick, my exploration warrior got eaten by lions, so I built another one. Then another worker, a settler, a warrior and I’ve just curled out my second settler. Some trees died in the process, but they died well.

Second city is built, S a bit – copper mine under development in the first ring, sharing the rice with the capital and with its own wheat. Second settler heading just W of the elephant you can see, where the third city will have clams in first ring and gold in second. And river and stuff. Then Zanth’s warrior appeared in the middle of it all, so I’m kinda waiting to see what he does.

So yeah, I think we’re up to date.

[MYKI]

Let’s face it, I’m not going to win this one on skill alone. Not with Gavagai and Bacchus in the room. I need to play the man, then. So who am I up against?

Gavagai (Quin Shi Huang of China – ind/pro; mining/agriculture): Probably needs little or no introduction. Basically he’s pretty damn good and I had the misfortune of being his neighbour in our last game. But is he invincible? He will act with a brutal rationally until a couple of rolls go against him or until someone behaves irrationally. Then it starts going wrong for him. So here the secret seems to be to avoid rationality. Hmm. I tried to explore this angle in our last game, and it worked very well until he got so angry that he crushed me irrationally until I was marooned on some islands in brand new cities. Perhaps with AI diplo I won't piss him off quite so much. Until I need to.

Bacchus (Hatshepsut of Egypt – cre/spi; ag/wheel): Perhaps a rung or two below Gavagai, but not for long. He lost his second city very early on in PB13 and so is doing much less well than he should be – he is one of the best for applying Microsoft Excel to civ. You should see his spreadsheets... although there is a weakness here as well as a strength – if you get too obsessed with the micro you start to ignore everything else that is going on in the game, and this is how you lose your second city to a stray warrior. Irrationality again may be my friend here, although these conclusions are leading me down dangerous paths. But when I have played Bacchus at chess I have found that if I am to stand a chance I have to get off-book as soon as possible. There is a short-term disadvantage in this, obviously, but strategically it can work wonders.

Zanth (Cyrus of Persia – chr/imp; ag/hunting): We were neighbours in the previous game. Probably quite evenly matched. I would possibly have spanked him had Gavagai not decided to closely ally with him and basically fight Zanth’s side of our war by proxy (thankfully we’re AI diplo this game). On the other hand, Zanth was quite unlucky in placement. Of course, he has immortals and so wants early blood. He also discovered me. T43, though, so I don’t know whether his warrior found someone else first. He is the only person I have met, so is the man I should be playing for the moment. Maybe, then, I should research hunting before priesthood, and get some holkans out. Only two of us started with mysticism, so I’ve probably got a bit of time in hand for the Oracle.

Bacchus told me that the benefit of writing these reports is that you actually end up thinking things through a bit more. You have to publicly defend your decisions. Turns out he’s right.

Hum (Gandhi of India – phi/spi; mining and mysticism and already the proud founder of Buddhism): Again, another near peer. Failed to make the most of being Roman in the last game, but came out of it all better than me. I’ll blame it on his distance from Gavagai. He plays with a straight bat, which is less of a disadvantage with AI diplo than it was with full on diplo like last time (the levels of intrigue became completely ridiculous). He just wants to build up a peaceful empire, a trait amplified by his civ choice. So one to invade if he’s close.

Alexander (Alexander) and Furungy (Willem) I don’t know. It was Gavagai, however, who recruited them, and they had the first two choices of leaders. Anything is possible...

[MYKI]

The other human intelligence I can bring to this analysis is the fact that I am British while the others are all Russian (don’t let the fact that they’re better at English than me fool you). So what cultural differences can we apply to this game?

Cultural Difference 1: When drinking to excess, Russians pass out while Brits chunder.

Every true-born Englishman knows the joys of the TC, the tactical chunder. Things are starting to get out of control, you go out back, chunder, and are REBORN – LET THE EVENING CONTINUE. A Russian will never know this feeling – they are the ones asleep or possibly dead in the corner. So. My opponents can be counted upon to stay true to the same strategy long after it has become clear that it is unwise. They will stay true to it as they dwindle into irrelevance. Not so me. I am destined to have an epic and humiliating disaster, be dismissed as irrelevant, and then come back into the fray harder, faster, better AND stronger. I’m pretty sure this would have happened in the previous game had the three leaders not called it a day a few turns after my chunder. Pretty sure.

Cultural Difference 2: Russians elevate mathematics above all the other disciplines.

If you can do maths, you can do anything. This is the Russian way, and leads to awesome things like this: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History:_Fi...Science%3F . History? I’m a maths professor – I can do history. History’s eeeeasy. This, er, this probably means that they’re going to be better at Civ than me, doesn’t it. But is Civ just maths applied creatively? Hmm. I’ve just been reading Sun Tzu, so we’ll see how he fares against Microsoft Excel.

That’s probably enough racial stereotyping for the moment. How about some Civ...

[MYKI]

So, yeah, Civ. Here's a snapshot of where I am in T46...



So that's a warrior and a settler you can almost see going to start a city 1W of the elephants (which are themselves a reason to go hunting after fishing, which has two turns left to run). City 3 will kick off with a monument so that it can get the Gold as soon as possible. My second city will probably build its fishing boat - it'll be whipping its monument as soon as pop goes to two, so there will be overflow hammers. First city's putting overflow hammers from the settler whip into a worker. It will then do one more turn of worker as I wait for the copper to come online (it's got two workers working it), and then it will build an axman as it gets the pop up a bit.

Zanth's warrior has just exited stage left.



So this is the world I found before my warrior was eaten. No close neighbours, it seems, and plenty of good city sites. The south warrior, which you can't really see, is going to start looking around what I hope is a resource-laden peninsula below me.

Apologies for the quality of the pictures. I suspect MS Paint is not the best place to reduce your pictures in size, but my aged laptop objects to running civ and photoshop concurrently. I'll find a better way for next time. The demos are completely unreadable, but they're also unimpressive - I'm 6th out of 7 for most things. This shouldn't be a surprise - I'm at the low point of my whipping cycle. I'm going to be whipping pretty aggressively until I have the ivory and gold online and a few cottages built.

Anyway. Onwards.

[Qgqqqqq]

Do you have a dotmap in mind for the rest of the area?
Great reports

[Commodore]

Using [screenshot][/scre-nshot] tags will auto-reduce the size for you.

[BRickAstley]

Like your analysis, made me chuckle glad to see you reporting here!

[MYKI]

Well here's a slightly higher resolution overview at T50 (and many thanks to Commodore for the screenshots tip).




As you can see, I've built my third city 1N of where I had planned. Less jungle, and gold in the first ring. A worker in en route to get that online. Elsewhere some pretty savage whipping - I knocked the capital back down to one to finish off the worker I had started on earlier. This is brutal, but by the time it next gets up to two my second city will have wheat and no longer need to steal the capital's rice. The second city was also briefly at a population of two. No more - the monument has been whipped, and the overflow should give my fishing boat a good headstart.

And I've started hunting, which will give me a) ivory and b) peace of mind on the subject of Zanth. In the meantime, since I now have copper, I'll build an axman next in the capital for killing barbarians. Then I'll do priesthood, and after that I'll need pottery - my capital's not one of the greats, but some cottages will make it respectable. I am financial, after all.

[MYKI]

Qgqqqqq wanted dotmap. I exist to serve:




Pretty rough, both on a planning level and on an MS Paint proficiency level. 4 is definitely next, although there is a dilemma there. If I put it on the cows I get the fish but not the cows. If I put it 1S of the cows, no fish. I'd quite like this to be a Moai city, and you need some hammers to build this, so 1S of cows would seems sensible. But I hate orphaning those fish. Orphaning the gems was bad enough.

As for the rest, I'll need a bit more exploration before I can finalise both the placement and the build order. Obviously the banana jungle one will need certain technologies before I'll build it. The island one will be nice financially. Between 5 and 8 is only the question of whether or not I should be pushing forwards towards Zanth (who I assume is pretty much due north of my new city). But it looks like there is more land to my S than I had expected, so maybe there's someone down there as well and I shouldn't build quite such an isolated city until I can afford to defend it properly.

Time will tell, although I'm intrigued to hear what you guys think.