Woden's and Chevalier Mal Fet's [Insert Clever Name Here] Team Thread

[Woden]

Nubia-Turn 7

Move warrior in the north and find much of the same...



One thing that does concern me a little is the tundra line. The above screenshot is zoomed out as far as I can. You can see the top of the map at the top of the screenshot. Unless there is a lot of water up there, that is a lot of tundra and could mean a lot of barbarians. We could be fighting off barbs all game unless we settle some cities up there. We will have to send some scouting units after we get a good sense of our continent so that we can at least tell when a camp forms, at the very least. 

Anyways, I finish the slinger and start a builder...



I send the slinger south and the builder is due in 9 turns but once I grow in 2 turns, should probably be 7 turns. Rome finishes CoL...



And Khmer grows to size 2. That is about it. 

CMF, 
I am pretty sure trying for an early religion might be a waste. With both China and Russia in the game, I think we will probably be 3rd or even 4th, depending if Khmer pushes hard for a religion. We would need 4 projects to race for the religion to try and get Jesuit Education. Most likely the first player to religion will take it, especially with oledavy's example in PBEM4. 

I am starting to lean towards a military opening and pushing for the 1st General, then go after someone early. I agree with my current reputation as a builder plus your unknown factor, we may be able to surprise someone, plus early aggression usually pays off. Also, in my defense, the wars I have fought so far have not been on my terms and ill timed. If I am the aggressor, I should do much better, plus over the last few weeks I have been playing around with Nubia and playing with early aggression. It is pretty easy when you can push out a huge army of 3 movement archers that promote quickly. 

I think it is still a little early to decide what path to take but if we see others collecting GP points soon-ish, we may want to head down the military path. As for targets, I actually think Germany/Russia might be a good target. There civs hit their sweet spot later, so we may want to take them out early. I really don't want to face Cossacks again. 

I have also been thinking about the set up of the map. With 4 teams and 4 continents there probably is 2 in the north and 2 in the south. The map can be set up 2 ways: teams stacked vertically and horizontally, meaning there is someone directly south of us and another east/west, or zig-zagged, where the teams are to the southwest and southeast of us and another team between them in the north. Either way, there can be water or land between us. I don't think it was ever established if it was one way or the other. I am thinking with the large amount of tundra in the north, we might have a zig-zag configuration. I guess it could be other ways but I think one of these 2 is most likely. Let me know what you think of this logic regarding the map.

[oledavy]

I am pretty sure trying for an early religion might be a waste. With both China and Russia in the game, I think we will probably be 3rd or even 4th, depending if Khmer pushes hard for a religion. We would need 4 projects to race for the religion to try and get Jesuit Education. 

I would tend to agree actually. It's just going to be really hard to beat Russia and China. Khmer is also strongly motivated to go for a religion for their Kongo/Relic cuteness, but you can realistically beat them if you really want to. It's still just going to be hard to get first or second choice of beliefs, so you might as well take your sweet time getting a religion and knock out other priorities in the meantime. Just make sure you're making those hammers you save count. 

I actually think because of PBEM4 people might be overvaluing Jesuit Education. It's good to be sure, but it worked there because of the combination of cheap Holy Sites on Japan, lots of mountains nearby, and early Religious CS neighbors. It also was very effective because the PBEM4 map was light on production, so having an alternate source of hammers was really good. Here, the team aspect makes it really strong, but it will otherwise require a lot of time setting up the necessary infrastructure to make it pay off. I would be especially suspect of China taking it, as they wouldn't even be grabbing it with a pre-existing Holy Site, and would need to build a couple and some faith buildings to really leverage it effectively. 

The one way around this that I can think of is if someone is able to make good use of Goddess of the Harvest. If someone grabs that as a Pantheon, they may be going for Jesuit Education. It's a strong Pantheon Belief that hasn't been showcased really well thus far. I don't think there are any other Pantheon or Follower Beliefs that have quite the same faith production potential. Even so, it will take them awhile for the harvest values to scale up enough for someone to really leverage GOTH effectively.

That being said, barring China or Rome trying to land Goddess of the Harvest, I expect Russia will take Jesuit Education. In their hands, it could be really scary, but that's a problem for another day.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Also agreed. Khmer is going to certainly be gunning for one, Russia's cheap lavras give them a leg up, and China is very probably going to bang out Stonehenge. We could bee-line it and still have no guarantee of even finishing second or third, let alone first.

I don't think that's a big deal, though. There are enough strong religious beliefs now - from Church Property to DOTF to Jesuit Education to Choral Music - that finishing 4th is still fine. We can take our time getting there, spending our hammers on perhaps getting scientific and commercial infrastructure up, and then taking our pick of the beliefs that are left.

I think we should both lay down Encampments at at least one of our cities, too - specialization is the name of the game in general, but if each partner could build up a city with an IZ, Encampment, CH, and (if possible) a harbor, that city would be a very strong destination for the other partner to send trade routes to, lots of production/gold/culture, particularly with the right policy cards. We don't want to compete with each other for the first GG, of course, but it'd also let one player lay down a barracks (probably Woden with his boosted archers), while I could lay down a stable and provide horsemen, for example.

This does bring up one question - do GGs boost allied units? I don't think so, but I don't know for certain.

[Woden]

I actually think because of PBEM4 people might be overvaluing Jesuit Education. It's good to be sure, but it worked there because of the combination of cheap Holy Sites on Japan, lots of mountains nearby, and early Religious CS neighbors. It also was very effective because the PBEM4 map was light on production, so having an alternate source of hammers was really good...

Agreed but I don't know if others will see it that way and may just see it as another source to build science and theater buildings. You really do need a strong source of faith for it to be useful because, not only do you need the faith to buy the buildings, you need it to buy units to spread your religion.

The one way around this that I can think of is if someone is able to make good use of Goddess of the Harvest. If someone grabs that as a Pantheon, they may be going for Jesuit Education. It's a strong Pantheon Belief that hasn't been showcased really well thus far. I don't think there are any other Pantheon or Follower Beliefs that have quite the same faith production potential. Even so, it will take them awhile for the harvest values to scale up enough for someone to really leverage GOTH effectively.

That being said, barring China or Rome trying to land Goddess of the Harvest, I expect Russia will take Jesuit Education. In their hands, it could be really scary, but that's a problem for another day.

I am pretty sure China will take Monument to the Gods for the bonus wonder production but Rome should have the first dibs on pantheons if nobody finds a religious city state (which reminds me to look at the religious rankings top see who is leading). I doubt with a custom map that Russia started near tundra but who knows but someone might have a faith generating resource near them. I guess we will have to see what if left when we get our picks.

Also agreed. Khmer is going to certainly be gunning for one, Russia's cheap lavras give them a leg up, and China is very probably going to bang out Stonehenge. We could bee-line it and still have no guarantee of even finishing second or third, let alone first.

I don't think that's a big deal, though. There are enough strong religious beliefs now - from Church Property to DOTF to Jesuit Education to Choral Music - that finishing 4th is still fine. We can take our time getting there, spending our hammers on perhaps getting scientific and commercial infrastructure up, and then taking our pick of the beliefs that are left.

Agreed that religion will still be worth the effort but my thinking is that it is not worth wasting science (researching Astrology un-eureka'd) and production (chopping 4 projects) to just lose the race to China and Russia. I think a good plan would be to resaerch Astrology 50% at some point and see if we find a Natura Wonder (there should be one on each continient since there are 4 on a standard size map, right?) Hopefully everybody else does go for an early religion and we can still get a medieval one (120 ggp).

I think we should both lay down Encampments at at least one of our cities, too - specialization is the name of the game in general, but if each partner could build up a city with an IZ, Encampment, CH, and (if possible) a harbor, that city would be a very strong destination for the other partner to send trade routes to, lots of production/gold/culture, particularly with the right policy cards. We don't want to compete with each other for the first GG, of course, but it'd also let one player lay down a barracks (probably Woden with his boosted archers), while I could lay down a stable and provide horsemen, for example.

This does bring up one question - do GGs boost allied units? I don't think so, but I don't know for certain.

If you were going to build horseman, you should probably work towards the first GG. My archers are an ancient unit and do not get the GG bonus. Barracks for me and stable for you sounds good. Having at least one production centric city each sounds good. I am pretty sure you are right about non-shared GGs but one other thing I was thinking about was Suzerain bonuses, are those shared? Seems like it would be a good idea to have them so teammates aren't fighting over the same city states but I am pretty sure that wasn't thought of when developing teams.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

I think we should both lay down Encampments at at least one of our cities, too - specialization is the name of the game in general, but if each partner could build up a city with an IZ, Encampment, CH, and (if possible) a harbor, that city would be a very strong destination for the other partner to send trade routes to, lots of production/gold/culture, particularly with the right policy cards. We don't want to compete with each other for the first GG, of course, but it'd also let one player lay down a barracks (probably Woden with his boosted archers), while I could lay down a stable and provide horsemen, for example.

This does bring up one question - do GGs boost allied units? I don't think so, but I don't know for certain.

If you were going to build horseman, you should probably work towards the first GG. My archers are an ancient unit and do not get the GG bonus. Barracks for me and stable for you sounds good. Having at least one production centric city each sounds good. I am pretty sure you are right about non-shared GGs but one other thing I was thinking about was Suzerain bonuses, are those shared? Seems like it would be a good idea to have them so teammates aren't fighting over the same city states but I am pretty sure that wasn't thought of when developing teams.

Ah, good point about suzerain bonuses. I hadn't considered that. The most logical thing is for each partner to focus on the complementary city states - ie one concentrates on Geneva, the other on Lisbon, boosting whatever specialization that civ has. 

I'm not sure that your archers will still be a viable unit by the time we are in position to actually hit someone. My feeling is that it will take a while to explore and locate our neighbors, and then the logistics of an invasion will still be formidable (although weirdly I think people still tend to overestimate how much of a defense water barriers pose, even though Sullla used the sea as a superhighway right to Archduke's capital in PBEM1 and Singaboy was able to basically ignore Japper's navy in PBEM4). It seems like the timing will be right as people are on the brink of crossbows, and if we're invading, any sane player is going to tech to machinery as rapidly as possible.

I still think that early aggression is the right play. Forcing any civ to divert hammers to military production over economic is an advantage, and if we've planned for it and dictated war on our terms, I feel we can't help but come out ahead (unless we seriously underestimate the amount of force needed and lose embarrasingly...let's not do that). Distracting Russia or China or Rome or Germany or hell anyone with a war before they get their snowballs rolling feels right.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Turn 8

Exciting times for team Woden/Chevalier! 

The main results of the turn are a flurry of international contacts:



A barbarian scout appears outside of Trafalgar, which frankly is good news so we can start working on the barbarian inspirations. Hopefully the camp isn't too close to horses, since that will be nasty. I keep working on the settler for now, but I probably ought to slot in a slinger afterwards - I don't want Woden to have to schlep his archers across the rough terrain between us to save me from barbarian invaders. 

Astute readers will also note that Woden is actually first to meet a city state of the two of us! 



He meets Kandy, which will be a nice boost for him on his pursuit of a Pantheon. I suppose he stumbled across a wandering Kandy warrior, since he hasn't reached the borders yet. Meanwhile, in the south I climb the hill separating me from my city state and meet Kabul: 



Both city states give us the easy quest of inspiring Masonry, which I can fulfill once I get a builder down to Salamis. That might follow my slinger build. Kabul is a pretty good find, I think - the boosted unit production is handy in the early game, and later on as it grows less useful I can add it to the British empire since it seems to have decent local terrain. I would have hoped for a Commercial city state, but you can't have everything in this game. As it is, we get our first meet envoys perfectly: Woden picks up the faith boost, and I get a production one. We couldn't have planned that better. 

In Trafalgar, I'm working the 3/1 tile and the Silks for 1/3/1 culture, to try and work towards Code of Laws a bit faster. I also amuse myself by tentatively laying out districts for the first two cities (obviously looking far down the road, but again I don't have much to think about right now! I have no doubt that Sullla, Brick, and Singaboy are coming up with complicated spreadsheets and giggling over their perfectly timed chain of wonder building, chops, inspirations, and unit builds over in their thread, but that's not really my style). Not sure if these take best advantage of adjacencies - I only grasp the basics, ie commercial hubs go by rivers, industrial zones by mines, districts boost each other, that kind of thing. Trafalgar is planned around getting as many production boosts for Woden's trade routes as possible, while Salamis is meant to be a naval production city with all those hills and quarries. I also slotted in the VA for fun - we'll see if I actually have the opportunity to build it!

[Woden]

Looks like CMF beat me to the good news. 

Nubia-Turn 8

Move warrior southeast and to my surprise find...



Find Kandy. Don't see any units, so must have met them due to having vision on the mountain. Pretty luck that they founded next to a mountain. Forgot to check on their quest, will have to do it next turn....



Kandy's Suzerain bonus is a relic every time you find a Natural Wonder plus 50% more faith from relics. Might be nice to have before we find one. Might want to see if I can get 3 envoys in them (through quests) and then kill them after I find a few wonders. Of coarse I would need to build a few shrines to house the relics first. Maybe let them build a holy site and then take them out to get a religion. IDK. 

Also notice that they are on the coast, or an island sea. I will have my warrior continue southeast to check it out. I check the rankings...



Looks to be a discrepancy between the team shown and the pop up. When I hover over Team 3 in the religion it shows Brick and Singaboy but we are Team 3. Must be due to CQUI updating immediately and the game UI being delayed a turn but IDK because Military Power shows the same thing but culture and science are correct. Maybe Brick finished a unit this turn(?), weirdness all around. Good to know that it maybe a little buggy since we haven't met anybody. 

CMF (I guess I should ask if you mind CMF instead of Chevalier Mal Fet), 
What do you think of taking Goddess of the Harvest as a pantheon? Faith can be good for all sorts of stuff: units with theology, missionaries when we get religion, great people, etc. I do plan on lots of chopping, so it might pay off. Another option is the district one but I do already get a production bonus to districts. Both are good but I also like the idea of denying GoH to someone who wants Jesuit Education. Any others that you like?  A cultural one is always good and I do have 2 pastures already but am not seeing any other animals around. I guess we have 12 or 13 days to think about it before I get to 25 faith. 

Nice find on the Military City State. Hopefully I can get an easy quest for more production on units. Let's keep an eye on that scout, if he heads to your city, I will move my slinger over that way before you get swarmed by barbs.

[oledavy]

@CMF, When I wrap up finals, I'll be happy to make a crack at a dotmap, district placement. 

I'm really tickled you guys found Kandy. I'm sure Mikeforall and Japper007 would kill for that. If I was Cornflakes, I would put 1 Natural Wonder on each starting continent, maybe a couple more out in the world somewhere. With that in mind, don't be bummed too much when you inevitably find yours relatively soon. This just means you need to get a scout abroad towards other people's continents sooner rather than later. A couple free relics won't be game breaking, but will be nice bonuses. 

I think this solidifies Woden as the religious end of this duo, especially as he now will likely have first choice of Pantheon. You can check faith production next turn to be sure. If Rome discovers a religious city-state, you still may need to run God-King to beat them. 

That being said, while first choice of Pantheon and potentially 3+ relics down the road is going to be nice, I would have much rather you guys found a cultural/mercantile/scientific city state. I think these are both prime candidates for relatively speedy incorporation into the imperium - especially Kabul. For Kandy, you're probably going to want to wait until you exploit it for relics. 

I do really like militaristic city-states for early expansion though. England is going to want to really focus on building units (Remember, you get the bonus on builders and settlers too) to fully leverage the bonus.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Looks like CMF beat me to the good news. 

Yeah, let me know if I ever step on your toes with reporting - with the way our turns are set up, if I report before you I'll always have the stuff that happened on your turn open to me, and I like to share anything interesting that comes up. I can focus just on my half of the realm if you don't want me stealing your thunder, though. 

CMF (I guess I should ask if you mind CMF instead of Chevalier Mal Fet), 
What do you think of taking Goddess of the Harvest as a pantheon? Faith can be good for all sorts of stuff: units with theology, missionaries when we get religion, great people, etc. I do plan on lots of chopping, so it might pay off. Another option is the district one but I do already get a production bonus to districts. Both are good but I also like the idea of denying GoH to someone who wants Jesuit Education. Any others that you like?  A cultural one is always good and I do have 2 pastures already but am not seeing any other animals around. I guess we have 12 or 13 days to think about it before I get to 25 faith. 

I don't mind CMF, or Chevalier, or Malfet, or Chevvy, or Chev, or whatever other nickname you have for my somewhat long and unwieldy name. Please, save yourself the trouble of typing that mess out every time. 

I was actually going to ask if you were thinking about Goddess of the Harvest. I know lots of your plans involve taking advantage of Nubia's enhanced ranged production to chop out some neat things, GotH seems to sync well with that. Since faith can be such a powerful, flexible currency with the right beliefs - almost as good as gold - I think it's worth taking. An added bonus is you'll deny it to someone like Khmer, who might want it to help churn out some more boosted missionaries. They might have another good faith-generating pantheon available, but denying people options while boosting yourself is never a bad move. 

@CMF, When I wrap up finals, I'll be happy to make a crack at a dotmap, district placement. 

I'm really tickled you guys found Kandy. I'm sure Mikeforall and Japper007 would kill for that. If I was Cornflakes, I would put 1 Natural Wonder on each starting continent, maybe a couple more out in the world somewhere. With that in mind, don't be bummed too much when you inevitably find yours relatively soon. This just means you need to get a scout abroad towards other people's continents sooner rather than later. A couple free relics won't be game breaking, but will be nice bonuses. 

Thanks, I'd appreciate that. City and district placement, while a modestly fun puzzle for me, are not things that I feel I grasp in any sort of depth - in fact, it was one of my Civ-ability limitations I had in mind when I said I wasn't sure if I was up to snuff in a multiplayer environment. This game is mostly a learning experience for me, with my main goal to turn in a respectable showing and not let Woden down. 

Now, I'm not sure that we do have a natural wonder on our continent. I'm pretty sure that Cornflakes said he can't edit the placement of natural wonders, when it came up that Japper had Piopiotahi on his starting island in PBEM4 (or perhaps it was during the map discussion for something else). I'll see if I can dig it up, but I think we're still dependent on the RNG for natural wonders, while the rest of the map can be hand-crafted. That said, the natural wonders are still out there. We can keep Kandy around while we explore - the nice thing about being allies is that I can discover natural wonders on Woden's behalf - then kill it off after we've got our relics. It'd be nice to let Japper and Mike find Kandy, then murder the city state before their eyes just to be cruel.  

That being said, while first choice of Pantheon and potentially 3+ relics down the road is going to be nice, I would have much rather you guys found a cultural/mercantile/scientific city state. I think these are both prime candidates for relatively speedy incorporation into the imperium - especially Kabul. For Kandy, you're probably going to want to wait until you exploit it for relics. 

I do really like militaristic city-states for early expansion though. England is going to want to really focus on building units (Remember, you get the bonus on builders and settlers too) to fully leverage the bonus.

Yep, that's the plan - I don't plan to build any monuments or other buildings for a goodly while yet, while I get my economy up and running. I'm thinking to exploit Kabul for perhaps a pair of settlers and builders, plus the early military that I will, er, use to take Kabul, to get myself up to 4 cities with decent improvements and a respectable military relatively quickly. I can go into infrastructure mode then and start building the districts (which I'll lay down to lock in the cost as they become available) and buildings in the cities. I can fudge a monument by working the silks tile, and I need the units sooner or later anyway so may as well use the bonus.

[Chevalier Mal Fet]

Found it:

I left the natural wonders where they appeared. I think there are 3 natural wonders, one of the others is a 1 tile lake that I think gives 4 faith to the west of oledavy on an island, and I honestly haven't a clue where or what the 3 one is. I only think there are 3 because I seem to remember that number of popups when I used the "reveal all" command to test the starting save. The natural wonder tool in World Builder is buggy so I didn't touch it. I haven't done extensive testing but I know for a fact that 2+ tile natural wonders can't be placed and removing them causes issues so I didn't touch that tool to be safe.