[PB73 SPOILERS] scooter's Oracle

[scooter]

To try to peek into Luddite’s head for a sec… I don’t think he’d agree that there is no need for commerce. This is big and small, so boats and naval parity are needed to actually win here; if he can’t compete on that front it doesn’t matter how many artillery he has to crush an immediate neighbor; he just gets walled off with wood, out-teched, and rendered irrelevant. To me the pick looked like ‘oh, cool, let’s get this awesome thing! … oh wait… how am I going to actually make this work for more than just one neighbor? … well I guess we will need some kind of economy…’

I guess I'm a bit skeptical on this. I think if you can just kill everyone, you can capture a continent and just win that way. Stuff Artillery in coastal cities and use your captured land to tech. I just think if you pick Artillery you should build your whole draft around acquiring more of them rather than softening it by hedging. But again, merely writing this out is seriously risking me hilariously dying to them in a month.

[Zed-F]

While I’m interested in the opponent analysis, I do have a couple other questions…

1. About what turn does it start to make sense to allow the capital to focus on things other than settling our first ring of cities? I imagine that we will probably need to whip the capital a couple times before we allow it to grow and build moai / wonders for instance, because we need time to hook up food/happy/strategic resources and research religion. Or alternatively, pump out a couple HA to harass a neighbor such as Oxy or Yuris who might be vulnerable to harassment. (I don’t suppose we will know which of those plays is the correct one until we get some scouting done…)

2. Does it make sense to play out a start from each of our rivals’ perspectives for (say) 25 turns to get a sense of how fast they can grow, or is that too much effort and we should just wait for scouting to identify any neighbors we might have before we analyze their start?

3. Are you planning do do the micro yourself or are any of the dedlurkers helping with that (not it, btw, I just try to ask questions.) I recall that you prefer the strategy of the game to the micro aspects.

[scooter]

While I’m interested in the opponent analysis, I do have a couple other questions…

1. About what turn does it start to make sense to allow the capital to focus on things other than settling our first ring of cities? I imagine that we will probably need to whip the capital a couple times before we allow it to grow and build moai / wonders for instance, because we need time to hook up food/happy/strategic resources and research religion. Or alternatively, pump out a couple HA to harass a neighbor such as Oxy or Yuris who might be vulnerable to harassment. (I don’t suppose we will know which of those plays is the correct one until we get some scouting done…)

Depends on too many factors to know right now. Who are my neighbors, how far are they, how many good city sites are available, etc. Maybe after a half dozen turns or so I'll start to have an idea, but I feel like this could go a lot of different ways.

2. Does it make sense to play out a start from each of our rivals’ perspectives for (say) 25 turns to get a sense of how fast they can grow, or is that too much effort and we should just wait for scouting to identify any neighbors we might have before we analyze their start?

I definitely don't have the patience to make 3 more sandboxes, so not really. Once I know who my closest neighbor is I might do a mental sim to guesstimate how far along they might be, but that's about it.

3. Are you planning do do the micro yourself or are any of the dedlurkers helping with that (not it, btw, I just try to ask questions.) I recall that you prefer the strategy of the game to the micro aspects.

I can micro OK and will probably play with this a bit more just because the start is so unusual that I need to test things. For example, I just saw lake fish and 4T WB and assumed it would be good, but testing it and it's actually a bit awkward due to the fact that WB-first means you sort of have to grow to size 2 because building the worker with food when you have a hammer bonus makes no sense. Anyway, as a result worker-first tested faster for me in my first pass at comparing them. If any of you want to take a stab at sandboxing, here's a zip file with the mod, wbsave, and t0 save all in one place.


https://www.dropbox.com/s/dlp2o7x1nfqcc5...s.zip?dl=1

[Zed-F]

Some notes which may be obvious to others:
- seems likely at this point that city 2 would be 3N and city 3 would preferably be 3E1N or 3E2N because the only capital food that can be shared in a direction where we would want to initially expand is the lake fish.
- because of bureau the lake fish is actually less good food-hammer wise than improved stone, ivory, or deer (so long as we don’t chop those deer/ivory forests), which I suppose further incentivizes sharing it. Of course the fish gives more commerce and food-hammers aren’t everything.
- at size 4 with 2 camped deer, camped ivory, and stone we make 13-8=5 food/18 hammers which is enough to 3-turn workers & is almost enough for 4-turn settlers, without considering whips / chops. Once we get a quarry this goes up to 19.5 hammers. We can expand quickly enough and with few enough economic concerns that we probably need an extra scout or so to find places to settle as fast as we can expand. (Edit: accounting problems…)

[Qgqqqqq]

I don't have super great memories of Oxy as a player as I never actually played against him, but like Luddite I recall him being a competent B to B+ type player. Quick glance at the game spreadsheet says he won a game with Commodore and Q, although it was one of those tight AW games that are sort of a different skillset. Q, do you remember much about him as a player? Anything he's particularly good or not good at that you remember? I think his selections could make him a contender if he plays his start right and gets neighbor luck.

Wait really? I found it, but I have absolutely no memory of playing in that game Ten years will do that to you, but I remember games from around then so no idea why that was memory-holed to such a degree.

I will say he's got the combo I'm most scared about in this game by a wee while - admittedly in part due to the unpredictability of military techs. From his position I wouldn't go for the Kremlin for a good while - REX for 80-100t, then think about it in the early-Medieval, probably with math chops. Engineer is an option but I think takes him too far off the beaten path.

If we're near him, and especially if we're on the 2-man continent, I think we should consider kicking his sandcastle - as he's got a terrific combo for outpacing us longer-term.

(I forget if I mentioned it, but my meta-assumption is two continents, one with three players and one with two. 4-1 or 2-2-1 is too unfair, 5-0 is likely too boring, so I'd expect two continents, accessible by galleys to each other. )

[scooter]

Next up, it’s the death muskets.

Mr. Cairo - Willem of France (Agriculture/Wheel), Gunpowder





This one feels like the scariest to me. When I looked at Artillery and SAM, I felt like the 1-move restriction limited how early they could be an impact. A resourceless 2-mover that can get defensive bonuses though is another animal entirely. Pair that with an extremely strong capital with super high foodhammers, and if he really wants to, there’s very little stopping him from building one super fast and just killing someone before they can respond. If he’s willing to gamble and build 1-2 before a settler, I predict he will get a kill out of it. Whether or not that’s a good idea or not is an open question, but I would not like to be on the receiving end. If I am, well, I’ll likely be joining the lurkers sometime next month. If everyone was on the same continent you could make a case for him going for early conquest or something, honestly.

Similar to Luddite, there’s not a ton of synergy here. I don’t mind it quite as much, but I still wonder why you don’t just take Ragnar and really go for it in the early game and trust Financial to save you once you’ve secured the additional land. That said, it’s so much easier to rush with Musketeers that I get a bit more why you’d try to greed a bit and try to have it both ways. Willem is obviously a commonly liked BtS leader, although in the alternate universe where RB kept playing vanilla Civ4, I wonder if Willem would have continued to be a high priority pick? Right around the time all the mods became popular, Creative was already starting to slip in priority. Some of that is settings - the infrequency of playing with barbarians dulled one of the early game benefits of Creative, for example. The other thing is players just got better at placing cities. Early games here were filled with dotmaps straight from single-player, and over time they evolved to put a heavy emphasis on first-ring plants and micro-intensive tile sharing. Take this start for example. Obviously you SIP. Your capital has so many resources though that you HAVE to share them or else you’ll just be happy capped and wasting good tiles, so you’re going to consider spots like 3S or SW-SW-S that don’t need border pops in your early cities.

That said, it’s certainly not bad. Willem does grant you the obvious Library/FIN synergy, and I think we’ve established the versatility of Musketeers being anything from turbo-rushers to units that age really gracefully and will be useful to have around for 200+ turns. He’s the neighbor I’d least like to be next to I think. His Agri/Wheel techs are pretty much fine here as the Corn/Wheat buy him plenty of time to get the other early techs.

As a player, I’m not sure what to make of Cairo. The games of his I’ve followed more closely seemed a bit unfocused, but he’s also won a game that I didn’t follow as much. He made a somewhat ominous comment in the setup thread that made me concerned about turn pace (and would downgrade expected performance), but then he’s made up for it by enlisting Hitru who is a very smart guy who could help him a ton. It feels like of all the players here, Cairo has the highest variance in expectations. I think he could show up engaged, run over a neighbor, and cruise off a huge land edge, or he could fumble through opening turns and find himself down 4 cities to us turbo-starters with his only real prize a unit that is barely more hammer efficient than a Horse Archer. My money is on him being a really serious contender.

[scooter]

Some notes which may be obvious to others:
- seems likely at this point that city 2 would be 3N and city 3 would preferably be 3E1N or 3E2N because the only capital food that can be shared in a direction where we would want to initially expand is the lake fish.
- because of bureau the lake fish is actually less good food-hammer wise than improved stone, ivory, or deer (so long as we don’t chop those deer/ivory forests), which I suppose further incentivizes sharing it. Of course the fish gives more commerce and food-hammers aren’t everything.
- at size 4 with 2 camped deer, camped ivory, and stone we make 13-8=5 food/18 hammers which is enough to 3-turn workers & is almost enough for 4-turn settlers, without considering whips / chops. Once we get a quarry this goes up to 19.5 hammers. We can expand quickly enough and with few enough economic concerns that we probably need an extra scout or so to find places to settle as fast as we can expand. (Edit: accounting problems…)

City 2 definitely looks like it’ll be 3N barring something unusual. Wet Corn + Gold is impossible to pass up. City 3 will depend a lot more on scouting. You’re right that sharing the Fish early on would be ideal, but 3S is not impossible if there’s a seafood down there as it can share the Deer and the capital can supply the WB for a fast starting city with little to no additional worker turns required to get it to self-sufficiency. You’re likely right that expansion direction priority doesn’t mesh super great with an early city 3S though.

If we're near him, and especially if we're on the 2-man continent, I think we should consider kicking his sandcastle - as he's got a terrific combo for outpacing us longer-term.

(I forget if I mentioned it, but my meta-assumption is two continents, one with three players and one with two. 4-1 or 2-2-1 is too unfair, 5-0 is likely too boring, so I'd expect two continents, accessible by galleys to each other. )

This is basically my guess too. Two continents organized as 3-2 that are accessible either directly by Galleys or slightly more likely chained by islands. That’s within the realm of plausible things B&S can spit out.

[Zed-F]

As a player, I’m not sure what to make of Cairo. The games of his I’ve followed more closely seemed a bit unfocused, but he’s also won a game that I didn’t follow as much.

I feel like as long as he's engaged, Cairo is close to the level of Commodore / Pindicator. Maybe slightly less good but really there's not much difference there. Also Hitru seems a major asset both to improve quality of play and to help keep interest levels up. Definitely that's not a civ we want to be next to.

[Commodore]

I like these comprehensive previews.

[shallow_thought]

Also Hitru seems a major asset both to improve quality of play and to help keep interest levels up. Definitely that's not a civ we want to be next to.

I'll leave Commodore to describe exactly how scarily effective Hitru can be as a dedlurker. He has the words.

I hope this game turns out to be as much fun as the idea deserves. It's been a good (unspoiled) read so far.