I forgot something! We left a few settings (barbs/difficulty) up to Plako, so let's check that out, shall weeeee:
1. No Barbarians. Very significant... This actually makes it much harder to get to Heroic Epic. This does mean that there's more potential for farmer's gambit here, because if I happened to get some sort of peninsula or "roped off" area, I could play much more riskily.
2. Prince Difficulty. AKA low maintenance, so again, REXing will likely be the name of the game. This fits nicely with No Barbs, although Prince barbs aren't exactly fearsome.
3. Map settings - not a lot can be gleaned from here, but it's worth noting. Doesn't say anything about world wrap... There's not an easy way to determine that is there? My guess is that it'll be cylindrical, as someone mentioned they didn't like Toroidal. Given that we're on Prince difficulty though, Toroidal wouldn't be as painful, so it's still a possibility. I'd like to figure this out before I start churning settlers, so does anyone know a good way to determine the world wrap? Possibly the maintenance formula or something?
dazedroyalty Wrote:Remember what happened in our last AW game?
Get out! Out of my thread, now!
dazedroyalty Wrote:Yeah, that's what I'm here to prevent!
Errr... Alright, I guess you can stay.
If anyone even thinks about complaining that I'm spamming at the moment, then... I've got nothing to say about that except that this is the first spam post in the thread, the rest have been genuine.
I will probably be dedlurking also. You won my heart with the (late, lucky you) Mansa Musa pick.
Quote:Doesn't say anything about world wrap... There's not an easy way to determine that is there?
That's what I thought too, but since you asked, I became curious and I figured out a way.
1) Make sure camera flying is enabled in your .ini file.
2) Open the game, turn on camera flying! (Ctrl-Alt-F)
3) Zoom out a medium amount, so that the revealed tiles take up maybe a third or half of the vertical and horizontal screen space.
4) Pan around (by moving the mouse). If you can see a far-off copy of your revealed land in the north (or south), there is N-S wrap. If you can see a far-off copy of your revealed land in the east (or west), there is E-W wrap. Both together means toroidal!
What are the other players' techs? Does anyone else even have mysticism? Also, I am pretty sure it's a typo that two of your opponents are Mayan.
I will probably be dedlurking also. You won my heart with the (late, lucky you) Mansa Musa pick.
Great! I've definitely never had 3 dedicated lurkers in a game before, so this is kind of exciting . As for the Mansa pick - I was as surprised as you were that it fell to me, as I thought it was the strongest set of traits available.
Quote:That's what I thought too, but since you asked, I became curious and I figured out a way.
1) Make sure camera flying is enabled in your .ini file.
2) Open the game, turn on camera flying! (Ctrl-Alt-F)
3) Zoom out a medium amount, so that the revealed tiles take up maybe a third or half of the vertical and horizontal screen space.
4) Pan around (by moving the mouse). If you can see a far-off copy of your revealed land in the north (or south), there is N-S wrap. If you can see a far-off copy of your revealed land in the east (or west), there is E-W wrap. Both together means toroidal!
This... This is golden. I'm not 100% sure I did it right, as I had to pan for what felt like forever, but I eventually found a far-off version (distinctly different angle, as opposed to merely coming back to where I was on accident) when I panned to the east. I reset the field of view, and tried both north and south for forever, and I came up with nothing. So, I can say with probably 75-80% confidence that we are on a Cylindrical map. Thanks for the tip there.
Quote:What are the other players' techs? Does anyone else even have mysticism?
Gaspar is the only Mysticism civ, and he's not financial so "Financial on a lake" is not in play here for him. This means that if we both went Buddhism, we're virtually guaranteed to tie, meaning I'd get it due to my (again, lucky) going first in the turn. So Buddhism is there almost for sure if I want it. I feel like it would be quite worthwhile too, given that I am spiritual. I just don't like the idea of having my worker sitting around building roads for a half dozen turns as a result, but it might be worth it. I'm leaning towards going for it. Any opinions?
Quote:Also, I am pretty sure it's a typo that two of your opponents are Mayan.
You need fishing to work lakes anyway, so that shouldn't be an issue, you definitely get there first if you want.
Given that you are Spiritual, I might skip it for now though. Spiritual biases you towards getting techs like Monotheism and Code of Laws a bit earlier than usual, which will probably give you a religion anyway. It also makes it even more important to get BW as quickly as possible, since you get into slavery for free. Also worth considering is that in a 5-player game there are plenty of religions to go around. (And if other people reason similarly you could even get Buddhism or Hinduism fairly late!)
Well hey, 1 less lunatic in the world is always helpful. Speaking of the two lunatics (I mean that in the most endearing way possible), let's check out Turn 1:
The lines are my effort at trying to pretend like this turn was worth reporting, so bear with me. Warrior will likely follow the orange line for scouting to get visibility as best as possible. Again, it's the obvious move, but if I draw the lines I can pretend like I thought about it for more than .5 seconds. I noted that the body of water in the top-right is a lake, rather than coast, which implies that the land up there is not just a mini-peninsula, but rather is part of the continent. I'll need to explore it then at some point.
It is interesting to me that Serdoa and Sandover did not settle in place, but rather opted to move. My guess is that Plako offered everyone a similar choice of being coastal? I'm envisioning this map being some sort of circular-ish Pangaea, in which case it woud make sense if we are each 1-2 tiles off the coast. I wonder if we all are, and the two of them decided to go for it. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. If we aren't all near the coast, then I'm guessing it involved being able to see 3 food but only use 2 of them (if you can call plains cow a food).
My only thought about religion was that if you're worried about early rushes than doesn't that make getting BW (and other military type techs) early even more important than usual?
Re: Lewwyn/Gaspar - I don't think I know anything about Lewwyn at all. But the Gaspar/Nakor thread in PBEM12 is the most interesting one in that game, partly coz with 2 of them they're talking back & forth all the time. So some vague-ish thoughts on Gaspar - spoilery for PBEM12 and PB4.
Gaspar & Nakor seem to be running a good cop/bad cop routine for diplo - in part trading off Nakor's rep for sneakiness. It seems from the things they say to've evolved just out of how they go about things, rather than be a particular thought-out-in-advance plan. So it seems like Gaspar gets on chat with some other civ and enthuses about how whatever it might be sounds like a good idea, lets be friends, lets go attack X etc, but then say he'll have to run it past Nakor first. Then Nakor sends out an email that basically says "Yeah, but no. We'd rather have this more advantageous to us deal instead". Not sure how that'll play out when it's just Gaspar tho. Gaspar also seems to see himself as not particularly good at diplo (inclined to give away too much advantage, I think).
He also seems to want to play aggressively - hasn't panned out that way particularly in PBEM12 yet, but he's the one saying they should've hit Kyan already or that they should join in with Whosit to take out GE, Nakor's the one advising patience and getting the NAPs. Gaspar says things like "I'm the crazy one, you're supposed to bring me back to sanity" to Nakor, so my read is he'll always think of the aggressive option first then the peaceful one, even if it's the peaceful route he decides to take.
Edited to add: Here's the perfect example from PB4: http://realmsbeyond.net/forums/showpost....tcount=169 Plako's somewhat abrasive message has sent Gaspar into a frothing rage I'm not getting the impression that Gaspar will interact well with either Sandover or Serdoa.
Struggling to articulate this last bit - he seems to think they got a raw deal with the map in PBEM12 favouring Kyan's India so much, and I think he feels they have a raw deal in PB4 too (tho I can't quite remember why, choice of Civ possibly? but that'd be their fault so dunno). So is he the sort of guy who can always see why the grass is greener over there?
Overall my take on him is that given your own style of diplo I'd expect you to be able to make friends with Gaspar & encourage him point his aggression at one of the others, particularly if you can encourage him to think one of them got a "better" start than everyone else. Now watch events prove me wrong
scooter Wrote:It is interesting to me that Serdoa and Sandover did not settle in place, but rather opted to move. My guess is that Plako offered everyone a similar choice of being coastal? I'm envisioning this map being some sort of circular-ish Pangaea, in which case it woud make sense if we are each 1-2 tiles off the coast. I wonder if we all are, and the two of them decided to go for it. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. If we aren't all near the coast, then I'm guessing it involved being able to see 3 food but only use 2 of them (if you can call plains cow a food).
It seems quite possible that everyone got this same interesting starting layout. I think there are actually even a few more possible settling choices than you mentioned, though I also expect they are all pretty balanced. One is, you can move S-SE and settle next turn on the plains hill. You still get the corn/cows and you get an extra hammer. It's especially good if you are expansive. Alternatively if you're expansive, moving 1S lets you at least get to 4h/turn for the bonus right from the start, and you might pick up good tiles in the south, who knows. I'm assuming that if the start positions are similar, Sandover/Serdoa moved onto a plains hill.
![[Image: t0_settings.JPG]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/PBEM14/t0_settings.JPG)
. As for the Mansa pick - I was as surprised as you were that it fell to me, as I thought it was the strongest set of traits available. 
Fixed. Lewwyn == Ottomans
Speaking of the two lunatics (I mean that in the most endearing way possible), let's check out Turn 1:![[Image: t1_explore.JPG]](http://dl.dropbox.com/u/5826112/PBEM14/t1_explore.JPG)
