[PB60] Lazteuq and Civac

[Miguelito]

Org doesn't give cheap cothons, Exp does. And I see plenty of synergy in Darius of Vikings.

[Lazteuq]

Org doesn't give cheap cothons, Exp does. And I see plenty of synergy in Darius of Vikings.

Ah! Thanks for correcting me, it makes sense now. I was getting lighthouses and harbors mixed up, probably because the Rhye's and Fall mod switches them for whatever reason.

[civac2]

We are second in almost all categories. At most one player settled in place. (GKC hasn't played yet.) From the max and average values we can see that it is exactly one player. In case of ties later ids come out ahead. Our id is 4 with only Jowy having a larger one. Consequently, Jowy must be the player who settled in place. This makes sense to a degree as he has Fishing and a sea-focused civ.

Now it depends how similar his start is to ours. Assuming it is close to the same, he is working the whale and researching a tech with a 1.2 bonus which must be Animal Husbandry.

[Tarkeel]

We are second in almost all categories. At most one player settled in place.

I find rival average population the easiest way to see how many have settled, especially with only 5 rivals.

[civac2]

Some thoughts:

Let me preface this by saying that I have absolutely no idea how to play a religious game. (You are overrating my ability a bit in general.) In previous PBs and even in SP I applied the rather simple approach of rexing extremely hard and then crawling to Currency via various trickery. That's about as subtle as a brick to the forehead yet the maps rb map makers have come up with lately simply favor this approach. Seeing this map my first impulse is to expand to 15 cities by turn 80 and then build the pyramids for fail gold.

Assuming we do go for a religion there are some challenges. Firstly, this is a small map and a bunch of players have chosen early aggressive UUs. Falling behind in expansion to chase religion or wonders is dangerous. Secondly, we have a rival in Mjmd who also starts with Mining/Mysticism. He can build Stonehenge or The Oracle faster and with less opportunity cost. These wonders grant prophet points while being useful by themselves. Conversely, teching Priesthood, building a temple and then working a 021 tile for 34 turns for a 5gpt shrine sounds terrible. It is of course possible Mjmd doesn't plan to go for religion. Maybe we can suss it out with C&D.

Religion can theoretically provide +1 happiness and a free border expansion in the early game. These are very valuable but not guaranteed. We could go Meditation as this is the cheapest way to get a religion or we could go for one of the later religions. Monotheism comes to mind. Organized religion is the part of religious tree which is most obviously useful. It could even help with expansion but that requires lucky religious spread again. I don't think a shrine is worthwhile unless our religion spreads unusually quickly.

Overall, I would tend to de-emphasize the religious aspect and fall back on the high production, flexible economy with Serfdom/SPI you wanted to try out. We should still get a religion at some point for the religious civics which are all very useful. But that is a call you should make.

Pyramids and Shwedagon Paya could be worthwhile. We have the multiplier resources for both.

Threat evalution of the aggressive UUs:
War chariots - We have resourceless spears.
Numids - These have the well-known weakness against horse archers. If you do not have HBR they are quite dangerous. Jowy attempted to attack me with numids in PB56. I was a bit spooked on discovering that C1 Numids gets odds against spears if the spears are attacking over a river and that there was a non-negligible part of my territory where the numids would actually be faster again due to the rivers everywhere. We can counter them pretty well with woodsman 2 holkans. No need to waste beakers on HBR if it comes to it.
Praetorians - Don't have a counter. (Or do you have an idea?) We would need to double whip a bunch of axes (probably dispensing with barracks) and build walls in border cities. The hope is that GKC understands that attacking someone with AGG praetorians is not a way to win a Civ4 FFA.

[civac2]

What's the civ password?

[Lazteuq]

Password is 'fox'.
I played turn 1.
Demos after settling: (only GKC had played)

I'm in a hurry, I'll write more later.

[civac2]

Took the turn in the interest of turn speed. I moved the scout NE of its poition on the forest. There is an ocean fish NE-NE from that tile. What do you want to do with the scout in general? Circle around north, then west , then back to the capital? Also played around to figure out opponents gnp values.

Edit: Turn has rolled. So you can play if you have time atm.

[Lazteuq]

I definitely agree with focusing on SPI and Serfdom, not religion. I think overinvesting in early religion is risky and not especially rewarding. I don't put much faith in natural spread, so I'm more interested in using OR to build missionaries for 40h guaranteed spreads in the late classical/early medieval time period. A lot of the fun religious stuff like Theocracy, Pacifism, and even the AP don't arrive until later in the game anyway.
I don't have much interest in chasing early wonders. I think that high-risk, high-reward play makes more sense in a crazy huge game like 59, but here, I don't like it. Mjmd's IND presence really changes things.

That asessment of UUs sounds good. My only other idea of countering praets is getting early catapults. Sadly Math->Construction doesn't work well n a Monarchy-centric tech path.
My idea of anti-praet preparation is having axes started in build queues, establishing early road connections everywhere, and having scouts watching the border areas.
Also we can try harassing GKC with our early Holkans to delay his growth before IW. I'd forgotten until your post that Holkans don't need copper!

Edit. Cross-posted. You beat me to the turn, I just got home. I'll post a picture and think about scout moves now.

[Lazteuq]

Gazing into the fog to the scout's W-NW, and NW-NW, I see plains forests. Not very interesting, and slow to navigate. So I think it's better to go back southeast along the coast and explore northwest later with a warrior.
I'm guessing that sheep and stone area is an island.

What secrets did your GNP witchcraft reveal?