[Spoilers!] Dave Versus Financial

[oledavy]

He either fears his fate too much,
Or his desserts are small,
Who dares not put it to the touch,
To win or lose it all

"Who dares, wins." Very appropriate Let's hope my confidence in this strategy is not misplaced Will be very interesting to see how it all plays out.

On my way to dinner, but had a few initial thoughts on some of the picks:

[SIZE="3"]Justinian of the Vikings[/SIZE]

My guess is Mackoti saw the other two teams pick financial, said screw it, decided to be a hipster and go with his second choice, Justinian - a much better choice in my opinion.

His strategy won't change much, except it's less likely he'll cottage spam now, and more likely he'll city spam with specialists. The Colossus is still a likely build for him. The AP, Sankore, and SM would all also dovetail well onto a city-spamming strategy with IMP settlers.

I've already explained why I think financial just isn't as good on a medieval start. But why do I think IMP is so much? Two reasons:

1. Settlers are 50% more expensive, you save more hammers, get to expand faster than your non-IMP opponents.
2. Cities start out with granaries and lighthouses, they get up and running faster, pay off as investments sooner.

In civ, your cities start out as liability and it takes time and infrastructure to make them contributing parts of the empire. By starting out with a lighthouse, but especially a granary, the growth curve for cities is dramatically improved and they can contribute to the civilization sooner. On a prince difficulty map, city-spamming will be a very solid route to victory. Each town will turn a profit relatively soon after it's founding due to the faster growth and getting to sink the first chops and whips into libraries and forges instead of a granary. Coastal cities growth gets dramatically buffed by having a lighthouse from the get-go. For a medieval start, IMP does the same thing for getting your snowball rolling sooner that EXP does for ancient era starts. The +100% GG generation is just icing on the cake. This brings us to:

[SIZE="3"]Victoria of England[/SIZE]

Very straightforward strategy here: spam cities, cottages, beeline to redcoats, start killing stuff. Colossus would be a good build for instant 2/0/4 coastal tiles to support your research: spam coastal cities. The priest economy also dovetails well with a city spam. Problem is, I don't think Sian is skilled enough at empire management to get his civ to redcoats while still remaining at tech parity. Much will depend on how lush the map is, but I see him either doing really well and pulling it off, or crashing and burning.

[SIZE="3"]Elizabeth of ???[/SIZE]

English queens are popular this time around. This pick has economic focus written all over it. If Shoot is willing to eat a couple turns in anarchy, he could give us a run for the Music GA. I don't expect competition from Mack or Sian. He needs to hurry up and announce his pick

[Commodore]

It has been years since your forefathers thrived upon the distant green lands of legend. The horrific wars drove you and your people from their homeland across the oceans to this new and strange land. There are still stories circulated about those ancient lands, but you know that the true lesson of the past is that no other civilization can be trusted...from now on, there can be nothing but war until the land is truly yours.



Your start. Have fun!

[oledavy]

First day of class tomorrow, so this will have to do for now.

@Nicolae and Mardoc, Merry Christmas!

[ATTACH]2367[/ATTACH]

From what I can see right now, I'm leaning towards settling 1S and 1NE respectively. Would love to hear any second opinions.

As for me right now, time for :zzz:

[oledavy]

[SIZE="3"]Elizabeth of the Ottomans[/SIZE]

I'm surprised Shoot chose the Ottomans since he just finished a game as them in PBEM17. This means in his time at RB, Shoot has played both the Ottomans and India twice. I personally prefer a bit more variety (says the guy playing Gandhi in two games ). That being said, I think the French might have been a slightly better choice, with the strength of the musketeer more than making up for the mehness of the Salon. The only reason they did not make my civ list is that I'm playing as them in PB6. Nonetheless, the Ottomans are still a really good choice, and neither their UU or UB needs much introduction. I can see Shoot going one of two routes here:

1. Beeline gunpowder, draft a horde of Jans, go kill someone with older units.
2. Focus on the economy, use FIN/PHI & Hammans to grow large productive cities.

With their +25% against mounted units, I would prefer to send my Conquistadors against either Sian or Mackoti when it comes down to it.

So, all the picks are in. None of them really have any sort of synergy, just strong traits paired with strong civs. My personal ranking:

1. Gandhi of Spain (Spiritual, Philosophical, Conquistador, Citadel)
But of course

2. Justinian of the Vikings (Spiritual, Imperialistic, Berserker, Trading Post)
Good leader, and from the civ pick, it sounds like Mackoti has a plan. If the overseas lands are as lush as the legends promise, his naval focus just got a lot better. Oh, and he should be a shoe-in for Circumnavigation with Nav I ships right from the outset.

3. Victoria of England (Financiai, Imperialistic, Redcoat, Stock Exchanges)
Spam financial cities everywhere, beeline redcoats - a solid, if unoriginal strategy. If he plays his cards right, Sian should be in good enough shape come redcoats to go on the offensive

4. Elizabeth of the Ottomans (Financial, Philosophical, Jannisary, Hamman)
Good economic traits, a good UB and a solid UU, I rate it 4th becuase I think Imperialistic > Financial. Shoot can either go full out military, or play a farmer's gambit and grow that FIN/PHI powered economy.

Traits Appearing in this Game

Financial: 2
Philosophical: 2
Imperialistic: 2
Spiritual: 2

We really do need just Suleiman and Mansa to get all the combinations of Fin/Phi/Spi/Imp.

So, without further ado, let's get this game going!

[SIZE="3"]Ded-Lurker Question Time![/SIZE]

So, I said in my 2nd post that our strategy would need to be flexible, and just seeing the starts and Commodore's blurb, I already have a couple potential changes.

1. Given the fact that richer lands are promised overseas, do either of you think it would be worth it to consider diverting to astronomy right after Military Tradition? Or perhaps sooner?

2. There is no strong bureaucracy capital location currently revealed. As a result, I was thinking it may be worthwhile to get to paper and education through theology. It's 229 beakers cheaper, get's us a 2nd religion, access to theocracy, and the possibility of nabbing the Apostolic Palace. The Hagia Sophia is more powerful on a medieval start, but I would rather build eight extra workers instead of the wonder (unless we have marble, in which case I might consider it). What we lose are maces, the ability to spread irrigation, and of course, bureaucracy. With the possible capital locations, the commerce boost just won't be very big, though the hammer bonus would still be nice with all those hills.

Just looking at the map, the Priest Economy is looking like a strong option with it's per-city bonuses on a grassland-poor map, especially for the Imperialistic civs. Spiritual temples, combined with Cathedrals would be a good synergy. However, it doesn't mesh well with my plan to get Scientific Method early and obsolete monasteries. I hadn't intended to go that route when I was in the planning stages for this game, but now I'm starting to consider it.

Thoughts?

[oledavy]

Oh, and is there any possibility I could draft someone to perform C&D/Map Analysis for me?

[Mardoc]

Thoughts? Thoughts!

My biggest worry about your proposed initial city sites is Berserkers. Both sites are coastal, no defensive terrain, etc.

On the other hand, your proposal does leave you with two strong cities to start with, while every inland site I can see is weaker. Maybe having a stronger start will let you build enough extra defenses/tech past Berserks faster/etc.

1. Given the fact that richer lands are promised overseas, do either of you think it would be worth it to consider diverting to astronomy right after Military Tradition? Or perhaps sooner?

No, probably not. Don't divert from the plan! If you can take the whole initial Pangaea, that'll be sufficient. Those are the cities that will be best developed, you can go after the colonies later on. But don't try to outdo Mackoti on the water.

2. There is no strong bureaucracy capital location currently revealed. As a result, I was thinking it may be worthwhile to get to paper and education through theology. It's 229 beakers cheaper, get's us a 2nd religion, access to theocracy, and the possibility of nabbing the Apostolic Palace. The Hagia Sophia is more powerful on a medieval start, but I would rather build eight extra workers instead of the wonder (unless we have marble, in which case I might consider it). What we lose are maces, the ability to spread irrigation, and of course, bureaucracy. With the possible capital locations, the commerce boost just won't be very big, though the hammer bonus would still be nice with all those hills.

Just looking at the map, the Priest Economy is looking like a strong option with it's per-city bonuses on a grassland-poor map, especially for the Imperialistic civs. Spiritual temples, combined with Cathedrals would be a good synergy. However, it doesn't mesh well with my plan to get Scientific Method early and obsolete monasteries. I hadn't intended to go that route when I was in the planning stages for this game, but now I'm starting to consider it.

Fewer beakers is good. Second religion is better than a punch in the mouth - but really, we don't want a Cultural victory, so it's not that valuable. AP - is good, but what's the opportunity cost?

You're talking about skipping Longbows and skipping Maces, right? What does that leave to keep you alive until Conquistadores? Archers and Axes?

I guess all in all I still come back to the same thought - Stay on Target! I've no strong opinion on if the Priest econ would get us to our fun horsie-dudes sooner or delay them - but I think that's the yardstick everything else needs to be based on, anyway. And I tend to think that we'll need one decent medieval-tier unit to spam to keep us alive until we make it there. I get the feeling that defense is what you're thinking of jettisoning, and that scares me.

Oh, and is there any possibility I could draft someone to perform C&D/Map Analysis for me?

It's a Commodore map. That means it's probably mostly hand-drawn, very fair, with some sort of interesting twist. I doubt it has much relation to a mapscript, though.

[oledavy]

No, probably not. Don't divert from the plan! If you can take the whole initial Pangaea, that'll be sufficient. Those are the cities that will be best developed, you can go after the colonies later on. But don't try to outdo Mackoti on the water.

Commodore's post in the organizing thred restored my confidence that I can win by just taking over the starting continent. So, we are in agreement.

Fewer beakers is good. Second religion is better than a punch in the mouth - but really, we don't want a Cultural victory, so it's not that valuable. AP - is good, but what's the opportunity cost?

Yeah, now that I reconsider it, the AP is too much of a hammer investment when I'm also producing an early GA and chopping out a library and the Great Library.

You're talking about skipping Longbows and skipping Maces, right? What does that leave to keep you alive until Conquistadores? Archers and Axes?

Maces aren't a huge loss, as they're a primarily offensive unit. We'll be defending with crossbows and pikes, so we'll be in good shape to face any offensive that comes our way. Machinery is going to be our first or second tech. As for Engineering, we'll tech it as needed in response to anyone nabbing guilds.

Essentially the debate is which is better:

1. Get to Liberalism 229 beakers sooner, landing Christianity and having theocracy for 7xp Cuirassiers (no vassalage).
2. Getting bureaucracy, maces and farms spreading irrigation.

I already explained why I think bureaucracy is worse in this situation and maces aren't a huge loss, but is it weaker than going through theocracy? I don't really know.

Alternatively, we could start off teching machinery, and use the Music GA to bulb theocracy then direct research paper. However, since I'm playing against two imperialistic civs, I would rather use a GA bomb to secure some territory for myself before they settle it all. Still an decent option though.

I guess all in all I still come back to the same thought - Stay on Target! I've no strong opinion on if the Priest econ would get us to our fun horsie-dudes sooner or delay them - but I think that's the yardstick everything else needs to be based on, anyway. And I tend to think that we'll need one decent medieval-tier unit to spam to keep us alive until we make it there. I get the feeling that defense is what you're thinking of jettisoning, and that scares me.

I think our defenses will be in decent shape with engineering and machinery. Just make sure you guys keep me away from the shiny wonders Other than the three (the GL, the Taj Mahal, and Kremlin) that are key elements of the overall plan.

Oh, and we need a theme/city naming scheme.

I already have to name my capital Pindicator IV

If you don't name your capital after him I'll lose all respect for you.

Darrell

But after that, I'm open to anything Ideas anyone?

[Commodore]

But after that, I'm open to anything Ideas anyone?

If global lurkers can chime in...famous destroyed cities?

[oledavy]

If global lurkers can chime in...famous destroyed cities?

From history or RB games?

If the latter, I really like that idea (though I think that someone else considered this in their spoiler thread and discarded the idea). I would need help compiling a list of the most well-known. The first two that come to my mind are Mason and The Warning.

EDIT: That would also go well with a Spanish Inquisition theme: burning cities at the stake (as well as open up infinite Spanish Inquisition jokes) And yes, I know Gaspar did something akin to that in PBEM24, but that was the Chinese Inquisition! This would be the legit Spanish one

[slowcheetah]

From history or RB games?

If the latter, I really like that idea (though I think that someone else considered this in their spoiler thread and discarded the idea). I would need help compiling a list of the most well-known. The first two that come to my mind are Mason and The Warning.

Pindicator probably has to be in there somewhere :neenernee and NoSpace's taking of Britannia from Pegasus in PBEM13 was pretty epic.