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Are you, in fact, a pregnant lady who lives in the apartment next door to Superdeath's parents? - Commodore |
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[PB59] Ichabod realizes Civ 4 PB is for closers only
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Here is the starting screenshot. Let me know when you've decided whether to lock in either the civ or leader or what you'd like to reroll. Confirm in the next two days please. I will be rerolling for everyone that rejects either civ or leader or both once I have all confirmations for this round of selections.
Your start: ![[Image: ACFXNZB.png]](https://i.imgur.com/ACFXNZB.png)
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
February 16th, 2021, 09:48
(This post was last modified: February 16th, 2021, 15:36 by Ichabod.)
 (February 16th, 2021, 08:35)darrelljs Wrote: Yeah, that's Juicy. SIP seems obvious, scout NW? Edited. I see a lot of options here. We could settle in place, we could go for the plains hill (loses corn and fogged tiles; gains wheat and some riverside cottages). There's 1NW, for a lot of forests and more hills, while perhaps making other cities more difficult to settle and losing a turn on the corn. FInally, we could settle on the sugar. We lose 1t, but we get a 3f city tile, which is similar to a plains hill? Not sure. It's certainly a very powerful start, but the edits make me believe everyone has the same/something of equal power level. In such cases, I dislike the fact that we have unfogged tiles in the Capital BFC (perhaps that's pigs to the southern hill, or maybe some more seafood). In fact, why can we see tiles like the northern incense and the patch of land to the NW (those tiles are fogged, so we shouldn't be seeing them)? So, we get a whole lot of info one those tiles, but we can't see the BFC to make a proper settling choice. That's the game, but I'm not as much into gambling as Darrell.  We can move the scout straight south, that would at least reveal that hill tile to the south of the settler, right? Worth doing if we decide to go for the sugar plant, Anyway, I was hoping for a simpler start. Why do you want to make me think?
February 16th, 2021, 15:36
(This post was last modified: February 16th, 2021, 15:37 by Ichabod.)
Since I'm not good at defensive C&D, I'm trying some offensive maneuvers. In other news, I should probably try to sim all this.
On the topic of starting techs, I'm guessing mining is very good, as it enables early BW, if we so desire. Wherever we settler, the best tile to improve is a grain, so Agri is good (pretty cheap in the mod, though). I wonder what is the best time to get the WB? I'm guessing we can make almost any starting techs work here.  
PB59.xlsx (Size: 44.19 KB / Downloads: 2)
Unhappy that this map is "Huge" size and that is just on some page of the tech-thread to find out. That has more severe implications on the tech-cost than the Emperor setting... Anyway, I'm preparing an excel so whoever wants can sim around. I've set it up that we settle on the Sugar but of course everyone can be adjusted, it's just numbers. The cells in yellow need to be updated by hand if you change the first turn configuration or the settling spot. edit: Also, if you want to try it with the assumption that we keep the IMP leader, you have to type "yes" in column AD ("Wonder?") for every row in which a settler is produced. It should be fairly obvious when you see the table yourself what I mean, I've pre-filled it with a potential T25 settler start. edit2: excel attached to this post, good night
Well, it seems that all this time without Civ 4 has a price. I'm feeling pretty lost.
Thanks a lot for the spreadsheet, Serdoa. I'll try some variations later today. Do you have a general feel about what worked? Right now, i'm tempted for the sugar plant. We get the +1 food, we get rid of an annoying jungle, which will likely make micro easier at some point, we get access to sugar with just calendar (if we feel like skipping IW for a while). We also get more riverside than in place, more forests as well. The plains hill also seems pretty good. Main thing about it is that we have a killer second city, that gets the wet corn and shares a whole lot of good tiles. My gut is that both these options are better than in place.
I've not tried many different variations but my general feel is as follows:
1) Settle in place is wrong. The one turn you gain is definitely not making up for getting the worker out several turns faster (5 foodhammers [fh] per turn vs. 4 fh means 12 turns vs 15 turns) 2) PH is a trap. You need a full turn to travel with the worker to the wheat and 2 more to travel to the deer after that. You could go over the Ivory to save one of those, but than you improve the weaker tile first (4fh vs 5 fh). You "gain" the added issue that, afaik, that jungle could spread 1W and 1S and at least from 1W spread even further. Probably not gonna happen, but still something to consider. So in total you lose 3 turns just for moving while the sugar-plant allows you to directly improve corn and get to deer with one move, saving you 2 worker turns. (I'll add here that the PH-plant does allow you to get to 20fh/t for settlers with just 4 pop as IMP, so in that specific case it might be better for that one build - I assume that we will soon be over 4 pop as with this start alone we can already have 6 which allows for 26fh/t for settlers with IMP and therefore 4t settlers. I still think whipping them is better as it blocks your food for just 2 turns with IMP, not several more but at 4t production times this could start to not be true anymore as regrowing takes longer than 2 turns.) 3) Research will be slow. Germany is providing us with two of the techs we certainly want for this start so we probably should keep it, even with the weak UU and UB. I shudder to think what it would cost us if we got a Myst/Fishing civ instead... 4) My excel is wrong because I've added an Anarchy-turn on T23 but it still counts the production for the settler on that turn. On Anarchy-turns you have to put in the same production as on the turn preceding the Anarchy, even if that build finished on that turn. I've added an updated one. 5) Barbs are on (!) so you will need more defense. Overflowing the settler in a warrior and regrowing before getting a worker could be worth it. 6) Our one worker certainly can get the wheat improved as well at the start and I believe we will settle the second city somewhere in that direction as it could share the Ivory with the capital as well as the fish (depending on settling location of course). 7) Fishing early is most likely not worth it, at least not for the commerce. Before CtH 2.0 it could be worth it, at least if you are FIN, but with the current nerf (you need a Lighthouse to get the FIN-bonus on water tiles) it is not. You will instead want early Pottery for Granaries and Cottages. 8) Depending on what we see when we scout and my point no. 7 I retract my earlier statement that we will settle close to the wheat the second city. Thinking about it, that might not be as obvious as it seems now and maybe settling eastwards and sharing the corn (or the Deer northeast-ish) is better. 9) Sailing will be necessary early than later. With that many players I doubt we have one continent for everyone, that was done in the past and IIRC never worked out all that well. Therefore my assumption is several continents (and 25 players equally distributed only leaves you with 5 "teams" of each 5 players if you want that), which suggests islands and naval warfare. 10) Is the above is correct, these islands might be barb-infested till we can reach them, something to keep in mind. 11) I have no eleven, I just didn't want to end on 10, that looked as if I was doing it deliberately.
February 17th, 2021, 13:08
(This post was last modified: February 17th, 2021, 13:10 by Ichabod.)
Those are great points, Serdoa. Thanks a lot. I'll focus any simming effort in the sugar plant, because your findings seem to make a lot of sense.
I appreciate the point about tech costs as well. Expensive teching makes me think Germany might be a better pick than we anticipate. We get both Grenadiers and Factories earlier. In the case of grenadiers, they'll be available at Chemistry, which is a bulbable tech (right?). Any other player will need Military science for them or Military Tradition for Cuirs/Cavs. Perhaps there's an advantage to be had there. That's just a plus, anyway, because I agree that starting techs will be key here and this start can't get much better than a hunting/mining pair. Considering this, I'm fine with just keeping Germany. About the leaders: IMP/IND has economy problems in the late game. Would the early game advantages make up for it? The pair leads me to believe that, with proper planning, we can get one of the great early wonders (very difficult to get more than that, with 24 opponentes). What's the best case scenario here? Pyramids, perhaps? Would an early representation into a big capital with cottages give us enough of an advantage for late game? Would MC early + forges give us a boost that we can turn into a better late game position? I'm worried that Emperor + Huge will make IMP impossible to leverage into a settler lead, as maintenance + tech costs won't allow for indiscriminate settling. AGG/ORG fixes the economy on the basis of keeping the slider higher for most of the game (would an early Academy be good with this pick?). But we get simply no extra hammers in the beggining of the game (most early traits give about 30 hammers per city - CRE, EXP, IMP; SPI and CHA give a bit less, more indirect bonuses). Can we overcome this deficit and rebound in the mid game, where we get a lot of production bonuses on buildings and our gold savings start to give an economic advantage? ORG/AGG is also good for water heavy maps, with Lighthouse + Drydocks (I'm assuming those will come into play into such a big game - they are available at steel, which we'll want anyway). Usually, I'd focus on the early game. But this is a 25 players game, so perhaps the late game bonuses are better? Right now, if I was to make a choice, I think I'd hold into AGG/ORG of Germany and reroll IMP/IND. But I'm very torn about this.
Oh, if we can hold one of the leaders and only re-roll the second than for certain I would do that yes. IND/IMP imo is not good. Wonder hogging is bad even in small games so IND does lose some of its bonus already. And in a big game, you'll potentially lose those wonders too. I honestly think that IND is not good enough on its own.
And I agree with you AGG/ORG might be ok or even good. Looking at it I think with the recent nerf to FIN it might be that ORG actually is the best economic trait. Lighthouses will be helpful, Courthouses as well on such a large map. And while I don't value AGG much, it might be better than I give it credit for as the unit cost could later on become very high if we have to defend on several sides at once, which is likely if we're doing well. |
