[SPOILERS] Ceiliazul and Timski go To War: Brennus of Spain

[Ceiliazul]

Sea to the north was not entirely a surprise - essentially an inverted outer-island start (with the inner islands bounded by mountains). Cripples early REX-ing, bolsters Organised even on Prince, and should trigger Commodore to build The Great Lighthouse

More scouting is required to know the impact of islands. I'm not sure ahou GLH on alays war. Seems like the absoute advantage would be reduced, but the relative advantage is still large compared to your opponents.

Short term, Work Boat first is still safe, assuming we follow that with a Warrior. If we work the Fish and Deer, the Warrior would complete end of turn 9, precisely the same moment we grow to size 3, which could then give us a 5 turn Worker build. Safer is perhaps 1 turn working the Fish to size 2, then working the Fish and plain-forest-hill, which gets the Warrior out end of turn 8, with enough overflow for a second Warrior 2 turns later, if things are looking bad or we fancy Warrior rushing.

We don't fancy warrior rushing. Realistically no one should be into early war except a possible sentry posting on a forest-hill tile. I feel completely safe with our current build order. As soon as we hit size 2 we can pop out a warrior to prevent empty capital razing. You are correst my warrior is only 9 tiles from GE's cap.

For now I'm assuming Kyan borders Commodore, while Dazed borders GingerEagle and Kyan - since putting Kyan next to GingerEagle would be unbalanced

Good point, let's assume that for now.

#1 - If next turn we see GingerEagle's Warrior heading towards us: Pause the Work Boat and build a Warrior. Alternatively retreat our scouting warrior immediately, since I see no good defensive sites for blocking their Warrior with ours.

Probably wuld have alread seen him. Next turn the warrior will begin to circle back toward Commodore. I'm debating a 2t detour to the beack to see how much ocean we're dealing with...

Good catch on the grass hill, I suspect you're right.

[timski]

My GingerEagle Warrior paranoia is moot, since the demos suggests they only have a Scout. Combined with 4 turns warning of an approaching Commodore, and the likelihood of Commodore having Kyan to contend with, I'm feeling much relaxed already .

The open question is therefore whether we go straight for Bronze Working, or stick with something closer to the original plan? Albeit perhaps with Settlers and military before Stonehenge.

(Apologies that my posting style has contained a rather random stream of consciousness. It should settle down shortly .)

[Ceiliazul]

yes, I feel more relaxed too. Your stream of consciousness is actually great: we lack concrete information so it is the age of brainstorming.

Thanks especially for the demo anaysis, very helpful.

With Gingereagle's scout start, poking a warrior in his face might be very effective... if only to make him build early warriors himself.

I need to decide that now though, before my warrior turns back around toward the capital.

[timski]

First warfare in general, which is definitely not my strength, so read with caution:

(I've referenced a few completed games here without spoiler tags.)

I only skimmed GingerEagle's completed games, but they seem rather impulsive, and not terribly strategic. For example, GingerEagle seemed to spend much of PBEM18(A) in sporadic border wars, bouncing token enemy forces back and forth, seemingly never getting to grips with their opponent in battle, nor managing to best them in economy.

I rate Commodore much higher on player skill, and consequently as far more of a threat in this game. But Commodore can also be quite impulsive. Since we (well, especially me) are inclined to plan ahead, the biggest risk for us is probably that one of our neighbours simply does something we didn't anticipate, or cannot react to. Akin to the NobleHelium of PBEM21, routinely frustrating Lewwyn by never having the units available to exploit unexpected gaps in their opponents' armour.

I suspect Greece's Phalanx are too early to be incredible on this map, unless Copper is easily accessible, of which I have doubts. Even then, Charismatic and Financial are not traits that naturally lend themselves to early warfare. Plus, if Daze is GingerEagle's other neighbour, Imperialistic Dazed is far more likely to put land pressure on Greece than us. Since I contend that Dazed is the player most in need (from opponents' perspective) of being slowed by early war, pointing any GingerEagle aggression west, not east, would be ideal.

Coming into the Mace era we're going to need serious military, because while Samurai may not be great, they are very viable for Commodore's first war. Everyone is close, so single move armies are relatively strong. In slightly later eras wars will need to fought over sea, vastly complicating the normal "build Knights and attack" logic, that tends to dominate mid-game RB wars. It's almost inevitable that we will look like the most vulnerable target, by virtue of lacking early advantages.

Those 2 observations define the first strategic warfare option - a viable Mace era army: First to discourage or deflect or at least not automatically roll over a play dead against Commodore. Second for a post-Phalanx war against Greece, if Greece is looking vulnerable by that stage.

That contrasts to the alternative - a dig-in and wait strategy: A huge stack of Longbows to hold the choke points, and early Astronomy to trash what will likely be a water-critical second half of the game, probably cleaning up with Rifles.


Specifically now, on GingerEagle:

Gut feeling, based on the strategy above, is to play easy with GingerEagle - not settling too aggressively, maybe no cheap Scout kills, so that we don't upset them.

But simultaneously if we think they might build something quirky, it is damn tempting to walk our Warrior up to their front gates and see if their city is empty, and potentially take them out of the game before we need a strategy. Capturing, rather than razing, may even be possible, given the proximity of the city to our capital, and the likeihood of Dazed otherwise grabbing most of the land freed up by the removal of Greece. At least we'd get vision on the site.

We would be gambling that they can't build a Warrior from nothing in however much warning they'd get. The demos are hard to read here, but we may not have the only plains hill capital. They may, like us, have 4 turns of vision on our approach, at which point all we'd do is panic them. While they may build military, they may send them east!

The flip-side for us is that scouting Greek lands leaves our land heavily fogged. With the ever-present risk of Commodore, we couldn't safely take our second Warrior north. The decision appears to depend on how confident you are that there is nothing more than a bit of coastline north, than can be revealed 10 turns late, without leading us to settle or tech badly in the meantime.

[Ceiliazul]

First warfare in general, which is definitely not my strength, so read with caution:

I love your posts and brainstoring, if you included a bullet point summary it would make responding in detail much easier. I'll do my best here to hit your points.

-Metagame, I don't see a benefit in an early GE exit. Like you said, I have no economic advantages early, and don't want to start a REX race.

-Commodore in the age of maces may well mean war. I agree I'll look like a god target at the time. I'll be on the verge of a poweful early industrial age, and will need defense ready then.

-I think the sea can wait. I'm not even worried about scouting it 10t later will hurt. That's because we already see a couple of spots for land based cities. We want a port, and soon! But not at the cost of mainland development.

[timski]

1. I'm looking for good reasons to risk an upset with Greece: If there's no advantage in Greece exiting early, all we gain from advancing towards them is: (1) Probable sight of their capital - certaintly useful for C&D, but to be honest I would rather see Commodore's capital. (2) Scaring Greece into thinking we are aggressive - which has honnets' nest potential - we may put GingerEagle on an impulsive war footing that will in turn force us onto a military path, even if neither intends to actually attack!

2. I'm looking for good reasons to chance home development: Scouting our own lands by turn 15 (maybe slightly later if we don't rush Bronze Working) so that: (1) We can answer the question, do we have Copper anywhere we can settle? Regardless of the threat level by that time, it informs the subsequent tech path directly. (2) Dot-mapping will be tricky given the very tight constraints of our lands. I'm already scratching my head trying to decide if the GingerEagle choke city will be on the coast 1W of the Pigs, or on the plains hill where the Warrior now stands, or... which in turn influences how we use the second Rice and FloodPlains, and so on. To put down even one settlement without a clear picture is risky. Of course the first Settler may not be ready until after turn 20, so the Greek delay may not delay us in practice.

(I'm not necessarily against a foray west, just want to be clear about the trade-offs. Indeed, I don't especially wish to labour the point at all...)

[Ceiliazul]

No pics, nothing to show here. I did turn the warrior toward the North coast, passing on the opportunity to probe GE. Timski, you've got it exactly right, not much to gain in sending the warrior far afield. He will provide valuable scouting data next turn, and shorten the window of weakness v Commodore's possible wandering warrior.

No score increases yet, which would have indicated a fishing or hunting start by GE, Kyan or Dazed.

[Ceiliazul]

Ogg Finds Beach, Bitten by Clam

Exploring warrior finds a VERY hospitable beach, though the jungle reduces its early potential some. Jungle covered pig especially. Still, Oog took in the open sea and splashed in like a little girl. Promptly, a clam clamped on his big toe. Oog fled the sea like a little girl.

Oog will continue his scouting in a generally SouthEasterly direction. Scouting that FP area is first on the agenda, and possible forays into Commodorian land are a possibility. Commodore has met someone (known from EP points) and so hopefully that means his warrior went the other way. May hot war erupt early and result in a long stalemate!

Also, mouseover my score is provided. The displayed land points eliminate all math from land-tile analysis.

[timski]

Reassuring to see Commodore engaged. At the very least they'll have to decide where to invest their EPs. Unless everyone is being cunning and conducting part-research to fool us, neither Dazed nor GingerEagle teched Mining. GingerEagle probably isn't rushing anything. Any updates on demos?

What's your plan for tech and build? The ratio of maximum population to land (826:709) is very favourable indeed. This is a food-rich map, with clear synergy to Brennus' traits. Given the lack of hostility on the radar, I'd be tempted to stick with the original plan, which after all contained enough redundancy to respond to unforeseen invasion. Hunting before Bronze Working, and only a partial Warrior before the first Worker, certainly accelerates the opening. Whether that still completes with Stonehenge is less clear: Early settlement looks important, and the dominance of the coast will point early Wonder-builders away from the 'Henge. Later tech choices are going to be very difficult, since this is shaping up to be a map where we need almost everything by turn 30...

Interesting game, and it's only turn 4.

[Ceiliazul]

Interesting game, and it's only turn 4.

Indeed, kudos to Plako for a close-quarters map that still gives us a chance to react to rushes (hopefully!)

I'm still following your Ultimate Macro plan, Timski. I did boat the fish, and grew on a warrior this turn. With GE starting with a scout, and my warrior quickly looping back in a Commodore direction, maybe I'll go straight to worker next turn, speeding the deer camp (and the first chop) by 1t.

So far, me and GE are on identical builds, suggesting a perfect mirror, at least for the 2 of us. We each grew to size 2 this turn, and crop/mfg is showing identical. I know the opponent city growth was GE from the score. Remember he's CHM too, but not SPI. If we do identical builds for 'Henge, we'll win on account of his slavery swap.




With the coast in view and a wider chunk of the map unveiled, flying camera has gained some power. Remember on the old 16bit Nintendo, the background was "3d" because the scrolling was split into near/far panels? I used the flying camera the same way, trees moving at different speeds/sizes mean bands of land. I came up with, I think, a pretty good idea of the map.

We're in a spiral galaxy, I think, with that land opposite the clams connecting to GE's starting region. I see 2 bands of trees to our East, suggesting we have a similar connection with Commodore. There are more islands besides, including a large one near cardinal North. Also, the spiral is an oval, not a circle. This explains why we got contact with Commodore but not GE.