[SPOILERS] Seven Russias Into the Periclous Fray

[SevenSpirits]

I didn't think anyone would read that sentence let alone repond to it.

[Hashoosh]

7 spirits but only 6 spirit animals. Unless the avatar is the seventh. Questions, questions, never answered

[SevenSpirits]

Game is being played with nothing of note happening yet at all. That said, I do still have the opponent evaluations to continue, but I've paused them since I've been spending my free time playing through Dark Souls II. Will resume soon.

[SevenSpirits]

t7:







As you can see, we met HitAnyKey, Wang Kon of Spain, conveniently one of the two opponents we've already analyzed. His own scout is on the highlighted tile.

[WilliamLP]

Are you concerned about the chance that he could transform into a 5/5 Devilsaur?

[SevenSpirits]

No, but squirrels only cost 1, so it could be trouble early on.

[SevenSpirits]

So uh, what? A game? I'm playing in one? Oh crap.

t26:

I declared war on HAK to see his capital. Then we made peace and I was happy. The peace treaty made it impossible for his scout to camp my wheat on the same turn I could move the worker there. Part of the reason I declared was that buddhism had just been founded and I wanted to lazily confirm it was him. Another part was that I wanted the peace treaty for safety anyway. Then of course there's the usual benefit of seeing your neighbor's cap, even though since the spy missions are removed we can't track production.



I've now discovered AH and (as of this turn) BW. Horses are plentiful, while copper has yet to show itself.





In terms of micro I've built a worker, warrior, part of a warrior while growing to 3, second worker, and a settler is coming next. There wasn't much value in building the second worker at size 2 because it would come out before BW. The second worker took 5t and the settler will also take 5t: 12h/t, with 2 20h chops to help out the settler. Then I can finish the warrior while growing to size 4.



My worker farmed the wheat then pastured the sheep, then put 3 out of 5t into a grass farm, then moved to the forest to chop. After chopping I'm thinking that he'll build a mine before assisting with the new city setup. The second worker will chop a forest and then get working on the second city setup a bit sooner. Second city setup probably consists of 2t of farming to finish the grass farm, 4t of roading, and then the capital's culture will have popped to include the sheep so I can pasture it.

The reason I like that spot for the second city is that it's the closest spot that adds two improvable resources. That is - roughly speaking - the most important quality of a second city in my view. Third city can then go NW to get that corn and nearby cow/horse, perhaps. That's maybe the strongest visible spot, but it's too far away to be worth it for city #2, so the best I can do is settle towards it.

I can only hope that my copper is in that direction rather than south in the jungle where there's no food and I need IW to effectively settle anyway. I'm sure Krill's not that much of a jerk, right?

[NobleHelium]

That's a lot of horses.

[SevenSpirits]

t33 (7 turns later):




Revolted to slavery last turn. We have four of the capital's tiles improved (the best ones other than the silk, and three are shareable) and get the second city now. End of next turn, the capital gets a border pop (creative) so we can improve the sheep. The capital is going to spit out two warriors while growing - we really need them badly to find copper in time. The current warrior is having to hold back from exploring the west as both a lion and a wolf are guarding that area. I may have to send a second warrior that way. Of course I also want to explore the southwest jungle, but arguably if my copper is down there I just need to get iron working anyway. Finally, I've found a lot of improvements that I'd really like to pillage, so hopefully we can get the scouting situation sorted ASAP so I can do that.

Btw, hinduism was founded last turn.

[SevenSpirits]

Gentlemen. Let's resume the opponent analysis. Our next player is Haram. What do we know about Haram?

Are the sign ups for this one still open?

I sign up. Really like the concept of this mod.

Ragnar

Mongolia

Yeah, there's not much to go off of here. My impression is of someone who's played multiplayer civ elsewhere, as opposed to the type of newbie who is only trying it out for the first time and has previously considered the AI to be a real challenge. This type of player is more likely to have metagame-misreading problems than other kinds of issues. That's all just speculation though. I guess we'll have to turn to the sacred animals for answers again.


6/10

5/10

4/10

5/10

9/10


Do the animals know something we don't?

In this game he took Ragnar (FIN/AGR) of Mongolia (HUNT/WHEEL). Wheel is a fairly unusual first tech to pair with hunting. It's more useful with Agriculture since then you can get pottery. But it's not bad - I think a lot of starting techs work out fine here, depending on the exact start. Ragnar meanwhile is about as plain a pick as you can get. Only two abilities - enhanced commerce on tiles and enhanced food on tiles. I think they are reasonably synergistic. The +food means you won't be needing to build non-resource farms, and the +commerce means you want to cottage those tiles. The only real point of conflict is flood plains. There, the traits pull in opposite directions. The major weakness of this trait pair is the complete lack of building discounts. The only hammer boost you get is through the whip in combination with the +food. So I would say this combo is more interested than most in setting up organized religion.

What sayeth the sixth sacred animal of this pairing?

Baaaaaa