![[Image: fuckoff.gif]](http://sushibandit.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/fuckoff.gif)
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[SPOILERS - PBEM16] Krill - Tokugawa of Rome
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I hate this start. Possibly one of the worst starts I can imagine for Rome..as I'll explain in the next post.
![[Image: PBEM16-Krill.jpg]](http://i554.photobucket.com/albums/jj417/KevinRill/PBEM16/PBEM16-Krill.jpg)
PB1: AGG/CRE, Ruff. Won the game (somehow?)
PB2: AGG/EXP, Whosit. Pissed off Plako and paid the price (why?) PB3: AGG/CRE, Sandover. Got into a fight with Mukha and didn't do much. PBEM6: AGG/CHM, Jowy. Not really a representative game. So...4 games with AGG Rome. One got into a fight with Zulu that I want to emulate, one decided to forget playing sane, one got crippled by tech pace and one by the map set up. This doesn't bode well for me, does it? Here is what I said over a year go in the RBPB2 lurker thread: "When you play Shaka of rome, you do one thing. You tech worker techs, then you tech pottery, then you tech IW. You get iron asap, and you 2-pop slave and chop out preats everywhere. By turn 60 you are looking at having a minimum 5 preats. You can't play it any other way. The stupid thing is he had all of this infomation available in RBPB1 threads to read." Now, I'm basically playing shaka of Rome, minus the worker bonus, but with faster border pops, perhaps best considered as some weird amalgam of Kublai and Shaka. The only problem now is that I'm playing on Quick speed, on either small or standard instead of huge, and double pop whips have been nerfed. And half the other players are PRO Putting together a preat rush in this game is going to be harder than any of the other games, save PBEM6...however, I do have an advantage for winning. I don't have to preat rush. The plan is fairly simple. Everyone that runs over AGG Rome wants an NAP that is very very long, enough time to get to cats. This cuts both ways, and I now have one trait that gives me cheap granaries, and another that allows me to ignore some techs and still pop borders cheaply. AGG isn't as good as IMP, or CRE in the early game, but hopefully it'll be enough, especially if some of my neighbours are running scared trying to find metal to hook up and not focussing on balanced expansion. I hope to be able to keep up, maybe even out expand some of the players and grab more land. I expect that I'll get at least one bite on a long NAP leaving me free to hit someone else if I really have to though. And hey, if I have to hit someone, AGG preats are just about the first choice I'd come up with. Lets compare ideal settings for a preat rush. What do you need to pull it off? 3 good cities by the time you get IW, with a settler and at least 2 workers ready to go and hook up iron. You need AGG for the preats so you need one of PRO, EXP, CRE and IMP. Each one has advantages. Early growth is pretty much independent of world size and difficulty, but tech speed isn't: on a small, noble map you can tech to IW faster than on a huge, monarch map, but you will reach 3 cities on the same turn on either map (well, with identical starts, and most of the time). So on a small map with lower difficulty you will have less time to set up for the preat rush, making it more difficult to pull off. The next point is what speed is the game? Quick speed means that it is harder to attack because of unit moves still only taking 1 tile a turn while the cost of building defenders is decreased. So while you move the preats over to the enemy they will have just as many turns to react, and be able to pump out more defenders on quick than on normal. With these two points in mind...it is going to be significantly harder to put together a preat rush in this game than any of the PB games.
Checking in as chief ded-lurker and thread-spammer!
While going through my chats with Krill, I came across this nugget Quote:Krill: fwiw 
Here's a chat with Krill, just for posterity
Quote:regoarrarr: excellent tl;dr version Krill: wah wah wah my start sucks
I'm going to rip someone limb from limb, I just won't be using preats to do it. I can't get 3 cities down with a settler and 2 workers ready for turn 37, which is the deadline in most sims for when IW comes in...if I do pottery first.
So, possible settling locations: 1N, 1S, 2S1E, 2W. 2SE is a straight no.
1N will be a cottage city, working as many cottages as possible by the mid game. 1S loses a lot of flood plains but has 2 ph and 3 gh so is a decent hammer city early on. Problem is it crowds out coastal cities on that coast, and I'm considering using a rice/crab/pig city as the NE city. 2W has a few coastal tiles, loses flood plains, loses hills but gives a plains hill capital. Same number of forests I think. not worth moving to IMO. 2S1E I might move if it uncovers an irrigated wheat or corn, otherwise, I'm not moving down there. Now I need the save before I decide what to do. But the map is normal size, which I'm happier with. Means I have more time before I will research IW to get an economy set up.
Options, 1N:
Options 1S: As above but with slower tech and higher health limits. |
