[SPOILERS] scooter's thread

[scooter]

First post blah blah filler blah blah ........................................................................









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Some sort of post coming up soon.

[scooter]

I'm not going to do any big crazy analysis here, and this will be my only thread for this tournament. If I actually update this extensively (we'll see), I'll make an index of some sort in the first post.

So thus begins game 1 - scooter vs Bobchillingworth.

Transcript of Bob and I discussing settings:

Okay, so how do you want to play this? Do you want to use the Inland Sea Mirror script thing, or some other mirror? I don't like inland sea maps much, but I don't really have strong feelings either way; my preferred script would be for mirrored continents just because that's very different from almost every duel I've played, if you're interested in something slightly off-the-wall. I assume we're doing ancient era, unless you prefer otherwise. The only era I really do not want to use is Modern, because I know that you have way more experience with it than I do :P


I'd also prefer to play this as a sequential gamespy game, but of course we can do PBEM if that's not an option for you. We're in the same timezone, so we can blitz away the turns whenever we're both free during extended sessions.


I'll send my leader / civ pick to Mist once we decide what kind of map we want him to roll.

I'd definitely prefer a more traditional map like the mirrored Inland Sea, or we could use the regular mirrored script so long as a lurker sprinkles it with some extra food. I am open to playing just about any era though if Ancient doesn't sound interesting to you. Something like Medieval or Renaissance might also allow us to use civs that we wouldn't use in ancient so we have more options available to us in our other games - though that might just result in us both choosing Byz. I'll say this - I do have a preference on a more traditional (boring) map but I have no preference at all on era and am happy to roll with anything there.

Okay, so traditional map & advanced, non-modern era then? I don't think I've ever tried a Renaissance start before, so I would be interested in that Let's just make a gentleman's agreement to not use Byz.


Inland sea or regular mirror, either works! It sounds like you're already on the job, getting a map from Mist and/or Speaker.


I'll send Mist my leader / civ combo once you confirm Renaissance start, and I fire up at least one SP game to find out what the hell techs I'm even going to start with :P

So in short, Renaissance start on mirrored inland sea. I haven't actually done Renaissance, but that's ok. Bob hasn't either, so we picked that. Cool thing here is it allows us to 1) keep all the good ancient civs on the table for later and 2) pick traits that aren't quite as strong in ancient. So I chose Gandhi (Phi/Spi) of France. We also mutually agreed not to use Byz just because dueling Byz is predictable and boring.

Edit: I'm going to put this following trait discussion in spoilers. It's not really much of a spoiler, but just in case - if you're a player do not read this until you are completely eliminated.

France was a pretty easy decision - Musketeers are a good UU in this era and Gunpowder is one of my T0 research choices as-is Nationalism. Education is also too which leads to Liberalism so yeah - big tech choice to make on T0. Need to put some thought into it, but I have a few ideas. Anyways.

So traits. Aggressive is logical with France, but I don't want to burn Aggressive quite yet... If I intend to make it to the final (and lose to Mackoti ), I have to use 10/11 traits. That means Aggressive will definitely be used, so why use it on Ren and take away my shot at Agg Rome? So I passed on that. Imp is also really strong here in Ren because settlers are stupid expensive ( BtS dev team), but Imp is also good in Ancient, so I'll save that.

Basically, I'm expecting most of my games to be ancient. Spi and Phi are not great for an Ancient duel, but they're solid in this kind of game. Mostly I can swap between Slavery/Caste and pump out quick great artists to control land and swap back. Also, I'll start in Bur but I'll want to swap to draft at some point too. Finally, I'll also want to Swap between Org Religion and Theocracy soo... Spiritual gives me tons of flexibility here. Basically, I'd like to get a lead and force Bob to come at me. I think that plays towards my abilities a bit better. Plus Knight + Musketeer stacks are nasty. Phi was chosen to synergize with Spiritual and because I can get some good mileage out of it here, but probably not quite so much in an ancient brawl. So that's that.

This whole starting in a different era to give us more options later is actually probably mildly exploitative, but it's an option we all pretty clearly have. Plus we announced our choices first out of anyone in the public thread, so anyone is free to copy our plan, so I don't feel too bad. It's a risk that we're both playing outside our comfort zone, but that's worth it to me. Plus I just don't like ancient early combat that much - WAY too much dumb luck in warrior battles/chokes.

[scooter]

Okay Bob and I did a short blitz last night (this is PBEM) where we knocked out about 20 turns, so I'm going to give a mini-report. I didn't take lots of screenshots because we only had about an hour, but I took some at the beginning and at the end, and then I took a couple graph pictures this morning on the next turn. First thing I did was open the civic screen and make my choices:



All pretty obvious choices. I stuck with Paganism only because religions haven't spawned yet so I won't bother paying upkeep on something like OrgReligion at this point. So I moved all my units and took a look at my options:



I settled in place and aimed for the spot 1E of the fish. I know this doesn't get iron right away in my two cities, but I know we're on Tiny and not Duel, so an early rush isn't a big threat here.



My T0 plan here was to build a workboat first while moving my worker onto the forest 1SE of the capital. That worker would begin chopping and I would finish the WB naturally. Once the WB is done, the chop goes into a worker which finishes in 1T. This felt like the quickest way to start here. And then yeah, City2 was going to go down here:



It's a stronger site than the capital really. So we blitzed it out and the last turn I played last night was T140, so here's a shot of my land on that turn:



Bob managed to get his explorer on the forest hill tile which was a bad mistake on my part - letting that be an option. It'll die soon. That longbow up there is annoying, but I'm going to kill that soon too. I'm more than a bit behind on tile improvements, but I'm catching up. I'm ahead of Bob I think. I also got my 3rd city before him. One interesting side-effect of being in Mercantilism + Philosophical is I've birthed 2 Great Engineers already. My plan at the moment is to try to win Liberalism, taking Nationalism with it. Rush the Taj Mahal with one, and then bulb Gunpowder with the other. I'll get a 3rd in not too long, and that can probably be used for an additional golden age after the Taj golden age. Most of the available wonders are not great. I thought about Notre Dame and probably should have taken it, but I elected not to. T140 Demos:



I'm well ahead in food and he's well ahead in MFG. Must be building settlers right now. I've been far ahead in GNP for awhile now, so I'll likely win Liberalism. His soldier count is ahead, but he sent his starting longbows at me and built new units to replace them, as opposed to me who kept them at home and didn't sink any hammers into military until just recently (did get my barracks/stables up though). Top cities:



His city sizes are about the same and he doesn't have a 3rd city at this point I don't think... Then this morning I played T141 and took a couple more pictures:



Yeah he settled 1 inland which in retrospect is the better spot. Doesn't have horse hooked so I don't have to worry about him running Knights over - though that'd be a stupid move on his part. He's got a settler there - pretty sure that just completed for his third city. Looks like he went north with his second city which is interesting - I'll check that out.

Food chart:



Here I've been ahead for awhile and continue to be way ahead. MFG chart is different:



So I don't entirely know what that means . Although, it's likely an effect of him going north for his second city working who-knows-what and me going south working floodplains cottages. Another factor is him going inland for iron (I really should have done that) and working iron with his Bur cap. Power graph:



My little bumps up have mostly been barracks and stables and pop until recently that I've completed 2 maces. He's built a few more things.

And that about wraps up where we're currently at. If you have any questions, feel free to ask and I'll give an idea of where I'm trying to go. Bob's capital is better than mine, but overall I think I've got a slight early edge on him with my food + gnp advantage. If my Lib->Nat->Taj plan works out, I'll be thrilled.

[scooter]

Camel Archers are resourceless . I'm fine, but I forgot I'd have to deal with that. That's the downside to blitzes.

[scooter]

Ok, T144 and Bob snuck a couple Camel Archers up.



I had seen one of them coming as he came into range of my culture, so I had enough warning - though I didn't know there was two. Thankfully my road network was pretty good, so this was the EOT144 situation. I have two pikes within range and two workers ready to 1T chop a third pike. Bob moved the CAs onto the tiles 1NE and 1NW of Lyons, which meant next turn:



Both those were ~75% odds, but my insurance in case of a loss was chopping the third Pike - so either way I was fine thankfully. This slowed me down slightly, but it was nice to clear the threat. This put me back in the soldier lead:



So I'm safe right now. Food/MFG is balancing itself out a bit, but I maintain a slight GNP edge (granted, I'm at 100% sci). Bob's second city went way up here:



His third city actually went way up north at the middle of the map which was interesting, but I'll show a picture of that in a future report.

[scooter]

Bob's 3rd city:



Not sure why he doesn't build culture to pop the borders here. As you see though he made it to the northern mirror. Very different settling strategy for him - not a bad one either.

[scooter]

Founded my 4th city of Rheims and thanks to some workers and Serfdom, it's off to a quick start:



Unfortunately Imperialistic is starting to do some damage:



Demos clearly show Bob has settled a couple more cities than me:



Bright spot is he's doing this at the expense of tech where I'm still comfortably leading despite being at 0%. I've done more vertical building thus far. Hopefully I can use this to catch back up.

[scooter]

I decided to use one of my sitting GEs to fire off a Golden Age. This will get me to Liberalism (and in turn, Taj) faster, so it made sense.



Settlers are still quite slow.

[scooter]

Next turn - we have a food dip. Some military whips?



GNP is always more fun in GA.

[scooter]

Checking the tech screen every turn and so far so good. 1 more turn to my Liberalism -> Nationalism -> Taj slingshot. Still in Golden Age.