I'll try harder then.
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[SPOILER] Krill rambles on
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Basic info and game settings
Number of land tiles 4244 (184 land tiles per player, so big map)  I'm pretty sure that increasing the total number of turns means that inflation is going to ramp up slower, I think that's reasonably good for me (AGG city maintenance cost decrease affects inflation is it's not as good as other leaders, but it hurts ORG more).
Huh, I wonder how that got set to 999. It says 500 in the WB file. Maybe Grimace set that when he restarted the game?
If Inflation ramps slower this way, maybe that's a good thing. It was insanely brutal near the end of PB22... Loved the self-review, btw. 
Yeah, late game inflation can get pretty harsh, OTOH tech costs are lower so maybe the end game is going to be too fast. I think that if ORG really is that good a trait, lowering inflation to some extent in the difficulty settings acts as a good method of nerfing it (rather than the turn count method which varies game to game). My largest concern would be that instead of the T260 win date we had in PB18 we reach SS times around T220 which just shortens the entire game, and I have no idea if that's good or bad there are so many knock on effects.
And thank you, I'm just glad there aren't people posting "You arrogant prick" in the lurker thread. Or are there?
Tier 2b: There are a few people playing in PB27 that I think probably don’t quite deserve to be in tier 2, but combined with a really good civ/leader combination definitely aren’t tier 3.
Ichabod & Retep, DESTROYER OF GAMES: Napoleon (CHM/ORG) of Greece Retep is a pretty good player, when the games he is in don’t die. Arguably I should even put this pairing into tier 2, the only thing stopping me is I don’t know if Retep is going to remain active or wander off as a ded lurker. Ichabod is OK, but has been known to be taken advantage of by others. Like with FinTourist and Old Harry burnt his entire navy at anchor in PB13. Retep though generally doesn’t fall for that short of trick and has easily fought off and dissuaded people in multiple games like in PB25 Commodore wouldn’t dare fight him. Retep is also more than competent at growing a civ and I think he is due a game where he proves himself as a top level player. Retep also has shown some almost psychic level intuitive game reading skills before, including nailing the delivery date perfectly. Ichabod I want to write more about, but I can’t actually remember anything else apart form him being the real victor of the clusterfuck that was PB7. I don’t think I’ve ever played in a game with him before. The leader/civ combination is quite interesting. Charismatic needs 8XP to reach 3 promotions, and the Greek Odeon gives +1XP to all land units, not just to melee/archery/siege/mounted. Specifically, the Odeon scales to work with gunpowder and armoured units. 3 promo rifles, inf and tanks and a late game crutch for sure, plus ORG saving gold as always (although perhaps nerfed by the max turns change?) Other than that, the only change to a “normal” game is that they have axes that chariots can’t beat. It’s slow as hell though, but in these larger games more and more people have slow starting combinations so it’s almost normal. Given the large amount of land though, I’d be less concerned by that. Given that I see 2 early happy resources, I think that it should be possible for Retabod to get a stupidly large capital really early. Size 9 with no issues. Questions is, would they want to? If by T50 you can get a city that can throw out 4 turn settlers, do you really care that you aren’t IMP? What’s the cost from staying at a smaller size, what’s the cost from improving that number of tiles for one city? In a small interlude, it’s worth looking at hte effects of tech cost scaling. Used to be that BW took 15 turns to reach and then Pottery took a further 30, granaries not even buildable until T50. That slowed down the ability to grow single cities, means that We used to need forest chops to speed up settlers, in fact growth was just slower. I’m intending to have a granary by eot T27 and I’m not even playing a PRO leader, no reason the others can’t do something similar. Improving ivory and 5 hills takes 30 worker turns, ignoring chops, but can Retabod afford that, or do they need to have workrers improving a second, third city? I don’t know which approach is going to be better, but I do know that if they can grow their capital to something approach size 15 and cottage the hell out of it vis a vis Crapital then they can have one hell of a mid game. 
Four stage micro plan to Henge
Stage 1: Hooking food resources: Scenario 1A: T20 wb>warrior>worker 21/24 food 1 warrior eot T9, 9/15 warrior fish, cow hooked, 0 worker turns. Wheel 25/38 Scenario 1B: T20 wb>worker>warrior 17/24 food 1 warrior eot T18, 4/15 warrior fish, cow hooked, 4 worker turns (but waste 1 if chopping, only other tile improvement is hill mine on grass hill 2 of Neu Crapital) Wheel 24/38 Only reason to go wb>worker is to chop use the extra worker turns to chop a forest and try to snowball the extra hammers, but down 4f/5h/1c that's not much profit to snowball. wb>warrior>worker is the right choice IMO. The earlier warrior also means that I can gain some scouting information, most likely what the land to the south west is like. Stage 2: Settler>granary or vice versa. This is a harder comparison, because a settler by itself is worthless. Needs warriors to protect and workers to improve food tiles, and food will not be shared between cities. Therefore costs of settler build path will include minimum 6 worker turns for roads and 2 warriors to defend/scout. The other issue with planning is that I have no clue where the viable second city locations are. Therefore in addition to the worker turns, I'm going to be accounting for 5 worker turns to hook a food resource. All scenario's start at T21, end T34 assuming Scenario 1A setup. Scenario 2A: granary>settler. Worker micro is specific, however it is trivial to change to rearrange the road layout for a second city to the north for hte grass cow and is actually much better for a southern second city. warrior T21>worker whip T26>granary T27>warrior T30>settler T33. Worker1 T21 move 1S, T22-3 chop/cancel, T24-5 mine/cancel, T26 chop, T27-8 mine, T29 move 1NE T30-32 chop T33 road/fin, [T34 2W chop/cancel, T35 E chop/cancel ] Worker2 T27 move E, T28-29 road, T30 move E, T31-2 road, T33 w road/fin [T34 move 2W chop/cancel, T35 E chop/cancel] Neu Crapital: 13/24 food, 4 hammers, 11 hammer overflow unallocated. 3 warriors Pottery>Myst>AH Scenario 2B: Settler>Granary Worker1 T21 move 1N, T22-4 chop, T25 move 1SE, T26-8 chop, T29-30 move 1NW road Worker 2 T25 move 1SE then 1NE, T26-28 chop, T29-30 road. Neu Crapital: warrior T21>worker T24>settler T25> warrior T26>settler T28 (whip T30). At this point I stop caring about the sim. Getting the settler 3 turns sooner, but chopping more 1 more forest and not having a granary completed until eot T33 completely screws growth compared to granary first. Moving the settler up before the second worker is not viable as I will not settle to overlap food resources, so I need too many worker turns for roads and to then improve the food resources Scenario 2C: skip to the good bit (rush Henge) I'll not bother posting MM, but Henge finishes eot T30, second worker eot T33, and a settler eot T39. Granary is unnecessary though, because Neu Crapital finishes Henge at size 5 and just stagnates whilst the workers put down mines. The downsides are the sheer risks involved with rushing henge, if someone steals it (probably only Gavagai would do it), I get a ton of gold and an almost unrecoverably slow expansion phase. It's not that efficient, and expansion is slower as well even in best case scenarios. I can ignore pottery, but I have to go Myst after BW (ie must make decision to this around T18). The granary is not present in the capital, and 3 forest chops are used (although that's not a fair comparison as I'd use 4 in other scenarios). Third worker would be eotT44 but it should be possible to use only 2 workers, and instead get second settler eot T45. The upsides are that I can definitely settle 6663 of the capital for the silver and corn, as the Henge culture will force the capital borders to pop to 40% early and open up the corn. Some of the stuff I've written in the downsides are also kind of upsides if it works. Stage 3: Henge I'll edit this in later, right now I'm going to go watch the rest of CLG v. TSM on a TV rather than getting drunk behind a PC.
We ran an over/under on PB18 right, and that "failed" abysmally. So...what's the over/under for this game?
I'm putting it at T65. |
