[Spoilers] Commodore as Darius of the HRE

[Commodore]

Krill, I actually figured GES was just being browbeat by you into Egypt, not that you were actually playing. Still, maximum paranoia is the most entertaining, right?

I don't think there's any way to pretend that we don't have the slowest start of this bunch. Three of our opponents get AGI/WHL as starting techs, the other is the only EXP leader, with WHL/MIN as techs. We've got strike one as the only civ with hunting, strike two as the only civ with mysticism, and strike three with no early UU. Deer in the BFC would be a godsend, although I don't think the mapmaker will be so generous. I think a coastal start is probably okay for us, even though it'll probably be the trickiest to actually play out.

War Chariots & Skirmishers are scary scary units that will maul us if we're unprepared, and the other two have uniques that kick in just as our economy does... Hopefully we can setup an empire good enough to blaze past the musket era and into rifles. :D.

We're going to have a very scary first 100 turns. :P. As long as we're remotely competitive landwise when the end of the medieval era rolls around, I think we'll be okay.

The Great Lighthouse feels like it could be really good for us, cheap lighthouses+financial/organized means we don't actually mind whipping them in and working the coasts. Hell, we can pack in our cities like rats in a cage and pretend our sea tiles are fresh river cottages. :P. Strategy of course though, is completely your call here. .

Sven, our thoughts are perfectly in line here. Thus my immediate regret for picking the obvious. Still, it's what we have. If we have furs, ivory, or deer in our BFC I'll be happy beyond knowing, otherwise...we're in trouble. The Mysticism start is weaker than the rest, but being the only mysticism start helps a little. I'm not going to dink around putting hammers into Stonehenge unless we're near stone, but one of the early religions should help pop our borders, should be worth snagging. It'll be up to C&D and gut feel to decide when to snag one. I have a feeling that the SP crew here might push religions faster than normal. Please scream at me if I interrupt our expansion for religion, though.

I'm feeling the GLH too, but that'll be in hot demand. Half price lighthouse < half price wonder. Still...I do want it badly, and yes, I agree about packing in the coastal cities. The only other wonder I'd kinda like early would be Colossus. Sure, it's a 33% increase for us rather than a 50% increase for Bismark, but if we truly do want to pump coastal cities it will still be very strong. Only thing is, we don't want to slow expansion with any wonder. Darius REX is a city spammer, not a wonder whore!

[Sven]

Taking a quick look at PBEM 15

v8mark seems to be doing okay. His expansion rate seems to be competitive from whatever updates I can see and he didn't seem to be bottle necked by the myst/hunting start. I think we'll be fine.

[Commodore]

Yeah, it's not like we're utterly screwed or anything, we're just going to have to be very careful in the early game. Keep balancing expansion and tech, don't get into destructive early wars, etc.

What are your thoughts on early religion play? I loathe monuments, in general, much preferring to spend the hammers on a missionary that will help happiness and production as well as culture. Plus, hey, why not bargain with the perk that is a free missionary?

And onto the bargaining front...on the one hand, I'd really like to avoid the precedent of long-term NAPs. It just seems like several games have fizzled as the runaway became obvious and was able to gobble the others down one-by-one thanks to NAP-secured borders. On the other hand, it is a definite prisoner's dilemma though in that if only one person avoids NAP'ing, he'll be screwed. I suspect (just a feel, hopefully wrong) that the crowd in this game will prefer to go the NAP route. On the gripping hand, Darius of HRE is a slow-starter who would love to avoid war for the first 100 turns altogether unless our start is mega-cramped. Grumble. A lot will depend on how the other teams play, but what are your thoughts, Sven? Lurkers, in general, what are your NAP feelings (not in this particular case, no spoil-baiting here).

[Sven]

I don't like religion before food techs & AH or BW are finished with a strat resource found, it just makes me feel uncomfortable to have high yield resource tiles controlled but unworked. The thought of no metal knowledge with War Chariots running around is just... diplomacy dependent. Also C&D dependent, so let's hope I can do a good job. :P.

If the game works out that we can pop Hinduism in our second city with relatively good timing that'll be pretty awesome, but we'll just need to wait and see to observe how much we'll need to sacrifice (if anything) for it. It would also be pretty sweet to get the Slavery+OR switch in a single turn to save anarchy, but again, it'll be up to you to decide how quickly we need slaving/chopping.

Some other things to consider are GPs (how quickly do we want our first?) and how quickly we want pottery to start getting in our granaries and cottages.

The thing about hitting Hinduism and OR is that we need to acknowledge and accept that there's a turn cost to it, you're exchanging secure quick commerce growth from Pottery to grab a bonus which pays off in the indeterminate future.

Basically we need to see the map and count our happies :P.

As for NAPs, I really think we can go with the general game trends that pop up erring on the side of lengthier staggered NAPs. War is difficult enough that I wouldn't bother without a secure ally agreeing to carve someone up. You'll end up with ridiculous coordination issues ending in wars that are way less effective than they theoretically should be but that's just life.

[Gaspar]

Here is your starting position, have fun!

[Commodore]

Oi. Nice choices, Gaspar.

I really do love the starting position here, SIP looks really strong at first blush. Plains hill, riverside, any move to the coast would loose the floodplain and the wet plains wheat, which would be a no-no. Scouting dependent, naturally.

The two scout directions that really call to me are 7 and 63.

7 gets us a seafood check to the west, lets us know if there are any resources that way (although any deer would be an edit, right?), and helps us know if that coast to the NE is part of this sea or a lake. It'll also let us know it if SIP wrecks dotmapping another city that direction. 87 is similar, but doesn't check for seafood.

63 is another seafood scout, and also checks for the potential port site for our second city. It'll also show if something is sadistically located 33 of our settler, although I can't imagine anything nice enough to lose FP and river wheat.

My initial gut is scout 63, settler settles in place (unless the scout sees, like, fishes and deer) and starts worker, tech set to Agriculture for a Arg->AH-> something initial start.

Man I hate my starting tech The more I think about it, the more I want the GLH, but not enough to gut my expansion, which moving the settler 1 and settling would do. Hum. If there was fish in the BFC 22 or 23 of the scout, I would be tempted. Certainly the wealth of forests means good chopping production, I would say GLH would be pretty sure to be ours if we went that route. Still leaning SIP, though. Thoughts?

Sven, I hope you're here, because ironically I'll need you take this today. Hell of a poor precedent, I know, but I'm hosting a friend's bachelor party tonight and I'm at work right now.

[Sven]

I'm leaning a scout move to see the rest of the PH's BFC? E then NE? The coast moves us away from the wheat, I don't think I'd move down coast even for two fish, our start just becomes too slow if we go coastal without a land food.

Settling options IMO are either in place or 1N or possibly 1NE depending on scouting.

1N does take away the +1 hammers from the PH but it'll grab another flood plain allowing us to hit +9* growth. It's a turn closer to the wheat as well so you *only lose a turn on setting up the wheat. You don't lose too much growthwise because you hit size two okay. You also get to work a 3 yield 1 commerce tile first turn instead of just a 3 yield tile for a worker. Lastly, it completely removes any fear of missing southern food resources by allowing you to shove in a back fill city whenever your heart desires it along that coastal strip.

What's up with those snow covered trees ._.?

[Sven]

Regardless of our choice I'd like to strongly push us towards worker first + agriculture. 5/1/1 is too good a tile to waste.

[Commodore]

Hum, the snow-covered trees threw me too, but with mapmaker-touches, I tend to not worry so much about the snow.

Worker first + Agriculture is a definite. Sorry, the stream of consciousness thoughts above masked the fact that I'd more or less talked myself out of coastal settling. E-NE would be a nice scout too, let us know about the BFC. I'm not sold on settling 1 N. Short term, it's easily better, and picking up an extra floodplain is always nice. Still, that sacrifices the plainshill start and a Fin river cottage.

I suppose scout E > NE, then unless there's something that screams settling NE, settle in place.

[Sven]

Turns out I'm a dirty liar who can't add properly.

I've been convinced settling in place is awesome. :D.