[SPOILER] Yell0w - Rivanna, Svartalfar

[Qgqqqqq]

[Barry Lyndon]

2 North, 1 East

[Yell0w]

Gah, thats what I feared, a perfect start for Flauros, a shitty start for elves. This start basically demands going for Calendar and Mining before anything else, both are techs other civilizations want to have anyways, it's right in their tech path, you could argue that fishing and AH are good as well since there are resources, but in reality commerce is WAY more important early, while the techs you need to hook up the resources are great for a aristocracy economy, they kinda suck if you want to go cottages. What I'm trying to say is: elves can deal with a "bad" start with lots of forests and without a river way better than anyone else, on the flip side everyone else has more synergy with this kind of start.

1n 2e is inferior to your suggested spot but is the only spot we can take use of hunting, not that I'm going to settle there. It will be 2n 1e.
I'm considering a two worker start if RoB isn't casted t 1. I would have waited with RoB for my 2nd or even 3rd city, but it seems to be standard to fire it t1, let's hope he does, the terrain makes it worth it I guess.

The non starting settler doesn't make a difference to us, with 4 moves we could settle right now with two moves, even though we can move through forests easier, we still need to wait a turn. Since we start in Nationhood there won't be any civ swaps we could use that turn for. I would have loved to benefit from forest movement getting my settler down a turn earlier than - well I guess everyone will pick this spot, believing that starts are probably mostly mirrored - everyone else.

First move should be to get our warrior to the citadel and pillage it down to a fort, where it can grow again so we can pillage it again.

So tech choices with Rivanna are usually very interesting, in this case though: Calendar -> Crafting -> Mining, probably followed up by Exploration -> AC -> Myst -> Hunting -> FotL -> AH -> Fishing -> Education Maybe an earlier Education, though that mostly depends on what kind of resources we find for our 2nd and 3rd city.

[Barry Lyndon]

1 North, 1 West or 2 North, 1 West are also very tempting, especially if you expect to settle your second city before you research Mining. It would let you skip researching Fishing and be stronger for food with just AH and Calendar.

You could also settle your second city 2S of the gold and it would be a great spot to specialize toward commerce.

[Yell0w]

Taking a second look:
I notice a lot of plain tiles, that is good, I didn't plan on using Agrarianism for long anyways.

The other spots aren't bad, the oasis counters the extra commerce from river tiles, still I think a coastal river spot for our capital will go a long way. A second city could go 3w pick up the oasis via culture from our capital and get Wheat and a bunch of river tiles in the first ring. However should there be another commerce resource close by I'd plant our 2nd city there.

Looks like a lot of water, and a lot of single water tiles, we ended up not banning OO or Tsunami, so we should keep that in mind should someone go for it, it is the best early collateral besides cats, and cats kinda suck.

Thinking about civics
Government
since Myst will be researched relatively early we probably want to run GK, GK's downfall is that it is really expensive, but hey we are Org after all. Though there might come the point where running city states is gonna be better, very late we want to have Republic, though games usually don't last that long.

Cultural Values
We'll probably run Nationhood to the end of times, maybe switching to religion once we've got Command Posts

Labor
Apprenticeship probably Military State later, after we build an army with the extra 2xp, maybe even before.

Economy
This is where it gets interesting, Agrarianism has limited use for us, but what instead? Well it'll probably be Conquest and later Foreign Trade... but Guardian of Nature will raise our happy cap so much it is probably the best civic for us. This will mainly be a question of how the game is going, if we get a scorpion and an early military lead, Conquest will be great. If not it sucks.

I would have loved to skip mining for quite some time, going Calendar -> AC -> Myst and spit out settlers with the help of GK, eventually going towards Archery for more production. As it is the gold tile is extremely valuable, even if it is on a desert tile.

I have a good idea about early and mid game, but my endgame plan basically consists of having a strong elven economy and hoping it'll suffice, cause we don't have a lot of great endgame toys. The only thing we've got is Commune with nature, which gives us a bunch of great units, but we still lack a good core unit, seeing that Champions are quite off our tech path, and with forests we don't really need forges to be able to compete production wise. Economy endgame will be Priesthood for forests and Taxation giving us +2 commerce and +1 hammers for all our towns.

Great Person wise there isn't really anything worth bulbing as far as I can see. So I'm leaning towards an GS for an academy and a GP or GB for the FotL shrine or a GA, I hope we'll take the free GC at Military Strategy which we could use in combat or for a GA

[Yell0w]

Short enemy analysis

1. Sian
He plays well, won a bunch of PBEM's and has the strongest civ in this pool, by far.

2. HK
Got Illians without any bans, which is the first game for a long time with that setting. As usual PoW can be very very deadly, but the later the game gets the Illians become worse in my opinion. Still strong with Mages with excelent summons, but not being able to get more than one Ice Mana is bad for them. Snowfall is maybe the single strongest collateral damage attack in the game.

3. Brian
Varn Gossam is interesting but he doesn't have a lot of synergy, the Malakim have some good magic things going for them and some good religious things going for them, but there is no synergy between both of them. He's gonna have to decide which path he takes, and for each path there is another civ that can do it better. The floodplains and Oasis will sure help him out with early commerce, the gold desert tile as well (I'm guessing we have almost identical starts) due to the +1 commerce on desert tiles. But I doubt it will be a significant enough boost to make a huge difference. Adaptive is always nice of course. Varn could actually benefit from FotL, but I kinda doubt he'll go for it. Cha will help only if he gets lucky with his starting units and with early happy cap, which ain't a bad deal, since he'll be able to change it on T71 for a better trait. Certainly the most interesting pick besides Rivanna, I'm looking forward to see what he does with it.

[Yell0w]

I'm sorry for not reporting but I've had a hell of a day. I will report on Friday when I've got some free time. On the plus side not that much is happening the first couple of turns. One thing that did happen was that RoB was used on t1.

Barry Lyndon (great movie by the way) if you want to receive the saves, to take a more active role and be more independent from my reports - please tell me and I'll ask to add you to the tracker.

[Yell0w]

So it's reporting time:

First screen shot I took is from turn 2, spotting a preplaced Tiger with Woodsman II

I found a preplaced Giant Spider with Command II as well. On one hand these barbs make the world dangerous, on the other hand, we want to go for hunting, and preplaced promoted animals are a good way to get some units for free. I think this benefits us more than the other players.

By pillaging the Citadel down to a fort we've got 81 pillage gold. And I met Sian on turn 5. Also spotting the Dragon Bones unique feature. Sian has to be close, great, exactly the player you don't want to have as a neighbor.

I decided to head back to the fort, pillaging it before Sian can do it. But the next turn I couldn't find his warrior anywhere so I decided to take the risk and leave the fort there. In a couple of turns we can pillage it again, it also is a good spot to place a warrior for fog busting and as a barbarian detergent.

The Ancient Tower in the screen shot before also is a great spot giving huge visibility. I'll try to get a unit there as soon as I can spare one.

This map is quite lush.

Getting as many cities out as quick as possible seems a good strategy here. I'll get a dot map going once I've scouted the east.

So far everything is going well, one of my opponents lost a unit, which is always nice.

[Barry Lyndon]

I'm sorry for not reporting but I've had a hell of a day. I will report on Friday when I've got some free time. On the plus side not that much is happening the first couple of turns. One thing that did happen was that RoB was used on t1.

Barry Lyndon (great movie by the way) if you want to receive the saves, to take a more active role and be more independent from my reports - please tell me and I'll ask to add you to the tracker.

Yeah that sounds good. BarryLyndonRB is my gmail address. I've been busy lately, but I'll be available for chats sometimes too.

I think the Calabim being nearby is actually not such a bad thing. We can probably kill or disable Sian before he would become a serious threat, especially if we can recruit some animals to help. I'd rather have him nearby than the Illians, at least.

[Yell0w]

Puh I don't know if we can attack Sian, he is no slouch, he will built units and he just need BW to field Moroi which are better than anything we could field with the same tech investment.

I spotted a Scorpion last turn =) thats GREAT.

This turn a lion moved in front of my warrior onto a desert tile. So I took the 75,~% odds and won, this is a risky move (especially cause there very well could have been another unit in the fog, the Scorpion eg.) I wouldn't make normally. Seeing how I'm playing a comparatively shitty civ, I'll have to take those risks to edge out every advantage I can get. This time it went well, loosing the warrior here would have been a serious blow.