If it were true that adopting a risky rush strategy simply increased the win probability chance, with no other considerations, I could understand the argument a lot more. However, I think there are other factors to consider on an issue like this. Let me throw out some made up percentages to illustrate what I’m thinking. For a 6 player game like this one, a truly random result would have each player with a 1 in 6 chance (about 16%) of coming in first place, and a 1 in 6 chance of coming in last place / being first to be eliminated:
Player 1: First Place 16% / Last Place 16%
Player 2: First Place 16% / Last Place 16%
Player 3: First Place 16% / Last Place 16%
Player 4: First Place 16% / Last Place 16%
Player 5: First Place 16% / Last Place 16%
Player 6: First Place 16% / Last Place 16%
Now let’s say that we decide to pick Byzantium/France first and go all-in with a rush strat. I agree that it increases the chances of being the game winner by a small amount… at the expense of greatly increasing the odds of a spectacular backfire that leaves the team first to be eliminated. Here’s a guess at what that might look like, with more completely made up numbers:
Player 1: First Place 20% / Last Place 60%
Player 2: First Place 15% / Last Place 8%
Player 3: First Place 15% / Last Place 8%
Player 4: First Place 15% / Last Place 8%
Player 5: First Place 15% / Last Place 8%
Player 6: First Place 15% / Last Place 8%
And yes, I know those numbers don’t add up to 100%!
Again, this might be exactly the scenario that you’re looking to play here, a high risk / high reward gambit. My point is more that such a strategy most likely greatly increases the risk of losing in exchange for a much smaller increase in victory probability. I’m not saying “don’t do this”, moreso just trying to provide a cautionary voice ahead of time. Three other thoughts on this:
1) I’ve seen this same sentiment posted in a lot of other Pitboss/PBEM threads. I’ve read many pre-game posts talking about how the team wanted to do something with high risk or high variance because they thought it offered the best chance of achieving an overall victory. In the vast majority of cases, this has backfired badly and resulted not just in non-winning games, but in early eliminations. Now you might say, “well yeah, that’s kind of the point!” but these games have generally not been much fun to play. I distinctly remember later posts in several threads where the turnplayer looked back and wrote “we should have just played standard, this is no fun” after tossing the dice and failing. I’ll have to try and track some of those threads down if I can find the time. The point is, it’s very easy to say in theory (before the game starts) that you want to do something crazy and aggressive. Actually playing it out is something else, and there’s a very real chance of being stuck for months to come playing a civ that has essentially no chance at winning, as a result of picking a non-econ setup before the game began. “Be careful what you wish for”, in other words.
2) Just how viable will an early attack be on a map like this? It bears some serious thought. In Pitboss 33, we had the dream setup for an early rush: Montezuma’s Aggressive/Spiritual pairing, access to the Combat I promotions and free civic swaps into Slavery/Nationhood/Theocracy/Vassalage, plus a coastal start, plus the chance to build galleons at the start of the game, plus a non-Spiritual non-Aggressive neighbor (Gaspar/Noble) who could be boated. So in retrospect, we should have sailed a couple galleons up to their cities and attacked with rifles/grenadiers, right? Well not so much, I think. Let’s assume a best case scenario where we manage to catch them by surprise and capture two of the Gaspar cities on the water, including their capital, dropping them from 5 cities down to 3 cities. Then what? We could probably hold those two cities, hopefully, but I doubt we could have made any further progress. The supply lines would have been crazy, with a core of 3 cities down in mainland Germany and 2 more cities up in Gaspar territory, with nothing in between. That distance was something like 5-6 turns away by galleon, each way. I don’t see how we could hope to take more territory from there… and it would come at the cost of creating a gamelong enemy, someone with no chance to win who would spend the rest of the game spiking our wheels. How exactly would that be a game-winning move again? I’m not seeing it. Dreylin/OT4E did things the right way, hitting later and taking all of the cities for themselves, and they had no warlike traits at all, a pair of pure econ traits instead (Spi/Phi).
Now let’s think about what’s different in a Renny start from an Industrial one. We do not know if we’ll have a coastal start with ability to move over water. We won’t have galleons available here, which means that any invasion will have to be done over land or via galleys (ugh). It will also be a lot harder to hit early since knights/musketeers only get 2 moves, not the 4 moves of galleons. What makes much more sense is trying to build up first before attacking, and after you get past the first 25 turns, you might as well just take a leader with superior traits rather than going for a specific rush strat. And I mean yes, one option is to take France first and then hope to land Temujin (Imp/Agg) on the second pass at the picks, but then aren’t we just in the same position we were in during the last game? With one good economic trait paired with Aggressive, being eventually outdone by teams with *TWO* economic traits? We did get good value from Aggressive trait in that game, but I know we could have done more with Organized or Philosophical to pair with Spiritual.
Anyway, I think it will be tough to attack early on, and by the time attacks become truly viable, we’ll be at a point where an econ leader would be a better choice. This isn’t a duel game where hurting a single opponent is enough to put you ahead. The only really successful early rushes are ones that get a complete elimination of your opponent, and I’m dubious that we can pull that off. (To clarify: pressuring a neighbor can be very strong, and I think that’s often the way to go. Sniping a border city, trying to box them in with city placements – that kind of thing is great strategy. By early rush, I’m thinking “building lots of units instead of workers/settlers and gambling on capturing cities rather than building them”. That second kind of approach is generally a mistake in my opinion.)
3) OK, I’m afraid that I have to disagree with Cheater Hater’s “why can’t you just attack with musketeers?” plan. For starters, that relies on taking Aggressive as a trait, which I mentioned before feels like opting into a losing strategy. We kind of played with one hand tied behind our back in the last game on the civ traits, I’m dubious about wanting to double up on the same thing again. Pindicator wrote in his Pitboss 33 thread about taking combat traits (Agg/Chr) and then overcoming that by out-microing the other teams, and, well, that didn’t exactly work out. I don’t like a first-pick France that then necessitates an Aggressive trait grab later on. (Also: what if another team likes Temujin? Would we have to play Montezuma’s Spi/Agg again?
) Secondly, musketeers are even weaker than knights when attacking, and they are FAR weaker than cataphracts. In an absolute best case scenario, you’re looking at C1/Cover against an enemy longbow (12.15 strength) as compared to a knight with C2 (12 strength). That’s essentially a wash, and a knight can take Shock or Pinch against any non-longbow opponent to swing the odds. Of course musketeers fare much better against pikes than knights… except that cataphracts with C1/Shock still get odds against pikes (16.2 against 12.6) nearly as good as C1/Shock musketeers against pikes (12.15 against 6.6). And yes, that’s not how the strength formulas work exactly when it comes to promotions, but it’s close enough for illustrative purposes. Obviously cataphracts absolutely slaughter any non-pike units until rifles appear on the scene.
The notion of picking France first, taking Aggressive trait, and then trying to overrun someone early on with musketeers feels like a poor choice of strategy. We don’t even start the game with Gunpowder tech, so we would need to research something that costs ~1200 beakers before we could even build our rush unit (or burn our first Great Engineer on a tech that has no economic value). Plus we have to lock ourselves into the mid-tier Aggressive trait to have any realistic chance at success. In contrast, cataphracts require zero techs to build, just iron and horses, and they have the same 2 movement points. More importantly, musketeers are strength 9. Cataphracts are strength 12. That’s a massive difference – I could have probably stopped right there.
No, if you’re serious about rushing someone, Byzantium needs to be the pick. Cataphracts are stronger, they don’t require a tech to unlock, and they open up a much wider range of leader picks on the second half of the snake draft.
Let me emphasize one last thing: I don’t want to be the party pooper here. The main thing is finding a pick that scooter wants to play. Having fun > any other concerns. I’m only cautioning that I’ve seen a lot of buyer’s remorse in past threads at taking oddball picks and suddenly realizing 25 turns into the game that you’ve removed any chance at winning before the game began. Being in a winning position, or at least competing for first place, tends to be what makes these games fun most of the time.
Hopefully we’ll see the starting screenshot soon. That should add a lot more information to consider.
