It's Clobberin' Time! Raging Barbs Highlands Tokugawa on Monarch

[shallow_thought]

Wow. I just skimmed through the first 75 turns of a game on Monarch/Highlands/Raging barbs. I picked Mansa/Mali for Skirmishers, and am glad I did. It's brutal. Could be tricky playing without an early unit that beats archers on flatland. I guess PRO may help a bit.

Should be fun!

[Fluffball]

Wow. I just skimmed through the first 75 turns of a game on Monarch/Highlands/Raging barbs. I picked Mansa/Mali for Skirmishers, and am glad I did. It's brutal. Could be tricky playing without an early unit that beats archers on flatland. I guess PRO may help a bit.

Should be fun!

HLs is one of my favorite map scripts, and Raging Barbs is my default setting as of late. It's pretty common for AIs to lose the capitals or be flat out eliminated. At least 1 per game on my huge maps. It's not THAT bad for players though since you can be smart about rivers and terrain and what not. Or just get the GW. 

[Zalson]

Naming scheme: Nintendo and Sega games?

I think the naming scheme is an excellent suggestion, RFS-81. We'll go with that.

Or maybe just generally Japanese pop-culture, in case that's easier for haphazard1?

He can probably still contribute some names. Or he can learn!

Lurker comment: I might look at a barracks over that volume of military, especially with Toku's traits and the very defensible terrain of HLs map. You should be winning most/all of your barbs combats until axes show up, and at that point you'll want shock axes. Just a thought.

A barracks is too much of a risk. On normal Monarch, barbarians show up on turn 25. I don't know what raging barbs does to their behavior; in a normal game, they don't enter your borders until the number of cities is great than 2n+1 ... I think perhaps raging barbs ... ignores that.

With start 3, we would have produced a worker, 2 warriors without a barracks and a worker and barracks by turn 25.

I think once we can whip, we'll probably get the barracks on overflow.

Wow. I just skimmed through the first 75 turns of a game on Monarch/Highlands/Raging barbs. I picked Mansa/Mali for Skirmishers, and am glad I did. It's brutal. Could be tricky playing without an early unit that beats archers on flatland. I guess PRO may help a bit.

Should be fun!

shallow_thought: when did the barbs show up?

My expectation is that we'll do a lot of defending -- and that Woody 3 will be very useful Can't wait to use some drill IV units, either.

My guess is that we'll have a woody 3 axe and a drill IV archer that will escort settlers, followed by a CG2 archer or two to defend. We'll need to expand defensively.

Our second city must must must have copper. Hence our tech path goes: agg, hunting, archery, bronzeworking.

We will also want to probably keep all cities above size 2 and keep some hammers in a cheap unit for emergency whips -- until we get a backline.

Protective may actually be useful too. Walls only cost a chop if we can get a plains hill plant and a forested plains hill -- and only 17 hammers if we can find stone!

Or just get the GW.

I'd prefer no Great Wall but if the team feels otherwise, we can try for it. Kind of ruins the fun...

I also realized that I voted for start 3 when I meant to vote for start 4.

[shallow_thought]

shallow_thought: when did the barbs show up?

Or just get the GW.

I'd prefer no Great Wall but if the team feels otherwise, we can try for it. Kind of ruins the fun...

It was one game, but everything seemed "normal" until around t40-50 or so, and then it was a constant stream of warriors and archers pushing up in ones and twos, pillaging stuff. Felt like a game of Fall from Heaven. Which is no bad thing.

Also, no GW - too boring!

[Zalson]

That's good. My current plan (which I need to stop working on...) will get us a worker and a half, settler, 2 built warriors, 1.5 archers, and 8 hammers into a barracks on turn 40. The problem I'm running into right now is that we don't know where copper is until Turn 42.

So let's hope there's a 2/1/1 or a 1/2/1 file in the fog. Otherwise we may have to try to for city 3 on the copper.

I'll explain how I got there when I play my turns tonight.

[Brian Shanahan]

shallow_thought: when did the barbs show up?

Or just get the GW.

I'd prefer no Great Wall but if the team feels otherwise, we can try for it. Kind of ruins the fun...

It was one game, but everything seemed "normal" until around t40-50 or so, and then it was a constant stream of warriors and archers pushing up in ones and twos, pillaging stuff. Felt like a game of Fall from Heaven. Which is no bad thing.

Also, no GW - too boring!

To be honest we shouldn't really be looking at building any early wonders. But, yeah, GW on a barb heavy map defeats the purpose.

[shallow_thought]

The economy is also weird. With so much miltary, founding more cities actually seems to help rather than hinder, as it reduces unit maintenance, if I understand what is going on correctly.

EDIT. Oops. -2gpt at 10% slider with Currency. We're going to need to keep an eye on the economy with this one.

[Zalson]

How many cities do you have? Do you have any cottages?

[haphazard1]

Wow, lots to catch up on already. Looks like people are ready to play on this one.

For naming, can I use old (ancient?) Atari games? That was the console of my youth, in the dim and misty past.

Raging barbs is definitely a different kind of game than normal barbs, and the Highlands script tends to make it even more so due to the space available for the barbs to spawn.

Economy will be a problem in the early going. Lots more units to support, and harder to keep tiles improved. We will have to be very careful about crashing our economy.

I agree that building the Great Wall (if we even could do it) would defeat the purpose of the game settings. Someone will eventually build it, just hopefully not an immediate neighbor. Getting both their and our share of the barbs would be messy.

We will want a barracks, and fairly early too with Toku's traits. But not right at first -- we will need several units out and defending to be safe enough to commit to an infra project.

What else? Copper or horses will be crucial early. Preferably copper, but horses for chariots can be really useful when the barb axes start showing up by threes and fours. Even shock axes do not get all that good of odds, and sometimes you have to attack to preserve a tile improvement so we can not count on always having defensive terrain.

Good luck! This should be fun. Or quick and brutal and we will be re-starting.

[Zalson]

Ok here we go:

Goals for the set:

1 worker
2 warriors
1 archer
5/7s of a settler

Research Agriculture, Hunting, 2/3 of bronzeworking

Start 4: check.

Name corrected: check.



Nothing to the north unfortunately.



T1
Found SuperMarioBros (apparently did not take a picture)

That riverside hill is pretty sweet. That'll save us some time on research!

T2
Is this agriculture (i've held off research until now)...



T3
Gold is better than nothing!


T6
That's two food resources!


T8
More gold



T10
Finish Agriculture. Start Hunting.

T12


A hut!



A map!

That's a lot of green.

T13
Worker comes in. Start a warrior, due in 8. It'll end up being done in 7 turns. 



T14
Worker starts on the corn.

Hunting comes in, start Archery. I think we still go bronze working first but Animal Husbandry needs to come after BW.

T16
Barbarians (wolves).



T17
Wolf does nothing.

T18
Hinduism goes down. Corn completes

T19
Get to the deer.

T20
Work that deer! And I got sniped by that wolf and…



FLAWLESS VICTORY!

T21
finish a warrior, start another. This guy goes to explore around the deer -- is that where we want site 2 to go (since we don't have AH for a bit?)

T22
A hut and another wolf!



T23
Take 4 hits but promote to woody1. Naturally, more gold.

T24
Finish archery and I realize my first mistake: Japan doesn't start with mining. Why did I think they did?

This changes thing a little bit. I'm going to go with animal husbandry. Horses will give a little respite and we have a lot of animal husbandry resources.

Start AH. Due in 10 turns.

LOOK AT THAT FOOD SURPLUS.



Next move is to make my way to the empty grass hill and mine it.

… I think you may notice something that I didn’t when I wrote the previous sentence.

T25
Warrior 3 completes and goes to explore our northwest. Warrior 1 shelters in place to avoid another wolf. Warrior 2 will loop around and head back to the cap.

T27
Were we playing a normal game, I know where city 2 would go.



I've indicated it just in case. Not sure this is where we want it to go for this game. or if we want it to go there yet.

T29
What do you mean I can't mine that hill?



That sound you heard? That was me doing this. 

Golly gee wilikers what an error. At least we can build roads.

T30
Our first archer comes out. Putting the overflow and hammers into a barracks while growing to size 5.

T31
Settler, due in 8 turns... and that was why I had the barracks getting a turn of hammers after archery came in (would have had picked up the 2 extra food hammers that would have gotten it for me in 7).



Oh also mining would have helped.

I hate it when I can't follow my OWN PLANS THAT I WROTE.

I think this city goes here. It can work the pigs, plus a defender on the pigs gets the river crossing penalty applied to the attacker. Just gotta hope there are horses down there.



T32
This A-Hole.



If you don't know, Gilgamesh cost me my game on deity http://www.realmsbeyond.net/forums/showt...p?tid=8960. Good thing we're going to kill him this game.

Peace for now. He has slavery and has nothing else.

T33
Animal Husbandry comes in and I sheepishly choose mining. There are no horses.

T35
Here's the territory to the south.



Gilgamesh has met someone else as he's spending 0 on espionage with us.

Look those sweet demos. First in pop and tops in foodhammers is good. GNP... not so much. Really sorry about the mining mishap, guys.



Territory to the north.



I've marked my recommended spot on the map. Feel free to veto; I'd also recommend north by the deer. That corn and pigs spot might be too difficult to defend with our first plant but we should definitely prioritize it highly. City 3, I think?

Good luck RFS-81. You've got it for 20 turns.

Zalson (weeping over micro mistakes and forgetting again that Japan doesn’t have mining)
RFS-81 (UP)
haphazard1 (on deck)
Brian Shanahan (in the dugout)
shallow_thought

We’ll do the standard 24/48. Clock starts now.

RFS-81, I was originally going to suggest a complex swapping pattern for starting a archer and double-whipping a worker and overflowing into a settler — but then I didn’t get you bronze working… Sorry about that…

So, I’d recommend you finish the settler and start an archer in both Super Mario and … city 2 (Sonic the … Hog?).

Good luck! I’m also sorry I didn’t pull the units back to our borders. Hope you have good hut luck!