Team Bring It!™ Planning Thread

[Kuro]

Sorry I didn't reply Twinkles, I didn't see you type anything because Tinychat's "you have a message" noise is so low. If you wanna get back on I'll pay attention >_>

[Bobchillingworth]

Ah, what the heck. I know that I said I was going to lurk everywhere for this game so that I could see Team Spulla mock everyone and the lurker reaction, but I think that might just give me indigestion So if you all don't mind, I'd like to join on as yet another dedicated lurker =) You all are going to be about the ultimate definition of the "underdogs", so I'm really hoping you guys are able to give as well as you get!


I am *mildly* spoiled- I read the first few posts in the map thread (haven't seen the actual map yet), and I know what Team Spulla's combos will be (well, I can remember two of them anyway). So I'll keep silent on any speculation on those grounds.



As I already told Kuro in our post-game tiny chat, his suggestions of Pacal of India and Gandhi of England sounded like reliable choices, if a little pedestrian. Concerning Caesar of HRE, I think his utility will depend a lot on the difficulty. In our game I was able to tech well even as I underbuilt cottages and forgot to whip libraries because my cities hardly cost anything. Imp was also great for rapidly spamming settlers at the start. Another significant advantage of Imp was that after a couple medium-sized battles I had gotten two GG, which I merged in my main military pump to produce 3-promo knights. Since you'll certainly be doing a lot of fighting in this game, that's a benefit I wouldn't overlook. My standard pattern was to complete a quick settler, immediately chop / whip a rathas (org religion helped, plus missionaries gave me culture), and have quite a few landscknects (or however you spell it) between cities for defense.

About the HRE UU, I personally was rather impressed with them. They pair very well with HA from stables, and could put up a decent defense / offense against anything that wasn't a crossbow. That said, you guys both dramatically underbuilt crossbowmen so I got more use out of the unit that I should have, plus crossbows require less tech. I think their main uses are to clean up ancient age units (unlikely to happen in this game), save you some hammers on maces / crossbowmen on the defense, be a generically good unit which you can build when you don't have anything better to work on, and probably most importantly single-handedly clean up any pre-muskets stack which you can hit with a lot of collateral first.


If you're on sissy baby noble difficulty though HRE might not be worth it. Cities will already hardly cost anything, so there's little point for the UB. An Imp civ would still be good, however. I personally would strenously object to noble though. Why play on a difficulty which ruins an entire trait (plus charismatic too I guess- noble gives extra happy, right?), especially when you can't have doubles?


France is a good option, but I think protective is a waste. Musketeers are a mobile unit, so what's the point of the city defense promo? I guess you could keep them around as a mobile garrison squad, but I'd personally just take aggressive and then maybe charismatic or imp.

[pindicator]

@Kuro - I feel that picking a trait around being on defense all the time isn't a good winning strategy. Now, if you want to argue that we're going to want first strike promos because they work better on attack after a unit has been softened up by seige.... now there's an argument I can get behind

Edit - Looks like Bob snuck in with a similar argument

@Twinkletoes - I would go with England then. Better to have a useful UU & UB. Nothing against the Hwacha, of course

[Bobchillingworth]

Oh and for the record, my tech path from our game:



Civil Service (my capital had decent hammers, so it worked out okay. Probably not worth it as a first tech otherwise), Machinery, Engineering (UU and extra road movement- the latter really helped), Theology (I might have grabbed this too early), Feudalism (probably later than it should have been, except I had Landmasters for defense + a few crossbowmen and maces), Guilds, Gunpowder, Chemistry, Military Strategy (mass city raider maces & landmaster upgrade to grenadiers).


I almost entirely ignored economic techs, but it didn't seem to matter much. I was only thinking in the short-term, though- obviously your game won't have a 120 turn limit. TT's drafting muskets made it difficult for me to get rid of him- I was having to stockpile a lot of trebs and mace / grenadiers to take his second city. On the attack though I think my 3-promo knights would have slaughtered them messily. I suspect that early nationalism would be great for France. Early Drama seems like it might be a red herring. Is a great artist really going to help anyone more than quicker bureaucracy or more advanced units?


My early builds were worker first in the capital -> chopped another worker. My other settler founded a coastal city with three seafood resources, so it went boat -> boat -> whip worker. Both my archers ran off scouting- seemed easy enough to whip or chop new ones if I was pressured.

[Kuro]

Yeah, I should of gotten Nat sooner that game...I was planning to Scientist bulb Philo, but that did not end up working, which is understandable.

I would be pretty okay with a combo me and Bob went over, assuming Monarch or more: Caeser of HRE, Pacal II of India, Gandhi of Korea/England.

[Jkaen]

I can't see anything better than those combos myself, so happy with that

[Bobchillingworth]

If you guys don't want noble difficulty, you should probably advocate more in the game set-up thread. You have a vote that counts for as much as anyone else, right?


Honestly this whole thing seems like a recipe for a farce. Spulla proposes a game with personalized settings tailor-made to appeal to Speaker's experience with "thousands" of similar games, with a likely tech speed which perfectly matches Sulla's expertise at running technocentric expansion economy games, and teams that lack any pretense of balance. So team Spulla gets an era ahead in tech or whatever, stomps everyone else, and then brags about how awesome they are and why their opponents are drooling imbeciles.


Well, whatever. Not my fight I guess. But I cannot understand why they would not consider raising the difficulty above noble unless they intend to entirely marginalize Organized.

[Kuro]

I don't really see how it's a farce...I see it as more of a fun challenge, myself. You wouldn't be complaining if Cervantes set up this game and then Speaker/Sulla joined as their real selves, would you?

And to be fair on the opponent's point...they pretty much take who they can get :P It's not their fault they didn't get a lot of Krills and Novices.

Besides, how many settings don't appeal to Spulla's strengths?

[Jkaen]

Its the sheer inflexibility though, and the take it or leve it approach that they think we should be bowing down before them to play no matter what the settings.

[Kuro]

REJECT RUSH KEKEKEKEKE