Chairmen NobleHelium and Gaspar Demand Your Presence in the Collective

[oledavy]

That's a lot of plains. If that is the case for the entire map, it nerfs running a specialist economy a little bit since you have less grassland to farm.

[Gaspar]

That's a lot of plains. If that is the case for the entire map, it nerfs running a specialist economy a little bit since you have less grassland to farm.

Yeah, we had similar thoughts. Looks a bit like the BTS version of FFH6 out there - no aristograrianism for us, sadly.

Does increase the value of wonders like GLH and Colossus if the whole map is this dry.

[NobleHelium]

Nah, it's a lot closer to FFH8. FFH6 is like the burning pits of hell (and basically is now).

[Gaspar]

So played. You can basically see what we did from the SS above. We had a fairly lengthy debate about Mining -> BW first or AH first. BW first is the home run play though, allows us to get the fastest early settler.

With the dearth of quality in the area, that's a real debate, but the safe play in a game of this skill is just suicide. If we strike out, we strike out, but at least we swung for the fences.

Here's the EOT shot. We'll research Mining -> BW while going worker -> worker then chop a pair of forests into a settler. Most likely Pottery after BW and get cottages up on the floodplains before improving the plains cows.



Here's the settings. No news that Commodore didn't already give us.



And the score info:



Anything else anyone's interested in, holler.

[NobleHelium]

Important reminder: we need to work the flood plains over the forest for 2 turns, which will trade 1 hammer of overflow out of the worker for 2 beakers in order to get Bronze Working a turn earlier. Very important. We worked the forest this turn.

[NobleHelium]

Oh and we claim victory on virtue of being #1 in all demographics categories!

[Gaspar]

I promised NH an assessment of our team, so if you're Holding Out for a Hero - here's your best shot:



Represented by the first among equals, the Chairman himself:



Mao (EXP/PRO) of Babylon (Bowman, Garden, Agriculture, The Wheel)

Well, we didn't really pick this so much as had it picked for us but I think you could contend that it was the strongest choice on the board. Exp is obviously the best trait allowed in this game and we're the only ones with it. While Pro is rightly derided as garbage it certainly supports a farmer's gambit in a game where one really can't push it too hard - strong, well-promoted Archer UU and cheap walls are a real deterrent to picking on the little guy. Better to just wait until later and come stomp us with something stronger. To leverage this we need to get Archery earlier than normal (I frequently never research it given peace, actually) and get bows to support aggressive expansion. I think NH and I both would like to run a specialist econ, but it is just not feasible given that all 3 other players have stronger incentives to do so than we do. Given that, we'll have to find other economic options - certainly GLH and Colossus are thoughts and no question that we'll have to find as much food to support cottages as possible. Gardens are a terrible, terrible UB and the less said about it the better.

In terms of us as players (I'll spare Mardoc and Dave analysis) well, you're looking at a mixed bag. I think I've proven capable of a strong start (PBEM24) and a strong middle (PBEM14, PB4). I've shown okay tactics (PBEM14 defense, PBEM26) and terrible tactics (FFH7, also PBEM26.) I've run heavily cottage oriented economies (PBEM12, PB4, FFH7) the water economy (PBEM14) and a decent hybrid (PBEM24.) I've shown strong diplo (PBEM14, FFH7) and terrible diplo (PBEM24, PB4.) So ultimately, I'm all over the map. If I play my best game, I truly believe I'm good enough to beat these guys. The problem is I've yet to put all those good marks together in one game. That, for me, is where NH comes in.

NH has a lot less history than me, being both a later joiner of RB and a less prolific player. He has however done a ton of dedlurking and learned a lot from it. I think Darrell's PBEM17 thread was a great education for both NH and GES - it was a bit of a finishing school of sorts. NH has lurked me before and you can usually count on him to notice things others don't. You can also count on him to tell you about it in the most blunt, grating way. Anyway, his one true foray into playing is PBEM21 (FFH8 only semi-counts.) I think we've all been impressed by his and Lewwyn's play there. His strength is definitely in seeing all the possibilities and you can see the influence of both Krill and Lewwyn in his micro, which is usually solid. Noble's weakness is a huge dollop of self-doubt, so while his role will be to keep me on point, my role will be to keep him out of the gutter. (He won't agree with this.)

Chairmen snapshot:

Player Skill: (Probably deserve 3 but I can't countenance rating Lewwyn ahead of us)
Leader/Civ Strength:
Aggressiveness:
"It" factor: *pimp*

Exploitable weakness: Tendency to lose focus, occasional panicking.
Biggest fear: To the other players? That one of the big boys rolls us and gets a huge swath of land to expand to.
Pre-game prediction: 3rd of 4.

[oledavy]

Random Musings

If the rest of the map is plains-heavy, it might be worth it to consider going the priest economy route for the per city bonuses.

For that you'd probably want to bulb theo to get the AP and open up Paper and DR. We would need Great Prophet Points from somewhere. Mack is going to be gunning for the Oracle for sure, but we could make a stab at Stonehenge and use the first great person to that end. Not having to build monuments would be pretty nice too, so we could capitalize on EXP granaries right off the bat.

Of course, idk about our odds of nabbing any wonders with an industrious civ in the game Thought it worth consideration though.

Edit: Because I can't count.

[NobleHelium]

There's only one industrious civ (two imperialistic ones). Per-city bonuses are definitely a possibility, and definitely less contentious than GLH. It's still a pain in the ass to generate Prophet points unless you're Egypt or...Arabia though. Stonehenge might be good, we have a lot of forests.

[oledavy]

There's only one industrious civ (two imperialistic ones).

Was counting N7 as industrious. Seven's build/chop micro makes him a faux industrious, right?