[PB24 Spoilers] In which Joey finds himself out on tilt from the get-go...

[GermanJoey]

Three techs from huts, cool. That's really cool. IIRC, I once read a trait analysis by Seven that suggested that the BTS Fin trait was worth about the same as starting with an extra, I think it was something like, 250 beakers on turn 0. Expansive was a little bit less, maybe 225. Thoth (france, Ag/Wheel) has probably gotten about that for free: the average value of the 4 starting techs he doesn't have is 85, and 85*3=255. (edit: actually, he could possibly get pottery too, and BW if he got mining! or AH if he got Hunting!) I got a map of a lake and 30 gold.

Why give a shit about the balance of traits and starting techs or whatever and then play with huts? What the fuck? I didn't even know they were turned on in PB22, but the best anyone got there was 2. I shoulda bowed out of this one when huts were on but... I really wanted to play against Krill. At least events are kinda cool, and way less impactful in RtR than they were in base BTS. (way less impactful than huts in either, for what its worth)

double edit: goddamn am I salty today. salty salty salty. *dota announcer* M-M-M-M-MMMEGA SALTY...

[GermanJoey]

How is Grimace in this game? He was completely oblivious in PB21... he kept confusing our civ (which he was dedlurking) with China, who we were at war with (he wanted us to "push on to take the GLH city" despite having built it ourselves, in our capital, many turns prior), thought it would be fun to set Zanth to the AI "and then you could compete to see who takes the most of his land " while he was in the middle of a hot war with Gawdzak (of Byzantium), and then wanted the lurkers to "vote on the winner" despite endgame demographics being almost completely equal globally, except for Gawdzak's gains in his war. Here, he's still harping about Those Six Goddamn Beakers yet thinks three full techs does not matter because of a Known Tech Bonus that won't even start having an effect (of a beaker or two per turn) for at least 60 more turns.

The only thing that could really make this game better would be if Thoth popped AH or BW, starts next to Grimace, and takes his capital before anyone else has their first settler out. God, now that would be truly beautiful...

[GermanJoey]

Hey Pind, here's the sim at T0, take a crack at it: http://www.mediafire.com/download/041z0i...dSwordSave

I'll gonna send you the link to the google doc version, with micro up to T33, via PM. I didn't run it much past the first settler because the spot I had planned to settle had not been fully explored, and have not seen an ideal 3rd city yet.

[pindicator]

Thanks Jojo, I'll try to steer this ship well with her captain away.

I like that little micro trick you put in of putting 2 turns into the settler upon reaching size 2 so you would get an extra turn of growing on the irrigated corn. Stuff like that is why I like to plan out my micro on a spreadsheet.

We're looking at a capital that is going to take quite a few worker turns to get all its tiles improved, what with the food resources being a full turn walking between them all and then most of our wanted improvements being mines. There's a bit of a balance here between getting the commerce to unlock early techs, getting the worker turns to implement those improvements for our citizens, and yet playing to our strengths and maintaining a solid production.

I assume you were going to go Agriculture >> Mining >> Bronze Working for the opening technologies? That is most likely the winner -- I got pretty heavily punished in pb19 for delaying Bronze Working (awkward location of bronze made it hard to adapt to later) so I'm not really eager to repeat that here. But I still want to look at a couple of ideas:

• Opening double worker
  
• Teching Wheel before BW (to connect our second city early)
  
• Teching AH before BW -- again, not something I'm too keen on, but there are some advantages here for it. First of all, we're going to have both pre-requisites unlocked anyway so it will be a cheap tech: 123 "real cost" for AH vs 173 for BW. And it also unlocks our third resource in the BFC. Working that fur could make up for not having much for rivers in the early game.
  

But before I get carried away I better put in some homework time first...

Edit: The downside of micro plans on spreadsheets: easy to make simple errors. Looks like you were giving us an extra hammer for making that first worker so I'll post an alternative first 30 turns with the same idea you had.

[pindicator]

I asked Commodore where he found the pb1 overview map i remembered him seeing -- don't worry, he gave me the okay to take this spot on despite being a little bit spoiled -- and he was kind enough to just share me his own:




Looks like our start is in the upper-right corner of the map. The lakes make it easy to spot.

A little early to plan settling strategy now, but we'll want to use this to figure out which directions we want to aim for and where we can potentially settle a choke point to claim a lot of land.

[GermanJoey]

Thanks Jojo, I'll try to steer this ship well with her captain away.

I like that little micro trick you put in of putting 2 turns into the settler upon reaching size 2 so you would get an extra turn of growing on the irrigated corn. Stuff like that is why I like to plan out my micro on a spreadsheet.

We're looking at a capital that is going to take quite a few worker turns to get all its tiles improved, what with the food resources being a full turn walking between them all and then most of our wanted improvements being mines. There's a bit of a balance here between getting the commerce to unlock early techs, getting the worker turns to implement those improvements for our citizens, and yet playing to our strengths and maintaining a solid production.

I assume you were going to go Agriculture >> Mining >> Bronze Working for the opening technologies? That is most likely the winner -- I got pretty heavily punished in pb19 for delaying Bronze Working (awkward location of bronze made it hard to adapt to later) so I'm not really eager to repeat that here. But I still want to look at a couple of ideas:

• Opening double worker
  
• Teching Wheel before BW (to connect our second city early)
  
• Teching AH before BW -- again, not something I'm too keen on, but there are some advantages here for it. First of all, we're going to have both pre-requisites unlocked anyway so it will be a cheap tech: 123 "real cost" for AH vs 173 for BW. And it also unlocks our third resource in the BFC. Working that fur could make up for not having much for rivers in the early game.
  

But before I get carried away I better put in some homework time first...

Edit: The downside of micro plans on spreadsheets: easy to make simple errors. Looks like you were giving us an extra hammer for making that first worker so I'll post an alternative first 30 turns with the same idea you had.

heh, woops, you can tell that part was from when I still thought I had Isabella on lockdown. When I went through it to update for Justinian, my eyes must have just glazed over the first worker. I fixed it for ya, luckily there was no overflow that messed up anything else.

The Wheel seeme to be an important tech to me too. Right now, it seems like there's only one spot for our second city, west of those lakes to share the corn and pig. That seems OK for Imp, as the 2nd city can produce workers out of food while the capital makes settlers out of pure hammers. However, I think its also important to get at least one new 5-6 fh tile with one's second city, and we can't even see over there. The wheel would give a lot of other options, although nothing's really shown up so far.

Ag -> Mining -> BW was what I figured on the best "default" tech path for the time being. I've also been burned bad by late copper. heh. However, I also thought that AH after mining would be much better IF horses are around. (easy horse availability in RB maps seems to be a lot more up in the air compared to copper) First, it looks like we'll have the opportunity to expand radially around the capital, which is great but makes axes/spears poor defenders against the barbs, simply because they can't cover a lot of area. Chariots would be much superior for defending wide open areas thanks to their cheaper cost and better mobility. Second, we unfortunately start with hunting, which means that as soon as copper is hooked we lose the ability to produce cheap warrior garrisons, which we'll want a lot of due to having cheap Imp settlers. The third point in favor of AH first is that we're spiritual, which doesn't get hurt as badly swapping into slavery late.

The 2-worker before settler plan sounds interesting. I didn't try that, although I didn't try too many options yet as I wanted to see if huts would pop any techs, HEH. With 2 workers, its probably a good idea to grow the capital to size 4 or 5 before the first settler... would be pretty ideal for getting an early SH too, which is always super nice for Imp. IIRC, TBS did something like this in PB19... seemed to work out pretty well for him! I think this plan wants BW after mining, for early slavery and chops.