[Spoilers] Dreylin's short visit to a late Era

[OT4E]

Probably leaning against early aggression; I'd like to have a bit more of a look at the era's gameplay, so develop a bit before pushing against anyone.

Good then, I do not like to rely on those "all in"-rush strategies. Right-stated goals and well-thought strategy can provide us necessary advantage, though we need to watch our back against easy win hunters. Drafting rifles must be a part of any strategy because you cant stay with 3 cities and if you want more you need a proper number of defenders.

[Dreylin]

So I'm thinking something like:

Gandhi (Phi/Spi) of the Khmer
Asoka (Spi/Org) of Aztec
Montezuma (Agg/Spi) of Germany
Darius (Fin/Org) of the Dutch
Peter (Exp/Phi) of India
Boudica (Agg/Chm) of Russia
Joao (Imp/Exp) of Carthage

Any thoughts?

[OT4E]

Seems good.

[Dreylin]

So a bit more explanation for posterity (and while I indecisively consider reordering some of the lower picks).

Gandhi (Phi/Spi) of the Khmer

Gandhi we've talked about quite a lot already, so I'll just say that 2 strong traits + free Barays is too good to pass up.

Asoka (Spi/Org) of Aztec
Montezuma (Agg/Spi) of Germany

What I considered the 2nd & 3rd strongest SPI picks here. SPI just seems like it should add so much more flexibility than any other trait, and the synergy with Aztec's UB is obvious. Monty wants to leverage SPI to survive until Panzers and then wreck face.

Darius (Fin/Org) of the Dutch

With the above comments about SPI, this is probably where Hannibal should be ... except I decided that of the two naval-focused civs, I was more interested in trying out The Dutch, so here is Darius. Having said that, I am probably underrating CHM as a SPI partner trait, but either way I probably put this combo too high on the list and will move it down on revision.

Peter (Exp/Phi) of India

Un-nerfed Fast Workers with the (IMO) best PHI combo after Gandhi. I will probably move this up to 4th.

Boudica (Agg/Chm) of Russia

Reasoning that if it gets this far through my pick list, then I'm going to want to go ruin someone else's game, and this is my favourite of the immediate aggro combos. (also unresolved PB28 trauma)

Joao (Imp/Exp) of Carthage

Essentially a filler chosen as what looks to be the best of the IMP combos. Probably should replace this guy with Brennus.


Picks 1-3 are set, so BRick, if you''re needing them and I'm the hold-out, try to get me one of them, OK? I'll post a final list this evening.

[OT4E]

I dont want to make pressure, I will be happy to have any among of most those combos.

But may be it is reasonable to put Asoka on the first place? If 5 people takes Gandi then we have just 20% to have it. I'd prefer 90% chance of having Asoka over than a 20% chance to gamble with Gandi. We could experiment with Kremlin sprint. Imagine Aztecs with Kremlin... Weird..

Up to you anyway.

[Dreylin]

Hmmm, I see the merits of what you're suggesting. Will need to think about it.

[OT4E]

Just for the information, about Brennus of vikings. Vikings have advantage in seas mostly because of Ships of the lines. They are terribly slow and need promotion to be in the right place in time. For others civs they are too expensive. Thought all the navy and its mobility must be more useful in teamers like those I have played in which most of the things were decided in waters.

[Dreylin]

I thought about it and decided that I'm not going to try to out-guess the picks; I'd like to play Gandhi, so I'll keep him in the #1 spot and hope the RNG is on my side ... or that everyone else has out-guessed it!

Gandhi (Phi/Spi) of the Khmer
Asoka (Spi/Org) of Aztec
Montezuma (Agg/Spi) of Germany
Peter (Exp/Phi) of India
Darius (Fin/Org) of the Dutch
Boudica (Agg/Chm) of Russia
Brennus (Chm/Spi) of the Vikings

Switched Peter & Darius as discussed earlier, I also dropped Joao in favour of Brennus in the final spot. The Joao pick was made mostly so I had an IMP on the list, but that doesn't make any sense.

BRick, these are final picks.

[Dreylin]

Results:

REM: Julius Caesar (Imp/Org) of Japan
Scooter: Montezuma (Agg/Spi) of Germany
Pindicator: Boudica (Agg/Chm) of Russia
CH'DZ: Peter (Exp/Phi) of India
Gaspar/Noble: Darius (Fin/Org) of the Dutch
Boldly: Asoka (Spi/Org) of Aztec
Dreylin: Gandhi (Phi/Spi) of the Khmer

Well, score one for not second-guessing!

So I figure we want to get the first city down t0 so we can get the Engineer brewing ASAP, while wandering with the other 2 Settlers. Workers stay with the first city to improve; first-build and buy Workers at city2 & 3, then whip a second? Unit at the capital, or another Worker?

[OT4E]

T0 we can only plant city on the place. It is not bad place for cap talking about commerce, but very limited chops and not much food. If we are planning Oxford here, we would better leave all 4 forests there.

As an option we can move cap to NW, to the iron, losing a turn. There we can chop more woods and expand faster.

From the first view it seems that starting from slavery is better, but need to test it out in the testbox.
Building plan is something like:
Worker - whip - worker (overflow) - workboat and start growing
Or if we chop gems:
Worker - culture - chop - worker (whip) - worker/wb(overflow)

The goal is to get maximum workers but not spend much turns building them and switch to growth asap.

City#2 is 1 tile below iron, it gets 2 sheeps, wheat and iron, probably some more chops outside of the visible circle. There we buy worker and whip worker.

City#3 I'd send to the deers, at least we can build green farms around to grow and it seems there are some chops. City to the corn has just 2 chops and no farms, so it is bad city for the opening. Need cities with many food and many chops, the more the better. Settler costs 9 chops/whips.

Since we are Gandhi we can think of wasting our first GE on Taj. We get it on the turn 14, but we can hurry it up with pacifism. This requires fast missionary and road to the holy city.

Is it good investment? By the turn 13-14 we will have cities size of 5-6, so thats probably we gain about 100-120 hammers total and some commerce.
Well Gandhi must use his GPs somehow. Nobody non-spi gets it to solve his problems with changing civics.

After we whip workers we switch to serfdorm and turn back to slavery only when we are ready to whip settlers.

What do you think about middle goals? Are we emphazising on Oxford and the best science output, or do we try Kremlin rush with GPs? Both require quick expansion, I am not fond of going for Kremlin with 3 cities. But in the details they are different. For example for GPs we shall consider chopping capitals forest into settler, while we'd better leave them for Oxford. For GPs shot we must start growing GA in the peripherical cities, I guess we must make GS or even 2 GS in both cases.

Or do you want us to invent some other tech plan?