RBP3 [SPOILERS] Hannibal of Byzantium (Bobchillingworth, ManiaMuse & SleepingMoogle)

[Bobchillingworth]

On our start


The more I think about it, the more I actually really like our start, which has some excellent commerce potential. My main concern is that it's obviously been world-built; jungle grassland silver is impossible under normal circumstances, jungles shouldn't appear next to the capital (well, except for on a few of the rarer map types, anyway), and the river seems pretty clearly edited in, as I don't think rivers ever naturally terminate on flatland, and it seems like the editor tried to get it to go into the one-tile lake, but stopped a little short (of course rivers don't normally go into tiny lakes anyway, I think).

What this tells me is that we can probably predict with fairly close accuracy what every other start will look like, since it would seem awfully unbalancing if no one else had a similar river and luxury scheme as us. I would expect someone to have a desert hill jungle gold, and possibly a plains jungle non-river gems. So we can expect many teams to beeline iron working, and Rome and Aztecs will be even more dangerous then before, since I'm sure they were going to do that anyway. If the trees to the north really do mean that we're approaching tundra country, then we may be in luck and have opponent-free land in that direction. Not particularly likely, but scouting south may be the priority.

[ManiaMuse]

Yeah I agree we can probably leave archery for a bit but definitely need hunting. We are a huge dogpile target, no one is going to want us to tech our way to cataprachts unhindered but yeah I agree, if we get choked while we only have archers we're going to be screwed either way.

Hopefully we can play our diplomacy well even against the experienced teams, particularly the ones keen on diplomacy (such as Rego, Krill, Athlete's team and Exploit to name a few). Maybe we could try our luck if we happen to border an obviously aggressive civ like Ruff or one of the unknown quantity teams and try and negotiate a really early protection pact or something. Obviously just speculation at the moment.

Anyway I'm doing some spreadsheets a la Sulla. Not too much to note so far as there isn't too much information or micro to be doing. But I'll try to keep track of population and power for a while at least. I hope Spulla don't mind too much if I use their spreadsheets as templates.

[Bobchillingworth]

Yeah I think we want to convince people that we're going to play like PB1 Byz while planning to follow the more sober elements of the PB2 Byz strategy. Offering to sell our neighbors cataphracts in the far future really appeals to me- that means that someone like Rome could have unit superiority from ironworking to rifles. Of course there's no guarantee that anyone else will think the same way.

Hey what do we want to do with Great Generals? Probably we should settle the first in our Heroic Epic city, and also we want a super medic chariot or whatever, but the idea of a super charismatic uber combat knight UU seems too fun to pass up- maybe GG #3, assuming we get that far. It's a shame that blitz needs a tech now- you can get some absurd exp with a 3-move blitz horse unit mopping up after an attack.

[ManiaMuse]

Yeah we could get up to some interesting things. I mean I don't think we're looking at this game deadset on winning it like a few other players are. But we want to survive until at least midgame and have a useful role hopefully employing cataprachts at some point for the purpose of fighting "evil" teams or whatever or selling them as mercenaries. Even if that means getting involved with a weaker alliance perhaps?. I'd rather help the underdog teams than buddy up with the clear favorites and end up getting picked off when we're no longer useful.

As for great generals, normally I make the first one my medic 3 chariot/scout/explorer and then settle the second one. Though usually that's because I get my first one after my first bloody stack attack and usually can do with being able to heal quickly to continue the offensive. Things may work differently in MP but an uber knight would be pretty fun.

Edit: here is the spreadsheet I was working on. I haven't done a tab for power yet even though we can work a few things out about it from starting units/population/techs. I think it will be this area that I fail most spectacularly at and not sure how worth it is before we get demographics. We have a few turns before builds complete so I might attempt to summarise what we can figure out in the next few turns.

Also credit goes to Spulla for the layout of the spreadsheets. If you feel that I have lifted it too much without asking permission just let me know and I'll do things differently (well so long as I continue with it anyway!)

[Bobchillingworth]

Looks good to me!


I took the liberty of moving the warrior SW as discussed- not too much too interesting, but there is a jungle hill tile, and what may be coast next to it.

Feel free to delete or add to the clutter of signs I've put up everywhere.

It seems like most people who have settled have 9 land tiles, so we might be the only ones with a lake. Several teams have more commerce than us; some of that is the creative trait, but I think at least one person has creative plus a two or three commerce square. Uh, also most people have one more food than us, so probably they moved a space closer to their agr resource.

[SleepingMoogle]

Okay, it sounds like counterclockwise is the way to go. It was the direction I favored myself as well as I'd like to see how large that desert to the SE is. Given no further surprises while defogging, how does this scouting path sound:

SE (we'll get visibility to the south) > E > NE > E (borders expand) > NE

It's a safe route as it never moves the Warrior too far from the capital and always provides a defensive terrain bonus. The last move would take us three tiles from the capital though, and I'd probably be against that if we have made contact with another Civ's scouting unit by that time. Either way, after that we could move NW a couple of turns to defog some tiles to the N and NW.

I also agree that whether or not we research Archery early should depend on whether we have early access to horses or copper. Our current tech path will reveal those pretty quickly. By that time we'll probably also know who our next door neighbors are and whether or not we can expect trouble from them. Without early access to both though, we should get it for early defense.

Quick question: Why do you think we need hunting right away Mania? All it would do at this point is enable Archery, but maybe I'm overlooking something. Do you want to train Scouts? If we have access to horses or copper, we can build some chariots and/or axes/spears for defense instead, and in that case I probably favor getting Pottery first.

Our food surplus isn't that great at the Capital, but I would still like to at least consider getting some cottages out early and start growing those instead of focusing on the hill mines. We probably have to utilize one early on, but we should still be able to at least 1-pop whip every 10 turns for production and regrow our population while working cottages. We're a Financial Civ, and the longer we wait with utilizing our bonuses, the weaker it'll make us in the long run.

Oh! I almost forgot to thank you for starting on the spreadsheet Mania. *cough* So, thanks a lot! This should give us some early benefit on the other teams for sure.

[ManiaMuse]

Quick question: Why do you think we need hunting right away Mania? All it would do at this point is enable Archery, but maybe I'm overlooking something. Do you want to train Scouts? If we have access to horses or copper, we can build some chariots and/or axes/spears for defense instead, and in that case I probably favor getting Pottery first.

Hunting after BW for spears just incase we end up facing a chariot rush or early horse archers (and since chariots don't get defensive bonuses it means we could cope with a chariot choke a bit better). I don't normally go for early hunting because the AI is stupid and doesn't do chariot/HA rushes but in MP it seems a lot more common and we should be prepared. Fortunately Persia isn't in the game so we only have to worry about Krill's uber war chariots, but still if we happen to meet him soon it might be worth considering. And there will be Numidian cavalry around at some point as well... If we want to get working a cottage fairly soon though I'd be happy with going for pottery first.

Interestingly Morgan still hasn't settled his city after the second turn and ad hoc etc are still thinking about it. I suspect everyone must have only average land around their capital if they think it is worth two turns of moving the settler.

[SleepingMoogle]

Okay, that's fair enough. Then again, we would need to have copper near our capital for spears as well. So how about a compromise? If we have access to copper and a neighbor that we fear is prepping a chariot rush, we'll get Hunting first. If not, we'll get Pottery and then research Hunting + Archery. How does that sound?

Guesstimates: Morgan may have found an alternative city site and is moving his settler towards it. This could also mean he'll end up very close to another Civ, so he may have to focus on defense to protect his claim early on. Ad hoc & co may still be discussing their moves for this turn, with 4 voices settling place could be a lengthy discussion.

Edit: Ad hoc's team has settled and finished turn. Now the only civ that hasn't planted their first city yet is Morgan.

[Bobchillingworth]

Something I forgot to post last night-

Our river may in fact be natural- it seems to be originating from one of our grass hills, instead of ending at it. More importantly, it flows north. Now, I'm not sure if the rivers in this game will flow into oceans /seas as they (I think) normally do in naturally generated maps, but when considering this in conjunction with a water square we can see through tile bleeding in our west I think this may mean that our west is a coastline. Given the pine trees in our north imply increasingly cold terrain in that direction, we probably have the best chance of meeting someone else either in the south or east. I like Moogle's scout plan, since it takes us in those directions, and we should probably settle toward opponents and backfill later.

Also I assume we go warrior after the worker- do we want to fast build it with the plains hill while we farm, or grow with a 3-food rice? I think I prefer fast building, although we lose a commerce that way. Too early to decide yet, but how does worker--> warrior (defense) --> warrior (scouting) --> worker --> chop settler sound, tenatively?

[ManiaMuse]

I really would prefer to build it while working the rice. Food should be the major priority in most openings apart from a few cases like building workboats. I know it will take longer to get another warrior out but we really want to get to happy cap as soon as possible before starting the first settler (since we will be a bit food poor we could build the first settler maybe at size 3 or 4. We have happy cap 5 without military police, 6 with).

Basically I'm really not sure if it is worth it stunting our early growth so much just to get another warrior. It's going to be cramped so we don't want to get beaten to a horse/copper site.

Any lurker comments?