[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[Dp101]

Everyone has mirrored starts so all micro being optimal, what's the best leader/combo to get here fastest with starting with 2 x 2pop cities.

I thought it was pretty much accepted that when racing for just one specific tech, Ghandi was best due to lightbulb power, no? Can't think of any particular civ that lends itself to making a play for it, except maybe the oddball option of Rome for more GPP generation. Disclaimer for the above: I haven't looked at the list of who bulbes what so the above might be very wrong.

[scooter]

Lots of good comments here. Nothing is particularly swaying me away from Julius.

Do Ren games even go as far as factories before concede? It seems like drafting is the biggest production bump in this setup and the most practical to plan around exploiting.

Oh I think this one will. Actually, I would go so far as to say the factory explosion might just be the thing that causes a concession if it's converted into a horde. In 33 REM and us got access to factories at basically the same time, but everyone will be more spread out by the time the leader gets there.

I am also wondering what leader will get us Lib Fastest assuming that's a high priority. It still seems like its the biggest prize in the early game as you can either get Nationalism free and try to Taj with the marble or get the free GM to pop a single guy golden age.

Is Liberalism that good if we don't go with Financial (and thus don't Cottage everywhere)? I think the reason why Liberalism is so prioritized in ancient starts is that the Universities at Education are much better (as you have a bunch of cottaged cities), and then Liberalism is cheaper than Nationalism (or something you can delay it for if you're really ahead in the race). Here you don't need Education right away, so why not just research Nationalism instead of risking the Liberalism race (especially since Nationalism is cheaper than normal thanks to Divine Right)? Or are you thinking of another target other than Nationalism--maybe the Economics merchant?

It's going to take a lot longer to tech Education and Liberalism than it'll take to just straight tech Nationalism, not to mention the possibility of someone artist-bulbing it.

My initial feeling is that Liberalism is a total sucker's play here. By the time you research it and get the free tech, you could have just researched the tech in question yourself, and of course someone could beat you there. I suppose the one exception would be if a deep Communism beeline is the plan in which case it's a tech you need anyway... which now that I actually type that out, yeah, a deep Communism beeline might just be in the cards. But that's a different discussion.

And yeah, like Dip101 said, Gandhi gets what Gandhi wants of the early bonuses in this setup.

It also seems like the marble is there so people can taj race.

Taj will almost certainly get rushed by an Engineer since everyone will get one. More likely the marble is there for the Epics which are available on a Ren start. Getting value out of National Epic in particular is going to be very important, and unlocking Heroic Epic will be important too.

* Organized also opens up some otherwise unappealing civs as options on the second half of the snake pick. Cheap sacrificial altars? Cheap rathauses? Not bad picks if the civs we expect to get taken are gone. Fin and Phi don't provide quite the same options (maybe Korea for Phi?)

I'm really intrigued at the possibility of abusing Sacrificial Altars unless something can't-miss drops to us with the last pick. Dreylin/OT4E's main barrier in their 33 whip-fest seemed to be happiness moreso than population. The comments you and others made about EPs are definitely on my mind too.


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Anyway, last call for someone to talk me into something other than Julius. I don't see much need to drag things out.

[Sullla]

Following up on antisocialmunky’s post: I’m not sure if a game like this gets to factories. Maybe 50/50 odds I would say. I think we like Organized as a trait even if we don’t get to factories, and I see that bonus as a minor tipping point in the trait’s favor.

We definitely should be thinking about a potential tech path out of the gate here. The options again are:

* Nationalism (base cost 1800 beakers before map-specific modifiers)
* Printing Press (1600 beakers)
* Education (1800 beakers)
* Gunpowder (1200 beakers)
* Astronomy (2000 beakers)

I don’t have a strong feeling about what’s best here. Nationalism unlocks drafting and leads to both Constitution and Military Tradition, in addition to having the Taj Mahal available. That might be a strong first choice. Printing Press is almost useless on its own (no one has villages/towns at the start of the game), but Replaceable Parts is very good with the windmill/watermill production bonus, and it’s on the path to Rifling. Education opens universities and leads to the bonuses of Liberalism and Economics. Gunpowder has muskets and opens the path to Chemistry; workshops are probably not useful in the pre-Chemistry period. (I don’t think Gunpowder is a good choice for first research due to its non-economic nature, and because by going Education before Gunpowder it discounts the cost of the latter tech.) Finally, Astronomy is indeed an option here, although with no pre-requisite bonuses it’s the most expensive starting tech by a wide margin and seems questionable with a landlocked starting position. Observatories aren’t THAT great.

Here’s something we need to drill into our heads: Liberalism and Taj Mahal are mutually exclusive goals. I can’t possibly see a team being able to research two techs (Education/Liberalism) before another team builds the Taj Mahal. That’s just not going to happen, and if it does, we all deserve to lose to whoever can pull it off. Everyone will be in Mercantilism running Engineer specialists out of the gate, so someone’s going to go Nationalism first and have an Engineer ready before a crazy bulbing path can get through both Education and Liberalism. Bulbing Liberalism should be quite tough to do, since Printing Press will grab the Great Scientist lightbulbs once Education is taken, and Nationalism still takes Great Artist preference over Liberalism. In fact, here’s a quick list of the relevant Great People tech preferences for this start:

Great Scientist:
Education
Printing Press
Astronomy

Great Artist:
Nationalism
Printing Press
Liberalism

Great Merchant:
Economics (once it’s available)
Printing Press
Replaceable Parts

Great Engineer:
Replaceable Parts (once it’s available)
Gunpowder
Chemistry

Great Prophet:
Printing Press
Education
Liberalism

Anyway, I’m reasonably sure that the team that builds Taj Mahal will be a team that goes Nationalism first, and a team starting Education -> Liberalism -> free Nationalism won’t be able to beat them to the wonder. Instead, the Liberalism team will very likely chose the Economics Great Merchant, at the risk of theorycrafting a bit too much here. Either path essentially requires Spiritual or Philosophical traits, and preferably both in the form of Gandhi. That is the leader we should take if we want to go all crazy with lightbulbs.

If we’re picking Julius Caesear instead, then all of this is essentially irrelevant. An Imp/Org pick means that we are not winning either the Taj prize or the Liberalism prize. I wouldn’t even bother with competing for either one. Take the first Great Person and use it to start a Golden Age for free civics swaps or something like that; we’d do better to follow REM’s playbook from the Industrial game and make a play for Statue of Liberty. Instead of growing cities to large sizes and running specialists, an Imperialistic pick demands that we keep them small and keep whipping more settlers. We will have our hands full building settlers, workers (so many workers!), enough units to defend them, and some cheap courthouses and libraries. That’s it. No need for anything else. Our early science will be terrible and early score will be terrible, but I seem to recall REM having 9 cities when everyone else had 4-5 cities in the last game, and that’s the main thing. Of course we don’t need to opt into this strategy, but that’s how to play Imp/Org to best efficiency. If we don’t want to play this setup, then we should pick Gandhi instead.

Do we want to wait until there’s a sandbox ready to do the picking? I guess it depends on how strongly scooter feels about the different options available.

[scooter]

Good stuff there. I'll follow-up on tech stuff shortly.

Do we want to wait until there’s a sandbox ready to do the picking? I guess it depends on how strongly scooter feels about the different options available.

Nah, I'm not going to wait for a sandbox. I know I prefer IMP regardless. I'm probably going to just go ahead and lock in Julius.

Mackoti is definitely going to take Byzantium at #3 and make me regret everything isn't he.

[scooter]

Alright, Julius locked in. Civs is the next choice, but it's probably going to be a few days before we get to make that pick. Tech path is on my mind. I expected Astronomy to be an obvious early target, but if we're landlocked it's significantly less important. It seems very likely that water will play a much smaller role in this game (if it appears at all beyond lakes). So I think there are two major prizes here, and we're going to have to decide more or less immediately which our largest priority is. I'm ignoring Taj because I'm assuming Gandhi will claim that. Assembly Line is also a prize of its own, but it's 9 techs away, and half of those aren't too useful.

1) Democracy: Statue of Liberty is the obvious bonus, and Sullla already covered this to some extent. Along the way we'd unlock Nationhood, Representation, UniSuffrage, and Emancipation. The civic unlocks though are a little less useful to us though since we aren't Spiritual. The risky thing here is Constitution-Democracy are pretty much dead-end techs, and our game is pretty screwed if we go this route and don't land the Statue. Finally, it's worth noting the Statue will probably be better here than in 33 due to what appears to be significantly less water.

Techs Required: Nationalism, Constitution, Printing Press

2) Communism: Kremlin could be a game-winner here as it nearly was in 33. With no water and no Toroidal, I also suspect dogpiles will be way less effective. Also State Property, free spy, etc. And of course, it puts us right next to other really valuable techs like Physics and potentially Biology. It's not quite as far away as it sounds. The other thing is losing the first-to race is more forgiving. With Courthouse EPs we'll probably know our rivals progress, and if it looks like we're going to lose we could pivot and still win the Physics race, netting ourselves a Scientist + Airships, and then unlock State Property. If we're Aztecs and go crazy with farms + 5 turn whip cycles, Biology would be very appealing too.

Techs Required: Education, Liberalism, Astronomy, Printing Press, Scientific Method
OR
Education, Liberalism, Gunpowder, Chemistry, Printing Press, Scientific Method

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I think at minimum we're going to have to land either Statue OR Kremlin to potentially win this thing. We may have to consider what Gandhi will prefer. I think if Gandhi tries to take the Taj, he may well be beaten to Communism. I'm not quite sure the early Taj will be as good here as it was in 33. In 33 we all had a turbo-start with 3 cities, 9 pop, and 2 workers. Here we've got 2 cities, 4 pop, 1 worker. What that means is whoever wins the Taj will do so with less population which means less opportunity to exploit the 100% GPP bonus. Winning Liberalism would actually do more for the Communism race than the Taj.

I guess what I'm getting at is if Gandhi goes for the Taj, I think the Communism race is in play even for Julius. I think lack of population to afford generating great people will be a barrier for the non-IMP folks. Not to mention that National Epic is easily available. Take BGN's 33 for example - he just fell way too far behind playing the great people game with no IMP, and I think it's going to be a much more costly sacrifice here for Suleiman or Gandhi to do their thing, which is a big part of why I softened on them.

This may require some guesswork once we see who takes Gandhi and Suleiman. But all this is to say I'm not totally ready to write off Communism even with Julius. I think the main benefit of Julius is that we actually have a choice on which route to pursue. I see it this way:

Democracy: less likely to be in a race, but more punishing if you lose the race. Rewarding, but less so. Whoever picks Victoria will probably be serious competition here.

Communism: more likely to be in a race, but less punishing if you lose the race. Winning the race is more rewarding than Statue. Losing it is less rewarding, but it doesn't end your game either.

[Dp101]

This is kind of premature theorising, but if you go for Kremlin you should 100% pick Aztecs, Org sacrificial altars with Kremlin boosted whips is most likely completely broken.

[pindicator]

Hey scooter, good luck in this! I remember when I tried to break out of my "play safe and for the long game" tendencies. I ended up with a very entertaining game but got annihilated in the late game in pb18. I'll be rooting for you to do better!

[antisocialmunky]

So having slept on it, I agree with Sullla that Lib is kind of a sucker's race with the tech costs involved unless you are trying to do something specific. I think that Taj is probably as well because such a early GA isn't as busted when you have a low city count so I agree with you there.

I think sacrificial altars/rathaus/baray + communism will be a pretty great combo with Caesar.

[Cheater Hater]

I think that Taj is probably as well because such a early GA isn't as busted when you have a low city count so I agree with you there.

Didn't everyone think Taj would be worthless in the last game, then it was great even with just the initial cities? I mean, we shouldn't aim for it, but it isn't worthless.

[scooter]

This is kind of premature theorising, but if you go for Kremlin you should 100% pick Aztecs, Org sacrificial altars with Kremlin boosted whips is most likely completely broken.

Honestly I think there is some real value to be had from Sacrificial Altars even if Kremlin proves to be a pipe dream, which it may be. I would be shocked if someone else picked them, so at worst we can take them if nothing better falls to the last pick.

Hey scooter, good luck in this! I remember when I tried to break out of my "play safe and for the long game" tendencies. I ended up with a very entertaining game but got annihilated in the late game in pb18. I'll be rooting for you to do better!

Thanks! Of course, I said all that and then immediately ditched that to go with the obvious pick instead . But I do need to actively remind myself from time to time that higher-variance play is to my benefit in games like this.

I think that Taj is probably as well because such a early GA isn't as busted when you have a low city count so I agree with you there.

Didn't everyone think Taj would be worthless in the last game, then it was great even with just the initial cities? I mean, we shouldn't aim for it, but it isn't worthless.

Eh, I think the right take-away was that Taj is good for the GPP bonus, not so much the production/commerce bonus. That'll still be the case here for Gandhi. The two short-comings I see.

1) Communism is a lot more beakers away this time
2) I believe there will be less population to work with when Taj gets built this time around. I believe that whoever builds it will earn fewer GPP than Dreylin managed, and early on GPP pretty much directly convert into beakers at an amazingly good exchange rate. How much fewer... not so sure. I may do a test run tonight just to get an idea.

(The only reason I'm not 100% certain at #2 is Taj isn't buildable from T0 like last time, so more turns will pass before Gandhi can build it this time.)