[SPOILERS] JR4 tries his luck in PB 37

[JR4]

Yep, I`m already looking forward to reading Krill`s thread after the game! I find it interesting that other players value CHA much higher than me. Perhaps it is not so bad after all.

As far as I know early rushes are not that common on MP, players seem to rather do a farmer`s gambit in the beginning. Few would want to invade SPI Mongolia when we have high-XP keshiks I think. We would probably be safe until the renaissance if the expansion phase goes well.

[RefSteel]

Farmers' gambits are common but not absolute; early wars can happen when an aggressive player perceives a target as currently weak but a mid-term threat. For instance, if we settle an insufficiently-protected city too close to another player (by that player's definition) they may well try to punish it. By a similar token, if an opponent feels we lack the capacity to punish them, they can "attack" us by planting aggressive forward cities and cutting us off from the land we need. (I do think Mongolia discourages that type of aggression though.)

Horcher rushes are typically the earliest full-on wars of conquest, and if we're playing well then we'll have our UU on the board by then (and maybe be executing such a rush with them ourselves) but Izzy of Mongolia isn't really oriented for defense - apart from the MAD-style "if you attack me, my keshiks will fork your cities and wreak havoc in your back lines!" And if we wanted super-promoted keshiks in the age of horchers and cats, we'd have needed a Charismatic leader: Barring a run to Theology or the Shwedagon Paya, by the time we can produce 10-xp mounted units without a GG, we'll also be able to build Longbows. (Of course, our opponents can't produce 8-xp horchers any sooner than us without a GG either; they don't have Gers.) Our keshiks are cool just as Keshiks, but our high-XP game will come into play more for the later mounted units...

...

...unless we can build SoZ. But that's getting ahead of ourselves a little bit.

In the meantime, we've got more picks to "analyze"! Let's see:

- Gavagai as Suryavarman of the Ottoman Empire: RtR Expansive Hammams are a pretty nice UB if you want to grow your cities, and Creative borders allow for wider city spacing, likewise helping to grow tall effectively, while Jans are nice to defend those huge cities against knights. ... And unless Gavagai has been replaced by a pod person or something, I don't think that's what he was thinking here. Cre is nice for controlling a border zone, Expansive is good for the early game and keeping a mid-game economy afloat after you horcherate somebody, and 1-pop draftable Janissaries make good stack defenders against the mobile defense force of the civ you're out conquering, and even good attackers if you manage to get to Gunpowder before your supperneighbor gets there. I strongly prefer our combo on what we know of this map so far, but this is another player next to whom I don't want to start. The combo's a decent target if Gav really was replaced by a pod person though, I guess?

- Dark Savant as Shaka of Ethiopia: Shaka is an excellent leader in this mod, and of course he boosts Oromo Warriors a bit - another 1-pop draftable UU, and a stronger one, that comes with better (for this mod/start) starting techs and a UB which ... uh ... well, those Oromos sure are great! They really are though: Not as good as I thought (so I'm not surprised Dark Savant didn't go for an IND leader after all) because Drill only leads to Commando in RtR3.x, but in Vassalage or Theocracy, he can draft e.g. Formation, first-strike-immune, collateral-resistant Combat 1 "Muskets" with several first strikes apiece.

- Couerva as Cyrus of Carthage: Carthage's starting techs work fine on this map, and their Cothons provide nice little boosts to the economy eventually when they start getting coastal cities into play. Couerva (with Bacchus) preferred IMP to EXP, eschewing Cothon synergy and earlier tile improvements to get their next cities spammed out faster once their capital's up and running ... and when they inevitably war, to claim more GGs. They also took Cha, a popular pick here with this lush but production-light mirrored capital site, and a good way to take advantage of their Numids: Barracks + Stable + (cheap-for-them) Colosseum + either of the XP civics or a (quickly-IMP-generated) settled GG lets them build the equivalent of L5 HAs. Like so many of the rest of us, they could be scary....

[EDIT: And I just missed seeing CML's pick before I posted this, but I don't think I need to say much about it: If we'd picked second instead of ninth and the rest of the snakepick went the way it has, we'd probably have gone with Bismarck of Russia too!]

[JR4]

Bismarck of Russia is a good choice I think. He can choose which wonders he wants. If you add mackoti as a dedlurker that could be very scary indeed.

[JR4]

Mod successfully downloaded! SP works just fine. Maybe I should try a quick test game in order to get a feel for the mod.

You are right that we will get 8XP instead of 10XP keshiks in the early midgame. Actually I like going for Theology at a semi-early stage. But we don`t have to decide on that yet.

Btw - good thoughts on the other picks. I think that we do not want to border Krill or GJ but if we do we have to find a way to get our share of the disputed land. Obviously bordering some of the more inexperienced players would be better. Let us see how the neighbour lottery turns out.

[RefSteel]

Bismarck of Russia is a good choice I think. He can choose which wonders he wants. If you add mackoti as a dedlurker that could be very scary indeed.

Yeah - Bismarck of Russia is terrific for this start, especially when you're the only IND in the game. (That's why we'd have picked it in their place!) I actually was expecting Bismarck to go sooner when I joked that we could have two "restricted" leaders in the game. Peter's good at getting Research Institutes up faster, but the best synergy for RIs is the 'mids. It may paint a bit of a target on CML's back ... but with mackoti on the team that may not even matter. Mack isn't actually invincible, but he's better at reading the metagame and choosing strategic direction than anyone else on this site, and he's very good at tactics and micromanagement as well. Plus of course there's the intimidation factor - not just for military conflict: The game hasn't even started, and I'm pretty much already conceding the Pyramids to them.

Also of course we now have a complete roster with...

- dtay as Tokugawa of Zulu: Agg Zulu is ridiculous with this starting position, and we just have to be grateful to Dark Savant for taking Shaka off the board. In spite of all the military picks we've seen, including our own, nothing is as prickly as TokuZulu in the early game, plus he'll be fast off the ground with the best possible starting techs for the mirrored capital, Agg to let him skip Myst, and cheap Pro granaries, while his Agg maintenance reduction, abetted by Ikhandas everywhere, and C1/D1/CG1 free on every Gunpowder unit will be pretty nice in the late game. Pretty nice ... but there are better, including ours if we play it well, Ventessel's unless the entire map is blanketed in rivers, and (naturally) CML's. If dtay wants to win this thing, he has to take an insurmountable lead when his combo is at its strongest; otherwise, he'll add to his (probably unfair) reputation for a strong early game that fades later on.

[EDIT: I'm glad you got the mod working! Running a test game could be fun and enlightening, and at some point we should probably sim out our start, though the first few turns seem pretty obvious at a glance.]

[JR4]

As long as I remember I have played at marathon speed. It is a bit strange to see a pasture complete in just 4 turns. Well - this game is a kind of a marathon anyway. It could easily take a year or more to finish I think.

[RefSteel]

Wow ... I've started a couple of games on Marathon, but never played past the Classical era. (And nowhere close to finishing.) Definitely a good idea to get familiar with this game's settings and mod then, I think! (And I'm glad the mod is working on your machine!)

And yeah, if we're still contending at the end, there'll most likely be long, complex, and critical turns to play into 2018! (I'd have gotten involved in a bunch of PbeMs by now if not for asking myself every time, "Are you sure you're going to have time to run a sprawling empire in six months?")

[JR4]

So, which traits were most popular? Four players chose EXP, which is not a big shock. But I am a little bit surprised that PRO and CHA are valued that high. German Joey actually picked both those traits. Interesting. Also, I would expect especially ORG to be picked by a player or two. 

EXP  -  4
CHA -   3
AGG -   3
PRO -  3
SPI   -  1
IMP   -  1
FIN  -    1
IND  -   1
CRE -   1
ORG -  0
PHI -    0

[JR4]

And yeah, if we're still contending at the end, there'll most likely be long, complex, and critical turns to play into 2018!  (I'd have gotten involved in a bunch of PbeMs by now if not for asking myself every time, "Are you sure you're going to have time to run a sprawling empire in six months?")

I like games that are moving at a glacier pace! I am able to play (at least) a turn per day in the foreseeable future.

[JR4]

I tried to sim out our start today. Sorry, no pictures, as I haven`t managed to upload pictures yet. Imgur didn`t work for me for some reason. Well, I`ll look into it in the nearest days. It seems we are just about able to squeeze out a turn 29 settler at size 3 with zero overflow. The other option is making a settler at size 4 that will finish at turn 32. Making a settler at size 5 is just too slow here imo.
 
Tech path was Fishing - Agriculture - BW.