[SPOILERS] scooter's thread

[scooter]

That's actually me. You can set the starting turn number in the WB file and since it was something ridiculous like 32 ( iirc ) I set it to 1.

Oops, I accidentally insulted the host . The part that confused me was why it was T1 and not T0. The T32 actually makes some degree of sense to me since it's Classical era... Or rather, that's what I was expecting since I've played enough of the late-era starts to know they usually have advanced turn numbers, which is why I was confused why Classical seemed to buck the trend of later turn numbers. Now it alllll makes sense.

[scooter]

Well, Lewwyn took a 30% shot on my capital and won. So he wins. Whatever, bring on Mackoti.

[scooter]

I can read his thread now right?

[Mist]

Nope, you can still meet in the final.

[scooter]

Nope, you will still meet in the final.

FTFY.

[NobleHelium]

Well that was anticlimactic.

[scooter]

Well that was anticlimactic.

Yeah it's too bad - I had high hopes for this match too. The hard part was that despite how nice of a capital it was long-term and despite how lousy Lewwyn's capital was, his was a perfect capital for a quick rush - plains hill, several forests, etc. Mine on the other hand was ok for whipping but even that was a little meh since I was getting less food due to the health. It was hard to keep up with him production wise.

[waterbat]

anticlimactic for real - i just read this thread (and the others in the duel league) today - come back for first refresh and its over. Good luck next round Scooter!

[scooter]

So I chatted briefly with Mack after we both sent our picks in. We decided to kill the suspense. The matchup:

Willem of India (me) vs Alex of Zulu.

Mackoti was kind enough to warn me that "his games haVe been very quick." I know, I know, you might kill me in 15T . I mean granted, his group hasn't exactly been frightening, but this is not the best matchup for me of course. In a perfect world I would've done something like Wang Kon of Mali instead and just builder-ed it and stocked my front with protective Skirmishers behind cheap walls, but again, blind picking and all I decided to leave myself an opening to go for a power-economic opening in case I got any sort of breathing room from Mack. Honestly, the quality of my pick may depend on how many rivers and forests we have and that's that. So... yeah. We'll see.

So Mack went on to state "I need to get aggressive early with you." Yep, figured as much. Something about the blunt phrasing of his words that makes it so much more terrifying . So I need a gameplan to survive the first 30T. Going to tech BW out of the gate and figure out where copper is. If it's close, I'll need to get it and get some axes to prep for Impis. If it's not... that's actually better, as that would just make my life easier. I'm also debating on how to open up here. As much fun as worker-worker aided by chop would be, that seems mildly suicidal here. Will depend on land, forests, etc.

We'll see how this goes. I'm going to need to play very carefully here, as I can say with certainty a choke of some sort will be coming, and Mack will certainly execute it well. Need to find our where strat resources are pronto. I can't be naive enough to think that if we have horse close but copper far that Mack will still wait for Impis - he'll adapt and just send chariots instead which would be nearly as bad because I wouldn't have my own spears to counter it so I'd have to rely on chariots myself.

[scooter]

So we're off. And, uh, very interesting start I'm handed here:



You can't see in this picture, but that body of water on the west side is a LAKE. So those are ALL Lighthouseable 3/0/3 tiles right there. Yikes. In a good way. Plus 2 seafood, a couple forests and wet corn. Wow. This is especially interesting for a FIN civ like me. No river, but I don't really need cottages with 3/0/3 tiles available to me at Sailing. Oracle -> MC -> Colossus is tempting. So anyways, I start with Hunting/Mining. Original plan was BW out of the gate, but the REALLY nice thing here is that I'm at the edge of the map, so Fishing first it is. I still needed to decide where to plan the city because, well... There's a 3H plant available on the marble. The cost though is sacrificing 2T on Quick speed AND sacrificing all the Lighthouseable lakes for the capital, thus really weakening a potentially nice Bureau-capital. So I was torn here. In the end though, I decided to play it safe and settle in place here. It was put over the top by the fact that I'm FIN. I'm still not sure I made the right decision. We'll see. Mack admitted by chat that he's going back and forth on whether to move for the marble plant or not, and he hasn't decided yet. So we'll see if we get some divergent strategy here. I'd say it was a no-brainer if these tiles to the west weren't lakes.

Also, settling revealed the rest of the tiles, with yields on to demonstrate the lake:



3h plant gets much stronger with that rice there, though it is dry. Build plan is to sink 4T into Fast Worker since there's nothing better to do. However, once Fishing is in I'll want to swap because the FW would finish several turns before BW and thus have nothing to do, so I'll swap to WB, net clams, then finish FW on the clams tile. I'll slip in a warrior while growing to size 2, and a FW will chop me out a second work boat for a turbo start. Fun.

ALSO. Note the presence of Marble + Stone. That's... a big deal. Can't help but wonder if this paired with Mack's PHI trait will lure him into building Pyramids rather than burning hammers on rushing me. It would be a smart play by him, and it's one I'm kinda thinking he'll make. Marble is also here for a possible Oracle play as mentioned above. So I'm going to give some thought on what to do with these shiny wonder boosters. I'm certainly not going to kill myself to get Pyramids here, but if Mack lets it sit too long I can get it with some fast worker shenanigans, as there seems to be some nice forests up north that would do the job perfectly.

Anyways, I need to think about what to do with this excess commerce here. Strong chance I I'll want to make a run at an early Academy here because this is the kind of capital to benefit from it. Not usually a huge fan of that play, but it seems better than usual here. Kinda tempting to go for Pyramids myself as this is the kind of start for FIN to run specialists, as you'll be working water due to giant food surplus anyways. So we'll see. Again, going to need to spend a lot of time thinking this over to make sure I don't make the wrong decisions here. Mack is a great player, so what I don't need is to hand him an advantage here right at the outset. If he goes for 3h plant and it turns out to be the better play though, it's possible I've done that already. We'll see. I'm not 100% convinced. At least he has no fast expansion traits.