[Spoilers] Gavagai, Bacchus and Elizabeth Form a Romantic Trio

[Bacchus]

Hm, checked my calculations regarding the second point - it looks like I was wrong and working grassland forest is better than working a hill. We can gain two food at the expanse of one hammer or three commerce by T11. Wow.

I'm telling you, this Excel devil-machine is totally worth it.

Also, am I correct that your table assumes growth to size 6 without a warrior built for MP? It will cause unhappiness even with religion present.

Yeah, last night in gchat you complained over why the hell the capital doesn't grow to 6 before starting on the worker, and I was so sleepy, I forgot the reason. If you check the table that's in your e-mail, there's growth to 6 with an immediate whip round turn 38.

I think we should try the following: built three WBs while growing to size 5, than build the first worker and whip the second one. Than chop/build a settler and two warriors while growing back to size 5. Than whip another worker, chop fourth worker, chop settler/warriors again.

I'll play around with the table over lunch today, but won't have the ability to test it in the sandbox until later than you. I'm pretty sure this gives too many workers for what we need at this happy cap (we only need three cottages in the capital for the foreseeable future, after all), but there might be more demand for workerturns from outlying cities. I think we have settled the plan for the first 20ish turns though.

[Gavagai]

but there might be more demand for workerturns from outlying cities. I think we have settled the plan for the first 20ish turns though.

There will be a lot of demand for workerturns from outlying cities. But yes, I don't think that we will change anything in regrds to first 20 turns.

[Bacchus]

Slowcheetah is slow. Some preliminary thoughts on the opposition:

BaII, Cre/Org of the Ottomans (Ozdemir Pasha?):
A relatively new player to MP, as I understand it. As I have yet to read his PB10 thread I cannot say much about playing ability. I can say that I would much rather be playing PB10, than this, but then again there is a certain something in being mashed into a pulp and being spread thinly over a breadth of cold, unyielding rock.

I cannot see how this pick comes together — Ottomans are a fine, but not outstanding civ, best for early Pottery and a solid classical advantage with the hammam. However, a lot about the Ottomans is awkward — hammam is strong, but not that strong in the light of HR and replaces the aqueduct, which you would rarely prioritize; Jans are great if you manage to get them early with the full use of their bonuses, but that's not happening in MP, where to me they appear simply a good, draftable general defender (as good, say, as pikes against curs). All this would be fine for a financial leader, which can sit comfortably at peace, but Cre/Org has to war expansively for a land advantage or watch as his economy falls further and further back. BaII probably counts on REXing into the land advantage and using the 2 free happy of the hammam to get slightly more bang for his buck in every city, and his traits help him somewhat, but comparing this pick to Darius of Sumeria I cannot but find it weaker on both counts.

EDIT: This pick has been played at RB before in PB3, albeit there the picker was 15th(!) in the first round of picks and 3rd in the second.

Nakor and Jester, Phi/Cre of Egypt:
This is Jester's second outing in RB MP, and from his first we sort of know that he is an obsessive micro-planner with SP-heavy background, and is really driven by SP thinking. Nakor is a much stronger MP player, but we do not know how heavily he will participate this time around. From the pick, I would wager that Jester hopes to stay in his comfort zone, aiming to adapt a bit more to the vagaries of MP. A lot will stand or fall on how actively the other players interfere with their plans, as the greatest weakness for this team is likely to be MP-specific preparedness and reactivity.

The pick is strong and oooooh so boring. I would like to play this leaderciv with the slightly insane aim of grabbing AH early if not straight out, knocking out a bunch of chariots, denying my neighbor his metal and rushing, whilst propping the economy up with settled great prophets — but that's me, what we are actually likely to see is a very straightforward, peaceful Pericles play. Libraries, scientists, Parthenon, bulbs. Yawn. In the light of potential wonder-grabbing competition from HC of Carthage, and given space to do so, they might go down the monk economy route, if they fail to get Pyramids. I would be surprised to see them survive once knight stacks abound.

Sian, Fin/Ind of Carthage:
Sian has been around for ages, but a lot of his threads stop halfway, he really looks like a player that we should find out more about.

Another strong and relatively boring pick. Back to basics, Sian's thread title, is quite right. Gavagai already described the wonder-heavy start available to this leaderciv higher in the thread, there isn't much to add. Ind is a bit meh, to be fair, and really locks one to a distinct development path. With productive starting lands and a bit of space before potentially aggressive neighbors Sian can do really well.

Merovech/WK, Exp/Spi of China:
WK in PB4 and Merovech in PB8 haven't done particularly well, albeit in both cases they faced strong opposition with poor lands, IIRC. If they turn out to be our neighbours, we'll have plenty of reading material to get a better judgement on them, but there are certainly scarier people here.

The pick is super-solid, of course. I've only read the Noble/Gaspar thread featuring this leaderciv, there have been other plays, but I think this is the first Pitboss outing at RB. Spi affords maximum flexibility, so important in MP, plus saves a couple of turns in the early game, which can sometimes equal a victory in a race for a key city spot. Last point is probably irrelevant for this map, though, as there is meant to be plentiful land and races will begin much later in the game. And Exp is even more obviously great. China is the only mining/agri civ, again giving maximum flexibility from the get go with a good beaker count to boot, the pavillion is ok, the chu-ko-nu is amazing, but the real advantage is in REXing, and this team, if successful, will do it to excess.

I'll leave the rest for later or for our esteemed captain.

EDIT: In last night's gchat we agreed that our civ choice was too hasty, Spain would have been a better pick all around. I also don't think Liz of England has been played here. Liz of Carthage has, but in the weird "everybody gets a fish lake" quick-speed game. This should probably tell us something, but ... did somebody say "party"?

[Gavagai]

I'm planning to write a survey of our opponents' combos after we finish picking. At this point I can say that we, of course, have a slow leader: Liz can work wonders in a mid-game but naturally has trouble keeping up with other leaders earlier. Let's take Sury, this beast which Slowcheetah has chosen: he gets discounts on granaries and libraries and doesn't need monuments. And those are three basic buidings which almost every city needs. His traits give him a straightforward advantage of 105 hammers per city against us - hammers he can spend on workers/settlers/units. And this is not counting benefits from getting those buildings earlier.
This is the reason why I'm so obsessed with getting settlers and workers out ASAP, even at price of levelling all of our 10 forests during the first 70 turns. Of course, Sury is the most dangerous in this regard but there are quite a lot of other fast leaders around here. So, we will be fighting an uphill battle from Turn 0.
On the upside - until now the only combo which is on par with ours long-term is Sedoa's Darius of Sumeria (actually, his pick is better, if we disregard starting techs). However, I'm pretty sure that Jowy and Q will end up with something decent either. Almost every civ is good if led by Mansa.

And yes, PB8 spoiler:

a textbook example of what happens when a "fast" leader clashes with a "slow" one early in the game is what happened with Zulu team.

[Gavagai]

In last night's gchat we agreed that our civ choice was too hasty, Spain would have been a better pick all around.

No, I don't remeember myself agreeing with that. Or if I did, then "hasty" should apply to that part. I said that Spain has better starting techs for our final micro-plan; but England has much better UU and UB and, I think, this long-term advantages are more important then getting a religion a few turns earlier.

[Bacchus]

You said: "We should have picked Spain, that's what I think". These are the problems with 3am chatting.

England has better, but later UU and UB. And the conquistador is pretty handy, actually. Hopefully we will still be in the game when Rifling comes around I personally doubt this will be the case, so I do think we should have picked Spain. Boy will I be glad to be proved wrong.

[Gavagai]

Don't worry, Liz of England is excellent. If we are not crippled by, for example, this Mongol guy during the first 100 turns, we will have a very good shot at winning.

[Gavagai]

Tried earlier proposed approach (3 WBs first while researching Poly, than 2 workers, than chopping/slaving 3 settlers, 2 workers and warriors) in-game, got 3 settlers, 4 workers, 3 warriors from capital exclusively by T63. Pretty good for me; needs a lot of polishing, of course, but we can take this approach for a base.

[Bacchus]

Yep, I got 3 settlers, 3 warriors, 3 workers, a granary and a temple by T63. The temple could have easily been a worker, but I wanted to go for some growth. As it stands, the fourth worker will be available to move on T67. There are 4 pops in the capital. There are no forests left standing. This did use a forest that grew due east of the capital, but it grows there quite persistently.

[Bacchus]

New and improved micro-plan with 2 workers prior to the settler, and anarchy explicitly included. "4" is an unimproved clam tile which allows to turn a couple of excess hammers (yes, we have those, who knew), into gold. Actually, what we have is excess food, which we turn into hammers by working hills, the "4" is just there to get rid of a couple hanging production points, which don't affect the schedule.