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As a French person I feel like it's my duty to explain strikes to you. - AdrienIer |
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RMOG: Renaissance Men of Genius
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If you post it will be read.
PB5 turns used to get over 200 views per turn, on both a blog and on the forum. tl;dr Spam content and win. Moan and get sarcastic comments.
Two surprise picks to round out the draft.
Mansa is a strong pick, I'm just surprised Mackoti did not want to pair him with a CHM leader. The unwillingness to commit his entire game plan to a cataphract rush seems like a good hedge to make. He may have no desire to rush someone, and just wants Cats as a cheap high strength utility unit. At any rate, I think Mansa was the best standalone leader left. In this game we picked: SPI/FIN SPI/PHI SPI/ORG IMP/FIN IMP/PHI IMP/ORG It's pretty easy to see where the trait priorities of the group lie, and it's definitely in the economic traits. I didn't expect the Aztec pick, but it makes sense. Spam organized sacrificial altars everywhere and convert food to hammers. I like the synergy. My only reservation is that I don't get the feeling happiness is a major issue, that whipping will be more gated by food and an abundance of tiles you want to work than available happiness. However, my sense for how much happiness you have to work with in a Renn game is not grounded in experience. That being said, if this map is as lush as it looks, I doubt happiness will ever be a significant issue. They'll want Kremlin, but then again, who doesn't. This leaves us with: Scooter/Sullla: Julius of Aztecs Alhazard: Gandhi of the Ottomans Mackoti: Mansa of Byzantium RMoG: Victoria of the Dutch Nic: Asoka of the Khmer Plako: Suleiman of the English 
I ended up predicting 8/12 picks, but only one combo (ours)
Things I thought would get picked, but didn't: France Russia Cyrus Genghis Khan Things that got picked that I didn't think would: Asoka Mansa Ottomans Aztec Aztecs are notable for not even making it onto my 'runners up' tier list. An oversight on my part, though I am not convinced that sacrificial altars are all that. Seems I overvalued how much people would respond to the end of PB33 by privileging IMP. People also ended up valuing economic traits significantly more than I thought, although I imagine that was pushed by the start picture. The most surprising thing to me is that nobody picked France/Russia, and I think that was largely driven by Mackoti and the start. The lush start favors having PHI/ORG/FIN, and without AGG, Musketeers are less appealing. The Ottoman selection I think was almost entirely driven by a fear of Mackoti. I feel like this was also partially the reason that Russia went unselected (No CHM), but moreover was pushed by a strong emphasis in the picks on building strong economies. Everyone just wants to play in their own little sandboxes this game it seems, except Mackoti.
In regards to great people. So, we're swapping into Pacfism to open right? We are guaranteed to get the religion in our second city and will pop out the GE from there.
We do definitely want an academy (although not until we have a decent population in our cap). So, I think we pick a city (maybe the second), build a library, and run two scientists + our merc engineer to pop out our second great person. This one, we can use for a GA. During that GA, while we'll ultimately switch out of Pacifism, we'll stick in Pacifism and CS, and try to pop out at least two GP. I think we want to aim for two great scientists, one who can build the academy, and one who can bulb something on the way to communism. My main suggested modification to your plan is to use the second GP for a GA instead of the academy. It's easy to create a GP during a golden age. With this in mind, the choice becomes delay the academy a little and swap civics sooner, or get the academy sooner and delay the golden age a lot by comparison. Moreover, running the golden age earlier allows us to set up better for bulbing things on the way to communism. As far as dikes go, presuming we do end up pushing for communism and don't have to divert to rifles early, I think we worry about that separately. I don't see any way we can wind up getting steam power before pushing to Communism (if we stay on that plan). With this in mind, the best routewill probably be to use our two-man golden age to swap into SP and build dikes/WSs everywhere. 3-man golden age should hopefully put us over the top. With a GSpy in pocket, setting off the two-man should hopefully be just a matter of producing 1 GP between our first and second golden ages. We can potentially grab the scientist from physics to speed us on the way to our third. So, that puts our first 5 great people spoken for. My only other thought is that it might be worthwhile to try and keep a pure engineer pool somewhere and push for a GE when we get close to Communism for the Kremlin. We will have to fight someone if we want HE. We won't have to do too much fighting though with IMP to get our first GG, which we will want to turn into our HE unit. Don't worry about National Wonders, I love getting all of those built ASAP and will be a constant voice in your ear this game reminding you we need to build them. So, I think I finally responded to everything! Anything you brought up that I failed to address? As always, looking forward to your thoughts.
Posted the rule discussion in the planning thread. In the meantime, that's enough talk about rules in here!
![[Image: silly.jpg]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15873301/Pitboss%2035/Funny/silly.jpg) Anyway, I let dave know that Pacifism doesn't work without a State Religion, which we can't switch into easily. Thanks to that, I don't really know what he thinks we should do with GP as that kind of ruins any chance of getting Liberalism. So, back to my plan then?  I still favor Astro first. It isn't as good for early research as Edu true but it's the next best option while also giving us a huge naval boost. Military will be covered by the GE bulb (Rifles are too far away to consider going PP atm). I don't think there is a easy answer here, but Astro covers the most bases.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OdGj-FVxOcs
Realms Beyond Presents, Real Men of Genius (Real Men of Genius) Today we salute you, Mr. Enslave Your People. (Mr. Enslave Your People) After Speaker left, Sullla thought he would never find someone again, until he met RB's resident bridesmaid. (Love in a hopeless place) Even better, you were into the same kinky shit (Whip pop) After not whipping in PB33, you decided to turn PB35 into an all-out sadism fest (Crack that whip) So put the leather to skin Mr. Enslave Your People, because if it doesn't work this time, at least you both still have each other. (Mr. Enslave Your People) Real Thoughts Julius Caesar (IMP/ORG) of the Aztecs (Sacrificial Altar) Whip jokes aside, this is the combo I am looking forward most to reading about after the game - especially paired with Scooter and Sullla's excellent reporting. Julius is either the best leader in the game, or the 3rd best, depending on if you ask myself or WK. The game plan here when paired with Aztecs is pretty straightforward: spam out cities -> spam sacrificial altars -> spam more cities and stuff with really happiness efficient whips. Whereas with us it's all about the BC capital, with Scullla is is all about the first 6 cities or so. They're going to want to get their first half-dozen cities or so up and running as soon as possible, even if they're in sub-par locations. It doesn't matter as long as they have a decent food bonus and can get a SA economy going quickly. More than anything, they just want food bonuses and pop to whip. Once they get an initial core up, they'll be set to go for the rest of the game and keep the whipping pace up. Julius is strong initially with Imperialistic and strong in the late game with Organized. If any team wants the Kremlin, I think it's them (although I also think they're least well positioned to get it). Whether or not this is a good pick or not comes down to how efficient whipping cities with SA's turns out to be. Our read on the map was that with abundant happiness (+7 with 3 luxuries, a religion, and a market - not to mention HR and potential doubled metal happiness from forges), the biggest things gating whipping would be the comparative abundance of tiles you want to work, and lack of overpowering food bonuses. I don't think there's enough food that you can dependably whip cities every 5 turns instead of 10. However, SA's will allow them to push really hard for production at points and recover faster from emergency whipping. With this in mind, they will not be the best rush target. Not much needs to be said about Sullla and Scooter as players, their reputations precede them. Although I don't think they're the strongest team in this match, I think they're a definite competitor to win and will be extremely difficult to knock out of the running. With their experience in PB33, I feel like they have a little bit of an experience edge on the rest of the field. I would like to border them simply because I would enjoy the PB6 rematch, but with their skill levels, I may need to be careful what I wish for. As for final thoughts on their pick: It relies on math I don't have handy nor have I the desire to do. The game itself will soon bear out whether or not SAs are cost efficient. My reservations aside, I love the synergy, and am excited to see how they do this game. The result will be edifying if nothing else.
I could get behind astronomy as an opening tech if we had water nearby. We hope we have water nearby, but we won't know for sure until we get some initial scouting done. Although, even with that said, it's unlikely our opponents will obligingly settle coastal cities for us to boat early on. Access to our UU early doesn't matter if we won't be able to get any use out of it. Also, is an EI and musket raiding party something we want to prioritize very early on instead of IMP settlers? So this essentially leaves us with an Observatory to slap in our capital, which, while nice, is not something we will be building in the very early game due to our focus on IMP settlers.
So, as near as I can tell, no tech except Gunpowder (which we're bulbing) guaranteed does anything for else early on. With this in mind, I feel the most compelling tech options are the ones which give us maximum flexibility. - Printing Press for bee lining rifles/dikes/communism - Education gives us the same effective bonus option as Astronomy while also allowing us to start setting up for Oxford and the flexibility to take Economics/Liberalism I would much rather be closer to rifles/have a shot at liberalism than have EI's early We can, however, put this decision off for the first couple turns and just plug away at gunpowder. At that point, we may have a better lay of the land and can make a decision informed by that. Other ways we could resolve our tech impasse: 1. Continue articulating ideas at each other until the other is convinced (Not like we lack for time to do that, plus it drives up the post count). 2. Enlist a ded-lurker (Is Shoot up to anything these days?) to break the tie. 3. Fox, no pistols, FINAL DESTINATION 4. Flip a coin, generate a random number, etc. 5. Poll the other teams on what they want us to research first. 6. Screw with everyone's C&D by almost but not quite researching all five available starting techs and then finishing them all at once.
Printing Press is the worst opening tech to research, as it does absolutely nothing for us. It may put us closer to Rifles, but it is still eons away (maybe 60 turns at least if we beeline it?). I would prefer anything else to PP.
I question why you think Education is worthwhile if you are dismissing an early Observatory build. If you have doubts we can afford an Observatory early, how can we set aside 6 Universities for Oxford? You mention it does put us closer to Liberalism, but that is going to a team who pops out a GS to finish Education some 20t before we do (if this doesn't happen, I will eat my hat). I might be able to get behind Gunpowder as first tech. The issue is we don't know how many beakers the GE will bulb, since that number relies on our population at t30. Plus do we need to worry about tech decay? (how does that mechanic work anyway?) I'll concede early EI raiding parties are not an efficient use of resources, and Astro first is a gamble depending on where the water is. Since we are Dutch however, we already are gambling on water presence anyway. Besides, what about using EI for naval scouting instead? Or to intimidate the other teams early? I'll admit these are minor points, but we don't exactly have any clear options in the first place... (August 13th, 2016, 15:36)oledavy Wrote: 1. Continue articulating ideas at each other until the other is convinced (Not like we lack for time to do that, plus it drives up the post count). If Shoot was still around, I'd invite him to join us to complete the trio. Sadly he's been MIA for nearly 2 years so I have to assume not. (Shoot, if you're reading this you're welcome to join in anytime!) While I do like the idea of screwing everyone's C&D, since everyone starts with Alphabet it wouldn't accomplish anything useful (in-game anyway, it would certainly be useful for WTF response from other teams  ).
While we are discussing early moves, we should move the explorer 2NE for tile visibility and then reassess city locations. I'm hesitant to move the capital away from the whale resource early on if there is enough room for city No.2 for a viable location NE. We may have to so regardless, but let's get all the info we can before doing so.
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