May 25th, 2011, 22:51
(This post was last modified: May 26th, 2011, 06:00 by Ranamar.)
Posts: 824
Threads: 7
Joined: May 2011
I need mouseover text, and I don't have any ready funny images like some people do. Maybe I'll let someone put images in for filler in post 2. 
Other players, though, keep out!
It's hard to train yourself not to click on all the links, if you've been lurking everyone in past games, isn't it? :neenernee
And now, some empty space...
Alright, that should be enough of that; let's get this show on the road...
Posts: 12,335
Threads: 46
Joined: Jan 2011
Lets give em hell. BTW there are no AGG leaders right? THANK GOD. I'm fighting an AGG leader in both my PBEMs and its just too much... Such a huge advantage in Ancient wars.
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
Posts: 824
Threads: 7
Joined: May 2011
Lewwyn Wrote:Lets give em hell. BTW there are no AGG leaders right? THANK GOD. I'm fighting an AGG leader in both my PBEMs and its just too much... Such a huge advantage in Ancient wars.
Nobody's going to want to attack us in the ancient age because of our skirmishers anyway, right? 
Posts: 12,335
Threads: 46
Joined: Jan 2011
Ranamar Wrote:Nobody's going to want to attack us in the ancient age because of our skirmishers anyway, right?
Oh. Yeah. 
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
Posts: 6,630
Threads: 47
Joined: Apr 2010
You could use those Skirmishers to rush someone though 
Posts: 12,335
Threads: 46
Joined: Jan 2011
Serdoa Wrote:You could use those Skirmishers to rush someone though
Don't I know it. XD Choke FTW
We should think about it. See the lay of the land...
“The wind went mute and the trees in the forest stood still. It was time for the last tale.”
Posts: 824
Threads: 7
Joined: May 2011
Now, let's try having some actually useful discussion.
The teams:
Darius of HRE (Commodore)
Mansa Musa of Egypt (GES & others)
Huayna Capac of the Ottomans (yuris125 & Maestro)
Hatshepsut of France (Mr. Nice Guy)
Bismarck of Mali (us)
I don't know the players very well, and I'm new to playing against humans, but I might as well give my thoughts, considering I'm going to be playing...
Darius of HRE:
From what I gather, this is somewhat of a classic combination. The Rathaus is an extra-effective courthouse and he gets them half-priced. Depending on how the trait stacks with the building, he could be paying as little as 1/8 the maintenance for any given city relative to what another player would be paying for a comparable city. I expect his plan to involve having as many cities as possible. He's financial, too, so anywhere he can get two coins together, he gets an extra one, which means he really can get away with building cities everywhere.
Additionally, his unique unit, the Landsknecht, is a straightforward "bonused against its usual weakness" UU, available around when you start getting siege units and might seriously consider warring with someone. If we're going to have to fight him, I recommend crossbows.
Bottom line: I expect him to try to expand more aggressively than the rest of us and then make a grab for someone else's land when his UU rolls around.
Mansa Musa of Egypt:
Mansa is arguably one of the better leaders, just generically, in this game, between the advantage financial gives in general and the fact that spiritual means you don't have to worry as much about timing on civic switches. On the other hand, I don't see much synergy with Egypt. It's a solid choice, certainly, with a scary UU and a monument replacement that lets you run non-citizen specialists from the start, if you really want to do that, but it just feels like bland solid A mixed with with bland solid B, from here. We'll have to watch out for war chariots, of course, but our skirmishers should mean that he can't easily take our cities with them, although that doesn't rule out a choke.
Bottom line: Solid all around; can cover expansion or rush someone with chariots; early UU means later in the game he will have to focus on outteching and outproducing opponents.
Huayna Capac of the Ottomans:
This guy is the other industrial leader in the game. He was our first choice. As such, he's the obvious competition for wonders. He's also financial, like everyone except ourselves and Hatshepsut, which means he'll likely get to them first in a race.
There are no obvious synergies here, either, although extra happy on your health buildings is always nice. (and better when you don't get +health from your leader already) Janissaries are pretty badass, especially if you can get a tech lead on other people, but I'll admit that, in my games, I often end up teching past musketmen so fast that I don't use them much. Maybe in a NTT game with human opponents, that won't be quite as much of a problem, especially given Huayna's teching advantages. Teching to it will suck, but grenadiers are obviously our best bet for dealing with these.
Bottom line: They will probably outtech us and thereby win a race to any wonder they really want, assuming they focus on it. At gunpowder they get a unit that hoses any units that came before it.
Hatshepsut of France:
This is the only other non-financial team in the game. Creative means they don't need to worry about getting culture and certain happiness-granting buildings are cheaper. On further consideration, in fact, I expect she will play out a lot like Louis only with spiritual instead of industrious meaning less focus on forges or wonder-grabbing. Based on comments I've seen elsewhere, I get the impression that most people would be skeptical if we'll get far enough through the tech tree for the Salon to come into play, and its free artist is mostly just good for GPP and a beaker point unless it's on a border where people are getting into a culture fight. That said, expect her culture to be notably greater than anyone else's, especially for any given level of effort. On the other hand, the UU is pretty cool, again, if you can stick at the musketmen stage for any significant period of time. Having a second move, musketeers can keep up with cavalry, or even substitute for it, and they get defense bonuses.
Bottom line: Expect her culture. Another one to try to avoid fighting around when gunpowder comes in.
Bismarck of Mali (us):
The starting point on this was me observing that I have a tendency to put forges everywhere anyway. (I also like wonders, and I'll try to restrain myself from building too many...) This led us to Industrious and the Mali Mint, which is a unique forge that gives a small gold production boost. Really, though, since I'm going to want to build forges everywhere anyway, we probably shouldn't treat it so much as a 10% gold boost as much as a 5-10% maintenance reduction. Whenever we're producing gold, it'll get us 5-10%, depending on other improvements, extra gold, and our big cost is expected to be maintenance. This should also help us a bit to keep up with the financial civs, since we're neither that, nor creative, for that matter.
Since we're not financial, I am sure we won't ever be the tech leader. Instead, we're going to need to outproduce them. Good thing we have cheap forges! Barring HC building it first, the plan is to build the Oracle to get Metal Casting, since it is the most expensive of the early technologies by a large margin, and it also gives us access to the aforementioned Mint.
Our unique unit, the skirmisher, is an archer with strength 4. This isn't enough to rush with (axes, for example, will still win in an unbonused fight, even without their bonus against melee units) but it should be enough to make us an exceedingly undesirable target, once we've researched archery, by making our defenses even harder to crack. Even if we wouldn't necessarily be able to take the fight to them, we can make it not worth it for them to attack us.
The early plan, in short: Quickly build the Oracle for metal casting, if we can get away with it, so we can quickly get access to mints to drive our economy. Try to be top in GDP with faster-growing cities due to cheap granaries and forges. Backfill technologies with a bonus from other teams having researched them already or try to get one of the early religions for Organized Religion and extra happiness.
Posts: 824
Threads: 7
Joined: May 2011
Other handy wonders:
Stonehenge:
- Free monument in every city
- 80H is equivalent to 4 monuments (20H each) unbonused; for us, it's effectively 2/3 of that, so we have made a hammer profit at 3 monuments, although the capital one is a bit irrelevant. If we have stone hooked up as well, it costs approximately 1.5 monuments, but that will likely require both delaying it and getting lucky with resources, so it's probably not worth it.
Great Lighthouse:
- If we're coastal, this could go a long way to improving our tech rate relative to the financials, and they don't even get a trade route advantage compared to us anyway.
- Unfortunately, everybody knows it's good, and we might not even be on a map where we can leverage it.
Pyramids:
- All government civics a lot earlier... best thing this is for is raising the happy cap, but Republic is handy if we're going to run specialists, too. In any event, it could give us some technology flexibility.
- It's really expensive... stone is a lot more valuable for this one than the henge.
Great Library:
- Two free scientists? Sounds good to me! It's even better if we get the pyramids for Republic.
- This is a ways into the tech tree. If Huayna Capac and team want to get it, they'll probably beat us to it.
If you couldn't tell, I probably like building infrastructure buildings too much. 
That's why I've got Lewwyn to tell me I should be building units and rushing/choking someone.
Posts: 7,766
Threads: 94
Joined: Oct 2009
Sup! If you don't mind, I'm going to dedlurk too and be the advocate for workers and settlers. 
Posts: 824
Threads: 7
Joined: May 2011
SevenSpirits Wrote:Sup! If you don't mind, I'm going to dedlurk too and be the advocate for workers and settlers.
Welcome aboard! You won't see me complaining about veteran players dedlurking and giving advice.
Yeah, I'll try to slot some settlers and workers in there.
Actually, really, remind me to build workers. I have a feeling that both my worker discipline is less than it should be and that I don't build enough workers, although I don't really have any data to prove it. (On the other hand, I do know that plans in these threads always sound excessive but turn out to be warranted.)
|
