Speaker's super top secret thread for the purposes of world domination; Neener Neener

[sunrise089]

We are finally up for Turn 83 (the second turn). Let's plan on playing the turn together sometime this evening.

I'm going to be working late tonight, so I doubt I'll be able to play in your and speaker's window. I don't think I can be at a PC until about midnight, which will be right at the end of the turn.

[Speaker]

I'm going to be working late tonight, so I doubt I'll be able to play in your and speaker's window. I don't think I can be at a PC until about midnight, which will be right at the end of the turn.

I will be around. I can play your turn for you, if you want, Sunrise. I think we all agreed on where to plant in any event, and the scouting units should be pretty easy.

I'm really leaning toward exploring in a circular pattern, clearing the fog but keeping the archers closeish, and popping out a scout or two at some point to go explore deep and find our opponents.

[Ronald]

Music first or Civil Service first. Music allows you to Build Culture in cities (not trivial, as this allows you to ignore Creative trait or monuments and still pop borders) and grants the free Great Artist to the first team that gets it. Civil Service unlocks Bureaucracy civic. Both are strong choices, with Music being more of a gamble because only one team can get the Artist. Both can be unlocked with a Great Person lightbulb, Music requiring a Great Artist and Civil Service requiring a Great Merchant.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts in such details.

Could you explain, why you prefer going after music and not after civil service?
Do you think the value of border pops is higher than of the additional production and research?

[Speaker]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts in such details.

Could you explain, why you prefer going after music and not after civil service?
Do you think the value of border pops is higher than of the additional production and research?

Civil Service only benefits the capital, and it takes a while for the bonus to really matter. We will be slaving a good amount for a little while, and our commerce-potential is really quite low early. Popping borders immediately upon founding a city is really quite helpful when figuring out worker micro, especially with India as one of our civs. Also, the free Great Artist, assuming we are first to Music, is a nice perk.

[Sullla]

After a lot of reloading delay, we finally reached the second turn of the game (T83). Here's my civ so far:



We decided we'd use a naming theme based on League of Legends, the online game that all of us play regularly. League of Legends is a Player vs Player MP game, and you may have heard that I maintain a YouTube channel that focuses on LoL casts. My capital is named "Requiem" after the ultimate skill of my favorite champion, Karthus:



Here's an old video of me playing Karthus a number of months ago, and here's another more contemporary one. Karthus is a fragile spellcaster who deals magic damage from a distance, and his "Requiem" skill hits every opponent on the map at once. You get a lot of angry comments when someone thinks they've run to safety, only to get insta-gibbed from the other side of the map.

Back in Civilization terms, we picked this starting position for my leader for two reasons:

1) Floodplains galore = insanely good for Financial leader
2) Grassland iron at the start = insanely good for Expansive leader

I founded on the starting tile last turn, as the location was almost perfect. The plains hill tile produces 2 shields/turn, and then the mined iron will produce 4 more shields/turn. Add another free one from Expansive, and add in the 2 base food/turn from the center tile, and that's a total of 9 production for a worker - at size 1! Crazy good. I had the worker mine the iron last turn (while I was in Anarchy changing civics), then again this turn, and it will finish next turn. Only one "wasted" turn working a floodplains tile on this current turn.

Last turn, we moved the scout and archers before doing anything else. That revealed a horse tile in the south, and so that's where the second city went. We debated whether to place the city on the tile you see above, or on the desert hill one tile east. We went with the current spot for 3 minor reasons:

1) No need to waste another turn moving
2) One more floodplains tile
3) Two more hill tiles

None of them were all that important on their own, but together it added up to a stronger city. The one downside is that the city is not on a hill, which could be dicey if it comes after heavy attack in the early game. We'll see what happens, and be ready to fight if someone else tries to pressure us. (Hopefully not the one Aggressive Rome!)

Speaker/sunrise: I've planned out my first dozen turns up to T95. Please take a look and give feedback if you have a minute. I tested a number of different strats and I liked this one the best. The focus was on getting out workers ASAP and improving the bonus resources. I was able to get 4 workers, grow cities to sizes 3/2, and connect the four resources at our cities, all by T95. There's a decent chance it can be done better, so have at it if you want to play around with city micro:

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/19563179/PB6/Sul...Sullla.xls

The next few turns are going to be spent hitting Enter while building workers, so there's plenty of time for theorycrafting...

[Speaker]

Hi, this post is all about ninjas, REAL NINJAS. This post is awesome. My name is Speaker and I can't stop thinking about ninjas. These guys are cool; and by cool, I mean totally sweet.


Facts:

1. Ninjas are mammals.
2. Ninjas fight ALL the time.
3. The purpose of the ninja is to flip out and kill people.


Shen is a ninja.

...

Well, actually Shen used to be a ninja.

...

Now he just sucks.

Shen is my favorite character in League of Legends, with a win rate of over 60%, and a Kill+Assist to Death ratio of just a hair under 5.0. He is a "tank" who is able to protect his teammates in a couple different ways. He has a skill that allows him to "dash" toward enemies in a straight line, and if he collides with any, they will all be forced to attack him for a short period of time. With a well-placed dash, and a grouped up enemy, he can connect with the entire team, and disable them for a period of time.

His ultimate skill called "Stand United" allows him to shield an ally anywhere on the map, and after a short channel time, will teleport to their location, to join the fight.

Playing Shen requires great map awareness, as you need to constantly be ready to shield and jump to your allies, should they need the help, and "Shadow Dash" allows you to pull off some pretty cool saves, as well as letting you jump through walls if you time it correctly, for some amazing escapes of derring do.

Unfortunately, he was nerfed into the ground, and is no longer a viable character.

Here is a video of me playing Shen, as narrated by Sullla. This was from before he was neutered.

In honor of Shen's former glory, I have named my capital after him.



[SIZE="1"]http://www.realultimatepower.net/[/SIZE]

[plako]

Speaker, I noticed you got your capital borders popped instantly. I guess only way to do this is to run culture slider and probably to get chop without losses next turn. Nice trick. Did you run it at 30% or higher? How do you plan to pop Junglewick's borders?

[Speaker]

Speaker, I noticed you got your capital borders popped instantly. I guess only way to do this is to run culture slider and probably to get chop without losses next turn. Nice trick. Did you run it at 30% or higher? How do you plan to pop Junglewick's borders?

Sorry, I should have mentioned this in my write up. I ran 30% culture last turn to pop my capital's borders. Our commerce is really so low that it only costs us a couple beakers toward tech...not a big deal. Junglewick only gained 0.6 culture, so, not much help there. I will hopefully get the religion on T7. If not, I will probably have to wait until we get music to pop my borders. Building a monument doesn't make much sense. It still takes 5 turns after you build it for the borders to pop, and by that time, we'll have music already anyways. This is why Music first is such a strong play. Insta-border pops.

[darrelljs]

They have REAL Ultimate Power!

Darrell

[Sullla]

Well, it doesn't look like our turn will be rolling over until sometime just before midnight tonight, so I'll plan on playing my turn tomorrow morning. If for some reason I'm not around, go ahead and play for me. All you have to do is finish mining the iron tile, swap the capital over to working it, and move the archers/scout.