[SPOILERS] Dark Age of Capria

[xenin]

This thread is going to be themed around an old classic:

[Serdoa]

Loved that game, played it several years, most of them together with my wife. Great choice

[xenin]

Alright, I have never played any form of multiplayer civ, and I think the only time I've played the bannor was the couple of missions in the main campaign before I could dump them for a useful civ, so this is likely to end in failure, but hopefully it'll be fun along the way.

I deliberately wanted to play a civ that I haven't used much in singleplayer, and in the end I went with
1) Rhoanna
2) Capria
3) Varn.

I'd be a lot more confident about this game if I'd got Rhoanna; she's got arguably the best builder traits of the non adaptive leaders but comes with the military threat of the hippus. I think with the bans we have she's one of the top restricted leader picks, and I have no idea why TheArchduke wanted Tasunke instead.

Instead we've got Capria. I'm going to miss the crutch of having financial but I'm hoping the flexibility of spiritual will come in handy for multiplayer. What I'm more worried about is having the Bannor, who are great once you have their tools running but have nothing at all early game, so I'd like a map with some room to expand ( Square Leg) and not to start next to one of the scary rushers.

There's not much more to talk about until we get the map, but I'll take a quick look at the competition:

Yell0w: garrim gyr (fin/def) of the luchiurp

Not hugely scary. Can't really rush early; has a scary late game but there are plenty of ways to deal with golems really.

nabaxo: Varn Gossam (spi/cre-ada) of the Malakim

Pretty blank slate civ with the best leader in the game; could go anywhere with it but again unlikely to be trying to rush someone in the stone age.

Tholal: Enion (phi/def) of the Elohim

Ahem. That's a better quality of monks anyway.

Decent civ, mediocre leader. Not going to be rushing me but nobody wants to rush into sanctuary.

Cromagnumpi: Tebryn (arc/sum) of the Sheaim

Yay, we're into scary rusher territory. I'm hoping this is going to be the nice sitting back and teching for mages/apocalypse sheaim and not the horrible burning zombies of death sheaim.

TheArchduke: Tasunke (agg/rai) of the hippus

With the Illians banned, this becomes the nastiest rusher in the game. Pick Tasunke and the only question you need to answer is whether to warcry-warrior rush or horseman rush. And we have no diplo to deflect with. And we're one of the obvious civs to rush. Pretty please can I not start next to them?

Overall, I'll back the bannor once we have fanaticism against any of that lot; so my priorities are
1) don't die to an early rush
2) try and do well enough on the builder side that the financial civs don't get a tier ahead in tech

[Mardoc]

Your start:

[xenin]

I'll probably move the scout/warrior anyway, but something gives me the impression we are meant to SIP

[Amelia]

Btw, to correct your opponent's info, elohim have a very good reason to rush others: Their tolerant trait. Of course, you're the Bannor, so they likely won't want to rush you.

[Selrahc]

Btw, to correct your opponent's info, elohim have a very good reason to rush others: Their tolerant trait. Of course, you're the Bannor, so they likely won't want to rush you.

Unless they want an easy source of Guardsman units.
But they do have a unique building already giving them that, so maybe not over much of a reason.

[xenin]

Wow, a turn! At this rate we should be finished a little after 2020



Everyone before me settled on the first turn. Moved generic fighter + generic thief (if they perform sufficiently heroicly they may even get to choose an actual class!), didn't see anything that looked better than SIP. That's coast to the SW, and tile bleed says it continues up all of the W. Probably send fighter north to follow the coast and thief inland.

[Ilios]

I have learned that occasional public scoldings do the trick.

[xenin]

Scouting sees nothing very exciting. Tech set to agriculture. Ag -> Calender seems the obvious opening, but I haven't decided whether after that I should go for myst or mining. Sadly the Bannor start with exploration, which isn't much use here, and every single resource in my BFC requires a different tech. And I'm the Bannor so I want education fairly early. Yay.

Longer term I'm thinking about leaves as a military stopgap. Spiritual priest of leaves are pretty good, I need priesthood for fanaticism, and hawks seem pretty important for a no-diplo MP game. On that note I realised going worker first and scouting with the warrior leaves me open to getting scout-eliminated. Not sure yet if I'm going to take the gamble or turn the warrior around in a couple of turns.