RBP7 [SPOILERS] - The Chronicles of Nyania

[nabaxo]

Sure, sent it to you. Just be careful not to move or change anything whenever you log in... I'm a bit of a control freak.

It's cool. Just that it might need it later as well.

So, no seafood in the fog... sucks a bit but never mind. Looks like there's a second break in the trees as well, so perhaps we've got another strategic resource hidden. Both Copper and Horses in the BFC would be insanely good... probably pretty unlikely though. Hopefully we'll get at least one though.

Either way, a 5f/1h Pig and 5f/1c Rice tile isn't too bad, and with 9 forests in the BFC, that's 180 free pre-Maths hammers if we want them. So while our BFC likely isn't amongst the best, we could probably do worse.

Not bad at all. Hope now that we have copper/iron there as well. Then we got production in the bag.

[Lord Parkin]

Heh... so far out of 8 players that have ended their turn, only 2 have founded their capitals (us and ASM). The other 6 must have decided to move their Settlers. Wonder if they've all found much better locations... perhaps they knew something we didn't.

Hope we don't end up regretting settling in place once we reveal a few more tiles...

[Lord Parkin]

Not bad at all. Hope now that we have copper/iron there as well. Then we got production in the bag.

Wasn't thinking much about the production benefits, although that'd be nice too. Main thing is that we need horse/copper/iron at some point to compete, especially so in an Always War game. After all, without strategic resources we're just a lame duck civ waiting to be conquered.

Luckily the odds aren't high of having no resources at all, but it can happen on these random maps. And having only Iron (out of Horses/Copper/Iron) can sometimes be almost as bad as not having anything, if you get rushed early.

[nabaxo]

Shit got real. We have a bounty on our head. xD

[Lord Parkin]

Shit got real. We have a bounty on our head. xD

Heh, I figured that would have to happen sooner or later. Although the odds that Mr Bounty Hunter is actually one of our neighbours should be fairly low. Though there are probably players with far more devious ideas out there that are just keeping quiet about them for now. I guess we just have to accept that we're likely to be a target regardless of who our neighbours are.

[Lord Parkin]

Hmm, after trying out a few starts on random maps with the same settings, I figured out why I kept feeling ours seems a bit slow: we lack a 2 hammer capital tile. Even if you don't start on one, often there's a plains hill or resource visible somewhere nearby that you can settle on to get a 2 hammer capital tile - not for us though. Gaining that 1 extra hammer per turn makes a huge difference, too... your first Worker alone comes out 3 turns earlier (15 turns @ 4h/turn vs 12 turns @ 5h/turn), and everything just snowballs from there.

Also, having a precious metal start (Gold/Silver/Gems) - which it's highly likely that someone, if not several people will have in this game given there's 18 players - makes a colossal difference. Any civs lucky enough to get one or more of those resources in their capital's BFC are going to get a huge early tech boost relative to the rest of us, especially given how expensive techs are on this map.

Ah well, balance definitely wasn't the theme in this game. We're probably unlikely to become a major power if this map is anything like the others I've seen, but as long as we survive we can still have fun harrassing our neighbours.

[Lord Parkin]

Some random musings about the metagame:

One interesting thing with an 18 player always war game on a map this large is the psychological aspect - it tends to make civs fairly insular. Many nations may not even make contact with the majority of civs for a large period of the game, depending on their location. So the only nations that will really matter to any given player are those immediately surrounding them... at least until around Astronomy.

And that's actually a good thing in a way, because it limits the number of meaningful contacts of each player - which in a RB-level environment, can easily get out of control (refer to Pitboss 3). When you have 15+ other players that you want to keep track of constantly, the effort required is immense. However, when it's only your 3-4 immediate neighbours that are of any significance, things are much more manageable. Of course, this also means that exactly who your immediate neighbours are is critical to your success (or demise) - though that's also the case in more "normal" games too.

Something else worth noting is that cooperation in this game will probably be exceedingly difficult even with full trust between two nations. There's a few reasons for this - for a start, gifting units is obviously impossible in Always War. Then the inability to sign open borders means that even if someone trusts you enough to let you send your units through their territory to attack someone else (not an easy thing to agree to do), your units will not get the benefit of their roads and so travel/reinforcement time will be very large and counterproductive. There's also the fact that while you're crawling through their territory, you'll be harming the person you're supposedly helping by constantly blocking workable tiles from them. Plus, your units will heal at the slowest possible rate inside their territory even if you're fighting a common enemy.

Anyway... perhaps it's an obvious conclusion, but I'd be very surprised to see many (or any) instances of serious fights breaking out between players who do not share a border in this game, at least until Astronomy. Especially since it should be extremely difficult to fully trust someone to cooperate with you when there's no private diplomacy allowed. I think the only instances of cooperation that might emerge will be much later in the game, when/if there's a clear runaway... and even then, any cooperation still won't be anywhere near as effective as it would be in a non-always war game.

[nabaxo]

If it is as you say, this game will be hard for us. Everyone is probably going to play very defensively and focus a lot on military, I predict that the overall tech-pace will be very, very slow.

But I think our food start will give us some advantages, we could try to grow our capital more than the other teams. Maybe with a scientist or two to help our teching pace, if we get that far, we could still be in the game for a long while.

Or we could go the slavery route to get the food to hammer we need. Something for future micro plans, nyan~~

Also: We need pottery for granaries.

[Lord Parkin]

Playing defensively is fine with me, as long as our land quality and quantity doesn't risk us falling behind in tech compared to our neighbours. If it seems we'll be unlikely to be able to keep up with them though, then there's pretty much no choice but to make the first strike and hope for the best. Else we just sit around waiting for them to wipe us out.

Our start isn't exactly what I'd call a "food start"... it's okay, but only average compared to what you can potentially get on a map script like this. I think several other nations will have much more potential for early growth in their capitals than us.

Also, bear in mind that for growth we need happiness. Too early to tell if we'll have much of that early on or not.

Granaries might not be too important unless/until we find a few happiness resources around, or get to Monarchy. Not so useful investing 60 hammers into a building when our happiness cap is 4 (or 5 in the capital), unless there's a really good whipping location around. Obviously worth building in cities where we want to whip though.

[Lord Parkin]

Fun fact: Only 8/18 players (including us) settled on the first turn. That means more than half the players decided to move their Settler, possibly to claim plains-hills or more resources. Will be interesting to see how many (if any) civs still remain nomadic by the end of this turn... my bet is very few, 2-3 tops.