[SPOILERS] Commodore, Mist and the Weed. A Farce in three acts.

[Commodore]

Well, with Scooter picking Mongolia, Hannibal looks the nicest of the Finns, for denial as well as synergy. Chm Gers are scary, particularly with elephants unbanned. I like the Gandhi notion, depending on what we can glean from the others' picks...don't want to find ourselves in competition with another SE that gets off the ground faster. CE is more simple, fire and forget.

[Commodore]

So after much discussion, although not much sturm or drang, I brought Mist around to the idea of Fin, and he brought me around to the idea of pairing that with Imp. So, unless either Lewwyn or Serdoa selects Victoria, we'll be getting the old empress.

The obvious one aspect of this is a cottage economy coupled with a lot of settlers, the initial wave of course determined to settle around the supercharged cap and start growing cottages. This feeds out a number of the capital's super-tiles early, so that whipping and running specialists are both much less painful.

That imperialistic grocer ought to be a lot of fun, yielding at least a couple GMs on our hell-for-leather beeline for Guilds. The first one should be timed to bulb before Mathematics come in, so that the big, juicy Metal Casing is snagged. If nobody else has gone either for the GM or Oracle -> MC, this will mean dibs on Colossus, which is nice, but it also means Machinery is open, so that's 450 beakers on the beeline. After that, whipping in a forge and running 2 merchants, 1 engineer nets us either a GE for Machinery, or a GM for CS, CoL or Guilds depending on where we are in the tree. The only downside is that this plan involves working less great Fin cottages at the capital, which is why a number of cheap settlers working the land around the city will be nice. I'm not sure, perhaps we could swap over to working engineer + a library scientist or two to get an academy in play.

One bit of trickery that might be way too much is if we could land the Oracle as we bulb MC, which would enable taking the massively expensive Machinery for free. We'll have to see though, I'd expect someone with Phi or Ind to care about getting there first too much, if someone does take the road to specialists and the 'mids.

[Mist]

Right judging from the picks, we have a good chance at landing Oracle. When we thought about it earlier, I suggested getting CS with it, but that apparently got swept out of the picture. Oh well.

So why not push it further and bulb guilds?

Commodore here of course says it's hard ( like that ever stopped me :neenernee ), so let's see what do we need.

[SIZE="4"]Guilds[/SIZE] need :

[SIZE="3"]I. Machinery[/SIZE]

We're oracling that apparently, so it's all nice and dandy.

[SIZE="3"]II. Feudalism[/SIZE]

Needs Monarchy.
Monarchy needs Writing and Priesthood.
We're getting Priesthood for Oracle and we won't want to skip Writing anyway. So that's fine too.

[SIZE="3"]III. Someone to bulb with[/SIZE]

Scientist? Nah, there's, like, whole tech tree above Guilds on the GS bulb priorities.

Merchant? We'd either have to not tech Writing ( which is impossible ) or tech all the way pas Paper ( which kind of defeats the subject ). So let's move on.

Prophet? Not on the list.

Artist? Not on the list either.

[size="3"]IV. Like a GEng for example[/size]

Bulbing priorities :

Machinery
Assembly Line
Industrialism
Combustion
Metal Casting
Mining
Iron Working
Engineering
Replaceable Parts
Steam Power
Steel
Robotics
Railroad
Feudalism
Fascism
The Wheel
Plastics
Masonry
Construction
Guilds

Let's cross out some stuff that's too far in the future to matter.

Machinery
[strike]Assembly Line[/strike]
[strike]Industrialism[/strike]
[strike]Combustion[/strike]
Metal Casting
Mining
Iron Working
Engineering
[strike]Replaceable Parts[/strike]
[strike]Steam Power[/strike]
[strike]Steel[/strike]
[strike]Robotics[/strike]
[strike]Railroad[/strike]
Feudalism
[strike]Fascism[/strike]
The Wheel
[strike]Plastics[/strike]
Masonry
Construction
Guilds

Now let's get rid of the thing we would have teched by then in any case

[strike]Machinery[/strike]
[strike]Metal Casting[/strike]
[strike]Mining[/strike]
Iron Working
Engineering
[strike]Feudalism[/strike]
[strike]The Wheel[/strike]
[strike]Masonry[/strike]
Construction
Guilds

This leaves us with pretty manageable

Iron Working
Engineering
Construction
Guilds

We need Iron for knights, so we'd tech IW anyhow most likely and we can block Construction and Engineering by not teching Mathematics. Note that we can still get to Currency/CoL via Alphabet.

V. Making the whole process easy

See Commodore? Not hard :neenernee .

[Commodore]

That's really cool, actually, although I'd be a bit more comfortable with good chops sooner. We'll have to see as things progress, and phase one, the MC bulb, is incredibly solid.

This start is giving me a headache, though. I started a little baby sim, which Mist has dinged me on already with a couple mistakes. He's the way more professional mapmaker here, guys. Anyway, I have a start here:



We'll poke about and see, but I think it's vertical all the way, baby. Which actually means food gets prioritized, so Agriculture -> Hunting -> Fishing before mining/BW, most likely. The railroaded mine gets out an Imp settler plenty fast anyway.

[Mist]

Actually, few initial micro runs suggest that Hunting first is better. But I should probably get somewhat more systematic at it...

Meh, let's make a spreadsheet.

This game might make me actually work on my micro skillz, I have no idea how Commodore intends to compensate me for that mental damage

[Ilios]

Dedicated Lurker Unit Ilios checking in.

Bulbing Guilds, now that's balsy!

Allthough I have to agree with Commodore, I wouldn't advise skipping Maths that long.

Have you considered going Settler first?

[Commodore]

Have you considered going Settler first?

Actually, that would be nice, but it also makes us want AH kind of early. I can see settling either 3W or 2W,NW of the capital, because hey check it:

[Commodore]

Opposition Analysis time!


Serdoa (clever, inconsistent) as Sulieman (Phi/Imp) of the Vikings (Hunting/Fishing)

Serdoa here normally has a plan, which often gets derailed. He might be doing something convoluted, but I'm pretty sure the thinking is to get extremely early GMs to bulb up the line to Berzerkers and then rampage. If everyone but Lewwyn wasn't in easy reach of MC->Machinery, I'd be actually worried. The starting techs of the Vikings aren't that bad for this setup, the Hunting start loses the deer's forest but still gets the nice 4/1 tile online fast, while Fishing's cost is a negligable -5 culture. Overall, this is one of the less esoteric Serdoa choices we're seeing.

As a player, I expect Serdoa to be aggressive early, which hopefully translates to being aggressive early in a direction that isn't us. A successful rush could put him in a good position, but his latest rushes have been in different circumstances. We should be seeing a generally solid, stable empire out of him pretty quickly...which he will then use to kamikaze someone else's game. He's probably top competition for the Oracle.



Scooter (Machiavellian, balanced) as Joao (Exp/Imp) of the Mongols (The Wheel/Hunting)

Scooter has a well-deserved reputation as one of the more diplomatically focused players on the forums, but he's actually got a decent civ skill-set backing it up, honed by many many hours of intense tango with Dazedroyalty. He's basically playing us, but earlier. I'm pretty sure he wanted Vicky, actually, and Joao was a panic reaction after we took her. The Hunting start, like I said, is pretty good, and Gers are awesome especially with war elephants unbanned. This is going to be our nemesis, I suspect. Joao is a solid enough leader, although with gers I'd rather have either Washington or Hannibal. Keshiks are probably not the lynchpin of his strategy, but I'm sure he'll play with them...watch out for mobility hijinks (this being BTS, mobility means ignoring terrain costs).

As a player, Scooter is pretty conventional, conbining energetic expansion and oppertunistic aggression with a solid economy game. On a pure-skill standpoint, he's probably about even with my average (although I think anyone who's lurked me will aggree that I am much better and much, much worse than him depending on the day). Judging from his thread title, this is going to be his attempt to win one decisively, so he should show up his best. I expect him to figure out the map before anyone else, which, given mirror, isn't all that useful this time.



Lewwyn (brilliant micro, moronic metagame), as Mansa Musa (Fin/Spi) of the Inca (Agriculture/Mysticism)

Lewwyn is a totally nutcase but he picked either the best or second best pairing this time. I'm not too fussed with the change to mere wet plains corn, and I doubt he is either, the tile is a solid one still. I'd take it in a heartbeat for free border pops, and lost scout is recovered by the super-warrior. Chief Rival here, with nothing in the "wow" department for military but the best builder traits paired with a completely broken UB. I doubt he'll go for much trickery in the wonder department early, although I expect him to get Polytheism and Monotheism pretty quickly, so Buddhism is our preferred target.

As a player, Lewwyn manages to pair his excellent micro skills for a complete and utter inability to read the metagame, which is more often than not expressed in fumbling early aggression. I don't want him pointed our way, as he is completely capable of torpedoing his neighbor while hurting himself...see PBEM 14 for the prime example. Tactically, he's sound although not nearly so good as he thinks. It is telling that the one game he's winning as a cakewalk is PBEM 22, always peace. I hope he gets tempted into throwing his game away for an early strike. Just let's not let that be us.



Brian Shanahan (newbie, Irish) as Catherine (Imp/Cre) of the Aztecs (Hunting/Mysticism)

Brian is a relative newcomer to BTS PBEMs, although he does have one full game of FFH under his belt (VII). He performed...pretty badly, being slightly screwed early by mapmaker Ravus Sol but then completely ruining his game with an irrational crusade against his southern neighbor while Kyan/Krill won things. His combo, which I already touched on before, is absolutely fine in most Fin-banned games, but here...kind of a whiff, actually. It's cute, having a Sacrificial Altar and whipping like mad, but that's also saying "whipping like made from an awesome capital that also has two merchant slots". Not terrible thinking, but also not a very impressive start.

As a player Brian seems to be solid for a newbie, and not above aggression, although he also tends to wait far to long for optimal times to strike. Overall, this is another potentially troublesome neighbor...holy crap. We're surrounded, guys. Brian is the only one I'm not expecting to have a high chance at winning, probably 5% to the rest of us. Still, he should be learning well here and at least everyone ought to be updating.

Mist, I know you've not played BTS PBEMs, but you've been lurking, what are your takes?

[Commodore]

So, like the man said, hunting first, etc, etc. Growing actually doesn't slow down the settler, so I opted for the "not dying to Lewwyn" option of warrior-first, Hunting. The real choice is going to be in two turns...if we fast-expand to pigs, we should road west instead of the deer tile.



I am a mite bit confused here thanks to the weird caps. I reckon I could sim out each person's start, but that...isn't going to happen. Enjoy the GNP lead while it lasts, suckers!



Settings, if someone is curious.



Currently, on track to turn 85 'phracts, let's bring that down.

[regoarrarr]

Serdoa (clever, inconsistent) as Sulieman (Phi/Imp) of the Vikings (Hunting/Fishing)
Scooter (Machiavellian, balanced) as Joao (Exp/Imp) of the Mongols (The Wheel/Hunting)
Lewwyn (brilliant micro, moronic metagame), as Mansa Musa (Fin/Spi) of the Inca (Agriculture/Mysticism)
Brian Shanahan (newbie, Irish) as Catherine (Imp/Cre) of the Aztecs (Hunting/Mysticism)

I can't decide if I'm intrigued or scared to know what you rate(d) me