[SPOILERS]Luddite: A Man, A Plan, An Also-Ran

[luddite]

Awesome

So who starts with Agri/wheel? Well that would be France, Sumeria, Babylon, Ottomans and Egypt.
France: I wouldn't bother with.
Sumeria: Noble and cylindrical nerfs the UB into the ground.
Babylon: Meh.
Ottomans: I like the UB and Jans are solid.
Egypt: Egypt would have good synergy with an early research of AH if horses are revealed. Who needs to invent bows and arrows when you have War Chariots?

Well, Scooter just picked Egypt. I noticed that he posted in his thread after I picked HC- I think I was right that he wanted HC, and didn't care too much otherwise.

The conventional wisdom is that starting techs are by far the most important thing in selecting a civ- you want the fastest start possible, and most UUs and UBs hardly change anything. Egypt is generally the best combination, but any Ag/wheel civ works fine (although sumeria can be kind of a liability). China has Ag/mining and tech bronze working immediately, but there's hardly any forests here. So that logic leads me to Ottomans and France... both very standard picks that have been used many, many times.

Nonetheless... I'm very tempted to do something unorthodox here.

I want to pick Spain. Their starting techs are mysticism and fishing, which is literally the worst possible combination for this start. However, on noble level and with a FIN leader, early research will go so fast that it hardly matters anyway. By the time I build a worker and farm the wheat and corn, I should have time to pick up wheel and pottery (or something else, but I think early pottery for those flood plains is the way to go here). I'm also somewhat tempted to grab early meditation, so starting with mysticism wouldn't be wasted, and fishing helps tech pottery faster.

So what do we get later, with Spain? Conquistadors! They're a fantastic UU which crushes any earlier unit, and even gets terrain defense to protect against catapults. What I would really like to do is tech an extremely early military tradition (boosted by MoM, Taj, and a lot of great scientist bulbs), conquer a neighbor with conquistadors, then rebuild my economy with democracy and financial cottages, using barrage 3 cannons for defense. Probably won't work that way, but we'll see!

[luddite]

Picks so far:

Me: Huayna Capac
AT: Willem
Scooter: Egypt
Sian: Pacal, France
Scooter: Isabella

very standard picks by AT and Sian so far, somewhat surprising choices by Scooter. I'm guessing AT will pick Ottomans now, which makes my choice even easier.

[Nydaeli]

You should also consider picking Mali. HC of Mali makes for a very powerful Oracle => MC slingshot (and you're the only Ind leader!). You also get a UU that guards against Scooter's WCs.

On the other hand, it doesn't have quite the factor of Conqs.

(I'll be unspoiled, BTW, if not a frequent poster.)

[luddite]

You're right, Mali is definitely the standard choice here. But I DO want to have some fun with this game, and I really think I can make Spain work. I think the fast tech speed will make oracling MC less attractive- I'm actually going to take a shot at Oracling Civil Service, if possible.

And I'd be very suprised if scooter tried a serious war chariot rush. If he does, I'll want spears anyway, so the skirms are not that great.

Edit: and just as I say that, AT really surprises me by picking Byzantium. He might be thinking along the same lines as me.

[ironstar]

HC is definitely a powerful leader especially since you landed the sole Ind leader, well done! Short of a Nospace 1-turn Wonder ™ we should be almost guaranteed any wonder we wish to pursue. I kinda feel restricted when playing a non Spi leader, but with Fin we can probably be a little less reliant on GPs for bulbing and just blow thru the tech tree the old fashioned way using Fin cottages.

Byz will definitely make this interesting, with Fin enabling him too beeline the cataphract quickly and Cre for cultural dominance. Let's hope we don't start too close to this pairing.

Spain could be a fun civ to play, although I haven't really tried leveraging their uniqies, so no idea how effective they are.

[luddite]

I'm hoping I can actually make good use of bulbs in this game. My current thinking is that what makes the pyramids SE so strong is not that they add a huge amount of beakers with rep, but rather they allow you to set up scientist bulbs in quick secession. Without rep, you're often stuck keeping your great scientists on ice for a long time waiting for their bulb to open up, which really depreciates the value of the bulb. My hope is that with FIN cottages, I can do something similar here even without the pyramids (although I haven't entirely ruled out building the pyramids anyway).

My ideal tech path would be to build the MoM, oracle CS, launch a golden age and switch into caste, bulb philosophy, switch to pacifism, research nationalism, build the Taj, then bulb paper, education, and liberalism while building HAs with theocracy. Grab military tradition with liberalism, upgrade all my HAs to conquistadors, and go kill someone who has nothing better than macemen to defend

I very much doubt the game will actually play out like that, but if it comes anywhere close I'll be happy. Worst-case scenario is that AT does the same thing to me, in reverse, with his cataphracts.

[Commodore]

Well, your UB is at Engineering. Real men Oracle Machinery, anyway.

[luddite]

Opponent analysis:

Scooter: I've never played a full game with scooter, although I've done some live MP with him and I was semi-partnered with Lewwyn in PBEM14, playing against him. He seems a lot like me- interested in trying out some new strategies, and with a fairly solid grasp of micro, but not interested in creating the perfect micro plan with sandboxes and spreadsheets. He picked Egypt with his first pick (after I picked HC), and then Isabella. That, of course, is the same combination that Novice/Seven used so well in PBEM23, although it's somewhat suprising to see Isabella get picked in a game with fully unrestricted leaders. My best guess is that he wants to recreate the pyramids economy that NS used in that game, and that he wants the war chariots so everyone will leave him alone and give him space early on. Overall I'd guess that he'll be the toughest opponent here.

Sian: He was in PBEM23 with me. He did pretty badly in that game, losing most of his army against Fierce, but that was his first game here and he's played a lot since. He seems to be getting better very quickly, and just won the PBEM29 greens game making good use of the pyramids, so I don't really know what to expect from him. Hopefully he won't hold a grudge against me for opportunistically double teaming him in 23. Pacal of France is a standard "power combo" that often gets banned in PBEM games here.

Automated-Teller: Least experienced player here, and the one I know least about. He's in two other games that are still running, and he seems to mostly know what he's doing. He picked Willem, who was often ranked 2nd in power after Pacal, but paired it with Byzantium which is unusual. I guess he had the same thinking as me, that he'll be able to overcome the bad starting techs with financial and the low tech cost on this map, then beeline guilds quickly.

At any rate, should be interesting. I'm glad we're not all financial Ag/wheel civs.

[luddite]

Well, your UB is at Engineering. Real men Oracle Machinery, anyway.

Ah yes, the ol' trebuchet rush. A classic winning move.

[slowcheetah]

Opponent analysis:


Sian: He was in PBEM23 with me. He did pretty badly in that game, losing most of his army against Fierce, but that was his first game here and he's played a lot since. He seems to be getting better very quickly, and just won the PBEM23 greens game making good use of the pyramids, so I don't really know what to expect from him. Hopefully he won't hold a grudge against me for opportunistically double teaming him in 23. Pacal of France is a standard "power combo" that often gets banned in PBEM games here.

If you mean PBEM29g, Sian didn't have the pyramids, he used TGL, early Ziggurats and Ind failgold wonders to power himself into a tech lead.