RB Pitboss #2 [SPOILERS] - Pacal II of Greece! (Jowy & Yazilliclick)

[Jowy]

Welcome to the spoiler thread of Pacal II of Greece!
This team is being played by Jowy and Yazilliclick.

Please refrain your urges to peek in incase you are playing, or planning to play, for another team in this game. If you are planning to perhaps play with us or chip in with advice at one point or another, please don't get spoiled by reading other's threads. Thank you.

[Yazilliclick]

I think, even should we die on turn two, it was all worth it for that picture.

[Jowy]

Reporting back in. Glad you like the banner So nobody picked Persia.. what a shame! Regardless, I'm still planning to build three hundred phalanx, DOW and send a diplomatic message of "THIS IS SPARTAAAAAAAAAA".

Let me put up a small montage of our snake pick choices for the lurkers. You probably wouldn't want to read 20ish e-mails of us bombarding eachother back and forth anyway.

What we picked:
Pacal II - Financial & Expansive
Greece - Phalanx & Odeon

* Financial/Expansive - I like financial in this game due to to the no tech trading which could become an advantage in a tech race. Expansive could help us develop more quickly as well

We kinda have two game plans here. Either we pick an aggressive or a passive role in the game. I'm afraid we're facing some strong players, so maybe that military edge from aggressive would help us against them. Either way, we're going to have to concentrate on fighting. In any mp game, anything you do should be so that you have better chances in fights. Cultural/diplomatic/space/time victories are out of the window, since the moment we'd be close to them, if we ever live that long, we'll get stopped by the rest of the players.

So the two plans.
Aggressive:
Persia/Egypt - Fin/Chr or Fin/Exp
Rome - Agg/Chr
Passive:
Mali - Fin/Chr or Fin/Exp

Atm I'm leaning towards Pacal of Egypt. We can research AH right away and hopefully get our horses if we're lucky. UB comes into play early as replacement monument. We'd be pretty safe with 5 strength 2 move unit in the start.

So we got Pacal (hope you hadn't changed your mind on leader choice). Seems a couple people were leaning that way too which feels nice

I guess time will tell what civs will be left when the pick gets back to us.

Good job I hadn't changed my mind on leader, but I'm not that sure about the civ anymore. I can't really tell you why, it would spoil the RPB1, but I'm not so confident anymore that early rush is the right move. Anyway as you said, we'll see what we have left.

So what are you leaning towards for civ now that other have chosen. I'm not sure about egypt myself. Chariot is nice but the building is weak imo.

Ok some new suggestions.

Portugal
- UB +1 commerce on water tiles, +100% commerce for intercontinental trade routes (replaces harbor)
- UU Carrack, replaces carabel, can hold normal units.

Portugal would be good if the map is water based, but we really don't know. If there's not much water, then it's really no use. We get +1 commerce on water tiles from being financial, +1 from harbor, then if we land Colossus that'd be +5 in all water tiles.

Well.. cant really think of much else. Maybe greek for phalanx, but the UB is not awesome.

Port ub is replacement for custom house isn't it? much later. Carthage has replacement for harbor which may not be a bad mix since we're exp so can build it faster. It's not bad but customs house is maybe a bit late?

I was also looking at the greeks. Phalax isn't bad. odeon may not be bad for some added culture & happiness as well.

Also was sneaking a peak at zulu.
ub is barracks replacement with -20% maintenance
uu is Impi 2 speed spear with mobility which would make for really good calvary counter I would think.
It's not incredibly powerful though and not sure how it would work out.

Right, customs house. That rules out portugal then. Zulu is taken.

Greek sounds pretty good then. Persia that we talked about earlier doesn't fit with expansive. What about Korea (+10% extra science from library, and hwachas)?

Missed that zulu was taken.

I lean towards greek but I'll leave it to you. Korea's not bad but I think they're weaker. Phalanx might be nice to have out since everybody so far has melee uu except for one and the defense vs chariots will make it harder for them to counter our anti-melee. Though nothing we can do against praetorians.

[Jowy]

Sunrise posted an analysis of the picks here. What caught my eye:

1 creative civ, but 5 others who start with mysticism. Only two starting religions. Good luck with that fellas, some of you are gonna be in for a dissapointment Except Incas will use their UB for culture, so make that 4 for the race. There are 3 philosophious civs, so they must be going for specialist economy, or atleast some kind of variation of it. Why else pick Philo? We definately aren't going to build the Pyramids. As Yaz pointed out in our convos, 5 civs picked an early melee UU. Our phalanx will counter those. Any ideas for our culture? Libraries should pay off with our +10% science later on. Maybe henge if we have stone and forests, since there are no industrious civs out there.

I'm anxious to play. ETA for the beginning of the game is next Monday.

[Dreylin]

As Yaz pointed out in our convos, 5 civs picked an early melee UU. Our phalanx will counter those. Any ideas for our culture? Libraries should pay off with our +10% science later on.

Hi, looking forward to lurking this game. Couple of comments on the above:

Phalanx are no better vs. Melee UUs than Axemen - their bonus is to counter the effects of the Chariot attack bonus. Yes that means you only need a single unit to counter most of any opponent's stack, but doesn't actually help against Melee units.

You won't be getting the +10% science, since you didn't take Korea (and BTW the Seowon replaces the Uni, not the Lib). Greek Odeon is a +2Happy colosseum.

[Jowy]

Hi, looking forward to lurking this game. Couple of comments on the above:

Phalanx are no better vs. Melee UUs than Axemen - their bonus is to counter the effects of the Chariot attack bonus. Yes that means you only need a single unit to counter most of any opponent's stack, but doesn't actually help against Melee units.

You won't be getting the +10% science, since you didn't take Korea (and BTW the Seowon replaces the Uni, not the Lib). Greek Odeon is a +2Happy colosseum.

Sure, it's not directly good against melees, but the chariot bonus eliminates Phalanx's biggest counter early on. Chariots got that melee bonus in the first place so that axes wouldn't be so overpowered. Now that it's eliminated.. Only downside I see is that Phalanx get +100% against chariots, not against all mounted, so horse-archers could be a problem.

Seowon. Meh. That's the second time I read the requirement building instead of the one it really replaces Right about the correct UB, must have mixed up the two since we were comparing Greek and Korean before our pick, both pretty unknown civs to me.

Have fun lurking Dreylin.

[Dreylin]

Definitely going to enjoy being able to surf through all the threads on this one, so expect me to pop up from time to time. I hope I don't turn into an unwelcome visitor!

It's important to note that the Phalanx bonus applies only when being attacked by Chariots, not when you're on the offensive - it's an exact mirror of the Chariot's bonus. (I've known too many people forget that the Chariot vs. Axe bonus is only one-way ... even Sullla!)

[Jowy]

Definitely going to enjoy being able to surf through all the threads on this one, so expect me to pop up from time to time. I hope I don't turn into an unwelcome visitor!

It's important to note that the Phalanx bonus applies only when being attacked by Chariots, not when you're on the offensive - it's an exact mirror of the Chariot's bonus. (I've known too many people forget that the Chariot vs. Axe bonus is only one-way ... even Sullla!)

Indeed, I may have picked a bad example (the old axes), since they were afterall OP for their rushing abilities, not as defensive troops. Not quite sure is it evident from the e-mails I picked, but we put aside the idea of early rush. Fin/exp and Greek isn't the ideal combination for that. Phalanx are more of an extra investment on security. Though a choke with Phalanx sounds interesting.

I'll be trying to post screenshots and other content for lurkers, so good to know there's actually people reading this.

[Yazilliclick]

Yeah hoping that the phalanx helps boost def, means there's not such an easy way to counter our anti-melee early on. Will be interesting to see how it pans out.

Odeon may come in useful if happiness resources are few and far between and the little culture boost doesn't hurt though it's late.

Fin was definitely popular, sort of expected with a no tech trading no spies game. If it goes on for a while somebody with fin could have a clear advantage in a 1:1 tech race and hopefully a strong early defense and expansion will let us get there.

Of course every plan sounds good on paper

And you're Jowy, damn glad we didn't try going for an early religion. Maybe try picking one up down the road if we're looking good.

[Kyan]

Hey guys,

haven't read any reports from either of you so don't know your style but i wish your team teh best of luck purely based on the epic picture on the first post

And Jowy, there are definitely people reading