[spoilers] Pax Commodorica: Pharaoh of Rome

[Hashoosh]

I don't know if you've ever played BI (you probably have), but the Western Empire is just hilariously worse than the Eastern. Is it so hard to ask for units that don't become Shaken at the start of a battle.

ugh.

./non sequitur

[Commodore]

LOOK WHAT YOU MADE ME DO!!!


Hash, if you want to take a crack, save's up.

[Commodore]

Okay, first off, let's try something kind of weird but really cool. Agriculture->BW

The initial timing works out the same here as for Hunting-first options; worker pops out, improves food; Rome grows first on the cow then on the improved wheat. The imperfect but fine follow-up is farming the wines; until Monarchy, possibly waaaay on down the line (no need for longbows, if I manage 'mids no HR need). I move the second citizen around a bit to get BW by the exact beaker...

...then, I futz around chopping/whipping/etc. This is hardly optimized by this point, but it gets plenty of improved tiles...

...and a decently timed second city. I'm pretty sure I can shave two turns off there, for what its worth. "Along the river" is a gimmie, because we're still a long way from the wheel here. That wine farm is what passes for a commerce resource here. But it's a hell of a springboard.

[Commodore]

Password: "amor". Anyone is welcome to poke around but if you change something I better see reams of micro justifying it.


...and here's the live game. I've yet to decide 100% on the Agriculture plan, so no tech yet selected. That plains hill is whispering seductively to my first settler already...

Excited!

[Hashoosh]

I was going to post when Xenu asked for colour changes that you should go Red instead of purple...

I don't think there's anything better than agri first with this start, I ran a few rough sims and agri was by far the best choice. So we don't lose any worker turns on Agri->BW with 2 farms? Nice.

You might have noticed someone accidentally chopped their capital's furs in PB16, so uh, from experience, don't chop that deer.

If you'd like, I can take a crack at the sandbox in a more thorough manner tomorrow, but for the next 24 hours I'm on cramming mode.

[Commodore]

Posted above in a hurry before work, realized the meaning of the different time on Agriculture on my commute...

I don't think there's anything better than agri first with this start, I ran a few rough sims and agri was by far the best choice. So we don't lose any worker turns on Agri->BW with 2 farms? Nice.

If you'd like, I can take a crack at the sandbox in a more thorough manner tomorrow, but for the next 24 hours I'm on cramming mode.

Um, I'm going to have to give you a new sim. It's Large, not Standard. Which makes Rome less a possibly weedy thing, more a completely terrible mistake. Pindicator, with the same techs and a *faster* worker, if going to hurt even worse I'll bet.

[Commodore]

Or not, whew.

Since you (and others in their threads) have all been remarking about map size, I went ahead and made a fixed file with Standard map size i can send to sunrise, just waiting/wanting a confirmation from Xenu first that that's ok.

** And Xenu just replied so I'll send that along to sunrise now. Prepare to play turn 0 again.

...didn't mean to be That Guy, but I would have preferred even say Germany over Rome if it was Large, that's an indicator. So that means, yeah, sim still valid and Agriculture first is a gimmie.

But BW next isn't a sure thing. AH or Hunting might also be valid; I'm almost certain the sim time is beaten by going a little harder on the growth side.

[Commodore]

As an aside, if anyone else wants to play with that sim save, it's actually one heck of a single player map there (moving back to the original start). Tectonics is awesome at making cool real-world, albeit terribly unbalanced, maps.

By the way, no Hunting so no scout pops out as the first growth build...but the starting fellow is going to beeline west. I think I figured >30% water tiles, so c-nav is out there.

[Hashoosh]

So I'm guessing the tech path (in a vaccuum) is going to be pretty heavy on the top of the tree? Eschewing Monarchy means there's no reason to go past MC with Praets for a long time. I guess machinery for windmills/watermills, but they're kinda shitty in base bts.

[Commodore]

So I'm guessing the tech path (in a vaccuum) is going to be pretty heavy on the top of the tree? Eschewing Monarchy means there's no reason to go past MC with Praets for a long time. I guess machinery for windmills/watermills, but they're kinda shitty in base bts.

Well, with the essential caveat that we're never ever in a vacuum...yeah, top of the tree ho! I'm not assuming that we're going to land the Pyramids for sure...this is a very competent field, any one of these guys can find some stone and swipe them; not worth gutting the expansion efforts for the wonder. But even if we do hit Monarchy, no need for Fuedalism thanks to longbowish defenders.

That's a good general point, actually. The Pyramids are an incredibly powerful wonder that I frequently see badly misused; they are for either (A.) using Representation's excellent happy cap to simply work more tiles, or (B.) running a specialist economy...which is *not* about piling up huge numbers of specialists willy-nilly all the time. The point of a 'mids SE is that you can continue to research at 0%, so you can push the REX to a ragged and bleeding edge. Spiritual actually means we can do that even with Representation, with timed Caste swaps and bulbs, but it is obviously less powerful. Colossus and the Great Lighthouse serve similar functions, as welcome boosters to affording expansion.

No matter what we need to have a large number of mature towns in the core by the time the era of worker pants rolls around.