[SPOILERS] Pindicator plays PBEM62 (not to be confused with Twitch Plays Civ)

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

Haha. Thanks for the great preview. Want to go to PB18 and do (probably) RB's first ever T125 retroactive pregame opponent preview for me? Kthx!!

[GermanJoey]

psst, Gaspar, Charlemenge is Pro/Imp not Pro/Cha...

[Gaspar]

psst, Gaspar, Charlemenge in Pro/Imp not Pro/Cha...

Oh right. I always confuse Charlemagne and Churchill since NOBODY WOULD EVER PLAY THEM.

Anyway, I'll edit the preview to reflect the changes. Also, it drives me crazy that everyone abbreviates Charismatic as Cha rather than Chm as the game does.

[GermanJoey]

I mean, his name even starts with "Cha", you'd think John Shafer would take a hint!

[Gaspar]

Haha. Thanks for the great preview. Want to go to PB18 and do (probably) RB's first ever T125 retroactive pregame opponent preview for me? Kthx!!

Well, I'd only have to do one preview since Parkin is all the opponents.

[Gaspar]

A Dedlurker's Guide to PBEM62 Opponents

Public Enemy #2 - Ichabod



Playing as...

Isabella of England (Spiritual, Expansive, Fishing, Mining, Redcoat, Stock Exchange)

(No chance of me screwing this up - I've played Izzy twice and England once.)




I like Isabella too much to give her a painting of a stodgy Spanish queen. I dunno who that is but I like the cut of her jib.

Known Knowns:
Ichabod is one of those guys everybody likes. I've played lots of games of Werewolf with and against him and I've played against him in PBEM38. He's just good people. However, he does have a tendency to fade in and out of RB so I wouldn't be surprised if one of his myriad dedlurkers ended up finishing this game for him. He abandoned Mist for a good stretch of 38 and its not the first time that happened. Ichabod largely is as skilled as he has time for. He's shown in FFH games particularly an ability to find creative solutions to problems and his micro tends to be very solid. His biggest issues are that he's a bit emotional and that I think leads to his frequent departures. That said, he's a strong player when he's on his game - his Byzantine civ lept out to the early lead in PBEM38 and while I think they mismanaged their empire (more on that in a moment) there's no arguing that when Ichabod stopped playing their team was in strong position. (PBEM38 really was an underrated game, the game had 3 different leaders at different points and was very competitive and interesting until the clusterfuck at the end.)

Isabella is a good leader, not a great one, but she's a lot of fun to play. Spi/Exp plays together perfectly because what Spi really wants is something else to do the heavy lifting until you can get some civic options in play, since it offers little other than saving you a turn on the slavery revolt early. And Exp wants something to carry its late game after helping you get off to a fast start. Its often said Spi is the most fun trait to play, and while I don't know if that's actually true, its definitely the trait that makes you feel like you're managing the game the most. That's not always a good thing - these are the reasons baseball managers call for too many bunts, for example. Sometimes its just best to play it straight. Nonetheless, I think Ichabod has the strongest synergistic trait pairing in the game, though I don't think its the best (or even close.) England kinda sucks. They were thought to be great back in the days of reading Sullla reports and everyone thinking games ended when you got to draft Rifles but both uniques come late-midgame and neither are things you typically build by the bucketload. Generally speaking 1-mover military UUs need something really snappy to be really valuable (I'm thinking of CKNs, which introduce a mechanic that doesn't exist elsewhere or Musketeers, which turn a 1-mover into a 2-mover.) Otherwise they're mostly flavor units. But as flavor units go, they're fine. Stock Exchanges are good, but you don't necessarily want to build a lot of Banks in an MP game, unless you have a really productive shrine/corp HQ and are building them for Wall Street. And any BTS start techs that have Fishing just sucks by definition in 95% of start (having something like lake Fish at your capital would change this, since you'd get to work it from t0.)

Anyway, his pick doesn't pigeonhole him into a gameplan other than to say he's likely to go for an early-ish religion to start making use of his trait and he's likely to start faster than, say, us.

Known Unknowns:

As always, the Known Unknown with Ichabod is how long he sticks with it and stays engaged. An engaged Ichabod is a dangerous player, the 3rd most accomplished of the players in this game. A disengaged Ichabod won't be a threat. I get the sense he probably feels like he has something to prove but that feeling can wane as RL piles up and the game starts not going your way.

I'm also curious if he's fully BTS'ified now. He hasn't played a FFH game in a while I don't think but FFH really screws with you in terms of tile improvements. In 38 he and Mist has more riverside tiles than anyone else by a long shot and they just had Farms and gimped workshops everywhere. If they had cottaged heavily (they were Fin in that game as well) I'm not sure we could have ever stopped them since they easily had the best starting land of any of the players. I wonder if he's learned from that mistake?

Ichabod Profile

Peace Weight: 5/10
Unit probability: 7/10
Wonders: 8/10

Flavors: Fall From Heaven tile improvements
D&D Alignment: Chaotic Neutral (He just wants to have a good time.)

Ichabod's Yearbook

Final Fantasy Character:

I wonder if Ichabod is any good at Blitzball?
Final Fantasy Tactics Job:

I think that goes without saying.
Twitch Emoticon:

Likeliness to Succeed:

Quality of Selection:

Exploitable Weakness: Gets bored, leaves civ to random newbie, take all their land.
Biggest Fear: Random newbie is the second coming of mackoti.
Pregame Prediction: 3rd

[pindicator]

PB18 was probably my best preview posting ever and it doesn't come close to this

psst, Gaspar, Charlemenge in Pro/Imp not Pro/Cha...

When I read this I thought he was taking a shot at our leader. I mean, this is Gaspar after all

Maybe I need to replay FF7 because I'm not seeing Commodore as Sephiroth. Maybe you mean it in that he's a popular villain?

Also, love the idea to compare people to FFT jobs

[Gaspar]

Maybe I need to replay FF7 because I'm not seeing Commodore as Sephiroth. Maybe you mean it in that he's a popular villain?

Also, love the idea to compare people to FFT jobs

Partly that, partly that in he's a pretty normal dude until he goes apeshit on his crusade.

FF7 really doesn't hold up as well to replaying anymore (granted I've played it a half-dozen times) but I tried it recently and found its just too easy to outlevel the content. At least compared to some of the older games.

[pindicator]

Point taken on commodore

[pindicator]

Good news: I finally got another turn sent to me

Bad news: It was the same turn

(Yes, i know they fixed the save. I'm being facetious.)