[SPOILERS] Team SsS

[Sandover]

Welcome to the lurker thread of Team SsS. If you're playing for another team in RBP3 you're being very naughty right now. If not, I hope you'll have a pleasent read!

Team SsS:
Sandover
scooter
Square Leg

As team leader I will be responsible for making sure turns are played, diplomacy is handled and that the superior letter "s" is given proper tribute within our civilization. scooter and Square Leg will act as my advisors, which means that their main job will be to stop me from doing anything stupid. They will also serve as my escape goats, but don't tell them that.

Our Configuration:
Kublai Khan (Agg/Cre) of Rome (Praetorian, Forum).

We ended up having the 12th position in the snake pick out of 17 teams. Pretty much everybody and his cat went for a builder approach in this game so our team is a black sheep with our military setup. Considering our position in the snake pick I'd say we did pretty well to land this combo, and we hope to kick some serious builder-butt using our aggressive praetorians!

General Strategy:
We're going to sacrifice early exploration in order to emphasize growth, hoping it will pay off in the long run. From there on we'll basically beeline to Iron Working once we've grabbed the needed worker techs, aiming to get our praetorians out as soon as possible. Our main challenge will be to tinker the diplomatic situation into our advantage in order to avoid a pre-praetorian rush or a dogpile. If we can handle that we're pretty much set to conquer one of our neighbours - after which we'll shift into economic mode and develop ourselves into a super-power.

Stay tuned to follow the action!

[Sandover]

Reserved for future use.

[Sandover]

Also reserved.

[Sandover]

Right, lets have a review of the snake pick while waiting for lift-off, shall we? I'll start from the bottom and work my way up from there, since that way seem to make the most sense (the bottom gets their combo sorted before the top does).

17th - Broker33 + dsplaisted + Swiss Pauli
Huayna Capac of Mali
Made good use of their back-to-back pick by teaming up cheaper forges with forges giving a 10% bonus commerce. Builder team.

16th - Ruff_Hi
Napoleon of the Aztecs
Roleplay combo? I bet only Ruff himself knows why he made this choice.

15th - Sockboy + ad hoc + WarriorKnight + Pegasus - Zara of Ottomans
Zara Yaqob of the Ottoman
An above average leader combined with an above average civ. Builder team.

14th Lobo.Thibron
Peter of Korea
PHI teamed with korea's powerful universities creates some nice synergy. Builder team.

13th meatbalz + dazedroyalty + Ilios
Mehmed II of the Holy Roman Empire
Cheap courthouses teamed with more powerful couthouses. Have a good combo - only real weakness is the scout start. Builder team.

12th Team SsS
Kublai Khan of Rome

11th Krill
Ghandi of Egypt
PHI combined with priest specialist-generating monuments. Likely to go for an early religion? Either way I reckon he wants to try something extreme like he did with the EXP/IMP Incans in RBP1. Also has the War Chariot. Builder team with rush potential.

10th SleepingMoogle + Bobchillingsworth + ManiaMuse
Hannibal of Byzantium
Cataphracts with cheap promotion and FIN added to the mix. Builder team with medieval conquest as a likely goal.

9th darrelljs + regoarrarr + sunrise089 + sooooo
Bismark of India
This team had a wonder strategy planned for RBP2 but got killed early. I figure their choice of IND here means they're going for something similar? Builder team.

8th Cyneheard + haphazard1 + antisocialmunky
Suryavaraman of England
Solid combo without any real synergy. Builder team.

7th Cull + RefSteel + Maniac Marshall
Ragnar of Maya
Interesting hybrid. FIN + a great UB while having aggressive Holkans. Rush team with builder potential.

6th athlete4life10 + Jowy + Kalin + Nakor
Joao of Inca
100% focus on rapid expansion. Builder team.

5th Exploit
Darius of Sumeria
Great leader but a weak civ despite the ORG/Ziggurat synergy. Builder team.

4th Kyan + Twinkletoes89 + Whosit
Pericles of Babylon
Great leader for GP economy but a weak civ despite the CRE/Garden synergy. Builder team.

3th Morgan + DMOC
Elizabeth of France
Purely economical leader and a rather "meh" civ. Builder team.

2th Dantski + Mukha
Willem of Portugal
Great leader. Can't really say the same about the civ. Builder team.

1th Mr. Nice Guy + Shoot the Moon
Pacal of Carthage
Reckon they took Carthage because of the Cothon rather than the Numbidian Cavalry. Builder team.



To me the trend here was pretty obvious. Almost everyone wanted to go for a builder(read: techer) strategy, and while the teams at the top got the best leaders for this kind of play they had to settle for some rather average civs. The real stand-outs are ourselves (military), Cull's team (hybrid rusher) and Ruff (who knows?). Broker's team and Krill could potentially also try to rush somebody early on, but I doubt they will other than out of necessity. Like if they ended up next to Aggressive Rome, for instance.

[Sandover]

Here's a note for you lurkers:

This team had a wonder strategy planned for RBP2...

I will pay attention not to give away any spoilers from the other MP games being played here at RB, in order to make sure players from those games can lurk this thread without fear of getting spoiled. I will, however, make referrences to those games if I feel it's valid to do so and it can be done without spoiling anything (obviously I don't consider the above quote to be a spoiler).

[scooter]

Checking in .

An interesting note to those lurking, our choice of Kublai + Rome is especially ironic to Sandover and I, because before the snake pick we exchanged quite a few lengthy emails planning what leaders/civs to target, and Rome/Kublai were nowhere near our list of choices. We had every intention of also pursuing a builder strategy, but when it got close to our pick we saw every single one of our top 8-9 choices leave the board, so we decided to call an audible and go with Rome. We were emailing throughout the Snake Pick, and as our pick neared, Sandover made this comment to Square Leg and I:

Getting tempted to try to do a proper Rome game though, seeing as
neither Ruff nor Whosit really managed to play them to their full potential in
the ongoing games.

And that kind of got the wheels turning, and here we are now! The next debate was which Aggressive leader to take, and it came down to Shaka vs. Kublai. In the end, we agreed that Kublai's creative trait was more valuable for two main reasons. One, cheap libraries are obviously useful if we still would like to shove together a working economy, and two, the free border pops are valuable not only for normal play, but also for quickly getting iron in play, and for not wasting hammers on monuments when they could be going into workers, barracks and Praetorians .

Early on we kind of felt like we should target the "best available Financial civ" - but given that we are playing with Tech Brokering + no restrictions, it felt less important, which is part of what encouraged us to go with Rome instead. We feel like our greatest challenge this game will be managing diplomacy. People have mentioned that if you are next to Agg. Rome, the best move is to chariot rush them, and I would say they are probably correct. So we have to work hard to keep neighbors from feeling threatened, despite the fact that we will happily take their cities off their hands .

[Sandover]

2 out of 3 then. Just waiting for Square Leg and the rambling can start for real!

[scooter]

Also I think it should be noted that we have every intention of dominating the thread view count competition.

[Sandover]

We do? I mean, yes, of course we do!

Btw, anyone think Sullla edited in Aggressive Zulu and placed them next to us?

[Sullla]

No.

But I like where your mind is going with that comment.