[Spoilers] Adrien and Mardoc relax and play civ

[AdrienIer]

And before you ask, the terrain is too rough for exp India (I can already see 6 forested hills).

[Mardoc]

And before you ask, the terrain is too rough for exp India (I can already see 6 forested hills).

I disagree, actually. I can also see a bunch of forests without hills. And hills without forests. The Fast Workers don't have to have every move be discounted, as long as some are, they're still helping our snowball.

But I'm not at all convinced that Exp needs to go with India. We shouldn't need to build quite as many Fast Workers as a normal civ builds workers, after all.

Maybe Julius of India? Consider the Fast Worker as a chop-speeding tool for those Imperialistic settlers?

Edit: If you feel super-strongly about skipping India, then I'm ok with someone else. But I'm not convinced HRE is awesome enough to leave the FW on the table.

Editedit: But also I am quite aware that I'm not the strongest player at RB. So if you think I'm missing something important...you could be right.

[GermanJoey]

I think you're a pretty strong player Mardoc... I thought you played really well in PB17, right until the end when a grudge caused by some moves from before you took over came back to bite.

[AdrienIer]

I don't think you're really missing something important, and (gigantic understatement here) I'm not the strongest player at RB either. But let's look at the start : we need hunting AH mining and BW to make full use of it. With India it's 4 techs away, with HRE only 3. Then which tiles are we going to improve : the pig, where a normal worker wouldn't lose a turn either, the deer that is a forested hill, the fur is also a forested hill, only the sheep is a normal hill. So that's 1 turn won by the FW (maybe 2 if we want to go pig->deer->sheep->fur due to moving back to the fur faster). Then we may want a 5th tile, which ideally would be a river grassland hill mine. There's one in our territory, and it's a forested hill. So overall India doesn't give us a big advantage in our first settler. It will VERY probably help later on, but for this capital it gives us around 3 worker turns before the first settler. So not as great as in some other cases.

Now the HRE strategy is exactly what you described to me earlier. We REX, we go straight to currency and COL and continue expanding. Of course if this is a PB25 style map with little room to expand HRE isn't great. But I'm willing to bet that it's not. I played India in PB25 and the map was pretty good for the FW, it gave us some early chops that we wouldn't have had without it, but here I'm not convinced.

I can wait till you wake up (you're US based right ?) before posting our final choice. I hope you'll agree about taking the HRE.

[AdrienIer]

Actually we both agree on Julius so I can just as well make it official. We can choose the civ later.

[Mardoc]

No, you definitely shouldn't have waited on me! There was a high chance I wasn't online again til tonight. Or tomorrow!

I can see your point about the snowball, true. India might not help as much as I'd like there, while Rathauses are a big boost on their own. I guess the real thing is to push REX so hard that GNP is the limit, not hammers or workers. Which seems to be technically possible.

Plus HRE does sound interesting, and there's synergy. And they make you more excited - engagement is worth tons on its own anyway. So go for it.

[AdrienIer]

Cool !

With this combo we'll have less incentive to build markets grocers and banks due to our costs being so low, it will save us some hammers in the early-mid game.

[Mardoc]

So am I correct that Landsknechts are mostly ignorable, the value of the HRE is in the Rathaus and (in this case) starting tech?

[AdrienIer]

I love landsknechts. Come on, +100% against Melee ! They're equal to maces before promos, destroy axes and spearmen and other pikes. Against them you need crossbows or shock maces, no other unit kills them before muskets.

[Commodore]

Rock some kickass haberdashery as well.