[Spoilers] AT (Charlie/Mongolia) has a thread. In which he shall post.

[AutomatedTeller]

Other pre-game stuff:

Early relgiions:

Since early techs are really cheap, it's probably easier to go for a religion if you have myst. And, in a game like this, we have seen that having a shrine can give a huge boost to your gold.

People with myst are:

CheaterHater
HAK
barteq
adrienler
Moloch

2 of them start with hunting, one with the wheel, one with mining and one with agri. I'd guess Moloch and CH go for Hinduisn and the others Meditation, since the first two have food techs and the other three don't. Well, one or two of them will punt. It would be pretty funny if no one goes for Buddhism until it doesn't fall and then a bunch of people go for it.

How does the game resolve ties in terms of religious? randomizes?

[flugauto]

Random.

[AutomatedTeller]

thanks.

I did some messing around with the sandbox after turn 28, and in my first try, I had 3 cities, 2 granaries, 3 workers and a settler about to be created by turn 50. Oh, 2 cottages.

that feels like I should be doing better, with an imp civ and this setup.

ok - just using the cap, 3 chops and a couple of whips, i can get:

1 workbout
3 workers
3 settlers
3 workers
1 granary
1 cottage
1 camp
1 farm
1 mine

though, the other two workers are doing stuff at "other" cities and the "other" cities are building things, too. I feel better about my expansion now.
by turn 50.

[AutomatedTeller]

I have not been paying much attention to games here, so I've misssed all the new players. A lot of these guys have been playing quite a bit. Gavagai, for instance, seems like a strong player from what I read in PB 22.

[BRickAstley]

I have not been paying much attention to games here, so I've misssed all the new players. A lot of these guys have been playing quite a bit. Gavagai, for instance, seems like a strong player from what I read in PB 22.

We demand a player ranking!

[AutomatedTeller]

I have not been paying much attention to games here, so I've misssed all the new players. A lot of these guys have been playing quite a bit. Gavagai, for instance, seems like a strong player from what I read in PB 22.

We demand a player ranking!

You want a player ranking? You can't handle a player ranking!!

ok - here's a player ranking!!!

AdrienIer
AT
Barteq
Borsche
CheaterHater
Commodore
Donovan Zoi
dtay
Elkad
Gavagai
Grimace
HitAnyKey
Ichabod
Krill
Moloch
NylesStandish
plako
ReallyEvilMuffin
Serdoa
Tasunke
TheWannabe
von Adlercruetz and taotao
yuris125

What? Alphabetical isn't good enough for you? it's plenty good enough for the alphabet, the dictionary, even the ENCYCLOPEDIA FRICKIN BRITTANICA!!!!

ok - there are 22 non-me players in this game. If I do one a day, then I should be able to get a ranking by the time I get my first settler out

[AutomatedTeller]

Well, the easy part of any such list is the top:

Krill, Serdoa, plako. Proven RB winners (at least, I think Serdoa is)

Next layer would be:

Commodora, dtay, Gavagai. These are guys who have been competetive - commodore in many games, dtay and Gavagai in recent ones.

There's also guys who I know won't win:

yuris, moloch, ichabod, CheaterHater, HitAnyKey. yuris does weird things, Moloch wasn't bad in PB 18, but very passive - as far as I can tell, he never declared once with an aggressive leader. he did plant aggressively at me, which is why we ended up at war. CH seems ok, but I played against him in a PBEM and he didn't do anything amazing. Ichabod seems to play the game, but is not a top player. HAK got hosed in PB 18, being forced to duel Jowwy on a small island, but I don't think he's a great player.

Then there are all the others:

AdreinIer, Barteq, Borsche, Donovan Zoi, Elkad, Grimace, NylesStandish,REM, Tasunke, TheWannabee, & von Adlercruetz and taotao. Don't know them. borsche seems reasonably competant from his posts in PB 28 - he swears as much as krill does, so he has that going for him. He picks good city themes

My assumption is that, as a group, these guys are roadkill.

If I had to guess percentage likelihood of winning, I'd go:

tier 1: 15% each
tier 2: 10% each
tiers 3 and 4: 25% likely total. My guess is that top 4 players are 2 from tier 1, 1 from tier 2 and 1 from the rest of us.

That's really the best I can do.

[BRickAstley]

Which tier are you?

[AutomatedTeller]

oh - I thought I said that. I'd put myself in tier 3, but that's mainly because I know myself I finished top 10 in PB 18, but that had a great deal more to do with neighbors and luck than skill - by the time GJ and BGN got near me, neither of them thought it worthwhile to kill me. Which I think might have been a mistake for BGN - he could have pretty easily taken me and I figure that they capture gold, even if he just burned my cities, would have helped his tech.

but that last tier has a lot of people who's skills I can't evaluate. I don't think anyone would have picked BGN, TheBlackSword or the trio to win PB18 - not in a field with krill & novice, plako, scooter & pindicator in it.

I'm definitely in it to win - realistically, i hope to be relevant at the end, or at least relevant near the end. I'll take dtay's game from PB18, as disappointed as I'm sure he was at the final outcome. Mainly, I want my neighbors to have to react to me, not me have to react to them.

I should really post some cat videos or something. maybe I need to start reading weird manga.

[AutomatedTeller]

Turn #0, In Which AT Founds a Civ, Talks to Himself and Speculates on the Map

I moved my scout and saw this:




So I said to myself "self, it doesn't get any better than this"

So I founded Banana Friction on the spot, like I had assumed I would for the past week or so.




I set my build order to be WB->worker. I'll explore before making choices as to what is next. I'll avoid setting tech to see what I get from huts, if anything (btw - how do you avoid picking a tech? I always get a popup if I don't select a tech right off)

btw - this start is one of the reasons I think that Fin got nerfed. For an old fin start, that's an extra commerce from turn 1 - over the course of a game, that's something like an extra crossbow->rifle upgrade or an extra turn of research in the renaissance. or, more concretely, it's another 10% boost to research - it probably would mean getting Math 2-4 turns earlier. Huge change to the game. Major change for anyone persuing a religion right now.

Take a look at the settings




and they look right

Check landarea



So that's 184 land tiles per civ.

If you assume that we are arranged:

x x x x x x
x x x x x x
x x x x x
x x x x x x

(or something like that) then capitols should be somewhere around 16 tiles apart on both the horizontal and vertical.

Thus, if we are more crowded, that's an indication that there's probably extra islands to settle somewhere and we are bunched up in continents. Mebbe. Not that it really matters

I didn't grab demos, though they wouldn't really say anything interesting.

Next turn, plan is to send the scout to red dot. Maybe I should have sent the scout to the hill up top on T1.

Very exciting times!!