[PB29 Spoiler] In which Joey, then mackoti, swing happy go lucky

[GermanJoey]

T26.

Settler out next turn... finally. The early game is so boring, nothing to do but rerun sims. Blugh. My latest attempt, based on a guess that copper sucks, hooks up copper T53 (5th city) and horses on like T71 (7th city). Archery for Skirmishers on T41 IIRC, after Pottery. That's kinda late to have one's first real combat unit out but I'm thinking that our area is compact enough that we can just rely on spawnbusting for awhile. My sim sees us having 6 skirmishers and 4 warriors on T75. We're also looking at 8 cities, 6 granaries, and like 30 pop T75ish, which is pretty good. I'd say micro is tightly tuned until about T45 right now; anything beyond that is just goofing around.

In the real game, nobody else settled yet besides Scipio, which is fairly surprising. I was expecting the Pro folks to put down this turn IIRC, and Dreylin around T24. I wonder what he's doing to still not have his second city up?

Someone has a size-4 city, which is probably TBS (the only Exp) with a fast granary. He went granary-first before settler in both PB19 and PBEM63; it's definitely one of his preferred patterns. It's certainly very strong here, with the 1/3 Ivory tile providing some significant muscle for getting the granary done fast. I guess this explains the Japan pick? He could go WB-first and then get Pottery in like 8 turns? Get a worker at size 2, and use the overflow from that to get the granary done in 5 additional turns, with the full bonus? Seems pretty good. I love how traits can make different openings possible, its one of the coolest things about Civ4. I wonder what he does after that though? Agriculture -> Mining -> BW? I think it's gotta be. So, he had to sacrifice his scout's movement, which I guess works out on this map.

[GermanJoey]

T27-T28.

Turn rolled in less than 6 hours today, so we get a doopla-boopla.

We finally settled our second city, Sonny Terry!




Sonny was the master of the country rhythm blues harp. Actually, you could say that he pretty much invented combining the two styles together; it took people a long time just to figure out how the hell he could play like that! Sonny's famous for whooping while playing, which you can kinda think of him as using his raw voice as an 11th hole of the harmonica. He's one of my all time favorite dudes. I absolutely love his unique style. I posted my favorite song from him on the first page, called Sonny's Squal / Hootin' Blues, but here's a great live performance with his partner Brownie McGhee and Pete Seeger:



In other news, TBS grew to size 5 this turn. This was mildly surprising, but I suppose it makes sense. There's two bare hills in our capital's BFC and also the wines, which can take a farm. If you're gonna have a late settler anyways, might as well make the most of it now, and you can double-whip it off when BW finally comes in. For us, it's coming T33; for him, working the fish for longer, perhaps T31? T32 at the very least. Perhaps a lot sooner if he skips AH... I wouldn't be too shocked if we see a double whip in the next couple of turns.

Notice that we saved gold for a turn - this turns out to not slow BW at all, as we were just a couple commerce short of completing it on T32 before, and thus this way we salvage every last coin.

Someone else grew to size 4, which was a surprise. From the tracker, it looks like Dreylin. I'm really perplexed as to what the hell he's doing. He should be zerg-rushing all over the map, not growing!

[GermanJoey]

Tsargon - Willem Von Orange (Fin/Cre) of Greece (Hunting/Fishing/Phalanx/Odeon)

Next on the player/combo reviews, we get to the Tsargon, ascendant psychogamer. Tsargon's got a slower starter here than most of the field, and I'm not sure I like that too much. Fin is nerfed in the early game in ToW compared to BTS, but is a bit better in the late game. Cre, OTOH, is a little slower than it used to be in BTS. It's still a very strong trait overall, but I'm not sure I'd want to rely on it as my only early game, especially with weak starting techs. However, luckily for Tsargon this map is still really good for Cre. So many cities want a border pop even with a dotmap that tries to avoid them. It really makes me wish we had Cathy! Tsargon's civ pick isn't that great, I think. Like, ok, Hunting/Fishing gives you 2/3 worker techs, but you have time to get those anyways. He only picks up 105 beakers here, while we pick up 135. 30 beakers is a big deal! Furthermore, to no fault of his own, the Phalanx is pretty a non-UU in this game due to the overseas horse. By the time most players will have that hooked, we'll be entering the classical era. I guess he does have cheap Odeons... that's not a terrible UU to have cheap, 40 hammers for 2 happy and 3 culture at Construction. And, hey, we do have elephants, which I'm sure was at least half of the reasoning behind the pick.

Tsargon is one of the players from badgame.net, along with Borsche, Agent427, and myself. I've known him for quite a long time, 6 years or so now, from back when we used to post on a politics forum together. This is his 6th pitboss game, including the recently started PB27. Tsargon started out as a mild-mannered, bumbling, pushover in his first game a year and a half ago, but since then has learned very quickly to become one of the better players at badgame. I'd rate him just a hair below Borsche in terms of overall ability. Very interestingly, as Tsargon has gotten better at the game, he's also become far more paranoid, to the point where the rest of the badgame crew now considers him to be a deranged psychopath. If he had picked a faster-starting leader, he'd probably be the guy I'd want to start next to the least, other than TBS.


Borsche - Julius Caesar (Imp/Org) of Scandanavia (Hunting/Fishing/TradingPost/Berserker)

Mr Fat and Horny, esquire, is the last of the badgame players in this game. His combo pick seems pretty excellent to me. Medium-distance maintenance devalues Org some, but since most of your cities will be water-adjacent on this map, cheap trading posts and the chance at the GLH should more than make up for it. Imp should help him get off to a good start, and he might be able to use a quick early skirmish to pump out a GG to plant for some 5xp Swords and Zerkers. 3-move galleys with CR2 C1 Zerkers sounds like a fucking nighmare to deal with. One bit of awkwardness with this pick is that cheap courthouses and cheap markets come available at about the same time. Borsche will have to choose or the other to chase after first (I'd guess markets would be ideal first), which means that he'd be leaving a bit of value on the table. Still, both of these traits are strong on their own, and Strong+Strong with a touch of overlap is usually better than Mediocre+Mediocre with some of synergy.

Borsche strikes me as a guy who tries to avoid mistakes he's been burned by in the past. This is his 8th pitboss game, same as me. His early games were characterized by very heavy early aggression, but lately he prefers playing more for the late game. I feel like that can result in him becoming a bit passive in the mid game. I think his level of play is also really dependent on how engaged he is with the game. For example, he puts his all into our badgame pitbosses and updates them very regularly, but then in PB27 I know he didn't sim his start at all and has barely reported, so who knows how the fuck he's doing. Here, he hasn't updated in like a month. Well, I think I'd still rate him about medium on the neighbor-desireability ranking... someone phoned-out and inclined towards peace in the midgame would be ideal, but Borsche also loves doing bullshit with boats so that would be a pain in the ass later.

[BRickAstley]

Is this the most badgame-infiltrated Pitboss here yet?

[GermanJoey]

by percent, yeah I think so.

[GermanJoey]

holy smokes TBS, a size 6 city?




I think we're about to see a triple-pop whip overflowing into Stonehenge... and then I think we'll see a 1-turn regrowth to size 4, followed by a double-pop worker whip overflowing into stonehenge too, I think this turn. Add to that a bit of ordinary production, and we're looking at T32 settler, T36 SH, with two workers and zero chops? or T32 settler, T37 settler, T38 SH? Wow... that is one hell of a unique opening.

[BRickAstley]

That seems.... pretty good.

[GermanJoey]

Yeah, totally. Our opening should be pretty good too though. 3rd city goin down T35 rather than T34, unless copper ends up being in an amazing spot, cause I wanted to get the warrior out a bit quicker to spawn-bust the west. Our 4th city ETA won't be affected. If my continent theory is correct, that we're all on one big continent, then we'll see barbs being able to enter borders around T40 or so. I want to make sure that as few barb bastards spawn near us as possible...

Copper revealed in 2 turns!

[GermanJoey]

T33.






We settle the deer for our 3rd, I think. I ain't settling no turd city for copper next. Indead, 4th city grabs the double-cows first-ring, which gives food to a 5th city 1N of the copper.

[GermanJoey]

Sonny Terry takes the ivory this turn to get 10fhpt, letting us whip a worker after 3 turns; that worker will head out to the new city. Muddy Waters instead takes the plainshill forest, letting it complete the settler at 106/100, turning 6 modified overflow into 4 real overflow without any adverse rounding loss. That's important because we start on another new settler immediately afterwards, which will complete, with the help of a chop, at exactly 100/100 once Muddy Waters takes back the ivory after the Sonny Terry whip.

TBS finally let his whip drop last turn, btw. I think he's already regrown to size 4; otherwise I can't explain why the top mfg is freaking 14 on T33. Ours is 11, which I feel is already inordinately high... add a whole grassmine on top of that? Hmm... doesn't seem efficient.




We still haven't met any neighbors yet. Good! I don't want to meet them yet, I just want to REX in peace! I suppose others are thinking the same way.