[NO PLAYERS] Seeding and ranking discussion

[Dreylin]

One note on REM's aggression; regarding PB22 I would probably give AdrienIer a chunk of credit for the narrow focus on you. This mostly from the perception of his other games that he always seems to find a grudge war with someone: PB23 (us/johns), PBEM68 (Grimace), PB29 (Jowy)....

While I think that the circumstances in those four games are very different, especially for the last two where I wasn't even playing the turns when the wars broke out, I'll admit that I have a great share of the responsibility in our team's aggessive mindset in PB22.

Wait, I thought this whole thread was all about making gross generalisations of other players' behaviors and skills; was I mistaken?

[GermanJoey]

His land was perfectly fine in PBEM 66 —I'm not sure why GJ thinks otherwise— but he played his hand wrong.

I disagree.

(PB66 spoilers of T49, which I hardly think matters at this point)

Here's what I see. Here's ipecac's opening land. Where da food at?








Outside the capital, I see a lot of 3 and 4 yield food tiles. Dry rice, crabs, clams, plains cows. Plainshill sheep. There's also two fishes... in different water bodies, with no trees around to chop a workboat. Contrast this to every other player having at least two new 6-yield land foodhammer tiles nearby and a hell of a lot more trees. Also note he didn't have a water-adjacent capital with the GLH in play.

This is a difficult spot to play out of. Here's how he settled it with his first few, as Viccy (Imp probably explains his hammer-focus):




Which I think is ok. I think what he shoulda done was try desperately for SH, despite HC in the field, then put a 3rd city to share the capital's wet corn and grab the horse, and then really start fling cities out there. Maybe even try to grab the Great Wall. I'd also probably put Shanghai on the dry rice, for the 3f plant and first-ring fish. That's a tough call to make with so few food resources around though. He also has too many roads. But, like I said, I think his opening isn't terrible and shows some core competence, which can be seen in that he was still leading the CY charts for quite awhile.

[GermanJoey]

One note on REM's aggression; regarding PB22 I would probably give AdrienIer a chunk of credit for the narrow focus on you. This mostly from the perception of his other games that he always seems to find a grudge war with someone: PB23 (us/johns), PBEM68 (Grimace), PB29 (Jowy)....

Oh I do too, oh I do too...

[Commodore]

For discussion, we need ten groups of three out of this:
Gandhi Korean
Gilgamesh Aztec
Tokugawa Ethiopia
Pericles Portuguese
Louis XIV Dutch
Mansa Musa Babylonian
Saladin Mayan
Catherine Byzantine
Justinian I Japanese
Huayna Capac Russian
Lincoln American
Sitting Bull Holy Roman Empire
Isabella Sumerian
Boudica Egyptian
Darius I Ottoman
Julius Caesar Viking
Kublai Khan Greek
Cyrus Indian
Frederick Zulu
Napoleon Native American
Hatshepsut Incan
Victoria French
Shaka Celtic
Ramesses II Khmer
Asoka Indian
Stalin Mongolian
Hammurabi Persian
Wang Kon German
Charlemagne English
Zara Yaqob Spanish
Alexander Carthaginian
Elizabeth Arabian
Qin Shi Huang Malian
Roosevelt Roman

[GermanJoey]

Will the map be toriod or not?

[Commodore]

Not! Imbalanced dude!

[GermanJoey]

yeah yeah, I figured; actually the perfect place for a non-toroid. I just wanted to make sure because that changes the value of Org a lot. You have double-Indias, btw; didn't notice any other duplicate civs.

Here's a rough first draft at a tier list:

great:
Catherine Byzantine (depending on variety of nearby food; push down a tier if nearby food is varied)
Victoria French
Cyrus Indian
Asoka Indian
Darius I Ottoman

very good:
Isabella Sumerian
Julius Caesar Viking (seafood start only, otherwise down a tier)
Roosevelt Roman (seafood start only, otherwise down a tier)
Huayna Capac Russian
Mansa Musa Babylonian

solid:
Zara Yaqob Spanish
Pericles Portuguese (if watery map, otherwise down a tier)
Louis XIV Dutch (if watery map, otherwise down a tier)

good:
Frederick Zulu
Hatshepsut Incan - Cre Inca XD
Kublai Khan Greek - nice dual-synergy boosts this a tier
Justinian I Japanese
Boudica Egyptian

ok:
Hammurabi Persian
Stalin Mongolian
Elizabeth Arabian
Wang Kon German
Ramesses II Khmer
Napoleon Native American

not thrilled about:
Qin Shi Huang Malian - PRO MALI
Gilgamesh Aztec
Alexander Carthaginian
Shaka Celtic
Gandhi Korean - would love to give this to OH fwiw

straight-up bad:
Sitting Bull Holy Roman
Charlemagne English
Lincoln American
Tokugawa Ethiopia
Saladin Mayan

[Commodore]

Mansa Babylon is actually top-tier.

Linc/America, Sitting Bull/HRE, and Toku/Ethiopia just toss, nothing fun or interesting there.

[Commodore]

Here's a lovely one, grossly unbalanced and all:

[GermanJoey]

Mansa Babylon is actually top-tier.

Linc/America, Sitting Bull/HRE, and Toku/Ethiopia just toss, nothing fun or interesting there.

Well, in another game I'd agree, but what I was thinking is that if offer the high-tiers to the bottom-tier players (e.g. TheWannabe, Greywolf), all Spi will mean to them is one free turn of non-anarchy when they revolt into slavery. They won't know what to do with Spi other than that I think.

Agreed about tossing those three. The other two at least have something interesting to look forward to. I feel like Cathy is really dependent on the map. Could be top tier, could be as much as two tiers below depending on the start. About the double Indias - we could offer them both to the same guy, to get around the problem of two players having the same civ. Or, we could chop one of them.

One more thing, I don't necessary think we have to give, say, the worst-ranked player the three best combos, the next-worst ranked the next three best combos, etc. We could use the combos for tuning the difficulty of each start too. Like, say we end up rating both ipecac and Alhazard the same rating, and then assign them to starting areas that are about the same. Well, they won't be exactly the same. If Alhazard's start is the slightly worse one, we could make sure he has better choices than ipecac. Or, for another example, lets say there's one starting area that's ridiculously good, and lets say we end up rating Greywolf as the worst player so that goes to him. Since his starting area is so phenomenal, he doesn't also need to have a choice of the three best leaders; we could give him 3 average ones. Etc etc.