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[SPOILERS] scooter's Industrial Revolution
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March 10th, 2016, 22:02
(This post was last modified: March 17th, 2016, 11:04 by BRickAstley.)
 (March 8th, 2016, 10:48)BRickAstley Wrote: Game Rules and Settings: ![[Image: 217894561.PNG]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/4491067/IndStarts/217894561.PNG)
Staring at the map is causing my eyes to glaze over, so let's talk about trait gameplan here. Here's my basic trait analysis.
Imperialistic - The uber trait. In case of tie, I'll gravitate towards Imperialistic. Settlers are insanely expensive - well over 300h which is an enormous ask for cities starting from scratch. Caveat: Bureau + free forge does mean IMP vs non-IMP is really more like 125% vs 75% (little bit different than 50% vs 0%), but it's still a big snowball effect. On top of this, we're looking at a roomier map than your traditional Industrial game (a cramped teamer with room for 5-6 cities max), so the benefit will continue for awhile. Most people will stick with 3 cities for awhile, but IMP can afford to expand much sooner. There's a decent chance that IMP is not only the best but the best by a mile. We could easily see a scenario where an IMP civ gets out to 6 cities before non-IMPs get to 4. I'm not certain, though, and there's a good reason the secondary traits and civs that got IMP are pretty underwhelming. Spiritual - Very strong. We start with all relevant civics besides State Property available, so the chance to bounce in and out of civics to your heart's content is quite powerful. Everyone will revolt T0, but when the religions get handed out, SPI can freely adopt it immediately for example. Not much else that needs to be said - SPI is a late-game trait, and we are in the late game. As an example, most civs will revolt to Slavery T0 to get the growth curve rolling, but SPI civs can take Serfdom first to make their initial workers more effective, and then pop into Slavery only once they're ready to whip. SPI civs could also start in OR to spread their religion, and then temporarily pop into Pacifism to get themselves a pseudo-PHI for a burst of great people, and so on. Not to mention the ability to do a drafting burst. SPI rules. Philosophical - Very strong. Tech pace will be extremely slow early, which means bulbing is very powerful. PHI gets you first dibs on a ton of things: first engineer (Taj/SOL), first to Communism (bulb SciMethod and Communism with generated scientist + artist), etc. It also gives you easier access to golden ages which gives you a bit of a pseudo-SPI as well. <large drop-off> Aggressive - Solid secondary. Rifles are draftable out of the gate, so getting free C1 on those is pretty nice. Drafting is especially good here since your cities will take awhile to turn into production monsters, but getting to a draftable population will be easy. Expansive - Undecided. I initially thought this was complete crap, but I'm warming on it a little bit. Workers are normal price, though, and given the multitude of options for getting them out (whip, chop, rush-buy), it's just not crucial. Granaries come free, and that's the main source of EXP's power. Charismatic - Decent. Well, kind of crap, but the leaders chosen have some nice synergy to help it be respectable. Pairing with Brennus helps a great deal, for example, because you can pop in and out of the xp-enhancing civics at will. Lincoln Mongols allows you to absolutely load up your Cavs with XP which could be interesting. Sure rifles are draftable, but Cavs with 3+ promos will give them serious grief. Organized - Weak. The only thing it's really got going is the factory bonus. That's not nothing, but it's going to be awhile before anyone gets to Assembly Line. Not going to be taking this trait. EDIT: I mistakenly thought Courthouses were included in each city. They're not, so ORG does get this too. I won't take it still, but I may be undervaluing this a notch or two. Financial - Bad. Doesn't even get a bank bonus because this is base BtS. I think cottages will be pretty weak compared to SP workshops. I think by the time you get yourself some towns they'll just get captured by someone with 3X your manufacturing base. Maybe it's workable if you snag Kremlin or something, but Kremlin is likely going to a PHI civ. It does get a little bit of help by the pretty heavy water presence, but I don't think it's nearly enough. Industrious - Almost null trait. Just a generic hammer saver on a handful of national wonders. Taj/SOL will go to engineers, and the rest of the wonders will go to a tech leader, which Ind/Imp Rome won't. Fortunately it's paired with the best primary trait and a good UB, but it's probably not enough to save it. I absolutely must have 1 of Imp/Phi/Spi, so that eliminates a few leaders off the bat. The only option that allows 2 of the 3 is Gandhi of Khmer, which will definitely be in my top 5 - just a question of how high. More on that in an upcoming post, though.
Let's narrow the field down so that this is less overwhelming.
No Thanks Tier Boudica (Agg/Chm) of Russia - Lacking top trait. I think this may be the worst of the bunch. Darius (Fin/Org) of the Dutch - Terrible traits. I think dike is probably a trap choice here - working coast is still weaker than most land tiles, and you do actually have to build the things first. Could be proven wrong, though. Actually, this might be worse than Boudica. At least Boudica's Super Cossacks combined with draftable-free-C1 rifles are a kinda terrifying combo. Hammurabi (Agg/Org) of England - Fun but not that good. Draftable Redcoats with C1 to begin with sounds horrifying. Play your cards right and you could have draftable pinch redcoats. That's legitimately enough to kill somebody. I hope someone tries, but it won't be me, and I really hope it's not my neighbor. Just can't miss on a big 3 trait. Only way this works is if we're close together with someone and a rush happens. Would need too much luck to be viable, and I don't like being pigeon-holed into one particular strategy. Asoka (Spi/Org) of Aztec - Sacrificial altars are easily available and discounted, so there's definitely a world where this could be abused, but ORG just brings too little to the table for me. And I suspect the altars will sound better on paper than in practice. Also, the other SPIs all sound like more fun. Pass. Fredrick (Phi/Org) of the Holy Roman Empire - I remember when people used to think the Rathaus was a compelling UB. It's not. The map being a Toroid does help it, but not enough. Anyway, I just don't like Org enough - all the other PHI combos sound more fun. Pass. EDIT: Mistakenly thought Courthouses came free in each city. They don't, so that helps this pair a bit. Not nearly enough for me, though. That narrows it down to the following 10: Quote:Augustus Caesar (Ind/Imp) of Rome I need to eliminate 3 more.
Some stray thoughts about the map itself.
* Happy cap could potentially be an issue early. Gold gets us +2 (free forge), and incense gets us +1. This is potentially a boost to SPI as you can play with civics to cover off the mediocre happy cap. It also may be a boost to Sacrificial Altars. It's a small boost to CHM as well. * The dye may force our dotmap here a little bit, as we really need to claim every luxury with our first 3 cities. The dye being improvable would be a crucial extra +2, which would hold off the desperate need to slog out a settler. * Not many hills, so workshops will be king as expected. Bumps up the value of State Property a notch. * I need to claim iron with one of these cities. Of the two irons, the iron to the northwest strikes me as the obviously preferable iron. * No horse in sight. That pretty much kills any of the Cav civs. * No copper in sight. SOL is not an insta-build for an engineer, so that's a consideration there. * Lots of water. Boosts the Dutch just enough that I bet someone will take them. It's also a nice boost to Brennus/Vikings, which is still in the running for me. Also boosts Cothons.
Here's what I'm mulling over right now. The question is how much we care about tech/eco. If this was a duel or (or dueled teamer as is common for Industrial games), the answer would be "not a lot" and I'd go try to kill somebody. What's different here is it's a 7 player FFA on a reasonably roomy (~160 land tiles/player according to setup post) map. Which means that tech advancement is both inevitable and likely necessary to win.
So that shifts the calculus towards Philosophical quite a bit (or Spiritual where you could bounce in and out of Pacifism) because the very slow tech pace really enhances bulbing power. So the real question is what tech prize do we care about most, and then what's the best way to get there? Then maybe that will inform the leader choice. Some options. 1) Taj Mahal - this will be engineer rushed. A golden age with just 3 small cities is hardly special, but it IS still a golden age that nobody else can have at a time where it can enhance the snowball. We've already established the value of great people, and this lets us churn them out more quickly. There's a certain opportunity cost here in using a cheap great person slot on an engineer that will get you a low-powered golden age, but there's still some degree of value here. It also gives a free revolt or two. Phi player has huge edge on this if he wants it. 2) Statue of Liberty - This will be partial built + rushed. No copper nearby so it's softened, but it's still good. Phi player has huge edge on this if he wants it. 3) Corporations - These are totally on and unrestricted. Mining Inc obviously is great, but Railroad is quite a ways away. Sid's is great too, but again, it's going to be awhile before Medicine is attainable. Phi player has huge edge on this if he wants it. 4) Communism - As of right now, I think this is the real prize. It's bulbable fairly early. Getting there first has two prizes: the Spy (golden age) and the Kremlin. Getting there first makes it highly likely that the Kremlin (UniSuffrage abuse) is yours. On top of all of that, State Property is arguably the most important civic here. There's a reason both of the mods that are popular around here nerf SP. I'm becoming more and more convinced that getting to Communism first is a very powerful strategy, which means perhaps picking a leader based around it may be worthwhile. This does mean giving up Corporations, but... I suspect it's worth it. Phi player has huge edge on this if he wants it. 5) Physics/Biology - including these for completeness. I don't think getting these super quickly warrants nearly as much consideration as Communism. State Property can provide food just as much (or more) as Biology can, and that's only one facet of teching Communism 6) Assembly Line - Getting here quickly is the other way to mass up a MFG base with the added benefit of unlocking Infantry. I'm skeptical though that this outweighs the value of State Property. 7) Military - Normally in an Industrial duel/teamer you wouldn't be able to neglect military early because your opponent has so many ways to get an army fast. However, this is where the bigger map + FFA component maybe shifts things. I have no idea what the meta will be here, so it's a large gamble on how aggressive people will be. My best guess is that people will play conservatively. From a game theory standpoint, I think it's worth betting that they will in the same way that Farmer's Gambit in pitboss games turned into Standard Opening really quickly. If you get called on it, well there's always next game, but if you don't, you're in great shape. There will definitely be fighting in this game, but the question is really will the fighting be done before or after someone gets a tech edge. The other factor is navy, which is a whole different mess. Ignoring Steel too long is potentially deadly. Spi gets a boost here because you could focus on eco while still having the flexibility to revolt and do a draft/whip/rush-buy round. 8) Barbarians - This is potentially a big one. This goes along with military, but barbarians are on for this game. Barbarians should arguably be off actually for a variety of reasons... But I think a viable strategy here will be to keep a standing military force (Grens please), wait for barbarians to plant cities for you, and then capture them. It'll make settler costs irrelevant. This may be the death knell for Imperialistic for me. Anyway, there's a certain theme here, and it's that Phi allows you to win any first-to bonus you really set your mind on, provided another Phi player doesn't get there first. So I'm starting to lean pretty heavily to taking Phi, but it forces you to figure out a way to keep pace in expansion while not having Imp. A possible solution to this is to just to pursue vertical expansion, and then expand horizontally when the settler costs become much less of a burden. Combine that with point #8 (barbarian capturing), and you might be able to keep pace reasonably okay, but you'll have a tech edge. Anyway, all that to say, Gandhi is the current clubhouse leader for me. Peter of India is probably second.
I understand the strength of State Property when you have a sprawling empire, but why is it so good straight out of the gate when you have only a few cities and it requires a post-t0 civic swap?
(March 11th, 2016, 13:49)picklepikkl Wrote: I understand the strength of State Property when you have a sprawling empire, but why is it so good straight out of the gate when you have only a few cities and it requires a post-t0 civic swap? Before I answer, I should admit that there's a chance that the correct answer is "it's not." This is purely educated guesswork from me. That said, for me it's all about workshops. I likely won't really be building any cottages, because I think it'll take too long for them to catch up to workshops. In the above 9x9, I count 13 flatland grass tiles with no resources on them. I will probably place a workshop on every single one of them (quick-edit: eventually. May have to farm some early). Workshops already are worth 3h out of the gate (+1 base, +1 chemistry, +1 guilds). State Property gives them their food back to elevate them to a 2/3 tile. From there, Caste (which I expect to spend a lot of time in after the first ~30 turns) gives them an additional +1h. Being able to work that many hammers without it "costing" any food is pretty fantastic, and it lets you turn any city whatsoever into a production powerhouse. The +10% production bonus is just icing on the cake. The watermills boost is less useful but still worthwhile. Let's take those riverside plains tiles as an example. Someone not in State Property has the following choices: *Farm it: 2/1/1 tile *Workshop it: 0/4 tile (+1h if Caste) *Watermill it: 1/3 tile *Cottage it: nope No matter what you do, it's a mediocre tile that runs counter to the goal of vertical expansion. Whether you want to workshop or watermill, the +1F from State Property makes it suddenly a very good tile. Basically, State Property lets you get more value out of the tiles you already have, and that sounds important to me, especially in an environment where horizontal expansion is pricey. It should really help get the snowball churning. (March 11th, 2016, 13:49)picklepikkl Wrote: I understand the strength of State Property when you have a sprawling empire, but why is it so good straight out of the gate when you have only a few cities and it requires a post-t0 civic swap? Oh, one more thing I neglected. If you get to Communism first... The Spy isn't useful for really anything other than firing a golden age given that we've limited espionage here. So I'd use the spy to fire a golden age and get a free civic swap that way.
SP watermills are amazing.
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