[SPOILERS] scooter peruses RB's Greatest Hits

[pindicator]

237/237 on the settler, no overflow, 1-turn build. One of the nicer results from a math perspective that I've seen in a while.

I'm really glad I'm not the only one who nerds out on stuff like this

[scooter]

Played through the updated plan. I definitely don't see any obvious way to tighten it. The 1T of swapping the pigs was a really nice touch - I didn't even consider that option when I played through it this afternoon. Also, that 237/237 is beautiful.

I finished the current turn according to plan. I'll post a report tomorrow morning along with some additional thoughts. After all this time, I'm starting to get pretty eager about this game again.

[Epoxy]

THE DAILY ROLL

TURN 186: MACK IS BACK

After a lengthy turn owing to Mackoti's take of leave, which spurred a brief rush for a replacement and only a little disappointment from players, PB35 is back in business, if not on schedule. With the rollover of the new turn it has become apparent that the Aztecs are the only nation not to have planted their capital on the first turn, which constitutes some new intelligence for the Cloak & Dagger as their first settler microplan has already been optimised to the nth degree. By settling the capital some way south of the start the Aztecs have scooped a bounty of five resources and much choppable forest, with room to spare for its sister city—how will the other city starts perform? Now the snowball starts rolling.

[Cheater Hater]

Should we have discussed the Yellow Dot plus 2S of pigs arrangement a bit more? You say you couldn't have known the deer was there, but technically we didn't settle until after we discovered it. Obviously it still might be bad (mainly because it wastes a turn, and because our plan was already good) and we don't have infinite time to sim now that mackoti's back, but it's interesting, especially if other teams could settle there (though is the deer likely to be there for other teams? In general, how much outside the screenshot is the same in mirrored starts?).

With the realization that every other team settled on T0, how much of an advantage are we getting from the the southern capital? Of the three main factors (Bureaucracy, distance maintenance, holy city placement), which was most important? (it's probably Bureaucracy, but there are no stupid questions )

[Epoxy]

Note that Warriorknight is the only player to have planted both cities on the first turn, on account of them being the only one with a score of 516 versus the 508 of everyone else sans us. Where does that put them? If Warriorknight has the maximum possible land of 18000 square km their northern settler would have settled on Sullla's blue dot and their southern settler would have moved and planted one tile south: that is the best configuration possible with no overlapping cultural borders and no lake tiles. With less land more configurations become possible, featuring the lake tile or mild border overlap.

Edit: Incorrect.

[Sullla]

One note: WarriorKnight's team (RMOG) did not settle both cities on the starting turn. No team did. They played and settled before us on T186. I also saw that mackoti whipped his capital this turn, which makes me feel better that the early worker whip is the correct play.

Cheater Hater, I was happy with what we had and didn't feel the need to do a detailed sim of those two spots. Too late now, for better or worse.

[scooter]

Turn 186



Settled our cities as planned and started a pasture. For next turn I'm kinda thinking the northeast longbow may as well come on home. Either that or having him do a mini-loop of NE-NW-SW-SW-S into that city to uncover a couple tiles. There's no barbs or opponents with starting units, so that should be completely safe. The other longbow I'm thinking SE-SW-SW-NW-N into the capital, although we could push him out a little further if needed. Explorer I think ought to go SW-SW. Basically, I think we want to find a city location or two pretty quickly. Something southeast-ish to share the dry rice early and pick up an additional food would be nice.

I do notice we've got water on both sides. I assume the eastern water is probably ocean (I didn't check to see if those tiles over there were irrigated), and the western water is definitely ocean. The Dutch team must be relieved to at least see a little bit of water. My general guess is that we'll want to slide south-ish with our early cities, but we are getting an early explorer to check out the north.

Finally, we could use a naming theme. I haven't thought of one, so I'll take any suggestions. Plus I could finally rename my thread once I've got a theme. In the meantime, our current theme is Aztec Cities.



Worker gets whipped next turn. The general plan here is to run the forests through the Bureau modifier, and from there we can turn this city into a ridiculous settler pump early on. Longer term, I imagine we may move the palace away from here as the commerce potential isn't as great.



This is likely our future capital once the dust settles. We'll whip the worker here as soon as it's available and chop out a second. We should be able to get an early-ish settler out of here without too much difficulty.



Judging by Rival Worst, I think someone is still in anarchy.

[scooter]

I never did write anything about the leaders/civs/players. Sullla broke them all down in really nice detail, and I pretty much agree with what he wrote. So here's the TL;DR version of my thoughts in the order of the picks.

scooter: Julius Caesar (Imp/Org) of the Aztecs - Good choice. Whether Altar will be worth passing on a couple other civs remains to be seen, but I'm excited to play it. I think we got the best leader by a small margin and a good-enough civ.

Alhazard: Gandhi (Spi/Phi) of the Ottomans - I've become pretty convinced Gandhi was a really bad choice. The short-term rewards aren't anywhere near what they were with Industrial, and like Sullla said - degree of difficulty is very high. I think Alhazard will get run over by someone before he can convert Gandhi into a good position. His civ is good though. I shudder at the thought of him building Kremlin for Mackoti.

mackoti: Mansa Musa (Fin/Spi) of Byzantium - I'm pretty certain Mansa was not his top choice. I think he was thinking like I was - take Byzantium and hope a strong leader falls to you. He'll make Mansa work just fine, but I do think he's got the weakest leader of the contenders. I expect he'll get ridiculous mileage out of Spiritual and prove me wrong because he's Mackoti. He's not going to rush anyone. That said, I would not be surprised if he starts next to Alhazard and runs him over with a Phract horde because he has like 10 cities to Alhazard's 5.

Real Men of Genius: Victoria (Fin/Imp) of the Dutch - This would probably get hailed as the best pairing if it was picked before seeing the start, but the Dutch pick puzzled me. In fairness, civs are not super impactful here, so Dutch could work out just fine. I suspect these guys may be a little rusty early on. We'll see how quickly they get back into a rhythm.

Nicolae and REM: Asoka (Spi/Org) of the Khmer - Getting Khmer at 5 was pure robbery, and pairing it with a strong leader even more so. I think they got the best leader/civ combination. They are starting with a "-2: you refuse to PYFT" from me after one whole turn.

plako: Suleiman (Imp/Phi) of England - In honor of Plako's thread updating style: good leader, good civ, good player, end of analysis.

-----------------

Predicted order of finish:

1) Mackoti
2) Scooter (lol)
3) Plako
4) Nicolae
5) RMoG
6) Alhazard

[Sullla]

We have a new turn up already! Hopefully the turnaround will be fast in these early turns after the long wait on T185. If anyone was going to do a micro plan, they had ample time to put it together.

Thoughts on scouting: I would definitely send the northern longbow on a wider mission to see what’s up there in the jungle. No one is going to be right on top of us with a map script this large, and everyone else is currently slaving out workers. It will take at least a dozen turns for anyone to connect their horses/iron, build an attack unit, and then walk them all the way over to us. Probably more like two dozen turns. With barbs off, let’s go explore that northern jungle. Sending the southern longbow to the south along that line of grassland hills also sounds like a plan. I’d be more cautious with that longbow, since anything incoming will likely be from the south, not the north. Maybe a half dozen turns of scouting for him and then back to our capital.

The main goal for the explorer is definitely to find our third city location. We have a settler coming out at the start of T200, which isn’t that far off. Following the river south might be the best option, combined with the some version of the traditional circle around the start. We’ll have a second explorer popping out in about five turns, and one of them can go on a deep mission to contact other teams.

Other teams: Yeah, I agree from those Demographics that someone took the 2 turn Anarchy to start the game. I would guess that they will therefore take another turn of Anarchy as well to pick up their religion when it appears. They’ll have to make Hereditary Rule and whatever their religious column choice might be (probably Pacifism) work out to justify those Anarchy turns. (Hereditary Rule alone doesn’t feel like it’s worth the extra Anarchy turn.) It’s either plako or the RMOG team that took the extra Anarchy turn, as they are the only non-Spiritual teams in this game aside from us. There’s a lot of similar traits in this game, so I’m thinking of the teams in pairs:

Scooter/RMOG: Imperialistic and an economy trait (Organized/Financial)
Nicolae/mackoti: Spiritual and an economy trait (Organized/Financial)
Alhazard/plako: Philosophical teams. These two have completely different playstyles however, since Spiritual and Imperialistic make for very different games.

All of the Spiritual teams whipped out something (a worker) from their capitals on T186. We will follow suit this turn as well. One other interesting tidbit: mackoti is the only player who did not settle his second city on T186. He planted the capital T185 and whipped it T186, but did not settle the second city yet. I won’t try to predict an order of finish for the teams, I’ll only suggest that I expect mackoti and the Nicolae/REM teams to provide our biggest competition. I already posted why I don’t think Gandhi is great for this start, the RMOG team seems to have made some odd choices already, and plako doesn’t seem to be highly engaged in this game judging by amount of posts, which is a recipe for a weaker result (the late era starts are different enough that they require a lot of time and planning). I am expecting to be proven wrong here.

Finally, we do need suggestions on naming themes! Have at it lurkers.

[OT4E]

Finally, we do need suggestions on naming themes! Have at it lurkers.

Thinking of a naming theme for IMP/ORG Aztecs I can suggest the following schema:
#1 Hatchery
#2 Spamming pool
#3 Hydralisk den
#4 Hatchery (upgrade #1 into Lare)
#5 Mutalisk spire
#6 Queen's nest
#7 Hatchery (upgrade #1 into Hive, upgrade #4 into Lare)
And so on.