also, how about an opponent analysis? people like those right?
Khan(Erratic, Tenacious): Mehmed of Natives:
Traits:
out of Pacal
Civ:
out of Celts
Player History:
out of
Getting EXP/ORG in a BtS game was a steal, but his Civ is pretty much a blank outside of the start techs (maybe even worse than a blank if you get attacked by horse units and are defending with dogs). Not that you can't just ride on traits alone, of course.
Most of Khan's games I've read seem to follow a pattern. He'll suffer some kind of aggression related blunder early on, but will determinedly crawl back into second place behind whoever was in the lead before the game ends. The exception to that was the game where he was snowballing and did some crazy things with ships in the emperor toroidal game, and the fact that people even agreed to those settings baffles me.
Prediction for this game: Khan attacks/gets attacked by Jowy early, gets set back, then later finishes the job/gets revenge with the help of me or El Grillo.
El Grillo(Methodical, ActuallyKnowsWhatTheEspionageSliderDoes): Wang Kong of Spain:
Traits:
out of Willem
Civ:
out of America
Player History:
out of
I think Fin paired with Pro (ie JUST FIN) was overrated here, as I would generally take two good traits over FIN. Doubly so since it's paired with Spain or Arabs. Spain seems marginally better since everyone seems to have a fishing resource nearby judging by the picks, but you still have to work around not having easy access to pastures or chopping early. Citadels are junk, but Conks aren't so bad. If you can get to them. And the game isn't over. And you're not one tech away from cavs.
El Grillo on the other hand definitely played the best out of A/B imo. Especially considering he didn't have any prior MP experience. Although he didn't get much use out of Zulu (beyond Khan giving him a golden opening to raze a city
) that game, he managed to build a really strong non-FIN economy and run the table on most first-to bonuses. I'll probably end up copying a lot of the stuff he did with SPI here.
Prediction for this game: El Grillo wins convincingly.
Jowy(Cautious???, NewLeaf???): Hatshepsut of Byzantium
Traits:
out of Sury
Civ:
out of Egypt
Player History:
I don't like this pick much. Hatty's traits don't synergize well (free culture vs getting free caste swaps to pop borders, religious vs non religious focus, cheap libraries vs caste for scientists). Byz adds to this by having Myst and no reason to use it early, and just having terrible start techs in general. BtS phracts are terrifying but I don't know if Jowy will ever get to use them here.
I don't know what Jowy's game plan is here. Byz screams rushing to guilds and then going whip crazy, but Jowy's been trying to run a more pacifist style of games recently. I guess he just wants revenge for all those times he got rushed by phracts?
Prediction for this game: Jowy either gets trolled by Khan early and never gets to guilds, or he gets to guilds, attacks someone with phracts, gets a stack shredded by cats+pikes, and ends up going nowhere.
Greenline(Lazy, Reactive): Ghandi of Netherlands
Traits:
out of Lizzie
Civ:
out of Vikings
Player History:
out of
This pick is OK. Start techs work out. Traits aren't bad and synergize. Dutch gives a potentially terrifying midgame advantage and a significant lategame production boost if it comes to that. The problem is PHI and East Indiamen both push you down a specific path (bulbs/mids, Astro rush) respectively rather then being generically strong like Trading Posts or ORG/SPI. So I'm kind of a one trick pony here, although not as much as Jowy's pick is.
As for my own skill, I managed to build an OK economy despite not expanding aggresively enough, and got owned in war. I plan to fix that by expanding ferociously as I can early, and hopefully sticking to Galleons for war.
Prediction for this game: Second or third, depending on how a mids run/my bulb understanding goes.
