[SPOILER] PB37: Mirror, mirror, on the wall, who's the most aggressive of them all?

[Krill]

I should probably just pick Zulu if it's there. I don't see myself regretting that decision and Zulu works with everything, just as well as any other civ would.

I hear a lot of echos of PB5, and given I don't want to play SPI becuase i lack the time to do the micro, I'd willingly trade SPI of Aztecs for AGG of Zulu. Both starts have a cottageable capital, need an academy, need methods of popping borders. HE broke that game open, I figure the same strategy should work here.

[Krill]

Link to a copy of microsheet

Size 4, settler eot32 with 1 chop, nothing else for the worker to do but chop, cow hooked T15, clam hooked T19, grow@2 eot19, grow@3 eot23, grow@4 eot26 with 4 improved tiles (cow, clam, rice, mine), 1 worker. Second worker has nothing to do so settler is smarter. 3 warriors. Can speed up settler a turn by not finishing one warrior, which probably makes sense for an eot31 settler. Sticking at size 3 would mean no point mining, but worker has nothing else to do but mine so why rush it.

Settler at size 3 would mean 1 warrior and settler eot 30 with inefficienies that make no sense. Settler@4 is the right choice here.

[Krill]

also, what was wrong with the +1 100% Lib CRE that needed reworking it into 35% across CHA and CRE

the tl'dr version goes like this:

• After trai rebalancing, CRE was strongest remaining trait
  
• CRE has 3 components, cheap libns, free culture, and lastly cheap colosseum and theatre.
  
• That last bit is irrelevant, removing them doesn't change CRE
  
• We tried lowering the free culture. Turns out, waiting 5 extra turns to pop borders does nothing when you use workers to hook inner ring food and chop a granary, the culture isn't the limiting factor in growth to size 2 to work extra food. So that didn't work
  
• We tried removing cheap libs. CRE was shit with that, as there were no tools to actually do anything, and the free culture was emulated by other boni.
  
• Adding cheap observatories didn't alleviate rthe problem that CRE lacked any early game punch.
  
• tried reverting back to cheap libs and lower culture again and CRE was really strong again.

Also, the slavery nerf boosted the cheap lib aspect of CRE. Beforehand, Libs were double pop whip with overflow hammers to a new build, and could be triple whipped by others. After the slavery nerf, Libs were still doublewhipped by CRE but all other leaders needed to find 20 hammers to be able to triple whip them: this led to an increase in the window of availablility for libs for CRE over other leaders and actually BUFFED CRE reloative to other traits in this instance. The cost was CRE got fewer overflow hammers, which shows up in the next item built, not in hte bonus from the lib.

Moving libs to +35% means that CRE needs to find about 23 hammers to then double whip libs, so CRE saves 1 pop on a lib whip compared to other traits. This is still a bonus, but lowers that to a level I feel is not broken. CHM get's the same advantage here, but then CHM sucked in base BtS and sucked less in earlier mod versions. Now CHM feels playable. More on that later..

And Kublai can go fuck himself.

[greenline]

• After trai rebalancing, CRE was strongest remaining trait
  
• tried reverting back to cheap libs and lower culture again and CRE was really strong again.
  

When and where was that decided? Wasn't there only one PBEM game played with that version of CRE where most players just picked it to play around with the changes and didn't bother putting in a good enough performance to determine if it was broken? Or am I missing something

[Thoth]

If you don't get Zulu, do Spain on a lake with Boudicea.  

Polytheism-->Hunting-->Ag-->wheel-->pottery (cottages)-->mining-->bronze-->masonry-->Mono-->whip out 3 fast settlers from size 7 or 8.

Build workboat working Clams to size 2, add Oasis as needed to shorten time to Polytheism then max hammers on wb.  Then worker,  worker.

[Krill]

The first plan I looked at was the Agri/Wheel start, going Pottery first. It was fucking ugly. Religion first has the same problem, it really delays improving food tiles.

I think the smarter choice is picking HRE and going Fishing>Meditation>Agri>Mining>BW. I believe that the timings are eoT5, eot15, eot24. The problem is that this delays hooking the rice from T22 (but not worked until T24) until T29, delays growth to size 4 and slows down expansion by a far bit. But I don't think it's the worst idea, just needs more mulling over and have to consider the snakepick. HRE does work Fishing>Agri>Mining>BW and the basic plan fine but delays the settler two turns due to not being able to chop (eoT5, eoT14, eoT21, eoT35-ish), and leaves the worker with few things to do. Agri/Hunting is just amazing for this start given workboat first is shite considering Fishing cost. Hunting/Mining is good, but most of those civs are boring. If no one picks Myst I think I'd almost be tempted to try and drop a religion into the second city.

Persia will remain a viable pick, but I would not be surprised to see both Zulu and Persia go in the first 5 picks, and if we do have identical starts I'm putting that down in the column of bad design.

Anyway, are you ded lurking here Thoth?

[Thoth]

Sorta ded lurking. I'm unspoiled but I don't intend to do much actual work.

Ag/wheel start opening Hunting/fishing/pottery? Delays BW but gets food and commerce up fast. Hmmmm.....looking at the start again.....really want mining in order to push put the wb in reasonable time. China instead?

[Krill]

Improving the cow gives more hammers than any mine and costs more than mining. It's just more.important than anything to start hunting.

I think that i should ask a specific question of Mardoc though: after reading the signups thread again, i have come to the conclusion the starts are identical. In my opinion, this is not what was meant under the proviso of "bog standard", especially given how you balanced it.

But I want to be absolutely clear, if this is a mirrored map i have no intention of playing at all, and i would rather drop out now and use what spare time i have now on something different. Will you confirm if this is a mirrored map or not. You can do that, because imo what I'm asking is if you are following the directions provided or not. If you aren't, I feel that you should tell all the players immediately because you are not doing what was asked, and we should have the opportunity to discard this map and find a mapmaker that will do what is asked.

[Krill]

And Mardoc, given the post in hte public thread, if that 9*9 area is mirrored I'll ask the other players if they want to go ahead with this map. If they do, I'll drop out, if not we'll have to get another map maker. If we can't fiund another map maker, I'll drop out and make a balanced but unmirrored map.

[Krill]

From the signup/tech thread:

The 9x9 areas are currently mirrored, but I'm happy to modify them to destroy that symmetry in the final map (was already leaning that direction anyway). It would be one more aspect to double-check to be sure I don't inadvertently create a movement opportunity, but that should be straightforward.

I am not willing to make a 9-player Pangaea map; I can't see any way to make an interesting landform and still meet the other constraints. I had something more like a Lakes map in mind, although it would be hand-drawn.

If you want something that artificial, I would use the Donut script and make a few minimal changes to what the script produces. Might need to start over with new starting screenshots in that case, because it's probably impossible to have both 11+ tiles of separation and a non-coastal start without making it much bigger than 150 tiles/person.

tl;dr Thank you for this post Mardoc.

I see three options, and from my PoV I don't care which takes place. I think that you would not like the thirtd option and probably would not see any difference between two of hte options.

1. Don't mirror the 9*9 area, take longer and check each one out. I see no issues with this. I may dislike the 9 identical starts, but that has never been a dealbreaker for me. Mirroring the 9*9 area though, that would be.
   
   
2. Restart map making process with a new map maker, the players give specific directions, redo snake pick.
   
   
3. Use the current starts in some form of rotation on that donut map.

That the third option exists suggests to me that you are going for the wrapping band of land map design, the rest of this post is conjecture based on that assumption.

If the 9*9 area was mirrored, then depending on the lay out on the map, the only parts of a map not mirrored would be the islands and the border lands between players. Given the minimum distance requirement and the number of tiles per player, I don't see how this would be significantly different to a fully mirrored map. If just the capital sites are mirrored, then that's OK. The width of the band changes the number of opponents, we could have between 2-4 opponents, and depending on the map width the band could wrap twice around one axis. All these are fine. What I favour is irrelevant.

as a side note, I don't see why the starts have the be the same mirror image for each player, could have just made three mirrored starts and made sure they were close enough in power. That would have alleviated an umber of problems with the snakepick interaction.