[Spoilers] Shallow Old Human Tourist Hit the beach!

[Old Harry]

t0 pt 2

Okay, SIP it is and where should we scout? Light blue gets us around to the rice area quickly, purple and dark blue explore the north more thoroughly... That plains hill would be great to settle if there's something useful up there and we can get a quick trade connection.


Demos after TBS and I played.

[Fintourist]

Alright, we are moving! That being said, the next couple of weeks probably won’t provide too much drama for lurkers. At our end, the micro for the first 17 turns is pretty much set and the discussion will mostly be focused on optimizing scouting moves. Consequently, this is a good time to share some opponent commentary or more provocatively.. A tier list! 

I’m mostly leaving the impact of leaders and civs out of this, but let’s include couple of general thoughts here as well:

• I don’t think anyone got a completely amazing synergistic combo and of course nobody is out of the running by t0. 
  
• RtR has quite a nice leader balance, but I guess I would still swap our leader with almost any other player/team. In a game this big, some players have two early traits and they better make use of the bonuses while they matter and some players have two late traits and they better hope that nobody runs away with the game before they have tools to compete.
  
• I’m expecting civs (and more specifically starting techs) to play a significant role in this game. I don’t mean that agri/mining (with our start) would provide a game-deciding advantage, but my forecast is that couple of players will definitely be in for a struggle due to their choice/roll. Unlike in PB18, there will be no hut gold/techs to support the early game and at the same at least our start is super fast with 2 wet food resources and a 4-foodhammer ivory. The expansion will be so fast that even with two relevant starting techs acquiring relevant worker techs will be a bottleneck.
  

Ok, but enough of forewords. Let the drama commence and start with the first group (players inside the group in alphabetical order)
 

Group I: Favorites
Dtay, Mackoti, The Black Sword


Probably unsurprisingly, this is the impressive trio we will be following closely and I would be extremely surprised if none of these guys will be in the running when the game is on the line. All of these players are expected to play well throughout the game, but if RB were to be represented in a sequential game, it would be hard to beat this combination:

Early game: Dtay
Mid game: Mackoti
Late game: TBS

I’m not sure if dtay has been given enough praise for his amazing play in PB18. That is really a textbook example of building an unstoppable snowball. Dtay had an early leader with great starting land and he capitalized on the opportunity perfectly and totally ran away with a 32-player game. In the end it required quite unusual circumstances / turn of events to change the course of the game. I guess dtay has since PB18 had some less successful games, but alone for the potential he showed in PB18 I think he belongs in this group.

Mackoti probably requires no introductions, but at this point he is probably the ultimate competitive vet. Mack has seen it all and put himself into winning position with cottage spam, spec economy, massive workshop production and closed the deal with early rushes, medieval warfare and tanks. Mack might not lead the game by t100, but when the mid game arrives with him still in a competitive position, that is when the experience and complete civ knowledge kicks in and more often than not you find mackoti strong in the race (and then it might be too late for you).

As everyone in this group, TBS has lots of strengths, but personally I have actually been most impressed by his late game play. Both we and TBS entered PB18 still as relatively fresh faces and probably the expectation was not for us to master civ’s complex late game dynamics. TBS did have a slower leader and fell behind in the game, but made the most out of his cards and like a machine, put himself into a winnable position and gave us practically no opening in a late game warfare dance. I have some reading backlog of more recent games, but my understanding is that TBS has continued on an impressive path and grabbed wins in highly competed games.


***


Alright, that was the first part of the commentary, to be continued..

Btw, the list isn’t a team effort this time, so I would encourage anybody reading to push OH, THH, ST, H for a separate opinion.. 

[Old Harry]

t0 pt3

More elephants.


More demos.


Oh and hooray for tier lists!

[Fintourist]

Ok, opponent commentary continues..

Group 2: Strong Contenders
Commodore, Gavagai, GermanJoey, Pindicator, Plako     

In the second group we have quite different profiles, but the common nominator is that all the players have skills to take the trophy if things go a tiny bit their way.

GermanJoey and Gavagai have to my knowledge performed well in the recent games and deserve to be considered key challengers for the favorite group. GJ would in addition be the worst possible neighbor for us. Competent player + too much bad blood from previous games would very likely lead to us both losing after a non-enjoyable game.

Plako is an interesting animal. Plako has extremely strong civ understanding and instincts, but I haven’t really seen impressive early games from him (during the past couple of years) and in PB13 when the early game was a success I think he should have taken the game with his position. Previous observations are probably linked to an overall casual attitude. To put it simply (and assuming plako does not change his casual attitude), if plako does not get an above average start (land quality / neighbors) Plako might end up in a non-relevant position like in PB18. However, give plako an easy neighbor for eating, he immediately becomes a powerhouse with his vast mid/late-game knowledge.

With Commodore and Pindicator I was actually not 100 % sure if they should be in this group. It’s a somewhat similar story as with plako. Enough potential and skill? Yes. Casual attitude losing the game? Maybe. I have seen more engaged performances from Pindicator and Commodore than from plako, so I guess it’s more likely that these guys will be in a good position when the mid game starts. However, regarding the ability to convert the position in to the actual win, I’m slightly more concerned.

[Old Harry]

Turn 1

Deer! It's a good tile, but a plains hill city will need a border pop, so we're not jumping for joy just yet... How about moving east with the first move next turn, then if that's a small lake go around the north, if it's an estuary go around the south?


Demos. I'm planning to do some tile-switching next turn to try to figure out how many players are making how many food and hammers.

The thing that jumps out here is that someone is only making 1 fpt. Is that because they're working a 1/2/1 or 1/2/0 forest tile or are they working a 1/0/2 coastal tile to race for that first religion? The other thing is that five players have one water tile in their first ring.

[Hitru]

I quess I have to carry my weight in post count war. (And I might even lure someone to read our thread, inflating our thread views  )

Working 1/0/2 seems way too slow, so I think that is EXP civ making worker using 1/2/0 tile.

But rival best GNP looks like someone might be going for an early religion, and I wildly speculate that person to be Dtay due to his starting civ and known tendency of valuing religion highly. It would also give him a nice way to pop borders for all those IMP/AGG cities that he will be building.

Lets hope there is food nest to the plains hill so that we wont have to worry about border pops for a while.

[shallow_thought]

I quess I have to carry my weight in post count war. (And I might even lure someone to read our thread, inflating our thread views   )

Working 1/0/2 seems way too slow, so I think that is EXP civ making worker using 1/2/0 tile.

But rival best GNP looks like someone might be going for an early religion, and I wildly speculate that person to be Dtay due to his starting civ and known tendency of valuing religion highly. It would also give him a nice way to pop borders for all those IMP/AGG cities that he will be building.

Lets hope there is food nest to the plains hill so that we wont have to worry about border pops for a while.

Hmm. Surely one of the benefits of being agg in RtR is cheap barracks being a source of culture, so reducing the need for religion.

[Old Harry]

I had a chance to log back in and fiddle with the tiles - working a 2/1/0 tile:


Working a 1/2/0 tile:


(Don't worry Fintourist - I put us back on the governor afterwards.)

Because of the way the turn order affects your position in the ranking (I believe only TBS is behind us this turn) we can make some deductions (assuming plains hill wine for everyone):
- (at least) 2 civs are working a zero commerce tile
- I *think* someone chose to move off the plains hill wine and isn't working a commerce tile, not sure how else the rival worst GNP can be 16 otherwise?
- 5 or six 6 are working a 1-hammer tile
- no-one is working a 2-hammer tile
- 17 or 18 civs are working a 3-food tile
- 1 or 2 civs are working a 1-food tile

So yeah, someone seems to be working a 1/0/2 to boost their religion push. Presumably they only work it for a few turns to get the tech sooner, then sit back hoping no-one else will sacrifice expansion for a coin-flip at religion?

I've got dtay - Genghis (Agg/Imp) of Celtia (Gallic Warrior/Dun) - starting with Hunting & Mysticism, so he can't be working water yet... These lot all start with Fishing so could be working the tile:
- superdeath - Churchill (Cha/Pro) of Natives (Dog S/T Pole)
- Dreylin - Roosevelt (Ind/Org) of Vikings (Zerk /Trading Post)
- OT4E and Chumchu - Qin (Ind/Pro) of Carthage (Numids/Cothon)
- WilliamLP - Tokugawa (Agg/Pro) of Japan (Samaurai /Pagoda)
- Commodore - Kublai (Cha/Cre) of Rome (Praetorian /Forum)
- spacetyrantxenu - Hatty (Cre/Spi) of Greece (Phalanx/Odeon)

But only one starts with Mysticism and Fishing:
- Dark Savant - Joao (Exp/Imp) of Byz (Phract /Hippodrome)

So I'll bet that Joao doesn't much care about getting a quick start as he'll catch up pretty easily once he's sorted out his border pops. It could take a good while to fill in the worker techs he's missing though. Let's hope he's our neighbour!

Unless of course some folks have an oasis to work. Why am I doing C&D in a 25 player game?

[Hitru]

one of these days I really should learn changes made in rtr mod. If barracs give culture then dtay indeed does not need religion as badlyas I thought. 

With this new information I agree with OH and suspect Dark savant. In any case lets hope we have a neighbour who builds a shrine to us while not snowballing as fast as he could. 

[Old Harry]

Turn 2

The RTR changes are detailed in the second post of this thread Hitru, they make excellent bedtime reading! Anyway, onto the exciting scout move for the turn... Crabs! And Sheep! Hmmm, does that change our tech order? Fishing before pottery for the extra pre-req?


The waves tell us that the water is >10 tiles, camera flying makes me think it's about 20 tiles - we'll be able to build boats on it if it is 20 or more. Scout to the plains hill next turn?


Demos. CRE civs will pop borders next turn revealing something about how many water tiles and ivory tiles they have...