[Spoilers] Shallow Old Human Tourist Hit the beach!

[Old Harry]

Turn 3

Going east reveals more sheep.


Demos, now with CRE border pops included!

[Fintourist]

Logged in to the game for the first time!   

I guess we haven't discussed the amount of land tiles here (OH showed it in the first screenshot, but I overlooked it): 5720 tiles. For 25 players. 229 per player. That's a lot.

It's way too early to make any conclusions, but if that amount of land is immediately up for grabs, early warfare is unlikely going to be a thing and people can play sandbox until knights etc (I'm exaggerating a bit of course). Anyways, as we get more scouting info we should definitely keep this data point in mind and try understand the map and its dynamics better.

Another thing worth noting is that the map is 53.5 % water. What was the circumnav limit again? I seem to forget that always.

[Hitru]

Thats indeed lots of land, of which we should get more than our fair share.

And we can aim to convert our future land and mfg advantage (which we hopefully get from IMP+IND) to knights and get even more land.

For some reason I remember that 50% of water tiles is enough for circumnav, but I am not sure.

[Old Harry]

According to GlobalDefines.xml in the mod folder:
<Define>
<DefineName>CIRCUMNAVIGATE_MIN_WATER_PERCENT</DefineName>
 <fDefineFloatVal>55</fDefineFloatVal>
</Define>

Which I think means that Cornflakes et al have been very clever. (Is it too late to be sucking up to the map makers now?)

[Old Harry]

Turn 4

More coast, which looks like it might link back up with our other coast...


Demos.

[shallow_thought]

I've gone through people's picks and added columns to the spreadsheet to say which techs they rejected. I've also recorded rejected traits, but I was more interested in seeing if there were any indications about different starts.

I dunno. Maybe? My ramblings are spoilered for length. There seem to be some weakish picks, and there are a few oddities.

Why did dtay reject the Agri/Wheel Ottomans? Maybe he's already played them? I'd think that they were a strong civ. As said earlier, I find the final myst/hunting pick odd given Agg cheap barracks being available for border pops. Agg/Imp is solid.

Superdeath picked Cha/Pro over Exp/Pro. Hmm. Exp/Pro is perhaps too fast-start heavy. Agri/Fishing is either Ok or excellent depending on start.

Mr Cairo picked a leader we'd have liked to have (Spi/Pro) and Hunting/Mining over Hunting/Wheel (or a gamble). Seems fair enough

Similarly, B4ndit's Cre/Org over Imp/Org immediate pick seems sensible,and Agri/Wheel are decent start techs.

For Rusten, Cha/Imp is OK, and probably better than Fin/Org, but I'd have been tempted to re-roll. Agri/Myst is a little sub-par, but there are worse combos, resourceless camel knights are better than nothing, while better, cheaper libraries are an actual thing. Hmm, they also go well with Cha, so that probably explains that.

Donovan Zoi picked Exp/Fin over Phi/Spi. I think that's pretty fair. Myst/Mining seems weakish again, but - a bit like us - he may have feared getting something worse.
Gavagai - Exp/Org over Imp/Ind. We get his leavings . He rejected Agri/Wheel and musketeers for a gamble, and got Agri/Wheel and war chariots instead. I think he got a bit lucky there...

GJ started this game by trolling OH and FT - he rejected Exp/Spi. He did so for Imp/Pro though - a strong, fast starting combo. Rejecting Fishing/Myst seems reasonable, and Hunting/Wheel is Ok.

Dreylin had a wierdly matched starting choice - Ind/Org or Ind/Fin. He went with Org, which is probably stronger. Stuck with Fishing/Hunting techs.  Looks to me as if Vikings are otherwise heavily nerfed in RtR, so seafood or pigs/cows at start?

OT4E+Chumchu went Ind/Pro over Cre/Pro. That's a little bit interesting. Makes me think they may have some specific wonder plays in mind. They rejected Hunting/Mining and Fishing/Mining before have to settle for - Fishing/Mining (without redcoats too this time). A candidate for a team even less happy than us with their round three luck.

Dark Savant: Exp/Imp over Exp/Phi. Fair enough. Sticking with Fishing/Myst at the start surely indicates seafood, cataphracts or no cataphracts.

2metraninja: Cha/Org over Cha/Phi. I could have been tempted into a re-roll. Also - Hunting/Myst? Pigs, cows or a deep love of whipping at Sacrificial Altars.

Mackoti: rejected Cre, Fin, Ind and Phi in various combos for Imp/Phi. I can kind of see why. Probably happy to have rejected America for France. Expect someone to die from musketeers and knigs.

TBS: Cre/Phi over Fin/Imp, Cha/Fin and Cha/Exp. I'm not usually into second-guessing players of his calibre, but I'd have gone with Vicky on the first round if I'd magically known what the second round was going
AdrienIer rejected FIVE Spi leaders and still got Exp/Pro at the end. We hate him forever . He didn't get as lucky with his techs, getting three meh sets in a row.

Pindicator: Agg/Org over Imp/Phi, with China's Agri/Mining. Easy picks.

William LP: Agg/Pro over Cre/Ind seems fair. Not sure about the Fishing/Wheel start though. Seafood?

Commodore: Cha/Cre over Fin/Spi. I feel Cha/Cre kind of suits his character. Fishing/Mining implies possible seafood - I can't see him picking Rome for the sake of Praetorian's, particularly without Agg.

naufrager: Rejected Agg/Ind, Ind/Spi (I might let him off for rejecting Spi there - weak combo unless you really want to go full monk with 2/3 everyone else's land) and Fin/Spi to get Imp/Org. Rejected Fishing/Mining for Hunting/Mining. I guess he doesn't have seafood.

plako: Picked Imp/Spi over Cha/Spi, which seems fair, and stuck with Agri/Myst + Terraces. Huh - I'd thought they'd be nerfed in RtR, but they're not (at least not directly - more buildings give culture). I'm not arguing with this pick.

elkad: Agg/Exp over Org/Spi. Unsuprisingly stuck with Agri/Mining.

xenu: Cre/Spi over Cre/Phi. We'd probably have done the same. Stuck with Fishing/Hunting for techs. Seafood?

BGN: Agg/Cha over Cre/Imp. Stuck with Hunting/Mining, which we might have done at our start.

Aretas: Agg/Fin over Cha/Exp - I'd have to think about this one. Hunting/Myst seems weak, but if he does manage to grab land his maintenance costs are going to be super-low with Agg+Rathaus. Throw Fin on top, and if he can find the hammers to build infra he could be a commerce powerhouse. But I think his start is going to be slow. 

[Old Harry]

Turn 5

Nice list ST - the more we analyse the opposition in minute detail the more thread views we get likely we are to know what they're up to and when we can eat them.

Lots of resources revealed this turn. This land looks great if you're Creative! S-SW next? Also I don't know how Aretas - Ragnar (Agg/Fin) of Holy Rome (Hunting/Mysticism) - got a score increase at this point - we've only made 60 beakers so far and the cheapest first-column tech is Fishing at 69 beakers.


Looking at the second column, the pre-req bonus makes things 20% cheaper, but even then the only tech in reach is Archery. Archery! Is this an archer rush? Even if it is, with 229 tiles per player it's going to take him ages to reach his target... Please let him be next to us!


The capital border pop reveals sheep, wheat, gems and silver! Want to start dotmapping yet?


Demos

[Old Harry]

A little bit more demo analysis now that everyone has popped borders.

Five players had a water tile in their initial 9 tiles, but everyone has 12 tiles in their second ring, so the water tiles must be lakes, meaning no-one has a boatable capital, and everyone's capitals should be pretty strong.

Looking at the soldier scores I think 8000 points were added this turn, Aretas' Archery is only 6000, so did someone build a warrior? Getting it after 5 turns means they worked a 2/1/0 tile, so they won't even be growing quickly. I guess we'll find out who it was when they grow between t10-12. Then we'll hope we're somewhere near them too...

[shallow_thought]

I'm not much on C&D, but looking at those crop yield figures, most people are still working 3f tiles. Has everyone logged in and re-allocated since the border pops? Someone's working a 1f tile. Someone Exp pushing the hammers? I'm guessing the average is being rounded, so we don't get to try and do a more detailed analysis. But it does look as if we're a bit lucky with the 2f2h tile at the moment.

[Fintourist]

I guess it's time to continue the opponent analysis..

Group 3: Within a shot
Boldly Going Nowhere, Dreylin, Elkad, Mr. Cairo, OT4E & Chumcu, Spacetyrantxenu, WilliamLP, 2metraninja

Ok, good stuff. I think the group 3 is kind of statement of how high quality game PB38 should or at least could be. My reasoning is that given a good start and some positive events, most of these guys have the capabilities to win this game.

BGN surely could have been ranked in the previous group alone for his strong performance in PB18. I just felt at that time that he should have made even more out of his position so here we go. We definitely underestimated BGN in our PB18 pre-game forecasts, apparently he has to prove us wrong again.

I guess you have to mention Xenu almost in the same sentence as his brother. If my memory serves me right, xenu has showcased a lot of skill in older RB games, but has been quite unlucky in some of those. Well, in the end only results matter, but I would not be surprised if xenu performs a lot better than most expect.

OT4E is another player that could well be assigned into a stronger group. I remember seeing some weedish things that made me think that he is not so strong when he started playing more at RB and this is visible in this ranking. However, OT4E just won PB36 with TBS, Gavagai, GermanJoey plaing. That must have been a strong performance and it would really be foolish to underestimate OT4E. I don’t much of his teammate Chumchu.

WilliamLP has to be considered a sort of a solid vet at this point. Solid in PB13. Solid in PB18. I guess something (aggression, micro execution, I don’t know?) has still separated him from competing truly for the win, but above average finishes in those big games mean that a lot of good things are happening in WLPs play.

2metra is another vet, who has moved from CFC to RB grounds. I’m not an expert re 2metra’s games, but many things that I said about WilliamLP also apply here. Solid play, but typically the pace is a bit lacking the top players.

I can’t say that I know too much about the rest of the guys in this group: Dreylin, Mr. Cairo and Elkad. I probably have the most expactations of Cairo as he has won a Pitboss game here, but overall I’m expecting solid, but not mind-blowing performances from these guys.

***

As a summary, I have so far mentioned 16 players, who all should be good players and most of them have a real chance of winning this pitboss. Is it too bold to state that this will be the MP game with the highest skill level ever to be played on RB? Or anywhere ever in the history of the civ4 universe?