[pb40 spoiler] Götterdämmerung: Destruction Is The Masses' Entertainment

[OT4E]

Actually all 5/5 are EXP or AGG so if you are trying to justify our pick it landed into bingo. Partially we forced people to pick AGG because being non-AGG against AGG-praets is quick ticket out.

Also 3/5 got IMP, CHM or FIN. You are not attentive. How can 2/5 pick 3 traits?

Shaka is very strong leader by itself, so I have no doubts here. It will be spectacular for sure.

About oracle, I dont think inca got it in pocket becauee start demand all starting techs. We are skipping hunting but unlikely inca can skip both hunting and fishing. So their handicap is somewhere between the cost of fishing and mysticism.

With production cap and saving some chops we could land it pretty quick. The options are 2 in my mind: Alphabet or Maths. But I think it is not our choice because there is no bigger shame than underexpanded Rome. I'd love to have quick Alphabet but it must come when we have decent production to invest into research and have some kind of snowball. Same things with Maths, because using chop boosts just to recover from building Oracle is so-so solution.

[Coeurva]

I'm lazy about adding the word "each": any given neighbour has a 3/5 chance of being specifically AGG here (well, for two neighbours, both being AGG is 3/10 obviously); same for EXP e: lol no, EXP is 2/5; and a 100% chance of being either. 1/5 for each of CHM, FIN, IMP and 3/5 combined. That's what I meant. The advantage we may have over an EXP neighbour is distinct from that we have over an AGG neighbour so I didn't toss them together.

If everyone except for the Mongols starts with a cheap cultural building, taking Myst followed by losing the Oracle race is a terrible proposition. Even if EXP Inca have no real beaker advantage because Myst replaces a tech they have to take anyway (Mining), they have an advantage in being quickest to adapt to a rival racing to Oracle. And maybe Inca can get by on Agri alone if the surrounding lands allow it; the capital suffers a bit from wheat + sugar taking longer to improve than wheat + clams, but the PRO granary can make up for that. Even if they take Fishing, that's 30 base beakers saved against Hunting starts. Might not be enough to lock it down, though, you're right.

[Bacchus]

[Coeurva]

Claimed our civ, password is

jaspis

Settings all look correct, xenu assigned us PLAYERCOLOR_WHITE though (probably to avoid conflicting with China), which looks fine.

There was a plains hill bleeding through the fog 11-47 of the capital; think we should move there next turn to scout possible city sites sharing wheat, then move counter-clockwise in a semicircle. Moving 11 revealed mainly that the jungle tile in our starting screenshot exists and additionally holds ivory.

Settling awarded us 1.05% of the total land area which means there are 762 land tiles total, 127 per team. -- e: Thanks Commodore The actual count of land tiles is 764. Tight quarters imo,

[Commodore]

Mousing over your score will also show total land tiles sans math.

[chumchu]

I'm excited by the choice. I've been playing Shaka of Rome a lot in SP to practice RTR and it absolutely wrecks the AI. You have 11,2 strength vs. cities without any promo. With CR 3 that is 16,45 strength which is beastly that early. It is very possible to take cities before catapults. The thing to remember is that you will have goo odds against axes in cities that do not have walls or big culture.

It's harder against players ofc. The trick will be to deliver them with any sort of surprise as your neighbors will hear alarm bells going off as soon as they see you (especially with your rep OT4E =)). Very early, on boats or backstabbing might be viable. It is not like you need to use them asap with a good economic pick like AGG//EXP. They trade cost-efficiently against cities until late renaissance.

[OT4E]

All true. I think that fear of Rome can play for us more than anything else. I do not drop away the idea of making HA rush or HA+praets combined attack since we get discount on stables too.

Strength mechanics work a bit different, bonus against cities applies to the defender. Sometimes it is better, sometimes it is a little bit worse. But in general agg-star stacks with CR bonus, so being AGG buffs praetorians significantly. The other side of being agg is quick acces to shock promotions.

Common axe attacking AGG praet on flat must have only 50% (5.0 vs 7/(1+0.5-0.1)).

If you add shock promotion on praet common and 1-star axe has odds below 50%. So only shock-axe can deal with shock-praet and it is still smth about 63%.

If landscape allows to avoid stepping on the flatland you dont need much advantage to get access to the cities. Also non-AGG enemies without shock on axes are in bigger troubles.

But what I like is that 4 HA with shock can change situation completely and make your stack untouchable without catapults.

The main idea is to watch what are opponents doing. If they go all in axes then HAs can fix it. If they try to get catapults quicker then possibly they will never get appropriate number of hitters at all. In some situations some number of chariots can work in attack. There are many ways to use praetorians but the main secret is to make production base and keep your eyes open to catch opportunities. As it was noticed many times praetorians are good against cities for long and very hammer effective so you only need to bring enough of them and cover.

[Coeurva]

Did Commodore use a Tectonics mapscript? Possible scout moves are 17 and 11; there's only hills bleeding through the fog in the BFC of the one obvious city site here, though. When borders pop / the worker moves to improve wheat, we might uncover seafood, but I'd prefer settling for an Agri resource second to avoid making the capital's build queue our bottleneck. Slotting in Hunting after BW on the tech path is possible (delaying Wheel/Pottery). I want a better 2nd site than this, though.

Demographics reveal that everyone settled in place and is working either sugar or sheep.

[OT4E]

17 I would go. If there is no sign of food then we no longer consider this are for possible early expansion and turn to the south. The map doesnt appear to be rich. If the situation with food is at looks from the first view, I doubt early granary is worth. Hunting for sheep is more important and sharing wheat can be good solution if we dont find a better spot to plant quickly. We share wheat and focus cap on sheep and mines.

[Coeurva]

11-63-63 imo, but can go 13 directly. The green pig hill is the obvious winner here and might well be city #2. Hunting immediately after BW grows in value.

I looked at demos again and somebody is in fact working 4h per turn, which has to mean they settled on sugar. This can only come from working the preserved plains forest hill (the only reason to work the 0/2/0 non-forest plains hill would be a work boat, and nobody else can build that T0). I'm assuming Charriu (can't be anyone else) is trying BW first, revolt T14, slave out the worker, to produce early warriors. There's not much of a reason to settle on the sugar otherwise -- you gain 1fpt for 1hpt (but the EXP discount would be lost on excess hammers occasionally anyway) for a while, then lose seafood and sugar farm in the long run.

If someone does harrass us with warriors early, we'll have a mine and chops to make two more of our own. Three warriors will hold against anything. Imo defensive plans will change if copper appears in cap BFC and one of our neighbours could be Zulu because lol impi rush, but Archery is 4t in the mod. Allowing an impi to waltz around would be a losing move for both involved parties (and winning to everyone else); the map looks spacious enough that the earliest an impi could arrive was past T28 and that's assuming copper is improved immediately and a warrior pre-built, then slaved. By that time, we could whip an axe with our own copper.


Not a micro plan, maybe the fuzzy idea for one later (but need more map info); I was curious what wheat overlap could do for us. This also produced the warrior before T29 settler. 4 cities (T29, T37 iirc, T47 settlers), 6 workers eot52, and a granary in city #2. Those cottages would likely be chops / improvements for city #4 instead, at least one of them. Though T55 or so should be a good time for us to start laying down cottages anyway. (That's just my gut.) Also I should be working the plains mine for +1c (the queued worker was just whipped and I took the screenshot immediately afterwards).

e: The granary build also sucked for reasons apparent from the screenshot -- should have been 1t later. Think it came from a chop, because I wouldn't have missed a 12/26 whip with such an obvious surplus, right...
ee: researched AH and Writing after Pottery btw; capital can build granary next while growing, I'd want to have a sugar farm at that point too and just grow to size6 here, possibly retaking wheat with Utica building the 5th settler at size3