[SPOILERS - PBEM19] Huayna Capac of Ottomans - yuris125 & Maestro

[yuris125]

Hope I'm not jumping the gun here, but we decided it was good time to create a thread already

So, first of all, the plan:

[SIZE="7"]PLN[/SIZE]

Now that we have a Plan, all we got tae do is to work out what tae do

Love this quote. Now - to business!

[yuris125]

To starts things off, I probably should talk about our Leader/Civ choice. I sent a long mail with my thoughts to Maestro after we teamed up, but I won't quote it in full The main point was that with an early leader choice, the Fin trait was too good to pass up. Huayna was our first choice; if MNG took him, I was thinking about Darius and Hannibal (although for some reason I thought HRE was banned, and therefore Darius wasn't very high in my rating - my first ). I wasn't confident in my abilities to properly leverage Spi, so decided not to take Mansa, even though I acknowledge he is a strong leader, and GES's Team Werewolf will probably make good use of his abilities

For Civ selection, I initially had Mali at the top of my list, it seemed to be the natural choice for an Ind leader with their Forge replacement UB. However, the more I thought about it, the less I like it. Mint bonus is not that good; the UU is only useful as a protection against a potential early rush, and starting techs are nothing special

Maestro repeated these arguments in his reply, and suggested Ottomans as his top choice. They were at or near the top of my list as well, mostly because of the awesome UU. We didn't think we would be able to get them as the 4th pick - but we did

So here we are Time to start scheming! I will wait for MNG's last pick though, so that we know all team's first

[Maestro]

The final lineup is in!

Mr. Nice Guy - Hatshepsut of France - Creative/Spiritual
Team Maximum Awesome - Huayna Capac of the Ottomans - Financial/Industrious
Gold Ergo Sum - Mansa Musa of Egypt - Financial/Spiritual
Ranamar - Bismark of Mali - Expansive/Industrious
Commodore - Darius I of Holy Rome - Financial/Organized

I'll post some thoughts on this tomorrow, but for now here are some aggregated numbers. The trait breakdown is:

3 Financial
2 Industrious
2 Spiritual
1 Creative
1 Organized
1 Expansive

Starting tech breakdown:
4 Wheel
3 Agriculture
1 Mining
1 Hunting
1 Mysticism

[yuris125]

Wow, looks like there was a lot happening while I was asleep, and tried to work in the morning. I wanted to post something long and interesting immediately, but for some reason the colleagues didn't appreciate this idea. I can't imagine why

Anyway. The time for long posts will come in the evening, for now I just wanted to post a barebone plan. It is rather basic, but tried and tested, and I don't see a reason to look for alternatives until it fails

* Take Metal Casting from Oracle
* Build Colossus to strengthen our economy
* Tech Construction and start building Cats
* (maybe) Get Literature and the GLib
* Beeline Gunpowder via Education
* Take Nationalism from Liberalism, build Taj
* Build & draft an army of Janissaries
* Capture as much land as we can
* Win.... if possible

Of course, one good thing about a Musketman replacement UU is that the path to Gunpowder is the same as to Liberalism, and you're forced to take this path early... so I rate our chances to get there first quite high

One more note: 3 key wonders I planned are speeded up by Marble, so we will have to reconsider if we don't have Marble and somebody else has

Once I get home after work - thoughts about our opponents and how they can stop this plan from working

[Maestro]

Awright, time for the player-by-player breakdown!

[SIZE="3"]Mr. Nice Guy - Hatshepsut of France - Creative/Spiritual[/SIZE]
Hatty is an interesting pick at #1. Creative is my favorite trait, but as yuri said, "not choosing a Fin leader would be a wasted opportunity." Spiritual gains power in a quick speed game, where the relative cost of turn of anarchy increases. As the only creative leader, MNG will own border conflicts in the early expansion phase.

As for France, it's very meh to me. Salon is a complete waste (free artist with your astronomy-req tech building!). Musketeers are strong, as their extra mobility allows for fast reinforcement / forking opportunities. Ag/Wheel starting techs are good. Still, Byz and Maya were on the board, and I've had taken either over France.

[SIZE="3"]Us - Huayna Capac of the Ottomans - Financial/Industrious[/SIZE]
We knew with pick #2 that we'd be able to get a strong Fin leader, and we did. With only 1 other Ind civ, we'll have a leg-up on any wonders we want. Plus, Bismark doesn't have the financial science boost, so if we can pull ahead of him in tech, we'll get first dibs on just about any wonder we want. We'll still need to be judicious about which ones to chase down, but that's fine.

Ottomans were my #1 civ choice. Hammam is just great, giving +2 free happiness for no extra hammers, and the bonus never obsoletes. Janissaries are draftable, excellent all-purpose defenders, and we start with Ag+Wheel. Ag+Wheel+Fin means we can consider Pottery first, getting an early riverside cottage or two for the +2 commerce. In the early game, when you're only working a couple of tiles, that can amount to a strong tech boost.

[SIZE="3"]Gold Ergo Sum - Mansa Musa of Egypt - Financial/Spiritual[/SIZE]
Mansa is very good, for reasons already mentioned above. A strong player can civic swap all over the place to effectively gain the benefits of multiple civics, and I suspect that GES is capable of that.

Egypt makes me nervous. He's 1 tech away from War Chariots, while the rest of the board is 2 (or in our case, 3!) techs from spears. If his plan is to rush early, the victim could be hard pressed to stop him. I just hope we're not neighbors with him and don't have to worry about it. Hopefully the larger relative cost of travel time in quick speed games will give the victim enough time to react.

The good news is that Egypt's bonuses obsolete quickly, so we have much better long-term prospects. Interestingly, GES said in the organization thread "Ottomans were my first choice until I was browbeaten into Egypt by Krill and scooter."

[SIZE="3"]Ranamar - Bismark of Mali - Expansive/Industrious[/SIZE]
With the only expansive leader in the game, I think Ranamar will be best served leveraging his cheap worker+granaries into an early snowball. If he doesn't get lots of improved tiles up early, he may have a hard time competing with all the Fins in the long term. He's also our rival Industrious civ. The fiend!

It's pretty likely that Mali was selected for the half-price mints. Yuri had the same temptation, but we both concluded that it's not actually that strong. +10% gold just isn't all that much. Compare that to our +2 happiness, which lets us work 2 additional tiles! I bet those extra tiles will produce more benefit than 10% gold.

Skirmisher really discourages any early rushes, and even gets odds on the feared war chariots if in city. However, it obsoletes early, and I often postpone archery if I can help it. Starting techs are Mining/Wheel, which puts him a tech behind on improving any early food/animal resources. Still, he's the only player with mining, so he can get to bronze working and chopping faster than anybody else.

[SIZE="3"]Commodore - Darius I of Holy Rome - Financial/Organized[/SIZE]
Commodore landed a strong combo at the turn of the snake pick. With the bans we had in place, Darius is an excellent leader. While the -50% civic cost is only so-so, nearly every city will build a courthouse, so he saves lots of hammers there. Similarly, pretty much any city that can build a lighthouse will.

The selection of HRE is purely for the rathaus. Coupled with Organized, commodore will enjoy -75% maintenance at half price. That is excellent, and undoubtedly the strongest single economic bonus in this game. However, everything else about HRE stinks. Landsknechts are a mace/pike combo that still loses to maces after promotions thanks to their lower base strength. Crossbows and muskets (and Janissaries to an even greater extent) are era-equivalent units that easily beat Landsknechts. Pikes exist to stop knights, and, despite their +100% vs melee bonus, that's still really all Landsknechts are good for.

Starting techs are bad bad bad: Hunting / Mysticism. Scout starts are unpleasant, and Mysticism is definitely behind Ag/Mining/Wheel. Commodore is the only leader with Mysticism to start, though, so he gets first dibs on early religion if he's so inclined.

[yuris125]

Great post Maestro, pretty much everything I wanted to say myself!

I read GES's PBEM11 thread yesterday, and he doesn't sound like an early rush guy. He is playing as Huayna Capac of Zulu, and I don't think he built a single Impi. Of course, the map in that game doesn't really encourage an early rush, but from a few of his posts, he sounds like a builder. Hopefully War Chariots will see little action in our game, but if he is our neighbour, we will have to invest into military early. Egypt is an interesting choice though, very strong players recommended this pick, but I don't really see what's so strong about it. We talked about War Chariots, which obviously are great. But Obelisks are very situational, even if you build Stonehenge and get them for free; usually you don't really need priest specialists early - or I'm missing something. Starting techs are the same as ours, so they couldn't affect the decision

I fully agree about MNG's picks, there were stronger choices for both leader and civ. I don't want to judge players I don't really know, but I would say he ended up with the weakest combo - having the first draft pick!

Commodore is one tech closer to Oracle than we are, but he has no Worker techs, so I'm sure he will have to research them before going for Oracle, if he has that plan. I wonder if he has it; he would greatly benefit from Oracling CoL, but I think he only has a chance if there is Deer in the capital BFC, the only food resource he can improve off the bat. Long term, I think with hugely reduced maintenance he will be the strongest economy, if he expands well (as he should with this leader/civ combo!)

Nothing to add about Ranamar

Next up - thoughts about our opening. Or, rather speculations, because we don't know what the start will look like yet!

[yuris125]

Thoughts on the opening are not coming along I wrote a post, and then found that I have "depends on the map" in every sentence! I should be more patient

For our reference, here are the techs we need to get to Oracle Metal Casting:

• Mining
  
• Bronze Working
  
• Pottery
  
• Mysticism
  
• Polytheism or Meditation
  
• Priesthood
  

Going Pottery early could help us get through this list. If there are cottageable riverside tiles. Depends on the map, yes

If there is Marble available, we should also get Masonry on the list

We need to keep in mind that there will be barbs in the game - so we need BW or AH relatively early. Good thing that we agreed on Prince level, and barb Archers won't appear for some time! Hope Gaspar will be generous with Copper!

Otherwise, there's not much to say at the moment. Build Worker first, and play standard opening, until we see reasons to deviate from it

[yuris125]

Just... one... more... post... before I go to bed. The naming theme. In the previous life, I worked for a radio station in Moscow ; to remember those years, I was planning to name cities after Moscow radio stations, Workers after radio personalities, and units after musicians we played. Maestro - feel free to veto though, especially if you have better ideas. This theme definitely matches my personality, will be fun for me, and will give me an opportunity to post random music videos whenever I feel like it (lurkers, beware!). However, I don't think anybody else will figure it out, so not sure it's such a good idea

PS I wonder how Commodore already managed to get 12 replies to his thread... yes, I am jealous! :neenernee

[Maestro]

Veto? No way! That's a great theme. Consider it done!

[Gaspar]

Here is your starting position, have fun!