[SPOILERS] Cheater Hater hates bad advice. BGN gives only bad advice.

[Caledorn]

Thread title is temporary I guess.

But at least I am the first one to have a thread for my team! Which is good, given that this game was somewhat my idea. Go me.

So, this team is Caledorn as the green with Plako being the mastermind advising me on how to improve my civ skills. I'm not sure about my strengths and weaknesses - those who have lurked in PB18 may have some ideas, without bringing any spoilers in though (I am nearly dead in PB18 though, which is not a spoiler - just a question of a few turns left). I think I am fairly adequate at city management, and tile management - and I know I am very bad at military. PB18 is also the only PB I've ever played in that didn't have diplomacy, which is reflected by how well that adventure turned out for me (not that I ever thought I'd win - I am pleasantly surprised that I will have lasted more than half the game in turn numbers though!).

That's that for now. Given the form of this game, expect me to be a lot better at reporting than I was in PB18 - it felt absolutely pointless in reporting in PB18 given the low amount of lurkers present, and the lurker civ who would report whenever something interesting was going on in my little corner of the world anyways.

Team info
Main Player: Caledorn
Mentor: Plako
Dedlurkers: BGN and Haram

Game info
Server: pitboss.watto.no:2062
Leader/Civ: Julius Caesar of HRE
Password: cal

[spacetyrantxenu]

Win the post count war, it's the only war that matters.

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

I'm glad to see this game starting. I'll be around (ded-lurking) to bounce ideas around with, and hopefully to pry something new from plako that will improve my game.

I wouldn't say you are bad at military, but that you are inexperienced. You've improved! Military strategy doesn't really matter though when the field is stacked so heavily against you. We'll have to make sure that when you fight you pick the fight and do so in an advantageous situation for your civ. This means fighting in someone else's back yard, not yours. Expand well, build a good economy, know when it is ok to take some risk to get ahead, know when you need to play it safe, and most importantly, know how to tell the difference between the two (this is where I esteem that plako and others do so well is knowing the difference between the two).

Please note that I do not profess to have all the answers. I'm doing well in PB18 because I haven't thrown away some favorable circumstances and because I wasn't pressured early on when it would have made a noticeable difference on my long term performance. And I have improved certain aspects of my game over my PBEMs and that notable disaster PB11 that I played with Xenu (that was totally his fault). I'm looking forward to this game. Good luck!

[Haram]

I also check in as a ded-lurker, if you don't mind

[Caledorn]

Welcome BGN and Haram

[Boldly Going Nowhere]

This is the kind of thing you want to be keeping an eye on if you want to improve your game:

Map is essentially done. Toroidal. Impossible to get balance for 7 players without it, unless use a ring type map which has other balance issues. Suggest Monarch difficulty to go with standard map size; map dimensions are 76*28. If using RtR, huts and events are nerfed such that there are no negative events ie slave revolt, and no one can pop anything more expensive than BW.

In RtR, toroid vs. cylinder doesn't matter as far as city maintenance goes, but map size does (for tech costs), and map dimensions do as well (for distance maintenance in cities). You want all of these to be a close to perfect as you can get when building a sandbox. This lets you forecast ahead very well in the early game and lets you try a lot of different openings with worker management, prioritizing city settlement, which order to research critical techs, etc. Until you actually do it, you can't really get a good feel for how much sandboxing can help you in the early game.

Also, though this is not stated, Krill's comment suggests that he did not use a ring. I'd guess some kind of lakes on a toroid. Try to come up with some starting player positions that make sense in terms of balancing distance for 7 players.

6 7
1 2 1
3 4 5 3
6 7 6
1 2 1

I have no idea without drawing a map. TBH, this doesn't seem to matter as much to me as getting yourself off to the fastest start you can. I can show you how to go about making the actual sandbox once we have a starting shot.

[spacetyrantxenu]

Your start:

[Caledorn]

Sorry about responding late to your post, BGN - I found it very helpful, and now that we have our start available I am really looking forward to learning to make a proper sandbox.

That's a nice start. Going to need Hunting for the domesticated animals I think, and AH for the 'phants. But as far as I can remember, Hunting as a starting tech is quite crappy, even with the mod? I like the forested plain tile 1S of the settler - that will be helpful as a source of hammers. Also there are 5 grassland river tiles that are nice for cottages, even though the mod modifies how cottages work, so that even the 3 grassland nonriver tiles are good for cottaging. That is, of course, provided SIP is the best start - but generally my impression is that the balanced RB maps (this map is balanced, yes?) are balanced in such a manner that SIP usually is a very good choice. As far as I can tell, if we do SIP, this will either be a commerce-heavy start, or a good foundation for a specialist economy with 6 tiles that can be farmed instead of cottaged, and 2 food tiles in addition to that. But again, with the mod, I am not sure about the viability of a specialist economy, and if that is a consideration we should venture into, I'm on shaky ground and will need lots of good advice as I haven't played a proper specialist economy - not even in SP.

I'm looking forward to what you all have to say about our start!

[plako]

2 food tiles + plains hill plant seems pretty hard to pass. However you could check south. Settling on top of ivory vould be considered, if there are more than 2 food resources there.

Hunting is a good starting tech in RtR. Nevertheless you probably have time to research Hunting soon enough so it is not totally essential here. AH should typically be postponed. It is not very appealing tech in RtR.

Specialist/Hammer economy is very viable in RtR. However you'll usually want to cottage your capital 1st no matter what path you choose.

[Haram]

Also note, there is a straight line of coast north. Settling in place could possibly waste a seafood. It would be really nasty from the mapmaker, but you never know


Edit: well, its probably not worth considering, cause its not possible to check both - the coast for potential seafood and south for more food.