Seems that Sunrise/Rego/Darrelljs plan for lightbulbing cataphracts is one which is now pretty transparent to their neighbours, and it has made them a target (in combination with their aggressive city placement). If things don't go too well for them, then I think that their 2 main mistakes in the game are:
- The aggressive city placement
- Their choice right at the start, during the snake pick, of picking a civ/leader combo with one obviously overpowering strategy. Firstly you are somewhat locked into that strategy at the start by golden handcuffs, and secondly it is transparent to other players what your plan is, so you are likely to be targetted before you can use it.
In a game with humans and lots of diplomacy, I wonder if it is sometimes a mistake to pick the best (military) UUs. It certainly contributed to Mortius's demise. Rome may fare better, but just because you have praets, you don't have to use them. Their possession of such a strong UU led to major distrust with their neighbours, and with a distrustful neighbour they are somewhat forced into early aggression. After Mortius's elimination, they might have been better off focusing on peaceful expansion (particularly with their lack of economic traits). They could have used the potential of praets to elicit (with very little persuasion) a very long NAP with their neighbour, without consuming many hammers building them! and the Iron-working beeline probably hasn't helped their economy a great deal (particularly with the lack of economic techs). Although I guess that being able to expand into the land of 3 civs may not be too bad a payoff, if they do succeed.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, I wonder if the teams that went for the best UBs (or fast workers) rather than the best UUs will fare better in their wars. Since (for the civs choosing the best UUs) their window of optimal military opportunity is a little too obvious to their targets, which will lead to being ganged up on before they get their UU. There may also be more appropriate defenses if they do get to use their UUs, since they lose some of the surprise factor.
One intriguing hypothesis for a no-tech-trading game :
Since the tech will go slower than with tech-trading on, then people will run out of buildings to build more quickly. So more hammers will probably end up in units than otherwise. I wonder if this will contribute to higher aggression levels?
I wonder when the diplomacy will move towards setting up 2v1 alliances? It's probably been a little early at the moment since it is not yet practical, but is getting to the stage where the diplomatic side of it could happen, if people choose to do that?
It seems that both teams currently planning on aggression are trying the 'international trade routes' tactic to road to their fronts, whilst conveniently not having NAP. It just seems like far too obvious a strategy to have any chance of working. Maybe someone will fall for it though.
- The aggressive city placement
- Their choice right at the start, during the snake pick, of picking a civ/leader combo with one obviously overpowering strategy. Firstly you are somewhat locked into that strategy at the start by golden handcuffs, and secondly it is transparent to other players what your plan is, so you are likely to be targetted before you can use it.
In a game with humans and lots of diplomacy, I wonder if it is sometimes a mistake to pick the best (military) UUs. It certainly contributed to Mortius's demise. Rome may fare better, but just because you have praets, you don't have to use them. Their possession of such a strong UU led to major distrust with their neighbours, and with a distrustful neighbour they are somewhat forced into early aggression. After Mortius's elimination, they might have been better off focusing on peaceful expansion (particularly with their lack of economic traits). They could have used the potential of praets to elicit (with very little persuasion) a very long NAP with their neighbour, without consuming many hammers building them! and the Iron-working beeline probably hasn't helped their economy a great deal (particularly with the lack of economic techs). Although I guess that being able to expand into the land of 3 civs may not be too bad a payoff, if they do succeed.
Somewhat counter-intuitively, I wonder if the teams that went for the best UBs (or fast workers) rather than the best UUs will fare better in their wars. Since (for the civs choosing the best UUs) their window of optimal military opportunity is a little too obvious to their targets, which will lead to being ganged up on before they get their UU. There may also be more appropriate defenses if they do get to use their UUs, since they lose some of the surprise factor.
One intriguing hypothesis for a no-tech-trading game :
Since the tech will go slower than with tech-trading on, then people will run out of buildings to build more quickly. So more hammers will probably end up in units than otherwise. I wonder if this will contribute to higher aggression levels?
I wonder when the diplomacy will move towards setting up 2v1 alliances? It's probably been a little early at the moment since it is not yet practical, but is getting to the stage where the diplomatic side of it could happen, if people choose to do that?
It seems that both teams currently planning on aggression are trying the 'international trade routes' tactic to road to their fronts, whilst conveniently not having NAP. It just seems like far too obvious a strategy to have any chance of working. Maybe someone will fall for it though.