[PB70] Charriu tries to promote the arts again

[Charriu]

I think civ is more off an escape for him from other stuff.

[Tarkeel]

Charriu, here is your start:

[Charriu]

Thanks, Tarkeel. I expect don't trust the fog as usual? Because I see water NE

[Tarkeel]

Anythying in the fog can potentially change before the map is finalized.

[Charriu]

Thanks for the info, Tarkeel.

As for my game plan I still want to do what I wanted to do in PB67, since I was denied actually playing this style. Here is what I wrote back in PB67:

Before the actual snake pick, simming and other stuff begins, I wanted to tell you what my plans for this PB are. By now I played in 4 PBs with the following traits:

PB39 (RtR): AGG/EXP Khmer
PB40 (RtR): AGG/PRO China
PB52 (CtH): EXP/PRO Celts
PB59 (CtH): SPI/IND Greece

As you can see I haven't played some traits yet namely:

FIN
CRE
CHA
IMP
AGG (in CtH)
PHI
ORG

I really enjoyed SPI last game, which as we know requires a bit more planning to get good use out of it. To that extend I want to play PHI this game. By now we have seen some more players pick up PHI with some great usage. What I wanted to do with it is generate a lot of scientists with it. I want to use those first scientist to build the academy and settle some scientist specialists in that academy city. Only later do I want to use specialists to bulb techs. I know the public opinion is that bulbing is always superior then settling the specialist, especially on RB maps, which are lusher and therefore move on a lot quicker through the tech tree.
Scientists are actually the best for bulbing starting at a base value of 1500 beakers per bulb and dependent on population can even go up to 1800 with 100 pop. I did play some test games with PHI and I regularly managed to generate at least 3 scientists before T100. By that time I'm somewhere in the early classical era with tech cost of around 400-800 beakers. So bulbs can only be worth that much at that time. But assuming that the game goes at least towards the T200 marker settling early scientist would generate at minimum 600 beakers without modifiers. If we factor in that almost every tech gets a modifier from prerequisite techs those 600 actually go up to 720. Importantly bulbing does not get this prerequisite bonus to my knowledge and of course no added modifiers from buildings. And of course on top of that the settled scientist also generates hammers too. Yes, bulbing can beat that, but it requires more planning around the tech path and the longer the game goes the better the settled scientist gets. Using the first of my 3 scientist for an academy is even better beaker-wise as with the 2 scientist settled in the city the academy-scientist also produced the same amount of beakers thanks to the 2 specialists, but also multiplies all other beaker sources as well as adding culture.
Lastly there's another more meta aspect I want to run this strategy. This style of play allows me to run a more steady if lower tech rate. As we have seen players do tend to judge huge spikes in GNP a lot more and sometimes jump the gun thinking that this player is running away with the game. To give an example consider a player A saving money for 5 turns and then running 5 turns of 600 GNP per turn compared to a player B running 10 turns of 300 GNP. I would think that more players are afraid of player A rather then B even though both had the same output. We have seen multiple times that having an early lead in a game can generate a dogpile against that player and with this strategy the chances of that happening might be reduced.

Having said all of that there are still a lot of other questions.
1. What about pyramids?
2. How do I get to representation without pyramids fast?
3. What second trait should I choose?
4. What civ works well with this playstyle?
5. When to start bulbing instead of settling scientists?
6. Any other interesting wonders (Great Library)?

I will answer all of these questions with my next posts or when we have a screenshot.

Now there will be some differences compared to PB67. This start has noticeable fewer river tiles. This makes this capitol less of a cottage-fest. Settling in place earns me four 5 food tiles and that lake will provide irrigation and the potential to place farms around it if need be. Now should we have similar starts I do expect that some players will still complain about this great starting location. I for one like it especially as it is more suited towards specialists and PHI I think.


The first big question though is where to settle. I see 3 potential spots.

1. On the plains hill 1 NW: This gives up the option to improve the lake clam in addition to loosing a 4 food-hammer tile in the first ring. And lastly we loose the 6 food-hammer forested deer tile. What I'm gaining is mostly unknown, maybe some floodplains valley. Who knows? That spot doesn't look that appetizing to me.
2. On the banana: This would destroy that 5 food tile for the city to have a 3 food tile. It still has the deers, but no 4 food-hammer tile and it also looses the lake. The upside I gain an ivory tile and the city would be on a river. We also gain hidden tiles in the fog. Looking back at what I did in PB67 this spot would be more suited as it has the potential to connect the second city via the river like I did back then. With that I could skip Wheel and Pottery again going via Animal Husbandry. But I think this option is inferior to the next. The reason why I did that back in PB67 was because I was forced to tech Animal Husbandry, which was the actual trigger to skip Wheel and Pottery.
3. Settling in place: This is the spot I want to use. It has the RB-standard plains hill, connects the lake clam giving it 5 food tiles in time. It has a 4 food-hammer tile to speed up the first worker. With this spot I would go for 3 pop working the deers and banana/clam getting the first settler in T28.

Now which starting techs will I need for this start. Obviously I need Hunting and Mining as a standard to get to Bronze Working. Now there are to disadvantages to this and potentially all the starts. The first one is the lack of non-cottage commerce. To that extend I think Fishing might be important to hook up the clam mainly as a higher commerce option. I could skip Fishin, which costs 78 beakers, but the lakes 2 commerce tiles will net me at least 20 beakers, when I work the tile until the settler pops. This makes up a little bit for the need to go Fishing, but of course I will continue using the lake tile making up the investment into Fishing. As for the second disadvantage: I'm not connected to a river. Therefore I need The Wheel to connect any second city. There's another reason for The Wheel and that is a serious lack of things to do for the worker after it finishes the deer camps until the settler pops or Bronze Working is finished. Now I could take a Hunting/Mining civ and immediately tech Bronze Working to start chopping, but then I delay Fishing and I think it's better to have the roads in place for the second city before it's settled. Having the Wheel also allows my worker to be a bit more productive while moving towards the next deer tile. The last two techs are not relevant for this start as there are no Agriculture resources and Mysticism is more important for the early religion, which I am not aiming at.

With those techs in mind this leaves me the option of the following civs:

Ethiopia (Hunting/Mining)
Germany (Hunting/Mining)
Greek (Hunting/Fishing)
Japan (The Wheel/Fishing)
Khmer (Hunting/Mining)
Mali (The Wheel/Mining)
Mongols (The Wheel/Hunting)
Native America (Hunting/Fishing)
Russia (Hunting/Mining)
Vikings (Hunting/Fishing)
Rome (Fishing/Mining)

Now there are more civs viable with 2 of those 4 techs aka all the Fishing/Mining civs. The problem with those is that The Wheel comes in 1 turn to late for the worker to move between the two deer tiles in a productive matter. Now that wouldn't be that bad as I would only loose out on Carthage, England, Portugal and Rome. Out of those Rome is the only one somewhat interesting if I run PRO/PHI, which would get me faster towards Writing and would provide early protection in the form of Praetorians. We'll see what will happen with the pick method/order. For now I would leave it at that and would think some more about which traits to take. Obviously PHI is a given with what I want to do, but the question remains what second trait to take.

PS: One last thing it's nice that America is not really an option for me here, because should I be able to play similar to PB67 it would somewhat show that the American UB isn't as overpowered as it seems.

[Tarkeel]

That's a very interesting take on PHI, and I'd love to see you try it. It has been said earlier that a lot of the conventional wisdom at RB was formed playing PBEMs on quick speed, and not everything converts to normal.

[Charriu]

I highly doubt this game will last as long as PB67 at this stage.

[Charriu]

Ok I think it's time.

I concede to Ginger

[Tarkeel]

Any thoughts on opening scout moves?

[Charriu]

If I see water under the fog NE then most likely in that direction. Want to check if I abandon any spot that could lighthouse the clam by setting in place