[SPOILERS - PBEM17] novice and spaceman - Suryavarman of India

[scooter]

Heartily seconded. A word of warning, though. We've racked up nearly 1,000 posts in just over three months for PBEM13. I hope you're a quick reader!

See, this is a big part of the draw for me, so I say this is a good thing. I'll definitely be lurking with interest. I know it's possible that I could get too curious and bail on ded-lurking and start reading the other threads instead, in which case, oh well, I tried.

[novice]

So why Sury of India, I hear you ask? (I have extremely keen hearing).

Well, we're playing a financial leader in PBEM13 and wanted to try something different. Also, we didn't want to tie too many plans into getting any specific wonders. We toyed with the idea of choosing a philosophical leader - Pericles. Since we didn't expect that leader to be wanted by anyone else we just picked a good civilization first. Of course, when the pick came back to us and everyone had picked from the top shelf, we chickened out and took Sury instead of Pericles.

So, we get cheap and fast workers, and half-price granaries and libraries. Our plan is basically to tech Bronze working, Pottery, Writing, Mathematics and try to get to Currency before our expansion has crashed our economy. If the map is lush, as promised, we should be able to run a fair amount of scientists to keep our research going.

Of course the shortcut to keeping our economy alive is to build the great lighthouse, which should allow us to expand unhindered for a long time. We'll have to discuss whether or not this is feasible when we see the map.

Regoarrar (Bismarck of Inca) is kind of scary, with Expansive like us, faux-creative, and Industrious on top. He'll be our top contender for TGL. Basically our only edge on Rego is our fast worker. Like us Rego has no interest in Stonehenge and doesn't need religion for border expansions, so it will be interesting to see which wonders he's planning on leveraging his industrious trait on. Hopefully he'll do the standard Oracle to Metal Casting.

[spacemanmf]

Regoarrar (Bismarck of Inca) is kind of scary, with Expansive like us, faux-creative, and Industrious on top. He'll be our top contender for TGL. Basically our only edge on Rego is our fast worker.

And cheap libraries! But yes, that advantage might not be sufficiently leveraged in time for the TGLh race.

Novice can at least blame me for this choice since I gently pushed it early on.

We'll be up against it versus three Financial powerhouses plus rego's "scary" combination.

But we figured that cheap fast workers, granaries and libraries would be fun. Pretty much everything we will build early on will be cheap, apart from settlers. (We won't really need units since we're on separate continents and barbs are off.)

Of course, fast workers will require a significant degree of micro-management to get the best out of them, particularly early on. However, I'm confident that novice can replicate his whizzy work from [cough] another PBEM. And I can nod in approval.

As for C&D, I don't intend to track techs, GNP, production or crop yield, but I will track score, power and population so we can gauge our progress relative to the opposition. That's fairly easy to do.

[spacemanmf]

I'm hoping that novice does his excellent opponent summaries characteristic of his early PBEM13 posts. In the meantime, we've already chosen our civ theme during some snake pick & opening moves chat last night.

As you may have read in the planning thread, I favoured the PBEM13 approach of diplomacy only via in-game contact. It has worked pretty well in my opinion, after a slightly clumsy start. It's quite refreshing not to have to worry about diplomacy every turn.

Now I have to caveat that with saying that I have not played any other MP game in this format, so I have nothing to compare it to. However, I did not expect the strength of this response:

I don't like this setting at all. It would probably be a clincher for me if im honest. Diplo is important. However, if you do all want to go that route, then mackoti implied above that he was interested so it wouldn't stop the game getting off the ground. I won't be offended if that's the case

Well now. We didn't want to force players out over something I wasn't so bothered about, so we agreed that diplomacy would occur freely upon in-game meeting. (Ditto I backed down on the inclusion of huts, which I thought might be fun if randomly imbalancing.)

Since novice would probably spend a lot of time on his beloved sandbox, perfecting our opening, I offered to do most of the diplo, but I suggested that we keep it relatively minimalist. We can keep it friendly and regular, but concise. We tell it how it is. We cut to the chase. We are the Straight Talkers.

Novice's suggestion for workers was Hollywood tough guys, named alphabetically. (We got there in the end.) Arnold, Bruce, Clint, ... etc

And my thought was that cities would be named with a completely true if uninspiring description. Things like Capital, Nice Location, Coastal, On A Hill, etc. We will see how that goes.

We will be looking for lurkers to provide suggestions for our cities' names.

And that is all from me for now. It looks like the map-maker is making good progress (and hopefully a good map!).

[novice]

Darrelljs
Elizabeth (Fin/Phi) of Egypt (Obelisk, War Chariot, Agriculture, The Wheel)

Great starting techs, irrelevant UU, not sure what he's going to use his UB for. Fin/Phi is kind of antisynergetic, as you want to work cottages and not specialists when you're financial. I would think the key is to work specialists in a select few cities to get those great people faster, while running a cottage economy in your other cities.

Darrell needs a plan for expanding his borders, stonehenge is one option but he doesn't really need the ability to run priests in every city, so it's not the only option.

[COLOR="Wheat"]novice and spaceman
Suryavarman (Exp/Cre) of India (Mausoleum, Fast Worker, Mysticism, Mining)

Overall I'd say we have the weakest Civ/Leader combination. Our hope is lots of forests, and go Bronze working first while building two or three workers. Then hook up our food ASAP and start rexing. We're three techs from Pottery which sucks as an expansive leader, so we might as well focus on food-consuming builds until we have granaries available.[/COLOR]

Kyan
Willem (Fin/Cre) of Dutch (Dike, East Indiaman, Agriculture, Fishing)

The Dutch have a UU and UB that come into play when our initial buildfest is over, so I like this choice. Willem is great.

[COLOR="Wheat"]Regoarrar
Bismarck (Exp/Ind) of Inca (Terrace, Quecha, Agriculture, Mysticism)

Scary combination. Only weakness is teching ability. Not that we rate much higher, but I guess that's how we need to beat him. Let's hope he overemphasizes wonders and falls behind in expansion as well.[/COLOR]

Shoot the Moon
Pacal (Fin/Exp) of the Ottomans (Hammam, Janissary, Agriculture, The Wheel)
Good traits and starting techs, irrelevant UU and UB. Also needs a way to expand borders.

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[COLOR="Wheat"]So I think our only chance at victory here is to outplay our opponents, plain and simple. Pretty tall order. Regardless, the initial buildfest should be fun even if we fall behind.

Interesting that the two mysticism civs don't really need culture, whereas StM and Darreljs need a way to expand their borders. So they might be the ones competing for the early religions. We certainly can't afford a detour to religion.[/COLOR]

[spacemanmf]

Overall I'd say we have the weakest Civ/Leader combination.

Hmm, the one that I suggested... I like it, though. Ah well, start pessimistic - can't be disappointed.

[plako]

Your start:

[novice]

Thanks plako! Let the sandboxing begin.

[scooter]

I've avoided the other threads, so yes it's official that I'll go ahead ded-lurk this one. Seems like a very interesting start... Perhaps settle 1N to get the 2 hammer plant? It'll also help get the worker out quicker - with expansive bonus and all.

[novice]

I've avoided the other threads, so yes it's official that I'll go ahead ded-lurk this one. Seems like a very interesting start... Perhaps settle 1N to get the 2 hammer plant? It'll also help get the worker out quicker - with expansive bonus and all.

Great to have you on board, scooter. It should be nice to have you around in genuinely helpful mode, as opposed to your antisocial behaviour in WW3.

I think with two agriculture resources we may have to go agriculture first, then bronze working? Settling on the plains hill seems attractive.