[SPOILER] Dark Savant graduates from blatant n00b to plain n00b

[Dark Savant]

PB37 is over, around 10-20 turns sooner than I expected -- I still think dtay had a several percent chance of pulling off a comeback if the game continued, with Krill a possible longshot.  I can't say I'm that surprised everyone was wiling to concede to GermanJoey, though.

Almost all my serious mistakes in PB37 were in early-to-mid Classical; I feel like there was nothing wrong with my civ/leader choice or opening several dozen moves.

Things to avoid:

• Windows of opportunity are very narrow -- be ready to jump on them, even a 1-turn difference is substantial.  (If I'd moved that one chariot right, I could have razed Coeurva's border city uncontested.)
  
• Don't pour resources into a potential war, then call it off.  Getting Iron Working as an early Classical tech did not pay off.
  
• Don't run too thin on military -- it's hard to respond quickly once war does come.
  
• Be a little less stingy when trading maps (though I think refusing early was still correct, I should have been more willing to trade later) and especially with Open Borders (though I realized that before the game ended).
  
• The one serious mistake I made in the later phases when I was at war with Gavagai and JR4 all the time: catapults don't make for good city defenders, don't throw them away like that next time.
  

[Dark Savant]

Now that I've poked around the PB37 spoiler threads some, people don't seem terribly enthusiastic about my civ choice, but I still think Ethiopia was fine; it didn't work out as I wanted for reasons beyond my control.

The aim was to plant the second and third cities fast to accelerate the early-game snowball (for which I determined you need Expansive + Hunting/Mining with that specific start; Imperialistic only beats Expansive at city #4 I think), but my third city of Castleview ended up being not especially productive for an early city because it got choked by Gavagai (maybe I should have seen that coming, but that would have required a lot of experience), then poured a lot of hammers into being one turn short of the Great Lighthouse.

Oromo Warriors backed by Aggressive were very good, too.

What civ I'd love with this game is going to depend on the start position, though ...

[RefSteel]

I can only speak for myself, but:

Wow - Ethiopia may not be as underrated as I thought - at least not by Dark Savant and ipecac. We'll have to see if he can play them up to their potential here, but if so, that potential is a lot scarier than it looks.

Zulu was such an obvious first pick for that start that it barely needs mention though. Between that, the neighbor situation, and his own sheer civ ability, I think dtay would have run away with the game and never looked back if he hadn't gotten his 3rd city razed by a barb at <1% odds. He was leading for much of the midgame in spite of that happening!

I wasn't a fan of your opening, but that had nothing to do with your civ choice, and if you'd landed the Great Lighthouse and refrained from burning your economy on a billion swords - whether you ultimately threw them at anyone or not - you'd have made me eat my words. I also wasn't a fan of your promotion choices - things like Shock Spears and Formation + Pinch on the same Oromo - but I feel like you improved toward the end, maybe by learning what worked best through direct experience. (I'm still slowly catching up on the game threads, so I can't tell for sure.)

[Coeurva]

Iirc Bacchus was always quite wary of the power of steles, specifically the expected cultural pressure on Whitehall from Fountain Head, and wanted us to grab a Great Artist to use against you, as well as settle the border more aggressively, to compensate for your expected advantage.

Like RefSteel, I was puzzled by your initial flirts with Shock spears thinking that I'd missed something, and I talked smack about them at least once -- well, look who survived to the end of that game and who didn't. Nor should I of all players have harped on misunderstanding the relative power of promotions, because even if I thought Krill was being reasonable about no other point of argument (I don't), he'd be right about that.

On another "iirc", Ignis (our border city) was empty when your chariot came around precisely because we knew you couldn't reach it in time -- seeing as we were at war with Russia, we had almost no units in the north and therefore placed a spear halfway between Ignis and Dragonish, because I thought you could make a feint at Ignis, then land units from Harmondale in the west. (At some point I also misclicked a chariot out of the city while trying to whack a Russian warrior, but I think that was a different occasion.)

Nevertheless, you're right that 1t earlier could have netted you a city raze against me; that opportunity arose when I hazardously bluffed the chariot having been loaded onto the galley (something you did indeed consider at once, as your thread revealed) when we scrambled to settle Stygian Terrace before you did, which left Whitehall empty. Had your galley come 1t sooner, you'd have taken our only mainland port in the west and probably placed Stygian Terrace in jeopardy as well. Much later, we had a 15-knight stack just out of your sight behind Ignis, though I was always wondering if you might not have found us out with a spy when you were considering an attack there. Then dtay/Joey killed us before you could lay a claim (or more likely, you didn't want to risk war with dtay, which would have given Gavagai a free hand)

Conversely, that Woody III axe I spent 10xp on was only useful for about 1t to prevent you from killing our settler, but I thought that was already worth it. I'm not sure if that's a play you should emulate, though.

I think we both overbuilt military long before researching either Construction or HBR and locked each other into an arms race that stifled both our economies -- our civs were #1 and #2 in power for nearly every turn from 1 to ~115, but neither of us did much of worth with that military during that period, nor did we manage to dissolve that tension diplomatically -- which was why I agreed to pay you for open borders later, despite our civ gaining no trade income from them; but even afterwards, it still seemed to me that we'd be your most likely attack vector and vice versa, and tension persisted.

I thought you overextended during the midgame, but then your recovery via MoM propelled you back to strength, and I doubt you should put that much weight on thoughts from a weaker player, anyway -- because I managed to crash our economy completely after the Golden Age that culminated in an ill-executed Astro bulb (well, Joey thought our finish date was strong, but Krill immediately responded with a triple bulb 3t afterwards), and not because Krill leisurely took all the islands which we never got to make use of -- his counterattack wrecked a third of our army/navy but was economically negligible at the time -- and Krill and Joey are right about that as well, I lacked the vision to build an economy, ending up with a large but nearly-outdated and barely-reinforceable sword stack which had nowhere to go after our war (in which you stopped our most important attack cold at Sorpigal; even if we hadn't declared on Krill and instead united our stacks there, I think you would have managed to hold it with xbows behind a castle). Regna alone would not have pulled us out of the swamp, nor would Mandrake if we could have held it.

Regarding your opening, I was most impressed by your early circumnavigation, and you probably kept the best C&D out of the new players (mine was a complete mess) including your scouting of Joey's GLH construction. Besides that, I think you made yourself difficult to read, with me often worried about an attack from you during the early game, but later taking you for a very defensive player (not really true). Also, in case I haven't told you yet, you handled that game, as well as your defenses against a superior army, much more gracefully than I did. So go for it, let's see if you can get a top6 finish here as well

[Dark Savant]

Zulu was such an obvious first pick for that start that it barely needs mention though.  Between that, the neighbor situation, and his own sheer civ ability, I think dtay would have run away with the game and never looked back if he hadn't gotten his 3rd city razed by a barb at <1% odds.  He was leading for much of the midgame in spite of that happening!

I'd have picked either Zulu or Carthage over any Hunting/Mining civ, but they were both gone by pick #4 -- the Zulu being gone was completely unsurprising, but I hadn't expected Carthage to disappear quite that fast.  If I'd been able to get Carthage I'd have drastically changed my strategy, as I mentioned in my PB37 thread -- I'd have paired Carthage with Exp/Fin Pacal (whom I wasn't expecting anyone to take) and gone all-in on planting lots of coastal cities.

That PB37 map might have worked out very well for that, too.  If I happen to get a civ/leader draw of the "best on water maps" variety, I'd still take the plunge here.

I wasn't a fan of your opening, but that had nothing to do with your civ choice, and if you'd landed the Great Lighthouse and refrained from burning your economy on a billion swords - whether you ultimately threw them at anyone or not - you'd have made me eat my words.  I also wasn't a fan of your promotion choices - things like Shock Spears and Formation + Pinch on the same Oromo - but I feel like you improved toward the end, maybe by learning what worked best through direct experience.  (I'm still slowly catching up on the game threads, so I can't tell for sure.)

I did come to believe from extensive simming that as long as I'm Expansive, that chop-tastic start on the PB37 start delivers not just two quick settlers, but flexibility in getting out two quick workers and knowing where metal is.  It does depend on those two settlers being able to claim two strong sites that could ramp up faster, which didn't really materialize.

The strange promotions partly came from lack of tactical experience, yeah.  The idea behind all those Shock spears was to get odds on axes attacking straight off galleys, which may have made sense once or twice, just not as much as I actually did.  (I suppose I should have put more stock into Coeurva pushing all his axes in the other direction.)  Promoting an Oromo to both Formation and Pinch also makes sense for the very first few Oromos, but not beyond that.

[Dark Savant]

Iirc Bacchus was always quite wary of the power of steles, specifically the expected cultural pressure on Whitehall from Fountain Head, and wanted us to grab a Great Artist to use against you, as well as settle the border more aggressively, to compensate for your expected advantage.

Too bad steles don't get their extra culture bonus once you have Astronomy -- I didn't know that until I actually had Astronomy; I thought all that would happen is that I would no longer be able to build them.  Speaking of that, I should have made a plan to bulb Astronomy -- it took forever to research the normal way.

Conversely, that Woody III axe I spent 10xp on was only useful for about 1t to prevent you from killing our settler, but I thought that was already worth it. I'm not sure if that's a play you should emulate, though.

Yeah, I was puzzled by your burning Great Generals on units like that.  It does get you a strong short-term local tactical advantage, but it also keeps the economy-draining arms race going ...

I think we both overbuilt military long before researching either Construction or HBR and locked each other into an arms race that stifled both our economies -- our civs were #1 and #2 in power for nearly every turn from 1 to ~115, but neither of us did much of worth with that military during that period, nor did we manage to dissolve that tension diplomatically -- which was why I agreed to pay you for open borders later, despite our civ gaining no trade income from them; but even afterwards, it still seemed to me that we'd be your most likely attack vector and vice versa, and tension persisted.

I'm not sure how we could have ramped that down without hashing things out in a post-mortem like this.  I guessed that you had a lot of axes and probably had them pointed towards someone who was probably CML, and I suppose I could have eased off on that front, but I did need to respond to your having units with GG XP and your plant of Whitehall.

I do think that the border being unclear between us for a long time didn't help -- on Gavagai's side, I knew exactly where the line was drawn very early on and could just load a single frontline city with units.

I also needed a fair bit of power just to be sure Gavagai didn't attack early -- at least I accomplished that much, as he never actually attacked me until I was obviously in serious trouble.

I thought you overextended during the midgame, but then your recovery via MoM propelled you back to strength, and I doubt you should put that much weight on thoughts from a weaker player, anyway -- because I managed to crash our economy completely after the Golden Age that culminated in an ill-executed Astro bulb (well, Joey thought our finish date was strong, but Krill immediately responded with a triple bulb 3t afterwards), and not because Krill leisurely took all the islands which we never got to make use of -- his counterattack wrecked a third of our army/navy but was economically negligible at the time -- and Krill and Joey are right about that as well, I lacked the vision to build an economy, ending up with a large but nearly-outdated and barely-reinforceable sword stack which had nowhere to go after our war (in which you stopped our most important attack cold at Sorpigal; even if we hadn't declared on Krill and instead united our stacks there, I think you would have managed to hold it with xbows behind a castle). Regna alone would not have pulled us out of the swamp, nor would Mandrake if we could have held it.

Oh, I most certainly did overextend in that period; I felt I needed to try something to catch up economically, but I should not have built so many +25% infrastructure buildings at the expense of military.  And I should have built more ships -- I wasted the circumnavigation bonus not doing so.

Regarding your opening, I was most impressed by your early circumnavigation, and you probably kept the best C&D out of the new players (mine was a complete mess) including your scouting of Joey's GLH construction. Besides that, I think you made yourself difficult to read, with me often worried about an attack from you during the early game, but later taking you for a very defensive player (not really true). Also, in case I haven't told you yet, you handled that game, as well as your defenses against a superior army, much more gracefully than I did. So go for it, let's see if you can get a top6 finish here as well

That was partly luck, as I had my scout alive for a very long time -- you can only expect maybe half the players having their scouts avoid getting killed either by some wandering bear or another player.  That scout unfogged a complete set of tiles along the entire Y-axis all by himself.  And the boat I built for circumnavigation on the X-axis was originally intended to scout for maybe 10 turns and then plant on seafood, but I changed my mind and decided to shift focus from wide to tall for a while, so it ended up doing far more scouting than I'd originally intended.  That's a benefit of Expansive I hadn't actually planned on, but it worked out well.

So I basically built a Wonder for 23 hammers, but really, people who had their scout survive should be willing to try it for 30, and even 60 is a reasonable gamble even if they're scarce early-game hammers.  But only on a small-ish map -- on a map with 25 players, you might need one boat in each cardinal direction, and that presumes it's even possible before Optics.

I didn't keep up that scouting as the game went on, but that's partly because I eventually had such pressing needs I couldn't do much more than watch my land neighbors.

[RefSteel]

So now you get a sample of what I've been posting about in the mapmakers thread!

Here are the choices we rolled for you - when you've decided whether to keep the civ or reroll it, and which (if either) of the leaders you want to keep, post the inforrmation here to let us know.

Options:
Joao (Exp/Imp)
Peter (Exp/Phi)
Byzantium

Your start:

The essential form of the BFC may be relied upon, though we might still make superficial changes e.g. to whether the trees are deciduous, conifers, or snowy, and we might imaginably even rotate the whole thing 90 degrees or something since the surrounding terrain is still being finalized. The corner tiles may yet change, and the fog is a fabric of lies, but at least you've got your start!

And yes, that lake has a mangrove forest.

[Dark Savant]

Okay, so Byzantium is Mysticism/Fishing in RtR, just like Spain.

Now, here's a start where I can gamble on a religion out the gate -- I have the right civ for it for this start.  It's an awkward start as I cannot build a worker first (as it wouldn't have anything to do), but a super early religion is very valuable on a 25-player map if I can get a holy city and shrine, and somehow catch up on the sacrificed early growth.

And hey there, we have Exp/Imp on tap too.  Now, I know I said I didn't really want that specific combination, because it has such inferior late-game potential ... but in this case, that late-game potential would come from possessing a shrine for a religion that gets everywhere.   And Exp/Imp would help catch up on the sacrifice made by not building a worker first.  And, hmm, Exp/Phi would accelerate the early Great Prophet by ~20 turns, which is good all on its own (it'd help spread my religion faster compared to whomever gets the other early religions), though my instinct is that it's better to take Exp/Imp if I keep Byzantium.

How much competition would I have for a religion?  This isn't a mirrored start, so someone would either need to roll and keep Spain together with lake/seafood, or start with an oasis.  In either case, they'd beat me by pairing it with Financial.  And there'd be only ~5 other people with Mysticism starts (which may instead be played for Incan terraces, Indian fast workers, Aztec sacrificial altars, or HRE Rathäuser).

I'll have to think this one over; it's probably time to start running sims to gauge how crippled my start is with religion-first.

[Dark Savant]

Okay, no time to run sims right now (in fact I might not have the time at all today; I might have to do it tomorrow), but it looks like we're Monarch/Huge.

That's expected, but it does make a significant difference in making a play for religion since every turn you spend researching Not-A-Worker-Tech has a serious negative impact on your starting growth rate.

I'll work out how bad this is -- I'm actually slightly inclined to reroll everything, but I'm also tempted to roll the dice.  I'll need to see some numbers.

[Dark Savant]

The flip size of the coin is that I don't actually have to get a religion even if I keep Byzantium -- I can simply research Hunting while building a worker.  It's not like Byzantium has a bad UB/UU.  I'm almost certain to get better starting techs rerolling Byzantium though.