[PB74 SPOILERS] scooter's Bluey Adventure

[scooter]

Thinking about this some more. I really want Agriculture for this start, but I’m afraid I cannot even remotely count on it. Of the 15 civs that were not rolled in round one, only 4 of them have Agriculture. So just from that pool, my odds of rolling one from two retries is around 50%. However, the odds will likely be worse than that, as we’re adding all the rejects in too, which will be disproportionately non-Agriculture I would guess.


HOWEVER, Hunting starts are … sort of OK for me too? It does allow me to tech AH first, for example. I don’t remember if on Large size I can finish AH within 12T though, so I’ll have to check that. Also, in CtH it strengthens the scout vs animals which is actually pretty important given that we are going barbs-on here. So if I widen my pool to Hunting OR Agriculture, it’s a little better, though there’s a subset of Hunting civs that would still be worse (Hunting/Myst). The core issue is because I only get 2 stabs at this, it’s entirely possible I get a worse/push civ twice.


Meanwhile, Japan does have some merits longer term. I think the UB is really interesting. Having a lower base cost (100h vs 120h) opens up the age-old question of whether that’s synergistic or anti-synergistic with Industrious. The lower base cost means IND is saving you fewer hammers, but it also means you’re potentially getting it online even faster. Because you get 3 leaders per roll vs 1 civ per roll, there’s a part of me tempted to do the counter-intuitive thing and lock Japan and go fishing for more synergy. Although, you could argue Washington sort of has that already what with extra XP from UB + CHM, not to mention the expansion buff of saving 30h on Granaries and 20h on Forges meaning cities will generally come online very quickly.

[scooter]

I took a look at this start. So if I lock Japan, WB first is essentially mandatory. Worker-first is painful because 1) you have to improve the dry rice first, and 2) the worker quickly runs out of stuff to do other than road. I can get a settler out in an OK time, but only by skipping a warrior, and that's not acceptable in a barb-on game, so nope.


WB first is playable. The WB is out by EoT8, grow EoT9 and start worker, worker comes out just in time for AH to come in, improve Sheep -> Rice on the way to size 3 while getting out a warrior. Then settler at size 3 completes by end of T31 and could theoretically settle 2N of the Sheep on T33. The worker still ends up roading a lot after improving Sheep/Rice, and BW takes an absolute eternity thanks to the Fish being in the ocean, so that probably goes til T40ish which means Slavery revolt waits until second settler. Point being, it's not blazing, but it's within the range of normal.

I think what this means is I should settle for Japan and see what I can do with a UB and UU that are both solid but unspectacular. Japan seems very, as the kids say, mid. And I'm OK settling for that for fear of stumbling into something worse. I should either take Washington with it, or reroll and see what kind of synergies I can find. But that's what I should do.

Personally I'd enjoy watching you deal with the challenge of handling Lizzie.

lol I'm gonna do it

Lock Elizabeth of Japan

30% chance I change my mind tomorrow before the deadline, for real.

[scooter]

So, as for actually playing this game out, there is a certain logic to sticking with Lizzie/Japan here even if I'm not sure it's the absolute best choice. Here's the thing: my chances will be decided on neighbor luck. Do I have weak players near me? Then what I pick doesn't matter, I'll out-play them and eventually take their land. Do I have strong players near me? Well then I'll be really constrained relative to the players who don't have this problem no matter what I pick. It's noteworthy that I appear to be on the southern tip of a land mass, so there's a real chance I only even have 1-2 neighbors anyway, so the whole thing is a big huge dice roll. (When I say southern tip, I don't actually mean near the south pole, as the screenshots looks like something more equator-adjacent.)


So, if I get solid neighbor luck, I'll have options for sure. If I get BAD neighbor luck, well, Elizabeth lets me still tech really well, and maybe by being sufficiently advanced I can find an opening that allows me to stay relevant. The synergies of this pick are a bit thin, but what I do have is just a lot of tools. Samurai are an ok UU that happen to come open at a stage of the game where fighting is more efficient, and they get instant double promos when built out of a city with the UB present, which itself I also get at a 20h discount which matters a fair bit. So that's good. I get the FIN bonus which is still really good long-term. PHI gets me cheap monasteries in case I'm somehow able to get religious. In the mid-game I have cheap Universities to open up Oxford as well as cheap Banks to open up Wall Street. PHI also naturally opens up a lot of early/midgame bulb angles depending on the situation. There's tools here is the point, and having tools rather than a set gameplan is sometimes nice for these big games.

[scooter]

Off we go. Naming theme will be characters from shows that my kids like. I'm not sure how to turn that into a good thread title? Open to suggestions. The present one is weak and a placeholder.





Starting with the titular character from the best show of the bunch by far. I'm comfortable calling Bluey one of the best written shows on TV full stop. I initially was just gonna go with Bluey characters as my naming theme, but I realized that may ultimately be too limiting, though there are a lot of bit characters I could theoretically mine. I'll start with the main characters and then decide if I want to commit to Bluey, or if I need to delve into, like, Paw Patrol or something.


Anyway, the start for this is pretty on rails. Build WB on max-hammer, tech Agriculture-AH. Net the fish, then build worker next and it comes out the turn before AH completes. Improve Sheep, then Rice while growing to size 3 and building a warrior, then build a settler probably, depending on what comes up around me. Hope and pray I find a weaker player next to me. Then watch the game implode because we inexplicably changed mods at the last second, and 20T in we find there was some massive balance change that screws someone's picks, and the game collapses and/or I get to update my scoreboard.





I'm getting pretty close to the population threshold for domination. Stay tuned on that one.


I don't have any real thoughts on players leader/civ picks other than LOL Pindicator rolled Zara of Sumeria. I might put him as the favorite on that alone, assuming he's dialed in for this game. Which, historically, is about 60% likely.


SIDE NOTE: I accidentally posted this in the CtH changelog thread for about 15 seconds. So that was cool.

[Mjmd]

I wouldn't mind a broader current kid show theme. But mind I have 3 young kids.

Anyways thread title ideas:
Scooter Tooning Around
Cartoon Scooter
Best of Looney Ideas (I feel like there are some good looney titles out there)

[scooter]

I've been watching people pop techs from huts on PBSpy, and I have just one question.





Where's my huts? I have not seen a single one. Seems unlikely I'll find any southeast considering I also just met GT who is playing Kublai of Zulu.


I have no idea if he's any good, but he definitely has a concerning leader/civ combo that sounds just perfect to ruin both his and my games. Will have to look his game history up and see if he's gonna superdeath me or not.

[scooter]

Well good news, I found a hut.





Bad news: it's not mine, it "belongs" to the Impi-haver. And his rice is wet. Also.





That is unsettlingly close for Impis, especially on land that specifically benefits them. And as I type this I remember they're nerfed in CtH. That's probably for the best. Speaking of Zulu, I've learned that GT has not played a game here, and instead is from the German forum. That doesn't tell me much as the quality of player over there varies wildly it seems. On average I think it's slightly lower than it is here, on account of the fact that Plemo seems to run over every game there, but here he seems merely very good, but also very mortal. So I'm guessing this is a below-average player for this game, but he's got tools to wreck me still. The simplest way I can distill this down...

The good news is he may not be super incentivized to settle in my direction. Northwest of him is jungle, and west is just a spice. No foods that way. The wet corn is of course southwest, but there's no visible easy connection to it city-wise. So I'm hopeful he'll settle the other way. I really hate my starting spot so far here honestly. The surrounded by water bit makes this start really awkward where I cannot really "claim" backlines spots with smart city plants. 80% of possible directions are just water. We'll see what I find north of me, but I suspect it rhymes with bungle.


The silver lining is that what I'm seeing affirms that FIN was important here.


TL;DR:

[scooter]

Sigh.




Not a single hut for me this game it appears.

[scooter]

On the bright side, I did look into GT briefly, and by "look into" I mainly mean glanced at a bunch of PBSpy game scoreboards. He seems to have not done super great so far, which brings me some optimism. However, the caveat still exists that you can do poorly and bring someone down with you. Fingers crossed I guessed.

[scooter]

Well, it's another good news bad news situation.





The good news is Xist is one of the weaker players in this field. The bad news is he's Rome. Will see if he's learned from some of his mistakes in PB72 or not. And yes, I am squished between Zulu and Rome. WHAT COULD GO WRONG. I seem to be in the German district. Am I gonna find Plemo/Piccadilly next?





Meanwhile, I've made an important tweak on the home front. I'm tweaking my naming theme to be Bluey episode names which is a way better fit than character names. I briefly called this city Hammerbarn before realizing that ought to be a production city, so Baby Race it is. Full episode below.

Shout-out to Tarkeel who saw my thread title change and was excited to see the choice. He casually asked if I was doing episode names, which immediately seemed like the obvious choice.