Gaspar and NobleHelium - More Arguments About Buildings & Food.

[Gaspar]

I think you're missing something. You forgot to rate us.

Its coming. With the game not starting until Monday and everyone off playing D3 I didn't want to blow all my material ahead of time.

Most entertaining...some kind of good cop/bad cop thingy going on and priceless chats (yep love reading them). I'm rooting for you to win this thing. You don't mind another ded-lurker do you?

Definitely appreciate as many voices in the chorus as possible.

I thought you retired after 29 Gaspar. Glad to see you didn't though, your pregame thoughts are easily one of my top favourite reads on RB

Thanks. Yeah, I had intended to retire but realized it was more burnout than flameout. I like having a save in my inbox every day. And really, if you look at the games I've played excepting 14 I had one of the top 10 players on the site as an opponent everytime - I'm not one to shy from a challenge but for once its nice to play against peers rather than an obvious presumptive favorite all the time. Constant self-deprecation aside I do believe I'm a pretty decent player. But honestly, this game isn't about winning for me (though obviously I intend to do all I can to win) its really just about having a slightly less tense good time. This game isn't filled with a bunch of slouches anyway - Dave and Commodore have both been in solid positions to win before, Ichabod's won FFH PBEMs and Yuri is always among the competitors at game end.

Anyway, thoughts on Me and NH the team, Isabella of China round two and an approach to the metagame for this game all forthcoming in the next bit.

P.S. Commodore told me he freaked out the other day when Mardoc posted in his thread. EVEN THE OTHER PLAYERS KNOW YOU'VE FORSAKEN ME!

[Gaspar]

And in the red corner...



Gaspar (PBEMs 12, 14, 24, 26, 29; FFH7, PB4) and NobleHelium (PBEMs21, 29)


As an encore...

NSFW

I still have no idea who that is, but I used her picture in 24 and saw no reason not to have an encore


Isabella of China (SPI, EXP, Mining, Agriculture, Pavillion, Cho-Ku-Nu)

This is the second time around for me and NH and as he stated above, we definitely made some big mistakes the first time around. My strength is generally a good "game sense." I usually have a pretty good feel for what my opponents are up to and for what we might need to do to counter it. My biggest weakness is a propensity for self-doubt and a close second is a tendency to make gigantic mistakes. NH's biggest strength is tactical micro - shuffling workers/units etc. His biggest weakness is being incredibly annoying. Secondly, he lacks experience as he's not actually played a lot of Civ4 so while his technical sense is outstanding he lacks the "feel" of someone who has played the game a lot more. Probably the second biggest reason he won when he played with the more assertive Lewwyn and lost when paired with me. Biggest reason is obviously the difference in the quality of the fields - PBEM21 was essentially a greens game; PBEM29 was pretty much the exact opposite, an experts game.

PBEM24 in some ways is a greater regret than even PBEM14 for me. It was easily the best first 30 turns I've played in a game on this site - no small part of that goes to the fact that there is nothing that starts faster than Expansive China - probably the only faster starter would be Sury of China - surprising we haven't seen that yet, actually. But I made one huge tactical blunder - leaving copper unhooked so I could continue to build cheap MP warriors leading to mackoti rolling up on me with 2 chariots that could have ended my game. Then I made two other huge mistakes: First ambling towards the Pyramids I based my game plan off rather than pushing towards them, and second losing a city to a barb warrior because I didn't bring MP with the settler. And then I proceeded to mail the rest of the game in because I was frustrated with myself. Anyway, more on Izzy strategies later.

Gaspar/NobleHelium snapshot:

Player skill:
Leader/Civ strength:
Aggressiveness:
Intangibles:
PYFT rating: [solo I'd give myself a 5 here, but NH & I tend to take entirely too long to discuss the turns and provided you guys with the opportunity to read our bickering.]

Exploitable weakness: Prone to throw in the towel when something goes against us, possible at anytime that I'm jailed for murdering my teammate.
Biggest fear: We somehow figure out how to work together properly and put our obviously complimentary skills to work positively.
Pre-game prediction: 2nd place.

[NobleHelium]

me: way to disc qq
RIGHT AFTER SKIPPING THE CINEMATIC FOR US
Gaspar: sorry
did you guys kill him?
i cant get back in
me: yeah we killed him
Gaspar:
me: after lewwyn stood in fire 389393 times and i healed him over and over
Gaspar: I died 2x on my DH before I got him
tricky fight
me: just need to keep moving
and watch the floor
there's a warning before the fire starts
Gaspar: at least with the minimal toolkit you have at this level
it wasn't the fire
me: it's just like a wow boss fight :P
Gaspar: it was him kicking my ass
i know how to avoid fire :P
me: yeah he hits hard when he grips you
Gaspar: the DH doesn't have much health
had to just keep flipping away from him
me: anyway i definitely like monk so far
very versatile
and very mobike
Gaspar: this sucks
i missed out on a rare
me: yeah two actually =[
lewwyn got a crossbow
Gaspar: you could have waited for me ; ;
me: I HAVEN'T DIED YET
PSEUDOHARDCORE
plus you skipped the cinematic!
Gaspar: dc'd again
this is so annoying
SORT IT OUT BLIZZ
its not me, i have really stable internet :P

[Lewwyn]

I was real sad about the cinematic... I haven't seen it yet. Gonna have to get wiz up there. NH kept healing me cuz I lagged into his attacks and the fire, but I died when he had 2% health left.

SO if I say I'm dedlurking this, like I said about 24, but ended up not doing anything, but I actually help this time, am I absolved of the sins of the past, whatever they may be?

SECOND CHANCE YO!

[Gaspar]

I have no idea what the purpose of that chat was.

Lewwyn, you're more than welcome though though your track record for dedlurking is almost as bad as mine.

I'll have some time tomorrow where I can probably get those Izzy of China and metagame posts done. NH will of course be contributing by playing Diablo 3. Remember this later when he whines that I'm not sandboxing enough. Or more likely, when I can't get him to sandbox because he's too busy playing Diablo 3.

[NobleHelium]

The purpose of the chat was to get Lewwyn to post of course.

[Lewwyn]

worked.

[Gaspar]

So, about Isabella of China. Why did I choose this over say, Willem of England?



They say a picture is worth a thousand words, and that's pretty much everything there. Now granted, it was a flat and very green map but you're looking at 4 cities on T32, 3 with granaries done, etc etc etc. Then on T33, mackoti showed up with his Chariots which were deadly because I didn't hook up copper to be able to continue building warrior garrisons. From there on, I made several bad decisions and then basically just started completely mailing the game in to the point where I was trumped by Commodore who had run his typical poor open and I was basically a footnote on the conclusion of the game. All without ever being declared on once. So suffice to say, this game qualifies as a regret on a level that the game design really was intentioned for. Willie might be a stronger leader than Izzy but I didn't ever expect to win that game. For one it was my first game here and for another it was against Kyan (great player) playing Expansive India on a map with a forest on every tile and no rivers. So I have no regrets there. While there's no shame in losing to mackoti, who may well be the best player on the entire site, there's plenty of shame in how I played the game.

So for take two, what have I learned? Well, certainly you expect a fast start. If you don't get out of the gate fast with Exp + an Agriculture/Mining start then you don't remotely deserve to win. But Spiritual leaders, oft lauded for their ability to run Specialist economies are actually really solid at running any type of economy. The ability to swap in and out of Caste System is huge in being able to push GP generation and out of multiple cities. So CoL will be an early tech priority. NobleHelium has referred to the tech path where one ignores religion in favor of diving headlong to Math > Currency > CoL as the "Gaspar Road" since I favor it in almost all of my games, but it makes a lot of sense here. If we're going to expand quickly, nothing does more to defray expansion costs than free trade routes and the ability to build wealth. Math is big because it opens powered chops for a potential wonder and CoL as mentioned gives the possibility to run Caste System whenever we want to generate a quick GP.

So, we'll talk about how we specifically hope to fit a strategy into this game a little later, but the obvious plan here is:

1. Fast start - expand aggressively
   
2. Push through the middle of the tree for key economic techs
   
3. Get Caste early for some bulb potential
   
4. Nab a key wonder to two - MoM is probably the most important one with Dave as a rival, though certainly the Pyramids are attractive if there's stone.
   
5. Build some spears.
   

[Gaspar]

Ok, so here's a chat NH and I had about the game:

Gaspar: k back
NobleHelium: ok
so what do you want to talk about
Gaspar: well, just a combination of what we think will happen in the game
and how we plan to approach it
need to get all this stuff out now
because once we see a map everything changes
NobleHelium: well i'm not sure what there is to say until we see the map lol
Gaspar: well
mostly what we see everyone doing etc
so uh
basically the way i see it
i wonder if a bit of pbem14 might break out
financials vs non-financials
NobleHelium: uh huh
you're going to blast me for not saying anything but i can't think of anything to say
Gaspar: WHY CAN'T YOU EVER CONTRIBUTE ANYTHING
you're like the uno equis man
least interesting man in the world
NobleHelium: one horse man?
Gaspar: as opposed to the dos equis man
or whatever, however its spelled
I'M JUST GOING TO HAVE TO END UP WRITING THE DAMN POST MUSELF

i need new internet friends
NobleHelium: well bring up some specific things for discussion
Gaspar: how do you see the first 50 turns playing out?
NobleHelium: ok
let's see
Gaspar: i.e. whos in the lead, who gets what wonders, etc
NobleHelium: yuris oracles metal casting
Gaspar: agree
NobleHelium: i'm not sure how davy will play this
Gaspar: well, you have to assume a mids run
NobleHelium: well maybe davy techs mono and goes for mids
Gaspar: yeah, id definitely expect early religion from him
i expect commodore to do so as well
he likes to attack shinies even if they're not all the shiny
though ceil is dedlurking him again so that should keep him semi-grounded
NobleHelium: commodore told you that
?
Gaspar: yeah
NobleHelium: i haven't seen ceil post at all
Gaspar: ive talked to commodore and ichabod a bit
NobleHelium: i expect too many settlers from mistabod because a) they're a lot cheaper than ffh and b) they're imp
Gaspar: it looks like maybe mackoti is dedlurking ichabod from the post count
but i dont expect mackoti to actually stick with it and help
yeah, economy crash from mistkebab is a safe bet
NobleHelium: i don't think the post count is indicative of anything
mack doesn't talk much
Gaspar: well
hes posted twice in ichabods thread and not in anyone elses
NobleHelium: yes he probably commented on their pick
and what's good and what's not
Gaspar: so ill say the the 3 early religions fall to a combo of dave and commodore
ill say mistkebab lands henge
yuri lands oracle
GLH?
its viable if we run pangaea
NobleHelium: depends
depends on the kind of pangaea i mean
Gaspar: i certainly could be talked into it if we have a lot of coastal spots
NobleHelium: well sure
Gaspar: probably it doesn't fall in the first 50 turns unless the map is more watery than we're expecting
obviously we don't want a lot of water with 3 fin opponents
NobleHelium: if we do roll on lakes which i don't think we will, it's very possible that the fin civs could start with no water and the nonfin civs could spawn next to the lakes
Gaspar: yeah
NobleHelium: that's why lakes isn't a good choice
Gaspar: if we roll pangaea most likely everyone starts reasonably close to an edge
with 5 players
as best as I can recall
<snip>
Gaspar: yeah
well
ideally
NobleHelium: btw i wouldn't be opposed to building great wall later in the game
Gaspar: whomever gets one someone else gets the other
im not opposed to building it if we have stone later in the game
NobleHelium: OR MAYBE WE GET THEM ALL
!!!!!
Gaspar: lol
i do think we should probably aim to land glh or mids
as much as to make sure nobody sweeps the econ wonders as to get them ourselves
NobleHelium: anyway if we go pangaea, first to destroyers will still be powerful
but there won't be superforking like 17
Gaspar: well, likelihood on a pangaea
is that theres a clear leader before combustion
NobleHelium: likely that there will be important combat before it at least
Gaspar: though id really like to stay peaceful until guilds in an ideal world
alright, i guess thats enough to go on

[pindicator]

Thar be PB7 spoilers in that chat, cap'n! :aar:

And if you want ideas on what to do, I've been tossing around the idea of a SPI strat that goes:

• Code of Laws via Priesthood
  
• Swap to Caste and run merchants while teching Math
  
• Bulb Currency with a GM

Is it feasible? No guarantees; it may only be worthwhile to do if you grab CoL with the Oracle. But it's different and I'd like to see someone road test it for me.