[SPOILERS] SevenSpirits goes on a mysterious adventure

[SevenSpirits]

I have had about the worst possible results from my early researches of AH and BW.

1) Horses are nowhere to be found, so I can't get a better city site from knowing AH, and early BW is nerfed due to lack of early chariots.
2) Copper is at the most obvious second city site around, but it's on a terrible tile that's not worth working (desert). So I gained absolutely nothing from revealing it before I choose my second city site.

[SevenSpirits]

>print opponent analysis

Sorry, I don't have anything cute this time.

Serdoa playing Joao of Inca. This is obviously a good choice. Inca is a top two pick. Serdoa is a great pick. And EXP is good. I believe IMP is pretty poor though. I hope this game will show us one way or the other. I'm used to seeing Serdoa as an IND leader. I really don't know what to expect from him with Joao. However, I'm always impressed by his depth of analysis and strong play, so I am not taking him lightly. Worse, I do not know him; that makes him a terrifying foe. Threat level: RED.

Novice and Shoot the Moon playing Pacal of Egypt. Quite strong pick. Actually I'm really curious to see how CRE and EXP compare, and this is a good opportunity: our setups are quite similar except for those traits. Novice is an extremely smart player who plays a tight game. Only catch is he doesn't have enough experience for this to always be the right game. I'm only a couple games ahead of him though, can I really talk? Shoot is a medium strong player who has a couple games of late-game experience, if I remember right. So this could be a good partnership as long as Shoot doesn't get discouraged by consistently being the incorrect one early on. And even if not, Novice alone is going to own the early game. Threat level: RED.

Gaspar, Zakalwe, Lewwyn, and WarriorKnight playing Huayna Capac of Mali. What, when did this team get so big!? Well, WarriorKnight only has one post in their thread so maybe the roster is a bit misleading. But here we at the very least have some quite good players with significant successes between them and plenty of strong micro skills. Yet somehow I still feel like they are lacking something. I think if you added one of the other teams to their roster they'd be much scarier, but I can't put my finger on why. Regarding the pick, I feel dubious about the Huayna pick like I said earlier; I think Sury would have been better. But I mean, it's good... You know, I'm always kind of happy to see IND opponents. I feel sort of comfortable because I feel like I know what they will do. But back the the opponents. I do not feel comfortable. I see a frenzied gang of motivated killers who are posting up a storm, will make seriously great plans, and will get really pissed when some of these plans are inevitably dashed. Actually that may be the difference I am imagining in this team compared to the others; I am expecting them to be the least able to handle broken plans well. But yeah. Threat level: RED.

SevenSpirits playing Willem of China. Yes, I count as an opponent, so what? I think Willem of China is a competitive pick for these conditions, though of course in retrospect an Ag/Wheel civ would have been better, sigh. I'm pretty confident in my play, but several things are going to work to undermine me this game. The main one is that my level of stress from playing has dropped way down over the last couple of games. PBEM39 I wanted to prove myself; I did really great planning and got far ahead of my opponents, so they conceded. PBEM43 I played a bit more casually, not even planning many early worker moves a turn in advance, yet I still feel like I was beating the field pretty handily when it got called due to a dearth of subs. So now, I lack motivation. I actually want to get into a losing position so I can see how I do from there, and so my opponents don't freaking concede. I'm tired of all this "being the favorite" crap. And I will stop at nothing to achieve my goals! Threat level: RED.

Mackoti playing Augustus of India. Aw, shit. Mackoti is the Death Star of civ players. He's definitely got the planet-exploding army of knights thing going on, and the more metaphorical laser focus. Also the institutional rigidity of the Empire, as his evaluations of what is good play are very correct but are based mostly on repeated experience, and miss out on a level of deeper understanding. It's like you are racing, and he is definitely a little bit slower than you, but he's going in exactly the right direction, and you keep getting lost or having to stop to rest and he just Keeps. Going. And he has this one weakness... well, we have spies trying to find out more information about it... Threat level: RED.

P.S. His leader pick was poor, but I don't know if this will become apparent due to the strength of India.

[Ceiliazul]

Nothing cute require, I just wanted to get in on the mysterious adventure at least once :-)

Given the point system, who would have been a better pick to go with India?

[T-hawk]

And EXP is good. I believe IMP is pretty poor though.

Do these follow? Everybody loves the cheap granaries, which save 30 hammers per city... but the IMP settler boost saves 33 if done right by whip/chop. (I have an answer to this, but curious to see if you think the same way.)

[scooter]

So now, I lack motivation. I actually want to get into a losing position so I can see how I do from there, and so my opponents don't freaking concede.

You know, you could've just recruited someone like me to play the first 75 turns or so and it would've done the trick nicely . "Whelp, I made a mess, have fun!"

It's like you are racing, and he is definitely a little bit slower than you, but he's going in exactly the right direction, and you keep getting lost or having to stop to rest and he just Keeps. Going.

This is the perfect description of Mackoti. He just never makes the wrong decision ever.

[Ichabod]

Very good analysis of the players. I'd only argue that you could consider PB7 (was it PB7? The Hunter-Gatherer team?) as a pretty bad losing position that you managed to overcome, so you should motivate yourself to once again dominate this game, seeing that that challenge was already handled.

[SevenSpirits]

Given the point system, who would have been a better pick to go with India?

Well... the point system was actually scrapped. So, Suryavarman, for example. Or Bismarck.

Do these follow? Everybody loves the cheap granaries, which save 30 hammers per city... but the IMP settler boost saves 33 if done right by whip/chop. (I have an answer to this, but curious to see if you think the same way.)

I am going by my evaluation in my pbem43 thread. EXP, IMP. Obviously the settings are different between these two games but not in a way that should affect IMP vs EXP.

You know, you could've just recruited someone like me to play the first 75 turns or so and it would've done the trick nicely . "Whelp, I made a mess, have fun!"

Hehe. This is partly why I volunteered to play some turns for Mack/cousin/adhoc in 41. But the thing is, I really like the early turns too.

Very good analysis of the players. I'd only argue that you could consider PB7 (was it PB7? The Hunter-Gatherer team?) as a pretty bad losing position that you managed to overcome, so you should motivate yourself to once again dominate this game, seeing that that challenge was already handled.

Unfortunately, that was before my recent games which I talked about. But it definitely gave me a taste of how fun it is to play from a much worse position.

[SevenSpirits]

Had a truly difficult decision this turn. Same turn I was due to plant the city on the desert hill, my escorting warrior first moved and... revealed horses.



So after quite some thought I decided to change my first city location at the last second. My worker is now rushing over there since the sheep are already improvable. The reason I changed is pretty much one of tile yield. The copper mine sucks, the horses are good. Additionally, I've met both my neighbors now, and they are Mackoti and Serdoa; aka not Skirmishers or War Chariots. So I don't think copper is a necessity. It's painful to think of how useless my mining-BW start has been, but such is life.

[SevenSpirits]

t27:

OK, I've just about passed out of the heavily-constrained opening turns. Not many significant choices since the last update except that I decided to cottage the FP before pasturing and roading to the horse. Reason is I consider the FP FIN cottage to have a better raw yield than the horse tile, I checked to make sure that the food from the FP would actually result in equal food gains post-granary-whip, and I decided that being unable to build chariots for 2 more turns was not really a problem. I do have 5 warriors already and one more halfway done, but warriors are useful.

My opening could have definitely been better by starting with Agriculture/Wheel, and researching AH-Mining-BW-Pottery to end up in the same place I'm at now. I would rather have had my worker build a road to the second city, which both speeds it up a turn and connects it, than be able to save a turn of the second city's life by revolting to slavery while the settler is moving. It would just be better. However, in either case, I'm glad of my decision to forgo hunting until now. I think getting BW/Pottery up faster was worth it, and camping the ivory was not a priority until after.




Here is the map I've explored so far. Up until this turn I thought it was mirrored. As you can see, I've circled some nearby tiles which are direct copies 12 spaces apart. But my warrior up in the north has uncovered clear evidence of non-mirroring. The two circled tiles on the top left should be the same as those in the top right, but a different one of the two is land in one place than the other.

[scooter]

>MOAR_UPDATES