[SPOILERS] Rusten prepares to face the music

[Rusten]

It doesn't necessarily have to be mounted warfare, but HAs have surprise factor and come at a time when it's hard to defend against 2-movers.
Knights are just good overall -- they tick all the boxes. Help protect stacks, 2 movement speed, good attackers in field and vs cities. Can't go wrong building them. Mounted warfare a la SP with just having naked knights/cuirassiers running around doesn't work though.
The normal 1-movers with siege do play a big role.

Re: Machinery improvements
-watermills get the extra hammer right away (strong!)
-windmills get the extra hammer on RP still
-both improvements get +1 hammer from serfdom (strong! and unlocked on the way to guilds).

[Rusten]

I looked at PB 27 for reference again and it seems all the starts had fish, livestock and ivory in the BFC. So maybe my theory on mirror BFCs still holds (but the rest of the nearby area will differ). Everyone having ivory is pretty certain though, mirror BFCs or not.
Maybe in the worst case there will be some starts with livestock instead of grain where we could face religious competition from hunting/mysticism civs (Aztecs, Celts and the HRE), but can definitely see it being grain for everyone.

But all of those civs are less inclined to go for it compared to us IMO. More difficult access to prophets and hunting is less flexible than agriculture for further teching (pottery etc). Even if they do tech it we'll have a flip. A fishing civ (possiblity of higher commerce) surely can't afford teching meditation/poly early.

[vandale]

Yes, most likely, the starts are "standardized", rather than mirrored.
e.g. : no gold mines in BFCs, no oasises, relatively equal access to strat resources, same amount of health/happy bonuses...

Holding a religion can come with many benefits later in the game. I would quite fancy it.
Diplo. Shared religion can give some amount of trust with a neighbour and, thus, security.
Happies.
Civics. Civics are a great asset. Org Rel, Theo, they do it all.
Not sure the wonders (AP, Sankore, Minaret) are worth it. Probably not in this game, without being SPI.

With a religion, you need to think about the spread. Borders can be closed but there must be a network connexion (Sailing, road).

Writing, Alphabet, Paper... Tech trading comes with Paper.
This is extremely late.
So the tech path basically is set with no tech trading. In the Classical Era, it's mostly the timing of Monarchy that will be impacted.
From what we can see, though, you're likely to have a high happy margin to work with (CHA, resources, Colosseum).
In this light, the religion also helps delay Monarchy in favour of some more commerce/infrastructure friendly techs.
You'll know quickly if you can get 10 happy surplus or not.

^ It would make sense that all player areas do not share the exact same resources, so as to enable trading and make for a richer diplo game.
Never second guess a map maker, as they say.
Explore, move the scout, be strong.


ps : I installed the mod wrong. I'll retry later on.

[Rusten]

^I don't know how closely you read the settings but there is no tech trading for this game. It's available at paper in the mod but disabled in the game settings. Very limited diplomacy as well. Not allowed to convey messages in any written form (unit naming, diplo screens, etc). Fish for fish deals and similar can be made to show peaceful intentions, but it's all conjecture and the only thing you can truly trust is a 10-turn enforced peace treaty by the game itself.

If anything I feel a shared religion will lead to less security as they'd want our cities more.
If/when we get a shrine it will also be a source of contention. But we can't avoid profitable plays just because it makes us more of a target. If we never have anything worth capturing we're not winning the game. Can't play these games with fear.

I agree with all the other things you wrote. Not being super reliant on monarchy is nice.

The mod should go in the program files folder I believe.

[vandale]

Ah, yes, I can remember the fish for fish thingy.

Just noticed the forested ivory tile. Is this busted or what ?

Worker before Settler makes you safer. And is strong overall.
I like the Worker at size 2. Producing the worker before/while the rice is improved is very neat.
Then you can grow 2 sizes in 2 turns. That's cool, too.

I'll look into it a little further. It's questionable whether the mines really are better than a 1F2H tile or that infamous 2F2H ivory.
^ Compared with chops, that is. I'm uncertain about the tech timings, so you can take that with a grain of salt.
^^ Cap has 2H, ivory has 2H. Those are even numbers, meaning the first mine doesn't even add an IMP hammer to the city's yield. The second mine adds 1 IMP hammer and 1 other hammer (assuming size 4) because it's a 4 yield tile.
That's it :
- corn, rice, ivory, plains forest = 15h/turn towards settler
- corn, rice, mine, mine = 17h/turn


I'll tryna open the save, now. This is full of possibilities and kinda funny.
An advantage of playing conservative with an opener like that and growing one more size than would otherwise seem necessary (i.e. size 4) is that when you reveal BFC copper, you can actually improve and work it.

[vandale]

This post is mostly me catching up with what it is to play MP and... Granary.

Safety :
- worker first is standard play.
- settler first can put you under a lot of pressure. It's comparable with a 14CC à la Flash (14 SCVs, Command Centre before Barracks (! ~~ link)).
It's still a strong option that should be considered, especially if you wanna a) claim another strong food resource or b) share the corn or the rice (which would also help grow cottages for that capital).
It gets you another mining base. Needs a warrior to defend. Religion cannot be an option. Improving mines is fine if you share an agriculture resource.
- I suppose it's rare and a very all-in strategy for 50/50 chances of success : I'd be interested in seeing a warrior bust in action (6 warriors, go?). Not here, need Mining from the start.

Flash gives you :

A bunker !!!

Now, Granary.
The Granary in the capital has a huge value. Thinking timelines and opportunity costs...
Would the religion delay the capital's Granary ?
At what point (i.e. after what build orders) would the capital want to build its Granary ?
[Sidenote : there's an option to double chop into the granary that seems very costly ; then again, working mines could be justified if it allows to complete it with a single chop.]
Every new city needs a garrison, right ? Preferably some sea peoples or an ice archer.
Thus : is it even feasible to go settler --> settler ? Even going worker first, chaining two settlers like that seems questionable ?
If you're building warriors, and not chopping them, then it doesn't matter if you founded a religion, 'cause you're certainly not starting the granary. Even with 5hammers/turn, the warrior takes 3 turns to build (and you grow a size in the meantime).
So, timelines :
The second is rather easy to drop on the ground.
But when do you think the third city can be planted (worker first, religion opener) ?
If there's a downtime in expansion after the second city anyway, time to consolidate, isn't better to go all-in 14 CC ? Build a warrior, grow to 3, go settler.
This is also interesting in the sense that it would get a city growing, as opposed to working corn, rice and stagnating.

I still haven't installed the mod. Can you help me and give some indications on tech timings :
- when do you get BW if you go straight for it ?
- when do you get it if you go religion first ?
- how much longer would it take to research Pottery ?

I do realize this post is starting to spiral down (or up) in circular logic, so I'll stop it here.
Just food for thought, with some luck you'll find something in there. Gambit for gambit, I quite like going settler first.
Another way to consider the religion's founding (other than likely delaying the granaries) is to weight it against CHA and your initial happy surplus.
We can also keep in mind that the mid-term plan is to out-tech and out-produce some neighbours and the religion doesn't help in that (but earlier cottages and cities and granaries do).

[vandale]

Go standard, outplay your opponents, build granaries early.
You don't need the religion, it's just too cute.

Build orders : stay open, scout the river, cannot go wrong.

[Rusten]

Warrior busts turn the game into a farce, and these games are modified to dissuade people from doing it. Significant distance between capitals and a hill plant. I can't see this ever being a good idea in a FFA game such as this one. In a duel game other rules apply, but for FFA it just ruins the game for both you and your opponent IMO. When did you become so bloodthirsty? I thought I had a builder on the team? I thought you were going to have to hold me back.
And where is the 6 warriors --> 6pool analogy? 

I don't understand why you are so against improving mines while keeping both corn and rice. We have a huge happy surplus so we need to improve these kinds of tiles. We'll grow onto them quickly and they're really good before pottery. Don't forget about the extra commerce compared to forests. Look at my size 3 sim for instance. The rice is farmed as the 2nd settler finishes and it can quickly grow to 5/6 using flood plains and then go back to mines.

Maybe I'm missing something, but I don't see how settler first works here. What good does the extra city do without improved tiles?
There's no downtime in expansion. If you have the 2 workers you get one settler after another without trouble. You can just run sims in vanilla BTS to verify this. With IMP a worker gets you the hammers back in no time from chopping. Play some starts on rich/lush maps with IMP and you'll see that what's limiting the expansion is to a large degree worker turns and not hammers. Size 3 example has first settler moving on T30 and the second on T34 with slavery adopted (possibly not necessary). This can be be reproduced whatever the tech cost if religion is not pursued.

Ideally we'll expand quickly to 4-5 good cities by 2500-2000 BC and have granary unlocked for quick growth of these cities (and plenty of workers). Having a size 6 capital worker several mines+rice+corn+ivory would help in this regard.

Tech costs: I was mistaken before. I looked at the 3.x line of the mod when I checked out tech costs which had significant discounts. The final game should be similar to that of base BtS. Map settings are huge/monarch.* As a result my previous sims can't be trusted and going for a religion will delay things a little more I guess (still many upsides though).

I agree that there's a risk of getting too cute. I usually avoid this religious line for a reason. But be aware that this sort of game can net you 50+ gpt shrines in the early ADs. We don't have spiritual to take advantage of early religious civics though.

This is becoming very jumbled/all over the place. In short I will say that.
-yes, let's not get too attached to the idea of going religion first (but keep it in mind)
-this start has 2 huge timings. The first is BW (IMP chopping) and the second is pottery (granaries+capital cottages). Any delay to any of those, as pointed out in one of the first posts, is always a concern. Every turn we're delayed to pottery costs our empire hammers and cottage turns in capital. Even a guaranteed religion may not be worth it.
-assume a good food resource other than what is already revealed for the first cities

We can just capture a religion too with ha/axe/swords/catas/WEs. It will do very little for us the first 70-80 turns -- more of a late game insurance (shrine).
It will be easier to plan when we know the exact tech costs. Final decision on micro/techs can't be made until the game is live, but simming out some starts now will help with the pattern recognition later on for what is/is not possible/profitable.

*Not sure if the map/scenario will be edited in some way to scale tech costs to standard size or if it will be like a normal huge. I've not kept up with the map discussion. Maybe someone can answer here.

[Rusten]

The more I think about it now the less I like the early religion. It goes against my philosophy of early development/gain and snowball. The benefits come so late and can be attained in other ways (CoL, philosophy, capture). Settling cities and growing early to take advantage of the river (free commerce) should be the priority. Religion is only a distraction for the first 50+ turns.

[RefSteel]

*Not sure if the map/scenario will be edited in some way to scale tech costs to standard size or if it will be like a normal huge. I've not kept up with the map discussion. Maybe someone can answer here.

The mod, difficulty, and map size have all been established; I don't know of anything else that modifies tech costs, so a huge/monarch sandbox with the same mod installed (RtR 2.0.8.3) should have the correct numbers.