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[TECH] Pitboss 33 IT and Tech Issues Thread

So after going through all of the setup for this game, and seeing how successful this game was, I feel like we could run a couple more of these at least, for people wanting another chance or new players wanting a try.

Before doing that though, I'd love to hear from the players and lurkers about combo balance. We've seen some analysis already, so I'll re-frame that as, what would be a balanced 7-10 leader & civ combos for players to pick from?
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IMP is very strong. If the map is fully contestable (no/few safe back line areas) I can think of very few strategies that are better than just claiming all the land possible as quickly as possible. With the huge expense of settlers and the accompanying discount IMP provides I just don't see a better alternative trait.

ORG is also huge for early factories, but in this game I feel that I was so far behind by the time that I got my early factories up it just didn't matter. SPI could not be efficient enough, however well leveraged, to close the gap on IMP. I needed at least twice as many cities as I had once I had factories going to be relevant. My fault was going almost purely vertical and hoping to expand horizontally once I had a super-efficient production base in the capital. In this case the right answer was to just eat long build times and expand onto the lush map and hope that a neighbor didn't invest hammers in hurting you. By the time I felt I could do something to REM (capital up and spewing hammers) he had so many more build queues (and base BTS whips perhaps) that it didn't matter what I could build, he'd defend well enough, and I'd only hurt my own expansion while others raced ahead in that scenario.

I don't see much value for CRE. PHI was very strong, but it's an all or nothing gambit for the few early wonders. Over time it is strong, as with a limited number of game turns you can spend a higher percentage in golden ages. Still, one of the better traits for this setup IMO. I should have gotten more out of SPI but I started mailing it in and never planned ahead so it was pretty much a null trait for me after the first 25 turns. SPI can be strong, but will never be as strong as IMP in this type of game.

AGG is good if the game is going to be a bloodbath but I don't even remember who was AGG so the impact, for me at least, must have been minimal. EXP is still ok as you'll need workers (another weakness in this game, I built far too few) but it lacks the punch provided by a normal start where you actually have to build the granaries. PRO is still garbage.

Which traits have I missed? FIN won't matter much. I cottaged one city to see if it would be good in comparison to workshop cities (it wasn't), and I had intended to get an academy for it but blew all my GPP on early rush to Communism which also wasn't worth it. I think it was pretty obvious to everyone else cottages would not pay off but I was curious so I tried it. But FIN overall has very little to offer on this late era start IMO. IND similar. Too few wonders to waste a trait and the forges are already built for you.
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(August 7th, 2016, 19:56)BRickAstley Wrote: So after going through all of the setup for this game, and seeing how successful this game was, I feel like we could run a couple more of these at least, for people wanting another chance or new players wanting a try.

Before doing that though, I'd love to hear from the players and lurkers about combo balance. We've seen some analysis already, so I'll re-frame that as, what would be a balanced 7-10 leader & civ combos for players to pick from?

Honestly I think better than trying to redo combinations like this it'd be better to just snake pick it with a ban or two if we were to revisit this era again. The preset combinations are fun for an era, but I'm not convinced you can really redo it. Part of the charm here was we were all going in pretty blind, so we were mostly uncertain on what the best choices were. Even if you rebalanced the preset choices, I think there would be much more of a consensus.
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I really liked the combination deal actually. I dunno how decent a snake you could make it. Perhaps a point system? Probably not enough data to score options though.

Maybe a snake would be ok with people wanting to try different options?

I would disagree with fin being too meh here. With fin I could trigger it on all riverside tiles pretty much as I would have milled them, and then all hills with electricity. And that is a 33% uplift on those tiles a lot of the time.


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Brick, I know I wrote this a number of times in our spoiler thread, but it bears repeating again that the scenario design for this game was outstanding. thumbsup Great map, great setup, and a very fair list of civs/leaders to pick between given that this was the first Industrial Pitboss competition that we’ve done. The fact that everyone was able to claim either their first or second pick in the draft phase, and the fact that there was so much diversity in what teams that was strong, indicates that this was an excellent starting point. Now we know looking back that some of those picks were a lot stronger than others, but we couldn’t have known that going into the setup. I wouldn’t beat yourself up over the minor thing that went wrong when so much went right.

Since you did ask though, here are some of my thoughts on how to run things for future games.

Leaders/Civs: The pool of viable traits is similar to an Ancient era start, only the desirable traits are shuffled around a bit. I think that Spiritual and Imperialistic are the two best traits for this setup, with Philosophical and Organized on the next tier down. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the top teams were all using some combination of these traits, while the teams that lacked them had middling to poor results. Imperialistic was probably the best trait for this particular map: a lush, resource-rich, food-heavy map with bountiful overseas trade routes where new cities could pay for themselves instantly. I still maintain that Spiritual is really, really good in late era starts though, and I think Spi/Imp would be the theoretical best possible combination. Popping into Slavery for your Imp settler whips, then back into Serfdom for early development, plus access to Pacifism for easy specialist lightbulbs? Yikes. Let’s not give anyone Justinian for these games, ok? lol

Spi/Phi have a special synergy for this start because no one else can possibly beat Gandhi to the first Great Engineer (with the ability to avoid Anarchy and get the free religion swap), which means a guaranteed Taj Mahal, and then a Golden Age to pop out Great People at 4x speed towards whatever lightbulb target is desired (almost certainly Communism). There’s just too much positive synergy here, played beautifully by Dreylin and OT4E in this game, enough so that I would consider knocking Gandhi out of the pool as well. Alternately and perhaps as a better choice, I think that the Taj Mahal should be banned from future Industrial games. It’s just too big of a swing for whoever can get the first Great Engineer; if Gandhi’s not in the game, you have a very real chance of multiple teams spawning Great Engineers on the same turn, and then the wonder’s getting decided based on a coin flip. I think it’s just bad mojo to have that big of a snowball factor coming in the first ten turns of the game. Statue of Liberty is totally fair since it can’t be taken with a single Great Engineer, as are wonders like Kremlin and Pentagon which require researching techs to unlock. However, I would suggest taking Taj out of the pool as too swingy and potentially too luck-based.

REM showed that Imp/Org has a lot of positive synergy as well, but I think the trait pairing was a fair one to hold in the field. There are other combos that would be powerful in other ways too, like Imp/Fin (settler spam plus windmill/watermill spam) or Imp/Phi (expansion plus lightbulbs) or Imp/Exp with the classic Joao expansion. Basically, anything paired with Imperialistic or Spiritual is pretty good for this era start. I think I would make sure to keep out Spi/Imp and Spi/Phi, and think about pairing Imp with weaker traits, but otherwise the trait balance is pretty solid. Aggressive clearly had a place in this game as a mid-tier trait, and perhaps Charimatic would have been useful if the map hadn’t been so stuffed full of happiness resources. REM makes a good point about how Financial could be quite good here too; one of my mistakes in this game was not building enough windmills, which are a very solid choice on grassland hills. (With Fin, that’s a 2/2/3 tile on any grassland hill post-Electricity. Pretty nice yield, especially turning a hill into a food-neutral tile!) Expansive is weaker trait, so perhaps can be used to balance something like Spi or Imp. The only really bad traits are Industrious, Creative, and (as always) Protective. They may also be good tools for balancing out Spi and Ind leaders.

I think most of the civs are fine, and it’s fun to be able to use more of them here in an era where starting techs don’t matter. I would not give anyone Khmer again though, as the free food just feels a little too good economically to me. Getting +1 food for free in every city for the whole game is a little unbalancing. I also think that one of the civs that wasn’t even in this game (the Vikings) would be extremely powerful for this kind of setup. They’re probably the only other civ I would consider as being potentially dangerous. I doubt strong enough to ban, but still worth noting. And of course India is always amazing, even if we didn’t see it in this game.

A snake pick with a couple of leaders banned would be a lot of fun to see for the next game. smile

Other Stuff: I thought the map was a giant success for this game, a near perfect combination of giving each team a clear starting area while also allowing teams to threaten one another early in the game. Those islands were a lot of fun to contest as well, and they were hugely important strategically. Scooter and I would have been also-rans without securing access to the two islands near out start. More maps like this in the future please.

I think that barbarians should be turned off in the future. They didn’t post any threat to the teams (since they showed up with warrior) and the random presence of barb cities felt a touch unbalancing. That was one of the few things that didn’t work for me in this game.

Interesting question to ponder: should map trading be ruled out for future games? I can see arguments for and against it. (It was a little silly in this game that circumnavigation was decided in the first 10 turns essentially via the dumb luck of map trades.)

We should also consider debating how to handle air power in future games. I personally like the compromise reached in this game, that air units can’t go after tile improvements due to the turn split issues it causes, but we should certainly discuss other options. Before a game starts, not afterwards!

I think that’s what I have for now. I’m reading the other spoiler threads and should have more team-based thoughts as I get through them. Thanks.
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GG, REM. I doubt that Julius of Japan was the perfect choice, you just played it out well and got lucky in some aspects.

Special thanks to Dreylin, who took me aboard and has done the most part of hard job of turn playing.

Everyone, thanks for the game, I really enjoyed it and it was never a boring one.

P.s: we must repeat it.
P.p.s: the map was really nice, all you need for industrial game
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(August 8th, 2016, 10:28)OT4E Wrote: P.s: we must repeat it.
P.p.s: the map was really nice, all you need for industrial game

Scooter just mentioned to me in chat that a 'shadow' game where we reuse the map would be really fun with this map. I'd be willing to throw that together for another round of players, all the hard work has been done after all.
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(August 8th, 2016, 10:28)OT4E Wrote: Special thanks to Dreylin, who took me aboard and has done the most part of hard job of turn playing.

We can discuss who did the hard work; after all, you get full credit for the early game bulb plan, while I just tried not to screw up the micro too much! shhh

Anyway, thanks for coming on board and as I said before I really enjoyed the collaboration and would be happy to do that again when you have more time. nod
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(August 8th, 2016, 10:52)BRickAstley Wrote:
(August 8th, 2016, 10:28)OT4E Wrote: P.s: we must repeat it.
P.p.s: the map was really nice, all you need for industrial game

Scooter just mentioned to me in chat that a 'shadow' game where we reuse the map would be really fun with this map. I'd be willing to throw that together for another round of players, all the hard work has been done after all.

Would you fix the wonky corn isthmus' some teams had? Or the slightly unbalanced starting luxury resources?
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(August 8th, 2016, 10:28)OT4E Wrote: GG, REM. I doubt that Julius of Japan was the perfect choice, you just played it out well and got lucky in some aspects.

Special thanks to Dreylin, who took me aboard and has done the most part of hard job of turn playing.

Everyone, thanks for the game, I really enjoyed it and it was never a boring one.

P.s: we must repeat it.
P.p.s: the map was really nice, all you need for industrial game


Thanks. Julius I think is the best here if you want a fire and forget leader. 2 powerful traits that need little input to get good effect. Plus as scooter said neighbour placement is always big here. Like if Gaspar had been left alone he probably would have tried for my reaching city.
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